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Nuclear
Nuclear may refer to: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21971 |
NSAP address
A Network Service Access Point address (NSAP address), defined in ISO/IEC 8348, is an identifying label for a Service Access Point (SAP) used in OSI networking.
These are roughly comparable to IP addresses used in the Internet Protocol; they can specify a piece of equipment connected to an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network. A specific stream, analogous to a TCP/IP port or socket, is specified by using a Transport Service Access Point (TSAP). ATM can also use a Presentation (PSAP) and Session (SSAP) Access Point, but these may also be unspecified; this is up to the application.
NSAP addresses are allocated by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), through a system of delegated authorities, which are generally national standards organizations. One of the schemes to generate NSAPs uses E.164 which is the addressing format describing telephone numbers.
NSAP addresses do not specify where a network terminal is located. Routing equipment must translate NSAP addresses to SNPAs (SubNetwork Point of Attachment) to route OSI packets; VCI (virtual circuit identifier) numbers are an example of a datalink layer SNPAs in ATM; when OSI packets are sent encapsulated in IP packets the IP address is considered an SNPA.
Currently SDH/SONET networks are a major part of the network infrastructure and NSAPs are used extensively. They are usually assigned by the Network Management/NOC personnel and agreed upon within an organization to be unique (to that organization and based on geographical location using country code telephone prefixes) and are required before any operational connectivity is established at the commissioning stage.
NSAP addresses are used in the following OSI-based network technologies:
NSAP-style addresses are used in the IS-IS routing protocol.
The NSEL (Network-Selector) is a field in the NSAP address that identifies the network layer service to which a packet should be sent. This part of the address for a router will always be 0x00. In the IS-IS routing protocol, the field is sometimes referred to as the SEL field. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21974 |
American submarine NR-1
Deep Submergence Vessel "NR-1" was a unique United States Navy (USN) nuclear-powered ocean engineering and research submarine, built by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics at Groton, Connecticut. "NR-1" was launched on 25 January 1969, completed initial sea trials 19 August 1969, and was home-ported at Naval Submarine Base New London. "NR-1" was the smallest nuclear submarine ever put into operation. The vessel was casually known as "Nerwin" and was never officially named or commissioned. The U.S. Navy is allocated a specific number of warships by the U.S. Congress. Admiral Hyman Rickover avoided using one of those allocations, and he also wanted to avoid the oversight that a warship receives from various bureaus.
"NR-1"s missions included search, object recovery, geological survey, oceanographic research, and installation and maintenance of underwater equipment. "NR-1" had the unique capability to remain at one site and completely map or search an area with a high degree of accuracy, and this was a valuable asset on several occasions.
In the 1970s and 1980s, "NR-1" conducted numerous classified missions involving recovery of objects from the floor of the deep sea. These missions remain classified and few details have been made public. One publicly acknowledged mission in 1976 was to recover parts of an F-14 that were lost from the deck of an aircraft carrier and sank with at least one AIM-54A Phoenix air-to-air missile. The secrecy typical of USN submarine operations was heightened by Rickover's personal involvement, and he shared details of "NR-1" operations only on a need-to-know basis. Rickover envisioned building a small fleet of "NR-1" type submarines, but only one was built due to budget restrictions.
Following the loss of the Space Shuttle "Challenger" in 1986, "NR-1" was used to search for, identify, and recover critical parts of the "Challenger" craft. It could remain on the sea floor without resurfacing frequently, and was a major tool for searching deep waters. "NR-1" remained submerged and on station even when heavy weather and rough seas hit the area and forced all other search and recovery ships into port.
In October, 1994, a survey was done by the "NR-1" off the Florida straits 65 km southwest of Key West where it encountered and explored an uncharted sink hole. On 2 December 1998, an advisory committee approved the name "NR-1" for the hole.
In 1995, Robert Ballard used the "NR-1" and its support ship to explore the wreck of , the sister ship of , which sank off the coast of Greece while serving as a hospital ship during World War I.
On 25 February 2007, "NR-1" arrived in Galveston, Texas, towed by "Carolyn Chouest", in preparation for an expedition to survey the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary and other sites in the Gulf of Mexico.
"NR-1" was deactivated on 21 November 2008 at the U.S. Navy submarine base at Groton, Connecticut, defuelled at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, then sent to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to be scrapped. On 13 November 2013, the U.S. Navy announced that salvaged pieces of the sub would be put on display at the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton.
"NR-1" performed underwater search and recovery, oceanographic research missions, and installation and maintenance of underwater equipment to a depth of almost half a nautical mile. Its features included extending bottoming wheels, three viewing ports, exterior lighting, television and still cameras for color photographic studies, an object recovery claw, a manipulator that could be fitted with various gripping and cutting tools, and a work basket that could be used in conjunction with the manipulator to deposit or recover items in the sea. Surface vision was provided by a television periscope permanently installed on a fixed mast in her sail area.
"NR-1" had sophisticated electronics, computers, and sonar systems that aided in navigation, communications, and object location and identification. It could maneuver or hold a steady position on or close to the seabed or underwater ridges, detect and identify objects at a considerable distance, and lift objects off the ocean floor.
"NR-1" was equipped with two electric motor-driven propellers and its maneuverability was enhanced by four ducted thrusters, two forward and two aft. The vehicle had diving planes mounted on the sail, and a conventional rudder.
"NR-1" could travel submerged at approximately for long periods, limited only by consumable supplies—primarily food. It could study and map the ocean bottom, including temperature, currents, and other information for military, commercial, and scientific uses. Its nuclear propulsion provided independence from surface support ships and essentially unlimited endurance.
"NR-1"s size limited its crew comforts. The crew of about 10 men could stay at sea for as long as a month, but had no kitchen or bathing facilities. They ate frozen TV dinners, bathed once a week with a bucket of water, and burned chlorate candles to produce oxygen. The sub was so slow that it was towed to sea by a surface vessel, and so tiny that the crew felt the push and pull of the ocean's currents. "Everybody on "NR-1" got sick," said Allison J. Holifield, who commanded the sub in the mid-1970s. "It was only a matter of whether you were throwing up or not throwing up."
"NR-1" was generally towed to and from remote mission locations by an accompanying surface tender, which was also capable of conducting research in conjunction with the submarine. "NR-1"s last mother ship was MV "Carolyn Chouest", which provided towing, communications, berthing, and direct mission support for all "NR-1" operations—a versatile platform and an indispensable member of the "NR-1" deep submergence team. "NR-1" command was manned with thirty-five Navy personnel and ten civilian contractor personnel. "NR-1" carried as many as thirteen persons (crew and specialists) at one time, including three of the four assigned officers. (The operations officer rode on "Carolyn Chouest"). All personnel who crewed "NR-1" were nuclear-trained and specifically screened and interviewed by the Director, Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21976 |
Neo Geo Pocket
The Neo Geo Pocket is a monochrome handheld game console released by SNK. It was the company's first handheld system and is part of the Neo Geo family. It debuted in Japan in late 1998 but never saw an American release, being exclusive to Japan, Asia and Europe.
The Neo Geo Pocket is considered to be an unsuccessful console. Lower than expected sales resulted in its discontinuation in 1999, and was immediately succeeded by the Neo Geo Pocket Color, a full color device allowing the system to compete more easily with the dominant Game Boy Color handheld, and which also saw an American release. Though the system enjoyed only a short life, there were some significant games released on the system such as "Samurai Shodown", and "King of Fighters R-1".
The Neo Geo Pocket is forward compatible with the majority of Neo Geo Pocket Color titles, although games for the color system will play in monochrome on a Neo Geo Pocket. Likewise, the Neo Geo Pocket Color is backward compatible and the entire Neo Geo Pocket library can be played on the color system.
Only ten monochrome games were released for the Neo Geo Pocket before it was discontinued:
After the release of the Neo Geo Pocket Color, several of these titles began receiving re-releases, updated to include color. All but King of Fighters R-1, Melon-chan's Growth Diary, Samurai Shodown and the original Neo Geo Cup 98 (the "Plus" version was updated instead) were eventually re-released for the color system.
Each video game is stored on a plastic cartridge, officially called a "Software Cartridge" by SNK. The cartridge provides the code and game data to the console's CPU. Some cartridges include a small battery with SRAM, flash memory chip, or EEPROM, which allows game data to be saved when the console is turned off. If the battery runs out in a cartridge, then the save data will be lost, however, it is possible to replace the battery with a new battery. To do this, the cartridge must be unscrewed, opened up, and the old battery would be removed and replaced. This may require desoldering the dead battery and soldering the replacement in place. SNK used round, flat watch batteries for saving information on the cartridges.
The cartridge is inserted into the console cartridge slot. If the cartridge is removed while the power is on, and the Neo Geo Pocket does not automatically reset, the game freezes; the Neo Geo Pocket may exhibit unexpected behavior, such as rows of zeros appearing on the screen, the sound remaining at the same pitch as was emitted the instant the game was pulled out, saved data may be corrupted, and hardware may be damaged. This applies to most video game consoles that use cartridges.
Even if Neo Geo Pocket Color exclusive titles like "" was bypassed by using a B/W Neo Geo Pocket model, the game would not run, and an image on the screen would inform the user that the game is only compatible with Neo Geo Pocket Color systems, similarity to if you slot a Game Boy Color exclusive game on Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Light or Super Game Boy.
All cartridges used the same cartridge design, and it was smaller than the Game Boy's cartridges. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21977 |
Neil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock (born 28 March 1942) is a British politician. A member of the Labour Party, he served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995, first for Bedwellty and then for Islwyn. He was the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1983 until 1992.
Kinnock led the Labour Party to a surprise fourth consecutive defeat at the 1992 general election, despite the party being ahead in most opinion polls, which had predicted either a narrow Labour victory or a hung parliament. Shortly afterwards, he resigned as Leader of the Labour Party, being succeeded in the ensuing leadership election by John Smith. He left the House of Commons in 1995 to become a European Commissioner. He went on to become the Vice-President of the European Commission under Romano Prodi from 1999–2004. Until the summer of 2009, he was also Chairman of the British Council and President of Cardiff University.
Kinnock, an only child, was born in Tredegar, Wales. His father, Gordon Herbert Kinnock was a former coal miner who later worked as a labourer; and his mother Mary Kinnock (née Howells) was a district nurse. Gordon died of a heart attack in November 1971 aged 64; Mary died the following month aged 61.
In 1953, at eleven years old, Kinnock began his secondary education at Lewis School, Pengam, which he later criticised for its record on caning. He went on to the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff (now Cardiff University), where he graduated with a degree in Industrial Relations and History in 1965. The following year, Kinnock obtained a postgraduate diploma in education. Between August 1966 and May 1970, he worked as a tutor for a Workers' Educational Association (WEA).
He has been married to Glenys Kinnock since 1967. They have two children – son Stephen Kinnock (born January 1970, now a Labour MP), and daughter Rachel Kinnock (born 1971).
In June 1969, he won the Labour Party nomination for Bedwellty in South Wales, which became Islwyn for the 1983 general election.
He was first elected to the House of Commons on 18 June 1970, and became a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in October 1978. Upon his becoming an MP, his father said "Remember Neil, MP stands not just for Member of Parliament, but also for Man of Principle."
Following Labour's defeat at the 1979 general election, James Callaghan appointed Kinnock to the Shadow Cabinet as education spokesman. His ambition was noted by other MPs, and David Owen's opposition to the changes to the electoral college was thought to be motivated by the realisation that they would favour Kinnock's succession. Kinnock remained as education spokesman following the resignation of Callaghan as Leader of the Labour Party and the election of Michael Foot as his successor in late 1980.
In 1981, while still serving as Labour's education spokesman, Kinnock was alleged to have effectively scuppered Tony Benn's attempt to replace Denis Healey as Labour's Deputy Leader by first supporting the candidacy of the more traditionalist Tribunite John Silkin and then urging Silkin supporters to abstain on the second, run-off, ballot.
Kinnock was known as a left-winger, and gained prominence for his attacks on Margaret Thatcher's handling of the Falklands War in 1982, although it was in fact this conflict which saw support for the Conservative government increase, and contribute to its landslide re-election the following year.
Following Labour's landslide defeat in June 1983, Michael Foot resigned as leader aged 69, and from the outset it was expected that the much younger Kinnock would succeed him. He was finally elected as Labour Party leader on 2 October 1983, with 71 per cent of the vote, and Roy Hattersley was elected as his deputy; their prospective partnership was considered to be a "dream ticket".
His first period as party leader between the 1983 and 1987 general elections was dominated by his struggle with the hard-left Militant tendency, then still strong in the party. Kinnock was determined to move the party's political standing to a centrist position, in order to improve its chances of winning a future general election. Although Kinnock had come from the Tribune left of the party, he parted company with many of his former allies after his appointment to the Shadow Cabinet.
The Labour Party was also threatened by the rise of the Social Democratic Party/Liberal Alliance, which pulled out more centrist adherents. On a broader perspective, the traditional Labour voter was disappearing in the face of de-industrialisation that the Conservative government had accepted since 1979. Kinnock focused on modernising the party, and upgrading its technical skills such as use of the media and keeping track of voters, while at the same time battling the Militants. Under his leadership, the Labour Party abandoned unpopular old positions, especially the nationalisation of certain industries, although this process was not completed until future Labour leader Tony Blair removed Clause IV from the party's manifesto in 1995. He stressed economic growth, which had a much broader appeal to the middle-class than the idea of redistributing wealth to benefit the poor. He accepted membership in the European Economic Community, whereas the party had pledged immediate withdrawal from it under Michael Foot. He discarded the rhetoric of class warfare.
All this meant that Kinnock had made plenty of enemies on the left wing of the party by the time he was elected as leader, though a substantial number of former Bennites gave him strong support. He was almost immediately in serious difficulty as a result of Arthur Scargill's decision to lead his union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) into a national strike (in opposition to pit closures) without a nationwide ballot. The NUM was widely regarded as the labour movement's praetorian guard and the strike convulsed the Labour movement. Kinnock supported the aim of the strike – which he dubbed the "case for coal" – but, as an MP from a mining area, was bitterly critical of the tactics employed. When heckled at a Labour Party rally for referring to the killing of David Wilkie as "an outrage", Kinnock lost his temper and accused the hecklers of "living like parasites off the struggle of the miners" and implied that Scargill had lied to the striking miners. In 1985, he made his criticisms public in a speech to Labour's conference:
In 2004, Kinnock said of Scargill, "Oh I detest him. I did then, I do now, and it's mutual. He hates me as well. And I'd much prefer to have his savage hatred than even the merest hint of friendship from that man."
The strike's defeat early in the year, and the bad publicity associated with the entryism practised by the Trotskyist Militant group were the immediate context for the 1985 Labour Party conference. Earlier in the year left-wing councils had protested at Government restriction of their budgets by refusing to set budgets, resulting in a budget crisis in the Militant-dominated Liverpool City Council. Kinnock attacked Militant and their conduct in a speech delivered at the conference:
One Liverpool MP, Eric Heffer, a member of the NEC left the conference stage in disgust at Kinnock's comments. In June 1986, the Labour Party finally expelled the deputy leader of Liverpool council, the high-profile Militant supporter Derek Hatton, who was found guilty of "manipulating the rules of the district Labour party". By 1986, the party's position appeared to strengthen further with excellent local election results and a thorough rebranding of the party under the direction of Kinnock's director of communications Peter Mandelson, as well as seizing the Fulham seat in West London from the Conservatives in an April by-election. Labour, now sporting a continental social democratic style emblem of a rose (replacing the party's first logo, the Liberty logo), appeared to be able to run the governing Conservatives close, but Margaret Thatcher did not let Labour's makeover go unchallenged.
The Conservatives' 1986 conference was well-managed, and effectively relaunched the Conservatives as a party of radical free-market economic liberalism. Labour suffered from a persistent image of extremism, especially as Kinnock's campaign to root out Militant dragged on as figures on the hard left of the party tried to stop its progress. Opinion polls showed that voters favoured retaining the United Kingdom's nuclear weapons, (Labour's policy, supported by Kinnock, was of unilateral nuclear disarmament), and believed that the Conservatives would be better than Labour at defending the country.
In early 1987, Labour lost a by-election in Greenwich to the SDP's Rosie Barnes. As a result, Labour faced the 1987 general election in some danger of finishing third in the popular vote, with the Conservatives once again expected to secure a comfortable victory. In secret, Labour's aim was to secure second place in order to remain as Official Opposition.
Mandelson and his team had revolutionised Labour's communications – a transformation symbolised by a party election broadcast popularly known as "Kinnock: The Movie". This was directed by Hugh Hudson and featured Kinnock's 1985 conference speech, and shots of him and his wife Glenys walking on the Great Orme in Llandudno (so emphasising his appeal as a family man and associating him with images of Wales away from the coal mining communities where he grew up), and a speech to that year's Welsh Labour Party conference asking why he was the "first Kinnock in a thousand generations" to go to university.
On polling day, Labour easily took second place, but with only a 31% share of the vote to the SDP-Liberal Alliance's 22%. Labour was still more than ten percentage points behind the Conservatives, who retained a three-figure majority in the House of Commons. However, the Conservative government's majority had come down from 144 seats in 1983 to 102. Significantly, Labour had gained twenty seats at the election.
Labour won extra seats in Scotland, Wales and Northern England, but lost ground particularly in Southern England and London, where the Conservatives still dominated. The Conservatives also regained the Fulham seat which it had lost to Labour at a by-election just over a year earlier.
A few months after the general election, Kinnock gained brief attention in the United States in August 1987 when it was discovered that then-US Senator Joe Biden for Delaware (and future 47th Vice President) plagiarised one of Kinnock's speeches during his 1988 presidential campaign in a speech at a Democratic Party debate in Iowa. This led to Biden's withdrawal of his presidential campaign.
The second period of Kinnock's leadership was dominated by his drive to reform the party's policies to gain office. This began with an exercise dubbed the policy review, the most high-profile aspect of which was a series of consultations with the public known as "Labour Listens" in the autumn of 1987.
After Labour Listens, the party went on, in 1988, to produce a new statement of aims and values—meant to supplement and supplant the formulation of Clause IV of the party's constitution (though, crucially, this was not actually replaced until 1995 under the leadership of Tony Blair) and was closely modelled on Anthony Crosland's social-democratic thinking—emphasising equality rather than public ownership. At the same time, the Labour Party's commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament was dropped, and reforms of Party Conference and the National Executive meant that local parties lost much of their ability to influence policy.
In 1988, Kinnock was challenged by Tony Benn for the party leadership. Later many identified this as a particularly low period in Kinnock's leadership — as he appeared mired in internal battles after five years of leadership with the Conservatives still dominating the scene, and being ahead in the opinion polls. In the end, though, Kinnock won a decisive victory over Benn and would soon enjoy a substantial rise in support.
The policy review — reporting in 1989 —coincided with Labour's move ahead in the polls as the poll tax row was destroying Conservative support, and Labour won big victories in local council elections as well as several parliamentary by-elections during 1989 and 1990. Labour overtook the Conservatives at the 1989 European elections, winning 40% of the vote; the first time Labour had finished in first place at a national election in fifteen years.
In December 1989, he abandoned the Labour policy on closed shops—a decision seen by many as a move away from traditional socialist policies to a more European-wide agenda, and also a move to rid the party of its image of being run by trade unions.
Kinnock was also perceived as scoring in debates over Margaret Thatcher in the Commons—previously an area in which he was seen as weak—and finally Michael Heseltine challenged Thatcher's leadership and she resigned on 28 November 1990 to be succeeded by then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Major. Kinnock greeted Thatcher's resignation by describing it as "very good news" and demanded an immediate general election.
Public reaction to Major's elevation was highly positive. A new Prime Minister and the fact that Kinnock was now the longest-serving current leader of a major party reduced the impact of calls for "Time for a Change". Neil Kinnock's showing in the opinion polls dipped; before Thatcher's resignation, Labour had been up to 10 points ahead of the Conservatives in the opinion polls (an Ipsos MORI poll in April 1990 had actually shown Labour as being more than 20 points ahead of the Conservatives), but many opinion polls were actually showing the Conservatives with a higher amount of support than Labour, in spite of the deepening recession.
By now Militant had finally been routed in the party, and their two MPs were expelled at the end of 1991, in addition to a number of supporters. The majority in the group were now disenchanted with entryism, and chose to function outside Labour's ranks, forming the Socialist Party.
In the three years leading up to the 1992 general election, Labour had consistently topped the opinion polls, with 1991 seeing the Conservatives (rejuvenated by the arrival of a new leader with John Major the previous November) snatch the lead off Labour more than once before Labour regained it. The rise in Conservative support came in spite of the economic recession and sharp rise in unemployment which affected Britain in 1991. Since Major's election as Leader of the Conservative Party (and becoming Prime Minister), Kinnock had spent the end of 1990 and most of 1991 putting pressure on Major to call a general election that year, but Major had held out and by the autumn he had insisted that there would be no general election in 1991.
Labour had gained four seats from the Conservatives in by-elections since the 1987 general election, having initially suffered disappointing results in some by-elections, namely a loss of the Govan constituency in Glasgow to the Scottish National Party in November 1988. However, by the end of 1991, the Conservative majority still stood at 88 seats and Labour needed to win more than ninety new seats to gain an overall majority, although there was still the hope of forming a minority or coalition government if Labour failed to win a majority.
In the run-up to the election, held on 9 April 1992, most opinion polls had suggested that the election would result in either a hung parliament or a narrow Labour majority.
At the 1992 general election, Labour made considerable progress – reducing the Conservatives' majority to just 21 seats. It came as a shock to many when the Conservatives won a majority, but the "triumphalism" perceived by some observers of a Labour Party rally in Sheffield (together with Kinnock's performance on the podium) may have helped put floating voters off. Although internal polls suggested no impact, while public polls suggested a decline in support had already occurred, most of those directly involved in the campaign believe that the rally really came to widespread attention only after the electoral defeat itself, with Kinnock himself changing his mind to a rejection of its negative impact over time.
On the day of the general election, "The Sun" newspaper ran a front page featuring Kinnock with the headline "If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights". Kinnock blamed the newspaper in his resignation speech for Labour losing the election, along with other right-wing media sections who had backed the Conservatives in the run-up to the election. The following day's headline in "The Sun" was "It's The Sun Wot Won It", which Rupert Murdoch, many years later at his April 2012 appearance before the Leveson Inquiry, stated was both "tasteless and wrong" and led to the editor Kelvin MacKenzie receiving a reprimand.
The Labour-supporting "Daily Mirror" had backed Kinnock for the 1987 general election and again in 1992. Less expected was the "Financial Times" backing Kinnock at the 1992 general election.
Kinnock himself later claimed to have half-expected his defeat at the 1992 general election and proceeded to turn himself into a media personality, even hosting a chat show on BBC Wales and twice appearing on the topical panel show "Have I Got News for You" within a year of the defeat. Many years later, he returned to appear as a guest host of the programme.
Kinnock announced his resignation as Labour Party leader on 13 April 1992, ending nearly a decade in the role. John Smith, previously Shadow Chancellor, was elected on 18 July as his successor.
He remains on the Advisory Council of the Institute for Public Policy Research, which he helped set up in the 1980s.
He was an enthusiastic supporter of Ed Miliband's campaign for leadership of the Labour Party in 2010, and was reported as telling activists, when Miliband won, "We've got our party back" – although Miliband, like Kinnock, failed to lead the party back into government, and resigned after the Conservatives were re-elected with a slim majority in 2015.
In 2011, he participated in the family history TV programme "Coming Home" where he discovered hitherto unknown information about his family.
Kinnock was appointed one of the UK's two members of the European Commission, which he served first as Transport Commissioner under President Jacques Santer, in early 1995; marking the end of his 25 years in the House of Commons. This came less than a year after the death of his successor, John Smith and the election of Tony Blair as the party's new leader.
He was obliged to resign as part of the forced, collective resignation of the Commission in 1999. He was re-appointed to the Commission under new President Romano Prodi. He now became one of the Vice-Presidents of the European Commission, with responsibility for Administrative Reform and the Audit, Linguistics and Logistics Directorates General. His term of office as a Commissioner was due to expire on 30 October 2004, but was delayed owing to the withdrawal of the new Commissioners. During this second term of office on the Commission, he was responsible for introducing new staff regulations for EU officials, a significant feature of which was substantial salary cuts for everyone employed after 1 May 2004, reduced pension prospects for many others, and gradually worsening employment conditions. This made him disliked by many EU staff members, although the pressure on budgets that largely drove these changes had actually been imposed on the Commission from above by the Member States in Council.
In February 2004, it was announced that with effect from 1 November 2004, Kinnock would become head of the British Council. Coincidentally, at the same time, his son Stephen became head of the British Council branch in St. Petersburg, Russia. At the end of October, it was announced that he would become a member of the House of Lords (intending to be a working peer), when he was able to leave his EU responsibilities. In 1977, he had remained in the House of Commons, with Dennis Skinner, while other MPs walked to the Lords to hear the Queen's speech opening the new parliament. He had dismissed going to the Lords in recent interviews. Kinnock explained his change of attitude, despite the continuing presence of ninety hereditary peers and appointment by patronage, by asserting that the Lords was a good base for campaigning.
He was introduced to the House of Lords on 31 January 2005, after being created, on 28 January, Baron Kinnock, of Bedwellty in the County of Gwent. On assuming his seat, he stated; "I accepted the kind invitation to enter the House of Lords as a working peer for practical political reasons." When his peerage was first announced, he said, "It will give me the opportunity... to contribute to the national debate on issues like higher education, research, Europe and foreign policy."
His peerage meant that the Labour and Conservative parties were equal in numbers in the upper house of Parliament (subsequently the number of Labour members overtook the number of Conservative members for many years). Kinnock was a long-time critic of the House of Lords, and his acceptance of a peerage led him to be accused of hypocrisy, by Will Self, among others.
In the build up to the 1979 Welsh devolution referendum The Labour government was in favour of devolution for Wales. Kinnock was one of just six MPs in South Wales who campaigned against devolution, with Kinnock personally backing an amendment to the Wales Act stating that devolution would require not only a simple majority, but also the backing of 40% of the entire electorate.
Kinnock has often referred to himself as a "unionist", he was controversially dismissive of Welsh identity, stating that "between the mid-sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century Wales had practically no history at all, and even before that it was the history of rural brigands who have been ennobled by being called princes".
Kinnock strongly opposed Brexit. Kinnock stated, “The truth is that we can either take the increasingly plain risks and costs of leaving the EU or have the stability, growth and revenues vital for crucial public services like the NHS and social care. Recognising that, we should stop Brexit to save the NHS – or, at very least, mitigate the damage by seeking European Economic Area membership.”
He is married to Glenys Kinnock, the UK's Minister for Africa and the United Nations from 2009–2010, and a Labour Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1994–2009. When she was made a life peer in 2009, they became one of the few couples both to hold titles in their own right. The pair met in the early 1960s whilst studying at University College, Cardiff, where they were known as "the power and the glory" (Glenys the power), and they married on 25 March 1967. Previously living together in Peterston-super-Ely, a village near the western outskirts of Cardiff, in 2008 they relocated to Tufnell Park, London, to be closer to their daughter and grandchildren.
They have a son, Stephen and a daughter, Rachel. Neil Kinnock, through his son Stephen, is also the father-in-law of Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former Danish Prime Minister.
On 26 April 2006, Kinnock was given a six-month driving ban after being found guilty of two speeding offences along the M4 motorway, west of London.
Neil Kinnock is a Cardiff City F.C. fan and regularly attends matches. He is also a follower of rugby union and supports London Welsh RFC at club level, regularly attending Wales games.
He was portrayed by both Chris Barrie and Steve Coogan in the satirical TV programme, "Spitting Image" and by Euan Cuthbertson in the Scottish film "In Search of La Che".
Kinnock has been described as an agnostic and an atheist. Like his wife, he is a Patron of Humanists UK. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21978 |
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an independent American computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the so-called first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than 1 percent in 2006. Netscape created the JavaScript programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages. The company also developed SSL which was used for securing online communications before its successor TLS took over.
Netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999 when the company was acquired by AOL in a pooling-of-interests transaction ultimately worth US$10 billion. In February 1998, approximately one year prior to its acquisition by AOL, Netscape released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization to coordinate future development of its product. The Mozilla Organization rewrote the entire browser's source code based on the Gecko rendering engine, and all future Netscape releases were based on this rewritten code. When AOL scaled back its involvement with Mozilla Organization in the early 2000s, the Organization proceeded to establish the Mozilla Foundation in July 2003 to ensure its continued independence with financial and other assistance from AOL. The Gecko engine is used to power the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser.
Netscape's browser development continued until December 2007, when AOL announced that the company would stop supporting it by early 2008. As of 2011, AOL continued to use the Netscape brand to market a discount Internet service provider.
AOL renamed the Netscape Communications Corporation to New Aurora Corporation, and transferred the Netscape brand to themselves. AOL sold the former Netscape company to Microsoft, who in turn sold them to Facebook. The former Netscape company is currently a non-operating subsidiary of Facebook, still known as New Aurora Corporation.
Today, Netscape is a brand name owned by Verizon Media, a subsidiary of Verizon Communications.
Netscape was the first company to attempt to capitalize on the emerging World Wide Web. It was founded under the name Mosaic Communications Corporation on April 4, 1994, the brainchild of Jim Clark who had recruited Marc Andreessen as co-founder and Kleiner Perkins as investors. The first meeting between Clark and Andreessen was never truly about a software or service like Netscape, but more about a product that was similar to Nintendo. Clark recruited other early team members from SGI and NCSA Mosaic. Jim Barksdale came on board as CEO in January 1995. Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen originally created a 20-page concept pitch for an online gaming network to Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 console, but a deal was never reached. Marc Andreessen explains, "If they had shipped a year earlier, we probably would have done that instead of Netscape."
The company's first product was the web browser, called "Mosaic Netscape 0.9," released on October 13, 1994. Within four months of its release, it had already taken three-quarters of the browser market. It became the main browser for Internet users in such a short time due to its superiority over other competition, like Mosaic. This browser was subsequently renamed Netscape Navigator, and the company took the "Netscape" name (coined by employee Greg Sands, although it was also a trademark of Cisco Systems) on November 14, 1994, to avoid trademark ownership problems with NCSA, where the initial Netscape employees had previously created the NCSA Mosaic web browser. The Mosaic Netscape web browser did not use any NCSA Mosaic code. The internal codename for the company's browser was "Mozilla", which stood for "Mosaic killer", as the company's goal was to displace NCSA Mosaic as the world's number one web browser. A cartoon Godzilla-like lizard mascot was drawn by artist-employee Dave Titus, which went well with the theme of crushing the competition. The Mozilla mascot featured prominently on Netscape's website in the company's early years. However, the need to project a more "professional" image (especially towards corporate clients) led to this being removed.
On August 9, 1995, Netscape made an extremely successful IPO. The stock was set to be offered at US$14 per share, but a last-minute decision doubled the initial offering to US$28 per share. The stock's value soared to US$75 during the first day of trading, nearly a record for first-day gain. The stock closed at US$58.25, which gave Netscape a market value of US$2.9 billion. While it was somewhat unusual for a company to go public prior to becoming profitable, Netscape's revenues had, in fact, doubled every quarter in 1995. The success of this IPO subsequently inspired the use of the term "Netscape moment" to describe a high-visibility IPO that signals the dawn of a new industry. During this period, Netscape also pursued a publicity strategy (crafted by Rosanne Siino, then head of public relations) packaging Andreessen as the company's "rock star." The events of this period ultimately landed Andreessen, barefoot, on the cover of "Time" magazine. The IPO also helped kickstart widespread investment in internet companies that created the dot-com bubble.
Netscape advertised that "the web is for everyone" and stated one of its goals was to "level the playing field" among operating systems by providing a consistent web browsing experience across them. The Netscape web browser interface was identical on any computer. Netscape later experimented with prototypes of a web-based system which would enable users to access and edit their files anywhere across a network, no matter what computer or operating system they happened to be using. This did not escape the attention of Microsoft, which viewed the commoditization of operating systems as a direct threat to its bottom line, i.e. a move from Windows to another operating system would yield a similar browsing experience thus reducing barriers to change. It is alleged that several Microsoft executives visited the Netscape campus in June 1995 to propose dividing the market (an allegation denied by Microsoft and, if true, would have breached antitrust laws), which would have allowed Microsoft to produce web browser software for Windows while leaving all other operating systems to Netscape. Netscape refused the proposition.
Microsoft released version 1.0 of Internet Explorer as a part of the Windows 95 Plus Pack add-on. According to former Spyglass developer Eric Sink, Internet Explorer was based not on NCSA Mosaic as commonly believed, but on a version of Mosaic developed at Spyglass (which itself was based upon NCSA Mosaic). Microsoft quickly released several successive versions of Internet Explorer, bundling them with Windows, never charging for them, financing their development and marketing with revenues from other areas of the company. This period of time became known as the browser wars, in which Netscape Communicator and Internet Explorer added many new features and went through many version numbers (not always in a logical fashion) in attempts to outdo each other. But Internet Explorer had the upper hand, as the amount of manpower and capital dedicated to it eventually surpassed the resources available in Netscape's entire business. By version 3.0, IE was roughly a feature-for-feature equivalent of Netscape Communicator, and by version 4.0, it was generally considered to be more stable on Windows than on the Macintosh platform. Microsoft also targeted other Netscape products with free workalikes, such as the Internet Information Server (IIS), a web server which was bundled with Windows NT.
Netscape could not compete with this strategy. In fact, it didn't attempt to. Netscape Navigator was not free to the general public until January 1998, while Internet Explorer and IIS have always been free or came bundled with an operating system and/or other applications. Meanwhile, Netscape faced increasing criticism for the bugs in its products; critics claimed that the company suffered from "featuritis" – putting a higher priority on adding new features than on making them work properly. This was particularly true with Netscape Navigator 2, which was only on the market for five months in early 1996 before being replaced by Netscape Navigator 3. The tide of public opinion, having once lauded Netscape as the David to Microsoft's Goliath, steadily turned negative, especially when Netscape experienced its first bad quarter at the end of 1997 and underwent a large round of layoffs in January 1998. Later, former Netscape executives Mike Homer and Peter Currie described the period as "hectic and crazy" and that the company was undone by factors both internal and external.
January 1998 was also the month that Netscape started the open source Mozilla project. Netscape publicly released the source code of Netscape Communicator 5.0 in the hopes that it would become a popular open source project. It placed this code under the Netscape Public License, which was similar to the GNU General Public License but allowed Netscape to continue to publish proprietary work containing the publicly released code. However, after having released the Communicator 5.0 code this way, Netscape proceeded to work on Communicator 5.0 which was focused on improving email and enterprise functionality. It eventually became clear that the Communicator 5.0 browser was too difficult to develop, and open source development was halted on this codebase. Instead, the open source development shifted to a next-generation browser built from scratch. Using the newly built Gecko layout engine, this browser had a much more modular architecture than Communicator 5.0 and was, therefore, easier to develop with a large number of programmers. It also included an XML user interface language named XUL that allowed single development of a user interface that ran on Windows, Macintosh, and Unix. The slogan for this open sourcing effort, "Free The Lizard", carried comedic sexual overtones.
The United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust case against Microsoft in May 1998. Netscape was not a plaintiff in the case, though its executives were subpoenaed and it contributed much material to the case, including the entire contents of the 'Bad Attitude' internal discussion forum. In October 1998, Netscape acquired web directory site NewHoo for the sum of US$1 million, renamed it the Open Directory Project, and released its database under an open content license.
On November 24, 1998, America Online (AOL) announced it would acquire Netscape Communications in a tax-free stock-swap valued at US$4.2 billion. During this time, Andreessen's view of Netscape changed; to him, it was no longer just a browser, intranet, extranet, or a software company, but rather an amalgamation of products and services. By the time the deal closed on March 17, 1999, it was valued at US$10 billion. This merger was ridiculed by many who believed that the two corporate cultures could not possibly mesh; one of its most prominent critics was longtime Netscape developer Jamie Zawinski. The acquisition was seen as a way for AOL to gain a bargaining chip against Microsoft, to let it become less dependent on the Internet Explorer web browser. Others believed that AOL was interested in Netcenter, or Netscape's web properties, which drew some of the highest traffic worldwide. Eventually, Netscape's server products and its Professional Services group became part of iPlanet, a joint marketing and development alliance between AOL and Sun Microsystems. On November 14, 2000, AOL released Netscape 6, based on the Mozilla 0.6 source code. (Version 5 was skipped.) Unfortunately, Mozilla 0.6 was far from being stable yet, and so the effect of Netscape 6 was to further drive people away from the Netscape brand. It was not until August 2001 that Netscape 6.1 appeared, based on Mozilla 0.9.2 which was significantly more robust. A year later came Netscape 7.0, based on the Mozilla 1.0 core.
During the acquisition of Netscape by AOL, joint development and marketing of Netscape software products would occur through the Sun-Netscape Alliance. The software, in the newly branded iPlanet, included "messaging and calendar, collaboration, web, application, directory, and certificate servers", as well as "production-ready applications for e-commerce, including commerce exchange, procurement, selling, and billing." In March 2002, when the alliance was ended, "iPlanet became a division of Sun... Sun retained the intellectual property rights for all products and the engineering"
On July 15, 2003, Time Warner (formerly AOL Time Warner) disbanded Netscape. Most of the programmers were laid-off, and the Netscape logo was removed from the building. However, the Netscape 7.2 web browser (developed in-house rather than with Netscape staff, with some work outsourced to Sun's Beijing development center) was released by AOL on August 18, 2004.
On October 12, 2004, the popular developer website Netscape DevEdge was shut down by AOL. DevEdge was an important resource for Internet-related technologies, maintaining definitive documentation on the Netscape browser, documentation on associated technologies like HTML and JavaScript, and popular articles written by industry and technology leaders such as Danny Goodman. Some content from DevEdge has been republished at the Mozilla website.
After the Sun acquisition by Oracle in January 2010, Oracle continued to sell iPlanet branded applications, which originated from Netscape. Applications include Oracle iPlanet Web Server and Oracle iPlanet Web Proxy Server.
The Netscape brand name continued to be used extensively. The company once again had its own programming staff devoted to the development and support for the series of web browsers. Additionally, Netscape also maintained the Propeller web portal, which was a popular social-news site, similar to Digg, which was given a new look in June 2006. AOL marketed a discount ISP service under the Netscape brand name.
A new version of the Netscape browser, Netscape Navigator 9, based on Firefox 2, was released in October 2007. It featured a green and grey interface. In November 2007, IE had 77.4% of the browser market, Firefox 16.0%, and Netscape 0.6%, according to Net Applications, an Internet metrics firm. On December 28, 2007, AOL announced that on February 1, 2008 it would drop support for the Netscape web browser and would no longer develop new releases. The date was later extended to March 1 to allow a major security update and to add a tool to assist users in migrating to other browsers. These additional features were included in the final version of Netscape Navigator 9 (version 9.0.0.6), released on February 20, 2008.
Netscape Navigator was Netscape's web browser from versions 1.0–4.8. The first beta versions were released in 1994 and were called Mosaic and later Mosaic Netscape. Then, a legal challenge from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (makers of NCSA Mosaic), which many of Netscape's founders used to develop, led to the name Netscape Navigator. The company's name also changed from Mosaic Communications Corporation to Netscape Communications Corporation.
The browser was easily the most advanced available and so was an instant success, becoming a market leader while still in beta. Netscape's feature-count and market share continued to grow rapidly after version 1.0 was released. Version 2.0 added a full email reader called Netscape Mail, thus transforming Netscape from a single-purpose web browser to an Internet suite. The main distinguishing feature of the email client was its ability to display HTML email. During this period, the entire suite was called Netscape Navigator.
Version 3.0 of Netscape (the first beta was codenamed "Atlas") was the first to face any serious competition in the form of Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. But Netscape remained the most popular browser at that time.
Netscape also released a Gold version of Navigator 3.0 that incorporated WYSIWYG editing with drag and drop between web editor and email components.
Netscape 4 addressed the problem of Netscape Navigator being used as both the name of the suite and the browser contained within it by renaming the suite to Netscape Communicator. After five preview releases in 1996–1997, Netscape released the final version of Netscape Communicator in June 1997. This version, more or less based on Netscape Navigator 3 Code, updated and added new features. The new suite was successful, despite increasing competition from Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 and problems with the outdated browser core. IE was slow and unstable on the Mac platform until version 4.5. Despite this, Apple entered into an agreement with Microsoft to make IE the default browser on new Mac OS installations, a further blow to Netscape's prestige. The Communicator suite was made up of Netscape Navigator, Netscape Mail & Newsgroups, Netscape Address Book and Netscape Composer (an HTML editor).
On January 22, 1998, Netscape Communications Corporation announced that all future versions of its software would be available free of charge and developed by an open source community, Mozilla. Netscape Communicator 5.0 was announced (codenamed "Gromit"). However, its release was greatly delayed, and meanwhile, there were newer versions of Internet Explorer, starting with version 4. These had more features than the old Netscape version, including better support of HTML 4, CSS, DOM, and ECMAScript; eventually, the more advanced Internet Explorer 5.0 became the market leader.
In October 1998, Netscape Communicator 4.5 was released. It featured various functionality improvements, especially in the Mail and Newsgroups component, but did not update the browser core, whose functionality was essentially identical to that of version 4.08. One month later, Netscape Communications Corporation was bought by AOL. In November, work on Netscape 5.0 was canceled in favor of developing a completely new program from scratch.
In 1998, an informal group called the Mozilla Organization was formed and largely funded by Netscape (the vast majority of programmers working on the code were paid by Netscape) to coordinate the development of Netscape 5 (codenamed "Gromit"), which would be based on the Communicator source code. However, the aging Communicator code proved difficult to work with and the decision was taken to scrap Netscape 5 and re-write the source code. The re-written source code was in the form of the Mozilla web browser, on which, with a few additions, Netscape 6 was based.
This decision meant that Netscape's next major version was severely delayed. In the meantime, Netscape was taken over by AOL who, acting under pressure from the Web Standards Project, forced its new division to release Netscape 6.0 in 2000. The suite again consisted of Netscape Navigator and the other Communicator components, with the addition of a built-in AOL Instant Messenger client, Netscape Instant Messenger. However, it was clear that Netscape 6 was not yet ready for release and it flopped badly. It was based on Mozilla 0.6, which was not ready to be used by the general public yet due to many serious bugs that would cause it to crash often or render web pages slowly. Later versions of Netscape 6 were much-improved (especially 6.2.x was regarded as a good release), but the browser still struggled to make an impact on a disappointed community.
Netscape 7.0 (based on Mozilla 1.0.1) was released in August 2002 as a direct continuation of Netscape 6 with very similar components. It picked up a few users, but was still very much a minority browser. It did, however, come with the popular Radio@Netscape Internet radio client. AOL had decided to deactivate Mozilla's popup-blocker functionality in Netscape 7.0, which created an outrage in the community. AOL reversed the decision and allowed Netscape to reinstate the popup-blocker for Netscape 7.01. Netscape also introduced a new AOL-free-version (without the usual AOL add-ons) of the browser suite. Netscape 7.1 (codenamed "Buffy" and based on Mozilla 1.4) was released in June 2003.
In 2003, AOL closed down its Netscape division and laid-off or reassigned all of Netscape's employees. Mozilla.org continued, however, as the independent Mozilla Foundation, taking on many of Netscape's ex-employees. AOL continued to develop Netscape in-house (with help from Sun's Beijing development center), but, due to there being no staff committed to it, improvements were minimal. One year later, in August 2004, the last version based on Mozilla was released: Netscape 7.2, based on Mozilla 1.7.2.
After an official poll posted on Netscape's community support board in late 2006, speculation arose of the Netscape 7 series of suites being fully supported and updated by Netscape's in-house development team. This was not to be.
Between 2005 and 2007, Netscape's releases became known as "Netscape Browser". AOL chose to base Netscape Browser on the relatively successful Mozilla Firefox, a re-written version of Mozilla produced by the Mozilla Foundation. This release is not a full Internet suite as before, but is solely a web browser.
Other controversial decisions include the browser only being released for Microsoft Windows and featuring both the Gecko rendering engine of previous releases and the Trident engine used in Internet Explorer, and switching between them based on a "compatibility list" that came with the browser. This effectively exposed users to the security vulnerabilities in both and resulted in a completely different user experience based on which site they were on. Examples are handling of right-to-left or bi-directional text, user interface widgets, bugs and web standards violations in Trident, etc. On top of this, Netscape Browser 8 even broke Internet Explorer's ability to open XML files by damaging a Windows Registry key, and would do so every time it was opened, even if the user fixed it manually.
AOL's acquisition of Netscape Communications in November 1998 made it less of a surprise when the company laid off the Netscape team and outsourced development to Mercurial Communications. Netscape Browser 8.1.3 was released on April 2, 2007, and included general bug fixes identified in versions 8.0–8.1.2
Netscape Navigator 9's features were said to include newsfeed support and become more integrated with the Propeller Internet portal, alongside more enhanced methods of discussion, submission and voting on web pages. It also sees the browser return to multi-platform support across Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Like Netscape version 8.x, the new release was based upon the popular Mozilla Firefox (version 2.0), and supposedly had full support of all Firefox add-ons and plugins, some of which Netscape was already providing. Also for the first time since 2004, the browser was produced in-house with its own programming staff. A beta of the program was first released on June 5, 2007. The final version was released on October 15, 2007.
AOL officially announced that support for Netscape Navigator would end on March 1, 2008, and recommended that its users download either the Flock or Firefox browsers, both of which were based on the same technology.
The decision met mixed reactions from communities, with many arguing that the termination of product support is significantly belated. Internet security site "Security Watch" stated that a trend of infrequent security updates for AOL's Netscape caused the browser to become a "security liability", specifically the 2005–2007 versions, Netscape Browser 8. Asa Dotzler, one of Firefox's original bug testers, greeted the news with "good riddance" in his blog post, but praised the various members of the Netscape team over the years for enabling the creation of Mozilla in 1998. Others protested and petitioned AOL to continue providing vital security fixes to unknowing or loyal users of its software, as well as protection of a well-known brand.
On June 11, 2007, Netscape announced Netscape Mercury, a standalone email and news client that was to accompany Navigator 9. Mercury was based on Mozilla Thunderbird. The product was later renamed Netscape Messenger 9, and an alpha version was released. In December 2007, AOL announced it was canceling Netscape's development of Messenger 9 as well as Navigator 9.
Netscape's initial product line consisted of:
Netscape's later products included:
Between June 2006 and September 2007, AOL operated Netscape's website as social news website similar to Digg. The format did not do well as traffic dropped 55.1 percent between November 2006 and August 2007. In September 2007, AOL reverted Netscape's website to a traditional news portal, and rebranded the social news portal as "Propeller", moving the site to the domain "propeller.com." AOL shut down the Propeller website on October 1, 2010.
Netscape operated a search engine, Netscape Search, which now redirects to AOL Search (which itself now merely serves Bing (formerly Google) search results). Another version of Netscape Search was incorporated into Propeller.
Netscape also operates a number of country-specific Netscape portals, including Netscape Canada among others. The portal of Netscape Germany was shut down in June 2008.
The Netscape Blog was written by Netscape employees discussing the latest on Netscape products and services. Netscape NewsQuake (formerly "Netscape Reports") is Netscape's news and opinion blog, including video clips and discussions. As of January 2012, no new posts have been made on either of these blogs since August 2008.
Netscape created the JavaScript web page scripting language. It also pioneered the development of push technology, which effectively allowed websites to send regular updates of information (weather, stock updates, package tracking, etc.) directly to a user's desktop (aka "webtop"); Netscape's implementation of this was named Netcaster. However, businesses quickly recognized the use of push technology to deliver ads to users that annoyed them, so Netcaster was short-lived.
Netscape was notable for its cross-platform efforts. Its client software continued to be made available for Windows (3.1, 95, 98, NT), Macintosh, Linux, OS/2, BeOS, and many versions of Unix including DEC, Sun Solaris, BSDI, IRIX, IBM AIX, and HP-UX. Its server software generally was only available for Unix and Windows NT, though some of its servers were made available on Linux, and a version of Netscape FastTrack Server was made available for Windows 95/98. Today, most of Netscape's server offerings live on as the Sun Java System, formerly under the Sun ONE branding. Although Netscape Browser 8 was Windows only, multi-platform support exists in the Netscape Navigator 9 series of browsers.
Netscape ISP is a dial-up Internet service once offered at US$9.95 per month. The company serves web pages in a compressed format to increase effective speeds up to 1300 kbit/s (average 500 kbit/s). The Internet service provider is now run by Verizon under the Netscape brand. The low-cost ISP was officially launched on January 8, 2004. Its main competitor is NetZero. Netscape ISP is no longer actively marketed, but for a time its advertising was aimed at a younger demographic, e.g., college students, and people just out of school, as an affordable way to gain access to the Internet.
Netscape always drove lots of traffic from various links included in the browser menus to its web properties. Some say it was very late to leverage this traffic for what would become the start of the major online portal wars. When it did, Netcenter, the new name for its site entered the race with Yahoo!, Infoseek, and MSN, which Google would only join years later.
The original Netscape.com was discontinued in June 2006, replaced by the site that would eventually become Propeller.com. Two continuations of the original Netscape.com portal are available; Compuserve.com, the Web site of Compuserve, and ISP.Netscape.com, the website for Netscape's dial-up discount ISP service, continue to use the Netscape.com layout as it was before June 2006. Of the two, only the latter explicitly uses the Netscape branding.
Netscape.com is currently an AOL Netscape-branded mirror duplicate of the AOL.com portal with the URL, replacing the former social news website in September 2007. The social news site moved to the Propeller.com domain, where it stayed until ending operations in October 2010. It features facilities such as news, sports, horoscopes, dating, movies, music and more. The change has come to much criticism amongst many site users, because the site has effectively become an AOL clone, and simply re-directs to regional AOL portals in some areas across the globe. Netscape's exclusive features, such as the Netscape Blog, Netscape NewsQuake, Netscape Navigator, My Netscape and Netscape Community pages, are less accessible from the AOL Netscape designed portal and in some countries not accessible at all without providing a full URL or completing an Internet search. The new AOL Netscape site was originally previewed in August 2007 before moving the existing site in September 2007.
Netscape.co.uk now redirects to AOL Search, with no Netscape branding at all.
DMOZ (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name, also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP), was a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that was constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. It closed in 2017.
Netscape also has a wide variety of community-based forums within Netscape Forum Center, including its browser's community support board. To post on the forums, users must possess an AOL Screenname account in which to sign in, referred to within the site as the "Netscape Network". The same service is also available through Compuserve Forum Center. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21979 |
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador () is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it is composed of the insular region of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador to the northwest, with a combined area of . In 2018, the province's population was estimated at 525,073. About 92% of the province's population lives on the island of Newfoundland (and its neighbouring smaller islands), of whom more than half live on the Avalon Peninsula.
The province is Canada's most linguistically homogeneous, with 97.0% of residents reporting English (Newfoundland English) as their mother tongue in the 2016 census. Historically, Newfoundland was also home to unique varieties of French and Irish, as well as the extinct Beothuk language. In Labrador, the indigenous languages Innu-aimun and Inuktitut are also spoken.
Newfoundland and Labrador's capital and largest city, St. John's, is Canada's 20th-largest census metropolitan area and is home to almost 40 per cent of the province's population. St. John's is the seat of government, home to the House of Assembly of Newfoundland and Labrador and to the highest court in the jurisdiction, the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal.
A former colony and then dominion of the United Kingdom, Newfoundland gave up its independence in 1933, following significant economic distress caused by the Great Depression and the aftermath of Newfoundland's participation in World War I. It became the tenth province to enter the Canadian Confederation on 31 March 1949, as "Newfoundland". On 6 December 2001, an amendment was made to the Constitution of Canada to change the province's name to Newfoundland and Labrador.
The name "New founde lande" was uttered by King Henry VII about the land explored by the Cabots. In Portuguese it is , which literally means "new land" which is also the French name for the Province's island region (). The name "Terra Nova" is in wide use on the island (e.g. Terra Nova National Park). The influence of early Portuguese exploration is also reflected in the name of Labrador, which derives from the surname of the Portuguese navigator .
Labrador's name in the Inuttitut/Inuktitut language (spoken in Nunatsiavut) is (ᓄᓇᑦᓱᐊᒃ), meaning "the big land" (a common English nickname for Labrador). Newfoundland's Inuttitut/Inuktitut name is (ᐃᒃᑲᕈᒥᒃᓗᐊᒃ) meaning "place of many shoals".
Newfoundland and Labrador is the most easterly province in Canada, and is at the north-eastern corner of North America. The Strait of Belle Isle separates the province into two geographical parts: Labrador, which is a large area of mainland Canada, and Newfoundland, an island in the Atlantic Ocean. The province also includes over 7,000 tiny islands.
Newfoundland is roughly triangular. Each side is about long, and its area is . Newfoundland and its neighbouring small islands (excluding French possessions) have an area of . Newfoundland extends between latitudes 46°36′N and 51°38′N.
Labrador is roughly triangular in shape: the western part of its border with Quebec is the drainage divide of the Labrador Peninsula. Lands drained by rivers that flow into the Atlantic Ocean are part of Labrador, and the rest belongs to Quebec. Most of Labrador's southern boundary with Quebec follows the 52nd parallel of latitude. Labrador's extreme northern tip, at 60°22′N, shares a short border with Nunavut. Labrador's area (including associated small islands) is . Together, Newfoundland and Labrador make up 4.06% of Canada's area, with a total area of .
Labrador is the easternmost part of the Canadian Shield, a vast area of ancient metamorphic rock comprising much of northeastern North America. Colliding tectonic plates have shaped much of the geology of Newfoundland. Gros Morne National Park has a reputation as an outstanding example of tectonics at work, and as such has been designated a World Heritage Site. The Long Range Mountains on Newfoundland's west coast are the northeasternmost extension of the Appalachian Mountains.
The north-south extent of the province (46°36′N to 60°22′N), prevalent westerly winds, cold ocean currents and local factors such as mountains and coastline combine to create the various climates of the province.
Most of Newfoundland has a humid continental climate (Dfb under the Köppen climate classification system): cool summer subtype. Newfoundland and Labrador has a wide range of climates and weather, due to its geography. The island of Newfoundland spans 5 degrees of latitude, comparable to the Great Lakes.
The province has been divided into six climate types, but broadly Newfoundland has a cool summer subtype of a humid continental climate, which is greatly influenced by the sea since no part of the island is more than 100 km (62 mi) from the ocean. Northern Labrador is classified as a polar tundra climate, southern Labrador has a subarctic climate.
Monthly average temperatures, rainfall and snowfall for four places are shown in the attached graphs. St. John's represents the east coast, Gander the interior of the island, Corner Brook the west coast of the island and Wabush the interior of Labrador. Climate data for 56 places in the province is available from Environment Canada.
The data for the graphs is the average over thirty years. Error bars on the temperature graph indicate the range of daytime highs and night time lows. Snowfall is the total amount that fell during the month, not the amount accumulated on the ground. This distinction is particularly important for St. John's, where a heavy snowfall can be followed by rain, so no snow remains on the ground.
Surface water temperatures on the Atlantic side reach a summer average of inshore and offshore to winter lows of inshore and offshore. Sea temperatures on the west coast are warmer than Atlantic side by 1 to 3 °C (1 to 5 °F). The sea keeps winter temperatures slightly higher and summer temperatures a little lower on the coast than inland. The maritime climate produces more variable weather, ample precipitation in a variety of forms, greater humidity, lower visibility, more clouds, less sunshine, and higher winds than a continental climate.
Human habitation in Newfoundland and Labrador can be traced back about 9,000 years. The Maritime Archaic peoples were groups of Archaic cultures of sea-mammal hunters in the subarctic. They prospered along the Atlantic Coast of North America from about 7000 BC to 1500 BC. Their settlements included longhouses and boat-topped temporary or seasonal houses. They engaged in long-distance trade, using as currency white chert, a rock quarried from northern Labrador to Maine. The southern branch of these people was established on the north peninsula of Newfoundland by 5,000 years ago. The Maritime Archaic period is best known from a mortuary site in Newfoundland at Port au Choix.
The Maritime Archaic peoples were gradually displaced by people of the Dorset culture (Late Paleo-Eskimo) who also occupied Port au Choix. The number of their sites discovered on Newfoundland indicates they may have been the most numerous group of Aboriginal people to live there. They thrived from about 2000 BC to AD 800. Many of their sites were on exposed headlands and outer islands. They were more oriented to the sea than earlier peoples, and had developed sleds and boats similar to kayaks. They burned seal blubber in soapstone lamps.
Many of these sites, such as Port au Choix, recently excavated by Memorial archaeologist, Priscilla Renouf, are quite large and show evidence of a long-term commitment to place. Renouf has excavated huge amounts of harp seal bones at Port au Choix, indicating that this place was a prime location for the hunting of these animals.
The people of the Dorset Culture (800 BC – AD 1500) were highly adapted to a cold climate, and much of their food came from hunting sea mammals through holes in the ice. The massive decline in sea ice during the Medieval Warm Period would have had a devastating impact upon their way of life.
The appearance of the Beothuk culture is believed to be the most recent cultural manifestation of peoples who first migrated from Labrador to Newfoundland around 1 AD. The Inuit, found mostly in Labrador, are the descendants of what anthropologists call the Thule people, who emerged from western Alaska around AD 1000 and spread eastwards across the High Arctic, reaching Labrador around 1300–1500. Researchers believe the Dorset culture lacked the dogs, larger weapons and other technologies that gave the expanding Inuit people an advantage. Over time, groups started to focus on resources available to them locally.
The inhabitants eventually organized themselves into small bands of a few families, grouped into larger tribes and chieftainships. The Innu are the inhabitants of an area they refer to as "Nitassinan", i.e. most of what is now referred to as northeastern Quebec and Labrador. Their subsistence activities were historically centred on hunting and trapping caribou, deer and small game. Coastal clans also practiced agriculture, fished and managed maple sugar bush. The Innu engaged in tribal warfare along the coast of Labrador with the Inuit groups that had large populations.
The Mi'kmaq of southern Newfoundland spent most of their time on the shores harvesting seafood; during the winter they would move inland to the woods to hunt. Over time, the Mi'kmaq and Innu divided their lands into traditional "districts". Each district was independently governed and had a district chief and a council. The council members were band chiefs, elders and other worthy community leaders. In addition to the district councils, the Mi'kmaq tribes also had (have) a Grand Council or "Santé Mawiómi", which according to oral tradition was formed before 1600.
By the time European contact with Newfoundland began in the early 16th century, the Beothuk were the only indigenous group living permanently on the island. Unlike other groups in the Northeastern area of the Americas, the Beothuk never established sustained trading relations with European settlers. Instead, their trading interactions were sporadic, and they largely attempted to avoid contact in order to preserve their culture. The establishment of English fishing operations on the outer coastline of the island, and their later expansion into bays and inlets, cut off access for the Beothuk to their traditional sources of food.
In the 18th century, as the Beothuk were driven further inland by these encroachments, violence between Beothuk and settlers escalated, with each retaliating against the other in their competition for resources. By the early 19th century, violence, starvation, and exposure to tuberculosis had decimated the Beothuk population, and they were extinct by 1829.
Geneticists have suggested some Icelanders may carry Beothuk DNA, which has been passed down matrilineally over the centuries. This suggests that when the Vikings abandoned their colonization of Newfoundland around 1000 AD, they might have brought back Beothuk women to Europe.
The oldest confirmed accounts of European contact date from a thousand years ago as described in the Viking (Norse) Icelandic Sagas. Around the year 1001, the sagas refer to Leif Ericson landing in three places to the west, the first two being Helluland (possibly Baffin Island) and Markland (possibly Labrador). Leif's third landing was at a place he called Vinland (possibly Newfoundland). Archaeological evidence of a Norse settlement was found in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, which was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1978.
There are several other unconfirmed accounts of European discovery and exploration, one tale by men from the Channel Islands being blown off course in the late 15th century into a strange land full of fish, and another from Portuguese maps that depict the Terra do Bacalhau, or land of codfish, west of the Azores. The earliest, though, is the Voyage of Saint Brendan, the fantastical account of an Irish monk who made a sea voyage in the early 6th century. While the story became a part of myth and legend, some historians believe it is based on fact.
In 1496 John Cabot obtained a charter from English King Henry VII to "sail to all parts, countries and seas of the East, the West and of the North, under our banner and ensign and to set up our banner on any new-found-land" and on 24 June 1497, landed in Cape Bonavista. Historians disagree on whether Cabot landed in Nova Scotia in 1497 or in Newfoundland, or possibly Maine, if he landed at all, but the governments of Canada and the United Kingdom recognise Bonavista as being Cabot's "official" landing place. In 1499 and 1500, Portuguese mariners João Fernandes Lavrador and Pêro de Barcelos explored and mapped the coast, the former's name appearing as "Labrador" on topographical maps of the period.
Based on the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Portuguese Crown claimed it had territorial rights in the area John Cabot visited in 1497 and 1498. Subsequently, in 1501 and 1502 the Corte-Real brothers, Miguel and Gaspar, explored Newfoundland and Labrador, claiming them as part of the Portuguese Empire. In 1506, king Manuel I of Portugal created taxes for the cod fisheries in Newfoundland waters. João Álvares Fagundes and Pêro de Barcelos established seasonal fishing outposts in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia around 1521, and older Portuguese settlements may have existed. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, provided with letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I, landed in St John's in August 1583, and formally took possession of the island.
Sometime before 1563 Basque fishermen, who had been fishing cod shoals off Newfoundland's coasts since the beginning of the sixteenth century, founded Plaisance (today Placentia), a seasonal haven which French fishermen later used. In the Newfoundland will of the Basque seaman Domingo de Luca, dated 1563 and now in an archive in Spain, he asks "that my body be buried in this port of Plazençia in the place where those who die here are usually buried". This will is the oldest known civil document written in Canada.
Twenty years later, in 1583, Newfoundland became England's first possession in North America and one of the earliest permanent English colonies in the New World when Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed it for Elizabeth I. European fishing boats had visited Newfoundland continuously since Cabot's second voyage in 1498 and seasonal fishing camps had existed for a century prior. Fishing boats originated from Basque, England, France, and Portugal. However, this changed during the initial stages of Anglo-Spanish War, when Bernard Drake led a devastating raid on the Spanish and Portuguese fisheries in 1585. This provided an opportunity to secure the island and led to the appointment of Proprietary Governors to establish colonial settlements on the island from 1610 to 1728. John Guy became governor of the first settlement at Cuper's Cove. Other settlements included Bristol's Hope, Renews, New Cambriol, South Falkland and Avalon (which became a province in 1623). The first governor given jurisdiction over all of Newfoundland was Sir David Kirke in 1638.
Explorers quickly realized the waters around Newfoundland had the best fishing in the North Atlantic. By 1620, 300 fishing boats worked the Grand Banks, employing some 10,000 sailors; many continuing to come from the Basque Country, Normandy, or Brittany. They dried and salted cod on the coast and sold it to Spain and Portugal. Heavy investment by Sir George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, in the 1620s in wharves, warehouses, and fishing stations failed to pay off. French raids hurt the business, and the weather was terrible, so he redirected his attention to his other colony in Maryland. After Calvert left, small-scale entrepreneurs such as Sir David Kirke made good use of the facilities. Kirke became the first governor of Newfoundland in 1638. A triangular trade with New England, the West Indies, and Europe gave Newfoundland an important economic role. By the 1670s there were 1,700 permanent residents and another 4,500 in the summer months.
In 1655 France appointed a governor in Plaisance (Placentia), the former Basque fishing settlement, thus starting a formal French colonization period in Newfoundland as well as a period of periodic war and unrest between England and France in the region. The Mi'kmaq, as allies of the French, were amenable to limited French settlement in their midst and fought alongside them against the English. English attacks on Placentia provoked retaliation by New France explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville who during King William's War in the 1690s destroyed nearly every English settlement on the island. The entire population of the English colony was either killed, captured for ransom, or sentenced to expulsion to England, with the exception of those who withstood the attack at Carbonear Island and those in the then remote Bonavista.
After France lost political control of the area after the Siege of Port Royal in 1710, the Mí'kmaq engaged in warfare with the British throughout Dummer's War (1722–1725), King George's War (1744–1748), Father Le Loutre's War (1749–1755) and the French and Indian War (1754–1763). The French colonization period lasted until the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession: France ceded to the British its claims to Newfoundland (including its claims to the shores of Hudson Bay) and to the French possessions in Acadia. Afterward, under the supervision of the last French governor, the French population of Plaisance moved to Île Royale (now Cape Breton Island), part of Acadia which remained then under French control.
In the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), France had acknowledged British ownership of the island. However, in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), control of Newfoundland once again became a major source of conflict between Britain, France and Spain who all pressed for a share in the valuable fishery there. Britain's victories around the globe led William Pitt to insist nobody other than Britain should have access to Newfoundland. The Battle of Signal Hill took place in Newfoundland in 1762 when a French force landed and tried to occupy the island, only to be repulsed by the British.
From 1763 to 1767 James Cook made a detailed survey of the coasts of Newfoundland and southern Labrador while commander of . (The following year, 1768, Cook began his first circumnavigation of the world.) In 1796 a Franco-Spanish expedition again succeeded in raiding the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador, destroying many of the settlements.
By the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), French fishermen gained the right to land and cure fish on the "French Shore" on the western coast. (They had a permanent base on nearby St. Pierre and Miquelon islands; the French gave up their French Shore rights in 1904.) In 1783 the British signed the Treaty of Paris with the United States that gave American fishermen similar rights along the coast. These rights were reaffirmed by treaties in 1818, 1854 and 1871 and confirmed by arbitration in 1910.
In 1854 the British government established Newfoundland's responsible government.
In 1855, Philip Francis Little, a native of Prince Edward Island, won a parliamentary majority over Hugh Hoyles and the Conservatives. Little formed the first Newfoundland administration (1855-1858). Newfoundland rejected confederation with Canada in the 1869 general election. Prime Minister of Canada Sir John Thompson came very close to negotiating Newfoundland's entry into Confederation in 1892.
Newfoundland remained a colony until acquiring Dominion status in 1907. A dominion constituted a self-governing state of the British Empire or British Commonwealth and the Dominion of Newfoundland was relatively autonomous from British rule.
Newfoundland's own regiment, the 1st Newfoundland Regiment, fought in the First World War. On July 1, 1916, nearly the entire regiment was wiped out at Beaumont-Hamel on the first day on the Somme. The regiment went on to serve with distinction in several subsequent battles, earning the prefix "Royal". Despite people's pride in the accomplishments of the regiment, the Dominion's war debt due to the regiment and the cost of maintaining a trans-island railway led to increased and ultimately unsustainable government debt in the post-war era.
Since the early 1800s, Newfoundland and Quebec (or Lower Canada) had been in a border dispute over the Labrador region. In 1927, however, the British government ruled the area known as modern-day Labrador was to be considered part of the Dominion of Newfoundland.
Due to Newfoundland's high debt load arising from World War I and construction of the Newfoundland Railway, and decreasing revenue due to the collapse of fish prices, the dominion legislature voted itself out of existence in 1933 in exchange for loan guarantees by the Crown and a promise it would be re-established. On February 16, 1934, the Commission of Government was sworn in, ending 79 years of responsible government. The Commission consisted of seven persons appointed by the British government. For 15 years, no elections took place, and no legislature was convened.
When prosperity returned with World War II, agitation began to end the Commission and reinstate responsible government. Instead, the British government created the National Convention in 1946, reflecting the efforts toward self-determination that arose in Europe following the war. The Convention, chaired by Judge Cyril J. Fox, consisted of 45 elected members from across the dominion and was formally tasked with advising on the future of Newfoundland.
Several motions were made by Joey Smallwood (a convention member who later served as the first provincial premier of Newfoundland) to examine joining Canada by sending a delegation to Ottawa. The first motion was defeated, although the Convention later decided to send delegations to both London and Ottawa to explore alternatives. In January 1948, the National Convention voted against putting Confederation onto the referendum 29 to 16, but the British, which controlled the National Convention and the subsequent referendum, overruled this vote. Those who supported Confederation were extremely disappointed with the recommendations of the National Convention and organized a petition, signed by more than 50,000 Newfoundlanders, demanding confederation with Canada be placed before the people in the upcoming referendum. As most historians agree, the British government keenly wanted Confederation on the ballot and ensured it would be.
Three main factions actively campaigned during the lead-up to the referenda. Smallwood led the Confederate Association (CA), advocating entry into the Canadian Confederation. They campaigned through a newspaper known as "The Confederate". The Responsible Government League (RGL), led by Peter Cashin, advocated an independent Newfoundland with a return to responsible government. Their newspaper was "The Independent". A third, the smaller Economic Union Party (EUP), led by Chesley Crosbie, advocated closer economic ties with the United States. Though a 1947 poll found 80% of Newfoundland residents wanting to become Americans, the EUP failed to gain much attention and merged with the RGL after the first referendum.
The first referendum took place on June 3, 1948; 44.6% of people voted for responsible government, 41.1% voted for confederation with Canada, while 14.3% voted for the Commission of Government. Since none of the choices had gained over 50%, a second referendum with only the two more popular choices was held on July 22, 1948. The official outcome of that referendum was 52.3% for confederation with Canada and 47.7% for responsible (independent) government. After the referendum, the British governor named a seven-man delegation to negotiate Canada's offer on behalf of Newfoundland. After six of the delegation signed, the British government passed the British North America Act, 1949 through Parliament. Newfoundland officially joined Canada at midnight on March 31, 1949.
As documents in British and Canadian archives became available in the 1980s, it became clear Canada and the United Kingdom wanted Newfoundland to join Canada. Some have charged it was a conspiracy to manoeuvre Newfoundland into Confederation in exchange for forgiveness of Britain's war debt and for other considerations. Yet, most historians who have examined the government documents have concluded that, while Britain engineered the inclusion of a Confederation option in the referendum, Newfoundlanders made the final decision themselves, if by a narrow margin.
Following the referendum, there was a rumour the referendum had been narrowly won by the "responsible government" side, but the result had been fixed by the British governor. Shortly after the referendum, several boxes of ballots from St. John's were burned by order of Herman William Quinton, one of only two commissioners who supported confederation. Some have argued that independent oversight of the vote tallying was lacking, though the process was supervised by respected Corner Brook Magistrate Nehemiah Short, who had also overseen elections to the National Convention.
Newfoundland and Labrador has a population of 519,716, more than half of whom live on the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, site of the capital and historical early settlement. Since 2006, the population of the province has started to increase for the first time since the early 1990s. In the 2006 census the population of the province decreased by 1.5% compared to 2001, and stood at 505,469. But, by the 2011 census, the population had risen by 1.8%.
The largest single religious denomination by number of adherents according to the 2011 National Household Survey was the Roman Catholic Church, at 35.8% of the province's population (181,590 members). The major Protestant denominations made up 57.3% of the population, with the largest groups being the Anglican Church of Canada at 25.1% of the total population (127,255 members), the United Church of Canada at 15.5% (78,380 members), and the Pentecostal churches at 6.5% (33,195 members), with other Protestant denominations in much smaller numbers. Non-Christians constituted only 6.8% of the population, with the majority of those respondents indicating "no religious affiliation" (6.2% of the population).
According to the 2001 Canadian census, the largest ethnic group in Newfoundland and Labrador is English (39.4%), followed by Irish (19.7%), Scots (6.0%), French (5.5%), and First Nations (3.2%). While half of all respondents also identified their ethnicity as "Canadian," 38% report their ethnicity as "Newfoundlander" in a 2003 Statistics Canada Ethnic Diversity Survey.
More than 100,000 Newfoundlanders have applied for membership in the Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation Band, equivalent to one-fifth of the total population.
Newfoundland English is any of several accents and dialects of English found in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Most of these differ substantially from the English commonly spoken elsewhere in neighbouring Canada and the North Atlantic. Many Newfoundland dialects are similar to the West Country dialects of the West Country in England, particularly the city of Bristol and counties Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire and Somerset, while others resemble dialects of Ireland's southeast, particularly Waterford, Wexford, Kilkenny and Cork. Still others blend elements of both, and there is also a Scottish influence on the dialects. While the Scots came in smaller numbers than the English and Irish, they had a large influence on Newfoundland society.
Newfoundland was also the only place outside Europe to have its own distinct name in Irish: "Talamh an Éisc", which means 'land of the fish'. The Irish language is now extinct in Newfoundland. Scots Gaelic was also once spoken in the southwest of Newfoundland, following the settlement there, from the middle of the 19th century, of small numbers of Gaelic-speaking Scots from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Some 150 years later, the language has not entirely disappeared, although it has no fluent speakers.
A vestigial community of French speakers exists on Newfoundland's Port au Port Peninsula; a remnant of the "French Shore" along the island's west coast.
Several aboriginal languages are spoken in the Province, representing the Algonquian (Beothuk, Mi'kmaq and Innu) and Eskimo-Aleut (Inuktitut) language families.
Languages of the population - mother tongue (2011)
For many years, Newfoundland and Labrador had experienced a depressed economy. Following the collapse of the cod fishery during the early 1990s, the province suffered record unemployment rates and the population decreased by roughly 60,000. Due to a major energy and resources boom, the provincial economy has had a major turnaround since the turn of the 21st century. Unemployment rates decreased, the population stabilized and had moderate growth. The province has gained record surpluses, which has rid it of its status as a "have not" province.
Economic growth, gross domestic product (GDP), exports and employment resumed in 2010, after suffering the impacts of the late-2000s recession. In 2010, total capital investment in the province grew to C$6.2 billion, an increase of 23.0% compared to 2009. 2010 GDP reached $28.1 billion, compared to $25.0 billion in 2009.
Service industries accounted for the largest share of GDP, especially financial services, health care and public administration. Other significant industries are mining, oil production and manufacturing. The total labour force in 2018 was 261,400 people. Per capita GDP in 2017 was $62,573, higher than the national average and third only to Alberta and Saskatchewan out of Canadian provinces.
Mines in Labrador, the iron ore mine at Wabush/Labrador City, and the nickel mine in Voisey's Bay produced a total of $3.3 billion worth of ore in 2010. A mine at Duck Pond (30 km (18 mi) south of the now-closed mine at Buchans), started producing copper, zinc, silver and gold in 2007, and prospecting for new ore bodies continues. Mining accounted for 3.5% of the provincial GDP in 2006. The province produces 55% of Canada's total iron ore. Quarries producing dimension stone such as slate and granite, account for less than $10 million worth of material per year.
Oil production from offshore oil platforms on the Hibernia, White Rose and Terra Nova oil fields on the Grand Banks was of , which contributed to more than 15 per cent of the province's GDP in 2006. Total production from the Hibernia field from 1997 to 2006 was with an estimated value of $36 billion. This will increase with the inclusion of the latest project, Hebron. Remaining reserves are estimated at almost as of December 31, 2006. Exploration for new reserves is ongoing. On June 16, 2009, provincial premier Danny Williams announced a tentative agreement to expand the Hibernia oil field. The government negotiated a 10-per-cent equity stake in the Hibernia South expansion, which will add an estimated $10 billion to Newfoundland and Labrador's treasury.
Newsprint is produced by one paper mill in Corner Brook with a capacity of 420,000 tonnes (462,000 tons) per year. The value of newsprint exports varies greatly from year to year, depending on the global market price. Lumber is produced by numerous mills in Newfoundland. Apart from seafood processing, paper manufacture and oil refining, manufacturing in the province consists of smaller industries producing food, brewing and other beverage production.
The fishing industry remains an important part of the provincial economy, employing roughly 20,000 and contributing over $440 million to the GDP. The combined harvest of fish such as cod, haddock, halibut, herring and mackerel was 92,961 tonnes in 2017, with a combined value of $141 million. Shellfish, such as crab, shrimp and clams, accounted for 101,922 tonnes in the same year, yielding $634 million. The value of products from the seal hunt was $1.9 million. Aquaculture is a new industry for the province, which in 2015 produced over 22,000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon, mussels and steelhead trout worth over $161 million. Oysters production is also expected to start in the province.
Agriculture in Newfoundland is limited to areas south of St. John's, Cormack, Wooddale, areas near Musgravetown and in the Codroy Valley. Potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, carrots and cabbage are grown for local consumption. Poultry and eggs are also produced. Wild blueberries, partridgeberries (lingonberries) and bakeapples (cloudberries) are harvested commercially and used in jams and wine making. Dairy production is another huge part of the Newfoundland Agriculture Industry.
Tourism is also a significant contributor to the province's economy. In 2006 nearly 500,000 non-resident tourists visited Newfoundland and Labrador, spending an estimated $366 million. In 2017, non-resident tourists spent an estimated $575 million. Tourism is most popular throughout the months of June–September, the warmest months of the year with the longest hours of daylight.
Newfoundland and Labrador is governed by a parliamentary government within the construct of constitutional monarchy; the monarchy in Newfoundland and Labrador is the foundation of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The sovereign is Queen Elizabeth II, who also serves as head of state of 15 other Commonwealth countries, each of Canada's nine other provinces and the Canadian federal realm; she resides in the United Kingdom. The Queen's representative in Newfoundland and Labrador is the Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland and Labrador, presently Judy Foote.
The direct participation of the royal and viceroyal figures in governance is limited; in practice, their use of the executive powers is directed by the Executive Council, a committee of ministers of the Crown responsible to the unicameral, elected House of Assembly. The Council is chosen and headed by the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, the head of government. After each general election, the lieutenant governor will usually appoint as premier the leader of the political party that has a majority or plurality in the House of Assembly. The leader of the party with the second-most seats usually becomes the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and is part of an adversarial parliamentary system intended to keep the government in check.
Each of the 40 Members of the House of Assembly (MHA) is elected by simple plurality in an electoral district. General elections must be called by the lieutenant governor on the second Tuesday in October four years after the previous election, or may be called earlier, on the advice of the premier, should the government lose a confidence vote in the legislature. Traditionally, politics in the province have been dominated by both the Liberal Party and the Progressive Conservative Party. However, in the 2011 provincial election the New Democratic Party, which had only ever attained minor success, had a major breakthrough and placed second in the popular vote behind the Progressive Conservatives.
Before 1950, the visual arts were a minor aspect of Newfoundland cultural life, compared to the performing arts such as music or theatre. Until about 1900, most art was the work of visiting artists, who included members of the Group of Seven, Rockwell Kent, and Eliot O'Hara. Artists such as Newfoundland-born Maurice Cullen and Robert Pilot travelled to Europe to study art in prominent ateliers.
By the turn of the 20th century, amateur art was made by people living and working in the province. These artists included J.W. Hayward and his son Thomas B. Hayward, Agnes Marian Ayre, and Harold B. Goodridge, the last of whom worked on a number of mural commissions, notably one for the lobby of the Confederation Building in St. John's. Local art societies became prominent in the 1940s, particularly The Art Students Club, which opened in 1940.
After Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada in 1949, government grants fostered a supportive environment for visual artists, primarily painters. The visual arts of the province developed significantly in the second half of the century, with the return of young Newfoundland artists whom had studied abroad. Amongst the first were Rae Perlin, who studied at the Art Students League in New York, and Helen Parsons Shepherd and her husband Reginald Shepherd, who both graduated from the Ontario College of Art. The Shepherds established the province's first art school, the Newfoundland Academy of Art, in a home in downtown St. John's.
Newfoundland-born painters Christopher Pratt and Mary Pratt (painter) returned to the province in 1961 to work at the newly established Memorial University Art Gallery as its first curator, later transitioning to painting full-time in Salmonier. Wesleyville's David Blackwood graduated from the Ontario College of Art in the early 1960s and achieved acclaim with his images of Newfoundland culture and history, though he no longer resides in the province. Newfoundland-born artist Gerald Squires returned in 1969.
The creation of The Memorial University Extension Services and St. Michael's Printshop in the 1960s and 1970s attracted a number of visual artists to the province to teach and create art. Similarly, the school in Hibb's Hole (now Hibb's Cove), established by painter George Noseworthy, brought professional artists such as Anne Meredith Barry to the province. A notable artist during this period is Marlene Creates.
From 1980 to present, opportunities for artists continued to develop, as galleries such as the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador (which later became The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery), the Resource Centre for the Arts, and Eastern Edge were established. Fine arts education programs were established at post-secondary institutions such as Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook, the Western Community College (now College of the North Atlantic) in Stephenville, and the Anna Templeton Centre in St. John's.
Newfoundland and Labrador's arts community is recognized nationally and internationally. The creation of Fogo Island Arts in 2008 on Fogo Island created a residency-based contemporary art program for artists, filmmakers, writers, musicians, curators, designers, and thinkers. In 2013 and 2015, the province was represented at the Venice Biennale as Official Collateral Projects. In 2015, Philippa Jones became the first Newfoundland and Labrador artist to be included in the National Gallery of Canada contemporary art biennial. Other notable contemporary artists who have received national and international attention include Will Gill, Kym Greeley, Ned Pratt and Peter Wilkins.
As of 2011, a study documented approximately 1,200 artists, representing 0.47% of the province's labour force.
Newfoundland and Labrador has a folk musical heritage based on the Irish, English and Scottish traditions that were brought to its shores centuries ago. Though similar in its Celtic influence to neighbouring Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador are more Irish than Scottish, and have more elements imported from English and French music than those provinces. Much of the region's music focuses on the strong seafaring tradition in the area, and includes sea shanties and other sailing songs. Some modern traditional musicians include Great Big Sea, The Ennis Sisters, The Dardanelles, Ron Hynes, and Jim Payne.
The Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra began in St John's in 1962 as a 20-piece string orchestra known as the St. John's Orchestra. Principals from this form a string quartet which performs regularly. A school of music at Memorial University schedules a variety of concerts and has a chamber orchestra and jazz band. Two members of its faculty, Nancy Dahn on violin and Timothy Steeves on piano, perform as Duo Concertante and are responsible for establishing an annual music festival in August, the Tuckamore Festival. Both the school of music and Opera on the Avalon produce operatic works. Memorial's Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media, and Place, houses Memorial's graduate program in ethnomusicology. A leading institution for research in ethnomusicology, the Centre offers academic lectures, scholarly residencies, conferences, symposia, and outreach activities to the province on music and culture.
The pre-confederation and current provincial anthem is the "Ode to Newfoundland", written by British colonial governor Sir Charles Cavendish Boyle in 1902 during his administration of Newfoundland (1901 to 1904). It was adopted as the official Newfoundland anthem on May 20, 1904. In 1980, the province re-adopted the song as an official provincial anthem, making this the only province in Canada to officially adopt an anthem. "The Ode to Newfoundland" is still sung at public events in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Margaret Duley (1894–1968) was Newfoundland's first novelist to gain an international audience. Her works include "The Eyes of the Gull" (1936), "Cold Pastoral" (1939) and "Highway to Valour" (1941). Subsequent novelists include Harold Horwood, author of "Tomorrow Will Be Sunday" (1966) and "White Eskimo" (1972), and Percy Janes, author of "House of Hate" (1970).
Michael Crummey's debut novel, "River Thieves" (2001), became a Canadian bestseller. Other novels include "The Wreckage" (2005) and "Galore" (2009).
Wayne Johnston's fiction deals primarily with the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, often in a historical setting. His novels include "The Story of Bobby O'Malley", "The Time of Their Lives", and "The Divine Ryans", which was made into a movie. "The Colony of Unrequited Dreams" was a historical portrayal of Newfoundland politician Joey Smallwood. Other novels include "The Colony of Unrequited Dreams", and "The Navigator of New York" (2002).
Lisa Moore's first two books, "Degrees of Nakedness" (1995) and "Open" (2002), are short-story collections. Her first novel, "Alligator" (2005), is set in St. John's and incorporates her Newfoundland heritage. "February" tells the story of Helen O'Mara, who lost her husband Cal on the oil rig "Ocean Ranger", which sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's Day storm in 1982.
Other contemporary novelists include Joel Thomas Hynes, author of "We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night" (2017), Jessica Grant author of "Come Thou Tortoise" (2009), and Kenneth J. Harvey, author of "The Town That Forgot How to Breathe" (2003), "Inside" (2006), and "Blackstrap Hawco" (2008).
The earliest works of poetry in British North America, mainly written by visitors and targeted at a European audience, described the new territories in optimistic terms. One of the first works was Robert Hayman's "Quodlibets", a collection of verses composed in Newfoundland and published in 1628.
After World War II, Newfoundland poet E. J. Pratt described the struggle to make a living from the sea in poems about maritime life and the history of Canada. In 1923, his first commercial poetry collection, "Newfoundland Verse", was released. It is frequently archaic in diction, and reflects a pietistic and late-Romantic lyrical sensibility. The collection has humorous and sympathetic portraits of Newfoundland characters, and creates an elegiac mood in poems concerning sea tragedies or Great War losses. With illustrations by Group of Seven member Frederick Varley, "Newfoundland Verse" proved to be Pratt's "breakthrough collection." He went on to publish 18 more books of poetry in his lifetime. "Recognition came with the narrative poems "The Witches' Brew" (1925), "Titans" (1926), and "The Roosevelt and the Antinoe" (1930), and though he published a substantial body of lyric verse, it is as a narrative poet that Pratt is remembered." Pratt's poetry "frequently reflects his Newfoundland background, though specific references to it appear in relatively few poems, mostly in "Newfoundland Verse"", says The Canadian Encyclopedia. "But the sea and maritime life are central to many of his poems, for example, "The Cachalot" (1926), which describes duels between a whale and its foes, a giant squid and a whaling ship and crew.
Amongst more recent poets are Tom Dawe, Al Pittman, Mary Dalton, Agnes Walsh, Patrick Warner and John Steffler. Canadian poet Don McKay has resided in St John's in recent years.
"1967 marked the opening of the St. John's Arts and Culture Centre and the first all-Canadian Dominion Drama Festival. Playwrights across Canada began writing, and this explosion was also felt in Newfoundland and Labrador. Subregional festivals saw Newfoundland plays compete - "Wreaker"s by Cassie Brown, "Tomorrow Will Be Sunday" by Tom Cahill, and "Holdin' Ground" by Ted Russell. Cahill's play went on to receive top honours and a performance at Expo 67 in Montreal. Joining Brown and Cahill in the seventies were Michael Cook and Al Pittman, both prolific writers".
Newfoundland and Labrador's present provincial flag, designed by Newfoundland artist Christopher Pratt, was officially adopted by the legislature on May 28, 1980, and first flown on "Discovery Day" that year.
The blue is meant to represent the sea, the white represents snow and ice, the red represents the efforts and struggles of the people, and the gold represents the confidence of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. The blue triangles are a tribute to the Union Flag, and represent the British heritage of the province. The two red triangles represent Labrador (the mainland portion of the province) and the island. In Pratt's words, the golden arrow points towards a "brighter future".
What has commonly but mistakenly been called the Newfoundland tricolour "Pink, White and Green"(sic) is the flag of the Catholic Church affiliated Star of the Sea Association (SOSA). It originated in the late nineteenth century and enjoyed popularity among people who were under the impression that it was the Native Flag of Newfoundland which was created before 1852 by the Newfoundland Natives'Society. The true Native Flag (red-white-green tricolour) was widely flown into the late nineteenth century. Neither tricolour was ever adopted by the Newfoundland government.
A 1976 article reported the tricolour flag was created in 1843 by then Roman Catholic Bishop of Newfoundland, Michael Anthony Fleming. The colours were intended to represent the symbolic union of Newfoundland's historically dominant ethnic/religious groups: English, Scots and Irish. Though popular, there is no historical evidence to support this legend. Recent scholarship suggests the green-white-pink flag was first used in the late 1870s or early 1880s by the Roman Catholic "Star of the Sea Association" a fishermen's aid and benefit organization established by the Catholic Church in 1871. It resembled the unofficial flag of Ireland. The tricolour flag remained relatively unknown outside of St. John's and the Avalon peninsula until the growth of the tourist industry since the late 20th century. It has been used as an emblem on items in gift shops in St. John's and other towns. Some tourists assume it is the Irish flag.
The "Pink, White and Green"(sic) has been adopted by some residents as a symbol of ties with Irish heritage and as a political statement. Many of the province's Protestants, who make up nearly 60% of the province's total population, may not identify with this heritage. At the same time, many of the province's Catholics, approximately 37% of the total population (with at least 22% of the population claiming Irish ancestry), think the current provincial flag does not satisfactorily represent them. But, a government-sponsored poll in 2005 revealed that 75% of Newfoundlanders rejected adoption of the Tricolour flag as the province's official flag.
Labrador has its own unofficial flag, created in 1973 by Mike Martin, former Member of the Legislative Assembly for Labrador South.
Newfoundland and Labrador has a somewhat different sports culture from the rest of Canada, owing in part to its long history separate from the rest of Canada and under British rule. Ice hockey, however, remains popular; a minor league professional team called the Newfoundland Growlers of the ECHL plays at the Mile One Centre in St. John's since the 2018–19 season. The area had an intermittent American Hockey League presence with the St. John's Maple Leafs then St. John's IceCaps until 2017, and the Newfoundland Senior Hockey League has teams around the island. Since the departure of the St. John's Fog Devils in 2008, Newfoundland and Labrador is the only province in Canada to not have a team in the major junior Canadian Hockey League (should one ever join it would be placed in the QMJHL, which hosted the Fog Devils and has jurisdiction over Atlantic Canada).
Association football (soccer) and rugby union are both more popular in Newfoundland and Labrador than the rest of Canada in general. Soccer is hosted at King George V Park, a 6,000-seat stadium built as Newfoundland's national stadium during the time as an independent dominion. Swilers Rugby Park is home of the Swilers RFC rugby union club, as well as the Atlantic Rock, one of the four regional teams in the Canadian Rugby Championship. Other sports facilities in Newfoundland and Labrador include Pepsi Centre, an indoor arena in Corner Brook; Shamrock Field, Canada's national Gaelic Games venue in St. John's; and St. Patrick's Park, a baseball park in St. John's.
Gridiron football, be it either American or Canadian, is almost nonexistent; it is the only Canadian province other than Prince Edward Island to have never hosted a Canadian Football League or Canadian Interuniversity Sport game, and it was not until 2013 the province saw its first amateur teams form.
Cricket was once a popular sport. The earliest mention is in the "Newfoundland Mercantile Journal", Thursday September 16, 1824, indicating the St. John's Cricket Club was an established club at this time. The St. John's Cricket club was one of the first cricket clubs in North America. Other centres were at Harbour Grace, Twillingate, and Trinity. The heyday of the game was the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, at which time there was league in St. John's, as well as an interschool tournament. John Shannon Munn is Newfoundland's most famous cricketer, having represented Oxford University. After the first World War, cricket declined in popularity and was replaced by soccer and baseball. However, with the arrival of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent,
cricket is once again gaining interest in the province.
Within the province, the Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Transportation and Works operates or sponsors 15 automobile, passenger and freight ferry routes which connect various communities along the province's significant coastline.
A regular passenger and car ferry service, lasting about 90 minutes, crosses the Strait of Belle Isle, connecting the province's island of Newfoundland with the region of Labrador on the mainland. The ferry "MV Apollo" travels from St. Barbe, Newfoundland on the Great Northern Peninsula to the port town of Blanc-Sablon, Quebec, located on the provincial border and beside the town of L'Anse-au-Clair, Labrador. The "MV Sir Robert Bond" once provided seasonal ferry service between Lewisporte on the island and the towns of Cartwright and Happy Valley–Goose Bay in Labrador, but has not run since the completion of the Trans-Labrador Highway in 2010, allowing access from Blanc-Sablon, Quebec, to major parts of Labrador. Several smaller ferries connect numerous other coastal towns and offshore island communities around the island of Newfoundland and up the Labrador coast as far north as Nain.
Inter-provincial ferry services are provided by Marine Atlantic, a federal Crown corporation which operates auto-passenger ferries from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, to the towns of Port aux Basques and Argentia on the southern coast of Newfoundland island.
The St. John's International Airport YYT and the Gander International Airport YQX are the only airports in the province that are part of the National Airports System. The St. John's International Airport handles nearly 1,200,000 passengers a year making it the busiest airport in the province and the eleventh busiest airport in Canada. The airport is currently undergoing a major expansion of the terminal building which is scheduled to be complete in 2021. The Deer Lake Airport YDF handles over 300,000 passengers a year.
The Newfoundland Railway operated on the island of Newfoundland from 1898 to 1988. With a total track length of , it was the longest narrow-gauge railway system in North America. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21980 |
New Oxford American Dictionary
The New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD) is a single-volume dictionary of American English compiled by American editors at the Oxford University Press.
"NOAD" is based upon the "New Oxford Dictionary of English" ("NODE"), published in the United Kingdom in 1998, although with substantial editing, additional entries, and the inclusion of illustrations. It is based on a corpus linguistics analysis of Oxford's 200 million word database of contemporary American English.
"NOAD" includes a diacritical respelling scheme to convey pronunciations, as opposed to the Gimson phonemic IPA system that is used in "NODE".
Published in September 2001, the first edition was edited by Elizabeth J. Jewell and Frank Abate.
Published in May 2005, the second edition was edited by Erin McKean. The edition added nearly 3,000 new words, senses, and phrases. It was in a large format, with 2096 pages, and was 8½" by 11" in size. It included a CD-ROM with the full text of the dictionary for Palm OS devices.
Since 2005 Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X operating system has come bundled with a dictionary application and widget which credits as its source "Oxford American Dictionaries", and contains the full text of "NOAD2". The Amazon Kindle reading device also uses "NOAD" as its built-in dictionary, along with a choice for the "Oxford Dictionary of English".
Oxford University Press published "NOAD2" in electronic form in 2006 at the OxfordAmericanDictionary.com, and in 2010, along with the "Oxford Dictionary of English", as part of Oxford Dictionaries Online.
Published in August 2010, the third edition was edited by Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg. This edition includes over 2,000 new words, senses, and phrases, and over 1,000(1225) illustrations; hundreds of new and revised explanatory notes, new "Word Trends" feature charts usage for rapidly changing words and phrases.
The dictionary includes an entry for the word "esquivalience", which it defines as meaning "the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities". This is a fictitious entry, intended to protect the copyright of the publication. The entry was invented by Christine Lindberg, one of the editors of the "NOAD".
With the publication of the second edition, a rumor circulated that the dictionary contained a fictitious entry in the letter 'e'. "New Yorker" contributing editor Henry Alford combed the section, and discussed several unusual entries he found with a group of American lexicographers. Most found "esquivalience" to be the most likely candidate, and when Alford approached "NOAD" editor in chief Erin McKean she confirmed it was a fake entry, which had been present since the first edition, in order to protect the copyright of the CD-ROM edition. Of the word, she said "its inherent fakeitude is fairly obvious".
The fake entry apparently ensnared dictionary.com, which included an entry for it (that has since been removed) which it attributed to "Webster's New Millennium Dictionary", both of which are owned by the private company Lexico. Possibly due to its licensing of Oxford dictionaries, Google Dictionary included the word, listing three meanings and giving usage examples. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21981 |
New Latin
New Latin (also called Neo-Latin or Modern Latin)
was a revival in the use of Latin in original, scholarly, and scientific works between 1375 and 1900. Modern scholarly and technical nomenclature, such as in zoological and botanical taxonomy and international scientific vocabulary, draws extensively from New Latin vocabulary. In such use, New Latin is subject to new word formation. As a language for full expression in prose or poetry, however, it is often distinguished from its successor, Contemporary Latin.
Classicists use the term "Neo-Latin" to describe the Latin that developed in Renaissance Italy as a result of renewed interest in classical civilization in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Neo-Latin also describes the use of the Latin language for any purpose, scientific or literary, during and after the Renaissance. The beginning of the period cannot be precisely identified; however, the spread of secular education, the acceptance of humanistic literary norms, and the wide availability of Latin texts following the invention of printing, mark the transition to a new era of scholarship at the end of the 15th century. The end of the New Latin period is likewise indeterminate, but Latin as a regular vehicle of communicating ideas became rare after the first few decades of the 19th century, and by 1900 it survived primarily in international scientific vocabulary and taxonomy. The term "New Latin" came into widespread use towards the end of the 1890s among linguists and scientists.
New Latin was, at least in its early days, an international language used throughout Catholic and Protestant Europe, as well as in the colonies of the major European powers. This area consisted of most of Europe, including Central Europe and Scandinavia; its southern border was the Mediterranean Sea, with the division more or less corresponding to the modern eastern borders of Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia.
Russia's acquisition of Kiev in the later 17th century introduced the study of Latin to Russia. Nevertheless, the use of Latin in Orthodox eastern Europe did not reach high levels due to their strong cultural links to the cultural heritage of Ancient Greece and Byzantium, as well as Greek and Old Church Slavonic languages.
Though Latin and New Latin are considered dead (having no native speakers), large parts of their vocabulary have seeped into English and several Germanic languages. In the case of English, about 60% of the lexicon can trace its origin to Latin, thus many English speakers can recognize New Latin terms with relative ease as cognates are quite common.
New Latin was inaugurated by the triumph of the humanist reform of Latin education, led by such writers as Erasmus, More, and Colet. Medieval Latin had been the practical working language of the Roman Catholic Church, taught throughout Europe to aspiring clerics and refined in the medieval universities. It was a flexible language, full of neologisms and often composed without reference to the grammar or style of classical (usually pre-Christian) authors. The humanist reformers sought both to purify Latin grammar and style, and to make Latin applicable to concerns beyond the ecclesiastical, creating a body of Latin literature outside the bounds of the Church. Attempts at reforming Latin use occurred sporadically throughout the period, becoming most successful in the mid-to-late 19th century.
The Protestant Reformation (1520–1580), though it removed Latin from the liturgies of the churches of Northern Europe, may have advanced the cause of the new secular Latin. The period during and after the Reformation, coinciding with the growth of printed literature, saw the growth of an immense body of New Latin literature, on all kinds of secular as well as religious subjects.
The heyday of New Latin was its first two centuries (1500–1700), when in the continuation of the Medieval Latin tradition, it served as the lingua franca of science, education, and to some degree diplomacy in Europe. Classic works such as Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) were written in the language. Throughout this period, Latin was a universal school subject, and indeed, the pre-eminent subject for elementary education in most of Europe and other places of the world that shared its culture. All universities required Latin proficiency (obtained in local grammar schools) to obtain admittance as a student. Latin was an official language of Poland—recognised and widely used between the 9th and 18th centuries, commonly used in foreign relations and popular as a second language among some of the nobility.
Through most of the 17th century, Latin was also supreme as an international language of diplomatic correspondence, used in negotiations between nations and the writing of treaties, e.g. the peace treaties of Osnabrück and Münster (1648). As an auxiliary language to the local vernaculars, New Latin appeared in a wide variety of documents, ecclesiastical, legal, diplomatic, academic, and scientific. While a text written in English, French, or Spanish at this time might be understood by a significant cross section of the learned, only a Latin text could be certain of finding someone to interpret it anywhere between Lisbon and Helsinki.
As late as the 1720s, Latin was still used conversationally, and was serviceable as an international auxiliary language between people of different countries who had no other language in common. For instance, the Hanoverian king George I of Great Britain (reigned 1714–1727), who had no command of spoken English, communicated in Latin with his Prime Minister Robert Walpole, who knew neither German nor French.
By about 1700, the growing movement for the use of national languages (already found earlier in literature and the Protestant religious movement) had reached academia, and an example of the transition is Newton's writing career, which began in New Latin and ended in English (e.g. "Opticks", 1704). A much earlier example is Galileo c. 1600, some of whose scientific writings were in Latin, some in Italian, the latter to reach a wider audience. By contrast, while German philosopher Christian Wolff (1679–1754) popularized German as a language of scholarly instruction and research, and wrote some works in German, he continued to write primarily in Latin, so that his works could more easily reach an international audience (e.g., "Philosophia moralis," 1750–53).
Likewise, in the early 18th century, French replaced Latin as a diplomatic language, due to the commanding presence in Europe of the France of Louis XIV. At the same time, some (like King Frederick William I of Prussia) were dismissing Latin as a useless accomplishment, unfit for a man of practical affairs. The last international treaty to be written in Latin was the Treaty of Vienna in 1738; after the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) international diplomacy was conducted predominantly in French.
A diminishing audience combined with diminishing production of Latin texts pushed Latin into a declining spiral from which it has not recovered. As it was gradually abandoned by various fields, and as less written material appeared in it, there was less of a practical reason for anyone to bother to learn Latin; as fewer people knew Latin, there was less reason for material to be written in the language. Latin came to be viewed as esoteric, irrelevant, and too difficult. As languages like French, Italian, German, and English became more widely known, use of a 'difficult' auxiliary language seemed unnecessary—while the argument that Latin could expand readership beyond a single nation was fatally weakened if, in fact, Latin readers did not compose a majority of the intended audience.
As the 18th century progressed, the extensive literature in Latin being produced at the beginning slowly contracted. By 1800 Latin publications were far outnumbered, and often outclassed, by writings in the modern languages. Latin literature lasted longest in very specific fields (e.g. botany and zoology) where it had acquired a technical character, and where a literature available only to a small number of learned individuals could remain viable. By the end of the 19th century, Latin in some instances functioned less as a language than as a code capable of concise and exact expression, as for instance in physicians' prescriptions, or in a botanist's description of a specimen. In other fields (e.g. anatomy or law) where Latin had been widely used, it survived in technical phrases and terminology. The perpetuation of Ecclesiastical Latin in the Roman Catholic Church through the 20th century can be considered a special case of the technicalizing of Latin, and the narrowing of its use to an elite class of readers.
By 1900, creative Latin composition, for purely artistic purposes, had become rare. Authors such as Arthur Rimbaud and Max Beerbohm wrote Latin verse, but these texts were either school exercises or occasional pieces. The last survivals of New Latin to convey non-technical information appear in the use of Latin to cloak passages and expressions deemed too indecent (in the 19th century) to be read by children, the lower classes, or (most) women. Such passages appear in translations of foreign texts and in works on folklore, anthropology, and psychology, e.g. Krafft-Ebing's "Psychopathia Sexualis" (1886).
Latin as a language held a place of educational pre-eminence until the second half of the 19th century. At that point its value was increasingly questioned; in the 20th century, educational philosophies such as that of John Dewey dismissed its relevance. At the same time, the philological study of Latin appeared to show that the traditional methods and materials for teaching Latin were dangerously out of date and ineffective.
In secular academic use, however, New Latin declined sharply and then continuously after about 1700. Although Latin texts continued to be written throughout the 18th and into the 19th century, their number and their scope diminished over time. By 1900, very few new texts were being created in Latin for practical purposes, and the production of Latin texts had become little more than a hobby for Latin enthusiasts.
Around the beginning of the 19th century came a renewed emphasis on the study of Classical Latin as the spoken language of the Romans of the 1st centuries BC and AD. This new emphasis, similar to that of the Humanists but based on broader linguistic, historical, and critical studies of Latin literature, led to the exclusion of Neo-Latin literature from academic studies in schools and universities (except for advanced historical language studies); to the abandonment of New Latin neologisms; and to an increasing interest in the reconstructed Classical pronunciation, which displaced the several regional pronunciations in Europe in the early 20th century.
Coincident with these changes in Latin instruction, and to some degree motivating them, came a concern about lack of Latin proficiency among students. Latin had already lost its privileged role as the core subject of elementary instruction; and as education spread to the middle and lower classes, it tended to be dropped altogether. By the mid-20th century, even the trivial acquaintance with Latin typical of the 19th-century student was a thing of the past.
Ecclesiastical Latin, the form of New Latin used in the Roman Catholic Church, remained in use throughout the period and after. Until the Second Vatican Council of 1962–65 all priests were expected to have competency in it, and it was studied in Catholic schools. It is today still the official language of the Church, and all Catholic priests of the Latin liturgical rites are required by canon law to have competency in the language. Use of Latin in the Mass, largely abandoned through the later 20th century, has recently seen a resurgence due in large part to Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 "motu proprio" "Summorum Pontificum" and its use by traditional Catholic priests and their organizations.
New Latin is also the source of the biological system of binomial nomenclature and classification of living organisms devised by Carl Linnaeus, although the rules of the ICZN allow the construction of names that deviate considerably from historical norms. (See also classical compounds.) Another continuation is the use of Latin names for the surface features of planets and planetary satellites (planetary nomenclature), originated in the mid-17th century for selenographic toponyms. New Latin has also contributed a vocabulary for specialized fields such as anatomy and law; some of these words have become part of the normal, non-technical vocabulary of various European languages.
New Latin had no single pronunciation, but a host of local variants or dialects, all distinct both from each other and from the historical pronunciation of Latin at the time of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. As a rule, the local pronunciation of Latin used sounds identical to those of the dominant local language; the result of a concurrently evolving pronunciation in the living languages and the corresponding spoken dialects of Latin. Despite this variation, there are some common characteristics to nearly all of the dialects of New Latin, for instance:
The regional dialects of New Latin can be grouped into families, according to the extent to which they share common traits of pronunciation. The major division is between Western and Eastern family of New Latin. The Western family includes most Romance-speaking regions (France, Spain, Portugal, Italy) and the British Isles; the Eastern family includes Central Europe (Germany and Poland), Eastern Europe (Russia and Ukraine) and Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden).
The Western family is characterized, "inter alia", by having a front variant of the letter "g" before the vowels "æ, e, i, œ, y" and also pronouncing "j" in the same way (except in Italy). In the Eastern Latin family, "j" is always pronounced , and "g" had the same sound (usually ) in front of both front and back vowels; exceptions developed later in some Scandinavian countries.
The following table illustrates some of the variation of New Latin consonants found in various countries of Europe, compared to the Classical Latin pronunciation of the 1st centuries BC-AD. In Eastern Europe, the pronunciation of Latin was generally similar to that shown in the table below for German, but usually with for "z" instead of .
New Latin texts are primarily found in early printed editions, which present certain features of spelling and the use of diacritics distinct from the Latin of antiquity, medieval Latin manuscript conventions, and representations of Latin in modern printed editions.
In spelling, New Latin, in all but the earliest texts, distinguishes the letter "u" from "v" and "i" from "j". In older texts printed down to c. 1630, "v" was used in initial position (even when it represented a vowel, e.g. in "vt", later printed "ut") and "u" was used elsewhere, e.g. in "nouus", later printed "novus". By the mid-17th century, the letter "v" was commonly used for the consonantal sound of Roman V, which in most pronunciations of Latin in the New Latin period was (and not ), as in "vulnus" "wound", "corvus" "crow". Where the pronunciation remained , as after "g", "q" and "s", the spelling "u" continued to be used for the consonant, e.g. in "lingua", "qualis", and "suadeo".
The letter "j" generally represented a consonantal sound (pronounced in various ways in different European countries, e.g. , , , ). It appeared, for instance, in "jam" "already" or "jubet" "orders" (earlier spelled "iam" and "iubet").
It was also found between vowels in the words "ejus", "hujus", "cujus" (earlier spelled "eius, huius, cuius"), and pronounced as a consonant; likewise in such forms as "major" and "pejor". "J" was also used when the last in a sequence of two or more "i"'s, e.g. "radij" (now spelled "radii") "rays", "alijs" "to others", "iij", the Roman numeral 3; however, "ij" was for the most part replaced by "ii" by 1700.
In common with texts in other languages using the Roman alphabet, Latin texts down to c. 1800 used the letter-form "ſ" (the "long s") for "s" in positions other than at the end of a word; e.g. "ipſiſſimus".
The digraphs "ae" and "oe" were rarely so written (except when part of a word in all capitals, e.g. in titles, chapter headings, or captions) ; instead the ligatures "æ" and "œ" were used, e.g. "Cæsar", "pœna". More rarely (and usually in 16th- to early 17th-century texts) the e caudata is found substituting for either.
Three kinds of diacritic were in common use: the acute accent ´, the grave accent `, and the circumflex accent ˆ. These were normally only marked on vowels (e.g. í, è, â); but see below regarding "que".
The acute accent marked a stressed syllable, but was usually confined to those where the stress was not in its normal position, as determined by vowel length and syllabic weight. In practice, it was typically found on the vowel in the syllable immediately preceding a final clitic, particularly "que" "and", "ve" "or" and "ne", a question marker; e.g. "idémque" "and the same (thing)". Some printers, however, put this acute accent over the "q" in the enclitic "que", e.g. "eorumq́ue" "and their". The acute accent fell out of favor by the 19th century.
The grave accent had various uses, none related to pronunciation or stress. It was always found on the preposition "à" (variant of "ab" "by" or "from") and likewise on the preposition "è" (variant of "ex" "from" or "out of"). It might also be found on the interjection "ò" "O". Most frequently, it was found on the last (or only) syllable of various adverbs and conjunctions, particularly those that might be confused with prepositions or with inflected forms of nouns, verbs, or adjectives. Examples include "certè" "certainly", "verò" "but", "primùm" "at first", "pòst" "afterwards", "cùm" "when", "adeò" "so far, so much", "unà" "together", "quàm" "than". In some texts the grave was found over the clitics such as "que", in which case the acute accent did not appear before them.
The circumflex accent represented metrical length (generally not distinctively pronounced in the New Latin period) and was chiefly found over an "a" representing an ablative singular case, e.g. "eâdem formâ" "with the same shape". It might also be used to distinguish two words otherwise spelled identically, but distinct in vowel length; e.g. "hîc" "here" differentiated from "hic" "this", "fugêre" "they have fled" (="fūgērunt") distinguished from "fugere" "to flee", or "senatûs" "of the senate" distinct from "senatus" "the senate". It might also be used for vowels arising from contraction, e.g. "nôsti" for "novisti" "you know", "imperâsse" for "imperavisse" "to have commanded", or "dî" for "dei" or "dii". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21983 |
Naive Set Theory (book)
Naive Set Theory is a mathematics textbook by Paul Halmos providing an undergraduate introduction to set theory. Originally published by "Van Nostrand" in 1960, it was reprinted in the Springer-Verlag Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics series in 1974.
While the title states that it is naive, which is usually taken to mean without axioms, the book does introduce all the axioms of ZFC set theory (except the Axiom of Foundation), and gives correct and rigorous definitions for basic objects. Where it differs from a "true" axiomatic set theory book is its character: there are no discussions of axiomatic minutiae, and there is next to nothing about advanced topics like large cardinals. Instead, it tries to be intelligible to someone who has never thought about set theory before.
Halmos later stated that it was the fastest book he wrote, taking about six months, and that the book "wrote itself".
As noted above, the book omits the Axiom of Foundation. Halmos repeatedly dances around the issue of whether or not a set can contain itself.
But Halmos does let us prove that there are certain sets that cannot contain themselves. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21986 |
Nitrogen fixation
Nitrogen fixation is a process by which molecular nitrogen in the air is converted into ammonia () or related nitrogenous compounds in soil. Atmospheric nitrogen is molecular dinitrogen, a relatively nonreactive molecule that is metabolically useless to all but a few microorganisms. Biological nitrogen fixation converts into ammonia, which is metabolized by most organisms.
Nitrogen fixation is essential to life because fixed inorganic nitrogen compounds are required for the biosynthesis of all nitrogen-containing organic compounds, such as amino acids and proteins, nucleoside triphosphates and nucleic acids. As part of the nitrogen cycle, it is essential for agriculture and the manufacture of fertilizer. It is also, indirectly, relevant to the manufacture of all nitrogen chemical compounds, which includes some explosives, pharmaceuticals, and dyes.
Nitrogen fixation is carried out naturally in soil by microorganisms termed diazotrophs that include bacteria such as "Azotobacter" and archaea. Some nitrogen-fixing bacteria have symbiotic relationships with plant groups, especially legumes. Looser non-symbiotic relationships between diazotrophs and plants are often referred to as associative, as seen in nitrogen fixation on rice roots. Nitrogen fixation occurs between some termites and fungi. It occurs naturally in the air by means of NOx production by lightning.
All biological nitrogen fixation is effected by enzymes called nitrogenases. These enzymes contain iron, often with a second metal, usually molybdenum but sometimes vanadium.
Nitrogen can be fixed by lightning that converts nitrogen and oxygen into (nitrogen oxides). may react with water to make nitrous acid or nitric acid, which seeps into the soil, where it makes nitrate, which is of use to plants. Nitrogen in the atmosphere is highly stable and nonreactive due to the triple bond between atoms in the molecule. Lightning produces enough energy and heat to break this bond allowing nitrogen atoms to react with oxygen, forming . These compounds cannot be used by plants, but as this molecule cools, it reacts with oxygen to form . This molecule in turn reacts with water to produce (nitric acid), or its ion (nitrate), which is usable by plants.
Biological nitrogen fixation was discovered by German agronomist Hermann Hellriegel and Dutch microbiologist Martinus Beijerinck. Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) occurs when atmospheric nitrogen is converted to ammonia by a nitrogenase enzyme. The overall reaction for BNF is:
N2 + 16ATP + 8e- + 8H+ -> 2NH3 +H2 + 16ADP + 16formula_1
The process is coupled to the hydrolysis of 16 equivalents of ATP and is accompanied by the co-formation of one equivalent of . The conversion of into ammonia occurs at a metal cluster called FeMoco, an abbreviation for the iron-molybdenum cofactor. The mechanism proceeds via a series of protonation and reduction steps wherein the FeMoco active site hydrogenates the substrate. In free-living diazotrophs, nitrogenase-generated ammonia is assimilated into glutamate through the glutamine synthetase/glutamate synthase pathway. The microbial nif genes required for nitrogen fixation are widely distributed in diverse environments.
Nitrogenases are rapidly degraded by oxygen. For this reason, many bacteria cease production of the enzyme in the presence of oxygen. Many nitrogen-fixing organisms exist only in anaerobic conditions, respiring to draw down oxygen levels, or binding the oxygen with a protein such as leghemoglobin.
Diazotrophs are widespread within domain Bacteria including cyanobacteria (e.g. the highly significant "Trichodesmium" and "Cyanothece"), as well as green sulfur bacteria, Azotobacteraceae, rhizobia and "Frankia". Several obligately anaerobic bacteria fix nitrogen including many (but not all) "Clostridium" spp. Some archaea also fix nitrogen, including several methanogenic taxa, which are significant contributors to nitrogen fixation in oxygen-deficient soils.
Cyanobacteria inhabit nearly all illuminated environments on Earth and play key roles in the carbon and nitrogen cycle of the biosphere. In general, cyanobacteria can use various inorganic and organic sources of combined nitrogen, such as nitrate, nitrite, ammonium, urea, or some amino acids. Several cyanobacteria strains are also capable of diazotrophic growth, an ability that may have been present in their last common ancestor in the Archean eon. Nitrogen fixation by cyanobacteria in coral reefs can fix twice as much nitrogen as on land—around 660 kg/ha/year. The colonial marine cyanobacterium "Trichodesmium" is thought to fix nitrogen on such a scale that it accounts for almost half of the nitrogen fixation in marine systems globally.
Marine surface lichens and non-photosynthetic bacteria belonging in Proteobacteria and Planctomycetes fixate significant atmospheric nitrogen.
Plants that contribute to nitrogen fixation include those of the legume family—Fabaceae— with taxa such as kudzu, clover, soybean, alfalfa, lupin, peanut and rooibos. They contain symbiotic rhizobia bacteria within nodules in their root systems, producing nitrogen compounds that help the plant to grow and compete with other plants. When the plant dies, the fixed nitrogen is released, making it available to other plants; this helps to fertilize the soil. The great majority of legumes have this association, but a few genera (e.g., "Styphnolobium") do not. In many traditional and organic farming practices, fields are rotated through various types of crops, which usually include one consisting mainly or entirely of clover or buckwheat (non-legume family Polygonaceae), often referred to as "green manure".
Fixation efficiency in soil is dependent on many factors, including the legume and air and soil conditions. For example, nitrogen fixation by red clover can range from 50-200 lb./acre.
Inga alley farming relies on the leguminous genus "Inga", a small tropical, tough-leaved, nitrogen-fixing tree.
Other nitrogen fixing families include:
The ability to fix nitrogen is present in other families that belong to the orders Cucurbitales, Fagales and Rosales, which together with the Fabales form a clade of eurosids. The ability to fix nitrogen is not universally present in these families. For example, of 122 Rosaceae genera, only four fix nitrogen. Fabales were the first lineage to branch off this nitrogen-fixing clade; thus, the ability to fix nitrogen may be plesiomorphic and subsequently lost in most descendants of the original nitrogen-fixing plant; however, it may be that the basic genetic and physiological requirements were present in an incipient state in the most recent common ancestors of all these plants, but only evolved to full function in some of them.
Several nitrogen-fixing symbiotic associations involve cyanobacteria (such as "Nostoc"):
"Rhopalodia gibba", a diatom alga, is a eukaryote with cyanobacterial -fixing endosymbiont organelles. The spheroid bodies reside in the cytoplasm of the diatoms and are inseparable from their hosts.
Some scientists are working towards introducing the genes responsible for nitrogen fixation directly into plant DNA. As all known examples of nitrogen fixation takes place in prokaryotes, transferring the functionality to eukaryotes such as plant is a challenge; one team is using yeast as their eukaryotic test organism. A major problem to overcome is the oxygen-sensitivity of the produced enzymes, as well as the energy requirements. Having the process taking place inside of mitocondria or chloroplasts is being considered.
The possibility that atmospheric nitrogen reacts with certain chemicals was first observed by Desfosses in 1828. He observed that mixtures of alkali metal oxides and carbon react at high temperatures with nitrogen. With the use of barium carbonate as starting material, the first commercial process became available in the 1860s, developed by Margueritte and Sourdeval. The resulting barium cyanide could be reacted with steam yielding ammonia.
Prior to 1900, Tesla experimented with industrial nitrogen fixation "by using currents of extremely high frequency or rate of vibration".
In 1898 Frank and Caro decoupled the process and produced calcium carbide and in a subsequent step reacted it with nitrogen to calcium cyanamide. The Ostwald process for the production of nitric acid was discovered in 1902. The Frank-Caro and Ostwald processes dominated industrial fixation until the discovery of the Haber process in 1909.
The most common ammonia production method is the Haber process. Fertilizer production is now the largest source of human-produced fixed nitrogen in the terrestrial ecosystem. Ammonia is a required precursor to fertilizers, explosives, and other products. The Haber process requires high pressures (around 200 atm) and high temperatures (at least 400 °C), which are routine conditions for industrial catalysis. This process uses natural gas as a hydrogen source and air as a nitrogen source.
Much research has been conducted on the discovery of catalysts for nitrogen fixation, often with the goal of reducing energy requirements. However, such research has thus far failed to approach the efficiency and ease of the Haber process. Many compounds react with atmospheric nitrogen to give dinitrogen complexes. The first dinitrogen complex to be reported was ()2+.
Achieving catalytic chemical nitrogen fixation at ambient conditions is an ongoing scientific endeavor. Guided by the example of nitrogenase, this area of homogeneous catalysis is ongoing, with particular emphasis on hydrogenation.
Metallic lithium burns in an atmosphere of nitrogen and then converts to lithium nitride. Hydrolysis of the resulting nitride gives ammonia. In a related process, trimethylsilyl chloride, lithium and nitrogen react in the presence of a catalyst to give tris(trimethylsilyl)amine. This can then be used for reaction with α,δ,ω-triketones to give tricyclic pyrroles. Processes involving lithium metal are however of no practical interest since they are non-catalytic and re-reducing the ion residue is difficult.
Beginning in the 1960s several homogeneous systems were identified that convert nitrogen to ammonia, sometimes catalytically, but often operating via ill-defined mechanisms. The original discovery is described in an early review:
"Vol'pin and co-workers, using a non-protic Lewis acid, aluminium tribromide, were able to demonstrate the truly catalytic effect of titanium by treating dinitrogen with a mixture of titanium tetrachloride, metallic aluminium, and aluminium tribromide at 50 °C, either in the absence or in the presence of a solvent, e.g. benzene. As much as 200 mol of ammonia per mol of was obtained after hydrolysis.…"
The quest for well-defined intermediates led to the characterization of many transition metal dinitrogen complexes. While few of these well-defined complexes function catalytically, their behavior illuminated likely stages in nitrogen fixation. Fruitful early studies focused on (dppe)2 (M = Mo, W), which protonates to give intermediates with ligand M=N−. In 1995, a molybdenum(III) amido complex was discovered that cleaved to give the corresponding molybdenum (VI) nitride. This and related terminal nitrido complexes have been used to make nitriles.
In 2003 a molybdenum amido complex was found to catalyze the reduction of , albeit with few turnovers. In these systems, like the biological one, hydrogen is provided to the substrate heterolytically, by means of protons and a strong reducing agent rather than with .
In 2011, another molybdenum-based system was discovered, but with a diphosphorus pincer ligand. Photolytic nitrogen splitting is also considered.
Nitrogen fixation at a p-block element was published in 2018 whereby one molecule of dinitrogen is bound by two transient Lewis-base-stabilized borylene species. The resulting dianion was subsequently oxidized to a neutral compound, and reduced using water.
With the help of catalysis and energy provided by electricity and light, can be produced directly from nitrogen and water at ambient temperature and pressure.
As of 2019 research was considering alternate means of supplying nitrogen in agriculture. Instead of using fertilizer, researchers were considering using different species of bacteria and separately, coating seeds with probiotics that encourage the growth of nitrogen-fixing bacteria. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21989 |
Navigation research
Whereas originally the term Navigation applies to the process of directing a ship to a destination, Navigation research deals with fundamental aspects of navigation in general. It can be defined as "The process of determining and maintaining a course or trajectory to a goal location" (Franz, Mallot, 2000).
It concerns basically all moving agents, biological or artificial, or remote-controlled.
Franz and Mallot proposed a navigation hierarchy in "Robotics and Autonomous Systems 30" (2006):
There are two basic methods for navigation:
In human navigation people visualize different routes in their minds to plan how to get from one place to another. The things which they rely on to plan these routes vary from person to person and are the basis of the differing navigational strategies.
Some people use measures of distance and absolute directional terms (north, south, east, and west) in order to visualize the best pathway from point to point. The use of these more general, external cues as directions is considered part of an allocentric navigation strategy. Allocentric navigation is typically seen in males and is beneficial primarily in large and/or unfamiliar environments. This likely has some basis in evolution when males would have to navigate through large and unfamiliar environments while hunting. The use of allocentric strategies when navigating primarily activates the hippocampus and parahippocampus in the brain. This navigation strategy relies more on a mental, spatial map than visible cues, giving it an advantage in unknown areas but a flexibility to be used in smaller environments as well. The fact that it is mainly males that favor this strategy is likely related to the generalization that males are better navigators than females as it is better able to be applied in a greater variety of settings.
Egocentric navigation relies on more local landmarks and personal directions (left/right) to navigate and visualize a pathway. This reliance on more local and well-known stimuli for finding their way makes it difficult to apply in new locations, but is instead most effective in smaller, familiar environments. Evolutionarily, egocentric navigation likely comes from our ancestors who would forage for their food and need to be able to return to the same places daily to find edible plants. This foraging usually occurred in relatively nearby areas and was most commonly done by the females in hunter-gatherer societies. Females, today, are typically better at knowing where various landmarks are and often rely on them when giving directions. Egocentric navigation causes high levels of activation in the right parietal lobe and prefrontal regions of the brain that are involved in visuospatial processing.
Outdoor robots can use GPS in a similar way to automotive navigation systems.
Alternative systems can be used with floor plan instead of maps for indoor robots, combined with localization wireless hardware. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21994 |
Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz (, ; 11 December 1911 – 30 August 2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Taha Hussein, to explore themes of existentialism. He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, hundreds of op-ed columns for Egyptian newspapers, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.
Mahfouz was born in a lower middle-class Muslim Egyptian family in Old Cairo in 1911. He was the seventh and the youngest child, with four brothers and two sisters, all of them much older than him. (Experientially, he grew up an "only child.") The family lived in two popular districts of Cairo: first, in the Bayt al-Qadi neighborhood in the Gamaleya quarter in the old city, from where they moved in 1924 to Abbaseya, then a new Cairo suburb north of the old city, locations that would provide the backdrop for many of Mahfouz's later writings. His father, Abdel-Aziz Ibrahim, whom Mahfouz described as having been "old-fashioned", was a civil servant, and Mahfouz eventually followed in his footsteps in 1934. Mahfouz's mother, Fatimah, was the daughter of Mustafa Qasheesha, an Al-Azhar sheikh, and although illiterate herself, took the boy Mahfouz on numerous excursions to cultural locations such as the Egyptian Museum and the Pyramids.
The Mahfouz family were devout Muslims and Mahfouz had a strict Islamic upbringing. In an interview, he elaborated on the stern religious climate at home during his childhood. He stated that "You would never have thought that an artist would emerge from that family."
The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 had a strong effect on Mahfouz, although he was at the time only seven years old. From the window he often saw British soldiers firing at the demonstrators, men and women. "You could say ... that the one thing which most shook the security of my childhood was the 1919 revolution", he later said.
In his early years, Mahfouz read extensively and was influenced by Hafiz Najib, Taha Hussein and Salama Moussa, the Fabian intellectual.
After completing his secondary education, Mahfouz was admitted in 1930 to the Egyptian University (now Cairo University), where he studied philosophy, graduating in 1934. By 1936, having spent a year working on an M.A. in philosophy, he decided to discontinue his studies and become a professional writer. Mahfouz then worked as a journalist for al-Risala, and contributed short stories to "Al-Hilal" and "Al-Ahram".
After receiving his bachelor's degree in Philosophy from Cairo University in 1934, Mahfouz joined the Egyptian civil service, where he continued to work in various positions and ministries until retirement in 1971. He served first as a clerk at Cairo University, then, in 1938, in the Ministry of Islamic Endowments (Awqaf) as parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Islamic Endowments. In 1945, he requested a transfer to the al-Ghuri Mausoleum library, where he interviewed residents of his childhood neighborhood as part of the "Good Loans Project." In the 1950s, he worked as Director of Censorship in the Bureau of Arts, as Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema, and finally as a consultant to the Ministry of Culture.
Mahfouz published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts and five plays over a 70-year career. Possibly his most famous work, "The Cairo Trilogy", depicts the lives of three generations of different families in Cairo from World War I until after the 1952 military coup that overthrew King Farouk. He was a board member of the publisher "Dar el-Ma'aref". Many of his novels were serialized in "Al-Ahram", and his writings also appeared in his weekly column, "Point of View". Before the Nobel Prize only a few of his novels had appeared in the West.
Most of Mahfouz's early works were set in Cairo. "Abath Al-Aqdar (Mockery of the Fates)" (1939), "Rhadopis" (1943), and "Kifah Tibah (The Struggle of Thebes)" (1944) were historical novels written as part of a larger unfulfilled 30-novel project. Inspired by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), Mahfouz planned to cover the entire history of Egypt in a series of books. However, following the third volume, his interest shifted to current settings and issues, as well as the psychological impact of social change on ordinary people.
Mahfouz's prose is characterised by the blunt expression of his ideas. His written works cover a broad range of topics, including the controversial and taboo such as socialism, homosexuality, and God. Writing about some of these subjects was prohibited in Egypt.
Mahfouz's works often deal with Egypt's development during the 20th century, and combined intellectual and cultural influences from both East and West. His own exposure to foreign literature began in his youth with the enthusiastic consumption of Western detective stories, Russian classics, and modernist writers as Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka and James Joyce. Mahfouz's stories are almost always set in the heavily populated urban quarters of Cairo, where his characters, usually ordinary people, try to cope with the modernization of society and the temptations of Western values.
Mahfouz's central work in the 1950s was the "Cairo Trilogy", which he completed before the July Revolution. The novels were titled with the street names "Palace Walk", "Palace of Desire", and "Sugar Street". Mahfouz set the story in the parts of Cairo where he grew up. The novels depict the life of the patriarch el-Sayyed Ahmed Abdel Gawad and his family over three generations, from World War I to the 1950s, when King Farouk I was overthrown. Mahfouz stopped writing for some years after finishing the trilogy.
Disappointed in the Nasser régime, which had overthrown the monarchy in 1952, he started publishing again in 1959, now prolifically pouring out novels, short stories, journalism, memoirs, essays, and screenplays. He stated in a 1998 interview that he "long felt that Nasser was one of the greatest political leaders in modern history. I only began to fully appreciate him after he nationalized the Suez Canal."
His 1966 novel "Tharthara Fawq Al-Nīl" (Adrift on the Nile) is one of his most popular works. It was later made into a film called "Chitchat on the Nile" during the régime of Anwar al-Sadat. The story criticizes the decadence of Egyptian society during the Nasser era. It was banned by Sadat to avoid provoking Egyptians who still loved former president Nasser. Copies of the banned book were hard to find prior to the late 1990s.
The "Children of Gebelawi" (1959, also known as "Children of the Alley") one of Mahfouz's best known works, portrayed the patriarch Gebelaawi and his children, average Egyptians living the lives of Cain and Abel, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Gebelawi builds a mansion in an oasis in the middle of a barren desert; his estate becomes the scene of a family feud that continues for generations. "Whenever someone is depressed, suffering or humiliated, he points to the mansion at the top of the alley at the end opening out to the desert, and says sadly, 'That is our ancestor's house, we are all his children, and we have a right to his property. Why are we starving? What have we done?'" The book was banned throughout the Arab world except in Lebanon until 2006 when it was first published in Egypt. The work was prohibited because of its alleged blasphemy through the allegorical portrayal of God and the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
In the 1960s, Mahfouz further developed the theme that humanity is moving further away from God in his existentialist novels. In "The Thief and the Dogs" (1961) he depicted the fate of a Marxist thief who has been released from prison and plans revenge.
In the 1960s and 1970s Mahfouz began to construct his novels more freely and often used interior monologues. In "Miramar" (1967) he employed a form of multiple First-person narratives. Four narrators, among them a Socialist and a Nasserite opportunist, represent different political views. In the center of the story is an attractive servant girl. In "Arabian Nights and Days" (1981) and in "The Journey of Ibn Fatouma" (1983) he drew on traditional Arabic narratives as subtexts. "Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth" (1985) deals with conflict between old and new religious truths.
Many of his novels were first published in serialized form, including "Children of Gebelawi" and "Midaq Alley" which was also adapted into a Mexican film starring Salma Hayek called "El callejón de los milagros".
Most of Mahfouz's writings deal mainly with politics, a fact he acknowledged: "In all my writings, you will find politics. You may find a story which ignores love or any other subject, but not politics; it is the very axis of our thinking".
He espoused Egyptian nationalism in many of his works, and expressed sympathies for the post-World-War-era Wafd Party. He was also attracted to socialist and democratic ideals early in his youth. The influence of socialist ideals is strongly reflected in his first two novels, "Al-Khalili" and "New Cairo", as well as many of his later works. Parallel to his sympathy for socialism and democracy was his antipathy towards Islamic extremism.
In his youth, Mahfouz had personally known Sayyid Qutb when Qutb was showing a greater interest in literary criticism than in Islamic fundamentalism; Qutb later became a significant influence on the Muslim Brotherhood. In the mid-1940s, Qutb was one of the first critics to recognize Mahfouz's talent, and by the 1960s, near the end of Qutb's life, Mahfouz even visited him in the hospital. But later, in the semi-autobiographical novel "Mirrors", Mahfouz drew a negative portrait of Qutb. He was disillusioned with the 1952 revolution and by Egypt's defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War. He had supported the principles of the revolution, but became disenchanted, saying that the practices failed to live up to the original ideals.
Mahfouz's writing influenced a new generation of Egyptian lawyers, including Nabil Mounir and Reda Aslan.
Mahfouz's translated works received praise from American critics:
"The alleys, the houses, the palaces and mosques and the people who live among them are evoked as vividly in Mahfouz's work as the streets of London were conjured by Dickens."
—"Newsweek"
"Throughout Naguib Mahfouz's fiction there is a pervasive sense of metaphor, of a literary artist who is using his fiction to speak directly and unequivocally to the condition of his country. His work is imbued with love for Egypt and its people, but it is also utterly honest and unsentimental."
—"Washington Post"
"Mahfouz's work is freshly nuanced and hauntingly lyrical. The Nobel Prize acknowledges the universal significance of [his] fiction."
—"Los Angeles Times"
"Mr. Mahfouz embodied the essence of what makes the bruising, raucous, chaotic human anthill of Cairo possible."
—"The Economist"
Mahfouz was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, the only Arab writer to have won the award. Shortly after winning the prize Mahfouz was quoted as saying:
The Swedish letter to Mahfouz praised his "rich and complex work":
Because Mahfouz found traveling to Sweden difficult at his age, he did not attend the award ceremony.
Mahfouz did not shrink from controversy outside of his work. As a consequence of his support for Sadat's Camp David peace treaty with Israel in 1978, his books were banned in many Arab countries until after he won the Nobel Prize. Like many Egyptian writers and intellectuals, Mahfouz was on an Islamic fundamentalist "death list".
He defended British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned Rushdie to death in a 1989 fatwa, but also criticized Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses" as "insulting" to Islam. Mahfouz believed in freedom of expression, and, although he did not personally agree with Rushdie's work, he spoke out against the "fatwa" condemning him to death for it.
In 1989, after Ayatollah Khomeini's "fatwa" calling for Rushdie and his publishers to be killed, Mahfouz called Khomeini a terrorist. Shortly after, Mahfouz joined 80 other intellectuals in declaring that "no blasphemy harms Islam and Muslims so much as the call for murdering a writer."
The appearance of "The Satanic Verses" revived the controversy surrounding Mahfouz's novel "Children of Gebelawi". Death threats against Mahfouz followed, including one from the "blind sheikh," Egyptian-born Omar Abdul-Rahman. Mahfouz was given police protection, but in 1994 an extremist succeeded in attacking the 82-year-old novelist by stabbing him in the neck outside his Cairo home.
He survived, permanently affected by damage to nerves of his right upper limb. After the incident Mahfouz was unable to write for more than a few minutes a day and consequently produced fewer and fewer works. Subsequently, he lived under constant bodyguard protection. Finally, in the beginning of 2006, the novel was published in Egypt with a preface written by Ahmad Kamal Aboul-Magd. After the threats, Mahfouz stayed in Cairo with his lawyer, Nabil Mounir Habib. Mahfouz and Mounir would spend most of their time in Mounir's office; Mahfouz used Mounir's library as a reference for most of his books. Mahfouz stayed with Mounir until his death.
Mahfouz remained a bachelor until age 43 because he believed that, with its numerous restrictions and limitations, marriage would hamper his literary future. "I was afraid of marriage . . . especially when I saw how busy my brothers and sisters were with social events because of it. This one went to visit people, that one invited people. I had the impression that married life would take up all my time. I saw myself drowning in visits and parties. No freedom."
However, in 1954, he quietly married a Coptic Orthodox woman from Alexandria, Atiyyatallah Ibrahim, with whom he had two daughters, Fatima and Umm Kalthum. The couple initially lived on a houseboat in the Agouza section of Cairo on the west bank of the Nile, then moved to an apartment along the river in the same area. Mahfouz avoided public exposure, especially inquiries into his private life, which might have become, as he put it, "a silly topic in journals and radio programs." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21995 |
Nomenklatura
The nomenklatura (; ) were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in the bureaucracy, running all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the communist party of each country or region.
Virtually all members of the nomenklatura were members of a communist party. Critics of Stalin, such as Milovan Đilas, critically defined them as a "new class". The arch-critic of Stalin, Trotsky, used the term "caste" rather than "class", because he saw the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers' state, not as a new-class society. Richard Pipes, an anti-communist Harvard historian, claimed that the nomenklatura system mainly reflected a continuation of the old Tsarist regime, as many former Tsarist officials or "careerists" joined the Bolshevik government during and after the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922.
The "nomenklatura" forming a "de facto" elite of public powers in the former Eastern Bloc; one may compare them to the western "establishment" holding or controlling both private and public powers (for example, in media, finance, trade, industry, the state and institutions).
The Russian term is derived from the Latin "nomenclatura", meaning a system of names.
The term was popularized in the West by the Soviet dissident Michael Voslenski, who in 1970 wrote a book titled "Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class" ().
The nomenklatura referred to the Communist Party's governance to make appointments to key positions throughout the governmental system, as well as throughout the party's own hierarchy. Specifically, the nomenklatura consisted of two separate lists: one was for key positions, appointments to which were made by authorities within the party; the other was for persons who were potential candidates for appointment to those positions. The Politburo, as part of its nomenklatura authority, maintained a list of ministerial and ambassadorial positions that it had the power to fill, as well as a separate list of potential candidates to occupy those positions.
Coextensive with the nomenklatura were patron-client relations. Officials who had the authority to appoint individuals to certain positions cultivated loyalties among those whom they appointed. The patron (the official making the appointment) promoted the interests of clients in return for their support. Powerful patrons, such as the members of the Politburo, had many clients. Moreover, an official could be both a client (in relation to a higher-level patron) and a patron (to other, lower-level officials).
Because a client was beholden to his patron for his position, the client was eager to please his patron by carrying out his policies. The Soviet power structure essentially consisted (according to its critics) of groups of vassals (clients) who had an overlord (the patron). The higher the patron, the more clients the patron had. Patrons protected their clients and tried to promote their careers. In return for the patron's efforts to promote their careers, the clients remained loyal to their patron. Thus, by promoting his clients' careers, the patron could advance his own power.
The nomenklatura system arose early in Soviet history. Vladimir Lenin wrote that appointments were to take the following criteria into account: reliability, political attitude, qualifications, and administrative ability. Joseph Stalin, who was the first general secretary of the party, was also known as "Comrade File Cabinet" (Tovarishch Kartotekov) for his assiduous attention to the details of the party's appointments. Seeking to make appointments in a more systematic fashion, Stalin built the party's patronage system and used it to distribute his clients throughout the party bureaucracy.
Under Stalin's direction in 1922, the party created departments of the Central Committee and other organs at lower levels that were responsible for the registration and appointment of party officials. Known as uchraspred, these organs supervised appointments to important party posts. According to American sovietologist Seweryn Bialer, after Leonid Brezhnev's accession to power in October 1964, the party considerably expanded its appointment authority. However, in the late 1980s some official statements indicated that the party intended to reduce its appointment authority, particularly in the area of economic management, in line with Mikhail Gorbachev's reform efforts.
At the all-union level, the Party Building and Cadre Work Department supervised party nomenklatura appointments. This department maintained records on party members throughout the country, made appointments to positions on the all-union level, and approved nomenklatura appointments on the lower levels of the hierarchy. The head of this department sometimes was a member of the Secretariat and was often a protégé of the general secretary.
Every party committee and party organizational department, from the all-union level in Moscow to the district and city levels, prepared two lists according to their needs. The basic (osnovnoi) list detailed positions in the political, administrative, economic, military, cultural, and educational bureaucracies that the committee and its department had responsibility for filling. The registered (uchetnyi) list enumerated the persons suitable for these positions.
An official in the party or government bureaucracy could not advance in the nomenklatura without the assistance of a patron. In return for this assistance in promoting his career, the client carried out the policies of the patron. Patron–client relations thus help to explain the ability of party leaders to generate widespread support for their policies. The presence of patron–client relations between party officials and officials in other bureaucracies also helped to account for the large-scale control the party exercised over the Soviet society. All of the 2 million members of the nomenklatura system understood that they held their positions only as a result of a favor bestowed on them by a superior official in the party and that they could easily be replaced if they manifested disloyalty to their patron. Self-interest dictated that members of the nomenklatura submit to the control of their patrons in the party.
Clients sometimes could attempt to supplant their patron. For example, Nikita Khrushchev, one of Lazar M. Kaganovich's former protégés, helped to oust the latter in 1957. Seven years later, Leonid Brezhnev, a client of Khrushchev, helped to remove his boss from power. The power of the general secretary was consolidated to the extent that he placed his clients in positions of power and influence. The ideal for the general secretary, writes Soviet émigré observer Michael Voslensky, "is to be overlord of vassals selected by oneself."
Several factors explain the entrenchment of patron–client relations. Firstly, in a centralized government system, promotion in the bureaucratic-political hierarchy was the only path to power. Secondly, the most important criterion for promotion in this hierarchy was approval from one's supervisors, who evaluated their subordinates on the basis of political criteria and their ability to contribute to the fulfillment of the economic plan. Thirdly, political rivalries were present at all levels of the party and state bureaucracies but were especially prevalent at the top. Power and influence decided the outcomes of these struggles, and the number and positions of one's clients were critical components of that power and influence. Fourthly, because fulfillment of the economic plan was decisive, systemic pressures led officials to conspire together and use their ties to achieve that goal.
The faction led by Brezhnev provides a good case study of patron–client relations in the Soviet system. Many members of the Brezhnev faction came from Dnipropetrovsk, where Brezhnev had served as first secretary of the provincial party organization. Andrei P. Kirilenko, a Politburo member and Central Committee secretary under Brezhnev, was first secretary of the regional committee of Dnipropetrovsk. Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, named as first secretary of the Ukrainian apparatus under Brezhnev, succeeded Kirilenko in that position. Nikolai Alexandrovich Tikhonov, appointed by Brezhnev as first deputy chairman of the Soviet Union's Council of Ministers, graduated from the Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute, and presided over the economic council of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Finally, Nikolai Shchelokov, minister of internal affairs under Brezhnev, was a former chairman of the Dnipropetrovsk soviet.
Patron–client relations had implications for policy making in the party and government bureaucracies. Promotion of trusted subordinates into influential positions facilitated policy formation and policy execution. A network of clients helped to ensure that a patron's policies could be carried out. In addition, patrons relied on their clients to provide an accurate flow of information on events throughout the country. This information assisted policymakers in ensuring that their programs were being implemented.
Milovan Đilas, a critic of Stalin, wrote of the nomenklatura as the "new class" in his book "", and he claimed that it was seen by ordinary citizens as a bureaucratic elite that enjoyed special privileges and had supplanted the earlier wealthy capitalist élites.
Some Marxists, such as Ernest Mandel, have criticised Đilas and the theory of state capitalism: The hypothesis that the Soviet bureaucracy is a new ruling class does not correspond to a serious analysis of the real development and the real contradictions of Soviet society and economy in the last fifty years. Such a hypothesis must imply, from the point of view of historical materialism, that a new exploitative mode of production has emerged in that country. If this were so, we would be confronted, for the first time in history, with a "ruling class" whose general behavior and private interests (which of course dictate that behavior) run counter to the needs and inner logic of the existing socio-economic system. Indeed, one of the main characteristics of the Soviet economy is the impossibility of reconciling the needs of planning, of optimizing economic growth (not from an "absolute" point of view, but from within the logic of the system itself) with the material self-interest of the bureaucracy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21999 |
Neural Darwinism
Neural Darwinism, a large scale theory of brain function by Gerald Edelman, was initially published in 1978, in a book called "The Mindful Brain" (MIT Press). It was extended and published in the 1987 book "Neural Darwinism – The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection".
In 1972, Edelman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology (shared with Rodney Porter of Great Britain) for his work in immunology showing how the population of lymphocytes capable of binding to a foreign antigen is increased by differential clonal multiplication following antigen discovery. Essentially, this proved that the human body is capable of creating complex adaptive systems as a result of local events with feedback. Edelman's interest in selective systems expanded into the fields of neurobiology and neurophysiology, and in "Neural Darwinism", Edelman puts forth a theory called "neuronal group selection". It contains three major parts:
With neuronal heterogeneity (by Edelman called "degeneracy"), it is possible to test the many circuits (on the order of 30 billion neurons with an estimated one quadrillion connections between them in the human brain) with a diverse set of inputs, to see which neuronal groups respond "appropriately" statistically. Functional "distributed" (widespread) brain circuits thus emerge as a result.
Edelman goes into some detail about how brain development depends on a variety of cell adhesion molecules (CAMs) and substrate adhesion molecules (SAMs) on cell surfaces which allow cells to dynamically control their intercellular binding properties. This surface modulation allows cell collectives to effectively "signal" as the group aggregates, which helps govern morphogenesis. So morphology depends on CAM and SAM function. And CAM and SAM function also depend on developing morphology.
Edelman theorized that cell proliferation, cell migration, cell death, neuron arbor distribution, and neurite branching are also governed by similar selective processes.
Once the basic variegated anatomical structure of the brain is laid down during early development, it is more or less fixed. But given the numerous and diverse collection of available circuitry, there are bound to be functionally equivalent albeit anatomically non-isomorphic neuronal groups capable of responding to certain sensory input. This creates a competitive environment where circuit groups proficient in their responses to certain inputs are "chosen" through the enhancement of the synaptic efficacies of the selected network. This leads to an increased probability that the same network will respond to similar or identical signals at a future time. This occurs through the strengthening of neuron-to-neuron synapses. And these adjustments allow for neural plasticity along a fairly quick timetable.
The last part of the theory attempts to explain how we experience spatiotemporal consistency in our interaction with environmental stimuli. Edelman called it "reentry" and proposes a model of reentrant signaling whereby a disjunctive, multimodal sampling of the same stimulus event correlated in time leads to self-organizing intelligence. Put another way, multiple neuronal groups can be used to sample a given stimulus set in parallel and communicate between these disjunctive groups with incurred latency.
It has been suggested that Friedrich Hayek had earlier proposed a similar idea in his book "The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology", published in 1952 (Herrmann-Pillath, 1992). Other leading proponents include Jean-Pierre Changeux, Daniel Dennett and Linda B. Smith. William Calvin proposes true replication in the brain, whereas Edelman opposes the idea that there are true replicators in the brain.
Criticism of Neural "Darwinism" was made by Francis Crick on the basis that neuronal groups are instructed by the environment rather than undergoing blind variation. A recent review by Fernando, Szathmary and Husbands explains why Edelman's Neural Darwinism is not Darwinian because it does not contain units of evolution as defined by John Maynard Smith. It is selectionist in that it satisfies the Price equation, but there is no mechanism in Edelman's theory that explains how information can be transferred between neuronal groups. A recent theory called Evolutionary Neurodynamics being developed by Eors Szathmary and Chrisantha Fernando has proposed several means by which true replication may take place in the brain. These neuronal models have been extended by Fernando in a later paper. In the most recent model, three plasticity mechanisms i) multiplicative STDP, ii) LTD, and iii) Heterosynaptic competition, are responsible for copying of connectivity patterns from one part of the brain to another. Exactly the same plasticity rules can explain experimental data for how infants do causal learning in the experiments conducted by Alison Gopnik. It has also been shown that by adding Hebbian learning to neuronal replicators the power of neuronal evolutionary computation may actually be greater than natural selection in organisms.
Jean Piaget (1896–1980) often used the concept of the "schème" (a supposed unit of action-coding), which he left as an abstraction. However, later theorizing led to the hypothesis that such "schèmes" were probably RNA-like molecules, at least in their simplest cases. Such molecular sites would need to intercommunicate mainly via infra-red signals: messages which would be able to travel through fatty tissue such as myelin, but would be blocked by water barriers (of >20 microns). This "new" "[R]-system" was proposed as a cooperative alternative arrangement, more concerned with digital signals and data required "for advanced thinking"—(whereas the traditional "[A]-system" of action-potentials and synapses would perhaps cope more with activities such as logistics, muscle-control, and pattern-recognition which can probably manage using "analogue" devices—a division of labour).
Whether or not one accepts those actual details, such a "molecule-based" system offers (i) an obvious scope for clear-cut encoding, (ii) an obvious explanation for any inherited behaviour-traits, (iii) a vastly greater number of candidate-codes from which to select-or-waste in a Darwinian contest; etc. Hence, this might be seen as overcoming Crick's objections, at least partially. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22000 |
Neil Peart
Neil Ellwood Peart OC (; September 12, 1952 – January 7, 2020) was a Canadian musician, songwriter, and author, best known as the drummer and primary lyricist of the rock band Rush. Peart received numerous awards for his musical performances, including an induction into the "Modern Drummer" Readers Poll Hall of Fame in 1983, making him the youngest person ever so honoured. His drumming was renowned for its technical proficiency and his live performances for their exacting nature and stamina.
Peart was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and grew up in Port Dalhousie (now part of St. Catharines). During adolescence, he floated between regional bands in pursuit of a career as a full-time drummer. After a discouraging stint in England to concentrate on his music, Peart returned home, where he joined Rush, a Toronto band, in mid-1974, six years after its formation. They released nineteen studio albums, with ten exceeding a million copies sold in the United States. "Billboard" ranks the band third for the "most consecutive gold or platinum albums by a rock band".
Early in his career, Peart's performance style was deeply rooted in hard rock. He drew most of his inspiration from drummers such as Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, and John Bonham, players who were at the forefront of the British hard rock scene. As time passed, he began to emulate jazz and big band musicians Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. In 1994, Peart became a friend and pupil of jazz instructor Freddie Gruber. It was during this time that Peart decided to revamp his playing style by incorporating jazz and swing components.
In addition to serving as Rush's primary lyricist, Peart published several memoirs about his travels. His lyrics for Rush addressed universal themes and diverse subjects including science fiction, fantasy, and philosophy, as well as secular, humanitarian, and libertarian themes. Peart wrote a total of seven nonfiction books focused on his travels and personal stories.
On December 7, 2015, Peart announced his retirement from music in an interview with "Drumhead Magazine", though bandmate Geddy Lee insisted Peart was quoted out of context, and suggested Peart was "simply taking a break". However, in January 2018, bandmate Alex Lifeson confirmed that Rush was retiring due to Peart's health issues. During his last years Peart lived in Santa Monica, California with his wife, Carrie Nuttall, and daughter. After a three and a half year illness, Peart died of glioblastoma on January 7, 2020, at age 67.
Peart was born on September 12, 1952, to Glen and Betty Peart and lived his early years on his family's farm in Hagersville, on the outskirts of Hamilton. The first child of four, his brother Danny and sisters Judy and Nancy were born after the family moved to St. Catharines when Peart was two years old. At this time his father became parts manager for Dalziel Equipment, an International Harvester farm machinery dealer. In 1956 the family moved to the Port Dalhousie area of the town. Peart attended Gracefield School and later Lakeport Secondary School, and described his childhood as happy and says he experienced a warm family life. By early adolescence he became interested in music and acquired a transistor radio, which he would use to tune into pop music stations broadcasting from Toronto, Hamilton, Welland, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.
His first exposure to musical training came in the form of piano lessons, which he later said in his instructional video "A Work in Progress" did not have much impact on him. He had a penchant for drumming on various objects around the house with a pair of chopsticks, so for his thirteenth birthday his parents bought him a pair of drum sticks, a practice drum, and some lessons, with the promise that if he stuck with it for a year they would buy him a kit.
His parents bought him a drum kit for his fourteenth birthday and he began taking lessons from Don George at the Peninsula Conservatory of Music. His stage debut took place that year at the school's Christmas pageant in St. Johns Anglican Church Hall in Port Dalhousie. His next appearance was at Lakeport High School with his first group, The Eternal Triangle. This performance contained an original number titled "LSD Forever". At this show he performed his first solo.
Peart got a job in Lakeside Park, in Port Dalhousie on the shores of Lake Ontario, which later inspired a song of the same name on the Rush album "Caress of Steel". He worked on the Bubble Game and Ball Toss, but his tendency to take it easy when business was slack resulted in his termination. By his late teens, Peart had played in local bands such as Mumblin' Sumpthin', the Majority, and JR Flood. These bands practiced in basement recreation rooms and garages and played church halls, high schools, and skating rinks in towns across Southern Ontario such as Mitchell, Seaforth, and Elmira. They also played in the northern Ontario city of Timmins. Tuesday nights were filled with jam sessions at the Niagara Theatre Centre.
At eighteen years old after struggling to achieve success as a drummer in Canada, Peart travelled to London, England, hoping to further his career as a professional musician. Despite playing in several bands and picking up occasional session work, he was forced to support himself by selling jewelry at a shop called The Great Frog on Carnaby Street.
While in London, he came across the writings of novelist and Objectivist Ayn Rand. Rand's writings became a significant early philosophical influence on Peart, as he found many of her writings on individualism and Objectivism inspiring. References to Rand's philosophy can be found in his early lyrics, most notably "Anthem" from 1975's "Fly by Night" and "2112" from 1976's "2112".
After eighteen months Peart became disillusioned by his lack of progress in the music business; he placed his aspiration of becoming a professional musician on hold and returned to Canada. Upon returning to St. Catharines, he worked for his father selling tractor parts at Dalziel Equipment.
After returning to Canada, Peart was recruited to play drums for a St. Catharines band known as Hush, who played on the Southern Ontario bar circuit. Soon after, a mutual acquaintance convinced Peart to audition for the Toronto-based band Rush, which needed a replacement for its original drummer John Rutsey. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson oversaw the audition. His future bandmates describe his arrival that day as somewhat humorous, as he arrived in shorts, driving a battered old Ford Pinto with his drums stored in trashcans. Peart felt the entire audition was a complete disaster. While Lee and Peart hit it off on a personal level (both sharing similar tastes in books and music), Lifeson had a less favourable impression of Peart.
After some discussion between Lee and Lifeson, Peart officially joined the band on July 29, 1974, two weeks before the group's first US tour. Peart procured a silver Slingerland kit which he played at his first gig with the band, opening for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann's Earth Band in front of over 11,000 people at the Civic Arena, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on August 14, 1974.
Peart soon settled into his new position, also becoming the band's primary lyricist. Before joining Rush he had written few songs, but, with the other members largely uninterested in writing lyrics, Peart's previously underutilized writing became as noticed as his musicianship. The band was working hard to establish themselves as a recording act, and Peart, along with the rest of the band, began to undertake extensive touring.
His first recording with the band, 1975's "Fly by Night," was fairly successful, winning the Juno Award for most promising new act, but the follow-up, "Caress of Steel," for which the band had high hopes, was greeted with hostility by both fans and critics. In response to this negative reception, most of which was aimed at the B side-spanning epic "The Fountain of Lamneth", Peart responded by penning "2112" on their next album of the same name in 1976. The album, despite record company indifference, became their breakthrough and gained a following in the United States. The supporting tour culminated in a three-night stand at Massey Hall in Toronto, a venue Peart had dreamed of playing in his days on the Southern Ontario bar circuit and where he was introduced as "The Professor on the drum kit" by Lee.
Peart returned to England for Rush's Northern European Tour and the band stayed in the United Kingdom to record the next album, 1977's "A Farewell to Kings" in Rockfield Studios in Wales. They returned to Rockfield to record the follow-up, "Hemispheres", in 1978, which they wrote entirely in the studio. The recording of five studio albums in four years, coupled with as many as 300 gigs a year, convinced the band to take a different approach thereafter. Peart has described his time in the band up to this point as "a dark tunnel".
In 1992, Peart was invited by Buddy Rich's daughter, Cathy Rich, to play at the Buddy Rich Memorial Scholarship Concert in New York City. Peart accepted and performed for the first time with the Buddy Rich Big Band. Peart remarked that he had little time to rehearse, and noted that he was embarrassed to find the band played a different arrangement of the song than the one he had learned. Feeling that his performance left much to be desired, Peart decided to produce and play on two Buddy Rich tribute albums titled "" in 1994 and 1997 in order to regain his aplomb.
While producing the first Buddy Rich tribute album, Peart was struck by the tremendous improvement in ex-Journey drummer Steve Smith's playing, and asked him his "secret". Smith responded he had been studying with drum teacher Freddie Gruber.
In early 2007, Peart and Cathy Rich again began discussing yet another Buddy tribute concert. At the recommendation of bassist Jeff Berlin, Peart decided to once again augment his swing style with formal drum lessons, this time under the tutelage of another pupil of Freddie Gruber, Peter Erskine, himself an instructor of Steve Smith. On October 18, 2008, Peart once again performed at the Buddy Rich Memorial Concert at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom. The concert has since been released on DVD.
On August 10, 1997, soon after the conclusion of Rush's Test for Echo Tour, Peart's first daughter (and, at the time, his only child) Selena Taylor, 19, was killed in a single-car crash on Highway 401 near the town of Brighton, Ontario. His common-law wife of 23 years, Jacqueline Taylor, succumbed to cancer 10 months later on June 20, 1998. Peart attributes her death to the result of a "broken heart" and called it "a slow suicide by apathy. She just didn't care."
In his book "", Peart writes that he told his bandmates at Selena's funeral, "consider me retired". Peart took a long sabbatical to mourn and reflect, and travelled extensively throughout North and Central America on his motorcycle, covering . After his journey, Peart decided to return to the band. Peart wrote the book as a chronicle of his geographical and emotional journey.
Peart was introduced to photographer Carrie Nuttall in Los Angeles by long-time Rush photographer Andrew MacNaughtan. They married on September 9, 2000. In early 2001, Peart announced to his bandmates that he was ready to return to recording and performing. The product of the band's return was the 2002 album "Vapor Trails". At the start of the ensuing tour in support of the album, it was decided amongst the band members that Peart would not take part in the daily grind of press interviews and "meet and greet" sessions upon their arrival in a new city that typically monopolize a touring band's daily schedule. Peart has always shied away from these types of in-person encounters, and it was decided that exposing him to a lengthy stream of questions about the tragic events of his life was not necessary.
After the release of "Vapor Trails" and his reunion with bandmates, Peart returned to work as a full-time musician. In the June 2009 edition of Peart's website's "News, Weather, and Sports", titled "Under the Marine Layer", he announced that he and Nuttall were expecting their first child. Olivia Louise Peart was born later that year.
In the mid-2010s, Peart acquired U.S. citizenship.
Peart announced his retirement in an interview in December 2015:
Peart had been suffering from chronic tendinitis and shoulder problems. In January 2018, Alex Lifeson confirmed that Rush is "basically done". Peart remained friends with his former bandmates.
Peart died from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, on January 7, 2020, in Santa Monica, California. He had been diagnosed three and a half years earlier, and the illness was a closely guarded secret in Peart's inner circle until his death. His family made the announcement on January 10.
From the official Rush website:
Peart's death was widely lamented by fans and fellow musicians alike, who considered it a substantial loss for popular music.
Peart's drumming skill and technique are well-regarded by fans, fellow musicians, and music journalists. His influences were eclectic, ranging from Pete Thomas, John Bonham, Michael Giles, Ginger Baker, Phil Collins, Chris Sharrock, Steve Gadd, Stewart Copeland, Michael Shrieve and Keith Moon, to fusion and jazz drummers Billy Cobham, Buddy Rich, Bill Bruford and Gene Krupa. The Who was the first group that inspired him to write songs and play the drums. Peart is distinguished for playing "butt-end out", reversing stick orientation for greater impact and increased rimshot capacity. "When I was starting out", Peart said, "if I broke the tips off my sticks I couldn't afford to buy new ones, so I would just turn them around and use the other end. I got used to it, and continue to use the heavy end of lighter sticks – it gives me a solid impact, but with less 'dead weight' to sling around."
Peart had long played matched grip but shifted to traditional as part of his style reinvention in the mid-1990s under the tutelage of jazz coach Freddie Gruber. He played traditional grip throughout his first instructional DVD "A Work in Progress" and on Rush's "Test for Echo" studio album. Peart went back to using primarily matched, though he continued to switch to traditional at times when playing songs from "Test for Echo" and during moments when traditional grip felt more appropriate, such as during the rudimental snare drum section of his drum solo. He discussed the details of these switches in the DVD "Anatomy of a Drum Solo".
"Variety" wrote: "Widely considered one of the most innovative drummers in rock history, Peart was famous for his state-of-the-art drum kits – more than 40 different drums were not out of the norm – precise playing style and on stage showmanship."
"USA Today"s writers compared him favorably to other top shelf rock drummers. He was "considered one of the best rock drummers of all time, alongside John Bonham of Led Zeppelin; Ringo Starr of The Beatles; Keith Moon of The Who; Ginger Baker of Cream and Stewart Copeland of The Police." Being "known for his technical proficiency", the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame inducted him in 1983.
Music critic Amanda Petrusich in "The New Yorker" wrote: "Watching Peart play the drums gave the impression that he might possess several phantom limbs. The sound was merciless."
With Rush, Peart played Slingerland, Tama, Ludwig, and Drum Workshop drums, in that order.
Peart played Zildjian A-series cymbals and Wuhan china cymbals until the early 2000s when he switched to Paragon, a line created for him by Sabian. In concert starting in 1987, Peart used an elaborate 360-degree drum kit that would rotate as he played different sections of the kit.
During the late 1970s, Peart augmented his acoustic setup with diverse percussion instruments, including orchestra bells, tubular bells, wind chimes, crotales, timbales, timpani, gong, temple blocks, bell tree, triangle, and melodic cowbells. From the mid-1980s, Peart replaced several of these pieces with MIDI trigger pads. This was done in order to trigger sounds sampled from various pieces of acoustic percussion that would otherwise consume far too much stage area. Some purely electronic non-instrumental sounds were also used. One classic MIDI pad used is the Malletkat Express, which is a two-octave electronic MIDI device that resembles a xylophone or piano. The Malletkat Express is composed of rubber pads for the "keys" so that any stick can be used. Beginning with 1984's "Grace Under Pressure", he used Simmons electronic drums in conjunction with Akai digital samplers. Peart performed several songs primarily using the electronic portion of his drum kit. (e.g. "Red Sector A", "Closer to the Heart" on "A Show of Hands" and "Mystic Rhythms" on "".)
Shortly after making the choice to include electronic drums and triggers, Peart added what became another trademark of his kit: a rotating drum riser. During live Rush shows, the riser allowed Peart to swap the prominent portions of the kit (traditional acoustic in front, electronic in back). A staple of Peart's live drum solos was the in-performance rotation-and-swap of the front and back kits as part of the solo, a special effect that provided both a symbolic transition of drum styles within the solo.
In the early 2000s, Peart began taking full advantage of the advances in electronic drum technology, primarily incorporating Roland V-Drums and continued use of samplers with his existing set of acoustic percussion. His digitally-sampled library of both traditional and exotic sounds expanded over the years with his music.
In April 2006, Peart took delivery of his third DW set, configured similarly to the R30 set, in a Tobacco Sunburst finish over curly maple exterior ply, with chrome hardware. He referred to this set, which he used primarily in Los Angeles, as the "West Coast kit". Besides using it on recordings with Vertical Horizon, he played it while composing parts for Rush's album, "Snakes & Arrows". It featured a custom 23-inch bass drum; all other sizes remained the same as the R30 kit.
On March 20, 2007 Peart revealed that Drum Workshop prepared a new set of red-painted DW maple shells with black hardware and gold "Snakes & Arrows" logos for him to play on the Snakes & Arrows Tour.
Peart also designed his own signature series drumstick with Pro-Mark, the Promark PW747W, Neil Peart Signature drumsticks, made of Japanese white oak.
During the 2010–11 Time Machine Tour Peart used a new DW kit which was outfitted with copper-plated hardware and time machine designs to match the tour's steampunk themes. Matching Paragon cymbals with clock imagery were also used.
Peart was noted for his distinctive in-concert drum solos, characterized by exotic percussion instruments and long, intricate passages in odd time signatures. His complex arrangements sometimes result in complete separation of upper- and lower-limb patterns; an ostinato dubbed "The Waltz" is a typical example. His solos were featured on every live album released by the band. On the early live albums ("All the World's a Stage" & "Exit... Stage Left"), the drum solo was included as part of a song. On all subsequent live albums through "", the drum solo has been included as a separate track. The "Clockwork Angels Tour" album includes three short solos instead of a single long one: two interludes played during other songs and one standalone. Similarly, the "R40 Live" album includes two short solos performed as interludes.
Peart's instructional DVD "Anatomy of a Drum Solo" is an in-depth examination of how he constructs a solo that is musical rather than indulgent, using his solo from the 2004 R30 30th anniversary tour as an example.
Peart was the main lyricist for Rush. Literature heavily influenced his writings. In his early days with Rush, much of his lyrical output was influenced by fantasy, science fiction, mythology, and philosophy.
The 1980 album "Permanent Waves" saw Peart cease to use fantasy and mythological themes. 1981's "Moving Pictures" showed that Peart was still interested in heroic, mythological figures, but now placed firmly in a modern, realistic context. The song "Limelight" from the same album is an autobiographical account of Peart's reservations regarding his own popularity and the pressures with fame. From "Permanent Waves" onward, most of Peart's lyrics began to revolve around social, emotional, and humanitarian issues, usually from an objective standpoint and employing the use of metaphors and symbolic representation.
1984's "Grace Under Pressure" strung together such despondent topics as the Holocaust ("Red Sector A") and the death of close friends ("Afterimage"). Starting with 1987's "Hold Your Fire" and including 1989's "Presto", 1991's "Roll the Bones", and 1993's "Counterparts", Peart would continue to explore diverse lyrical motifs, even addressing the topic of love and relationships, ("Open Secrets", "Ghost of a Chance", "Speed of Love", "Cold Fire", "Alien Shore") a subject which he purposefully avoided in the past, out of fear of using clichés. 2002's "Vapor Trails" was heavily devoted to Peart's personal issues, along with other humanitarian topics such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks ("Peaceable Kingdom"). The album "Snakes & Arrows" dealt primarily and vociferously with Peart's opinions regarding faith and religion.
The song "2112" focuses on the struggle of an individual against the collectivist forces of a totalitarian state. This became the band's breakthrough release, but also brought unexpected criticism, mainly because of the credit of inspiration Peart gave to Ayn Rand in the liner notes. "There was a remarkable backlash, especially from the English press, this being the late seventies, when collectivism was still in style, especially among journalists", Peart said. "They were calling us 'Junior fascists' and 'Hitler lovers'. It was a total shock to me".
Regarding his seeming ideological fealty to Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, Peart said, "For a start, the extent of my influence by the writings of Ayn Rand should not be overstated. I am no one's disciple." The lyrics of "Faithless" exhibit a life stance which has been closely identified with secular humanism. Peart explicitly discussed his religious views in "The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa", in which he wrote: "I'm a linear thinking agnostic, but not an atheist, folks."
In 2007, Peart was ranked No. 2 (after Sting) on the now defunct magazine "Blender"'s list of "worst lyricists in rock". In contrast, Allmusic called him "one of rock's most accomplished lyricists".
For most of his career, Peart had never publicly identified with any political party or organization in Canada or the United States. Even so, his political and philosophical views have often been analyzed through his work with Rush and through other sources. In October 1993, shortly before that year's Canadian federal election, Peart appeared with then-Liberal Party leader Jean Chrétien in an interview broadcast in Canada on MuchMusic. In that interview, Peart stated he was an undecided voter who supported Quebec federalism.
Peart has often been categorized as an Objectivist and an admirer of Ayn Rand. This is largely based on his work with Rush in the 1970s, particularly the song "Anthem" and the album "2112"; the latter specifically credited Rand's work. However, in his 1994 "Rush Backstage Club Newsletter", while contending the "individual is paramount in matters of justice and liberty," Peart specifically distanced himself from a strictly Objectivist line. In a June 2012 "Rolling Stone" interview, when asked if Rand's words still speak to him, Peart replied, "Oh, no. That was forty years ago. But it was important to me at the time in a transition of finding myself and having faith that what I believed was worthwhile." Peart has also ascribed to a philosophy that he called "Tryism," which means that anything one tries to attain will be attained if one tries hard enough.
Although Peart was sometimes assumed to be a "conservative" or "Republican" rock star, he has criticized the Republican Party by stating that the philosophy of the party is "absolutely opposed to Christ's teachings." In 2005 he described himself as a "left-leaning libertarian," and is often cited as a libertarian celebrity.
In a 2015 interview with "Rolling Stone", Peart stated that he saw Democratic Party as the lesser evil: "For a person of my sensibility, you’re only left with the Democratic party."
Peart was a member of the Canadian charity Artists Against Racism and worked with them on a radio PSA.
Peart authored seven non-fiction books, the latest released in September 2016.
Peart's first book, titled "", was written in 1996 about a month-long bicycling tour through Cameroon in November 1988. The book details Peart's travels through towns and villages with four fellow riders. The original had a limited print run, but after the critical and commercial success of Peart's second book, "Masked Rider", was re-issued by ECW Press and remains in print.
After losing his wife and (at the time) only daughter, Peart embarked on a lengthy motorcycle road trip spanning North America. His experiences were penned in "". Peart and the rest of the band were always able to keep his private life at a distance from his public image in Rush. However, "Ghost Rider" is a first-person narrative of Peart on the road on a BMW R1100GS motorcycle, in an effort to put his life back together as he embarked on an extensive journey across North America.
Years later, after his marriage to Nuttall, Peart took another road trip, this time by car. In his third book, "", he reflects on his life, his career, his family, and music. As with his previous two books, it is a first-person narrative.
Three decades after Peart joined Rush the band found itself on its . Released in September 2006, "Roadshow: Landscape With Drums, A Concert Tour By Motorcycle" details the tour both from behind Neil's drumkit and on his BMW R1150GS and R1200GS motorcycles.
Peart's next book, "Far and Away: A Prize Every Time", was published by ECW Press in May 2011. This book, which he worked on for two years, is formed around his traveling in North and South America. It tells how he found in a Brazilian town a unique combination of West African and Brazilian music. In 2014, a follow-up book, "Far and Near: On Days like These", was published by ECW. It covers travels in North America and Europe. Another book, "Far and Wide: Bring That Horizon to Me!", was published in 2016 and is based on his travels between stops on the R40 Live Tour of 2015.
Nonfiction works include:
Peart worked with science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson to develop a novelization of Rush's 2012 album "Clockwork Angels"; the book was published by ECW Press. The two collaborated again on a loose sequel, "Clockwork Lives", published in 2015. Snippets of the band's lyrics can be found throughout both stories.
Fiction works include:
Peart had a brief cameo in the 2007 film "Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters", in which samples of his drumming were played.
Peart also had a brief cameo in the 2008 film "Adventures of Power" and in the DVD extra does a drum-off competition.
Peart appeared in concert with Rush in the 2009 film "I Love You, Man", as well as a "Funny or Die" web short in which the film's main characters sneak into the band's dressing room.
Apart from Rush's video releases as a band, Peart has released the following DVDs as an individual:
Peart received the following awards in the "Modern Drummer" magazine
reader's poll:
Peart received the following awards from "DRUM!" magazine for 2007:
Peart received the following awards from "DRUM!" magazine for 2008:
Peart received the following awards from "DRUM!" magazine for 2009:
Peart received the following awards from "DRUM!" magazine for 2010:
Other honors and awards
""Lakeside Park feature could be named for acclaimed Rush percussionist and lyricist"" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22003 |
North Atlantic Treaty
The North Atlantic Treaty, also referred to as the Washington Treaty, is the treaty that forms the legal basis of, and is implemented by, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The treaty was signed in Washington, D.C. on 4 April 1949.
The treaty was signed in Washington, D.C. on 4 April 1949 by a committee which was chaired by US diplomat Theodore Achilles. Earlier secret talks had been held at the Pentagon between 22 March and 1 April 1948, of which Achilles said:
The talks lasted about two weeks and by the time they finished, it had been secretly agreed that there would be a treaty, and I had a draft of one in the bottom drawer of my safe. It was never shown to anyone except Jack [Hickerson]. I wish I had kept it, but when I left the Department in 1950, I dutifully left it in the safe and I have never been able to trace it in the archives. It drew heavily on the Rio Treaty, and a bit of the Brussels Treaty, which had not yet been signed, but of which we were being kept heavily supplied with drafts. The eventual North Atlantic Treaty had the general form, and a good bit of the language of my first draft, but with a number of important differences.
According to Achilles, another important author of the treaty was John D. Hickerson:
More than any human being Jack was responsible for the nature, content, and form of the Treaty...It was a one-man Hickerson treaty.
As a fundamental component of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty is a product of the US' desire to avoid overextension at the end of World War II, and consequently pursue multilateralism in Europe. It is part of the US' collective defense arrangement with Western European powers, following a long and deliberative process. The treaty was created with an armed attack by the Soviet Union against Western Europe in mind, but the mutual self-defense clause was never invoked during the Cold War. Rather, it was invoked for the first and only time in 2001 during Operation Eagle Assist in response to the September 11 attacks.
By signing the North Atlantic Treaty, parties are "determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of the peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law."
The following twelve states signed the treaty and thus became the founding members of NATO. The following leaders signed the agreement as plenipotentiaries of their countries in Washington, D.C. on 4 April 1949:
The following 18 states joined the treaty after the 12 founding states:
Article 1 of the treaty states that member parties "settle any international disputes in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations."
Members seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area through preservation of peace and security in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
The treaty includes Article 4, which calls for consultation over military matters when "the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened."
It has been invoked four times by Turkey: in 2003 over the Iraq War, in June 2012 after the shooting down of a Turkish military jet by Syria, in October 2012 after Syrian attacks on Turkey and their counterattacks, and in February 2020 amid increasing tensions as part of the Northwestern Syria offensive.
An Article 4 meeting was invoked by Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland in March 2014 as a response to the extraterritorial Crimean crisis.
Turkey announced plans to convoke under Article 4 an extraordinary meeting on 28 July 2015, ostensibly in response to the 2015 Suruç bombing, which it attributed to ISIS, and other security issues along its southern border. A press statement released by the Alliance declared that "Turkey requested the meeting in view of the seriousness of the situation after the heinous terrorist attacks in recent days, and also to inform allies of the measures it is taking." The US announced through "The New York Times" on 27 July that it had already agreed "in general terms on a plan that envisions American warplanes, Syrian insurgents and Turkish forces working together to sweep Islamic State militants from a 60-mile-long strip of northern Syria along the Turkish border... long-range artillery could be used across the border." Concerns were expressed that the plan would put allied warplanes closer than ever to areas that Syrian aircraft regularly bomb; the plan did not determine the reaction if Syrian warplanes attack allied personnel on the ground in what is Syrian territory. Turkish Prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the operations will continue as long as Turkey faces a threat, and discussed the situation with UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in a telephone call over the weekend of 26 July. The US said that Turkey "has a right to take action" against the PKK, a Kurdish insurrectionary group that has sought since 1984 autonomy from Turkey. A news report also disclosed prior to the 28 July meeting that Turkey had violated Iraqi airspace in its pursuit of the PKK.
The key section of the treaty is Article 5. Its commitment clause defines the "casus foederis". It commits each member state to consider an armed attack against "one" member state, in Europe or North America, to be an armed attack against "them all".
It has been invoked only once in NATO history: by the United States after the September 11 attacks in 2001. The invocation was confirmed on 4 October 2001, when NATO determined that the attacks were indeed eligible under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty. The eight official actions taken by NATO in response to the 9/11 attacks included Operation Eagle Assist and Operation Active Endeavour, a naval operation in the Mediterranean which was designed to prevent the movement of terrorists or weapons of mass destruction, as well as enhancing the security of shipping in general. Active Endeavour began on 4 October 2001. It is a common misconception that NATO involvement in Afghanistan was a result of Article 5's invocation.
In April 2012, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan considered invoking Article 5 of the NATO treaty to protect Turkish national security in a dispute over the Syrian Civil War. The alliance responded quickly and a spokesperson said the alliance was "monitoring the situation very closely and will continue to do so" and "takes it very seriously protecting its members." On April 17, Turkey said it would raise the issue quietly in the next NATO ministerial meeting. On April 29, the Syrian foreign ministry wrote that it had received Erdoğan's message, which he had repeated a few days before, loud and clear. On 25 June, the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister said that he intended to raise Article 5 at a specially-convened NATO meeting because of the downing of an "unarmed" Turkish military jet which was "13 sea miles" from Syria over "international waters" on a "solo mission to test domestic radar systems". A Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman insisted that the plane "flying at an altitude of 100 meters inside the Syrian airspace in a clear breach of Syrian sovereignty" and that the "jet was shot down by anti-aircraft fire," the bullets of which "only have a range of 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles)" rather than by radar-guided missile. On 5 August, Erdoğan stated, "The tomb of Suleyman Shah [in Syria] and the land surrounding it is our territory. We cannot ignore any unfavorable act against that monument, as it would be an attack on our territory, as well as an attack on NATO land... Everyone knows his duty, and will continue to do what is necessary." NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen later said in advance of the October 2012 ministerial meeting that the alliance was prepared to defend Turkey, and acknowledged that this border dispute concerned the alliance, but underlined the alliance's hesitancy over a possible intervention: "A military intervention can have unpredicted repercussions. Let me be very clear. We have no intention to interfere militarily [at present with Syria]." On 27 March 2014, recordings were released on YouTube of a conversation purportedly involving then Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu, then National Intelligence Organization (MİT) head Hakan Fidan, and Deputy Chief of General Staff General Yaşar Güler. The recording has been reported as being probably recorded at Davutoğlu's office at the Foreign Ministry on 13 March. Transcripts of the conversation reveal that as well as exploring the options for Turkish forces engaging in false flag operations inside Syria, the meeting involved a discussion about using the threat to the tomb as an excuse for Turkey to intervene militarily inside Syria. Davutoğlu stated that Erdoğan told him that he saw the threat to the tomb as an "opportunity".
Prior to the meeting of Defence Ministers and recently appointed Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at Brussels in late June 2015, it was stated by a journalist, who referenced an off-the-record interview with an official source, that "Entirely legal activities, such as running a pro-Moscow TV station, could become a broader assault on a country that would require a NATO response under Article Five of the Treaty... A final strategy is expected in October 2015." In another report, the journalist reported that "as part of the hardened stance, the UK has committed £750,000 of its money to support a counter-propaganda unit at NATO's headquarters in Brussels."
Article 6 states that the treaty covers only member states' territories in Europe and North America, and islands in the North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer, plus French Algeria. It was the opinion in August 1965 of the US State Department, the US Defense Department and the legal division of NATO that an attack on the U.S. state of Hawaii would not trigger the treaty, but an attack on the other 49 would.
On 16 April 2003, NATO agreed to take command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, which includes troops from 42 countries. The decision came at the request of Germany and the Netherlands, the two states leading ISAF at the time of the agreement, and all nineteen NATO ambassadors approved it unanimously. The handover of control to NATO took place on 11 August, and marked the first time in NATO's history that it took charge of a mission outside the north Atlantic area.
Three official footnotes are have been released to reflect the changes made since the treaty was written:
Regarding Article 6:
Regarding Article 11: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22007 |
Nitronium ion
The nitronium ion, , is a cation. It is an onium ion because of its tetravalent nitrogen atom and +1 charge, similar in that regard to ammonium. It is created by the removal of an electron from the paramagnetic nitrogen dioxide molecule, or the protonation of nitric acid (with removal of H2O).
It is stable enough to exist in normal conditions, but it is generally reactive and used extensively as an electrophile in the nitration of other substances. The ion is generated "in situ" for this purpose by mixing concentrated sulfuric acid and concentrated nitric acid according to the equilibrium:
The nitronium ion is isoelectronic with carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, and has the same linear structure and bond angle of 180°. For this reason it has a similar vibrational spectrum to carbon dioxide. Historically, the nitronium ion was detected by Raman spectroscopy, because its symmetric stretch is Raman-active but infrared-inactive. The Raman-active symmetrical stretch was first used to identify the ion in nitrating mixtures.
A few stable nitronium salts with anions of weak nucleophilicity can be isolated. These include nitronium perchlorate (), nitronium tetrafluoroborate (), nitronium hexafluorophosphate (), nitronium hexafluoroarsenate (), and nitronium hexafluoroantimonate (). These are all very hygroscopic compounds.
The solid form of dinitrogen pentoxide, N2O5, actually consists of nitronium and nitrate ions, so it is an ionic compound, [][], not a molecular solid. However, dinitrogen pentoxide in liquid or gaseous state is molecular and does not contain nitronium ions.
The compounds nitryl fluoride, NO2F, and nitryl chloride, NO2Cl, are not nitronium salts but molecular compounds, as shown by their low boiling points (−72 °C and −6 °C respectively) and short N–X bond lengths (N–F 135 pm, N–Cl 184 pm).
Addition of one electron forms the neutral nitryl radical, ; in fact, this is fairly stable and known as the compound nitrogen dioxide.
The related negatively charged species is , the nitrite ion. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22009 |
Neo Geo (system)
The , stylised as NEO•GEO, also written as NEOGEO, is a cartridge-based arcade system board and fourth-generation home video game console released on April 26, 1990, by Japanese game company SNK Corporation. It was the first system in SNK's Neo Geo family. The Neo Geo was marketed as 24-bit; its CPU is technically a 16/32-bit 68000-based system with an 8/16-bit Z80 coprocessor, while its GPU chipset has a 24-bit graphics data bus.
The Neo Geo originally launched as the MVS (Multi Video System) coin-operated arcade machine. The MVS offers owners the ability to put up to six different cartridges into a single cabinet, a unique feature that was also a key economic consideration for operators with limited floorspace, as well as saving money long-term. With its games stored on self-contained cartridges, a game cabinet can be exchanged for a different game title by swapping the game's ROM cartridge and cabinet artwork. A home console version was also made, called AES (Advanced Entertainment System). It was originally launched as a rental console for video game stores in Japan (called Neo Geo Rental System), with its high price causing SNK not to release it for home use – this was later reversed due to high demand and it came into the market as a luxury console. The AES had the same raw specs as the MVS and had full compatibility, thus managed to bring a true arcade experience to home users. The Neo Geo was revived along with the brand overall in December 2012 through the introduction of the Neo Geo X handheld and home system.
The Neo Geo was a very powerful system when released, more powerful than any video game console at the time, and many arcade systems such as rival Capcom's CPS, which did not surpass it until the CP System II in 1993. The Neo Geo MVS was a success during the 1990s due to the cabinet's low cost, six ROM slots, and compact size. Several successful video game series were released for the platform, such as "Fatal Fury", "Art of Fighting", "Samurai Shodown", "The King of Fighters" and "Metal Slug". The AES had a very niche market in Japan, though sales were very low in the U.S. due to its high price for both the hardware and software; but it has since gained a cult following and is now considered a collectable. Neo Geo hardware production lasted seven years, discontinued in 1997, whereas game software production lasted until 2004, making Neo Geo the longest supported arcade system of all time. The AES console was succeeded by the Neo Geo CD and the MVS arcade by the Hyper Neo Geo 64. As of March 1997, the Neo Geo and the Neo Geo CD combined had sold 980,000 units worldwide. In 2009, the Neo Geo was ranked 19th out of the 25 best video game consoles of all time by video game website IGN.
The Neo Geo hardware was an evolution of an older SNK/Alpha Denshi M68000 arcade platform that was used in "Time Soldiers" in 1987, further developed in the SNK M68000 hardware platform as used for "" in 1988. Contrary to other popular arcade hardware of the time, the SNK/Alpha Denshi hardware used sprite strips instead of the more common tilemap based backgrounds. The Neo Geo hardware was essentially developed by Alpha Denshi's Eiji Fukatsu, adding sprite scaling through the use of scaling tables stored in ROM as well as support for a much higher amount of data on cartridges and better sound hardware.
The Neo Geo was announced on January 31, 1990 in Osaka, Japan and released on April 26, 1990. Initially, the AES home system was only available for rent to commercial establishments, such as hotel chains, bars and restaurants, and other venues. When customer response indicated that some gamers were willing to buy a console, SNK expanded sales and marketing into the home console market in 1991.
Neo Geo's graphics and sound are largely superior to other contemporary home consoles, arcades, and even computers such as the Sharp X68000.
Unlike earlier systems, the Neo Geo AES was intended to reproduce the same quality of game as the arcade MVS system. The MVS was one of the most powerful arcade units at the time, allowing the game ROM to be loaded from interchangeable cartridges instead of using custom, dedicated hardware cabinets for each game.
Early attempts to port arcade games to home systems had been limited by inferior hardware. In a well-known incident when Pac-Man was ported to the Atari 2600 many visual features of the original game had to be changed to compensate for the lack of ROM space and the hardware struggled when multiple ghosts appeared on the screen creating a flickering effect. The poor performance of the ported Pac-Man is cited as a cause of the video game crash of 1983.
In the United States, the console's debut price was planned to be and included two joystick controllers and a game: either "Baseball Stars Professional" or "NAM-1975". However, the price was raised and its American launch debuted as the Gold System at (). Later, the Gold System was bundled with "Magician Lord" and "Fatal Fury". The Silver System package, launched at , included one joystick controller and no pack-in game. Other games were launched at about and up. At double or quadruple the price of the competition, the console and its games were accessible only to a niche market. Although its high price tag kept it out of the mainstream gaming market, it outlasted the market lifespan of its more popular Nintendo and Sega rivals, and also made a unique niche market for it. In addition, its full compatibility meant that no additional money was being spent on porting or marketing for the AES, since the MVS' success was thus automatically feeding the AES, making the console profitable for SNK.
When realtime 3D graphics became the norm in the arcade industry, the Neo Geo's 2D hardware was unable to do likewise. Despite this, Neo Geo arcade games retained profitability through the mid-1990s, and the system was one of three 1995 recipients of the American Amusement Machine Association's Diamond Awards (which are based strictly on sales achievements). SNK developed a new console in 1994, called the Neo Geo CD. A new arcade was also made in 1997, called Hyper Neo Geo 64. However these two systems had low popularity and only a few games.
Despite the failures of these 3D hardware, and the ceasing of manufacturing home consoles by the end of 1997, SNK continued making software for the original 2D Neo Geo. Despite being very aged by the end of the decade, the Neo Geo continued getting popular releases, such as the critically acclaimed "The King of Fighters 2002". The last official game by SNK for the Neo Geo system, "Samurai Shodown V Special", was released in 2004, 14 years after the system's introduction.
On August 31, 2007, SNK stopped offering maintenance and repairs to Neo Geo home consoles, handhelds, and games.
The Neo Geo X, an officially licensed device with a collection of Neo Geo games pre-installed, was first released in 2012 by TOMMO Inc. After just one year and a lukewarm reception due to its price and poor quality of the emulation, on October 2nd, 2013, SNK Playmore terminated the license agreement and demanded an immediate cease and desist of distribution and sales of all licensed products.
In a 1993 review, "GamePro" gave the Neo Geo a "thumbs up". Though they voiced several criticisms, noting that the system was not as powerful as the soon-to-launch 3DO and had few releases which were not fighting games, they generally praised both the hardware and games library, and recommended that gamers who could not afford the console (which was still priced at $649.99) play the games in the arcade.
Each joystick controller is 280mm (width) × 190mm (depth) × 95mm (height) ( 11 × 8 × 2.5 in.) and contains the same four-button layout as the arcade MVS cabinet.
The arcade machines have a memory card system by which a player could save a game to return to at a later time and could also be used to continue play on the SNK home console of the same name.
The arcade version of the video game hardware is often referred to as the "MVS," or Multi Video System (available in 1-slot, 2-slot, 4-slot, and 6-slot variations, differing in the amount of game cartridges loaded into the machine at the time), with its console counterpart referred to as the "AES", or Advanced Entertainment System. Early motherboard revisions contain daughterboards, used to enhance the clarity of the video output.
The MVS and AES hardware can execute identical machine code. Owners can move EPROMs from one type to the other, and the game will still run. The program specifics for both MVS and AES game options are contained on every game ROM, whether the cartridge is intended for home or arcade use. However, the arcade and home cartridges do have a different pinout. They were designed this way to prevent arcade operators from buying the cheaper home carts and then using them in arcades. It has been found that in a few home version games, one could unlock the arcade version of the game by inputting a special code.
The original specification for ROM size is up to 330 megabits, hence the system displaying "Max 330 Mega Pro-Gear Spec" upon startup. While no technical advances were required to achieve it, some games over 100 megabits, such as "Top Hunter", followed this screen by displaying an animation proclaiming "The 100Mega Shock!". The original ROM size specification was later enhanced on cartridges with bank switching memory technology, increasing the maximum cartridge size to around 716 megabits. These new cartridges also cause the system to display "Giga Power Pro-Gear Spec" upon startup or during attract mode, indicating this enhancement.
The system uses seven different specialist processors, which divide the workload for the visuals, audio and gameplay.
RAM: 214 KB SRAM
On-board ROM: 512 KB
The SNK custom video chipset allows the system to draw sprites in vertical strips which are 16 pixels wide, and can be 16 to 512 pixels tall; it can draw up to 96 sprites per scanline for a total of 380 sprites on the screen at a time. Unlike most other video game consoles of its time, the Neo Geo does not use scrolling tilemap background layers. Instead, it has a single non-scrolling tilemap layer called the fix layer, while any scrolling layers rely exclusively on drawing sprites to create the scrolling backgrounds (like the Sega Y Board). By laying multiple sprites side by side, the system can simulate a tilemap background layer. The Neo Geo sprite system represents a step between conventional sprites and tilemaps.
The onboard Yamaha YM2610 sound chip gives the system 15 channels of sound.
The Neo Geo is the first home game console to feature a removable memory card for saved games.
The GameTap subscription service has included a Neo Geo emulator and a small library of Neo Geo games. In 2007 Nintendo announced that Neo Geo games would appear on the Wii's Virtual Console, starting with "", "Art of Fighting", and "World Heroes". Neo Geo games were released through Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, including "Fatal Fury Special", "Samurai Shodown II", "Metal Slug 3", "" and "The King of Fighters '98". Many Neo Geo games were released on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch through the Arcade Collection Archives (ACA) service.
Homebrew activity began after the console's discontinuation, both by noncommercial hobbyists and commercially.
Neo Geo has a community of collectors. Because of the limited production runs received by cartridges amongst the sizable available arcade library, some of the rarest Neo Geo games can sell for well over $1,000. The most valuable game is the European AES version of "Kizuna Encounter". The MVS market provides a cheaper alternative to the expensive and rare home cartridges, and complete arcade kits are priced at a premium. It is also possible to play the MVS cartridges, which generally cost much less, on the AES home system through the use of adapters.
On June 9, 2018, SNK announced the Neo Geo Mini, a miniature semi-portable arcade cabinet which features 40 built-in SNK titles, would be released on July 24, 2018 in Japan. The games are the AES versions, but the Neo Geo Mini features a system which allows players to save and load the game at any time. Neo Geo Mini also can connect to a TV screen with a separately sold HDMI cable. It has a headphone jack and two ports for external Neo Geo mini Pad controllers (also sold separately), which are a re-design of the Neo Geo CD controllers. SNK also announced a Neo Geo Mini International Version, which contains the same features as the Japanese Neo Geo Mini but with 14 titles changed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22011 |
Neo Geo CD
The is the second home video game console of SNK Corporation's Neo Geo family, released in September 9, 1994, four years after its cartridge-based equivalent. This is the same platform, converted to the cheaper CD format retailing at $49 to $79 per title, compared to the $300 cartridges. The system was originally priced at US$399, or £399 in the UK. The unit's 1× CD-ROM drive is slow, with very long loading times. The system can also play Audio CDs. All three versions of the system have no region-lock. The Neo Geo CD was launched bundled with a control pad instead of a joystick like the AES version. However, the original AES joystick can be used with all three Neo Geo CD models.
As of March 1997, there had been 570,000 Neo Geo CD units sold worldwide.
The Neo Geo CD was first unveiled at the 1994 Tokyo Toy Show. The console uses the same CPU set-up as the arcade and cartridge-based Neo Geo systems, facilitating conversions. SNK planned to release Neo Geo CD versions of every Neo Geo game still in the arcades.
Three versions of the Neo Geo CD were released:
The front-loading version is the original console design, with the top-loading version having been developed shortly before the Neo Geo CD launch as a scaled-down, cheaper alternative model. The CDZ was released on December 29, 1995 as the Japanese market replacement for SNK's previous efforts (the ""front loader"" and the ""top loader""). The Neo Geo CD had met with limited success due to it being plagued with slow loading times that could vary from 30 to 60 seconds between loads, depending on the game.
In response to criticism of the Neo Geo CD's long load times, SNK planned to produce a model with a double speed CD-ROM drive for North America, compared to the single speed drive of the Japanese and European models. However, the system missed its planned North American launch date of October 1995, and while SNK declined to give a specific reason for the delay, in their announcement of the new January 1996 launch date they stated that they had decided against using a double speed drive. Their Japanese division had produced an excess number of single speed units and found that modifying these units to double speed was more expensive than they had initially thought, so SNK opted to sell them as they were, postponing production of a double speed model until they had sold off the stock of single speed units.
The CDZ was only officially sold in Japan during its production. However, its faster loading times, lack of a "region lock", and the fact that it could play older CD software, made it a popular import item for enthusiasts in both Europe and North America. The system's technical specs are identical to the previous models except that it includes a double-speed CD-ROM drive.
In response to reader inquiries about Neo Geo CD software, "GamePro" reported in an issue cover dated May 1997 that SNK had quietly discontinued the console by this time.
Criticism of the system's generally long loading times began even before launch; a report in "Electronic Gaming Monthly" on the Neo Geo CD's unveiling noted, "At the show, they were showing a demo of "Fatal Fury 2". The prototype of the machine that they showed was single speed, and the load time was 14-28 seconds between rounds. You can see that the screen[shot] on the right is a load screen."
Approximately one month after launch, SNK reported that they had sold the Neo Geo CD's entire initial shipment of 50,000 units.
Reviewing the Neo Geo CD in late 1995, "Next Generation" noted SNK's reputation for fun games but argued that their failure to upgrade the Neo Geo system with 3D capabilities would keep them from producing any truly "cutting edge" games, and limit the console to the same small cult following as the Neo Geo AES system although with less expensive games. They gave it 1 1/2 out of 5 stars.
The system is also capable of reading Redbook standard compact disc audio.
In addition to the multi-AV port (nearly identical to the one used on the Sega Genesis model 1, though they are not interchangeable), all Neo Geo CD models had composite RCA A/V and S-Video out jacks on the rear of the console.
The CD system's 56 Mbit / 7 MB of RAM was split accordingly:
While the Neo Geo CD library consists primarily of ports of MVS and AES titles, there are a few MVS arcade games which were not officially released for the Neo Geo AES and ported instead to the Neo Geo CD. These include "Puzzle Bobble", "Janshin Densetsu: Quest of Jongmaster" (a Mahjong game also released for the PC Engine), "Power Spikes II", "Neo Drift Out: New Technology", and "" ("Futsal: 5-on-5 Mini Soccer").
A few games which were unreleased in MVS and AES formats were also released exclusively for the Neo Geo CD. These include "Ironclad: Tesshō Rusha" ("Chōtetsu Burikingā", "BRIKIN'GER"), "Crossed Swords II", "ZinTrick" ("Oshidashi Zintorikku"), "ADK World", "Neo Geo CD Special", "The King of Fighters '96 Neo Collection", "Samurai Shodown RPG" ("Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits: Bushidō Retsuden"; an RPG spin-off of the "Samurai Shodown" series that was also released for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn), and "Idol-Mahjong Final Romance 2" (an arcade game which is not an MVS game, but was ported directly to the Neo Geo CD). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22012 |
Neopets
Neopets (originally stylized NeoPets," and currently neopets") is a virtual pet website. Users can own virtual pets ("Neopets"), and buy virtual items for them using one of two virtual currencies. One currency, called Neopoints, can be earned within the site, and the other, Neocash, can either be purchased with real-world money, or won by chance in-game.
The website was launched by Adam Powell and Donna Williams in late 1999. Two years later, a consortium of investors led by Doug Dohring bought a controlling interest in the company and in June 2005, Viacom bought "Neopets" Inc. for US$160 million. On March 17, 2014, Viacom sold Neopets to JumpStart Games for an unannounced amount. On July 3, 2017, Chinese company NetDragon acquired JumpStart.
"Neopets" allows users to create and care for digital pets called "Neopets" and explore the virtual world of Neopia. There is no set objective for the users, but they are expected to feed and care for their Neopets when they grow hungry or ill. Neopets will not die if neglected, but their health can limit their gameplay. Neopets come in a variety of species and colors and users can create or adopt their own. Users can obtain items to interact with their Neopet, such as books to read and toys to play with them. Neopets can be customised with certain clothing items, paint brushes, transformation potions, and accessories. Users can build a customisable Neohome for their Neopets and furnish it with furniture, wallpaper, and flooring. Neopets can battle against other Neopets or non-player characters in the Battledome but they cannot die there.
Neopia is a virtual planet with fantasy lands inhabited by Neopets and other virtual creatures. Each land has a different theme, such as pirates or prehistory, and their own shops, games, and attractions. Neopia follows its own calendar and time zone, which runs concurrent with real-world Pacific Time, and has tie-ins with certain real-world holidays such as Halloween and Christmas. It has its own economy and stock market based on Neopoints. Users can earn Neopoints through various means including playing games and selling items, which can be invested or used to buy various virtual goods and services. While there is no set objective for users, interactive storylines are sometimes released that introduce changes to the planet such as new lands.
The site is regularly updated with features like new games, items and content. In addition to the site content updated by the "Neopets" staff members, users also contribute content to the site. User contributions come in the form of prescreened submissions and readily editable content that is automatically filtered, such as the site's weekly electronic newspaper "The Neopian Times". There are different types of submissions that will be accepted.
Users can earn Neopoints from playing games. Games come in many different genres, which include action, puzzles, and luck & chance. Most games have set maximum earnings or playtime. Players may also earn trophies and other awards from games if they score high enough or perform better than other users. Many single-player and multiplayer browser games are available. Users can also participate in contests and spotlights judged by staff to showcase the users' talents. Quests to retrieve items may also be performed for specific NPCs. Challenges may be made against other players or random players in a "World Challenge" for a prize piece and Neopoints from the jackpot for certain Flash games. Monthly competitions also exist for multiplayer games with four week-long elimination rounds.
The economy is based on Neopoints. Users can also exchange real money for Neocash, used exclusively for the NC Mall. Users can earn Neopoints through playing games, selling items, and other transactions. Once earned, they can be saved in the bank, used to buy items from other users or non-player character (NPC) shops, used to buy and sell stocks in the Neopian stock market called the NEODAQ, or used to buy various other things. Items can be bought from shops found throughout the world of Neopia that are run by NPCs who may allow bargaining. Users can open their own shops to sell items, sometimes after obtaining those items at a lower price from sources such as other shops or charities. Items may also be exchanged through trading or auctions.
"Neopets" has a community for users to chat with and contact other users. Each user has their own profile they can edit with HTML and CSS and are represented by avatars provided by the website, as users cannot upload their own. Most avatars must be "unlocked" by completing certain in-game tasks, such as winning a contest or getting a high score on a game.
Users may request other users to be "Neofriends" or block other users from contacting them. To comply with COPPA, users under 13 years of age cannot access any of the site's communication features without sending in parental consent via fax. The main features include:
Discussions through these features are restricted and may not involve topics such as dating and romance or controversial topics like politics and religion. Continuous moderation is performed by paid "Neopets" staff members, and users can help moderate the site by reporting messages they believe are inappropriate or offensive. Messages are also automatically filtered to prevent users from posting messages with profanity or lewd content.
"Neopets" was conceived in 1997 by Adam Powell, a British student at the University of Nottingham at the time. He shared this idea with Donna Williams and the two started work on the site in September 1999, with Powell responsible for the programming and the database and Williams the web design and art. The site launched on November 15, 1999 from offices in Portsmouth Road, Guildford, a location still commemorated on the site. Powell stated that the original goal was to "keep university students entertained, and possibly make some cash from banner advertising". The site contained popular culture references, such as a Neopet that was simply a picture of Bruce Forsyth.
The user base grew by word of mouth and by Christmas 1999, "Neopets" was logging 600,000 page views daily and sought investors to cover the high cost of running the site. Later in the month, American businessman Doug Dohring was introduced to the creators of the site and, along with other investors, bought a majority share in January of the following year. Dohring founded "Neopets, Inc." in February 2000 and began business on April 28. Intellectual property that did not belong to "Neopets" was removed but the site kept the British spellings. The website made money from the first paying customers using an advertising method trademarked as "immersive advertising" and touted as "an evolutionary step forward in the traditional marketing practice of product placement" in television and film. In 2004, "Neopets" released a premium version and started showing advertisements on the basic site that were not shown to premium members.
Media conglomerate Viacom purchased "Neopets, Inc." on June 20, 2005 for $160 million and announced plans to focus more on the use of banner ads over the site's existing immersive advertising. The website was redesigned on April 27, 2007 and included changes to the user interface and the ability to customise Neopets. In June, Viacom promoted "Neopets" through minishows on Nickelodeon. Promotions included the second Altador Cup and led to an increase in traffic through the site. The first Altador Cup was released as an international online gaming event to coincide with the 2006 FIFA World Cup to improve interactivity between users and had 10.4 million participants the first year. On July 17, the NC Mall was launched in a partnership with Korean gaming company Nexon Corporation. It allowed users to use real money to purchase Neocash to buy exclusive virtual items. On June 17, 2008, Viacom formed the Nickelodeon Kids & Family Virtual Worlds Group to "encompass all paid and subscription gaming initiatives across all relevant platforms", including "Neopets". By June 2011, "Neopets" announced that the website had logged 1 trillion page views since its creation.
In July 2009, the "Neopets" site was the target of an identity theft hacking scheme that attempted to trick users into clicking a link that would allow them to gain items or Neopoints. Upon doing so, malware was installed onto the user's computer. According to reports, the hack was aimed not at child players' "Neopets" accounts, but at using the malware to steal the financial data and identities of their parents. Viacom stated that it was investigating the issue, and that the hack was a version of social engineering rather than an "indictment of Neopets security practices". In an on-site newsletter for players, "Neopets" denied the report and claimed that the site's security measures prevented the posting of such links.
JumpStart acquired Neopets from Viacom in April 2014. Server migration began in September. JumpStart-owned Neopets was immediately characterized by glitches and site lag. On 6 March 2015, much of the Neopets Team remaining from Viacom were laid off. On July 3, 2017, Chinese company NetDragon acquired JumpStart.
On the weekend of 27–28 June 2015, the site's chat filters, designed to prevent adult language and content, stopped working. The site's forums and other user-edited spaces were flooded with adult content and obscene images.
In a statement on Facebook, JumpStart apologized, explaining that the issue was due to a "facility move," and that during that move, the moderation team was not able to access the Neopets community.
In 2016, Motherboard reported that the login data of 70 million Neopets accounts was stolen. It contained not only usernames and passwords but also email addresses, birth dates, IP addresses, and PINs. It turned out this information was being stored in plain text by Neopets and had first been retrieved in 2012; every single account created prior to that year was affected. Neopets responded by posting about the leak on their official Facebook page and sent emails out to all affected players telling them to change their passwords.
"Neopets" is consistently one of the "stickiest" sites for children's entertainment. Stickiness is a measure of the average amount of time spent on a website. A press release from "Neopets" in 2001 stated that Neopets.com led in site "stickiness" in May and June, with the average user spending 117 minutes a week. "Neopets" also led in the average number of hours spent per user per month in December 2003 with an average of 4 hours and 47 minutes. A 2004 article stated that Nielsen//NetRatings reported that people were spending around three hours a month on "Neopets", more than any other site in its Nielsen category. By May 2005, a "Neopets"-affiliated video game producer cited about 35 million unique users, 11 million unique IP addresses per month, and 4 billion web page views per month. This producer also described 20% of the users as 18 or older, with the median of the remaining 80% at about 14. "Neopets" was consistently ranked among the top ten "stickiest" sites by both Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore Media Metrix in 2005 and 2006. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, in 2007, "Neopets" lost about 15% of its audience over the previous year. In February 2008, comScore ranked it as the stickiest kids entertainment site with the average user spending 2 hours and 45 minutes per month.
Described as an online cross of "Pokémon" and "Tamagotchi", "Neopets" has received both praise and criticism. It has been praised for having educational content. Children can learn HTML to edit their own pages. They can also learn how to handle money by participating in the economy. Reviews from About.com and MMO Hut considered the multitude of possible activities a positive aspect. Most of the users are female, higher than in other massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) but equivalent to social-networking-driven communities. Lucy Bradshaw, a vice president of Electronic Arts, attributes the popularity among girls to the openness of the site and said, "Games that have a tendency to satisfy on more than one dimension have a tendency to have a broader appeal and attract girls".
Luck & chance games draw criticism from parents as they introduce children to gambling. In Australia, a cross-promotion with McDonald's led to controversy with "Neopets"' luck/chance games in October 2004. Australian tabloid television show "Today Tonight" featured a nine-year-old boy who claimed the site requires one to gamble in order to earn enough Neopoints to feed one's Neopet or else it would be sent to the pound. While gambling is not required, nor are pets sent to the pound if unfed, the website includes games of chance based on real games such as blackjack and lottery scratchcards. After this incident, "Neopets" prohibited users under the age of 13 from playing most games that involve gambling.
Immersive advertising is a trademarked term for the way "Neopets" displayed advertisements to generate profit after Doug Dohring bought the site. Unlike pop-up and banner ads, immersive ads integrate advertisements into the site's content in interactive forms, including games and items. Players could earn Neopoints from them by playing advergames and taking part in online marketing surveys. Prior to the arrival of the NC Mall, it contributed to 60% of the revenue from the site with paying Fortune 1000 companies including Disney, General Mills, and McDonald's.
It was a contentious issue with the site with regard to the ethics of marketing to children. It drew criticism from parents, psychologists, and consumer advocates who argued that children may not know that they are being advertised to, as it blurred the line between site content and advertisement. Children under eight had difficulty recognizing ads and half a million of the 25 million users were under the age of eight in 2005. Dohring responded to such criticism stating that of the 40 percent of users twelve and younger, very few were seven or eight years old and that preschoolers were not their target audience.
Others criticised the functionality of the site. Susan Linn, another psychologist and author of "Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood" considered the purpose of this site was to keep children in front of advertisements. Kalle Lasn, editor-in-chief and co-founder of "Adbusters" magazine, said the site encouraged kids to spend hours in front of a screen and recruited them to consumerism. "Neopets" executives stated that paid content comprised less than 1% of the site's total content. Children were not required to play or use sponsor games and items, and all ads were marked as such.
After Neopets was purchased by Viacom, and due to criticism towards the immersive advertising model, banner advertisements and other more clear-cut forms of advertising were integrated into the site. Neocash (discussed elsewhere in this article) was also introduced as an additional revenue source.
The popularity of "Neopets" spawned real-world merchandise including stickers, books, cereals, video games and more, sold at mainstream outlets and online retailers. The most common items were plushies (stuffed animals). Each piece of merchandise has a code which can be redeemed at the site for an in-game reward. "Neopets, Inc." had always planned to "bring the online and offline worlds together in ways that have never been done before". An investment banker at Allen & Company in New York said that "Neopets" was the only online media he had seen "that might have the ability to capture market share in the offline world". Merchandise has been almost entirely discontinued save for a line of enamel pins released by Overpowered in 2018.
Neopets, Inc. signed various licensing deals with companies such as Viacom Consumer Products, Thinkway Toys, and Jakks Pacific over the years. Wizards of the Coast released the "Neopets Trading Card Game" in September 2003, which was promoted in three of General Mills "Big G" cereals and ten Simon Property Group malls. It received two different nominations for "Toy of the Year" as well as other recognitions. "Neopets: The Official Magazine" was a bi-monthly magazine released the same month but it was replaced in 2008 by "Beckett Plushie Pals", which featured "Neopets" news as well as other companies' products such as Webkinz.
In 2005, "Neopets" expanded to film and video game deals. The first movie was to be written by Ron Lieber and produced by Dylan Sellers and John A. Davis, but the project has since been cancelled with no other projects announced. Two video games were released by Sony Computer Entertainment, "" for the PlayStation 2 in 2005 and "" for the PlayStation Portable in 2006. 2006 also saw the release of "Neopets" mobile, which allowed users to visit the new land of Lutari Island, but it was discontinued on June 30, 2009, leaving the island completely inaccessible. In 2007, MumboJumbo developed a match-3 game "Neopets: Codestone Quest". "Neopets" wouldn't attempt another mobile game until 2015, when they released a match-3 game called "Ghoul Catchers" for Android and iOS. However, they still released other games during those years, including "Treasure Keepers" for Facebook and "Puzzle Adventure" for Nintendo DS, Wii, and PC. In early 2019, Jumpstart announced that they were making a full mobile-friendly "Neopets" app, and it was scheduled to launch late in the summer of 2019. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22015 |
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Tennessee. The city is the county seat of Davidson County and is located on the Cumberland River. It is the 23rd most-populous city in the United States.
Named for Francis Nash, a general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, the city was founded in 1779. The city grew quickly due to its strategic location as a port on the Cumberland River and, in the 19th century, a railroad center. Nashville seceded with Tennessee during the American Civil War; in 1862 it was the first state capital in the Confederacy to fall to Union troops. After the war, the city reclaimed its position and developed a manufacturing base.
Since 1963, Nashville has had a consolidated city-county government, which includes six smaller municipalities in a two-tier system. The city is governed by a mayor, a vice-mayor, and a 40-member metropolitan council; 35 of the members are elected from single-member districts, while the other five are elected at-large. Reflecting the city's position in state government, Nashville is home to the Tennessee Supreme Court's courthouse for Middle Tennessee, one of the state's three divisions.
A major center for the music industry, especially country music, Nashville is commonly known as "Music City". It is also home to numerous colleges and universities, including Tennessee State University, Vanderbilt University, Belmont University, Fisk University, Trevecca Nazarene University, and Lipscomb University, and is sometimes referred to as "Athens of the South" due to the large number of educational institutions. Nashville is also a major center for the healthcare, publishing, private prison, banking, automotive, and transportation industries. Entities with headquarters in the city include Asurion, Bridgestone Americas, Captain D's, CoreCivic, Dollar General, Hospital Corporation of America, LifeWay Christian Resources, Logan's Roadhouse, and Ryman Hospitality Properties.
The town of Nashville was founded by James Robertson, John Donelson, and a party of Overmountain Men in 1779, near the original Cumberland settlement of Fort Nashborough. It was named for Francis Nash, the American Revolutionary War hero. Nashville quickly grew because of its strategic location as a port on the Cumberland River, a tributary of the Ohio River; and its later status as a major railroad center. By 1800, the city had 345 residents, including 136 enslaved African Americans and 14 free African Americans. In 1806, Nashville was incorporated as a city and became the county seat of Davidson County, Tennessee. In 1843, the city was named as the permanent capital of the state of Tennessee.
The city government of Nashville owned 24 slaves by 1831, and 60 prior to the Civil War. They were "put to work to build the first successful water system and maintain the streets." Auction blocks and brokers' offices were part of the slave market at the heart of the city. It was the center of plantations cultivating tobacco and hemp as commodity crops, in addition to the breeding and training of thoroughbred horses, and other livestock. For years Nashville was considered one of the wealthiest southern capitals and a large portion of its prominence was from the iron business. Nashville led the south for iron production.
The cholera epidemic that struck Nashville in 1849–1850 took the life of former U.S. President James K. Polk and resulted in high fatalities. There were 311 deaths from cholera in 1849 and an estimated 316 to about 500 in 1850.
Before the Civil War, about 700 free blacks lived in small enclaves in northern Nashville while there were over 3,200 black slaves in the city. By 1860, when the first rumblings of secession began to be heard across the South, antebellum Nashville was a prosperous city. The city's significance as a shipping port and rail center made it a desirable prize for competing military forces that wanted to control the region's important river and railroad transportation routes. In February 1862, Nashville became the first Confederate state capital to fall to Union troops, and the state was occupied by Union troops for the duration of the war. Then African-Americans from Middle Tennessee fled to contraband camps around military installations in Nashville's eastern, western, and southern borders. The Battle of Nashville (December 15–16, 1864) was a significant Union victory and perhaps the most decisive tactical victory gained by either side in the war; it was also the war's final major military action in which Tennessee regiments played a large part on both sides of the battle. Afterward, the Confederates conducted a war of attrition, making guerrilla raids and engaging in small skirmishes, with the Confederate forces in the Deep South almost constantly in retreat.
In 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, the Nashville chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was founded by Confederate veteran John W. Morton. He was reported to have initiated General Nathan Bedford Forrest into the vigilante organization. Chapters of this secret insurgent group formed throughout the state and the South; they opposed voting and political organizing by freedmen, tried to control their behavior, and sometimes also attacked their white allies, including schoolteachers from the North.
Whites directed violence against freedmen and their descendants both during and after the Reconstruction era. Two freedmen, David Jones and Jo Reed, were lynched in Nashville by white mobs in 1872 and 1875, respectively. Reed was hanged from a bridge over the river, but survived after the rope broke and he subsequently fell into the water, and fled the city soon thereafter.
In 1873 Nashville suffered another cholera epidemic, along with towns throughout Sumner County along railroad routes and the Cumberland River. This was part of a larger epidemic that struck much of the United States. The epidemic is estimated to have killed around 1,000 people in Nashville.
Meanwhile, the city had reclaimed its important shipping and trading position and developed a solid manufacturing base. The post–Civil War years of the late 19th century brought new prosperity to Nashville and Davidson County. Wealthy planters and businessmen built grand, classical-style buildings. A replica of the Parthenon was constructed in Centennial Park, near downtown.
On April 30, 1892, Ephraim Grizzard, an African-American man, was lynched in a spectacle murder in front of a white mob of 10,000 in Nashville. His lynching was described by journalist Ida B. Wells as: "A naked, bloody example of the blood-thirstiness of the nineteenth century civilization of the Athens of the South." His brother, Henry Grizzard, had been lynched and hanged on April 24, 1892, in nearby Goodlettsville as a suspect in the same assault incident. From 1877 to 1950, a total of six lynchings of blacks were conducted in Davidson County, four before the turn of the century.
By the turn of the century, Nashville had become the cradle of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The first chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy was founded here, and the "Confederate Veteran" magazine was published here. Most "guardians of the Lost Cause" lived Downtown or in the West End, near Centennial Park.
At the same time, Jefferson Street became the historic center of the African-American community, with similar districts developing in the black neighborhoods in East and North Nashville. In 1912, the Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial and Normal School as moved to Jefferson Street. The first Prince's Hot Chicken Shack originated at the corner of Jefferson Street and 28th Avenue in 1945. Jefferson Street became a destination for jazz and blues musicians, and remained so until the federal government split the area by construction of Interstate 40 in the late 1960s.
In 1950 the state legislature approved a new city charter that provided for the election of city council members from single-member districts, rather than at-large voting. This change was supported because at-large voting required candidates to gain a majority of votes from across the city. The previous system prevented the minority population, which then tended to support Republican candidates, from being represented by candidates of their choice; apportionment under single-member districts meant that some districts in Nashville had black majorities. In 1951, after passage of the new charter, African-American attorneys Z. Alexander Looby and Robert E. Lillard were elected to the city council.
With the United States Supreme Court ruling in 1954 that public schools had to desegregate with "all deliberate speed", the family of student Robert Kelley filed a lawsuit in 1956, arguing that Nashville administrators should open all-white East High School to him. A similar case was filed by Reverend Henry Maxwell due to his children having to take a 45-minute bus ride from South Nashville to the north end of the city. These suits caused the courts to announce what became known as the "Nashville Plan", where the city's public schools would desegregate one grade per year beginning in the fall of 1957.
Urban redevelopment accelerated over the next several decades, and the city grew increasingly segregated. An interstate was placed on the edge of East Nashville while another highway was built through Edgehill, a lower-income, predominantly minority community.
Rapid suburbanization occurred during the years immediately after World War II, as new housing was being built outside city limits. This resulted in a demand for many new schools and other support facilities, which the county found difficult to provide. At the same time, suburbanization led to a declining tax base in the city, although many suburban residents used unique city amenities and services that were supported financially only by city taxpayers. After years of discussion, a referendum was held in 1958 on the issue of consolidating city and county government. It failed to gain approval although it was supported by the then-elected leaders of both jurisdictions, County Judge Beverly Briley and Mayor Ben West.
Following the referendum's failure, Nashville annexed some 42 square miles of suburban jurisdictions to expand its tax base. This increased uncertainty among residents, and created resentment among many suburban communities. Under the second charter for metropolitan government, which was approved in 1962, two levels of service provision were proposed: the General Services District and the Urban Services District, to provide for a differential in tax levels. Residents of the Urban Services District had a full range of city services. The areas that made up the General Services District, however, had a lower tax rate until full services were provided. This helped reconcile aspects of services and taxation among the differing jurisdictions within the large metro region.
In the early 1960s, Tennessee still had racial segregation of public facilities, including lunch counters and department store fitting rooms. Hotels and restaurants were also segregated. Between February 13 and May 10, 1960, a series of sit-ins were organized at lunch counters in downtown Nashville by the Nashville Student Movement and Nashville Christian Leadership Council, and were part of a broader sit-in movement in the southeastern United States as part of an effort to end racial segregation of public facilities. On April 19, 1960, the house of Z. Alexander Looby, an African-American attorney and council member, was bombed by segregationists. Protesters marched to the city hall the next day. Mayor Ben West said he supported the desegregation of lunch counters, which civil rights activists had called for.
In 1963, Nashville consolidated its government with Davidson County, forming a metropolitan government. The membership on the Metro Council, the legislative body, was increased from 21 to 40 seats. Of these, five members are elected at-large and 35 are elected from single-member districts, each to serve a term of four years. In 1957 Nashville desegregated its school system using an innovative grade a year plan, in response to a class action suit Kelly vs. Board of Education of Nashville. By 1966 the Metro Council abandoned the grade a year plan and completely desegregated the entire school system at one time.
Congress passed civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965, but tensions continued as society was slow to change. On April 8, 1967, a riot broke out on the college campuses of Fisk University and Tennessee State University, historically black colleges, after Stokely Carmichael spoke about Black Power at Vanderbilt University. Although it was viewed as a "race riot", it had classist characteristics.
In 1979, the Ku Klux Klan burnt crosses outside two African-American sites in Nashville, including the city headquarters of the NAACP.
Since the 1970s the city and county have undergone tremendous growth, particularly during the economic boom of the 1990s under the leadership of then-Mayor and later-Tennessee Governor, Phil Bredesen. Making urban renewal a priority, Bredesen fostered the construction or renovation of several city landmarks, including the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the downtown Nashville Public Library, the Bridgestone Arena, and Nissan Stadium.
Nissan Stadium (formerly Adelphia Coliseum and LP Field) was built after the National Football League's (NFL) Houston Oilers agreed to move to the city in 1995. The NFL team debuted in Nashville in 1998 at Vanderbilt Stadium, and Nissan Stadium opened in the summer of 1999. The Oilers changed their name to the Tennessee Titans and finished the season with the Music City Miracle and a close Super Bowl game. The St. Louis Rams won in the last play of the game.
In 1997, Nashville was awarded a National Hockey League expansion team; this was named the Nashville Predators. Since the 2003–04 season, the Predators have made the playoffs in all but three seasons. In 2017, they made the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in franchise history, but ultimately fell to the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4games to 2, in the best-of-seven series.
On January 22, 2009, residents rejected Nashville Charter Amendment 1, which sought to make English the official language of the city.
Between May 1 and 7, 2010, much of Nashville was extensively flooded as part of a series of 1,000 year floods throughout Middle and West Tennessee. Much of the flooding took place in areas along the Cumberland and Harpeth Rivers and Mill Creek, and caused extensive damage to the many buildings and structures in the city, including the Grand Ole Opry House, Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, Opry Mills Mall, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Bridgestone Arena, and Nissan Stadium. Sections of Interstate 24 and Briley Parkway were also flooded. Eleven people died in the Nashville area as a result of the flooding, and damages were estimated to be over $2 billion.
The city bounced back after the Great Recession. In March 2012, a Gallup poll ranked Nashville in the top five regions for job growth. In 2013, Nashville was described as "Nowville" and "It City" by "GQ", "Forbes", and "The New York Times".
Nashville elected its first female mayor, Megan Barry, on September 25, 2015. As a council member, Barry had officiated at the city's first same-sex wedding on June 26, 2015.
In 2017, Nashville's economy was deemed the third fastest-growing in the nation, and the city was named the "hottest housing market in the US" by Freddie Mac realtors. In May 2017, census estimates showed Nashville had passed Memphis to become most populated city in Tennessee. Nashville has also made national headlines for its "homelessness crisis". Rising housing prices and the opioid crisis have resulted in more people being out on the streets: , between 2,300 and 20,000 Nashvillians are homeless.
On March 6, 2018, due to felony charges filed against Mayor Barry relating to the misuse of public funds, she resigned before the end of her term. A special election was called. Following a ruling by the Tennessee Supreme Court, the Davidson County Election Commission set the special election for May 24, 2018, to meet the requirement of 75 to 80 days from the date of resignation. David Briley, who was Vice Mayor during the Barry administration and Acting Mayor after her resignation, won the special election with just over 54% of the vote, becoming the 70th mayor of Nashville.
On May 1, 2018, voters rejected Let's Move Nashville, a referendum which would have funded construction of an $8.9 billion mass transit system under the Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority, by a 2 to 1 margin.
On March 3, 2020, a tornado tracked west to east, just north of the downtown Nashville area, killing at least 25 people and leaving tens of thousands without electricity. Neighborhoods impacted included North Nashville, Germantown, East Nashville, Donelson, and Hermitage.
Nashville lies on the Cumberland River in the northwestern portion of the Nashville Basin. Nashville's elevation ranges from its lowest point, above sea level at the Cumberland River, to its highest point, above sea level in the Radnor Lake State Natural Area.
Nashville also sits at the start of the Highland Rim, a Geophysical region of very hilly area. Because of this Nashville is very hilly. Nashville also has some stand alone hills around the city such as the hill on which the Tennessee State Capitol building sits.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which of it is land and of it (4.53%) is water.
Nashville's downtown area features a diverse assortment of entertainment, dining, cultural and architectural attractions. The Broadway and 2nd Avenue areas feature entertainment venues, night clubs and an assortment of restaurants. North of Broadway lie Nashville's central business district, Legislative Plaza, Capitol Hill and the Tennessee Bicentennial Mall. Cultural and architectural attractions can be found throughout the city.
Three major interstate highways (I-40, I-65 and I-24) converge near the core area of downtown, and many regional cities are within a day's driving distance.
Nashville's first skyscraper, the Life & Casualty Tower, was completed in 1957 and launched the construction of other high rises in downtown Nashville. After the construction of the AT&T Building (commonly referred to by locals as the "Batman Building") in 1994, the downtown area saw little construction until the mid-2000s. The Pinnacle, a high rise office building, opened in 2010, the first Nashville skyscraper completed in more than 15 years. Ten more skyscrapers have since been constructed or are under construction.
Many civic and infrastructure projects are being planned, in progress, or recently completed. A new MTA bus hub was recently completed in downtown Nashville, as was the Music City Star pilot project. Several public parks have been constructed, such as the Public Square. Riverfront Park is scheduled to be extensively updated. The Music City Center opened in May 2013. It is a 1,200,000 square foot (110,000 m2) convention center with 370,000 square feet (34,000 m2) of exhibit space.
The nearby city of Lebanon is notable and even named for its so-called "cedar glades", which occur on soils too poor to support most trees and are instead dominated by Virginian juniper. Blackberry bushes, Virginia pine, loblolly pine, sassafras, red maple, river birch, American beech, river cane, mountain laurel and sycamore are all common native trees, along with many others.
In addition to the native forests, the combination of hot summers, abundant rainfall and mild winters permit a wide variety of both temperate and subtropical plants to be cultivated easily. Southern magnolia and cherry blossom trees are commonly cultivated here, with the city having an annual cherry blossom festival. Crepe myrtles and yew bushes are also commonly grown throughout Metro Nashville, and the winters are mild enough that sweetbay magnolia is evergreen whenever it is cultivated. The pansy flower is popular to plant during the autumn, and some varieties will flower overwinter in Nashville's subtropical climate. However, many hot-weather plants like petunia and even papyrus thrive as annuals, and Japanese banana will die aboveground during winter but re-sprout after the danger of frost is over. Unbeknownst to most Tennesseans, even cold-hardy palms, particularly needle palm and dwarf palmetto, are grown uncommonly but often successfully. High desert plants like Colorado spruce and prickly pear cactus are also grown somewhat commonly, as are "Yucca filamentosa".
Nashville has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen "Cfa", Trewartha "Cf"), with hot, humid summers and generally cool winters typical of the Upper South. Monthly averages range from in January to in July, with a diurnal temperature variation of .
Snowfall occurs during the winter months, but it is usually not heavy. Average annual snowfall is about , falling mostly in January and February and occasionally in March and December. The largest snow event since 2003 was on January 22, 2016, when Nashville received of snow in a single storm; the largest overall was , received on March 17, 1892, during the St. Patrick's Day Snowstorm.
Rainfall is typically greater in November and December, and spring, while August to October are the driest months on average. Spring and fall are prone to severe thunderstorms, which may bring tornadoes, large hail, and damaging wind, with recent major events on April 16, 1998; April 7, 2006; February 5, 2008; April 10, 2009; May 1–2, 2010; and March 3, 2020. Relative humidity in Nashville averages 83% in the mornings and 60% in the afternoons, which is considered moderate for the Southeastern United States. In recent decades, due to urban development, Nashville has developed an urban heat island; especially on cool, clear nights, temperatures are up to warmer in the heart of the city than in rural outlying areas. The Nashville region lies within USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 7a.
Nashville's long springs and autumns combined with a diverse array of trees and grasses can often make it uncomfortable for allergy sufferers. In 2008, Nashville was ranked as the 18th-worst spring allergy city in the U.S. by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
The coldest temperature ever recorded in Nashville was on January 21, 1985, and the highest was on June 29, 2012.
According to the 2016 American Community Survey, there were 667,885 people living in the city. The population density was . There were 294,794 housing units at an average density of .
At the 2010 census, the racial makeup of the city was 65.5% White (58.6% non-Hispanic white), 28.6% African American, 0.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 3.5% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and 1.4% from two or more races. 9.0% of the total population was of Hispanic or Latino origin (they may be of any race). The non-Hispanic White population was 79.5% in 1970.
There were 254,651 households and 141,469 families (55.6% of households). Of households with families, 37.2% had married couples living together, 14.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 4.2% had a male householder with no wife present. 27.9% of all households had children under the age of 18, and 18.8% had at least one member 65 years of age or older. Of the 44.4% of households that are non-families, 36.2% were individuals and 8.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.38 and the average family size was 3.16.
The age distribution was 22.2% under 18, 10.3% from 18 to 24, 32.8% from 25 to 44, 23.9% from 45 to 64, and 10.7% who were 65 or older. The median age was 34.2 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.7 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $46,141, and the median income for a family was $56,377. Males with a year-round, full-time job had a median income of $41,017 versus $36,292 for females. The per capita income for the city was $27,372. About 13.9% of families and 18.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.5% of those under age 18 and 9.9% of those age 65 or over. Of residents 25 or older, 33.4% have a bachelor's degree or higher.
Because of its relatively low cost of living and large job market, Nashville has become a popular city for immigrants. Nashville's foreign-born population more than tripled in size between 1990 and 2000, increasing from 12,662 to 39,596. The city's largest immigrant groups include Mexicans, Kurds, Vietnamese, Laotians, Arabs, and Somalis. There are also smaller communities of Pashtuns from Afghanistan and Pakistan concentrated primarily in Antioch. Nashville has the largest Kurdish community in the United States, numbering approximately 15,000. In 2009, about 60,000 Bhutanese refugees were being admitted to the U.S., and some were expected to resettle in Nashville. During the Iraqi election of 2005, Nashville was one of the few international locations where Iraqi expatriates could vote. The American Jewish community in Nashville dates back over 150 years, and numbered about 8,000 in 2015, plus 2,000 Jewish college students.
, Nashville has the largest metropolitan area in the state of Tennessee, with an estimated population of 1,959,495. The Nashville metropolitan area encompasses 14 of 41 Middle Tennessee counties: Cannon, Cheatham, Davidson, Dickson, Hickman, Macon, Maury, Robertson, Rutherford, Smith, Sumner, Trousdale, Williamson, and Wilson. The 2019 population of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Columbia combined statistical area was estimated at 2,087,725.
59.6% of people in Nashville claim religious affiliation according to information compiled by Sperling's BestPlaces. The dominant religion in Nashville is Christianity, comprising 57.7% of the population. The Christian population is broken down into 20.6% Baptists, 6.2% Catholics, 5.6% Methodists, 3.4% Pentecostals, 3.4% Presbyterians, 0.8% Mormons, and 0.5% Lutherans. 15.7% identify with other forms of Christianity, including the Orthodox Church and Disciples of Christ. Islam is the second largest religion, comprising 0.8% of the population. 0.6% of the population adhere to eastern religions such as Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism and Hinduism, and 0.3% follow Judaism.
As the "home of country music", Nashville has become a major music recording and production center. The Big Three record labels, as well as numerous independent labels, have offices in Nashville, mostly in the Music Row area. Nashville has been the headquarters of guitar company Gibson since 1984. Since the 1960s, Nashville has been the second-largest music production center (after New York City) in the United States. Nashville's music industry is estimated to have a total economic impact of about $10billion per year and to contribute approximately 56,000 jobs to the Nashville area.
In recent times Nashville has been described as a "southern boomtown" by numerous publications, with it having the third fastest growing economy in the United States as of 2017. It has been stated by the US Census bureau that Nashville "adds an average of 100 people a day to its net population increase". The Nashville region was also stated to be the "Number One" Metro Area for Professional and Business Service Jobs in America, as well as having the "hottest Housing market in America" as stated by Zillow.
Although Nashville is renowned as a music recording center and tourist destination, its largest industry is health care. Nashville is home to more than 300 health care companies, including Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), the world's largest private operator of hospitals. , it is estimated the health care industry contributes per year and 200,000 jobs to the Nashville-area economy.
CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America and one of the largest private corrections company in the United States, was founded in Nashville in 1983. Vanderbilt University was one of its investors prior to the company's initial public offering. The City of Nashville's pension fund includes "a $921,000 stake" in the company as of 2017. The "Nashville Scene" notes that, "A drop in CoreCivic stock value, however minor, would have a direct impact on the pension fund that represents nearly 25,000 current and former Metro employees."
The automotive industry is also becoming important for the Middle Tennessee region. Nissan North America moved its corporate headquarters in 2006 from Gardena, California (Los Angeles County) to Franklin, a suburb south of Nashville. Nissan also has its largest North American manufacturing plant in Smyrna, another suburb of Nashville. Largely as a result of the increased development of Nissan and other Japanese economic interests in the region, Japan moved its former New Orleans consulate-general to Nashville's Palmer Plaza. General Motors also operates an assembly plant in Spring Hill, about south of Nashville.
Bridgestone has a strong presence with their North American headquarters located in Nashville, with manufacturing plants and a distribution center in nearby counties.
Other major industries in Nashville include insurance, finance, and publishing (especially religious publishing). The city hosts headquarters operations for several Protestant denominations, including the United Methodist Church, Southern Baptist Convention, National Baptist Convention USA, and the National Association of Free Will Baptists.
Nashville is also known for some of their famously popular Southern confections, including Goo Goo Clusters (which have been made in Nashville since 1912).
Fortune 500 companies with offices within Nashville include BNY Mellon, Bridgestone Americas, Ernst & Young, Community Health Systems, Dell, Deloitte, Dollar General, Hospital Corporation of America, Nissan North America, Philips, Tractor Supply Company, and UBS. Of these, Community Health Systems, Dollar General, Hospital Corporation of America, and Tractor Supply Company are headquartered in the city.
In 2013, the city ranked No. 5 on "Forbes" list of the Best Places for Business and Careers. In 2015, Forbes put Nashville as the 4th Best City for White Collar Jobs.
In 2015, Business Facilities' 11th Annual Rankings report named Nashville the number one city for Economic Growth Potential.
In May 2018, AllianceBernstein pledged to build a private client office in the city by mid-2019 and to move its headquarters from New York City to Nashville by 2024. Additionally, in November 2018, Amazon announced its plans to build an operations center in the Nashville Yards development to serve as the hub for their Retail Operations division.
Real estate is becoming a driver for the city's economy. Based on a survey of nearly 1,500 real estate industry professionals conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute, Nashville ranked 7th nationally in terms of attractiveness to real estate investors for 2016. , according to city figures, there is more than $2 billion in real estate projects underway or projected to start in 2016. Due to high yields available to investors, Nashville has been attracting a lot of capital from out-of-state. A key factor that has been attributed to the increase in investment is the adjustment to the city's zoning code. Developers can easily include a combination of residential, office, retail and entertainment space into their projects. Additionally, the city has invested heavily into public parks. Centennial Park is undergoing extensive renovations. The change in the zoning code and the investment in public space is consistent with the millennial generation's preference for walkable urban neighborhoods.
According to the city's 2016 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city are:
Much of the city's cultural life has revolved around its large university community. Particularly significant in this respect were two groups of critics and writers who were associated with Vanderbilt University in the early 20th century: the Fugitives and the Agrarians.
Popular destinations include Fort Nashborough and Fort Negley, the former being a reconstruction of the original settlement, the latter being a semi-restored Civil War battle fort; the Tennessee State Museum; and The Parthenon, a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens. The Tennessee State Capitol is one of the oldest working state capitol buildings in the nation. The Hermitage, the former home of President Andrew Jackson, is one of the largest presidential homes open to the public, and is also one of the most visited.
Some of the more popular types of local cuisine include hot chicken, hot fish, barbecue, and meat and three.
Nashville has a vibrant music and entertainment scene spanning a variety of genres. With a long history in the music scene it is no surprise that city was nicknamed 'Music City.' The Tennessee Performing Arts Center is the major performing arts center of the city. It is the home of the Nashville Repertory Theatre, the Nashville Opera, the Music City Drum and Bugle Corps, and the Nashville Ballet. In September 2006, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center opened as the home of the Nashville Symphony.
As the city's name itself is a metonym for the country music industry, many popular tourist attractions involve country music, including the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Belcourt Theatre, and Ryman Auditorium. The Ryman was home to the "Grand Ole Opry" until 1974 when the show moved to the Grand Ole Opry House, east of downtown. The Opry plays there several times a week, except for an annual winter run at the Ryman.
Many music clubs and honky-tonk bars are in downtown Nashville, particularly the area encompassing Lower Broadway, Second Avenue, and Printer's Alley, which is often referred to as "the District".
Each June, the CMA Music Festival (formerly known as Fan Fair) brings thousands of country fans to the city. The Tennessee State Fair is also held annually in September.
Nashville was once home of television shows such as "Hee Haw" and "Pop! Goes the Country", as well as The Nashville Network and later, RFD-TV. Country Music Television and Great American Country currently operate from Nashville. The city was also home to the Opryland USA theme park, which operated from 1972 to 1997 before being closed by its owners (Gaylord Entertainment Company) and soon after demolished to make room for the Opry Mills mega-shopping mall.
The Contemporary Christian music industry is based along Nashville's Music Row, with a great influence in neighboring Williamson County. The Christian record companies include EMI Christian Music Group, Provident Label Group and Word Records.
Music Row houses many gospel music and Contemporary Christian music companies centered around 16th and 17th Avenues South. On River Road, off Charlotte Pike in West Nashville, the "CabaRay" opened its doors on January 18, 2018. The performing venue of Ray Stevens it offers a Vegas-style dinner and a show atmosphere. There is also a piano bar and a gift shop.
Although Nashville was never known as a major jazz town, it did have many great jazz bands, including The Nashville Jazz Machine led by Dave Converse and its current version, the Nashville Jazz Orchestra, led by Jim Williamson, as well as The Establishment, led by Billy Adair. The Francis Craig Orchestra entertained Nashvillians from 1929 to 1945 from the Oak Bar and Grille Room in the Hermitage Hotel. Craig's orchestra was also the first to broadcast over local radio station WSM-AM and enjoyed phenomenal success with a 12-year show on the NBC Radio Network. In the late 1930s, he introduced a newcomer, Dinah Shore, a local graduate of Hume Fogg High School and Vanderbilt University.
Radio station WMOT-FM in nearby Murfreesboro, which formerly programmed jazz almost exclusively and still does so on the weekends, aided significantly in the recent revival of the city's jazz scene, as has the non-profit Nashville Jazz Workshop, which holds concerts and classes in a renovated building in the north Nashville neighborhood of Germantown. Fisk University also maintains a jazz station, WFSK.
Nashville has an active theatre scene and is home to several professional and community theatre companies. Nashville Children's Theatre, Nashville Repertory Theatre, the Nashville Shakespeare Festival, the Dance Theatre of Tennessee and the Tennessee Women's Theater Project are among the most prominent professional companies. One community theatre, Circle Players, has been in operation for over 60 years.
The Barbershop Harmony Society has its headquarters in Nashville.
Perhaps the biggest factor in drawing visitors to Nashville is its association with country music, in which the Nashville sound played a role. Many visitors to Nashville attend live performances of the Grand Ole Opry, the world's longest-running live radio show. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is another major attraction relating to the popularity of country music. The Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, the Opry Mills regional shopping mall and the "General Jackson" showboat, are all located in what is known as Music Valley.
Civil War history is important to the city's tourism industry. Sites pertaining to the Battle of Nashville and the nearby Battle of Franklin and Battle of Stones River can be seen, along with several well-preserved antebellum plantation houses such as Belle Meade Plantation, Carnton plantation in Franklin, and Belmont Mansion.
Nashville has many arts centers and museums, including the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, the Tennessee State Museum, the Johnny Cash Museum, Fisk University's Van Vechten and Aaron Douglas Galleries, Vanderbilt University's Fine Art Gallery and Sarratt Gallery, the National Museum of African American Music, and the full-scale replica of the Parthenon.
Nashville has become an increasingly popular destination for bachelor and bachelorette parties. In 2017 "Nashville Scene" counted 33 bachelorette parties on Lower Broadway ("from Fifth Avenue down to the Cumberland River, it's their town") in less than two hours on a Friday night, and stated that the actual number was likely higher. Downtown, the newspaper wrote, "offers five blocks of bars with live music and no cover". In 2018, "The New York Times" called Nashville "the hottest destination for bachelorette parties in the country" because of the honky-tonk bars' live music. City boosters welcome the bachelorette parties because temporary visitors may become permanent; "BuzzFeed" wrote, "These women are at precisely the point in their lives when a move to Nashville is possible". The CMT reality television series "Bachelorette Weekend" follows the employees at Bach Weekend, a Nashville company that designs and throws bachelor and bachelorette parties.
Nashville is a colorful, well-known city in several different arenas. As such, it has earned various sobriquets, including:
Nashville has additionally earned the moniker "The Hot Chicken Capital", becoming known for the local specialty cuisine hot chicken. The Music City Hot Chicken Festival is hosted annually in Nashville and several restaurants make this spicy version of southern fried chicken.
Nashville is home to four professional sports franchises. Three play at the highest professional level of their respective sports: the Tennessee Titans of the National Football League, the Nashville Predators of the National Hockey League, and Nashville SC of Major League Soccer. The city is also home to one minor league team: the Nashville Sounds of Minor League Baseball's Pacific Coast League. An investment group, Music City Baseball LLC, seeks to secure a Major League Baseball expansion franchise or lure an existing team to the city.
The Tennessee Titans moved to Nashville in 1998. Previously known as the Houston Oilers, which began play in 1960 in Houston, Texas, the team relocated to Tennessee in 1997. They played at the Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis for one season, then moved to Nashville in 1998 and played in Vanderbilt Stadium for one season. During those two years, the team was known as the Tennessee Oilers, but changed its name to Titans in 1999. The team now plays at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, which opened in 1999. Since moving to Nashville, the Titans have won three division championships (2000, 2002, and 2008) and one conference championship (1999). They competed in 1999's Super Bowl XXXIV, losing to the St. Louis Rams, 23–16. The city previously hosted the 1939 Nashville Rebels of the American Football League and two Arena Football League teams named the Nashville Kats (1997–2001 and 2005–2007).
From April 25–27, 2019, Nashville hosted the 2019 NFL Draft, which saw an estimated 200,000 fans attend each day.
The Nashville Predators joined the National Hockey League as an expansion team in the 1998–99 season. The team plays its home games at Bridgestone Arena. The Predators have won two division championships (2017–18 and 2018–19) and one conference championship (2016–17).
Nashville SC, a Major League Soccer franchise, began play in 2020 at Nissan Stadium. It is expected to relocate to the Nashville Fairgrounds Stadium upon its planned completion in 2022.
The Nashville Sounds baseball team was established in 1978 as expansion franchise of the Double-A Southern League. The Sounds won the league championship in 1979 and 1982. In 1985, the Double-A Sounds were replaced by a Triple-A team of the American Association. After the American Association dissolved in 1997, the Sounds joined the Triple-A Pacific Coast League in 1998 and won the league championship in 2005. The Sounds left their original ballpark, Herschel Greer Stadium, in 2015 for First Horizon Park, a new ballpark built on the former site of Sulphur Dell ballpark. In total, the Sounds have won ten division titles, two conference titles, and three league championships.
Nashville hosts the second-oldest continually operating race track in the United States, the Fairgrounds Speedway. It hosted NASCAR Winston Cup races from 1958 to 1984, NASCAR Busch Series and NASCAR Truck Series in the 1980s and 1990s, and later the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series and ARCA Racing Series.
The Nashville Invitational was a golf tournament on the PGA Tour from 1944 to 1946. The Sara Lee Classic was part of the LPGA Tour from 1988 to 2002. The BellSouth Senior Classic of the Champions Tour was held from 1994 to 2003. The Nashville Golf Open is part of the Web.com Tour since 2016. The 1961 Women's Western Open and 1980 U.S. Women's Open Golf Championship were also held in Nashville.
Nashville is also home to four Division I athletic programs. Nashville is also home to the NCAA college football Music City Bowl.
The Nashville Rollergirls are Nashville's only women's flat track roller derby team. Established in 2006, Nashville Rollergirls compete on a regional and national level. They play their home games at the Nashville Fairgrounds Sports Arena. In 2014, they hosted the WFTDA Championships at Municipal Auditorium.
The Nashville Kangaroos are an Australian Rules Football team that compete in the United States Australian Football League. The Kangaroos play their home games at Elmington Park. The team is the reigning USAFL Central Region Champions.
Three Little League Baseball teams from Nashville (one in 1970; one in 2013; and, one in 2014) have qualified for the Little League World Series. Teams from neighboring Goodlettsville qualified for the 2012 and 2016 series, giving the metropolitan area teams in three consecutive years to so qualify; and four teams in five years.
Metro Board of Parks and Recreation owns and manages of land and 99 parks and greenways (comprising more than 3% of the total area of the county).
Warner Parks, situated on of land, consists of a learning center, of scenic roads, of hiking trails, and of horse trails. It is also the home of the annual Iroquois Steeplechase.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers maintains parks on Old Hickory Lake and Percy Priest Lake. These parks are used for activities such as fishing, water skiing, sailing and boating. The Harbor Island Yacht Club makes its headquarters on Old Hickory Lake, and Percy Priest Lake is home to the Vanderbilt Sailing Club and Nashville Shores.
Other parks in Nashville include Centennial Park, Shelby Park, Cumberland Park, and Radnor Lake State Natural Area.
On August 27, 2013, Nashville mayor Karl Dean revealed plans for two new riverfront parks on the east and west banks of the Cumberland River downtown. Construction on the east bank park began in the fall of 2013, and the projected completion date for the west bank park is 2015. Among many exciting benefits of this Cumberland River re-development project is the construction of a highly anticipated outdoor amphitheater. Located on the west bank, this music venue will be surrounded by a new park and will replace the previous thermal plant site. It will include room for 6,500 spectators with 2,500 removable seats and additional seating on an overlooking grassy knoll. In addition, the east bank park will include a river landing, providing people access to the river. In regard to the parks' benefits for Nashvillian civilians, Mayor Dean remarked that "if done right, the thermal site can be an iconic park that generations of Nashvillians will be proud of and which they can enjoy".
The city of Nashville and Davidson County merged in 1963 as a way for Nashville to combat the problems of urban sprawl. The combined entity is officially known as "the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County", and is popularly known as "Metro Nashville" or simply "Metro". It offers services such as police, fire, electricity, water and sewage treatment. When the Metro government was formed in 1963, the government was split into two service districts—the "urban services district" and the "general services district." The urban services district encompasses the 1963 boundaries of the former City of Nashville, approximately , and the general services district includes the remainder of Davidson County. There are six smaller municipalities within the consolidated city-county: Belle Meade, Berry Hill, Forest Hills, Oak Hill, Goodlettsville (partially), and Ridgetop (partially). These municipalities use a two-tier system of government, with the smaller municipality typically providing police services and the Metro Nashville government providing most other services. Previously, the city of Lakewood also had a separate charter. However, Lakewood residents voted in 2010 and 2011 to dissolve its city charter and join the metropolitan government, with both votes passing.
Nashville is governed by a mayor, vice-mayor, and 40-member Metropolitan Council. It uses the strong-mayor form of the mayor–council system. The current mayor of Nashville is John Cooper. The Metropolitan Council is the legislative body of government for Nashville and Davidson County. There are five council members who are elected at large and 35 council members that represent individual districts. The Metro Council has regular meetings that are presided over by the vice-mayor, who is currently Jim Shulman. The Metro Council meets on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 6:00pm, according to the Metropolitan Charter.
Nashville is home to the Tennessee Supreme Court's courthouse for Middle Tennessee and the Estes Kefauver Federal Building and United States Courthouse, home of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.
Nashville has been a Democratic stronghold since at least the end of Reconstruction, and has remained staunchly Democratic even as the state as a whole has trended strongly Republican. Pockets of Republican influence exist in the wealthier portions of the city, but they are usually no match for the overwhelming Democratic trend in the rest of the city. The issue of school busing roiled politics for years but subsided after the 1990s. While local elections are officially nonpartisan, nearly all the city's elected officials are publicly known as Democrats. The city is split among 10 state house districts, all of which are held by Democrats. Three state senate districts and part of a fourth are within the county; two are held by Democrats and two by Republicans.
In the state legislature, Nashville politicians serve as leaders of both the Senate and House Democratic Caucuses. Representative Mike Stewart serves as Chairman of the House Caucus. Senator Jeff Yarbro serves as Chairman of the Senate Caucus.
Democrats are no less dominant at the federal level. Democratic presidential candidates have failed to carry Davidson County only five times since reconstruction; in 1928, 1968, 1972, 1984 and 1988. In most years, Democrats have carried Nashville at the presidential level with relatively little difficulty, even in years when they lose Tennessee as a whole. This has been especially true in recent elections. In the 2000 presidential election, Tennessean Democrat Al Gore carried Nashville with over 59% of the vote even as he narrowly lost his home state. In the 2004 election, Democrat John Kerry carried Nashville with 55% of the vote even as George W. Bush won the state by 14 points. In 2008, Barack Obama carried Nashville with 60% of the vote even as Republican John McCain won Tennessee by 15 points.
Despite its large size, Nashville has been in a single congressional district for most of the time since Reconstruction; it is currently the 5th District, represented by Democrat Jim Cooper, who is also the brother of Nashville's current mayor John Cooper. A Republican has not represented a significant portion of Nashville since 1874. Republicans made a few spirited challenges in the mid-1960s and early 1970s. The Republicans almost won it in 1968; only a strong showing by a candidate from Wallace's American Independent Party kept the seat in Democratic hands. However, they have not made a serious bid for the district since 1972, when the Republican candidate gained only 38% of the vote even as Nixon carried the district in the presidential election by a large margin. The district's best-known congressman was probably Jo Byrns, who represented the district from 1909 to 1936 and was Speaker of the House for much of Franklin Roosevelt's first term as President. Another nationally prominent congressman from Nashville was Percy Priest, who represented the district from 1941 to 1956 and was House Majority Whip from 1949 to 1953. Former mayors Richard Fulton and Bill Boner also sat in the U.S. House before assuming the Metro mayoral office.
From 2003 to 2013, a sliver of southwestern Nashville was located in the 7th District, represented by Republican Marsha Blackburn. This area was roughly coextensive with the portion of Nashville she had represented in the state senate from 1998 to 2002. However, the 5th regained all of Nashville after the 2010 census.
According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting database, Metropolitan Nashville has a violent crime rate approximately three times the national average, and a property crime rate approximately 1.6 times the average. The following table shows Nashville's crime rate per 100,000 inhabitants for seven UCR categories.
The city is served by Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, also referred to as Metro Schools. This district is the second largest school district in Tennessee, and enrolls approximately 85,000 students at 169 schools. In addition, Nashville is home to numerous private schools, including Montgomery Bell Academy, Harpeth Hall School, University School of Nashville, Lipscomb Academy, The Ensworth School, Christ Presbyterian Academy, Father Ryan High School, Pope John Paul II High School, Franklin Road Academy, Davidson Academy, Nashville Christian School, Donelson Christian Academy, and St. Cecilia Academy. Combined, all of the private schools in Nashville enroll more than 15,000 students.
Nashville is often labeled the "Athens of the South" due to the many colleges and universities in the city and the metropolitan area. Vanderbilt University is the largest university in Nashville, with approximately 13,000 students. Vanderbilt is considered one of the most prestigious research universities in the United States, and is particularly known for its medical, legal, and education programs.
Nashville is home to four historically black institutions of higher education, the second highest in the nation, behind Atlanta, Georgia. These are Fisk University, Tennessee State University, Meharry Medical College, and American Baptist College.
Other schools based in Nashville include Belmont University, Lipscomb University, Trevecca Nazarene University, John A. Gupton College, Watkins College of Art, Design & Film. The Tennessee Board of Regents operates Nashville State Community College and the Nashville branch of the Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology. In total, enrollment in post-secondary education in Nashville is around 43,000.
In addition, there are several other institutes of higher education in the Nashville metropolitan area. Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), a full-sized public university with Tennessee's second largest undergraduate population, is located in Murfreesboro. Other schools include Daymar College and O'More College of Design, both in Franklin, and Cumberland University in Lebanon.
The daily newspaper in Nashville is "The Tennessean", which until 1998 competed with the "Nashville Banner", another daily paper that was housed in the same building under a joint-operating agreement. "The Tennessean" is the city's most widely circulated newspaper. Online news service "NashvillePost.com" competes with the printed dailies to break local and state news. Several weekly papers are also published in Nashville, including "The Nashville Pride", "Nashville Business Journal", "Nashville Scene" and "The Tennessee Tribune". Historically, "The Tennessean" was associated with a broadly liberal editorial policy, while "The Banner" carried staunchly conservative views in its editorial pages; "The Banner"s heritage had been carried on, to an extent, by "The City Paper" which folded in August 2013 after having been founded in October 2000. The "Nashville Scene" is the area's alternative weekly broadsheet. "The Nashville Pride" is aimed towards community development and serves Nashville's entrepreneurial population. "Nashville Post" is an online news source covering business, politics and sports.
Nashville is home to eleven broadcast television stations, although most households are served by direct cable network connections. Comcast Cable has a monopoly on terrestrial cable service in Davidson County (but not throughout the entire media market). Nashville is ranked as the 29th largest television market in the United States. Major stations include WKRN-TV 2 (ABC), WSMV-TV 4 (NBC), WTVF 5 (CBS), WNPT 8 (PBS), WZTV 17 (Fox), WNPX-TV 28 (ion), WPGD-TV 50 (TBN), WLLC-LP 42 (Univision), WUXP-TV 30 (MyNetworkTV), and WNAB 58 (CW).
Nashville is also home to cable networks Country Music Television (CMT), among others. CMT's master control facilities are located in New York City with the other Viacom properties. The Top 20 Countdown and CMT Insider are taped in their Nashville studios. Shop at Home Network was once based in Nashville, but the channel signed off in 2008.
Several FM and AM radio stations broadcast in the Nashville area, including five college stations and one LPFM community radio station. Nashville is ranked as the 44th largest radio market in the United States. WSM-FM is owned by Cumulus Media and is 95.5 FM. WSM-AM, owned by Gaylord Entertainment Company, can be heard nationally on 650 AM or online at WSM Online from its studios located inside the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center. WSM is famous for carrying live broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry, through which it helped spread the popularity of country music in America, and continues to broadcast country music throughout its broadcast day. WLAC, whose over-the-air signal is heard at 1510 AM, is an iHeartMedia-owned talk station which was originally sponsored by the Life and Casualty Insurance Company of Tennessee, and its competitor WWTN is owned by Cumulus.
Several major motion pictures have been filmed in Nashville, including "The Green Mile", "The Last Castle", "Gummo", "The Thing Called Love", "Two Weeks", "Coal Miner's Daughter", "Nashville", and "Country Strong", as well as the ABC television series "Nashville".
According to the 2016 American Community Survey, 78.1% of working Nashville residents commuted by driving alone, 9.8% carpooled, 2% used public transportation, and 2.2% walked. About 1.1% used all other forms of transportation, including taxicab, motorcycle, and bicycle. About 6.7% of working Nashville residents worked at home. In 2015, 7.9% of city of Nashville households were without a car; this figure decreased to 5.9% in 2016. The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. Nashville averaged 1.72 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8 per household.
Nashville is centrally located at the crossroads of three Interstate Highways, I-40 (east-west), I-24 (northwest-southeast) and I-65 (north-south). I-40 connects the city between Memphis to the west and Knoxville to the east, I-24 connects between Clarksville to the northwest and Chattanooga to the southeast, and I-65 connects between Louisville, Kentucky to the north and Huntsville, Alabama to the south. All three of these interstate highways, which also serve the suburbs, form brief concurrencies with each other in the city, and completely encircle downtown. Interstate 440 is a bypass route connecting I-40, I-65, and I-24 south of downtown Nashville. Briley Parkway, the majority of which is a freeway, forms a bypass around the north side of the city and its interstates. Ellington Parkway, a freeway made up of a section of U.S. Route 31E, runs between east of downtown and Briley Parkway, serving as an alternative route to I-65. Interstate 840 provides an outer southern bypass for the city and its suburbs. U.S. Routes 31, 31E, 31W, 31 Alternate, 41, 41 Alternate, 70, 70S, and 431 also serve Nashville, intersecting in the city's center as arterial surface roads and radiating outward. Most of these routes are called "pikes" and many carry the names of nearby towns to which they lead. Among these are Clarksville Pike, Gallatin Pike, Lebanon Pike, Murfreesboro Pike, Nolensville Pike, and Franklin Pike.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority provides bus transit within the city. Routes utilize a hub and spoke method, centered around the Music City Central transit station in downtown. A rejected expansion plan included use of bus rapid transit and light rail service at some point in the future.
Nashville is considered a gateway city for rail and air traffic for the Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion.
The city is served by Nashville International Airport (BNA), which is operated by the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority (MNAA). 18.27 million passengers visited the airport in 2019, making it the 31st busiest airport in the US. BNA is ranked fastest growing airport among the top 50 airports in the United States. Nashville International Airport serves 600 daily flights to more than 85 nonstop markets.
In late 2014, BNA became the first major U.S. airport to authorize ridesharing services with dedicated pick-up and drop-off areas.
In addition, the airport authority also operates the John C. Tune Airport, a class E general aviation airport.
Although a major freight hub for CSX Transportation, Nashville is not currently served by Amtrak, the second-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. to have this distinction. Nashville's Union Station had once been a major intercity passenger rail center for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad; Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway; and the Tennessee Central Railway, reaching Midwestern cities and cities on the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. However, by the time of Amtrak's founding, service had been cut back to a single train, the "Floridian", which ran from Chicago to Miami and St. Petersburg, Florida. It served Union Station until its cancellation on October 9, 1979, due to poor track conditions resulting in late trains and low ridership, ending over 120 years of intercity rail service in Nashville.
While there have been no proposals to restore Amtrak service to Nashville, there have been repeated calls from residents. However, Tennessee state officials have advised it will not be happening anytime soon. In addition to scarce federal funding, they do not believe that Nashville is large enough to support intercity rail. "It would be wonderful to say I can be in Memphis and jump on a train to Nashville, but the volume of people who would do that isn't anywhere close to what the cost would be to provide the service," said Ed Cole, chief of environment and planning with the Tennessee Department of Transportation. Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, said rail trips would catch on if routes were expanded, but conceded that it would be nearly impossible to resume Amtrak service to Nashville without a substantial investment from the state. However, in 2020, Amtrak indicated it was considering a service that would run from Atlanta to Nashville by way of Chattanooga.
Nashville launched a passenger commuter rail system called the Music City Star on September 18, 2006. The only currently operational leg of the system connects the city of Lebanon to downtown Nashville at the Nashville Riverfront station. Legs to Clarksville, Murfreesboro and Gallatin are currently in the feasibility study stage. The system plan includes seven legs connecting Nashville to surrounding suburbs.
Bridges within the city include:
The city of Nashville owns the Nashville Electric Service (NES), Metro Water Services (MWS) and Nashville District Energy System (NDES). The Nashville Electric Service provides electricity to the entirety of Davidson County and small portions of the six adjacent counties, and purchases its power from the Tennessee Valley Authority. Metro Water Services provides water, wastewater, and stormwater to Nashville and the majority of Davidson County, as well as water services to small portions of Rutherford and Williamson counties, and wastewater services to small portions of all of the surrounding counties except for Cheatham County. MWS sources its water from the Cumberland River and operates two water treatment plants and three wastewater treatment plants. Ten additional utility companies provide water and sewer service to Nashville and Davidson County. The Nashville District Energy System provides heating and cooling services to certain buildings in downtown, including multiple government buildings. Natural gas is provided by Piedmont Natural Gas, a subsidiary of Duke Energy.
As a major center for the healthcare industry, Nashville is home to several hospitals and other primary care facilities. Most hospitals in Nashville are operated by Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the TriStar Division of Hospital Corporation of America, and Saint Thomas Health. The Metropolitan Nashville Hospital Authority operates Nashville General Hospital, which is affiliated with Meharry Medical College.
Nashville is an active participant in the sister cities program and has relationships with the following towns and cities: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22018 |
Novial
Novial is a constructed international auxiliary language (IAL) for universal communication between speakers of different native languages. It was devised by Otto Jespersen, a Danish linguist who had been involved in the Ido movement, and later in the development of Interlingua.
Its vocabulary is based largely on the Germanic and Romance languages and its grammar is influenced by English.
Novial was introduced in Jespersen's book "An International Language" in 1928. It was updated in his dictionary "Novial Lexike" in 1930, and further modifications were proposed in the 1930s, but the language became dormant with Jespersen's death in 1943. In the 1990s, with the revival of interest in constructed languages brought on by the Internet, some people rediscovered Novial.
The basic rule is: stress the vowel before the last consonant. However, consonantal flexional endings (ie. -d, -m, -n, -s) do not count for this (eg. "bóni" but "bónim", not "boním"; "apérta" but "apértad", not "apertád") so perhaps it is better to say that the vowel before the final consonant of the stem takes the stress.
The digraphs "ch" and "sh" represent or , depending on the speaker. For example, "chokolate" would be pronounced either or.
In Novial, nominative and oblique pronouns are identical.
The standard word order is subject-verb-object, as in English. Therefore, the object need not be marked to distinguish it from the subject:
E.g.:
The accusative (direct object) is therefore most often identical to the nominative (subject). However, in case of an ambiguity problem, an optional accusative ending, -m (-em after a consonant), is available but is rarely used. The preposition em is equivalent to this ending.
The personal possessive adjectives are formed from the pronouns by adding -n or after a consonant -en. This is in fact the genitive (possessive) of the pronoun so "men" means both "my" and "mine" ("of me"):
E.g.:
Possession may also be expressed with the preposition de: "de me", "de vu", and so on.
Verb forms never change with person or number. Most verb tenses, moods and voices are expressed with auxiliary verbs preceding the root form of the main verb. The auxiliaries follow the same word order as the English equivalent. The pronouns are indicated with parentheses and are given for example purposes.
Novial clearly distinguishes the passive of becoming and the passive of being. In English the forms are often the same, using the auxiliary verb "to be" followed by the past participle. However, the passive of becoming is also often expressed with the verb "to get" which is used in the examples below.
The passive voice of becoming is formed with the auxiliary bli followed by the root verb form.
The passive voice of being is formed with the auxiliary es followed by the past passive participle (stem + -t).
The definite article is "li" which is invariant. It is used as in English.
There is no indefinite article, although "un" (one) can be used.
The plural noun is formed by adding –s to the singular (-es after a consonant).
The accusative case is generally identical to the nominative but can optionally be marked with the ending -m (-em after a consonant) with the plural being -sem (-esem after a consonant) or with the preposition em.
The genitive is formed with the ending -n (-en after a consonant) with the plural being -sen (-esen after a consonant) or with the preposition de.
Other cases are formed with prepositions.
All adjectives end in -i, but this may be dropped if it is easy enough to pronounce and no confusion will be caused. Adjectives precede the noun qualified. Adjectives do not agree with the noun but may be given noun endings if there is no noun present to receive them.
Comparative adjectives are formed by placing various particles ("plu, tam," and "min") in front of the adjective receiving the comparison. Likewise, the superlative particles ("maxim" and "minim") precede the adjective. The adjective does not receive an inflection to its ending.
An adjective is converted to a corresponding adverb by adding -m after the -i ending of the adjective.
Comparative and superlative adverbs are formed in the same manner as comparative and superlative adjectives: by placing a specific particle before the adverb receiving the comparison.
See the and at the Novial Wikibook.
Jespersen was a professional linguist, unlike Esperanto's creator. He disliked the arbitrary and artificial character that he found in Esperanto and Ido. Additionally, he objected to those languages' inflectional systems, which he found needlessly complex. He sought to make Novial at once euphonious and regular while also preserving useful structures from natural languages.
In Novial:
A major difference between Novial and Esperanto/Ido concerns noun endings. Jespersen rejected a single vowel to terminate all nouns (-o in Esperanto/Ido), finding it unnatural and potentially confusing. Instead, Novial nouns may end in "-o", "-a", "-e", or "-u" or "-um". These endings may be taken to indicate natural sex according to the custom in Romance languages. Also there is no grammatical gender or requirement for adjectives to agree with nouns.
Here is the Lord's Prayer in Novial and several related languages:
As Jespersen relates in his autobiography, in 1934 he proposed an orthographic reform to Novial, which displeased a part of the users. Jespersen abandoned the essential principle of "one sound, one letter" :
Some of Jespersen's colleagues among philologists jokingly referred to Novial as "Jesperanto", combining his surname with Esperanto, the prototypical auxiliary language. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22024 |
Musical note
In music, a note is a symbol denoting a musical sound. In English usage a note is also the sound itself.
Notes can represent the pitch and duration of a sound in musical notation. A note can also represent a pitch class.
Notes are the building blocks of much written music: discretizations of musical phenomena that facilitate performance, comprehension, and analysis.
The term "note" can be used in both generic and specific senses: one might say either "the piece 'Happy Birthday to You' begins with two notes having the same pitch", or "the piece begins with two repetitions of the same note". In the former case, one uses "note" to refer to a specific musical event; in the latter, one uses the term to refer to a class of events sharing the same pitch. (See also: Key signature names and translations.)
Two notes with fundamental frequencies in a ratio equal to any integer power of two (e.g., half, twice, or four times) are perceived as very similar. Because of that, all notes with these kinds of relations can be grouped under the same pitch class.
In traditional music theory, most countries in the world use the solfège naming convention Do–Re–Mi–Fa–Sol–La–Si, including for instance Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, Romania, most Latin American countries, Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, and all the Arabic-speaking or Persian-speaking countries. However, in English- and Dutch-speaking regions, pitch classes are typically represented by the first seven letters of the Latin alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F and G). A few European countries, including Germany, adopt an almost identical notation, in which H substitutes for B (see below for details). Byzantium used the names Pa–Vu–Ga–Di–Ke–Zo–Ni (Πα—Βου—Γα—Δι—Κε—Ζω—Νη).
The eighth note, or octave, is given the same name as the first, but has double its frequency. The name octave is also used to indicate the span between a note and another with double frequency. To differentiate two notes that have the same pitch class but fall into different octaves, the system of scientific pitch notation combines a letter name with an Arabic numeral designating a specific octave. For example, the now-standard tuning pitch for most Western music, 440 Hz, is named a′ or A4.
There are two formal systems to define each note and octave, the Helmholtz pitch notation and the scientific pitch notation.
Letter names are modified by the accidentals. The sharp sign raises a note by a semitone or half-step, and a flat lowers it by the same amount. In modern tuning a half step has a frequency ratio of , approximately 1.0595. The accidentals are written after the note name: so, for example, F represents F-sharp, B is B-flat, and C is C natural (or C).
Additional accidentals are the double-sharp , raising the frequency by two semitones, and double-flat , lowering it by that amount.
In musical notation, accidentals are placed before the note symbols. Systematic alterations to the seven lettered pitches in the scale can be indicated by placing the symbols in the key signature, which then apply implicitly to all occurrences of corresponding notes. Explicitly noted accidentals can be used to override this effect for the remainder of a bar. A special accidental, the natural symbol , is used to indicate a pitch unmodified by the alterations in the key signature. Effects of key signature and local accidentals do not accumulate. If the key signature indicates G, a local flat before a G makes it G (not G), though often this type of rare accidental is expressed as a natural, followed by a flat () to make this clear. Likewise (and more commonly), a double sharp sign on a key signature with a single sharp indicates only a double sharp, not a triple sharp.
Assuming enharmonicity, many accidentals will create equivalences between pitches that are written differently. For instance, raising the note B to B is equal to the note C. Assuming all such equivalences, the complete chromatic scale adds five additional pitch classes to the original seven lettered notes for a total of 12 (the 13th note completing the octave), each separated by a half-step.
Notes that belong to the diatonic scale relevant in the context are sometimes called "diatonic notes"; notes that do not meet that criterion are then sometimes called "chromatic notes".
Another style of notation, rarely used in English, uses the suffix "is" to indicate a sharp and "es" (only "s" after A and E) for a flat, e.g., Fis for F, Ges for G, Es for E. This system first arose in Germany and is used in almost all European countries whose main language is not English, Greek, or a Romance language (French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Romanian)
In most countries using these suffixes, the letter H is used to represent what is B natural in English, the letter B is used instead of B, and Heses (i.e., H) is used instead of B (although Bes and Heses both denote the English B). Dutch-speakers in Belgium and the Netherlands use the same suffixes, but applied throughout to the notes A to G, so that B, B and B have the same meaning as in English, although they are called B, Bes, and Beses instead of B, B flat and B double flat. Denmark also uses H, but uses Bes instead of Heses for B.
The following chart lists the names used in different countries for the 12 notes of a chromatic scale built on C. The corresponding symbols are shown within parenthesis. Differences between German and English notation are highlighted in bold typeface. Although the English and Dutch names are different, the corresponding symbols are identical.
The table below shows each octave and the frequencies for every note of pitch class A. The traditional (Helmholtz) system centers on the great octave (with capital letters) and small octave (with lower case letters). Lower octaves are named "contra" (with primes before), higher ones "lined" (with primes after). Another system (scientific) suffixes a number (starting with 0, or sometimes −1). In this system A4 is nowadays standardised at 440 Hz, lying in the octave containing notes from C4 (middle C) to B4. The lowest note on most pianos is A0, the highest C8. The MIDI system for electronic musical instruments and computers uses a straight count starting with note 0 for C−1 at 8.1758 Hz up to note 127 for G9 at 12,544 Hz.
A written note can also have a note value, a code that determines the note's relative duration. In order of halving duration, they are: double note (breve); whole note (semibreve); half note (minim); quarter note (crotchet); eighth note (quaver); sixteenth note (semiquaver).; thirty-second note (demisemiquaver), sixty-fourth note (hemidemisemiquaver), and hundred twenty-eighth note.
In a score, each note is assigned a specific vertical position on a staff position (a line or space) on the staff, as determined by the clef. Each line or space is assigned a note name. These names are memorized by musicians and allow them to know at a glance the proper pitch to play on their instruments.
\relative c' {
c1 d1 e1 f1 g1 a1 b1 c1 b1 a1 g1 f1 e1 d1 c1
\layout {
\midi {
The staff above shows the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C and then in reverse order, with no key signature or accidentals.
In all technicality, "music" can be composed of notes at any arbitrary physical frequency. Since the physical causes of music are vibrations of mechanical systems, they are often measured in hertz (Hz), with 1 Hz meaning one vibration per second. For historical and other reasons, especially in Western music, only twelve notes of fixed frequencies are used. These fixed frequencies are mathematically related to each other, and are defined around the central note, A4. The current "standard pitch" or modern "concert pitch" for this note is 440 Hz, although this varies in actual practice (see History of pitch standards).
The note-naming convention specifies a letter, any accidentals, and an octave number. Each note is an integer number of half-steps away from concert A (A4). Let this distance be denoted "n". If the note is above A4, then "n" is positive; if it is below A4, then "n" is negative. The frequency of the note ("f") (assuming equal temperament) is then:
For example, one can find the frequency of C5, the first C above A4. There are 3 half-steps between A4 and C5 (A4 → A4 → B4 → C5), and the note is above A4, so "n" = 3. The note's frequency is:
To find the frequency of a note below A4, the value of "n" is negative. For example, the F below A4 is F4. There are 4 half-steps (A4 → A4 → G4 → G4 → F4), and the note is below A4, so "n" = −4. The note's frequency is:
Finally, it can be seen from this formula that octaves automatically yield powers of two times the original frequency, since "n" is a multiple of 12 (12"k", where "k" is the number of octaves up or down), and so the formula reduces to:
yielding a factor of 2. In fact, this is the means by which this formula is derived, combined with the notion of equally-spaced intervals.
The distance of an equally tempered semitone is divided into 100 cents. So 1200 cents are equal to one octave – a frequency ratio of 2:1. This means that a cent is precisely equal to , which is approximately .
For use with the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard, a frequency mapping is defined by:
where "p" is the MIDI note number (and 69 is the number of semitones between C−1 (note 0) and A4). And in the opposite direction, to obtain the frequency from a MIDI note "p", the formula is defined as:
For notes in an A440 equal temperament, this formula delivers the standard MIDI note number ("p"). Any other frequencies fill the space between the whole numbers evenly. This lets MIDI instruments be tuned accurately in any microtuning scale, including non-western traditional tunings.
Music notation systems have used letters of the alphabet for centuries. The 6th-century philosopher Boethius is known to have used the first fourteen letters of the classical Latin alphabet (the letter J did not exist until the 16th century),
to signify the notes of the two-octave range that was in use at the time and in modern scientific pitch notation are represented as
Though it is not known whether this was his devising or common usage at the time, this is nonetheless called "Boethian notation". Although Boethius is the first author known to use this nomenclature in the literature, Ptolemy wrote of the two-octave range five centuries before, calling it the "perfect system" or "complete system" – as opposed to other, smaller-range note systems that did not contain all possible species of octave (i.e., the seven octaves starting from A, B, C, D, E, F, and G).
Following this, the range (or compass) of used notes was extended to three octaves, and the system of repeating letters A–G in each octave was introduced, these being written as lower-case for the second octave (a–g) and double lower-case letters for the third (aa–gg). When the range was extended down by one note, to a G, that note was denoted using the Greek letter gamma (Γ). (It is from this that the French word for scale, "gamme" derives, and the English word gamut, from "Gamma-Ut", the lowest note in Medieval music notation.)
The remaining five notes of the chromatic scale (the black keys on a piano keyboard) were added gradually; the first being B, since B was flattened in certain modes to avoid the dissonant tritone interval. This change was not always shown in notation, but when written, B (B-flat) was written as a Latin, round "b", and B (B-natural) a Gothic script (known as Blackletter) or "hard-edged" b. These evolved into the modern flat () and natural () symbols respectively. The sharp symbol arose from a barred b, called the "cancelled b".
In parts of Europe, including Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Norway, Denmark, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Finland and Iceland (and Sweden before about 1990s), the Gothic b transformed into the letter H (possibly for "hart", German for "hard", or just because the Gothic b resembled an H). Therefore, in German music notation, H is used instead of B (B-natural), and B instead of B (B-flat). Occasionally, music written in German for international use will use H for B-natural and Bb for B-flat (with a modern-script lower-case b instead of a flat sign). Since a Bes or B in Northern Europe (i.e., a B elsewhere) is both rare and unorthodox (more likely to be expressed as Heses), it is generally clear what this notation means.
In Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Romanian, Greek, Albanian, Russian, Mongolian, Flemish, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Turkish and Vietnam notation the notes of scales are given in terms of Do–Re–Mi–Fa–Sol–La–Si rather than C–D–E–F–G–A–B. These names follow the original names reputedly given by Guido d'Arezzo, who had taken them from the first syllables of the first six musical phrases of a Gregorian chant melody "Ut queant laxis", which began on the appropriate scale degrees. These became the basis of the solfège system. "Do" later replaced the original "Ut" for ease of singing (most likely from the beginning of "Dominus", Lord), though "Ut" is still used in some places. "Si" or "Ti" was added as the seventh degree (from "Sancte Johannes", St. John, to whom the hymn is dedicated). The use of "Si" versus "Ti" varies regionally.
The two notation systems most commonly used today are the Helmholtz pitch notation system and the scientific pitch notation system. As shown in the table above, they both include several octaves, each starting from C rather than A. The reason is that the most commonly used scale in Western music is the major scale, and the sequence C–D–E–F–G–A–B–C (the C major scale) is the simplest example of a major scale. Indeed, it is the only major scale that can be obtained using natural notes (the white keys on the piano keyboard) and is typically the first musical scale taught in music schools.
In a newly developed system, primarily in use in the United States, notes of scales become independent of music notation. In this system the natural symbols C–D–E–F–G–A–B refer to the absolute notes, while the names Do–Re–Mi–Fa–So–La–Ti are relativized and show only the relationship between pitches, where Do is the name of the base pitch of the scale, Re is the name of the second pitch, etc. The idea of so-called movable Do, originally suggested by John Curwen in the 19th century, was fully developed and involved into a whole educational system by Zoltán Kodály in the middle of the 20th century, which system is known as the Kodály method or Kodály concept. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22026 |
Nephrology
Nephrology (from Greek" nephros" "kidney", combined with the suffix "-logy", "the study of") is a specialty of medicine and pediatric medicine focused on the kidneys, specifically normal kidney function and kidney disease, the preservation of kidney health, and the treatment of kidney disease, from diet and medication to renal replacement therapy (dialysis and kidney transplantation).
Nephrology also studies systemic conditions that affect the kidneys, such as diabetes and autoimmune disease; and systemic diseases that occur as a result of kidney disease, such as renal osteodystrophy and hypertension. A physician who has undertaken additional training and become certified in nephrology is called a "nephrologist".
The term "nephrology" was first used in about 1960, according the french "néphrologie" proposed by Pr. Jean Hamburger en 1953, from the greek νεφρός / nephrós (kidney). Before then, the specialty was usually referred to as "kidney medicine."
Nephrology concerns the diagnosis and treatment of kidney diseases, including electrolyte disturbances and hypertension, and the care of those requiring renal replacement therapy, including dialysis and renal transplant patients. The word 'dialysis' is from the mid 19th century: via Latin from the Greek word 'dialusis'; from 'dialuein' (split, separate), from 'dia' (apart) and 'luein' (set free). In other words, dialysis replaces the primary (excretory) function of the kidney, which separates (and removes) excess toxins and water from the blood, placing them in the urine.
Many diseases affecting the kidney are systemic disorders not limited to the organ itself, and may require special treatment. Examples include acquired conditions such as systemic vasculitides (e.g. ANCA vasculitis) and autoimmune diseases (e.g., lupus), as well as congenital or genetic conditions such as polycystic kidney disease.
Patients are referred to nephrology specialists after a urinalysis, for various reasons, such as acute kidney failure, chronic kidney disease, hematuria, proteinuria, kidney stones, hypertension, and disorders of acid/base or electrolytes.
A nephrologist is a physician who specializes in the care and treatment of kidney disease. Nephrology requires additional training to become an expert with advanced skills. Nephrologists may provide care to people without kidney problems and may work in general/internal medicine, transplant medicine, immunosuppression management, intensive care medicine, clinical pharmacology, perioperative medicine, or pediatric nephrology.
Nephrologists may further sub-specialise in dialysis, kidney transplantation, chronic kidney disease, cancer-related kidney diseases (Onconephrology), procedural nephrology or other non-nephrology areas as described above.
Procedures a nephrologist may perform include native kidney and transplant kidney biopsy, dialysis access insertion (temporary vascular access lines, tunnelled vascular access lines, peritoneal dialysis access lines), fistula management (angiographic or surgical fistulogram and plasty), and bone biopsy. Bone biopsies are now unusual.
India
To become a nephrologist in India, one has to complete an MBBS (5 and1/2 years) degree, followed by a MD/DNB (3 years) either in medicine or paediatrics, followed by a DM/DNB (3 years) course in either nephrology or paediatric nephrology.
Nephrology training in Australia and New Zealand typically includes completion of a medical degree (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery: 4–6 years), internship (1 year), Basic Physician Training (3 years minimum), successful completion of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians written and clinical examinations, and Advanced Physician Training in Nephrology (2–3 years). The training pathway is overseen and accredited by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Increasingly, nephrologists may additionally complete of a post-graduate degree (usually a PhD) in a nephrology research interest (3–4 years). Finally, all Australian and New Zealand nephrologists participate in career-long professional and personal development through the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and other bodies such as the Australian and New Zealand Society of Nephrology and the Transplant Society of Australia and New Zealand.
In the United Kingdom, nephrology (often called renal medicine) is a subspecialty of general medicine. A nephrologist has completed medical school, foundation year posts (FY1 and FY2) and core medical training (CMT), specialist training (ST) and passed the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) exam before competing for a National Training Number (NTN) in renal medicine. The typical Specialty Training (when they are called a registrar, or a ST) is five years and leads to a Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) in both renal medicine and general (internal) medicine. In that five years, they usually rotate yearly between hospitals on a region (known as a deanery). They are then accepted on to the Specialist Register of the General Medical Council (GMC). Specialty trainees often interrupt their clinical training to obtain research degrees (MD/PhD). After achieving CCT, the registrar (ST) may apply for a permanent post as Consultant in Renal Medicine. Subsequently, some Consultants practice nephrology alone. Others work in this area, and in Intensive Care (ICU) , or General (Internal) or Acute Medicine.
Nephrology training can be accomplished through one of two routes. The first pathway is through an internal medicine pathway leading to an Internal Medicine/Nephrology specialty, and sometimes known as "adult nephrology". The second pathway is through Pediatrics leading to a speciality in Pediatric Nephrology. In the United States, after medical school adult nephrologists complete a three-year residency in internal medicine followed by a two-year (or longer) fellowship in nephrology. Complementary to an adult nephrologist, a pediatric nephrologist will complete a three-year pediatric residency after medical school or a four-year Combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency. This is followed by a three-year fellowship in Pediatic Nephrology. Once training is satisfactorily completed, the physician is eligible to take the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) or American Osteopathic Board of Internal Medicine (AOBIM) nephrology examination. Nephrologists must be approved by one of these boards. To be approved, the physician must fulfill the requirements for education and training in nephrology in order to qualify to take the board's examination. If a physician passes the examination, then he or she can become a nephrology specialist. Typically, nephrologists also need two to three years of training in an ACGME or AOA accredited fellowship in nephrology. Nearly all programs train nephrologists in continuous renal replacement therapy; fewer than half in the United States train in the provision of plasmapheresis. Only pediatric trained physicians are able to train in pediatric nephrology, and internal medicine (adult) trained physicians may enter general (adult) nephrology fellowships.
History and physical examination are central to the diagnostic workup in nephrology. The history typically includes the present illness, family history, general medical history, diet, medication use, drug use and occupation. The physical examination typically includes an assessment of volume state, blood pressure, heart, lungs, peripheral arteries, joints, abdomen and flank. A rash may be relevant too, especially as an indicator of autoimmune disease.
Examination of the urine (urinalysis) allows a direct assessment for possible kidney problems, which may be suggested by appearance of blood in the urine (haematuria), protein in the urine (proteinuria), pus cells in the urine (pyuria) or cancer cells in the urine. A 24-hour urine collection used to be used to quantify daily protein loss (see proteinuria), urine output, creatinine clearance or electrolyte handling by the renal tubules. It is now more common to measure protein loss from a small random sample of urine.
Basic blood tests can be used to check the concentration of hemoglobin, white count, platelets, sodium, potassium, chloride, bicarbonate, urea, creatinine, albumin, calcium, magnesium, phosphate, alkaline phosphatase and parathyroid hormone (PTH) in the blood. All of these may be affected by kidney problems. The serum creatinine concentration is the most important blood test as it is used to estimate the function of the kidney, called the creatinine clearance or estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR).
It is good idea for patients with longterm kidney disease to know an up-to-date list of medications, and their latest blood tests, especially the blood creatinine level. In the United Kingdom, blood tests can monitored online by the patient, through a website called RenalPatientView.
More specialized tests can be ordered to discover or link certain systemic diseases to kidney failure such as infections (hepatitis B, hepatitis C), autoimmune conditions (systemic lupus erythematosus, ANCA vasculitis), paraproteinemias (amyloidosis, multiple myeloma) and metabolic diseases (diabetes, cystinosis).
Structural abnormalities of the kidneys are identified with imaging tests. These may include Medical ultrasonography/ultrasound, computed axial tomography (CT), scintigraphy (nuclear medicine), angiography or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
In certain circumstances, less invasive testing may not provide a certain diagnosis. Where definitive diagnosis is required, a biopsy of the kidney (renal biopsy) may be performed. This typically involves the insertion, under local anaesthetic and ultrasound or CT guidance, of a core biopsy needle into the kidney to obtain a small sample of kidney tissue. The kidney tissue is then examined under a microscope, allowing direct visualization of the changes occurring within the kidney. Additionally, the pathology may also stage a problem affecting the kidney, allowing some degree of prognostication. In some circumstances, kidney biopsy will also be used to monitor response to treatment and identify early relapse. A transplant kidney biopsy may also be performed to look for rejection of the kidney.
Treatments in nephrology can include medications, blood products, surgical interventions (urology, vascular or surgical procedures), renal replacement therapy (dialysis or kidney transplantation) and plasma exchange. Kidney problems can have significant impact on quality and length of life, and so psychological support, health education and advanced care planning play key roles in nephrology.
Chronic kidney disease is typically managed with treatment of causative conditions (such as diabetes), avoidance of substances toxic to the kidneys (nephrotoxins like radiologic contrast and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), antihypertensives, diet and weight modification and planning for end-stage kidney failure. Impaired kidney function has systemic effects on the body. An erythropoetin stimulating agent (ESA) may be required to ensure adequate production of red blood cells, activated vitamin D supplements and phosphate binders may be required to counteract the effects of kidney failure on bone metabolism, and blood volume and electrolyte disturbance may need correction. Diuretics (such as furosemide) may be used to correct fluid overload, and alkalis (such as sodium bicarbonate) can be used to treat metabolic acidosis.
Auto-immune and inflammatory kidney disease, such as vasculitis or transplant rejection, may be treated with immunosuppression. Commonly used agents are prednisone, mycophenolate, cyclophosphamide, ciclosporin, tacrolimus, everolimus, thymoglobulin and sirolimus. Newer, so-called "biologic drugs" or monoclonal antibodies, are also used in these conditions and include rituximab, basiliximab and eculizumab. Blood products including intravenous immunoglobulin and a process known as plasma exchange can also be employed.
When the kidneys are no longer able to sustain the demands of the body, end-stage kidney failure is said to have occurred. Without renal replacement therapy, death from kidney failure will eventually result. Dialysis is an artificial method of replacing some kidney function to prolong life. Renal transplantation replaces kidney function by inserting into the body a healthier kidney from an organ donor and inducing immunologic tolerance of that organ with immunosuppression. At present, renal transplantation is the most effective treatment for end-stage kidney failure although its worldwide availability is limited by lack of availability of donor organs. Generally speaking, kidneys from living donors are 'better' than those from deceased donors, as they last longer.
Most kidney conditions are chronic conditions and so long term followup with a nephrologist is usually necessary. In the United Kingdom, care may be shared with the patient's primary care physician, called a General Practitioner (GP).
The world's first society of nephrology was the French 'Societe de Pathologie Renale'. Its first president was Jean Hamburger, and its first meeting was in Paris in February 1949. In 1959, Hamburger also founded the 'Société de Néphrologie', as a continuation of the older society. The UK's Renal Association was founded in 1950; the second society of nephrologists. Its first president was Arthur Osman. Its first meeting was on 30 March 1950 in London. The Società di Nefrologia Italiana was founded in 1957 and was the first national society to incorporate the phrase nephrologia (or nephrology) into its name.
The word 'nephrology' appeared for the first time in a conference, on 1–4 September 1960 at the "Premier Congrès International de Néphrologie" in Evian and Geneva, the first meeting of the International Society of Nephrology (ISN, International Society of Nephrology). The first day (1.9.60) was in Geneva and the next three (2–4.9.60) were in Evian, France. The early history of the ISN is described by Robinson and Richet in 2005 and the later history by Barsoum in 2011. The ISN is the largest global society representing medical professionals engaged in advancing kidney care worldwide.
In the USA, founded in 1964, the National Kidney Foundation is a national organization representing patients and professionals who treat kidney diseases. Founded in 1966, the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) is the world’s largest professional society devoted to the study of kidney disease. The American Nephrology Nurses' Association (ANNA), founded in 1969, promotes excellence in and appreciation of nephrology nursing to make a positive difference for patients with kidney disease. The American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP) is a non-profit, patient-centric group focused on improving the health and well-being of CKD and dialysis patients. The National Renal Administrators Association (NRAA), founded in 1977, is a national organization that represents and supports the independent and community-based dialysis providers. The American Kidney Fund directly provides financial support to patients in need, as well as participating in health education and prevention efforts. ASDIN (American Society of Diagnostic and Interventional Nephrology) is the main organization of interventional nephrologists. Other organizations include CIDA, VASA etc. which deal with dialysis vascular access. The Renal Support Network (RSN) is a nonprofit, patient-focused, patient-run organization that provides non-medical services to those affected by chronic kidney disease (CKD).
In the United Kingdom, UK National Kidney Federation and Kidney Care UK (previously known as British Kidney Patient Association, BKPA) represent patients, and the Renal Association represents renal physicians and works closely with the National Service Framework for kidney disease.
There is as well an International Office in Brussels, Belgium. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22028 |
Native Esperanto speakers
Native Esperanto speakers (Esperanto: "denaskuloj" or "denaskaj esperantistoj") are people who have acquired Esperanto as one of their native languages. As of 1996, there were 350 or so attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers. Estimates from associations indicate that there were around 1,000 Esperanto-speaking families, involving perhaps 2,000 children in 2004. According to a 2019 synthesis of all the estimates made, they would be between several hundred and 2000, and would compose between <1% and 4.5% of the Esperanto community. In all known cases, speakers are natively bilingual, or multilingual, raised in both Esperanto and either the local national language or the native language of their parents. In all but a handful of cases, it was the father who used Esperanto with the child. In the majority of such families, the parents had the same native language, though in many the parents had different native languages, and only Esperanto in common.
Raising children in Esperanto occurred early in the history of the language, notably with the five children of Montagu Butler (1884–1970). Because of this, some families have passed Esperanto on to their children for several generations. Also notable are young Holocaust victim Petr Ginz, whose drawing of the planet Earth as viewed from the moon was carried aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, and Daniel Bovet, the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Esperanto is not the primary language of any geographic region, outside of temporary gatherings (such as conventions like the World Congress of Esperanto) and isolated offices (such as the World Esperanto Association's central office in Rotterdam). Consequently, native speakers have limited opportunity to meet one another except where meetings are specially arranged. For this reason, many parents consider it important to bring their children regularly to Esperanto conventions such as the annual "Renkontiĝo de Esperanto-familioj" (or "Esperantistaj familioj"; REF, since 1979). Similarly, the annual happens alongside the largest Esperanto convention, the World Congress of Esperanto ("Universala Kongreso").
Below is a list of noted native Esperanto speakers.
The Esperanto of native-speaking children differs from the standard Esperanto spoken by their parents. In some cases this is due to interference from their other native language (the adstrate), but in others it appears to be an effect of acquisition.
Bergen (2001) found the following patterns in a study of eight native-speaking children, aged 6 to 14, who were bilingual in Hebrew (two siblings), Slovak (two siblings), French, Swiss German, Russian, and Croatian.
Among children that do use the accusative, its usage may be regularized from adult usage, at least at young ages. For example, when a screw dropped out of a lock, a young (≤ 5-year-old) child said it "malvenis la pordon." Besides the novel use of "mal-" with "veni" 'to come' to mean 'come away from', the accusative is not used in adult speech for motion away, but only motion towards. However, in this case the child generalized the usage of the accusative for direct objects.
Lindstedt, on the other hand, referencing Bergen's study, contends that "it is difficult to find convincing examples of changes introduced by the process of nativisation. All examples proposed seem rather to be due to (1) transfers from the children’s other native languages, (2) differences between the spoken and written register of Esperanto and, in some cases, (3) incomplete acquisition." Some of the features, such as phonological reduction, can be found in the speech of some fluent non-native speakers, while some other, such as the attrition of the accusative, are completely absent from the speech of some native-speaking children.
Native-speaking children, especially at a young age, may coin words that do not exist in the speech of their parents, often for concepts for which Esperanto has a word they do not yet know, by exploiting the morphology of the language. This is analogous to what adult speakers do for concepts where Esperanto lacks a word, and indicates that some of the grammatical alterations that adult learners may find difficult come easily to native-speaking children. For example, | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22031 |
Nicaragua v. United States
The Republic of Nicaragua v. The United States of America (1986) was a case where the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held that the U.S. had violated international law by supporting the Contras in their rebellion against the Sandinistas and by mining Nicaragua's harbors.
The Court had 15 final decisions upon which it voted. In Statement 9, the Court stated that while the U.S. encouraged human rights violations by the Contras by the manual entitled "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare", this did not make such acts attributable to the U.S.
The case was decided by the ICJ, when the ICJ ruled in favor of Nicaragua and against the United States, to award reparations to Nicaragua.
The Court found in its verdict that the United States was "in breach of its obligations under customary international law not to use force against another State", "not to intervene in its affairs", "not to violate its sovereignty", "not to interrupt peaceful maritime commerce", and "in breach of its obligations under Article XIX of the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation between the Parties signed at Managua on 21 January 1956."
The United States refused to participate in the proceedings after the Court rejected its argument that the ICJ lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. The U.S. also blocked enforcement of the judgment by the United Nations Security Council and thereby prevented Nicaragua from obtaining any compensation. Nicaragua, under the later, post-FSLN government of Violeta Chamorro, withdrew the complaint from the court in September 1992 following a repeal of the law which had required the country to seek compensation.
The first armed intervention by the United States in Nicaragua occurred under President Taft. In 1909, he ordered the overthrow of Nicaraguan President José Santos Zelaya. During August and September 1912, a contingent of 2,300 U.S. Marines landed at the port of Corinto and occupied León and the railway line to Granada. A pro-U.S. government was formed under the occupation. The 1914 Bryan–Chamorro Treaty granted perpetual canal rights to the U.S. in Nicaragua and was signed ten days before the U.S.-operated Panama Canal opened for use, thus preventing anyone from building a competing canal in Nicaragua without U.S. permission.
In 1927, under Augusto César Sandino, a major peasant uprising was launched against both the U.S. occupation and the Nicaraguan establishment. In 1933, the Marines withdrew and left the Nicaraguan National Guard in charge of internal security and elections. In 1934, Anastasio Somoza García, the head of the National Guard, ordered his forces to capture and murder Sandino. In 1937, Somoza assumed the presidency, while still in control of the National Guard, and established a dictatorship that his family controlled until 1979.
The downfall of the regime is attributed to its embezzlement of millions of dollars in foreign aid that was given to the country in response to the devastating 1972 earthquake. Many moderate supporters of the dictatorship began abandoning it in the face of growing revolutionary sentiment. The Sandinista (FSLN) movement organized relief, began to expand its influence and assumed the leadership of the revolution. A popular uprising brought the FSLN to power in 1979. The United States had long been opposed to the socialist FSLN, and after the revolution the Carter administration moved quickly to support the Somocistas with financial and material aid. When Ronald Reagan took office, he augmented the direct support to an anti-Sandinista group, called the Contras, which included factions loyal to the former dictatorship. When Congress prohibited further funding to the Contras, Oliver North continued the funding through arms sales that were also prohibited by Congress.
Nicaragua charged:
Nicaragua demanded that all such actions cease and that the United States had an obligation to pay reparations to the government for damage to their people, property, and economy.
It is noteworthy that the United States, the defaulting party, was the only member that put forward arguments against the validity of the judgment of the court, arguing that it passed a decision that it "had neither the jurisdiction nor the competence to render." Members that sided with the United States in opposing Nicaragua's claims did not challenge the court's jurisdiction, its findings, nor the substantive merits of the case.
The very long judgment first listed 291 points, among them that the United States had been involved in the "unlawful use of force". The alleged violations included attacks on Nicaraguan facilities and naval vessels, the mining of Nicaraguan ports, the invasion of Nicaraguan air space, and the training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying of forces (the "Contras") and seeking to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government. This was followed by the statements that the judges voted on.
The court found evidence of an arms flow between Nicaragua and insurgents in El Salvador between 1979–81. However, there was not enough evidence to show that the Nicaraguan government was imputable for this or that the US response was proportional. The court also found that certain transborder incursions into the territory of Guatemala and Costa Rica, in 1982, 1983 and 1984, were imputable to the Government of Nicaragua. However, neither Guatemala nor Costa Rica had made any request for US intervention; El Salvador did in 1984, well after the US had intervened unilaterally.
"As regards El Salvador, the Court considers that in customary international law the provision of arms to the opposition in another State does not constitute an armed attack on that State. As regards Honduras and Costa Rica, the Court states that, in the absence of sufficient information as to the transborder incursions into the territory of those two States from Nicaragua, it is difficult to decide whether they amount, singly or collectively, to an armed attack by Nicaragua. The Court finds that neither these incursions nor the alleged supply of arms may be relied on as justifying the exercise of the right of collective self-defence."
Regarding human rights violations by the Contras, "The Court has to determine whether the relationship of the contras to the United States Government was such that it would be right to equate the Contras, for legal purposes, with an organ of the United States Government, or as acting on behalf of that Government. The Court considers that the evidence available to it is insufficient to demonstrate the total dependence of the Contras on United States aid. A partial dependency, the exact extent of which the Court cannot establish, may be inferred from the fact that the leaders were selected by the United States, and from other factors such as the organisation, training and equipping of the force, planning of operations, the choosing of targets and the operational support provided. There is no clear evidence that the United States actually exercised such a degree of control as to justify treating the contras as acting on its behalf... Having reached the above conclusion, the Court takes the view that the Contras remain responsible for their acts, in particular the alleged violations by them of humanitarian law. For the United States to be legally responsible, it would have to be proved that that State had effective control of the operations in the course of which the alleged violations were committed."
The Court concluded that the United States, despite its objections, was subject to the Court's jurisdiction. The Court had ruled on November 26 by 11 votes to one that it had jurisdiction in the case on the basis of either Article 36 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (i.e. compulsory jurisdiction) or the 1956 Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation between the United States and Nicaragua. The Charter provides that, in case of doubt, it is for the Court itself to decide whether it has jurisdiction, and that each member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision of the Court. The Court also ruled by unanimity that the present case was admissible. The United States then announced that it had "decided not to participate in further proceedings in this case." About a year after the Court's jurisdictional decision, the United States took the further, radical step of withdrawing its consent to the Court's compulsory jurisdiction, ending its previous 40 year legal commitment to binding international adjudication. The Declaration of acceptance of the general compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice terminated after a 6-month notice of termination delivered by the Secretary of State to the United Nations on October 7, 1985.
Although the Court called on the United States to "cease and to refrain" from the unlawful use of force against Nicaragua and stated that the US was "in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to use force against another state" and ordered it to pay reparations, the United States refused to comply. As a permanent member of the Security Council, the U.S. has been able to block any enforcement mechanism attempted by Nicaragua. On November 3, 1986 the United Nations General Assembly passed, by a vote of 94-3 (El Salvador, Israel and the US voted against), a non-binding resolution urging the US to comply.
On June 27, 1986, the Court made the following ruling:
The Court
The ruling did in many ways clarify issues surrounding prohibition of the use of force and the right of self-defence. Arming and training the Contra was found to be in breach with principles of non-intervention and prohibition of use of force, as was laying mines in Nicaraguan territorial waters.
Nicaragua's dealings with the armed opposition in El Salvador, although it might be considered a breach with the principle of non-intervention and the prohibition of use of force, did not constitute "an armed attack", which is the wording in article 51 justifying the right of self-defence.
The Court considered also the United States claim to be acting in collective self-defence of El Salvador and found the conditions for this not reached as El Salvador never requested the assistance of the United States on the grounds of self-defence.
In regards to laying mines, "...the laying of mines in the waters of another State without any warning or notification is not only an unlawful act but also a breach of the principles of humanitarian law underlying the Hague Convention No. VIII of 1907."
Votes of Judges – Nicaragua v. United States
Judge Schwebel's dissent was twice as long as the actual judgment. Judge Schwebel argued that the Sandinista government came to power with support of foreign intervention similar to what it was now complaining about. He argued that the Sandinista government achieved international recognition and received large amounts of foreign aid in exchange for commitments they subsequently violated. He cited evidence that the Sandinista government had indeed supported the rebels in El Salvador and noted that Nicaragua's own CIA witness contradicted their assertions that they had never at any point supported the rebels in El Salvador. The CIA witness said that there was no evidence of weapon shipments since early 1981, but Schwebel argued that he could not credibly explain why opponents of Contra aid such as Congressman Boland, who also saw the evidence, believed that weapon shipments were ongoing. He further argued that Daniel Ortega publicly admitted such shipments in statements in 1985 and 1986. Furthermore, there was no dispute that the leadership of the rebels operated in Nicaragua from time to time.
He stated that in August 1981 the U.S. offered to resume aid to Nicaragua and to not support regime change in exchange for Nicaraguan commitments to not support the rebels in El Salvador. These proposals were rejected by the Sandinistas, and judge Schwebel argued that the U.S. was entitled to take action in collective self-defense with El Salvador by authorizing Contra aid in December 1981. He stated that further U.S. proposals to resolve the issue made in early 1982 were also ignored by the Sandinistas. The Sandinista government in 1983 began advancing proposals in which it would undertake not to support the rebels, but Schwebel noted that these were coupled with demands that the U.S. cease supporting the lawful government of El Salvador. The judge noted that since early 1985 the U.S. had increasingly made regime change a primary objective but argued this was not inconsistent with self-defense because it was reasonable to believe that Nicaragua would not maintain any commitments unless Sandinista power was diluted.
The judge said that both sides of the wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador had committed atrocities. He said the U.S. mining of Nicaraguan harbors was unlawful in regard to third parties, but not Nicaragua.
The first witness called by Nicaragua was Nicaragua's first Vice Minister of the Interior, Commander Luis Carrion. Commander Carrion had overall responsibility for state security and was in charge of all government operations in the "principal war zone". He was responsible for monitoring United States involvement in military and paramilitary activities against Nicaragua, directing Nicaragua's military and intelligence efforts against the contra guerrillas.
Commander Carrion began by explaining the condition of the contras prior to United States' aid in December 1981. Commander Carrion stated that the contras consisted of insignificant bands of poorly armed and poorly organized members of Somoza's National Guard, who carried out uncoordinated border raids and rustled cattle (presumably for food).
In December 1981, the U.S. Congress authorized an initial appropriation of 19 million dollars to finance paramilitary operations in Nicaragua and elsewhere in Central America. Because of this aid, Commander Carrion stated that the contras began to become centralized and received both training and weapons from the CIA. During 1982 the contra guerrillas engaged the Sandinista armed forces in a series of hit and run border raids and carried out a number of sabotage operations including:
The United States Central Intelligence Agency, and Argentine military officers financed by the CIA, were engaged in the training of the contra forces. The guerrillas received both basic infantry training as well as training in specialized sabotage and demolition for "special operation groups".
The U.S. Congress apportioned new funds for the contras to the amount of $30 million at the end of 1982. This made it possible for the contra forces to launch a military offensive against Nicaragua. According to Commander Carrion, the offensive known as "C Plan" had the objective of capturing the Nicaraguan border town of Jalapa in order to install a provisional government, which could receive international recognition. This plan failed.
After the failure of the Jalapa offensive the contras changed their tactics from frontal assaults to economic warfare against State farms, coffee plantations, grain storage centers, road junctions, etc.
The CIA began to support the contras by setting up and coordinating a communications and logistical system. The CIA supplied aircraft and the construction of airfields in the Honduran border area next to Nicaragua. This allowed the contras to carry out deep penetration raids into the more developed and populated areas of the Nicaraguan interior. U.S. Army engineers created this airfield. The purpose of these deep penetration attacks upon economic targets was to weaken the Nicaraguan economy, causing a shortages of goods.
As a part of its training program for the contras, the CIA prepared and distributed a manual entitled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare. This manual included instructions in the "use of implicit and explicit terror", and in the "selective use of violence for propaganda effects". Commander Carrion explained that the manual was given to the Contras, "All of these terrorist instructions have the main purpose of alienating the population from the Government through creating a climate of terror and fear, so that nobody would dare support the Government". The manual calls for the "neutralization" (i.e. assassination) of Sandinista local government officials, judges, etc. for purposes of intimidation. It was openly admitted by the President Reagan in a press conference that the manual had been prepared by a CIA contract employee.
After the United States Congress approved an additional $24 million aid to the contras in December 1983, a new offensive was launched, named Plan Sierra. This offensive involved approximately 7000 members of the contra forces. As in earlier attacks, the initial objective of this offensive was to capture the border town of Jalapa to install a provisional government, which the CIA informed the contras would be immediately recognized by the United States Government. But this contra offensive was also repulsed by the Nicaraguan government forces.
In the beginning of 1984, the contras made a major effort to prevent the harvesting of the coffee crop, which is one of Nicaragua's most important export products. Coffee plantations and state farms where coffee is grown were attacked, vehicles were destroyed, and coffee farmers were killed.
Commander Carrion testified that the ability of the contras to carry out military operations was completely dependent upon United States funding, training and logistical support. Carrion stated that the U.S. Government supplied the contras with uniforms, weapons, communications equipment, intelligence, training, and coordination in using this material aid.
In September 1983, CIA operatives blew up Nicaragua's only oil pipeline, which was used to transport oil from off-loading facilities to storage tanks on shore. The United States was also directly involved in a large scale sabotage operation directed against Nicaragua's oil storage facilities. This last attack was carried out by CIA contract employees termed by that organization as "Unilaterally Controlled Latin Assets" (UCLAs). The CIA personnel were also directly involved in a helicopter attack on a Nicaraguan army training camp. One of the helicopters was shot down by Nicaraguan ground fire resulting in the death of two U.S. citizens.
Commander Carrion testified that the United States was involved in the mining of Nicaragua's ports between February – April 1984. The mining operation was carried out by CIA ships directing the operation from international waters, while the actual mining was carried out by CIA employees on board speedboats operating inshore. After the mine-laying was completed the speedboats returned to the mother vessel.
Carrion stated that 3,886 people had been killed and 4,731 wounded in the four years since the contras began their attacks. Carrion estimated property damage at $375 million.
Commander Carrion stated if the United States stopped aid, support and training, this would result in the end of the contras military activities within three months. Asked why he was so sure of this, Commander Carrion answered, "Well, because the contras are an artificial force, artificially set up by the United States, that exists only because it counts on United States direction, on United States training, on United States assistance, on United States weapons, on United States everything...Without that kind of support and direction the contras would simply disband, disorganize, and thus lose their military capacity in a very short time".
David MacMichael was an expert on counter-insurgency, guerrilla warfare, and Latin American affairs, he was also a witness because he was closely involved with U.S. intelligence activities as a contract employee from March 1981 – April 1983. MacMichael worked for Stanford Research Institute, which was contracted by the U.S. Department of Defense. After this he worked two years for the CIA as a "senior estimates officer", preparing the National Intelligence Estimate. Dr. MacMichael's responsibility was centered upon Central America. He had top-secret clearance. He was qualified and authorized to have access to all relevant U.S. intelligence concerning Central America, including intelligence relating to alleged Nicaraguan support for, and arms shipments to the anti-Government insurgents in El Salvador. He took part in high level meetings of the Latin American affairs office of the CIA. Including a fall 1981 meeting, which submitted the initial plan to set up a 1500-man covert force on the Nicaraguan border, shipping arms from Nicaragua to the El Salvador insurgents. This plan was approved by President Reagan.
"The overall purpose (for the creation of the contras) was to weaken, even destabilize the Nicaraguan Government and thus reduce the menace it allegedly posed to the United States' interests in Central America..."
Contra paramilitary actions would "hopefully provoke cross-border attacks by Nicaraguan forces and thus serve to demonstrate Nicaragua's aggressive nature and possibly call into play the Organization of American States' provisions (regarding collective self-defense). It was hoped that the Nicaraguan Government would clamp down on civil liberties within Nicaragua itself, arresting its opposition, so demonstrating its allegedly inherent totalitarian nature and thus increase domestic dissent within the country, and further that there would be reaction against United States citizens, particularly against United States diplomatic personnel within Nicaragua and thus to demonstrate the hostility of Nicaragua towards the United States".
Mr. Glennon testified about a fact-finding mission he had conducted in Nicaragua to investigate alleged human rights violations committed by the Contra guerrillas, sponsored by the International Human Rights Law Group, and the Washington Office on Latin America. Glennon conducted the investigation with Mr. Donald T. Fox who is a New York attorney and a member of the International Commission of Jurists.
They traveled to Nicaragua, visiting the northern region where the majority of contra military operations took place. The two lawyers interviewed around 36 northern frontier residents who had direct experience with the contras. They also spoke with the U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, and with senior officials of the U.S. Department of State in Washington after returning to the United States.
No hearsay evidence was accepted. Professor Glennon stated that those interviewed were closely questioned and their evidence was carefully cross-checked with available documentary evidence. Doubtful "testimonies" were rejected, and the results were published in April 1985.
The conclusions of the report were summarized by Glennon in Court:
We found that there is substantial credible evidence that the contras were engaged with some frequency in acts of terroristic violence directed at Nicaraguan civilians. These are individuals who have no connection with the war effort-persons with no economic, political or military significance. These are Individuals who are not caught in the cross-fire between Government and contra forces, but rather individuals who are deliberately targeted by the contras for acts of terror. "Terror" was used in the same sense as in recently enacted United States law, i.e. "an activity that involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life that Is a violation or the criminal law, and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to Influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping.
In talks with U.S. State Department officials, at those in Managua U.S. Embassy, and with officials in Washington, Professor Glennon had inquired whether the U.S. Government had ever investigated human rights abuses by the contras. Professor Glennon testified that no such investigation had ever been conducted, because in the words of a ranking State Department official who he could not name, the U.S. Government maintained a policy of "intentional ignorance" on the matter. State Department officials in Washington- had admitted to Glennon that "it was clear that the level of atrocities was enormous". Those words "enormous" and "atrocities" were the ranking State Department official's words.
Father Jean Loison was a French priest who worked as a nurse in a hospital in the northern frontier region close to Honduras.
Asked whether the contras engaged in acts of violence directed against the civilian population, Father Loison answered:
Yes, I could give you several examples. Near Quilali, at about 30 kilometers east of Quilali, there was a little village called El Coco. The contras arrived, they devastated it, they destroyed and burned everything. They arrived in front of a little house and turned their machinegun fire on it, without bothering to check if there were any people inside. Two children, who had taken fright and hidden under a bed, were hit. I could say the same thing of a man and woman who were hit, this was in the little co-operative of Sacadias Olivas. It was just the same. They too had taken fright and got into bed. Unlike El Coco, the contras had just been on the attack, they had encountered resistance and were now in flight. During their flight they went into a house, and seeing that there were people there, they threw grenade. The man and the woman were killed and one of the children was injured.
About contra kidnappings:
I would say that kidnappings are one of the reasons why some of the peasants have formed themselves into groups. Here (indicates a point on the map) is Quilali. Between Quilali and Uilili, in this region to the north, there are hardly any peasants left of any age to bear arms, because they have all been carried off.
Father Loison described many examples of violence, mostly indiscriminate, directed at the civilian population in the region where he resides. The picture that emerges from his testimony is that the contras engage in brutal violation of minimum standards of humanity. He described murders of unarmed civilians, including women and children, rape followed in many instances by torture or murder, and indiscriminate terror designed to coerce the civilian population. His testimony was similar to various reports including the International Human Rights Law Group, Amnesty International, and others.
William Hüper was Nicaragua's Minister of Finance. He testified about Nicaragua economic damage, including the loss of fuel as a result of the attack in the oil storage facilities at Corinto, the damage to Nicaragua's commerce as a result of the mining of its ports, and other economic damage.
After five vetoes in the Security Council between 1982 and 1985 of resolutions concerning the situation in Nicaragua , the United States made one final veto on 28 October 1986 (France, Thailand, and United Kingdom abstaining) of a resolution calling for full and immediate compliance with the judgment.
Nicaragua brought the matter to the U.N. Security Council, where the United States vetoed a resolution (11 to 1, 3 abstentions) calling on all states to observe international law. Nicaragua also turned to the General Assembly, which passed a resolution 94 to 3 calling for compliance with the World Court ruling. Two states, Israel and El Salvador, joined the United States in opposition. At that time, El Salvador was receiving substantial funding and military advisement from the U.S., which was aiming to crush a Sandinista-like revolutionary movement by the FMLN. At the same session, Nicaragua called upon the U.N. to send an independent fact-finding mission to the border to secure international monitoring of the borders after a conflict there; the proposal was rejected by Honduras with U.S. backing. A year later, on November 12, 1987, the General Assembly again called for "full and immediate compliance" with the World Court decision. This time only Israel joined the United States in opposing adherence to the ruling.
The United States refused to participate in the merits phase of the proceedings, but the Court found that the US refusal did not prevent it from deciding the case. The Court also rejected the United States defense that its action constituted collective self-defense.
The United States argued that the Court did not have jurisdiction, with U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick dismissing the Court as a "semi-legal, semi-juridical, semi-political body, which nations sometimes accept and sometimes don't."
The United States had signed the treaty accepting the Court's decision as binding, but with the exception that the court would not have the power to hear cases based on multilateral treaty obligations unless it involved all parties to the treaty affected by that decision or the United States specially agreed to jurisdiction. The court found that it was obliged to apply this exception and refused to take on claims by Nicaragua based on the United Nations Charter and Organization of American States charter, but concluded that it could still decide the case based on customary international law obligations with 11-4 majority.
After five vetoes in the Security Council between 1982 and 1985 of resolutions concerning the situation in Nicaragua , the United States made one final veto on 28 October 1986 (France, Thailand, and United Kingdom abstaining) of a resolution calling for full and immediate compliance with the Judgement.
When a similar but crucially non-binding resolution was brought before the United Nations General Assembly on 3 November it was passed. Only El Salvador and Israel voted with the U.S. against it. El Salvador's ruling junta was at that time receiving substantial funding and military advisement from the U.S., which was aiming to crush a Sandinista-like revolutionary movement by the FMLN. In spite of this resolution, the U.S. still chose not to pay the fine.
Professor of International Law, Anthony D'Amato, writing for the "American Journal of International Law" (Vol. 80, 1986), commented on this case, stating that "...law would collapse if defendants could only be sued when they agreed to be sued, and the proper measurement of that collapse would be not just the drastically diminished number of cases but also the necessary restructuring of a vast system of legal transactions and relations predicated on the availability of courts as a last resort. There would be talk of a return to the law of the jungle." The author also notes that the case resulted in an unusual candor. A month after the announced withdrawal, Secretary of State Shultz suggested, and President Reagan later confirmed in a press conference, that the goal of U.S. policy was to overthrow the Sandinista Government of Nicaragua. Although this was what Nicaragua had alleged to be the U.S. goal, while the case was actively pending, the United States could not concede that goal without serious risk of undermining its litigating position. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22033 |
No-cloning theorem
In physics, the no-cloning theorem states that it is impossible to create an identical copy of an arbitrary unknown quantum state. This no-go theorem of quantum mechanics was articulated by James Park in proving the impossibility of a simple perfect non-disturbing measurement scheme, in 1970 and rediscovered by Wootters and Zurek and by Dieks in 1982. It has profound implications in quantum computing and related fields. The state of one system can be entangled with the state of another system. For instance, one can use the controlled NOT gate and the Walsh–Hadamard gate to entangle two qubits. This is not cloning. No well-defined state can be attributed to a subsystem of an entangled state. Cloning is a process, the result of which is a separable state with identical factors.
The no-cloning theorem is normally stated and proven for pure states; the no-broadcast theorem generalizes this result to mixed states.
The no-cloning theorem has a time-reversed dual, the no-deleting theorem. Together, these underpin the interpretation of quantum mechanics in terms of category theory, and, in particular, as a dagger compact category. This formulation, known as categorical quantum mechanics, allows, in turn, a connection to be made from quantum mechanics to linear logic as the logic of quantum information theory (in the same sense that intuitionistic logic arises from Cartesian closed categories).
According to Asher Peres and David Kaiser, the publication of the 1982 proof of the no-cloning theorem by
Wootters and Zurek and by Dieks was prompted by a proposal of Nick Herbert for a superluminal communication device using quantum entanglement. However, Ortigoso pointed out in 2018 that a complete proof along with an interpretation in terms of the lack of simple nondisturbing measurements in quantum mechanics was already delivered by Park in 1970.
Suppose we have two quantum systems "A" and "B" with a common Hilbert space formula_1. Suppose we want to have a procedure to copy the state formula_2 of quantum system "A", in quantum system "B" irrespective of the original state formula_2 (see bra–ket notation). That is, beginning with the state formula_2, we want to end up with the state formula_5 To make a "copy" of the state "A", we combine it with system "B" in some unknown initial, or blank, state formula_6 independent of formula_2, of which we have no prior knowledge. The state of the composite system is then described by the following tensor product:
(in the following we will omit the formula_9 symbol and keep it implicit). There are only two permissible quantum operations with which we may manipulate the composite system.
We can perform an observation, which irreversibly collapses the system into some eigenstate of an observable, corrupting the information contained in the qubit(s). This is obviously not what we want.
Alternatively, we could control the Hamiltonian of the "combined" system, and thus the time-evolution operator "U"("t"), e.g. for a time-independent Hamiltonian, formula_10. Evolving up to some fixed time formula_11 yields a unitary operator "U" on formula_12, the Hilbert space of the combined system. However, no such unitary operator "U" can clone all states.
Theorem: There is no unitary operator "U" on formula_12 such that for all normalised states formula_14 and formula_6 in formula_16
for some real number formula_18 depending on formula_19 and formula_20.
The extra phase factor expresses the fact that a quantum-mechanical state defines a normalised vector in Hilbert space only up to a phase factor i.e. as an element of projectivised Hilbert space.
To prove the theorem, we select an arbitrary pair of states formula_2 and formula_22 in the Hilbert space formula_16. Because "U" is unitary,
Since the quantum state formula_25 is assumed to be normalized, we thus get
This implies that either formula_27 or formula_28. Hence by the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality either formula_29 or formula_19 is orthogonal to formula_31. However, this cannot be the case for two "arbitrary" states. Therefore, a single universal "U" cannot clone a "general" quantum state. This proves the no-cloning theorem.
Take a qubit for example. It can be represented by two complex numbers, called probability amplitudes (normalised to 1), that is three real numbers (two polar angles and one radius). Copying three numbers on a classical computer using any copy and paste operation is trivial (up to a finite precision) but the problem manifests if the qubit is unitarily transformed (e.g. by the Hadamard quantum gate) to be polarised (which unitary transformation is a surjective isometry). In such a case the qubit can be represented by just two real numbers (one polar angle and one radius equal to 1), while the value of the third can be arbitrary in such a representation. Yet a realisation of a qubit (polarisation-encoded photon, for example) is capable of storing the whole qubit information support within its "structure". Thus no single universal unitary evolution "U" can clone an arbitrary quantum state according to the no-cloning theorem. It would have to depend on the transformed qubit (initial) state and thus would not have been "universal".
In the statement of the theorem, two assumptions were made: the state to be copied is a pure state and the proposed copier acts via unitary time evolution. These assumptions cause no loss of generality. If the state to be copied is a mixed state, it can be purified. Alternately, a different proof can be given that works directly with mixed states; in this case, the theorem is often known as the no-broadcast theorem. Similarly, an arbitrary quantum operation can be implemented via introducing an ancilla and performing a suitable unitary evolution. Thus the no-cloning theorem holds in full generality.
Non-clonability can be seen as a property of arbitrary sets of quantum states. If we know that a system's state is one of the states in some set S, but we do not know which one, can we prepare another system in the same state? If the elements of S are pairwise orthogonal, the answer is always yes: for any such set there exists a measurement which will ascertain the exact state of the system without disturbing it, and once we know the state we can prepare another system in the same state.
On the other hand, if S contains a pair of elements that are not pairwise orthogonal, then an argument like that given above shows that the answer is no. So even if we can narrow down the state of a quantum system to just "two" possibilities, we still cannot clone it in general (unless the states happen to be orthogonal).
Another way of stating the no-cloning theorem is that amplification of a quantum signal can only happen with respect to some orthogonal basis. This is related to the emergence of the rules of classical probability via quantum decoherence.
There is a classical analogue to the quantum no-cloning theorem, which might be stated as follows: given only the result of one flip of a (possibly biased) coin, we cannot simulate a second, independent toss of the same coin. The proof of this statement uses the linearity of classical probability, and has exactly the same structure as the proof of the quantum no-cloning theorem. Thus, in order to claim that no-cloning is a uniquely quantum result, some care is necessary in stating the theorem. One way of restricting the result to quantum mechanics is to restrict the states to pure states, where a pure state is defined to be one that is not a convex combination of other states. The classical pure states are pairwise orthogonal, but quantum pure states are not.
In logic, the idea of no-cloning and no-deleting correspond to the notion of disallowing two rules of inference: the rule of weakening (monotonicity of entailment) and the rule of contraction (idempotency of entailment). The removal of these two rules of inference from classical logic results in linear logic, which is the form of logic that describes quantum systems (or, more generally, the behavior of tensor products on Hilbert spaces).
Even though it is impossible to make perfect copies of an unknown quantum state, it is possible to produce imperfect copies. This can be done by coupling a larger auxiliary system to the system that is to be cloned, and applying a unitary transformation to the combined system. If the unitary transformation is chosen correctly, several components of the combined system will evolve into approximate copies of the original system. In 1996, V. Buzek and M. Hillery showed that a universal cloning machine can make a clone of an unknown state with the surprisingly high fidelity of 5/6.
Imperfect cloning can be used as an eavesdropping attack on quantum cryptography protocols, among other uses in quantum information science. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22035 |
Norman Hackerman
Norman Hackerman (March 2, 1912 – June 16, 2007) was an American chemist, professor, and academic administrator who served as the 18th President of the University of Texas at Austin (1967–1970) and later as the 4th President of Rice University (1970–1985). He was an internationally known expert in metal corrosion.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he was the only son of Jacob Hackerman and Anna Raffel, immigrants from the Baltic regions of the Russian Empire that later became Estonia and Latvia, respectively.
Hackerman earned his bachelor's degree in 1932 and his doctor's degree in chemistry in 1935 from Johns Hopkins University. He taught at Johns Hopkins, Loyola College in Baltimore and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, before working on the Manhattan Project in World War II.
He joined the University of Texas in 1945 as an assistant professor of chemistry, became an associate professor in 1946, a full professor in 1950, a department chair in 1952, dean of research in 1960, vice president and provost in 1961, and vice chancellor for academic affairs for the University of Texas System in 1963. Hackerman left the University of Texas in 1970 for Rice, where he retired 15 years later. He was named professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Texas in 1985 and taught classes until the end of his life.
He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his many honors are the Olin Palladium Award of the Electrochemical Society, the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Chemists (1978), the Charles Lathrop Parsons Award, the Vannevar Bush Award and the National Medal of Science. He was awarded the Acheson Award by the Electrochemical Society in 1984.
Hackerman served on advisory committees and boards of several technical societies and government agencies, including the National Science Board, the Texas Governor's Task Force on Higher Education and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Welch Foundation. He also served as editor of the "Journal of the Electrochemical Society" and as president of the Electrochemical Society.
Hackerman's wife of 61 years, Gene Coulbourn, died in 2002; they had three daughters and one son.
In 1982 The Electrochemical Society created the Norman Hackerman Young Author Award to honor the best paper published in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society for a topic in the field of electrochemical science and technology by a young author or authors. In 2000 the Welch Foundation created the Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Research to recognize the work of young researchers in Texas. The Rice Board of Trustees established the Norman Hackerman Fellowship in Chemistry in honor of Hackerman's 90th birthday in 2002. In 2008, the original Experimental Science Building at the University of Texas at Austin campus was demolished and rebuilt as the Norman Hackerman Experimental Science Building in his name and honor. The building was completed in late 2010, with the opening and dedication ceremony on March 2, 2011, which was both Hackerman's 99th Birthday and the 175th Anniversary of Texas Independence. The main building at the J. Erik Jonsson Center of the National Academy of Sciences is Hackerman House, named in his honor. Hackerman House overlooks Quissett Harbor in Woods Hole MA, on Cape Cod. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22036 |
N ray
N rays (or N-rays) were a hypothesized form of radiation, described by Prosper-René Blondlot in 1903, and initially confirmed by others, but subsequently found to be illusory.
The N ray affair occurred shortly after a series of major breakthroughs in experimental physics. Victor Schumann discovered vacuum ultraviolet radiation in 1893, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in 1896, and, in 1897, J. J. Thomson discovered electrons, showing that they were the constituents of cathode rays. This created an expectation within the scientific community that other forms of radiation might be discovered.
At this time, Prosper-René Blondlot was a professor of physics at the University of Nancy studying electromagnetic radiation. Blondlot was a respected member of the scientific community: he was one of eight physicists who were corresponding members of the French Academy of Sciences and was awarded the Academy's Gaston Planté prize in 1893 and the LaCaze prize in 1899. His attempts to measure the speed of electromagnetic waves were commended by Thomson and Henri Poincaré. After the discovery of X-rays, Blondlot began investigating the nature of X-rays, trying to determine whether they behaved as particles or electromagnetic waves. (This was before wave-particle duality became widely accepted among scientists.)
In 1903, Blondlot announced his discovery while working at the University of Nancy and attempting to polarize X-rays. He had perceived changes in the brightness of an electric spark in a spark gap placed in an X-ray beam which he photographed, and he later attributed to the novel form of radiation, naming this the "N rays" for the University of Nancy. Blondlot, Augustin Charpentier, Arsène d'Arsonval and approximately 120 other scientists in 300 published articles claimed to be able to detect N rays emanating from most substances, including the human body with the peculiar exceptions that they were not emitted by green wood and by some treated metals. Most researchers of the subject at the time used the perceived light of a dim phosphorescent surface as "detectors", although work in the period clearly showed the change in brightness to be a physiological phenomenon rather than some actual change in the level of illumination. Physicists Gustave le Bon and P. Audollet and spiritualist Carl Huter even claimed the discovery as their own, leading to a commission of the Académie des sciences to decide priority.
The "discovery" excited international interest and many physicists worked to replicate the effects. However, the notable physicists Lord Kelvin, William Crookes, Otto Lummer, and Heinrich Rubens failed to do so. Following his own failure, self-described as "wasting a whole morning", the American physicist Robert W. Wood, who had a reputation as a popular "debunker" of nonsense during the period, was prevailed upon by the British journal "Nature" to travel to Blondlot's laboratory in France to investigate further. Wood suggested that Rubens should go since he had been the most embarrassed when Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany asked him to repeat the French experiments, and then after two weeks Rubens had to report his failure to do so. Rubens, however, felt it would look better if Wood went, since Blondlot had been most polite in answering his many questions.
In the darkened room during Blondlot's demonstration, Wood surreptitiously removed an essential prism from the experimental apparatus, yet the experimenters still said that they observed N rays. Wood also stealthily swapped a large file that was supposed to be giving off N rays with an inert piece of wood, yet the N rays were still "observed". His report on these investigations were published in "Nature",
and they suggested that the N rays were a purely subjective phenomenon, with the scientists involved having recorded data that matched their expectations. There is reason to believe that Blondlot in particular was misled by his laboratory assistant, who confirmed all observations. By 1905, no one outside of Nancy believed in N rays, but Blondlot himself is reported to have still been convinced of their existence in 1926. Martin Gardner, referencing Wood's biographer William Seabrook's account of the affair, attributed a subsequent decline in mental health and eventual death of Blondlot to the resulting scandal, but there is evidence that this is at least some exaggeration of the facts.
The term "N ray" was added to dictionaries upon its announcement and was described as a real phenomenon until at least the 1940s. For instance, the 1946 Webster's Dictionary defined it as "An emanation or radiation from certain hot bodies which increases the luminosity without increasing the temperature: as yet, not fully determined."
The incident is used as a cautionary tale among scientists on the dangers of error introduced by experimenter bias. N rays were cited as an example of pathological science by Irving Langmuir. Nearly identical properties of an equally unknown radiation had been recorded about 50 years before in another country by Carl Reichenbach in his treatise "Researches on Magnetism, Electricity, Heat, Light, Crystallization, and Chemical Attraction in their relations to the Vital Force" in 1850, and before that in Vienna by Franz Mesmer in his "Mémoire on the Discovery of Animal-Magnetism" in 1779. It is clear that Reichenbach was aware of Mesmer's work and that researchers in Paris working with Blondlot were aware of Reichenbach's work, although there is no proof that Blondlot was personally aware of it.
A park in central Nancy is named after Blondlot. He left his house and garden to the city, which transformed it into a public park. James Randi reported that many citizens of Nancy and members of the faculty at the university did not remember having heard about N-rays or of Blondlot. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22037 |
Nikolai Kuznetsov (admiral)
Nikolay Gerasimovich Kuznetsov (; 24 July 1904 – 6 December 1974) was a Soviet naval officer who achieved the rank of Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union and served as People's Commissar of the Navy during the Second World War. The N. G. Kuznetsov Naval Academy and the Russian aircraft carrier are named in his honor.
Kuznetsov was born into a peasant family in the village of Medvedki near Veliky Ustyug, Vologda Governorate, Russian Empire (now in Kotlassky District of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia). His father, a Serbian immigrant, had settled in Russia before the turn of the century.
In 1919 Kuznetsov joined the Northern Dvina Naval Flotilla, having added two years to his age to make himself eligible to serve. In 1920 he was stationed at Petrograd and in 1924, as a member of a naval unit, he attended the funeral ceremony of Vladimir Lenin.
That same year he joined the Communist Party.
Upon graduation from the Frunze Higher Naval School in 1926 Kuznetsov served on the cruiser , first as watch officer and then as First Lieutenant. In 1932 he graduated from the Naval College after studying operational tactics. Upon graduation, he was offered two options – a desk job with the general staff or a command post on a ship.
Kuznetsov successfully applied for the post of executive officer on the cruiser . Within a year the young officer earned his next promotion. In 1934 he returned to the "Chervona Ukraina", this time as her commander. Under Kuznetsov the ship became an outstanding example of discipline and organization, quickly drawing attention to her young captain.
From 5 September 1936 to 15 August 1937, Kuznetsov served as the Soviet naval attaché and chief naval advisor to Republican Spain. During the early stages of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 he developed a strong dislike of fascism.
On returning home, on January 10, 1938, he was promoted to the rank of flag officer, 2nd rank, and given command of the Pacific Fleet. While in this position, he came face to face with Stalin's purge of the military. Kuznetsov himself was never implicated, but many of the officers under his command were. Kuznetsov resisted the purges at every step, and his intervention saved the lives of many Soviet officers.
On 28 April 1939, Kuznetsov, still only thirty-four, was appointed the People's Commissar (Minister) of the Navy, a post he would hold throughout the Second World War until 1946. In 1939, despite Stalin's negative attitude to the Nikolaevsky Engineering Academy, Nikolay Gerasimovich Kuznetsov ordered the return of the Naval Engineering faculty from Moscow to Leningrad, and set up the Military Engineering-Technical University to educate engineers for the construction of naval bases.
Kuznetsov played a crucial role during the first hours of the war – at this pivotal moment, his resolve and blatant disregard for orders averted the destruction of the Soviet Navy. By June 21, 1941, Kuznetzov was convinced of the inevitability of war with Nazi Germany. On the same day Semyon Timoshenko and Georgy Zhukov issued a directive prohibiting Soviet commanders from responding to "German provocations". The Navy, however, constituted a distinct ministry (narkomat), and thus Kuznetsov held a position which was technically outside the direct chain of command. He utilized this fact in a very bold move.
Shortly after midnight on the morning of June 22, Kuznetsov ordered all Soviet fleets to battle readiness. At 3:15 am that same morning, the Wehrmacht began Operation Barbarossa. The Soviet Navy was the only branch of the military in the highest state of combat readiness at the start of the initial German push.
In the following two years, Kuznetsov's primary concern was the protection of the Caucasus from a German invasion. Throughout the war, the Black Sea remained the primary theater of operations for the Soviet Navy. During the war years Kuznetsov honed Soviet methods of amphibious assault. A notable subordinate in the Black Sea and in command of the Azov Flotilla was S.G. Gorshkov who would later succeed him as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. In May 1944 he was given the rank of Admiral of the Fleet – a newly created position initially equated to that of a four-star general. In the same year, Kuznetsov was given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. On May 31, 1945, his rank was equated to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union with a similar insignia.
From 1946 to 1947 he was the Deputy Minister of the USSR Armed Forces and Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces.
In 1947 he was removed from his post on Stalin's orders and in 1948 he, as well as several other admirals were put on trial by the Naval Tribunal. Kuznetsov was demoted to vice-admiral, while the other admirals received prison sentences of varying length.
In 1951 Stalin ended Kuznetsov's pariah status, once again placing him in command of the Navy (as the Minister of the Navy of the USSR), but without restoring his military rank, which was returned to him upon Stalin's death in 1953. In the same year, he became the First Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR. In 1955, Kuznetsov was made Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces. His rank was raised to Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union and he was awarded the Marshal's Star.
His newfound prominence brought him into direct conflict with now Defense Minister Marshal Zhukov, with whom he had clashed during the war years. On December 8, 1955, using the loss of the battleship as a pretext, Zhukov removed the Admiral from his post. The commission that inspected the ship's loss was headed by Vyacheslav Malyshev and its findings were used by Zhukov to blame Kuznetsov. In February 1956 he was again demoted to the rank of vice-admiral, retired and expressly forbidden "any and all work connected with the navy."
During his retirement he wrote and published many essays and articles, as well as several longer works, including his memoirs and an officially sanctioned book, "With a Course for Victory", which dealt with the Patriotic War. His memoirs, unlike those of many other prominent leaders, were written by him personally and are noted for their style.
Kuznetsov also authored several books on the war, on Stalin's repressions, and on the navy which were published posthumously. In these he was highly critical of the Party's interference in the internal affairs of the military, and insisted that "the state must be ruled by law."
After the retirement of Zhukov in 1957, and of Khrushchev in 1964, a group of naval veterans began a campaign addressed to the Soviet leadership to restore Kuznetsov's rank, with all benefits, and to make him one of the General Inspectors of the Ministry of Defence. Invariably, these requests fell on deaf ears. Not until July 26, 1988 under Andrey Gromyko did the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR reinstate Kuznetsov to his former rank of Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union. Kuznetzov is now recognized as one of the most prominent men in the history of the Soviet and, today, of the Russian Navy.
"Personal ranks for the Russian Navy were abolished in 1918, and were only restored in 1935, excepting the various ranks of admiral which were not restored until 1940."
"My whole life has been the Soviet Navy. I made my choice when young and have never regretted it." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22039 |
Nuon (DVD technology)
Nuon is a technology developed by VM Labs that adds features to a DVD player. In addition to viewing DVDs, one can play 3D video games and use enhanced DVD navigational tools such as zoom and smooth scanning of DVD playback. One could also play CDs while the Nuon graphics processor generates synchronized graphics on the screen. There were plans to provide Internet access capability in the next generation of Nuon-equipped DVD players.
Nuon originally started off as "Project X," and was featured in "Electronic Gaming Monthly"s 1999 Video Game Buyer's Guide. One of the Nuon's main software developers was Jeff Minter, who created a version of "Tempest" titled "Tempest 3000" for the system and the built-in VLM-2 audio visualizer. However, the Nuon platform was primarily marketed as an expanded DVD format. A large majority of Nuon players that were sold in fact resembled typical consumer DVD players with the only noticeable difference being a Nuon logo. Nuon players offered a number of features that were not available on other DVD players when playing standard DVD-formatted titles. These included very smooth forward and reverse functionality and the ability to smoothly zoom in and out of sections of the video image. In addition, Nuon provided a software platform to DVD authors to provide interactive software like features to their titles.
In North America, Nuon was used in the Samsung DVD-N501 and DVD-N2000 models; they also released several models in other parts of the world: DVD-N504 (Europe), DVD N505 (Europe), and DVD-N591 (Korea). Toshiba released the SD-2300 DVD player, and there are two RCA models, the DRC300N and DRC480N. The Nuon was also used in Motorola's Streamaster 5000 "Digital DNA" set-top box. However, the format has appeared to have died off. Nuon was created by VM Labs, whose assets were sold to Genesis Microchip in April 2002. As of November 2004, there were no Nuon-enabled DVD players shipping and no new Nuon software titles, meaning that it was
discontinued.
Peripherals for Nuon-enhanced DVD players included the following:
Only four DVD releases utilized Nuon technology. All of them were released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:
Only eight games were officially released for the Nuon:
During late 2001, VM Labs released a homebrew SDK which allowed people to be able to program apps/games for their Nuon system. Only the Samsung DVD-N501/DVDN504/DVDN505 and RCA DRC300N/DRC480N can load homebrew games.
Some homebrew titles have been created for or ported to Nuon. They are not commercially available and require the user to burn the material to a Nuon-compatible CD-R. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22042 |
Cuisine of New England
New England cuisine is an American cuisine which originated in the New England region of the United States, and traces its roots to English cuisine. It is characterized by extensive use of seafood and dairy products, which results from its historical reliance on its seaports and fishing industry, as well as extensive dairy farming in inland regions. Many of New England's earliest Puritan settlers were from eastern England, where baking foods (for instance pies, beans, and turkey) was more common than frying, as was the tradition elsewhere.
Two prominent characteristic foodstuffs native to New England are maple syrup and cranberries. The traditional standard starch is potato, though rice has a somewhat increased popularity in modern cooking. New England cuisine is known for limited use of spices aside from ground black pepper, although parsley, garlic, and sage are common, with a few Caribbean additions such as nutmeg. Use of cream is common, due to the reliance on dairy. The favored cooking techniques are stewing, steaming, and baking. Many local ingredients, such as squash, corn and local beans, sunflowers, wild turkey, maple syrup, cranberries and dishes such as cornbread, Johnnycakes and Indian pudding were adopted from Southern New England Algonquian cuisine.
The traditional diet of the Wampanoag people included chestnuts, beechnuts, walnuts, beans, multi-colored corn (called "flint corn"), and varieties of squash and pumpkins.
In 1620, the newly arrived Pilgrims faced the prospect of surviving their first winter in Plymouth Colony. The climate was harsh and the growing season was shorter than they were accustomed to due to the long and frosty winters. The newly arrived colonists brought vital techniques of food preservation like smoking, curing and drying that helped them survive the harsh New England winter. They also received help from the Wampanoag, who taught the newly arrived Pilgrims how to grow the staple crops of squash, beans and corn. It is not known for certain what crops were grown in early colonial gardens, but later sources mention turnips, onions, carrots, garlic and pumpkins.
The Pilgrims used corn to make hasty pudding and Wampanoag recipes like popcorn, sagamite and nasaump. The Wampanoag also taught the Pilgrims to bake in hot ashes, and ash cakes (also called johnny cakes or breakfast bannocks) became a staple breakfast bread. Beans were used to make stews or combined with corn to make succotash.
Many of New England's earliest Puritan settlers were from eastern England and brought with the traditions of English cuisine with them. Roast duck, goose, lamb, and hams were brought to the so-called "New World" as farmyard stock as soon as the colonies began to prosper. Even today, traditional English cuisine remains a strong part of New England's identity. Some of its plates are now enjoyed by the entire United States, including clam chowder, baked beans, apple pies, baked or roast turkey, pease porridge, and steamed puddings.
The first Thanksgiving meal was shared by the Wampanoag and Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. The menu would have been considerably more humble than the modern Thanksgiving dinner which typically includes turkey with stuffing, cranberry sauce, candied yams, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. Though filled pastries were common in English cuisine, the colonists did not have wheat flour or butter, so pie would have been absent from the original Thanksgiving table. White potatoes and sweet potatoes had not yet reached North America, and the first literary mention of cranberry sauce dates some 50 years after the first Thanksgiving meal.
The original menu included "Indian corn", wild fowl, including wild turkey and waterfowl, and venison. These are only foods mentioned by primary sources, however food historians have speculated as to what else may have been served. In addition to wild turkey, duck and goose, swan and passenger pigeons were plentiful. In those times birds were typically stuffed with onion and herbs and one 17th century recipe for goose includes a stuffing of chestnuts. It is likely that the meal included local seafood like clams, mussels, lobsters and eels.
Since the 1800s New England's culinary traditions have been influenced by the arrival of Irish Americans, Portuguese Americans, and Italian Americans. Irish-style braised pickled beef was the origin of New England boiled dinner.
"Country stores" sold homemade jams, fruit preserves and penny candy. Common crackers are still made with the original recipe dating to 1828.
In the post World War II era July 4 celebrations frequently feature steak, hot dogs, hamburgers and grilled chicken. In the more distant past lamb was more traditional inland, and coastal communities in New England typically served salmon with dill mayo, peas, new potatoes and corn on the cob. Dessert often includes a seasonal fruit, for example strawberry shortcake and blueberry pie.
Drinks in the Colonial era were made with local ingredients like honey, molasses, apples, hops and wild berries. These drinks included apple brandy ("applejack"), fruit wines, rum and mead. Some of the finest rum distilleries were located in New England prior to Prohibition.
The hot ale flip is a traditional drink historically made by mixing a pitcher of beer with rum, frothy eggs and a sweetener like dried pumpkin, maple syrup or molasses. The beverage was warmed by plunging a hot poker into the drink to caramelize the sugars creating the drink's characteristic hot froth. Like the flip, the Rattle-Skull was a mix of beer (in this case a dark beer like porter) and hard liquor - usually a mix of rum and brandy. The beverage is flavored with lime and garnished with nutmeg.
The Stone Fence was a mix of hard cider and rum. Reportedly, Ethan Allen and his men drank it before their raid of Fort Ticonderoga in 1775. Egg cider was made by cracking eggs into heated cider and adding a sweetener like molasses. Another cider based beverage syllabub was made with rum, cream and sweetener. Mulled cider could be made with sweetener, spices, rum and egg yolks.
Birch beer, made with sap from the "betula lenta" tree, was made by both the English and early American colonists. The "betula lenta" is known for producing a fragrant sap with a unique minty flavor. John Mortimer wrote that birch beer was usually made by the poor by boiling birch sap with sugar and fermenting it with yeast.
Many local breweries produce lagers and ales. Notable examples include Samuel Adams of the Boston Beer Company in Boston (even though the recipe for the beer does not come from New England); Sea Dog Brewing Company of Bangor; Shipyard Brewing Company of Portland; Smuttynose Brewing Company of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Vermont-based Woodchuck Draft Cider is a popular alcoholic cider. New England has also played a major role in the craft beer revolution, with Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont having notable breweries such as Treehouse Brewing Company, Trillium Brewing Company, The Alchemist Brewery, Rock Art Brewery, Long Trail Brewing Company, Kent Falls Brewing Company and Two Roads Brewing Company.
The custom of bringing one-dish casseroles (also called hot dishes) to barn raisings and church suppers was not exclusive to New England, but included traditional variations of baked beans and succotash. Modern recipes can be made with any ingredients available at markets. Seafood casseroles are made with cream sauce and bread crumb topping.
American chop suey is a casserole dish made with ground beef, macaroni and a seasoned tomato sauce. Though unrelated to Hungarian goulash, in other regions of the United States it may be called American goulash amongst other names.
Blueberries are made into jams and jellies and feature in breads and regional desserts like pies, cobblers and cakes.
Wild beach plums are foraged and used to make fruit preserves like jams and jellies. Beach plums were cultivated and used for the commercial manufacture of beach plum jelly in the 1930s, but beach plum products are no longer widely available in commercial markets.
The local purple concord grapes are a cross between native and European grapes. The large grapes are prized for their juicyness and used in the production of commercial grape juice, wine and grape jelly. It is a common ingredient in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Until the pilgrims planted apple seeds from Europe, the only regional apples were crab apples. Cross-pollination altered the results of these first attempts, but over the years thousands of new varieties were bred by the pilgrims. William Blaxton planted the first apple orchard in 1625. The earliest apple varieties produced in New England included Lady (1628), Roxbury Russet (1630), Pomme Grise (1650), Baldwin (1740), Porter (1800), Mother (1844) and Wright (1875). In modern times apples are grown commercially throughout Massachusetts.
The first attempts at commercial cranberry growing were pioneered by Captain Henry Hall, who developed the technique of covering the vines with sand to accelerate the plant's growth.
New England hot dog rolls are split on top instead of on the side, and have a more rectangular shape. While smaller than common hot dog rolls, New England hot dog rolls have a larger soft surface area which allows for buttering and toasting, which are also commonly used for convenient serving of seafood like lobster or fried clams. Regional bread makers often differentiate between these and the more traditional-style American hot dog rolls by referring to the New England variation as "Frankfurt Rolls" on packaging, with both commonly available next to each other on store shelves (though when purchasing a cooked hot dog or seafood "roll" from a restaurant or food stand, the Frankfurt style is almost exclusively used).
Maple sap is collected annually during New England's "sugaring season". The new sap is reduced and thickened to form syrup. An issue of "Yankee" dating from 1939 gives some details on seasonal recipes with recipes for maple butternut fudge, maple sauce ice cream and "Sugar on Snow". Sugar on Snow, a regional specialty also called maple syrup taffy, is made by pouring freshly heated maple syrup on fresh snow, forming candy with a taffy consistency as the syrup hardens.
Desserts like cobbler, pie, and custard were made with local sweeteners like maple syrup and molasses instead of sugar. Molasses and rum were common in New England cuisine, due to New England's involvement in the Triangle Trade in the 18th century. Molasses from the Caribbean and honey were staple sweeteners for all but the upper class well into the 19th century.
Sandwiches typical of New England's cuisine include baked bean on Boston brown bread; the Fluffernutter with Fluff marshmallow creme and peanut butter, usually served on Wonder bread; served cold or hot, lobster rolls can optionally include fixings like mayo or warmed butter; clam rolls dressed with tartar or cocktail sauce on a New England style hot dog bun; and chow mein sandwich with noodles, celery, onions, meat and sauce in a hamburger bun; from Fall River, Massachusetts.
The waters of the Gulf of Maine and Long Island Sound provide a rich variety of fish and shellfish that are a signature of the cuisine in New England. Commercial cod fishing along Cape Ann dates back as far as 1623 when salt cod was carried by merchant vessels to Africa, which returned with slaves for plantations in the Caribbean before carrying sugar back to New England. Cod, the fish for which Cape Cod is named, remains a staple of the regional cuisine to this day. Bluefish can be found throughout Cape Cod and Nantucket during the summer months and is consumed smoked, broiled or sauteed. American lobster is usually consumed grilled, steamed, or boiled.
Breaded deep fried clams are popular pub fare in New England. The regional clam varieties can be soft shell or hard shell and include razor clams; the latter of these is more likely to be caught by hand owing to how difficult it is to harvest them without damaging the beach upon which they dwell. Hard shell clams are sometimes called littlenecks, cherrystones or quahogs depending on their size. These are used to make New England style clam chowder, and may also be consumed steamed or even raw. The preferred methods of preparing soft-shell clams (also called "steamers") are frying or steaming. Adapted from the Native Americans, the clambake is a traditional meal in New England where clams, lobsters and corn are cooked over a firepit. Modern versions of the dish may include mussels, fish, crabs and non seafood ingredients like chicken, sausage, potatoes and other root vegetables.
The official state fish are as follows:
Many herbs were uncommon, particularly Mediterranean herbs, which are not hardy in much of New England away from the coast. As a result, most savory New England dishes do not have much strong seasoning, aside from salt and ground black pepper, nor are there many particularly spicy staple items. Other dishes meant as desserts often contain ingredients such as nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and ground ginger which are a legacy of trade with the Caribbean Sea that began in the 17th Century and lasted well into the 19th.
Much of the pizza in New England is Greek pizza, owing to the strong presence of Greek immigrants and Greek Americans in the food service industry in New England. Greek pizza (as understood in New England) is typified by its chewy, bready crust similar to focaccia, which is baked in shallow, round metal pan liberally coated with olive oil. Greek-style pizzerias in New England are often found under the name "House of Pizza".
Italians emigrated to New England beginning a little over a century ago,
and Southern New England pizza tends to be more Italian influenced. World famous restaurants such as “Pepe’s Pizza” in New Haven, CT serve a thin, wood fired, hand tossed style of pie. “New Haven” style pizza is typified by a slightly burnt, crunchy exterior crust and soft, slightly chewy interior. Southern New England pizza (or apizza) is closely related to Neapolitan style pizza.
Irish American influences are common in the interior portions of the state, including the Hartford area. During the 18th century the Hartford election cake was a spicy, boozy yeast-leavened cake based on a traditional English holiday cake. During the colonial era elections were celebrated with drink and a huge celebration cake large enough to feed the entire community, and the recipe as given by Amelia Simmons in 1796 called for butter, sugar, raisins, eggs, wine and spices in enormous quantities. Hasty pudding is sometimes found in rural communities, particularly around Thanksgiving.
Italian-inspired cuisine is dominant in the New Haven area, which is known for charred thin-crust New Haven style pizza baked in coal-fired ovens. The well-known white clam pie is made with fresh clams, olive oil, fresh garlic, oregano and grated Romano cheese. Some pizza places also offer subs on Italian bread ("grinders") and standard Italian fare like eggplant rollatini, manicotti, baked ziti and chicken parmesan. Well-known pizzerias include Pepe's Pizza, Sally's Apizza and Modern Apizza,
The cuisine of Southeastern Connecticut is heavily based on the local fishing industry. Typical New England seafood dishes are available at local restaurants like Abbot's Lobster in the rough. Lobster rolls, crab cakes, oysters, clam chowder, steamer clams and mussels are served with sides like potato chips, remoulade sauce and coleslaw. Shad is the state fish and is cooked on planks (usually hickory, oak, or cedar) by the fire, called a "shad bake", deboning the fish requires some skill with a boning knife.
Louis' Lunch began as a lunch wagon started by Danish immigrant Louis Lassen in 1895. Their burgers are still cooked in the original antique cast iron broiler. A local specialty of Meriden, Connecticut, steamed cheeseburgers started as simple steamed cheese on a roll sandwiches sold off horse-drawn food carts in the 1900s. Some believe the hamburger originated in New Haven at Louis', and like the butter burger and deep-fried hamburger, the steamed version may be remnant of an earlier time before the broiled hamburger on a bun became the standard form.
Ice cream is made with milk from local creameries at UCONN Dairy Bar using a century old recipe to produce 24 different flavors of ice cream. Ferris Acres Creamery is a 150 year old dairy farm offering 50 flavors of ice cream. The most popular is the "Cow Trax" - a base of vanilla with peanut butter swirls and chocolate chips.
Maine is known for its lobster. Relatively inexpensive lobster rolls—lobster meat mixed with mayonnaise and other ingredients, served in a grilled hot dog roll are often available in the summer, particularly on the coast. Northern Maine produces potato crops, second only to Idaho in the United States.
Fiddlehead ferns were part of the Native American cuisine and are still prized in Maine, where they are gathered in springtime. Wild blueberries are a common ingredient or garnish, and blueberry pie is the official state dessert (when made with wild Maine blueberries). Red snappers are considered the most popular type of hot dog in Maine, natural casing frankfurters colored bright red. The whoopie pie, which is also a staple in the Philadelphia/Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine, is the official state treat. Maine is the place of origin for the needham, a dessert bar made from chocolate, coconut, and potato. Finally, the Italian sandwich is popular in Portland and southern Maine. Portland restaurant Amato's claims to have invented the Italian sandwich in 1902—specifically, a submarine sandwich made with ham, cheese, tomato, raw peppers, and pickles, served with or without oil, salt, and pepper. The city of Portland, Maine is known for its numerous nationally renowned restaurants; it was ranked as Bon Appétit magazine's "America's Foodiest Small Town" in 2009.
Moxie was America's first mass-produced soft drink and is the official state soft drink. It is known for its strong aftertaste and is found throughout New England. Wax-wrapped salt water taffy is a popular item sold in tourist areas, although it is originally from New Jersey.
Coastal Massachusetts is known for its clams, haddock, and cranberries, and previously cod. Massachusetts had similar immigrant influences as the coastal regions, though historically strong Eastern European populations instilled kielbasa and pierogi as common dishes.
Named after the town of Newton, Fig Newtons were first made in 1891 using a machine invented by James Mitchell to fill cookie dough with fig jam. The small round Necco Wafers, made with the first American candy machine, similarly originated in Cambridge. Graham bread was first made in 19th-century Massachusetts by Sylvester Graham. Tollhouse cookies, the official state cookie of Massachusetts were created in 1930 at the Toll House Inn, located in Whitman.
Boston is known for, baked beans (hence the nickname "Beantown"), bulkie rolls, and various pastries. Boston cream pie is not a pie but a cake with custard filling. The origins are mysterious, but it is likely that antecedent cakes were made with either a sponge cake or pound cake.
Parker's Restaurant was the premier dining establishment in Boston in the 19th century. The a la carte menu from 1865 included a range of local seafood offerings like oysters, fried clams, mackerel, shad, salmon in anchovy sauce, cod in oyster sauce, and soft-shell crab. Other meat dishes included chicken fricassee, potted pigeons, corned beef and baked beans with pork. Sides included corn, rice, macaroni, potatoes, asparagus, green peas, radishes and fried bananas. Sweet pastry and puddings were also served such as Indian pudding, custard, apple pie, rhubarb pie, Washington pie, Charlotte Russe, and blancmange.
The North Shore area is locally known for its roast beef shops and "steak tips" (marinated cubes of sirloin), a common menu item at pizza establishments and backyard cookouts. The South Shore area maintains a following for bar pizza, with many popular restaurants serving these crisp, thin, often heavily topped creations.
Common plant foods in Massachusetts are similar to those of interior northern New England, because of the landlocked, hilly terrain, including potatoes, maple syrup, and wild blueberries. Dairy production is also prominent in this central and western area.
Southern New Hampshire cuisine is similar to that of the Boston area, featuring fish, shellfish, and local apples. As with Maine and Vermont, French-Canadian dishes are popular, including tourtière, which is traditionally served on Christmas Eve, and poutine. Corn chowder is also common, which is similar to clam chowder but with corn and bacon replacing the clams. Portsmouth is known for its orange cake.
Rhode Island is known for johnnycakes, doughboys, and clam cakes.
Johnnycakes, variously and contentiously known as jonnycakes, journeycakes and Shawnee cakes, can vary in thickness and preparation, and disagreements over whether they should be make with milk or water persist. East of Narrangasett Bay johnnycakes are made with cold milk and a little butter, but around South County the batter is sweetened and make with scalded cornmeal. One attempt by the Rhode Island Legislature to settle on an "authentic" recipe ended in a fistfight. They were traditionally served as a flatbread alongside chipped beef or baked beans, but in modern times they are usually eaten for breakfast with butter and maple syrup. According to The Society for the Propagation of the Johnnycake Tradition in Rhode Island, authentic johnnycakes must be made with whitecap flint corn historically grown in the region around Narrangasett Bay. Stone-ground flint corn is not commercially available, but can still ve found at a few historic gristmills like the Prescott Farm museum in Middletown.
Hot dogs, known "wieners" or sometimes "New York System wieners", are slow cooked over low heat and served in a steamed bun, often topped with some combination of celery salt, mustard, raw onion and ground beef sauce.
Sweetened coffee-flavored dairy products are popular in Rhode Island. Coffee ice cream is popular and a locally produced coffee gelatin dessert mix can be found at supermarkets. Coffee milk has been the official state drink since 1993. While the origins may date to the 1930s, when some shopkeeps sweetened leftover coffee ground with milk and sugar, its now made with coffee extract syrups like those produced by Autocrat.
Also popular in the state are clear clam chowder known as Rhode Island clam chowder, quahogs, milkshakes (called "cabinets" in Rhode Island and "frappes" elsewhere in New England), submarine sandwiches, pizza strips, the chow mein sandwich, and Del's Frozen Lemonade. Italian cooking is long established in the region. In Rhode Island and other parts of New England with a large Portuguese American population, Portuguese foods are common, including linguiça, chouriço, caldo verde, malasadas, and Portuguese sweet bread.
Vermont produces cheddar cheese and other dairy products. Small cheesemakers recognized for producing hand-crafted cheddar cheeses include the Crowley Cheese Factory Grafton Village Cheese Company, and Shelburne Farms.
The Vermonter sandwich is made with cold cuts (often turkey and ham), apple, sharp Vermont cheddar and maple mustard (a mix of maple syrup and grainy mustard). The toasted sandwich is served warm.
It is known in and outside of New England for its maple syrup. Maple syrup is used as an ingredient in some Vermont dishes, including baked beans. Rhubarb pie is a common dessert and has been combined with strawberries in late spring.
The oldest operating restaurant in the United States is the Union Oyster House (1826) located in Boston.
Legal Sea Foods is a chain restaurant that began by selling fresh fish and fish and chips. The original 1950 shop was located at Cambridge's Inman Square.
Woodman's of Essex began selling homemade potato chips in 1914. Their signature dish of fried claims was introduced only a few years later, in 1916. The chowder has won prizes at the annual Essex Clamfest.
Friendly's was founded in 1935 during the Great Depression in Springfield, Massachusetts as an ice cream parlor selling two scoops for a nickel. By 1960, the company offered 63 flavors of ice cream. They were producing 25 million gallons per year and had moved their headquarters to Wilbraham. It only becomes a full-service chain restaurant after being acquired by Donald Smith in 1988.
At local shops along the North Shore of Massachusetts, "three-way" roast beef sandwiches are often served on an onion roll and topped with mayo, barbecue sauce and white American cheese. Kelly's Roast Beef claims to have originated the first roast beef sandwich. Open-faced roast beef sandwiches predate Kelly's version but are typically eaten with a knife and fork. Other well-known North Shore roast beef shops include Londi's and Bill & Bob's.
D'Angelo's is a regional chain with locations in Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts specializing in subs (called heroes in New York City and hoagies in Philadelphia). Their first shop opened in Dedham, Massachusetts in 1967. They serve foot-long lobster rolls and other sandwich varieties like steak and cheese. Italian sandwiches are the specialty Moe's Italian Sandwiches, founded in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1959. Based on a family recipe their sandwich is made with salami, provolone, veggies, spices and olive oil. Amato's claims to have originated the Maine Italian sandwich, made with ham, American cheese, onion, sour pockles, tomatoes, black olives, green peppers and olive oil.
Fluff marshmallow creme, used to make Fluffernutter sandwiches, is made in Lynn, Massachusetts. Welch's, headquartered in Concord, Massachusetts, produces grape juices, jellies and jams from purple Concord grapes. The company has been owned by the National Grape Cooperative Association since 1956.
Autocrat is a company based in Lincoln, Rhode Island that produces coffee and tea extracts. Their coffee syrups are used to make coffee milk which became the official state drink of Rhode Island in 1993. The Moxie Beverage Company of Bedford, New Hampshire, acquired by the Coca-Cola Company in 2018, produces the Moxie soft drink. Flavored with gentian root extract, Moxie has been the official soft drink of Maine since May 10, 2005.
Organic dairy company Stonyfield Farm, owned by the French dairy company Lactalis, is located in Londonderry, New Hampshire. Ice cream company Ben & Jerry's, purchased in 2000 by the Anglo-Dutch company Unilever, was founded in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22048 |
Neil Simon
Marvin Neil Simon (July 4, 1927 – August 26, 2018) was an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. He has received more combined Oscar and Tony Award nominations than any other writer.
Simon grew up in New York City during the Great Depression. His parents' financial difficulties affected their marriage, giving him a mostly unhappy and unstable childhood. He often took refuge in movie theaters, where he enjoyed watching early comedians like Charlie Chaplin. After graduating from high school and serving a few years in the Army Air Force Reserve, he began writing comedy scripts for radio programs and popular early television shows. Among the latter were Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows", (where in 1950 he worked alongside other young writers including Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Selma Diamond) and "The Phil Silvers Show", which ran from 1955 to 1959.
His first produced play was "Come Blow Your Horn" (1961). It took him three years to complete and ran for 678 performances on Broadway. It was followed by two more successes, "Barefoot in the Park" (1963) and "The Odd Couple" (1965). He won a Tony Award for the latter. It made him a national celebrity and "the hottest new playwright on Broadway." From the 1960s to the 1980s he wrote for stage and screen; some of his screenplays were based on his own works for the stage. His style ranged from farce to romantic comedy to more serious dramatic comedy. Overall, he garnered 17 Tony nominations and won three awards. In 1966, he had four successful productions running on Broadway at the same time, and in 1983 he became the only living playwright to have a New York theatre, the Neil Simon Theatre, named in his honor.
Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927, in The Bronx, New York, to Jewish parents. His father, Irving Simon, was a garment salesman, and his mother, Mamie (Levy) Simon, was mostly a homemaker. Neil had one brother, eight years his senior, television writer and comedy teacher Danny Simon. He grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan, and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School when he was sixteen. He was nicknamed 'Doc', and the school yearbook described him as extremely shy.
Simon's childhood was marked by his parents' "tempestuous marriage" and the financial hardship caused by the Depression. Sometimes at night he blocked out their arguments by putting a pillow over his ears. His father often abandoned the family for months at a time, causing them further financial and emotional suffering. As a result the family took in boarders, and Simon and his brother Danny were sometimes forced to live with different relatives.
During an interview with writer Lawrence Grobel, Simon said: "To this day I never really knew what the reason for all the fights and battles were about between the two of them ... She'd hate him and be very angry, but he would come back and she would take him back. She really loved him." Simon has said that one of the reasons he became a writer was to fulfill a need to be independent of such emotional family issues, a need he recognized when he was seven or eight: "I'd better start taking care of myself somehow ... It made me strong as an independent person.
He was able to do that at the movies, in the work of stars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy. "I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud." Simon acknowledged these childhood films as his inspiration: "I wanted to make a whole audience fall onto the floor, writhing and laughing so hard that some of them pass out." He made writing comedy his long-term goal, and also saw it as a way to connect with people. "I was never going to be an athlete or a doctor." He began writing for pay while still in high school: At the age of fifteen, Simon and his brother created a series of comedy sketches for employees at an annual department store event. To help develop his writing skill, he often spent three days a week at the library reading books by famous humorists such as Mark Twain, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman and S. J. Perelman.
Soon after graduating from high school, he signed up with the Army Air Force Reserve at New York University. He attained the rank of corporal and was eventually sent to Colorado. During those years in the Reserve, Simon wrote professionally, starting as a sports editor. He was assigned to Lowry Air Force Base during 1945 and attended the University of Denver from 1945 to 1946.
Simon quit his job as a mailroom clerk in the Warner Brothers offices in Manhattan to write radio and television scripts with his brother Danny Simon, under the tutelage of radio humourist Goodman Ace, who ran a short-lived writing workshop for CBS. Their work for the radio series "The Robert Q. Lewis Show" led to other writing jobs. Max Liebman hired the duo for the writing team of his popular television comedy series "Your Show of Shows." The program received Emmy Award nominations for Best Variety Show in 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954, and won in 1952 and 1953. Simon later wrote scripts for "The Phil Silvers Show", for episodes broadcast during 1958 and 1959.
Simon later recalled the importance of these two writing jobs to his career: "Between the two of them, I spent five years and learned more about what I was eventually going to do than in any other previous experience." "I knew when I walked into "Your Show of Shows", that this was the most talented group of writers that up until that time had ever been assembled together."
Simon described a typical writing session:
Simon incorporated some of these experiences into his play "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" (1993). A 2001 TV adaptation of the play won him two Emmy Award nominations.
His first Broadway experience was on "Catch a Star!" (1955); he collaborated on sketches with his brother, Danny.
In 1961, Simon's first Broadway play, "Come Blow Your Horn", ran for 678 performances at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. Simon took three years to create that first play, partly because he was also working on television scripts. He rewrote it at least twenty times from beginning to end: "It was the lack of belief in myself," he recalled. "I said, 'This isn't good enough. It's not right.' ... It was the equivalent of three years of college." Besides being a "monumental effort" for Simon, that play was a turning point in his career: "The theater and I discovered each other."
"Barefoot in the Park" (1963) and "The Odd Couple" (1965), for which he won a Tony Award, brought him national celebrity, and he was considered "the hottest new playwright on Broadway", according to Susan Koprince. Those successes were followed by others. During 1966, Simon had four shows playing simultaneously at Broadway theatres: "Sweet Charity", "The Star-Spangled Girl", "The Odd Couple" and "Barefoot in the Park". His professional association with producer Emanuel Azenberg began with "The Sunshine Boys" and continued with "The Good Doctor", "God's Favorite", "Chapter Two", "They're Playing Our Song", "I Ought to Be in Pictures", "Brighton Beach Memoirs", "Biloxi Blues", "Broadway Bound", "Jake's Women", "The Goodbye Girl" and "Laughter on the 23rd Floor", among others. His work ranged from romantic comedies to serious drama. Overall, he received seventeen Tony nominations and won three awards.
Simon also adapted material originated by others, such as the musical "Little Me" (1962), based on the novel by Patrick Dennis; "Sweet Charity" (1966) from the screenplay for the film "Nights of Cabiria ("1957), written by Federico Fellini and others; and "Promises, Promises" (1968) a musical version of Billy Wilder's film, "The Apartment". Simon also served as an uncredited "script doctor,” helping to hone the books of Broadway-bound plays or musicals under development, as he did for "A Chorus Line" (1975). During the 1970s, he wrote a string of successful plays; sometimes more than one was playing at the same time, to standing room only audiences. Although he was, by then, recognized as one of the country's leading playwrights, his inner drive kept him writing:
Simon drew "extensively on his own life and experience" for his stories. His settings are typically working-class New York City neighborhoods, similar to the ones in which he grew up. In 1983, he began writing the first of three autobiographical plays, "Brighton Beach Memoirs" (1983), which would be followed by "Biloxi Blues" (1985) and "Broadway Bound" (1986). He received his greatest critical acclaim for this trilogy. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his follow-up play, "Lost in Yonkers" (1991).
Simon chose not to write the screenplay for the first film adaptation of his work, "Come Blow Your Horn" (1963), preferring to focus on his playwriting. However, he was disappointed with the picture, and thereafter tried to control the conversion of his works. Simon wrote screenplays for more than twenty films and received four Academy Award nominations—for The Odd Couple (1969), The Sunshine Boys (1976), The Goodbye Girl (1978) and California Suite (1979). Other movies include "The Out-of-Towners (1970) and" "Murder by Death" (1976). Although most of his films were successful, movies were always of secondary importance to his plays:
Many of his earlier adaptations of his own work were very similar to the original plays. Simon observed in hindsight: "I really didn't have an interest in films then. I was mainly interested in continuing writing for the theater ... The plays never became cinematic". "The Odd Couple" (1968), was one highly successful early adaptation, faithful to the stage play but also opened out, with more scenic variety.
Theater critic John Lahr believes that Simon's primary theme is "the silent majority,” many of whom are "frustrated, edgy, and insecure". Simon's characters are "likable" and easy for audiences to identify with. They often have difficult relationships in marriage, friendship or business, as they "struggle to find a sense of belonging". According to biographer Edythe McGovern, there is always "an implied seeking for solutions to human problems through relationships with other people, [and] Simon is able to deal with serious topics of universal and enduring concern,” while still making people laugh.
McGovern adds that one of Simon's hallmarks is his "great compassion for his fellow human beings," an opinion shared by author Alan Cooper, who observes that Simon's plays "are essentially about friendships, even when they are about marriage or siblings or crazy aunts ..."
Many of Simon's plays are set in New York City, with a resulting urban flavor. Within that setting, Simon's themes include marital conflict, infidelity, sibling rivalry, adolescence, bereavement and fear of aging. Despite the serious nature of these ideas, Simon always manages to tell the stories with humor, embracing both realism and comedy. Simon would tell aspiring comedy playwrights "not to try to make it funny ... try and make it real and then the comedy will come."
"When I was writing plays," he said, "I was almost always (with some exceptions) writing a drama that was funny ... I wanted to tell a story about real people." Simon explained how he managed this combination:
His comedies often portray struggles with marital difficulties or fading love, sometimes leading to separation, divorce and child custody issues. After many twists in the plot, the endings typically show renewal of the relationships.
Politics seldom plays in Simon's stories, and his characters avoid confronting society as a whole, despite their personal problems. "Simon is simply interested in showing human beings as they are—with their foibles, eccentricities, and absurdities." Drama critic Richard Eder noted that Simon's popularity relies on his ability to portray a "painful comedy," where characters say and do funny things in extreme contrast to the unhappiness they are feeling.
Simon's plays are generally semi-autobiographical, often portraying aspects of his troubled childhood and first marriages. According to Koprince, Simon's plays also "invariably depict the plight of white middle-class Americans, most of whom are New Yorkers and many of whom are Jewish, like himself." He has said, "I suppose you could practically trace my life through my plays." In "Lost in Yonkers", Simon suggests the necessity of a loving marriage (as opposed to his parents'), and how children who are deprived of it in their home, "end up emotionally damaged and lost".
According to Koprince, Simon's Jewish heritage is a key influence on his work, although he is unaware of it when writing. For example, in the "Brighton Beach" trilogy, she explains, the lead character is a "master of self-deprecating humor, cleverly poking fun at himself and at his Jewish culture as a whole." Simon himself has said that his characters are people who are "often self-deprecating and [who] usually see life from the grimmest point of view," explaining, "I see humor in even the grimmest of situations. And I think it's possible to write a play so moving it can tear you apart and still have humor in it." This theme in writing, notes Koprince, "belongs to a tradition of Jewish humor ... a tradition which values laughter as a defense mechanism and which sees humor as a healing, life-giving force."
Simon's characters are typically "imperfect, unheroic figures who are at heart decent human beings", according to Koprince, and she traces Simon's style of comedy back to that of Menander, a playwright of ancient Greece. Menander, like Simon, also used average people in domestic life settings, and also blended humor and tragedy into his themes. Many of Simon's most memorable plays are built around two-character scenes, as in segments of "California Suite" and "Plaza Suite".
Before writing, Simon tried to create an image of his characters. He said that the play "Star Spangled Girl", which was a box-office failure, was "the only play I ever wrote where I did not have a clear visual image of the characters in my mind as I sat down at the typewriter." Simon considered "character building" an obligation, stating that the "trick is to do it skillfully". While other writers have created vivid characters, they have not created nearly as many as Simon did: "Simon has no peers among contemporary comedy playwrights," stated biographer Robert Johnson.
Simon's characters often amuse the audience with sparkling "zingers," made believable by Simon's skillful writing of dialogue. He reproduces speech so "adroitly" that his characters are usually plausible and easy for audiences to identify with and laugh at. His characters may also express "serious and continuing concerns of mankind ... rather than purely topical material". McGovern notes that his characters are always impatient "with phoniness, with shallowness, with amorality", adding that they sometimes express "implicit and explicit criticism of modern urban life with its stress, its vacuity, and its materialism." However, Simon's characters are never seen thumbing their noses at society."
The key aspect most consistent in Simon's writing style is comedy, situational and verbal, and presents serious subjects in a way that makes audiences "laugh to avoid weeping." He achieved this with rapid-fire jokes and wisecracks, in a wide variety of urban settings and stories. This creates a "sophisticated, urban humor", says editor Kimball King, and results in plays that represent "middle America." Simon created everyday, apparently simple conflicts with his stories, which became comical premises for problems which needed be solved.
Another feature of his writing is his adherence to traditional values regarding marriage and family. McGovern states that this thread of the monogamous family runs through most of Simon's work, and is one he feels is necessary to give stability to society. Some critics have therefore described his stories as somewhat old fashioned, although Johnson points out that most members of his audiences "are delighted to find Simon upholding their own beliefs." And where infidelity is the theme in a Simon play, rarely, if ever, do those characters gain happiness: "In Simon's eyes, adds Johnson, "divorce is never a victory."
Another aspect of Simon's style is his ability to combine both comedy and drama. "Barefoot in the Park", for example, is a light romantic comedy, while portions of "Plaza Suite" were written as "farce", and portions of "California Suite" are "high comedy".
Simon was willing to experiment and take risks, often moving his plays in new and unexpected directions. In "The Gingerbread Lady", he combined comedy with tragedy; "Rumors" (1988) is a full-length farce; in "Jake's Women" and "Brighton Beach Memoirs" he used dramatic narration; in "The Good Doctor", he created a "pastiche of sketches" around various stories by Chekhov; and "Fools" (1981), was written as a fairy-tale romance similar to stories by Sholem Aleichem. Although some of these efforts failed to win approval from many critics, Koprince claims that they nonetheless demonstrate Simon's "seriousness as a playwright and his interest in breaking new ground."
During most of his career Simon's work received mixed reviews, with many critics admiring his comedy skills, much of it a blend of "humor and pathos". Other critics were less complimentary, noting that much of his dramatic structure was weak and sometimes relied too heavily on gags and one-liners. As a result, notes Kopince, "literary scholars had generally ignored Simon's early work, regarding him as a commercially successful playwright rather than a serious dramatist." Clive Barnes, theater critic for "The New York Times", wrote that like his British counterpart Noël Coward, Simon was "destined to spend most of his career underestimated", but nonetheless very "popular".
This attitude changed after 1991, when he won a Pulitzer Prize for drama with "Lost in Yonkers". McGovern writes that "seldom has even the most astute critic recognized what depths really exist in the plays of Neil Simon." Although, when "Lost in Yonkers" was considered by the Pulitzer Advisory Board, board member Douglas Watt noted that it was the only play nominated by all five jury members, and that they judged it "a mature work by an enduring (and often undervalued) American playwright."
McGovern compares Simon with noted earlier playwrights, including Ben Jonson, Molière, and George Bernard Shaw, pointing out that those playwrights had "successfully raised fundamental and sometimes tragic issues of universal and therefore enduring interest without eschewing the comic mode." She concludes, "It is my firm conviction that Neil Simon should be considered a member of this company ... an invitation long overdue." McGovern attempts to explain the response of many critics:
Similarly, literary critic Robert Johnson explains that Simon's plays have given us a "rich variety of entertaining, memorable characters" who portray the human experience, often with serious themes. Although his characters are "more lifelike, more complicated and more interesting" than most of the characters audiences see on stage, Simon has "not received as much critical attention as he deserves." Lawrence Grobel, in fact, calls him "the Shakespeare of his time", and possibly the "most successful playwright in history." He states:
Broadway critic Walter Kerr tries to rationalize why Simon's work has been underrated:
Simon was married five times. He was married to dancer Joan Baim for 20 years (1953–1973) and had two children. Simon became a widower when Baim died of bone cancer. Simon married actress Marsha Mason (1973–1983), actress Diane Lander in two separate marriages (1987–1988 and 1990–1998), and actress Elaine Joyce (1999–2018). He was the father of Nancy and Ellen, from his first marriage, and Bryn, Lander's daughter from a previous relationship, whom he adopted.
Simon's nephew is U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon and his niece-in-law is U.S. Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici.
Simon was on the board of selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service.
In 2004, Simon received a kidney transplant from his long-time friend and publicist Bill Evans.
Neil Simon died on August 26, 2018, after being on life support while hospitalized for kidney failure. He also had Alzheimer's disease. He was 91. The cause of death was complications of pneumonia, according to his publicist, Bill Evans. Simon died around 1 a.m. Sunday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.
Simon held three honorary degrees; a Doctor of Humane Letters from Hofstra University, a Doctor of Letters from Marquette University and a Doctor of Law from Williams College. In 1983 Simon became the only living playwright to have a New York City theatre named after him. The Alvin Theatre on Broadway was renamed the Neil Simon Theatre in his honor, and he was an honorary member of the Walnut Street Theatre's board of trustees. Also in 1983, Simon was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
In 1965, he won the Tony Award for Best Playwright ("The Odd Couple"), and in 1975, a special Tony Award for his overall contribution to American theater. Simon won the 1978 Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay for "The Goodbye Girl". For "Brighton Beach Memoirs" (1983), he was awarded the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, followed by another Tony Award for Best Play of 1985, "Biloxi Blues". In 1991, he won the Pulitzer Prize along with the Tony Award for "Lost in Yonkers" (1991).
The Neil Simon Festival is a professional summer repertory theatre devoted to preserving the works of Simon and his contemporaries. The Neil Simon Festival was founded by Richard Dean Bugg in 2003.
In 2006, Simon received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Simon is credited as playwright and contributing writer to at least 49 plays on Broadway:
In addition to the plays and musicals above, Simon has twice rewritten or updated his 1965 play "The Odd Couple", both of which versions have run under new titles. These new versions are "The Female Odd Couple" (1985), and "Oscar and Felix: A New Look at the Odd Couple" (2002).
Simon, as a member of a writing staff, penned material for the following shows:
The following made-for-TV movies were all written solely by Simon, and all based on his earlier plays or screenplays | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22049 |
North American Free Trade Agreement
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA; , TLCAN; , ALÉNA) was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994, and superseded the 1988 Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Canada. The NAFTA trade bloc formed one of the largest trade blocs in the world by gross domestic product.
The impetus for a North American free trade zone began with U.S. president Ronald Reagan, who made the idea part of his 1980 presidential campaign. After the signing of the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement in 1988, the administrations of U.S. president George H. W. Bush, Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney agreed to negotiate what became NAFTA. Each submitted the agreement for ratification in their respective capitals in December 1992, but NAFTA faced significant opposition in both the United States and Canada. All three countries ratified NAFTA in 1993 after the addition of two side agreements, the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC).
Passage of NAFTA resulted in the elimination or reduction of barriers to trade and investment between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The effects of the agreement regarding issues such as employment, the environment, and economic growth have been the subject of political disputes. Most economic analyses indicated that NAFTA was beneficial to the North American economies and the average citizen, but harmed a small minority of workers in industries exposed to trade competition. Economists held that withdrawing from NAFTA or renegotiating NAFTA in a way that reestablished trade barriers would've adversely affected the U.S. economy and cost jobs. However, Mexico would've been much more severely affected by job loss and reduction of economic growth in both the short term and long term.
After U.S. president Donald Trump took office in January 2017, he sought to replace NAFTA with a new agreement, beginning negotiations with Canada and Mexico. In September 2018, the United States, Mexico, and Canada reached an agreement to replace NAFTA with the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), and all three countries had ratified it by March 2020. NAFTA remained in force until USMCA was implemented. In April 2020, Canada and Mexico notified the U.S. that they were ready to implement the agreement. The USMCA took effect on July 1, 2020, replacing NAFTA with a modernized agreement.
The impetus for a North American free trade zone began with U.S. president Ronald Reagan, who made the idea part of his campaign when he announced his candidacy for the presidency in November 1979. Canada and the United States signed the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 1988, and shortly afterward Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari decided to approach U.S. president George H. W. Bush to propose a similar agreement in an effort to bring in foreign investment following the Latin American debt crisis. As the two leaders began negotiating, the Canadian government under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney feared that the advantages Canada had gained through the Canada–US FTA would be undermined by a US–Mexican bilateral agreement, and asked to become a party to the US–Mexican talks.
Following diplomatic negotiations dating back to 1990, the leaders of the three nations signed the agreement in their respective capitals on December 17, 1992. The signed agreement then needed to be ratified by each nation's legislative or parliamentary branch.
The earlier Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement had been controversial and divisive in Canada, and featured as an issue in the 1988 Canadian election. In that election, more Canadians voted for anti-free trade parties (the Liberals and the New Democrats), but the split of the votes between the two parties meant that the pro-free trade Progressive Conservatives (PCs) came out of the election with the most seats and so took power. Mulroney and the PCs had a parliamentary majority and easily passed the 1987 Canada–US FTA and NAFTA bills. However, Mulroney was replaced as Conservative leader and prime minister by Kim Campbell. Campbell led the PC party into the 1993 election where they were decimated by the Liberal Party under Jean Chrétien, who campaigned on a promise to renegotiate or abrogate NAFTA. Chrétien subsequently negotiated two supplemental agreements with Bush, who had subverted the LAC advisory process and worked to "fast track" the signing prior to the end of his term, ran out of time and had to pass the required ratification and signing of the implementation law to incoming president Bill Clinton.
Before sending it to the United States Senate Clinton added two side agreements, the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), to protect workers and the environment, and to also allay the concerns of many House members. The U.S. required its partners to adhere to environmental practices and regulations similar to its own. After much consideration and emotional discussion, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act on November 17, 1993, 234–200. The agreement's supporters included 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. The bill passed the Senate on November 20, 1993, 61–38. Senate supporters were 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats. Clinton signed it into law on December 8, 1993; the agreement went into effect on January 1, 1994. Clinton, while signing the NAFTA bill, stated that "NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement." NAFTA then replaced the previous Canada-US FTA.
NAFTA (TLCAN in Spanish) was approved by the Mexican Senate on November 22, 1993, and was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation on December 8, 1993.
The decree implementing NAFTA and the various changes to accommodate NAFTA in Mexican law was promulgated on December 14, 1993, with entry into force on January 1, 1994.
The goal of NAFTA was to eliminate barriers to trade and investment between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The implementation of NAFTA on January 1, 1994, brought the immediate elimination of tariffs on more than one-half of Mexico's exports to the U.S. and more than one-third of U.S. exports to Mexico. Within 10 years of the implementation of the agreement, all U.S.–Mexico tariffs were to be eliminated except for some U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico, to be phased out within 15 years. Most U.S.–Canada trade was already duty-free. NAFTA also sought to eliminate non-tariff trade barriers and to protect the intellectual property rights on traded products.
Chapter 20 provides a procedure for the international resolution of disputes over the application and interpretation of NAFTA. It was modeled after Chapter 69 of the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement.
NAFTA is, in part, implemented by Technical Working Groups composed of government officials from each of the three partner nations.
The North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act made some changes to the copyright law of the United States, foreshadowing the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994 by restoring copyright (within the NAFTA nations) on certain motion pictures which had entered the public domain.
U.S. congressional approval for NAFTA would have been impossible without addressing public concerns about NAFTA's environmental impact. The Clinton administration negotiated a side agreement on the environment with Canada and Mexico, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), which led to the creation of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) in 1994. To alleviate concerns that NAFTA, the first regional trade agreement between a developing country and two developed countries, would have negative environmental impacts, the commission was mandated to conduct ongoing "ex post" environmental assessment, It created one of the first "ex post" frameworks for environmental assessment of trade liberalization, designed to produce a body of evidence with respect to the initial hypotheses about NAFTA and the environment, such as the concern that NAFTA would create a "race to the bottom" in environmental regulation among the three countries, or that NAFTA would pressure governments to increase their environmental protections. The CEC has held four symposia to evaluate the environmental impacts of NAFTA and commissioned 47 papers on the subject from leading independent experts.
From the earliest negotiation, agriculture was – and still is – a controversial topic within NAFTA, as it has been with almost all free trade agreements signed within the WTO framework. Agriculture is the only section that was not negotiated trilaterally; instead, three separate agreements were signed between each pair of parties. The Canada–U.S. agreement contains significant restrictions and tariff quotas on agricultural products (mainly sugar, dairy, and poultry products), whereas the Mexico–U.S. pact allows for a wider liberalization within a framework of phase-out periods (it was the first North–South FTA on agriculture to be signed).
NAFTA established the CANAMEX Corridor for road transport between Canada and Mexico, also proposed for use by rail, pipeline, and fiber optic telecommunications infrastructure. This became a High Priority Corridor under the U.S. Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991.
Another contentious issue is the investor-state dispute settlement obligations contained in Chapter 11 of NAFTA. Chapter 11 allows corporations or individuals to sue Mexico, Canada or the United States for compensation when actions taken by those governments (or by those for whom they are responsible at international law, such as provincial, state, or municipal governments) violate international law.
This chapter has been criticized by groups in the United States, Mexico, and Canada for a variety of reasons, including not taking into account important social and environmental considerations. In Canada, several groups, including the Council of Canadians, challenged the constitutionality of Chapter 11. They lost at the trial level and the subsequent appeal.
Methanex Corporation, a Canadian corporation, filed a US$970 million suit against the United States because, it said, a California ban on Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), a substance that had found its way into many wells in the state, was hurtful to the corporation's sales of methanol. The claim was rejected, and the company was ordered to pay US$3 million to the U.S. government in costs, based on the following reasoning: "But as a matter of general international law, a non-discriminatory regulation for a public purpose, which is enacted in accordance with due process and, which affects, inter alios, a foreign investor or investment is not deemed expropriatory and compensable unless specific commitments had been given by the regulating government to the then putative foreign investor contemplating investment that the government would refrain from such regulation."
In another case, Metalclad, an American corporation, was awarded US$15.6 million from Mexico after a Mexican municipality refused a construction permit for the hazardous waste landfill it intended to construct in Guadalcázar, San Luis Potosí. The construction had already been approved by the federal government with various environmental requirements imposed (see paragraph 48 of the tribunal decision). The NAFTA panel found that the municipality did not have the authority to ban construction on the basis of its environmental concerns.
In Eli Lilly and Company v. Government of Canada the plaintiff presented a US$500 million claim for the way Canada requires usefulness in its drug patent legislation. Apotex is sued the U.S. for US$520 million because of opportunity it says it lost in an FDA generic drug decision.
Lone Pine Resources Inc. v. Government of Canada filed a US$250 million claim against Canada, accusing it of "arbitrary, capricious and illegal" behaviour, because Quebec intends to prevent fracking exploration under the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Lone Pine Resources is incorporated in Delaware but headquartered in Calgary, and had an initial public offering on the NYSE May 25, 2011, of 15 million shares each for $13, which raised US$195 million.
Barutciski acknowledged "that NAFTA and other investor-protection treaties create an anomaly in that Canadian companies that have also seen their permits rescinded by the very same Quebec legislation, which expressly forbids the paying of compensation, do not have the right (to) pursue a NAFTA claim", and that winning "compensation in Canadian courts for domestic companies in this case would be more difficult since the Constitution puts property rights in provincial hands".
A treaty with China would extend similar rights to Chinese investors, including SOEs.
NAFTA's Chapter 19 is a trade dispute mechanism which subjects antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) determinations to binational panel review instead of, or in addition to, conventional judicial review. For example, in the United States, review of agency decisions imposing antidumping and countervailing duties are normally heard before the U.S. Court of International Trade, an Article III court. NAFTA parties, however, have the option of appealing the decisions to binational panels composed of five citizens from the two relevant NAFTA countries. The panelists are generally lawyers experienced in international trade law. Since NAFTA does not include substantive provisions concerning AD/CVD, the panel is charged with determining whether final agency determinations involving AD/CVD conform with the country's domestic law. Chapter 19 is an anomaly in international dispute settlement since it does not apply international law, but requires a panel composed of individuals from many countries to re-examine the application of one country's domestic law.
A Chapter 19 panel is expected to examine whether the agency's determination is supported by "substantial evidence". This standard assumes significant deference to the domestic agency.
Some of the most controversial trade disputes in recent years, such as the U.S.–Canada softwood lumber dispute, have been litigated before Chapter 19 panels.
Decisions by Chapter 19 panels can be challenged before a NAFTA extraordinary challenge committee. However, an extraordinary challenge committee does not function as an ordinary appeal. Under NAFTA, it will only vacate or remand a decision if the decision involves a significant and material error that threatens the integrity of the NAFTA dispute settlement system. Since January 2006, no NAFTA party has successfully challenged a Chapter 19 panel's decision before an extraordinary challenge committee.
The roster of NAFTA adjudicators includes many retired judges, such as Alice Desjardins, John Maxwell Evans, Constance Hunt, John Richard, Arlin M. Adams, Susan Getzendanner, George C. Pratt, Charles B. Renfrew and Sandra Day O'Connor.
In 2008, Canadian exports to the United States and Mexico were at $381.3 billion, with imports at $245.1 billion. According to a 2004 article by University of Toronto economist Daniel Trefler, NAFTA produced a significant net benefit to Canada in 2003, with long-term productivity increasing by up to 15 percent in industries that experienced the deepest tariff cuts. While the contraction of low-productivity plants reduced employment (up to 12 percent of existing positions), these job losses lasted less than a decade; overall, unemployment in Canada has fallen since the passage of the act. Commenting on this trade-off, Trefler said that the critical question in trade policy is to understand "how freer trade can be implemented in an industrialized economy in a way that recognizes both the long-run gains and the short-term adjustment costs borne by workers and others".
A study in 2007 found that NAFTA had "a substantial impact on international trade volumes, but a modest effect on prices and welfare".
According to a 2012 study, with reduced NAFTA trade tariffs, trade with the United States and Mexico only increased by a modest 11% in Canada compared to an increase of 41% for the U.S. and 118% for Mexico. Moreover, the U.S. and Mexico benefited more from the tariff reductions component, with welfare increases of 0.08% and 1.31%, respectively, with Canada experiencing a decrease of 0.06%.
According to a 2017 report by the New York City based public policy think tank report, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), bilateral trade in agricultural products tripled in size from 1994 to 2017 and is considered to be one of the largest economic effects of NAFTA on U.S.-Canada trade with Canada becoming the U.S. agricultural sectors' leading importer. Canadian fears of losing manufacturing jobs to the United States did not materialize with manufacturing employment holding "steady". However, with Canada's labour productivity levels at 72% of U.S. levels, the hopes of closing the "productivity gap" between the two countries were also not realized.
According to a 2018 Sierra Club report, Canada's commitments under NAFTA and the Paris agreement conflict. The Paris commitments are voluntary, and NAFTA's are compulsory.
According to a 2018 report by Gordon Laxter published by the Council of Canadians, NAFTA's Article 605, energy proportionality rule ensures that Americans have "virtually unlimited first access to most of Canada's oil and natural gas" and Canada cannot reduce oil, natural gas and electricity exports (74% its oil and 52% its natural gas) to the U.S., even if Canada is experiencing shortages. These provisions that seemed logical when NAFTA was signed in 1993 are no longer appropriate. The Council of Canadians promotes environmental protection and is against NAFTA's role in encouraging development of the tar sands and fracking.
US President Donald Trump, angered by Canada's dairy tax of "almost 300%", threatened to leave Canada out of the NAFTA. Since 1972, Canada has been operating on a "supply management" system, which the United States is attempting to pressure it out of, specifically focusing on the dairy industry. However, this has not yet taken place, as Quebec, which holds approximately half the country's dairy farms, still supports supply management.
Maquiladoras (Mexican assembly plants that take in imported components and produce goods for export) have become the landmark of trade in Mexico. They moved to Mexico from the United States, hence the debate over the loss of American jobs. Income in the maquiladora sector has increased 15.5% since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994. Other sectors now benefit from the free trade agreement, and the share of exports to the U.S. from non-border states has increased in the last five years while the share of exports from border states has decreased. This has allowed rapid growth in non-border metropolitan areas such as Toluca, León and Puebla; all larger in population than Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Reynosa.
The overall effect of the Mexico–U.S. agricultural agreement is disputed. Mexico did not invest in the infrastructure necessary for competition, such as efficient railroads and highways. This resulted in more difficult living conditions for the country's poor. Mexico's agricultural exports increased 9.4 percent annually between 1994 and 2001, while imports increased by only 6.9 percent a year during the same period.
One of the most affected agricultural sectors is the meat industry. Mexico went from a small player in the pre-1994 U.S. export market to the second largest importer of U.S. agricultural products in 2004, and NAFTA may be a major catalyst for this change. Free trade removed the hurdles that impeded business between the two countries, so Mexico has provided a growing market for meat for the U.S., and increased sales and profits for the U.S. meat industry. A coinciding noticeable increase in the Mexican per capita GDP greatly changed meat consumption patterns; per capita meat consumption has grown.
Production of corn in Mexico has increased since NAFTA. But internal demand for corn has increased beyond Mexico's supply, and imports have become needed, far beyond the quotas Mexico originally negotiated. Zahniser & Coyle also point out that corn prices in Mexico, adjusted for international prices, have drastically decreased, but through a program of subsidies expanded by former president Vicente Fox, production has remained stable since 2000. Reducing agricultural subsidies, especially corn subsidies, has been suggested as a way to reduce harm to Mexican farmers.
A 2001 "Journal of Economic Perspectives" review of the existing literature found that NAFTA was a net benefit to Mexico. By the year 2003, 80% of the commerce in Mexico was executed only with the U.S. The commercial sales surplus, combined with the deficit with the rest of the world, created a dependency in Mexico's exports. These effects were evident in 2001–2003; the result of that recession was either a low rate or a negative rate in Mexico's exports.
A 2015 study found that Mexico's welfare increased by 1.31% as a result of the NAFTA tariff reductions, and that Mexico's intra-bloc trade increased by 118%. Inequality and poverty fell in the most globalization-affected regions of Mexico. 2013 and 2015 studies show that Mexican small farmers benefitted more from NAFTA than large-scale farmers.
NAFTA has also been credited with the rise of the Mexican middle class. A Tufts University study found that NAFTA lowered the average cost of basic necessities in Mexico by up to 50%. This price reduction increased cash-on-hand for many Mexican families, allowing Mexico to graduate more engineers than Germany each year.
Growth in new sales orders indicates an increase in demand for manufactured products, which resulted in expansion of production and a higher employment rate to satisfy the increment in the demand. The growth in the maquiladora industry and in the manufacturing industry was of 4.7% in August 2016. Three quarters of the imports and exports are with the U.S.
Tufts University political scientist Daniel W. Drezner has argued that NAFTA made it easier for Mexico to transform to a real democracy and become a country that views itself as North American. This has boosted cooperation between the United States and Mexico.
Economists generally agree that the United States economy benefited overall from NAFTA as it increased trade. In a 2012 survey of the Initiative on Global Markets' Economic Experts Panel, 95% of the participants said that, on average, U.S. citizens benefited from NAFTA while none said that NAFTA hurt US citizens, on average. A 2001 "Journal of Economic Perspectives" review found that NAFTA was a net benefit to the United States. A 2015 study found that US welfare increased by 0.08% as a result of NAFTA tariff reductions, and that US intra-bloc trade increased by 41%.
A 2014 study on the effects of NAFTA on US trade jobs and investment found that between 1993 and 2013, the US trade deficit with Mexico and Canada increased from $17.0 to $177.2 billion, displacing 851,700 US jobs.
In 2015, the Congressional Research Service concluded that the "net overall effect of NAFTA on the US economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily because trade with Canada and Mexico accounts for a small percentage of US GDP. However, there were worker and firm adjustment costs as the three countries adjusted to more open trade and investment among their economies." The report also estimated that NAFTA added $80 billion to the US economy since its implementation, equivalent to a 0.5% increase in US GDP.
The US Chamber of Commerce credits NAFTA with increasing U.S. trade in goods and services with Canada and Mexico from $337 billion in 1993 to $1.2 trillion in 2011, while the AFL–CIO blames the agreement for sending 700,000 American manufacturing jobs to Mexico over that time.
University of California, San Diego economics professor Gordon Hanson has said that NAFTA helped the US compete against China and therefore saved US jobs. While some jobs were lost to Mexico as a result of NAFTA, considerably more would have been lost to China if not for NAFTA.
The US had a trade surplus with NAFTA countries of $28.3 billion for services in 2009 and a trade deficit of $94.6 billion (36.4% annual increase) for goods in 2010. This trade deficit accounted for 26.8% of all US goods trade deficit. A 2018 study of global trade published by the Center for International Relations identified irregularities in the patterns of trade of NAFTA ecosystem using network theory analytical techniques. The study showed that the US trade balance is influenced by tax avoidance opportunities provided in Ireland.
A study published in the August 2008 issue of the "American Journal of Agricultural Economics", found NAFTA increased US agricultural exports to Mexico and Canada, even though most of the increase occurred a decade after its ratification. The study focused on the effects that gradual "phase-in" periods in regional trade agreements, including NAFTA, have on trade flows. Most of the increase in members' agricultural trade, which was only recently brought under the purview of the World Trade Organization, was due to very high trade barriers before NAFTA or other regional trade agreements.
The U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) in NAFTA countries (stock) was $327.5 billion in 2009 (latest data available), up 8.8% from 2008. The US direct investment in NAFTA countries is in nonbank holding companies, and in the manufacturing, finance/insurance, and mining sectors. The foreign direct investment of Canada and Mexico in the United States (stock) was $237.2 billion in 2009 (the latest data available), up 16.5% from 2008.
In their May 24, 2017 report, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) wrote that the economic impacts of NAFTA on the U.S. economy were modest. In a 2015 report, the Congressional Research Service summarized multiple studies as follows: "In reality, NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters. The net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily because trade with Canada and Mexico accounts for a small percentage of U.S. GDP. However, there were worker and firm adjustment costs as the three countries adjusted to more open trade and investment among their economies."
Many American small businesses depend on exporting their products to Canada or Mexico under NAFTA. According to the U.S. Trade Representative, this trade supports over 140,000 small- and medium-sized businesses in the US.
According to University of California, Berkeley professor of economics Brad DeLong, NAFTA had an insignificant impact on US manufacturing. The adverse impact on manufacturing has been exaggerated in US political discourse according to DeLong, and Harvard economist Dani Rodrik.
According to a 2013 article by Jeff Faux published by the Economic Policy Institute, California, Texas, Michigan and other states with high concentrations of manufacturing jobs were most affected by job loss due to NAFTA. According to a 2011 article by EPI economist Robert Scott about 682,900 U.S. jobs were "lost or displaced" as a result of the trade agreement. More recent studies agree with reports by the Congressional Research Service, that NAFTA only had a modest impact on manufacturing employment, and that automation explains 87% of the losses in manufacturing jobs.
According to a study in the "Journal of International Economics", NAFTA reduced pollution emitted by the US manufacturing sector: "On average, nearly two-thirds of the reductions in coarse particulate matter (PM10) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from the U.S. manufacturing sector between 1994 and 1998 can be attributed to trade liberalization following NAFTA."
According to the Sierra Club, NAFTA contributed to large-scale, export-oriented farming, which led to the increased use of fossil fuels, pesticides and GMO. NAFTA also contributed to environmentally destructive mining practices in Mexico. It prevented Canada from effectively regulating its tar sands industry, and created new legal avenues for transnational corporations to fight environmental legislation. In some cases, environmental policy was neglected in the wake of trade liberalization; in other cases, NAFTA's measures for investment protection, such as Chapter 11, and measures against non-tariff trade barriers threatened to discourage more vigorous environmental policy. The most serious overall increases in pollution due to NAFTA were found in the base metals sector, the Mexican petroleum sector, and the transportation equipment sector in the United States and Mexico, but not in Canada.
According to the Department of Homeland Security Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, during fiscal year 2006 (i.e., October 2005 through September 2006), 73,880 foreign professionals (64,633 Canadians and 9,247 Mexicans) were admitted into the United States for temporary employment under NAFTA (i.e., in the TN status). Additionally, 17,321 of their family members (13,136 Canadians, 2,904 Mexicans, as well as a number of third-country nationals married to Canadians and Mexicans) entered the U.S. in the treaty national's dependent (TD) status. Because DHS counts the number of the new I-94 arrival records filled at the border, and the TN-1 admission is valid for three years, the number of non-immigrants in TN status present in the U.S. at the end of the fiscal year is approximately equal to the number of admissions during the year. (A discrepancy may be caused by some TN entrants leaving the country or changing status before their three-year admission period has expired, while other immigrants admitted earlier may change their status "to" TN or TD, or extend TN status granted earlier).
According to the International Organization for Migration, deaths of migrants have been on the rise worldwide with 5,604 deaths in 2016. An increased number of undocumented farmworkers in California may be due to the initial passing of NAFTA
Canadian authorities estimated that on December 1, 2006, 24,830 U.S. citizens and 15,219 Mexican citizens were in Canada as "foreign workers". These numbers include both entrants under NAFTA and those who entered under other provisions of Canadian immigration law. New entries of foreign workers in 2006 totalled 16,841 U.S. citizens and 13,933 Mexicans.
In the second 1992 presidential debate, Ross Perot argued:
Perot ultimately lost the election, and the winner, Bill Clinton, supported NAFTA, which went into effect on January 1, 1994.
In 1996, the gasoline additive MMT was brought to Canada by Ethyl Corporation, an American company when the Canadian federal government banned imports of the additive. The American company brought a claim under NAFTA Chapter 11 seeking US$201 million, from the Canadian federal government as well as the Canadian provinces under the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT). They argued that the additive had not been conclusively linked to any health dangers, and that the prohibition was damaging to their company. Following a finding that the ban was a violation of the AIT, the Canadian federal government repealed the ban and settled with the American company for US$13 million. Studies by Health and Welfare Canada (now Health Canada) on the health effects of MMT in fuel found no significant health effects associated with exposure to these exhaust emissions. Other Canadian researchers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency disagreed citing studies that suggested possible nerve damage.
The United States and Canada have argued for years over the United States' 27% duty on Canadian softwood lumber imports. Canada filed many motions to have the duty eliminated and the collected duties returned to Canada. After the United States lost an appeal before a NAFTA panel, it responded by saying "We are, of course, disappointed with the [NAFTA panel's] decision, but it will have no impact on the anti-dumping and countervailing duty orders." (spokesman for U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman) On July 21, 2006, the United States Court of International Trade found that imposition of the duties was contrary to U.S. law.
On October 30, 2007, American citizens Marvin and Elaine Gottlieb filed a Notice of Intent to Submit a Claim to Arbitration under NAFTA, claiming thousands of U.S. investors lost a total of $5 billion in the fall-out from the Conservative Government's decision the previous year to change the tax rate on income trusts in the energy sector. On April 29, 2009, a determination was made that this change in tax law was not expropriation.
Several studies have rejected NAFTA responsibility for depressing the incomes of poor corn farmers. The trend existed more than a decade before NAFTA existed. Also, maize production increased after 1994, and there wasn't a measurable impact on the price of Mexican corn because of subsidized corn from the United States. The studies agreed that the abolition of U.S. agricultural subsidies would benefit Mexican farmers.
Preparations for NAFTA included cancellation of Article 27 of Mexico's constitution, the cornerstone of Emiliano Zapata's revolution in 1910–1919. Under the historic Article 27, indigenous communal landholdings were protected from sale or privatization. However, this barrier to investment was incompatible with NAFTA. Indigenous farmers feared the loss of their remaining lands, and also feared cheap imports (substitutes) from the US. The Zapatistas labelled NAFTA a "death sentence" to indigenous communities all over Mexico. Then EZLN declared war on the Mexican state on January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA came into force.
In a "60 Minutes" interview in September 2015, 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump called NAFTA "the single worst trade deal ever approved in [the United States]", and said that if elected, he would "either renegotiate it, or we will break it". , president of the trade group Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, expressed concern about renegotiation and the willingness to focus on the car industry. A range of trade experts have said that pulling out of NAFTA would have a range of unintended consequences for the United States, including reduced access to its biggest export markets, a reduction in economic growth, and higher prices for gasoline, cars, fruits, and vegetables. Members of the private initiative in Mexico noted that to eliminate NAFTA, many laws must be adapted by the U.S. Congress. The move would also eventually result in legal complaints by the World Trade Organization. The "Washington Post" noted that a Congressional Research Service review of academic literature concluded that the "net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily because trade with Canada and Mexico accounts for a small percentage of U.S. GDP".
Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, called it "a continuation of other disastrous trade agreements, like NAFTA, CAFTA, and permanent normal trade relations with China". He believes that free trade agreements have caused a loss of American jobs and depressed American wages. Sanders has said that America needs to rebuild its manufacturing base using American factories for well-paying jobs for American labor rather than outsourcing to China and elsewhere.
Shortly after his election, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would begin renegotiating the terms of NAFTA, to resolve trade issues he had campaigned on. The leaders of Canada and Mexico have indicated their willingness to work with the Trump administration. Although vague on the exact terms he seeks in a renegotiated NAFTA, Trump threatened to withdraw from it if negotiations fail.
In July 2017, the Trump administration provided a detailed list of changes that it would like to see to NAFTA. The top priority was a reduction in the United States' trade deficit. The administration also called for the elimination of provisions that allowed Canada and Mexico to appeal duties imposed by the United States and limited the ability of the United States to impose import restrictions on Canada and Mexico. The list also alleged subsidized state-owned enterprises and currency manipulation.
According to Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Trump administration's list "is very consistent with the president's stance on liking trade barriers, liking protectionism. This makes NAFTA in many respects less of a free-trade agreement." The concerns expressed by the US Trade Representative over subsidized state-owned enterprises and currency manipulation are not thought to apply to Canada and Mexico, but rather to be designed to send a message to countries beyond North America. Jeffrey Schott of the Peterson Institute for International Economics noted that it would not be possible to conclude renegotiations quickly while also addressing all the concerns on the list. He also said that it would be difficult to do anything about trade deficits.
An October 2017 op-ed in Toronto's "The Globe and Mail" questioned whether the United States wanted to re-negotiate the agreement or planned to walk away from it no matter what, noting that newly appointed American ambassador Kelly Knight Craft is married to the owner of Alliance Resource Partners, a big US coal operation. Canada is implementing a carbon plan, and there is also the matter of a sale of Bombardier jets. "The Americans inserted so many poison pills into last week's talks in Washington that they should have been charged with murder", wrote the columnist, John Ibbitson.
"A number of the proposals that the United States has put on the table have little or no support from the U.S. business and agriculture community. It isn't clear who they're intended to benefit", said John Murphy, vice-president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Pat Roberts, the senior US senator from Kansas, called for an outcry against Trump anti-NAFTA moves, saying the "issues affect real jobs, real lives and real people". Kansas is a major agricultural exporter, and farm groups warn that just threatening to leave NAFTA might cause buyers to minimize uncertainty by seeking out non-US sources.
A fourth round of talks included a U.S. demand for a sunset clause that would end the agreement in five years, unless the three countries agreed to keep it in place, a provision U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has said would allow the countries to kill the deal if it was not working. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with the House Ways and Means Committee, since Congress would have to pass legislation rolling back the treaty's provisions if Trump tries to withdraw from the pact.
From June to late August 2018, Canada was sidelined as the United States and Mexico held bilateral talks. On 27 August 2018 Mexico and the United States announced they had reached a bilateral understanding on a revamped NAFTA trade deal that included provisions that would boost automobile production in the U.S., a 10-year data protection period against generic drug production on an expanded list of products that benefits pharmaceutical companies, particularly US makers producers of high-cost biologic drugs, a sunset clause—a 16-year expiration date with regular 6-year reviews to possibly renew the agreement for additional 16-year terms, and an increased "de minimis" threshold in which Mexico raised the "de minimis" value to $100 from $50 regarding online duty- and tax-free purchases. According to an August 30 article in "The Economist", Mexico agreed to increase the rules of origin threshold which would mean that 75% as opposed to the previous 62.5% of a vehicle's components must be made in North America to avoid tariffs. Since car makers currently import less expensive components from Asia, under the revised agreement, consumers would pay more for vehicles. As well, approximately 40 to 45 per cent of vehicle components must be made by workers earning a minimum of US$16 per hour, in contrast to the current US$2.30 an hour that a worker earns on average in a Mexican car manufacturing plant. "The Economist" described this as placing "Mexican carmaking into a straitjacket".
Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that they were willing to join the agreement if it was in Canada's interests. Freeland returned from her European diplomatic tour early, cancelling a planned visit to Ukraine, to participate in NAFTA negotiations in Washington, D.C. in late August. According to an August 31 "Canadian Press" published in the "Ottawa Citizen", key issues under debate included supply management, Chapter 19, pharmaceuticals, cultural exemption, the sunset clause, and "de minimis" thresholds.
Although President Donald Trump warned Canada on September 1 that he would exclude them from a new trade agreement unless Canada submitted to his demands, it is not clear that the Trump administration has the authority to do so without the approval of Congress. According to Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports, one published in 2017 and another on July 26, 2018, it is likely that congressional approval to make substantive changes to NAFTA would have to be secured by President Trump before the changes could be implemented.
On September 30, 2018, the day of the deadline for the Canada–U.S. negotiations, a preliminary deal between the two countries was reached, thus preserving the trilateral pact when the Trump administration submits the agreement before Congress. The new name for the agreement will be the "United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement" (USMCA).
Following Donald Trump's election to the presidency, a range of trade experts have said that pulling out of NAFTA as Trump proposed would have a range of unintended consequences for the U.S., including reduced access to the U.S.'s biggest export markets, a reduction in economic growth, and increased prices for gasoline, cars, fruits, and vegetables. The worst affected sectors would be textiles, agriculture and automobiles.
According to Tufts University political scientist Daniel W. Drezner, the Trump administration's desire to return relations with Mexico to the pre-NAFTA era are misguided. Drezner argues that NAFTA made it easier for Mexico to transform to a real democracy and become a country that views itself as North American. If Trump acts on many of the threats that he has made against Mexico, it is not inconceivable that Mexicans would turn to left-wing populist strongmen, as several South American countries have. At the very least, US-Mexico relations would worsen, with adverse implications for cooperation on border security, counterterrorism, drug-war operations, deportations and managing Central American migration.
According to Chad P. Bown (senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics), "a renegotiated NAFTA that would reestablish trade barriers is unlikely to help workers who lost their jobs—regardless of the cause—take advantage of new employment opportunities".
According to Harvard economist Marc Melitz, "recent research estimates that the repeal of NAFTA would not increase car production in the United States". Melitz notes that this would cost manufacturing jobs.
If the original Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) had come into effect, existing agreements such as NAFTA would be reduced to those provisions that do not conflict with the TPP, or that require greater trade liberalization than the TPP. However, only Canada and Mexico will have the prospect of becoming members of the TPP after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in January 2017. In May 2017, the 11 remaining members of the TPP, including Canada and Mexico, agreed to proceed with a revised version of the trade deal without U.S. participation.
The American public is largely divided on its view of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with a wide partisan gap in beliefs. In a February 2018 Gallup Poll, 48% of Americans said NAFTA was good for the U.S., while 46% said it was bad.
According to a journal from the "Law and Business Review of the Americas (LBRA)", U.S. public opinion of NAFTA centers around three issues: NAFTA's impact on the creation or destruction of American jobs, NAFTA's impact on the environment, and NAFTA's impact on immigrants entering the U.S.
After President Trump's election in 2016, support for NAFTA has become very polarized between Republicans and Democrats. Donald Trump expressed negative views of NAFTA, calling it "the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country". Republican support for NAFTA has decreased from 43% support in 2008 to 34% in 2017. Meanwhile, Democrat support for NAFTA has increased from 41% support in 2008 to 71% in 2017.
The political gap is especially large in concern to views on free trade with Mexico. As opposed to a favorable view of free trade with Canada, whom 79% of American describe as a fair trade partner, only 47% of Americans believe Mexico practices fair trade. The gap widens between Democrats and Republicans: 60% of Democrats believe Mexico is practicing fair trade, while only 28% of Republicans do. This is the highest level from Democrats and the lowest level from Republicans ever recorded by the Chicago Council Survey. Republicans have more negative views of Canada as a fair trade partner than Democrats as well.
NAFTA has strong support from young Americans. In a February 2017 Gallup poll, 73% of Americans aged 18–29 said NAFTA was good for the U.S, showing higher support than any other U.S. age group. It also has slightly stronger support from unemployed Americans than from employed Americans. The issue of NAFTA continues to remain a predominantly divisive issue. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22050 |
National Lampoon (magazine)
National Lampoon was an American humor magazine which ran from 1970 to 1998. The magazine started out as a spinoff from the "Harvard Lampoon". "National Lampoon" magazine reached its height of popularity and critical acclaim during the 1970s, when it had a far-reaching effect on American humor and comedy. The magazine spawned films, radio, live theatre, various sound recordings, and print products including books. Many members of the creative staff from the magazine subsequently went on to contribute creatively to successful media of all types.
During the magazine's most successful years, parody of every kind was a mainstay; surrealist content was also central to its appeal. Almost all the issues included long text pieces, shorter written pieces, a section of actual news items (dubbed "True Facts"), cartoons and comic strips. Most issues also included "Foto Funnies" or fumetti, which often featured nudity. The result was an unusual mix of intelligent, cutting-edge wit, combined with some crass, bawdy jesting.
In both cases, "National Lampoon" humor often pushed far beyond the boundaries of what was generally considered appropriate and acceptable. It was especially anarchic, satirically attacking what was considered holy and sacred. As co-founder Henry Beard described the experience years later: "There was this big door that said, 'Thou shalt not.' We touched it, and it fell off its hinges."
The magazine declined during the late 1980s, and ceased publication altogether, in 1998. Projects under the "National Lampoon" brand name continue to this day.
"National Lampoon" was started by Harvard graduates and "Harvard Lampoon" alumni Doug Kenney, Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman in 1969, when they first licensed the "Lampoon" name for a monthly national publication. The Harvard Lampoon was established in 1876 as a long-standing tradition of the campus, influencing the later National Lampoon Brand in its evolution from illustration heavy publications to satirical wit, ranging from short fiction to comic strips. The magazine's first issue was dated April 1970. The company that owned the magazine was called Twenty First Century Communications.
After a shaky start for a few issues, the magazine rapidly grew in popularity. Like the "Harvard Lampoon," individual issues had themes, including such topics as "The Future," "Back to School," "Death," "Self-Indulgence," and "Blight." The magazine regularly reprinted material in "best-of" omnibus collections. Its writers joyfully targeted every kind of phoniness, and had no specific political stance, even though individual staff members had strong political views.
Thomas Carney, writing in New Times, traced the history and style of the National Lampoon and the impact it had on comedy's new wave. "The National Lampoon," Carney wrote, "was the first full-blown appearance of non-Jewish humor in years--not anti-Semitic, just non-Jewish. Its roots were W.A.S.P. and Irish Catholic, with a weird strain of Canadian detachment. . . . This was not Jewish street-smart humor as a defense mechanism; this was slash-and-burn stuff that alternated in pitch but moved very much on the offensive. It was always disrespect everything, mostly yourself, a sort of reverse deism."
"National Lampoon" was a monthly magazine for most of its publication history. Numerous "special editions" were also published and sold simultaneously on newsstands. Some of the special editions were anthologies of reprinted material; others were entirely original. Additional projects included a calendar, a songbook, a collection of transfer designs for T-shirts, and a number of books. The magazine sold yellow binders with the Lampoon logo, designed to store a year's worth of issues.
The original art directors were cartoonist Peter Bramley and Bill Skurski, founders of New York's Cloud Studio, an alternative-culture outfit known at the time for its eclectic style. Bramley created the "Lampoon"'s first cover and induced successful cartoonists Arnold Roth and Gahan Wilson to become regular contributors.
Beginning with the eighth issue, the art direction of the magazine was taken over by Michael C. Gross, who directed the look of the magazine until 1974. A number of the "National Lampoon"'s most acerbic and humorous covers were designed or overseen by Gross, including:
Michael Gross and Doug Kenney chose a young designer from "Esquire" named Peter Kleinman to succeed the team of Gross and David Kaestle. During his" Lampoon" tenure, Kleinman was also the art director of "Heavy Metal" magazine, published by the same company. The best known of Kleinman's" Lampoon "covers were "Stevie Wonder with 3-D Glasses" painted by Sol Korby, a photographed "Nose to The Grindstone" cover depicting a man's face being pressed against a spinning grinder wheel for the "Work" issue, the "JFK's First 6000 Days" issue featuring a portrait of an old John F. Kennedy, the "Fat Elvis" cover which appeared a year before Elvis Presley died, and many of the Mara McAfee covers done in a classic Norman Rockwell style. Kleinman designed the logos for "Animal House" and "Heavy Metal."
Kleinman left in 1979 to open an ad agency.
He was succeeded by Skip Johnson, the designer responsible for the "Sunday Newspaper Parody" and the "Arab Getting Punched in the Face" cover of the "Revenge" issue. Johnson went on to "The New York Times." He was followed by Michael Grossman, who changed the logo and style of the magazine.
In 1984, Kleinman returned as creative director and went back to the 1970s logo and style, bringing back many of the artists and writers from the magazine's heyday. He left four years later to pursue a career in corporate marketing. At that time, the "National Lampoon" magazine entered a period of precipitous decline.
Every regular monthly issue of the magazine had an editorial at the front of the magazine. This often appeared to be straightforward, but was always a parody. It was written by whoever was the editor of that particular issue, since that role rotated among the staff. A few issues were guest-edited.
The magazine was an outlet for some notable writing talents, including Douglas Kenney, Henry Beard, George W. S. Trow, Chris Miller, P. J. O'Rourke, Michael O'Donoghue, Chris Rush, Sean Kelly, Tony Hendra, Brian McConnachie, Gerald Sussman, Ellis Weiner, Ted Mann, Chris Cluess, Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jeff Greenfield, John Hughes and Ed Subitzky.
The work of many important cartoonists, photographers, and illustrators appeared in the magazine's pages, including Neal Adams, Gahan Wilson, Robert Grossman, Michael Sullivan, Ron Barrett, Peter Bramley, Vaughn Bode, Bruce McCall, Rick Meyerowitz, Warren Sattler, M. K. Brown, Shary Flenniken, Bobby London, Edward Gorey, Jeff Jones, Joe Orlando, Arnold Roth, Rich Grote, Ed Subitzky, Mara McAfee, Sam Gross, Charles Rodrigues, Buddy Hickerson, B. K. Taylor, Birney Lettick, Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, Marvin Mattelson, Stan Mack, Chris Callis, John E. Barrett, Raymond Kursar, Andy Lackow, and David C.K. McClelland.
Comedy stars John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle Murray, Harold Ramis, and Richard Belzer first gained national attention for their performances in the National Lampoon's stage show and radio show. The first three subsequently went on to become part of "Saturday Night Live"'s original wave of Not Ready for Primetime Players, Bill Murray replaced Chase when Chase left "SNL" after the first season, and Brian Doyle Murray later appeared as an "SNL" regular. Harold Ramis went on to be a prolific director and writer working on such films as "Animal House", "Caddyshack", "Ghostbusters", and many more. Brian Doyle Murray has had roles in dozens of films, and Belzer is an Emmy Award-winning TV actor.
Gerald L. "Jerry" Taylor was the publisher, followed by William T. Lippe. The business side of the magazine was controlled by Matty Simmons, who was chairman of the board and CEO of Twenty First Century Communications, a publishing company.
"True Facts" was a section near the front of the magazine which contained true but ridiculous items from real life. Together with the masthead, it was one of the few parts of the magazine that was factual. "True Facts" included photographs of unintentionally funny signage, extracts from ludicrous newspaper reports, strange headlines, and so on. For many years John Bendel was in charge of the "True Facts" section of the magazine. Steven Brykman edited the "True Facts" section of the National Lampoon website. Several "True Facts" compilation books were published in the 1980s and early 90s, and several all-True-Facts issues of the magazine were published during the 1980s.
Most issues of the magazine featured one or more "Foto Funny" or fumetti, comic strips that use photographs instead of drawings as illustrations. The characters who appeared in the Lampoon's Foto Funnies were usually writers, editors, artists, photographers or contributing editors of the magazine, often cast alongside nude or semi-nude models. In 1980, a paperback compilation book, "National Lampoon Foto Funnies" which appeared as a part of National Lampoon Comics, was published.
The "Funny Pages" was a large section at the back of the magazine that was composed entirely of comic strips of various kinds. These included work from a number of artists who also had pieces published in the main part of the magazine, including Gahan Wilson, Ed Subitzky and Vaughn Bode, as well as artists whose work was only published in this section. The regular strips included "Dirty Duck" by Bobby London, "Trots and Bonnie" by Shary Flenniken, "The Appletons" by B. K. Taylor, "Politeness Man" by Ron Barrett, and many other strips. A compilation of Gahan Wilson's "Nuts" strip was published in 2011. The Funny Pages logo header art, which was positioned above Gahan Wilson's "Nuts" in each issue, and showed a comfortable, old-fashioned family reading newspaper-sized funny papers, was drawn by Mike Kaluta.
From time to time, the magazine advertised Lampoon-related merchandise for sale, including T-shirts that had been especially designed.
The magazine existed from 1970 to 1998. Some consider its finest period was from 1971 to 1975, although it continued to be produced on a monthly schedule throughout the 1970s and the early 1980s, and did well during that time.
However, during the late 1980s, a much more serious decline set in. In 1989, the company that controlled the magazine and its related projects (which was part of "Twenty First Century Communications") was the subject of a hostile takeover by Daniel Grodnik, a Hollywood Producer, and Tim Matheson, an actor who starred in the Lampoon's first big hit, Animal House. In 1991 it was sold outright to another company, "J2 Communications".
At that point "National Lampoon" was considered valuable only as a brand name that could be licensed out to other companies. The magazine was issued erratically and rarely from 1991 onwards. 1998 saw the last issue.
The first issue was April 1970; by November of that year, Michael C. Gross had become the art director. He achieved a unified, sophisticated, and integrated look for the magazine, which enhanced its humorous appeal.
National Lampoon's most successful sales period was 1973–75. Its national circulation peaked at 1,000,096 copies sold of the October 1974 "Pubescence" issue. The 1974 monthly average was 830,000, which was also a peak. Former "Lampoon" editor Tony Hendra's book "Going Too Far" includes a series of precise circulation figures.
It was also during this time that Lemmings (National Lampoon) Show and The National Lampoon Radio Hour show was broadcast, bringing interest and acclaim to the National Lampoon brand with magazine talent like writer Michael O'Donoghue that would go on to write for Saturday Night Live with many of the players transitioning from Lemmings (National Lampoon) and The National Lampoon Radio Hour.
The magazine was considered by many to be at its creative zenith during this time. It should however be noted that the publishing industry's newsstand sales were excellent for many other titles during that time: there were sales peaks for "Mad" (more than 2 million), "Playboy" (more than 7 million), and "TV Guide" (more than 19 million).
Some fans consider the glory days of National Lampoon to have ended in 1975, although the magazine remained popular and profitable long after that point. During 1975, the three founders (Kenney, Beard, and Hoffman) took advantage of a buyout clause in their contracts for $7.5 million. About the same time, writers Michael O'Donoghue and Anne Beatts left to join the NBC comedy show "Saturday Night Live" ("SNL"). At the same time, the" National Lampoon Show's "John Belushi and Gilda Radner left the troupe to join the original septet of" SNL's" Not Ready for Primetime Players.
The magazine was a springboard to the cinema of the United States for a generation of comedy writers, directors, and performers. Various alumni went on to create and write for "SNL," "The David Letterman Show," SCTV, "The Simpsons", "Married... with Children", "Night Court", and various films including "National Lampoon's Animal House", "Caddyshack", "National Lampoon's Vacation", and "Ghostbusters".
As some of the original creators departed, the magazine remained popular and profitable as it had the emergence of John Hughes and editor-in-chief P.J. O'Rourke, along with artists and writers such as Gerry Sussman, Ellis Weiner, Tony Hendra, Ted Mann, Peter Kleinman, Chris Cluess, Stu Kreisman, John Weidman, Jeff Greenfield, Bruce McCall, and Rick Meyerowitz.
In 1985, Matty Simmons (who had been working only on the business end of the Lampoon up to that point) took over as editor-in-chief. He fired the entire editorial staff, and appointed his two sons, Michael Simmons and Andy Simmons, as editors, Peter Kleinman as creative director and editor, and Larry "Ratso" Sloman as executive editor. The magazine was on an increasingly shaky financial footing, and beginning in November 1986, the magazine was published six times a year instead of every month.
In 1989, the magazine was acquired in a hostile takeover by a business partnership of producer Daniel Grodnik and actor Tim Matheson (who played "Otter" in the 1978 film "National Lampoon's Animal House"). Grodnik and Matheson became the co-Chairmen/co-CEOs. During their tenure, the stock went up from under $2 to $6, and the magazine was able to double its monthly ad pages (albeit from 7 to 15). The company moved its headquarters from New York to Los Angeles to focus on film and television. The publishing operation stayed in New York. But attempts to reinvigorate the brand failed, and Grodnick and Matheson sold the company two years after acquiring it.
In 1991, the magazine (and more importantly, the rights to the brand name "National Lampoon") were bought by a company called J2 Communications (a company previously known for marketing Tim Conway's "Dorf" videos), headed by James P. Jimirro.
J2 Communications' focus was to make money by licensing out the brand name "National Lampoon". The company was contractually obliged to publish at least one new issue of the magazine per year to retain the rights to the Lampoon name. However, the company had very little interest in the magazine itself; throughout the 1990s, the number of issues per year declined precipitously and erratically. In 1991, an attempt at monthly publication was made; nine issues were produced that year. Only two issues were released in 1992. This was followed by one issue in 1993, five in 1994, and three in 1995. For the last three years of its existence, the magazine was published only once a year.
The magazine's final print publication was November 1998, after which the contract was renegotiated, and in a sharp reversal, J2 Communications was then prohibited from publishing issues of the magazine. J2, however, still owned the rights to the brand name, which it continued to franchise out to other users. In 2002, the use of the brand name and the rights to republish old material were sold to a new, and otherwise unrelated, company which chose to call itself National Lampoon, Incorporated.
During its most active period, the magazine spun off numerous productions in a wide variety of media.
"National Lampoon" released books, special issues, anthologies, and other print pieces, including:
"True Facts" special editions and books
Vinyl record albums
Vinyl singles
Many of the older albums that were originally on vinyl have been re-issued as CDs and a number of tracks from certain albums are available as MP3s.
Considerable ambiguity exists about what actually constitutes a "National Lampoon" film.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, a few films were made as spin-offs from the original "National Lampoon" magazine, using its creative staff. The first theatrical release, and by far the most successful "National Lampoon" film was "National Lampoon's Animal House" (1978). Starring John Belushi and written by Doug Kenney, Harold Ramis, and Chris Miller, it became the highest-grossing comedy film of that time. Produced on a low budget, it was so enormously profitable that, from that point on for the next two decades, the name "National Lampoon" applied to the title of a movie was considered to be a valuable selling point in and of itself.
Numerous movies were subsequently made that had "National Lampoon" as part of the title. Many of these were unrelated projects because, by that time, the name "National Lampoon" could simply be licensed on a one-time basis, by any company, for a fee. Critics such as the "Orlando Sentinel"′s Roger Moore and "The New York Times"′ Andrew Adam Newman have written about the cheapening of the "National Lampoon"′s movie imprimatur; in 2006, an Associated Press review said: "The National Lampoon, once a brand name above nearly all others in comedy, has become shorthand for pathetic frat boy humor."
The first of the "National Lampoon" movies was a not-very-successful made-for-TV movie:
In 1978, "National Lampoon's Animal House" was released. Made on a small budget, it did phenomenally well at the box office. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress considered the film "culturally significant", and preserved it in the National Film Registry.
The script had its origins in a series of short stories that had been previously published in the magazine. These included Chris Miller's "Night of the Seven Fires", which dramatized a fraternity initiation and included the characters Pinto and Otter, which contained prose versions of the toga party, the "road trip", and the dead horse incident. Another source was Doug Kenney's "First Lay Comics", which included the angel and devil scene and the grocery-cart affair. According to the authors, most of these elements were based on real incidents.
The film was of great cultural significance to its time, as "The New York Times" describes the magazine's 1970s period as "Hedonism {} in full sway and political correctness in its infancy." Animal House, as the article describes was a crucial film manifestation of that culture.
An article from "The Atlantic Monthly" describes how "Animal House" captures the struggle between "elitist {fraternity} who willingly aligned itself with the establishment, and the kind full of kooks who refused to be tamed." That concept was a crucial figment of the early National Lampoon Magazine, according to a "The New York Times" article concerning the early years of the Magazine and co-founder Douglas Kenney's brand of comedy as a "liberating response to a rigid and hypocritical culture."
This 1982 movie was an attempt by John Hughes to make something similar to "Animal House". "National Lampoon's Class Reunion" was not successful, however.
Released in 1983, the movie "National Lampoon's Vacation" was based upon John Hughes's "National Lampoon" story "Vacation '58". The movie's financial success gave rise to several follow-up films, including "National Lampoon's European Vacation" (1985), "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" (1989), based on John Hughes's "Christmas '59", "Vegas Vacation" (1997), and most recently "Vacation" (2015), all featuring Chevy Chase.
The Robert Altman film "O.C. and Stiggs" (1987) was based on two characters who had been featured in several written pieces in "National Lampoon" magazine, including an issue-long story from October 1982 entitled "The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs." Completed in 1984, the film was not released until 1987, when it was shown in a small number of theaters and without the "National Lampoon" name. It was not a success.
Following the success of "Animal House", "MAD" magazine lent its name to a 1980 comedy titled "Up the Academy". Although two of "Animal House"′s co-writers were the "Lampoon"′s Doug Kenney and Chris Miller, "Up The Academy" was strictly a licensing maneuver, with no creative input from "Mad"′s staff or contributors. It was a critical and commercial failure.
In 2015, a documentary film was released called "". The film featured a great deal of content from the magazine, as well as interviews with staff members and fans, and it explains how the magazine changed the course of humor.
The 2018 film "A Futile and Stupid Gesture", a biography of co-founder Douglas Kenney, also depicts the magazine's early years. The film was described by a 2018 The New York Times Article as a "snapshot of a moment where comedy's freshest counter-culture impulse was gleefully crass and willfully offensive." In the same article, Douglas Kenney was said to "spot a comical hollowness and rot in the society he and his peers were trained to join." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22051 |
Non-disclosure agreement
A non-disclosure agreement (NDA), also known as a confidentiality agreement (CA), confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), proprietary information agreement (PIA) or secrecy agreement (SA), is a legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict access to. Doctor–patient confidentiality (physician–patient privilege), attorney–client privilege, priest–penitent privilege, bank–client confidentiality, and kickback agreements are examples, often not enshrined in a written contract between the parties.
It is a contract through which the parties agree not to disclose information covered by the agreement. An NDA creates a confidential relationship between the parties, typically to protect any type of confidential and proprietary information or trade secrets. As such, an NDA protects non-public business information. Like all contracts, they cannot be enforced if the contracted activities are felonies. NDAs are commonly signed when two companies, individuals, or other entities (such as partnerships, societies, etc.) are considering doing business and need to understand the processes used in each other's business for the purpose of evaluating the potential business relationship. NDAs can be "mutual", meaning both parties are restricted in their use of the materials provided, or they can restrict the use of material by a single party. An employee can be required to sign an NDA or NDA-like agreement with an employer, protecting trade secrets. In fact, some employment agreements include a clause restricting employees' use and dissemination of company-owned confidential information. In legal disputes resolved by settlement, the parties often sign a confidentiality agreement relating to the terms of the settlement. Examples of this agreement are The Dolby Trademark Agreement with Dolby Laboratories, the Windows Insider Agreement, and the Halo CFP (Community Feedback Program) with Microsoft.
In some cases, employees who are dismissed following their complaints about unacceptable practices (whistleblowers), or discrimination against and harassment of themselves, may be paid compensation subject to an NDA forbidding them from disclosing the events complained about. Such conditions in an NDA may not be enforceable in law, although they may intimidate the former employee into silence.
A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) may be classified as unilateral, bilateral, or multilateral:
A unilateral NDA (sometimes referred to as a one-way NDA) involves two parties where only one party (i.e., the disclosing party) anticipates disclosing certain information to the other party (i.e., the receiving party) and requires that the information be protected from further disclosure for some reason (e.g., maintaining the secrecy necessary to satisfy patent laws or legal protection for trade secrets, limiting disclosure of information prior to issuing a press release for a major announcement, or simply ensuring that a receiving party does not use or disclose information without compensating the disclosing party).
A bilateral NDA (sometimes referred to as a mutual NDA or a two-way NDA) involves two parties where both parties anticipate disclosing information to one another that each intends to protect from further disclosure. This type of NDA is common when businesses are considering some kind of joint venture or merger.
When presented with a unilateral NDA, some parties may insist upon a bilateral NDA, even though they anticipate that only one of the parties will disclose information under the NDA. This approach is intended to incentivize the drafter to make the provisions in the NDA more "fair and balanced" by introducing the possibility that a receiving party could later become a disclosing party or vice versa, which is not an entirely uncommon occurrence.
A multilateral NDA involves three or more parties where at least one of the parties anticipates disclosing information to the other parties and requires that the information be protected from further disclosure. This type of NDA eliminates the need for separate unilateral or bilateral NDAs between only two parties. E.g., a single multiparty NDA entered into by three parties who each intend to disclose information to the other two parties could be used in place of three separate bilateral NDAs between the first and second parties, second and third parties, and third and first parties.
A multilateral NDA can be advantageous because the parties involved review, execute, and implement just one agreement. However, this advantage can be offset by more complex negotiations that may be required for the parties involved to reach a unanimous consensus on a multilateral agreement.
A non-disclosure agreement can protect any type of information that is not generally known. However, non-disclosure agreements may also contain clauses that will protect the person receiving the information so that if they lawfully obtained the information through other sources they would not be obligated to keep the information secret. In other words, the non-disclosure agreement typically only requires the receiving party to maintain information in confidence when that information has been directly supplied by the disclosing party. However, it is sometimes easier to get a receiving party to sign a simple agreement that is shorter, less complex and does not contain safety provisions protecting the receiver.
Some common issues addressed in an NDA include:
Deeds of confidentiality and fidelity (also referred to as deeds of confidentiality or confidentiality deeds) are commonly used in Australia. These documents generally serve the same purpose as and contain provisions similar to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) used elsewhere. However, these documents are legally treated as deeds and are thus binding, unlike contracts, without consideration.
In California, (and some other U.S. states), there are some special circumstances relating to non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clauses. California's courts and legislature have signaled that they generally value an employee's mobility and entrepreneurship more highly than they do protectionist doctrine.
Use of non-disclosure agreements are on the rise in India and is governed by the Indian Contract Act 1872. Use of an NDA is crucial in many circumstances, such as to tie in employees who are developing patentable technology if the employer intends to apply for a patent. Non-disclosure agreements have become very important in light of India's burgeoning outsourcing industry. In India, an NDA must be stamped to be a valid enforceable document.
In Britain, in addition to use to protect trade secrets, NDAs are often used as a condition of a financial settlement in an attempt to silence whistleblowing employees from making public the misdeeds of their former employers. There is law allowing protected disclosure despite an NDA, although employers sometimes intimidate the former employee into silence despite this.
1. Information about non-disclosure-agreements (NDAs) published by the UK Intellectual Property Office - ("2018-01-15")
2. Confidentiality and Confidential Disclosure Agreements (CDA) booklet edited by the UK Intellectual Property Office ("300 KB pdf file") - ("2005-01") | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22052 |
Network effect
A network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the effect described in economics and business that an additional user of goods or services has on the value of that product to others. When a network effect is present, the value of a product or service increases according to the number of others using it.
The classic example is the telephone, where a greater number of users increases the value to each. A positive externality is created when a telephone is purchased without its owner intending to create value for other users, but does so regardless. Online social networks work similarly, with sites like Twitter and Facebook increasing in value to each member as more users join.
The network effect can create a bandwagon effect as the network becomes more valuable and more people join, resulting in a positive feedback loop.
The expression "network effect" is applied to positive network externalities as in the case of the telephone. Negative network externalities can also occur, where more users make a product less valuable, but they are more commonly referred to as "congestion" (as in traffic congestion or network congestion).
Network effects were a central theme in the arguments of Theodore Vail, the first post-patent president of Bell Telephone, in gaining a monopoly on US telephone services. In 1908, when he presented the concept in Bell's annual report, there were over 4,000 local and regional telephone exchanges, most of which were eventually merged into the Bell System.
Network effects were popularized by Robert Metcalfe, stated as Metcalfe's law. Metcalfe was one of the co-inventors of Ethernet and a co-founder of the company 3Com. In selling the product, Metcalfe argued that customers needed Ethernet cards to grow above a certain critical mass if they were to reap the benefits of their network. According to Metcalfe, the rationale behind the sale of networking cards was that the cost of the network was directly proportional to the number of cards installed, but the value of the network was proportional to the square of the number of users. This was expressed algebraically as having a cost of N, and a value of N2. While the actual numbers behind this proposition were never firm, the concept allowed customers to share access to expensive resources like disk drives and printers, send e-mail, and eventually access the Internet.
The economic theory of the network effect was advanced significantly between 1985 and 1995 by researchers Michael L. Katz, Carl Shapiro, Joseph Farrell and Garth Saloner. Author, high-tech entrepreneur Rod Beckstrom presented a mathematical model for describing networks that are in a state of positive network effect at BlackHat and Defcon in 2009 and also presented the "inverse network effect" with an economic model for defining it as well.
Network effects become significant after a certain subscription percentage has been achieved, called critical mass. At the critical mass point, the value obtained from the good or service is greater than or equal to the price paid for the good or service. As the value of the good is determined by the user base, this implies that after a certain number of people have subscribed to the service or purchased the good, additional people will subscribe to the service or purchase the good due to the value exceeding the price.
A key business concern must then be how to attract users prior to reaching critical mass. One way is to rely on extrinsic motivation, such as a payment, a fee waiver, or a request for friends to sign up. A more natural strategy is to build a system that has enough value "without" network effects, at least to early adopters. Then, as the number of users increases, the system becomes even more valuable and is able to attract a wider user base.
Beyond critical mass, the increasing number of subscribers generally cannot continue indefinitely. After a certain point, most networks become either congested or saturated, stopping future uptake. Congestion occurs due to overuse. The applicable analogy is that of a telephone network. While the number of users is below the congestion point, each additional user adds additional value to every other customer. However, at some point, the addition of an extra user exceeds the capacity of the existing system. After this point, each additional user decreases the value obtained by every other user. In practical terms, each additional user increases the total system load, leading to busy signals, the inability to get a dial tone, and poor customer support. Assuming the congestion point is below the potential market size, the next critical point is where the value obtained again equals the price paid. The network will cease to grow at this point if system capacity is not improved. Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are networks designed to distribute load among their user pool. This theoretically allows P2P networks to scale indefinitely. The P2P based telephony service Skype benefits from this effect and its growth is limited primarily by market saturation.
Network effects are commonly mistaken for economies of scale, which result from business size rather than interoperability. To help clarify the distinction, people speak of demand side vs. supply side economies of scale. Classical economies of scale are on the production side, while network effects arise on the demand side. Network effects are also mistaken for economies of scope. Because of the positive feedback often associated with the network effect, system dynamics can be used as a modelling method to describe the phenomena. Word of mouth and the Bass diffusion model are also potentially applicable.
If some existing technology or company whose benefits are largely based on network effects starts to lose market share against a challenger such as a disruptive technology or open standards based competition, the benefits of network effects will reduce for the incumbent, and increase for the challenger. In this model, a tipping point is eventually reached at which the network effects of the challenger dominate those of the former incumbent, and the incumbent is forced into an accelerating decline, whilst the challenger takes over the incumbent's former position.
Network effects are notorious for causing lock-in with the most-cited examples being Microsoft products and the QWERTY keyboard. Vendor lock-in can be mitigated by opening the standards upon which users depend, allowing competition between implementations. This does not, however, mitigate industry-wide lock-in to the standard itself. Indeed, as there are now multiple vendors driving down the price and increasing the quality, more users are likely to adopt the standard, thereby creating greater industry-wide lock-in to the standard.
Broadly, there are two kinds of networks effects:
Additionally, there are two sources of economic value that are relevant when analyzing products that display network effects:
Negative network externalities, in the mathematical sense, are those that have a negative effect compared to normal (positive) network effects. Just as positive network externalities (network effects) cause positive feedback and exponential growth, negative network externalities create negative feedback and exponential decay. In nature, negative network externalities are the forces that pull towards equilibrium, are responsible for stability, and represent physical limitations keeping systems bounded.
Congestion occurs when the efficiency of a network decreases as more people use it, and this reduces the value to people already using it. Traffic congestion that overloads the freeway and network congestion on connections with limited bandwidth both display negative network externalities.
Braess' paradox suggests that adding paths through a network can have a negative effect on performance of the network.
Interoperability has the effect of making the network bigger and thus increases the external value of the network to consumers. Interoperability achieves this primarily by increasing potential connections and secondarily by attracting new participants to the network. Other benefits of interoperability include reduced uncertainty, reduced lock-in, commoditization and competition based on price.
Interoperability can be achieved through standardization or other cooperation. Companies involved in fostering interoperability face a tension between cooperating with their competitors to grow the potential market for products and competing for market share.
In communication and information technologies, open standards and interfaces are often developed through the participation of multiple companies and are usually perceived to provide mutual benefit. But, in cases in which the relevant communication protocols or interfaces are closed standards, the network effect can give the company controlling those standards monopoly power. The Microsoft corporation is widely seen by computer professionals as maintaining its monopoly through these means. One observed method Microsoft uses to put the network effect to its advantage is called Embrace, extend and extinguish.
Mirabilis is an Israeli start-up which pioneered instant messaging (IM) and was bought by America Online. By giving away their ICQ product for free and preventing interoperability between their client software and other products, they were able to temporarily dominate the market for instant messaging. Because of the network effect, new IM users gained much more value by choosing to use the Mirabilis system (and join its large network of users) than they would using a competing system. As was typical for that era, the company never made any attempt to generate profits from its dominant position before selling the company.
Stock exchanges and derivatives exchanges feature a network effect. Market liquidity is a major determinant of transaction cost in the sale or purchase of a security, as a bid–ask spread exists between the price at which a purchase can be made versus the price at which the sale of the same security can be made. As the number of buyers and sellers on an exchange increases, liquidity increases, and transaction costs decrease. This then attracts a larger number of buyers and sellers to the exchange.
The network advantage of financial exchanges is apparent in the difficulty that startup exchanges have in dislodging a dominant exchange. For example, the Chicago Board of Trade has retained overwhelming dominance of trading in US Treasury bond futures despite the startup of Eurex US trading of identical futures contracts. Similarly, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has maintained dominance in trading of Eurobond interest rate futures despite a challenge from Euronext.Liffe.
There are very strong network effects operating in the market for widely used computer software.
For many people choosing an office suite, prime considerations include how much value having learned that office suite will prove to potential employers, and how well the software interoperates with other users. That is, since learning to use an office suite takes many hours, users want to invest that time learning the office suite that will make them most attractive to potential employers and clients. Similarly, finding already-trained employees is a big concern for employers when deciding which office suite to purchase.
In 2007 Apple released the iPhone followed by the app store. Most iPhone apps rely heavily on the existence of strong network effects. This enables the software to grow in popularity very quickly and spread to a large userbase with very limited marketing needed. The Freemium business model has evolved to take advantage of these network effects by releasing a free version that will not limit the adoption or any users and then charge for premium features as the primary source of revenue.
Many web sites benefit from a network effect. One example is web marketplaces and exchanges. For example, eBay would not be a particularly useful site if auctions were not competitive. However, as the number of users grows on eBay, auctions grow more competitive, pushing up the prices of bids on items. This makes it more worthwhile to sell on eBay and brings more sellers onto eBay, which drives prices down again as this increases supply while bringing more people onto eBay because there are more things being sold that people want. Essentially, as the number of users of eBay grows, prices fall and supply increases, and more and more people find the site to be useful.
Network effects were used as justification for some of the dot-com business models in the late 1990s. These firms operated under the belief that when a new market comes into being which contains strong network effects, firms should care more about growing their market share than about becoming profitable. This was believed because market share will determine which firm can set technical and marketing standards and thus determine the basis of future competition.
Social networking websites are good examples. The more people register onto a social networking website, the more useful the website is to its registrants.
Alexa Internet uses a technology that tracks users' surfing patterns; thus Alexa's Related Sites results improve as more users use the technology. Alexa's network relies heavily on a small number of browser software relationships, which makes the network more vulnerable to competition.
Google has also attempted to create a network effect in its advertising business with its Google AdSense service. Google AdSense places ads on many small sites, such as blogs, using Google technology to determine which ads are relevant to which blogs. Thus, the service appears to aim to serve as an exchange (or ad network) for matching many advertisers with many small sites (such as blogs). In general, the more blogs Google AdSense can reach, the more advertisers it will attract, making it the most attractive option for more blogs, and so on, making the network more valuable for all participants.
By contrast, the value of a news site is primarily proportional to the quality of the articles, not to the number of other people using the site. Similarly, the first generation of search sites experienced little network effect, as the value of the site was based on the value of the search results. This allowed Google to win users away from Yahoo! without much trouble, once users believed that Google's search results were superior. Some commentators mistook the value of the Yahoo! brand (which does increase as more people know of it) for a network effect protecting its advertising business.
There are strong network effects in the initial choice of rail gauge, and in gauge conversion decisions. Even when placing isolated rails not connected to any other lines, track layers usually choose a standard rail gauge so they can use off-the-shelf rolling stock. Although a few manufacturers make rolling stock that can adjust to different rail gauges, most manufacturers make rolling stock that only works with one of the standard rail gauges. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22053 |
Nuclear fission
In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction or a radioactive decay process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller, lighter nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay.
Nuclear fission of heavy elements was discovered on December 17, 1938 by German Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann, and explained theoretically in January 1939 by Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch. Frisch named the process by analogy with biological fission of living cells. For heavy nuclides, it is an exothermic reaction which can release large amounts of energy both as electromagnetic radiation and as kinetic energy of the fragments (heating the bulk material where fission takes place). In order for fission to produce energy, the total binding energy of the resulting elements must be more negative (greater binding energy) than that of the starting element.
Fission is a form of nuclear transmutation because the resulting fragments are not the same element as the original atom. The two (or more) nuclei produced are most often of comparable but slightly different sizes, typically with a mass ratio of products of about 3 to 2, for common fissile isotopes. Most fissions are binary fissions (producing two charged fragments), but occasionally (2 to 4 times per 1000 events), "three" positively charged fragments are produced, in a ternary fission. The smallest of these fragments in ternary processes ranges in size from a proton to an argon nucleus.
Apart from fission induced by a neutron, harnessed and exploited by humans, a natural form of spontaneous radioactive decay (not requiring a neutron) is also referred to as fission, and occurs especially in very high-mass-number isotopes. Spontaneous fission was discovered in 1940 by Flyorov, Petrzhak, and Kurchatov in Moscow, when they confirmed that, without bombardment by neutrons, the fission rate of uranium was indeed negligible, as predicted by Niels Bohr; it was not.
The unpredictable composition of the products (which vary in a broad probabilistic and somewhat chaotic manner) distinguishes fission from purely quantum tunneling processes such as proton emission, alpha decay, and cluster decay, which give the same products each time. Nuclear fission produces energy for nuclear power and drives the explosion of nuclear weapons. Both uses are possible because certain substances called nuclear fuels undergo fission when struck by fission neutrons, and in turn emit neutrons when they break apart. This makes a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction possible, releasing energy at a controlled rate in a nuclear reactor or at a very rapid, uncontrolled rate in a nuclear weapon.
The amount of free energy contained in nuclear fuel is millions of times the amount of free energy contained in a similar mass of chemical fuel such as gasoline, making nuclear fission a very dense source of energy. The products of nuclear fission, however, are on average far more radioactive than the heavy elements which are normally fissioned as fuel, and remain so for significant amounts of time, giving rise to a nuclear waste problem. Concerns over nuclear waste accumulation and over the destructive potential of nuclear weapons are a counterbalance to the peaceful desire to use fission as an energy source.
Nuclear fission can occur without neutron bombardment as a type of radioactive decay. This type of fission (called spontaneous fission) is rare except in a few heavy isotopes.
In engineered nuclear devices, essentially all nuclear fission occurs as a "nuclear reaction" — a bombardment-driven process that results from the collision of two subatomic particles. In nuclear reactions, a subatomic particle collides with an atomic nucleus and causes changes to it. Nuclear reactions are thus driven by the mechanics of bombardment, not by the relatively constant exponential decay and half-life characteristic of spontaneous radioactive processes.
Many types of nuclear reactions are currently known. Nuclear fission differs importantly from other types of nuclear reactions, in that it can be amplified and sometimes controlled via a nuclear chain reaction (one type of general chain reaction). In such a reaction, free neutrons released by each fission event can trigger yet more events, which in turn release more neutrons and cause more fission.
The chemical element isotopes that can sustain a fission chain reaction are called nuclear fuels, and are said to be "fissile". The most common nuclear fuels are 235U (the isotope of uranium with mass number 235 and of use in nuclear reactors) and 239Pu (the isotope of plutonium with mass number 239). These fuels break apart into a bimodal range of chemical elements with atomic masses centering near 95 and 135 u (fission products). Most nuclear fuels undergo spontaneous fission only very slowly, decaying instead mainly via an alpha-beta decay chain over periods of millennia to eons. In a nuclear reactor or nuclear weapon, the overwhelming majority of fission events are induced by bombardment with another particle, a neutron, which is itself produced by prior fission events.
Nuclear fission in fissile fuels is the result of the nuclear excitation energy produced when a fissile nucleus captures a neutron. This energy, resulting from the neutron capture, is a result of the attractive nuclear force acting between the neutron and nucleus. It is enough to deform the nucleus into a double-lobed "drop", to the point that nuclear fragments exceed the distances at which the nuclear force can hold two groups of charged nucleons together and, when this happens, the two fragments complete their separation and then are driven further apart by their mutually repulsive charges, in a process which becomes irreversible with greater and greater distance. A similar process occurs in fissionable isotopes (such as uranium-238), but in order to fission, these isotopes require additional energy provided by fast neutrons (such as those produced by nuclear fusion in thermonuclear weapons).
The liquid drop model of the atomic nucleus predicts equal-sized fission products as an outcome of nuclear deformation. The more sophisticated nuclear shell model is needed to mechanistically explain the route to the more energetically favorable outcome, in which one fission product is slightly smaller than the other. A theory of fission based on the shell model has been formulated by Maria Goeppert Mayer.
The most common fission process is binary fission, and it produces the fission products noted above, at 95±15 and 135±15 u. However, the binary process happens merely because it is the most probable. In anywhere from 2 to 4 fissions per 1000 in a nuclear reactor, a process called ternary fission produces three positively charged fragments (plus neutrons) and the smallest of these may range from so small a charge and mass as a proton ("Z" = 1), to as large a fragment as argon ("Z" = 18). The most common small fragments, however, are composed of 90% helium-4 nuclei with more energy than alpha particles from alpha decay (so-called "long range alphas" at ~ 16 MeV), plus helium-6 nuclei, and tritons (the nuclei of tritium). The ternary process is less common, but still ends up producing significant helium-4 and tritium gas buildup in the fuel rods of modern nuclear reactors.
The fission of a heavy nucleus requires a total input energy of about 7 to 8 million electron volts (MeV) to initially overcome the nuclear force which holds the nucleus into a spherical or nearly spherical shape, and from there, deform it into a two-lobed ("peanut") shape in which the lobes are able to continue to separate from each other, pushed by their mutual positive charge, in the most common process of binary fission (two positively charged fission products + neutrons). Once the nuclear lobes have been pushed to a critical distance, beyond which the short range strong force can no longer hold them together, the process of their separation proceeds from the energy of the (longer range) electromagnetic repulsion between the fragments. The result is two fission fragments moving away from each other, at high energy.
About 6 MeV of the fission-input energy is supplied by the simple binding of an extra neutron to the heavy nucleus via the strong force; however, in many fissionable isotopes, this amount of energy is not enough for fission. Uranium-238, for example, has a near-zero fission cross section for neutrons of less than one MeV energy. If no additional energy is supplied by any other mechanism, the nucleus will not fission, but will merely absorb the neutron, as happens when U-238 absorbs slow and even some fraction of fast neutrons, to become U-239. The remaining energy to initiate fission can be supplied by two other mechanisms: one of these is more kinetic energy of the incoming neutron, which is increasingly able to fission a fissionable heavy nucleus as it exceeds a kinetic energy of one MeV or more (so-called fast neutrons). Such high energy neutrons are able to fission U-238 directly (see thermonuclear weapon for application, where the fast neutrons are supplied by nuclear fusion). However, this process cannot happen to a great extent in a nuclear reactor, as too small a fraction of the fission neutrons produced by any type of fission have enough energy to efficiently fission U-238 (fission neutrons have a mode energy of 2 MeV, but a median of only 0.75 MeV, meaning half of them have less than this insufficient energy).
Among the heavy actinide elements, however, those isotopes that have an odd number of neutrons (such as U-235 with 143 neutrons) bind an extra neutron with an additional 1 to 2 MeV of energy over an isotope of the same element with an even number of neutrons (such as U-238 with 146 neutrons). This extra binding energy is made available as a result of the mechanism of neutron pairing effects. This extra energy results from the Pauli exclusion principle allowing an extra neutron to occupy the same nuclear orbital as the last neutron in the nucleus, so that the two form a pair. In such isotopes, therefore, no neutron kinetic energy is needed, for all the necessary energy is supplied by absorption of any neutron, either of the slow or fast variety (the former are used in moderated nuclear reactors, and the latter are used in fast neutron reactors, and in weapons). As noted above, the subgroup of fissionable elements that may be fissioned efficiently with their own fission neutrons (thus potentially causing a nuclear chain reaction in relatively small amounts of the pure material) are termed "fissile." Examples of fissile isotopes are uranium-235 and plutonium-239.
Typical fission events release about two hundred million eV (200 MeV) of energy, the equivalent of roughly >2 trillion Kelvin, for each fission event. The exact isotope which is fissioned, and whether or not it is fissionable or fissile, has only a small impact on the amount of energy released. This can be easily seen by examining the curve of binding energy (image below), and noting that the average binding energy of the actinide nuclides beginning with uranium is around 7.6 MeV per nucleon. Looking further left on the curve of binding energy, where the fission products cluster, it is easily observed that the binding energy of the fission products tends to center around 8.5 MeV per nucleon. Thus, in any fission event of an isotope in the actinide's range of mass, roughly 0.9 MeV is released per nucleon of the starting element. The fission of U235 by a slow neutron yields nearly identical energy to the fission of U238 by a fast neutron. This energy release profile holds true for thorium and the various minor actinides as well.
By contrast, most chemical oxidation reactions (such as burning coal or TNT) release at most a few eV per event. So, nuclear fuel contains at least ten million times more usable energy per unit mass than does chemical fuel. The energy of nuclear fission is released as kinetic energy of the fission products and fragments, and as electromagnetic radiation in the form of gamma rays; in a nuclear reactor, the energy is converted to heat as the particles and gamma rays collide with the atoms that make up the reactor and its working fluid, usually water or occasionally heavy water or molten salts.
When a uranium nucleus fissions into two daughter nuclei fragments, about 0.1 percent of the mass of the uranium nucleus appears as the fission energy of ~200 MeV. For uranium-235 (total mean fission energy 202.79 MeV), typically ~169 MeV appears as the kinetic energy of the daughter nuclei, which fly apart at about 3% of the speed of light, due to Coulomb repulsion. Also, an average of 2.5 neutrons are emitted, with a mean kinetic energy per neutron of ~2 MeV (total of 4.8 MeV). The fission reaction also releases ~7 MeV in prompt gamma ray photons. The latter figure means that a nuclear fission explosion or criticality accident emits about 3.5% of its energy as gamma rays, less than 2.5% of its energy as fast neutrons (total of both types of radiation ~ 6%), and the rest as kinetic energy of fission fragments (this appears almost immediately when the fragments impact surrounding matter, as simple heat). In an atomic bomb, this heat may serve to raise the temperature of the bomb core to 100 million kelvin and cause secondary emission of soft X-rays, which convert some of this energy to ionizing radiation. However, in nuclear reactors, the fission fragment kinetic energy remains as low-temperature heat, which itself causes little or no ionization.
So-called neutron bombs (enhanced radiation weapons) have been constructed which release a larger fraction of their energy as ionizing radiation (specifically, neutrons), but these are all thermonuclear devices which rely on the nuclear fusion stage to produce the extra radiation. The energy dynamics of pure fission bombs always remain at about 6% yield of the total in radiation, as a prompt result of fission.
The total "prompt fission" energy amounts to about 181 MeV, or ~ 89% of the total energy which is eventually released by fission over time. The remaining ~ 11% is released in beta decays which have various half-lives, but begin as a process in the fission products immediately; and in delayed gamma emissions associated with these beta decays. For example, in uranium-235 this delayed energy is divided into about 6.5 MeV in betas, 8.8 MeV in antineutrinos (released at the same time as the betas), and finally, an additional 6.3 MeV in delayed gamma emission from the excited beta-decay products (for a mean total of ~10 gamma ray emissions per fission, in all). Thus, about 6.5% of the total energy of fission is released some time after the event, as non-prompt or delayed ionizing radiation, and the delayed ionizing energy is about evenly divided between gamma and beta ray energy.
In a reactor that has been operating for some time, the radioactive fission products will have built up to steady state concentrations such that their rate of decay is equal to their rate of formation, so that their fractional total contribution to reactor heat (via beta decay) is the same as these radioisotopic fractional contributions to the energy of fission. Under these conditions, the 6.5% of fission which appears as delayed ionizing radiation (delayed gammas and betas from radioactive fission products) contributes to the steady-state reactor heat production under power. It is this output fraction which remains when the reactor is suddenly shut down (undergoes scram). For this reason, the reactor decay heat output begins at 6.5% of the full reactor steady state fission power, once the reactor is shut down. However, within hours, due to decay of these isotopes, the decay power output is far less. See decay heat for detail.
The remainder of the delayed energy (8.8 MeV/202.5 MeV = 4.3% of total fission energy) is emitted as antineutrinos, which as a practical matter, are not considered "ionizing radiation." The reason is that energy released as antineutrinos is not captured by the reactor material as heat, and escapes directly through all materials (including the Earth) at nearly the speed of light, and into interplanetary space (the amount absorbed is minuscule). Neutrino radiation is ordinarily not classed as ionizing radiation, because it is almost entirely not absorbed and therefore does not produce effects (although the very rare neutrino event is ionizing). Almost all of the rest of the radiation (6.5% delayed beta and gamma radiation) is eventually converted to heat in a reactor core or its shielding.
Some processes involving neutrons are notable for absorbing or finally yielding energy — for example neutron kinetic energy does not yield heat immediately if the neutron is captured by a uranium-238 atom to breed plutonium-239, but this energy is emitted if the plutonium-239 is later fissioned. On the other hand, so-called delayed neutrons emitted as radioactive decay products with half-lives up to several minutes, from fission-daughters, are very important to reactor control, because they give a characteristic "reaction" time for the total nuclear reaction to double in size, if the reaction is run in a "delayed-critical" zone which deliberately relies on these neutrons for a supercritical chain-reaction (one in which each fission cycle yields more neutrons than it absorbs). Without their existence, the nuclear chain-reaction would be prompt critical and increase in size faster than it could be controlled by human intervention. In this case, the first experimental atomic reactors would have run away to a dangerous and messy "prompt critical reaction" before their operators could have manually shut them down (for this reason, designer Enrico Fermi included radiation-counter-triggered control rods, suspended by electromagnets, which could automatically drop into the center of Chicago Pile-1). If these delayed neutrons are captured without producing fissions, they produce heat as well.
In fission there is a preference to yield fragments with even proton numbers, which is called the odd-even effect on the fragments' charge distribution. However, no odd-even effect is observed on fragment mass number distribution. This result is attributed to nucleon pair breaking.
In nuclear fission events the nuclei may break into any combination of lighter nuclei, but the most common event is not fission to equal mass nuclei of about mass 120; the most common event (depending on isotope and process) is a slightly unequal fission in which one daughter nucleus has a mass of about 90 to 100 u and the other the remaining 130 to 140 u. Unequal fissions are energetically more favorable because this allows one product to be closer to the energetic minimum near mass 60 u (only a quarter of the average fissionable mass), while the other nucleus with mass 135 u is still not far out of the range of the most tightly bound nuclei (another statement of this, is that the atomic binding energy curve is slightly steeper to the left of mass 120 u than to the right of it).
Nuclear fission of heavy elements produces exploitable energy because the specific binding energy (binding energy per mass) of intermediate-mass nuclei with atomic numbers and atomic masses close to 62Ni and 56Fe is greater than the nucleon-specific binding energy of very heavy nuclei, so that energy is released when heavy nuclei are broken apart. The total rest masses of the fission products (Mp) from a single reaction is less than the mass of the original fuel nucleus (M). The excess mass Δm = M – Mp is the invariant mass of the energy that is released as photons (gamma rays) and kinetic energy of the fission fragments, according to the mass-energy equivalence formula "E" = "mc"2.
The variation in specific binding energy with atomic number is due to the interplay of the two fundamental forces acting on the component nucleons (protons and neutrons) that make up the nucleus. Nuclei are bound by an attractive nuclear force between nucleons, which overcomes the electrostatic repulsion between protons. However, the nuclear force acts only over relatively short ranges (a few nucleon diameters), since it follows an exponentially decaying Yukawa potential which makes it insignificant at longer distances. The electrostatic repulsion is of longer range, since it decays by an inverse-square rule, so that nuclei larger than about 12 nucleons in diameter reach a point that the total electrostatic repulsion overcomes the nuclear force and causes them to be spontaneously unstable. For the same reason, larger nuclei (more than about eight nucleons in diameter) are less tightly bound per unit mass than are smaller nuclei; breaking a large nucleus into two or more intermediate-sized nuclei releases energy.
Also because of the short range of the strong binding force, large stable nuclei must contain proportionally more neutrons than do the lightest elements, which are most stable with a 1 to 1 ratio of protons and neutrons. Nuclei which have more than 20 protons cannot be stable unless they have more than an equal number of neutrons. Extra neutrons stabilize heavy elements because they add to strong-force binding (which acts between all nucleons) without adding to proton–proton repulsion. Fission products have, on average, about the same ratio of neutrons and protons as their parent nucleus, and are therefore usually unstable to beta decay (which changes neutrons to protons) because they have proportionally too many neutrons compared to stable isotopes of similar mass.
This tendency for fission product nuclei to undergo beta decay is the fundamental cause of the problem of radioactive high-level waste from nuclear reactors. Fission products tend to be beta emitters, emitting fast-moving electrons to conserve electric charge, as excess neutrons convert to protons in the fission-product atoms. See Fission products (by element) for a description of fission products sorted by element.
Several heavy elements, such as uranium, thorium, and plutonium, undergo both spontaneous fission, a form of radioactive decay and "induced fission", a form of nuclear reaction. Elemental isotopes that undergo induced fission when struck by a free neutron are called fissionable; isotopes that undergo fission when struck by a slow-moving thermal neutron are also called fissile. A few particularly fissile and readily obtainable isotopes (notably 233U, 235U and 239Pu) are called nuclear fuels because they can sustain a chain reaction and can be obtained in large enough quantities to be useful.
All fissionable and fissile isotopes undergo a small amount of spontaneous fission which releases a few free neutrons into any sample of nuclear fuel. Such neutrons would escape rapidly from the fuel and become a free neutron, with a mean lifetime of about 15 minutes before decaying to protons and beta particles. However, neutrons almost invariably impact and are absorbed by other nuclei in the vicinity long before this happens (newly created fission neutrons move at about 7% of the speed of light, and even moderated neutrons move at about 8 times the speed of sound). Some neutrons will impact fuel nuclei and induce further fissions, releasing yet more neutrons. If enough nuclear fuel is assembled in one place, or if the escaping neutrons are sufficiently contained, then these freshly emitted neutrons outnumber the neutrons that escape from the assembly, and a "sustained nuclear chain reaction" will take place.
An assembly that supports a sustained nuclear chain reaction is called a critical assembly or, if the assembly is almost entirely made of a nuclear fuel, a critical mass. The word "critical" refers to a cusp in the behavior of the differential equation that governs the number of free neutrons present in the fuel: if less than a critical mass is present, then the amount of neutrons is determined by radioactive decay, but if a critical mass or more is present, then the amount of neutrons is controlled instead by the physics of the chain reaction. The actual mass of a "critical mass" of nuclear fuel depends strongly on the geometry and surrounding materials.
Not all fissionable isotopes can sustain a chain reaction. For example, 238U, the most abundant form of uranium, is fissionable but not fissile: it undergoes induced fission when impacted by an energetic neutron with over 1 MeV of kinetic energy. However, too few of the neutrons produced by 238U fission are energetic enough to induce further fissions in 238U, so no chain reaction is possible with this isotope. Instead, bombarding 238U with slow neutrons causes it to absorb them (becoming 239U) and decay by beta emission to 239Np which then decays again by the same process to 239Pu; that process is used to manufacture 239Pu in breeder reactors. In-situ plutonium production also contributes to the neutron chain reaction in other types of reactors after sufficient plutonium-239 has been produced, since plutonium-239 is also a fissile element which serves as fuel. It is estimated that up to half of the power produced by a standard "non-breeder" reactor is produced by the fission of plutonium-239 produced in place, over the total life-cycle of a fuel load.
Fissionable, non-fissile isotopes can be used as fission energy source even without a chain reaction. Bombarding 238U with fast neutrons induces fissions, releasing energy as long as the external neutron source is present. This is an important effect in all reactors where fast neutrons from the fissile isotope can cause the fission of nearby 238U nuclei, which means that some small part of the 238U is "burned-up" in all nuclear fuels, especially in fast breeder reactors that operate with higher-energy neutrons. That same fast-fission effect is used to augment the energy released by modern thermonuclear weapons, by jacketing the weapon with 238U to react with neutrons released by nuclear fusion at the center of the device. But the explosive effects of nuclear fission chain reactions can be reduced by using substances like moderators which slow down the speed of secondary neutrons.
Critical fission reactors are the most common type of nuclear reactor. In a critical fission reactor, neutrons produced by fission of fuel atoms are used to induce yet more fissions, to sustain a controllable amount of energy release. Devices that produce engineered but non-self-sustaining fission reactions are subcritical fission reactors. Such devices use radioactive decay or particle accelerators to trigger fissions.
Critical fission reactors are built for three primary purposes, which typically involve different engineering trade-offs to take advantage of either the heat or the neutrons produced by the fission chain reaction:
While, in principle, all fission reactors can act in all three capacities, in practice the tasks lead to conflicting engineering goals and most reactors have been built with only one of the above tasks in mind. (There are several early counter-examples, such as the Hanford N reactor, now decommissioned). Power reactors generally convert the kinetic energy of fission products into heat, which is used to heat a working fluid and drive a heat engine that generates mechanical or electrical power. The working fluid is usually water with a steam turbine, but some designs use other materials such as gaseous helium. Research reactors produce neutrons that are used in various ways, with the heat of fission being treated as an unavoidable waste product. Breeder reactors are a specialized form of research reactor, with the caveat that the sample being irradiated is usually the fuel itself, a mixture of 238U and 235U.
For a more detailed description of the physics and operating principles of critical fission reactors, see nuclear reactor physics. For a description of their social, political, and environmental aspects, see nuclear power.
One class of nuclear weapon, a "fission bomb" (not to be confused with the "fusion bomb"), otherwise known as an "atomic bomb" or "atom bomb", is a fission reactor designed to liberate as much energy as possible as rapidly as possible, before the released energy causes the reactor to explode (and the chain reaction to stop). Development of nuclear weapons was the motivation behind early research into nuclear fission which the Manhattan Project during World War II (September 1, 1939 – September 2, 1945) carried out most of the early scientific work on fission chain reactions, culminating in the three events involving fission bombs that occurred during the war. The first fission bomb, codenamed "The Gadget", was detonated during the Trinity Test in the desert of New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Two other fission bombs, codenamed "Little Boy" and "Fat Man", were used in combat against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in on August 6 and 9, 1945 respectively.
Even the first fission bombs were thousands of times more explosive than a comparable mass of chemical explosive. For example, Little Boy weighed a total of about four tons (of which 60 kg was nuclear fuel) and was long; it also yielded an explosion equivalent to about 15 kilotons of TNT, destroying a large part of the city of Hiroshima. Modern nuclear weapons (which include a thermonuclear "fusion" as well as one or more fission stages) are hundreds of times more energetic for their weight than the first pure fission atomic bombs (see nuclear weapon yield), so that a modern single missile warhead bomb weighing less than 1/8 as much as Little Boy (see for example W88) has a yield of 475 kilotons of TNT, and could bring destruction to about 10 times the city area.
While the fundamental physics of the fission chain reaction in a nuclear weapon is similar to the physics of a controlled nuclear reactor, the two types of device must be engineered quite differently (see nuclear reactor physics). A nuclear bomb is designed to release all its energy at once, while a reactor is designed to generate a steady supply of useful power. While overheating of a reactor can lead to, and has led to, meltdown and steam explosions, the much lower uranium enrichment makes it impossible for a nuclear reactor to explode with the same destructive power as a nuclear weapon. It is also difficult to extract useful power from a nuclear bomb, although at least one rocket propulsion system, Project Orion, was intended to work by exploding fission bombs behind a massively padded and shielded spacecraft.
The strategic importance of nuclear weapons is a major reason why the technology of nuclear fission is politically sensitive. Viable fission bomb designs are, arguably, within the capabilities of many, being relatively simple from an engineering viewpoint. However, the difficulty of obtaining fissile nuclear material to realize the designs is the key to the relative unavailability of nuclear weapons to all but modern industrialized governments with special programs to produce fissile materials (see uranium enrichment and nuclear fuel cycle).
The discovery of nuclear fission occurred in 1938 in the buildings of Kaiser Wilhelm Society for Chemistry, today part of the Free University of Berlin, following over four decades of work on the science of radioactivity and the elaboration of new nuclear physics that described the components of atoms. In 1911, Ernest Rutherford proposed a model of the atom in which a very small, dense and positively charged nucleus of protons was surrounded by orbiting, negatively charged electrons (the Rutherford model). Niels Bohr improved upon this in 1913 by reconciling the quantum behavior of electrons (the Bohr model). Work by Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, and Rutherford further elaborated that the nucleus, though tightly bound, could undergo different forms of radioactive decay, and thereby transmute into other elements. (For example, by alpha decay: the emission of an alpha particle—two protons and two neutrons bound together into a particle identical to a helium nucleus.)
Some work in nuclear transmutation had been done. In 1917, Rutherford was able to accomplish transmutation of nitrogen into oxygen, using alpha particles directed at nitrogen 14N + α → 17O + p. This was the first observation of a nuclear reaction, that is, a reaction in which particles from one decay are used to transform another atomic nucleus. Eventually, in 1932, a fully artificial nuclear reaction and nuclear transmutation was achieved by Rutherford's colleagues Ernest Walton and John Cockcroft, who used artificially accelerated protons against lithium-7, to split this nucleus into two alpha particles. The feat was popularly known as "splitting the atom", and would win them the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics for ""Transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles"", although it was not the nuclear fission reaction later discovered in heavy elements.
After English physicist James Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1932, Enrico Fermi and his colleagues in Rome studied the results of bombarding uranium with neutrons in 1934. Fermi concluded that his experiments had created new elements with 93 and 94 protons, which the group dubbed ausonium and hesperium. However, not all were convinced by Fermi's analysis of his results, though he would win the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons". The German chemist Ida Noddack notably suggested in print in 1934 that instead of creating a new, heavier element 93, that "it is conceivable that the nucleus breaks up into several large fragments." However, Noddack's conclusion was not pursued at the time.
After the Fermi publication, Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, and Fritz Strassmann began performing similar experiments in Berlin. Meitner, an Austrian Jew, lost her Austrian citizenship with the "Anschluss", the union of Austria with Germany in March 1938, but she fled in July 1938 to Sweden and started a correspondence by mail with Hahn in Berlin. By coincidence, her nephew Otto Robert Frisch, also a refugee, was also in Sweden when Meitner received a letter from Hahn dated 19 December describing his chemical proof that some of the product of the bombardment of uranium with neutrons was barium. Hahn suggested a "bursting" of the nucleus, but he was unsure of what the physical basis for the results were. Barium had an atomic mass 40% less than uranium, and no previously known methods of radioactive decay could account for such a large difference in the mass of the nucleus. Frisch was skeptical, but Meitner trusted Hahn's ability as a chemist. Marie Curie had been separating barium from radium for many years, and the techniques were well-known. Meitner and Frisch then correctly interpreted Hahn's results to mean that the nucleus of uranium had split roughly in half. Frisch suggested the process be named "nuclear fission", by analogy to the process of living cell division into two cells, which was then called binary fission. Just as the term nuclear "chain reaction" would later be borrowed from chemistry, so the term "fission" was borrowed from biology.
News spread quickly of the new discovery, which was correctly seen as an entirely novel physical effect with great scientific—and potentially practical—possibilities. Meitner's and Frisch's interpretation of the discovery of Hahn and Strassmann crossed the Atlantic Ocean with Niels Bohr, who was to lecture at Princeton University. I.I. Rabi and Willis Lamb, two Columbia University physicists working at Princeton, heard the news and carried it back to Columbia. Rabi said he told Enrico Fermi; Fermi gave credit to Lamb. Bohr soon thereafter went from Princeton to Columbia to see Fermi. Not finding Fermi in his office, Bohr went down to the cyclotron area and found Herbert L. Anderson. Bohr grabbed him by the shoulder and said: “Young man, let me explain to you about something new and exciting in physics.” It was clear to a number of scientists at Columbia that they should try to detect the energy released in the nuclear fission of uranium from neutron bombardment. On 25 January 1939, a Columbia University team conducted the first nuclear fission experiment in the United States, which was done in the basement of Pupin Hall. The experiment involved placing uranium oxide inside of an ionization chamber and irradiating it with neutrons, and measuring the energy thus released. The results confirmed that fission was occurring and hinted strongly that it was the isotope uranium 235 in particular that was fissioning. The next day, the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics began in Washington, D.C. under the joint auspices of the George Washington University and the Carnegie Institution of Washington. There, the news on nuclear fission was spread even further, which fostered many more experimental demonstrations.
During this period the Hungarian physicist Leó Szilárd, realized that the neutron-driven fission of heavy atoms could be used to create a nuclear chain reaction. Such a reaction using neutrons was an idea he had first formulated in 1933, upon reading Rutherford's disparaging remarks about generating power from his team's 1932 experiment using protons to split lithium. However, Szilárd had not been able to achieve a neutron-driven chain reaction with neutron-rich light atoms. In theory, if in a neutron-driven chain reaction the number of secondary neutrons produced was greater than one, then each such reaction could trigger multiple additional reactions, producing an exponentially increasing number of reactions. It was thus a possibility that the fission of uranium could yield vast amounts of energy for civilian or military purposes (i.e., electric power generation or atomic bombs).
Szilard now urged Fermi (in New York) and Frédéric Joliot-Curie (in Paris) to refrain from publishing on the possibility of a chain reaction, lest the Nazi government become aware of the possibilities on the eve of what would later be known as World War II. With some hesitation Fermi agreed to self-censor. But Joliot-Curie did not, and in April 1939 his team in Paris, including Hans von Halban and Lew Kowarski, reported in the journal "Nature" that the number of neutrons emitted with nuclear fission of uranium was then reported at 3.5 per fission. (They later corrected this to 2.6 per fission.) Simultaneous work by Szilard and Walter Zinn confirmed these results. The results suggested the possibility of building nuclear reactors (first called "neutronic reactors" by Szilard and Fermi) and even nuclear bombs. However, much was still unknown about fission and chain reaction systems.
Chain reactions at that time were a known phenomenon in "chemistry", but the analogous process in nuclear physics, using neutrons, had been foreseen as early as 1933 by Szilárd, although Szilárd at that time had no idea with what materials the process might be initiated. Szilárd considered that neutrons would be ideal for such a situation, since they lacked an electrostatic charge.
With the news of fission neutrons from uranium fission, Szilárd immediately understood the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction using uranium. In the summer, Fermi and Szilard proposed the idea of a nuclear reactor (pile) to mediate this process. The pile would use natural uranium as fuel. Fermi had shown much earlier that neutrons were far more effectively captured by atoms if they were of low energy (so-called "slow" or "thermal" neutrons), because for quantum reasons it made the atoms look like much larger targets to the neutrons. Thus to slow down the secondary neutrons released by the fissioning uranium nuclei, Fermi and Szilard proposed a graphite "moderator", against which the fast, high-energy secondary neutrons would collide, effectively slowing them down. With enough uranium, and with pure-enough graphite, their "pile" could theoretically sustain a slow-neutron chain reaction. This would result in the production of heat, as well as the creation of radioactive fission products.
In August 1939, Szilard and fellow Hungarian refugee physicists Teller and Wigner thought that the Germans might make use of the fission chain reaction and were spurred to attempt to attract the attention of the United States government to the issue. Towards this, they persuaded German-Jewish refugee Albert Einstein to lend his name to a letter directed to President Franklin Roosevelt. The Einstein–Szilárd letter suggested the possibility of a uranium bomb deliverable by ship, which would destroy "an entire harbor and much of the surrounding countryside." The President received the letter on 11 October 1939 — shortly after World War II began in Europe, but two years before U.S. entry into it. Roosevelt ordered that a scientific committee be authorized for overseeing uranium work and allocated a small sum of money for pile research.
In England, James Chadwick proposed an atomic bomb utilizing natural uranium, based on a paper by Rudolf Peierls with the mass needed for critical state being 30–40 tons. In America, J. Robert Oppenheimer thought that a cube of uranium deuteride 10 cm on a side (about 11 kg of uranium) might "blow itself to hell." In this design it was still thought that a moderator would need to be used for nuclear bomb fission (this turned out not to be the case if the fissile isotope was separated). In December, Werner Heisenberg delivered a report to the German Ministry of War on the possibility of a uranium bomb. Most of these models were still under the assumption that the bombs would be powered by slow neutron reactions—and thus be similar to a reactor undergoing a critical power excursion.
In Birmingham, England, Frisch teamed up with Peierls, a fellow German-Jewish refugee. They had the idea of using a purified mass of the uranium isotope 235U, which had a cross section not yet determined, but which was believe to be much larger than that of 238U or natural uranium (which is 99.3% the latter isotope). Assuming that the cross section for fast-neutron fission of 235U was the same as for slow neutron fission, they determined that a pure 235U bomb could have a critical mass of only 6 kg instead of tons, and that the resulting explosion would be tremendous. (The amount actually turned out to be 15 kg, although several times this amount was used in the actual uranium (Little Boy) bomb). In February 1940 they delivered the Frisch–Peierls memorandum. Ironically, they were still officially considered "enemy aliens" at the time. Glenn Seaborg, Joseph W. Kennedy, Arthur Wahl, and Italian-Jewish refugee Emilio Segrè shortly thereafter discovered 239Pu in the decay products of 239U produced by bombarding 238U with neutrons, and determined it to be a fissile material, like 235U.
The possibility of isolating uranium-235 was technically daunting, because uranium-235 and uranium-238 are chemically identical, and vary in their mass by only the weight of three neutrons. However, if a sufficient quantity of uranium-235 could be isolated, it would allow for a fast neutron fission chain reaction. This would be extremely explosive, a true "atomic bomb." The discovery that plutonium-239 could be produced in a nuclear reactor pointed towards another approach to a fast neutron fission bomb. Both approaches were extremely novel and not yet well understood, and there was considerable scientific skepticism at the idea that they could be developed in a short amount of time.
On June 28, 1941, the Office of Scientific Research and Development was formed in the U.S. to mobilize scientific resources and apply the results of research to national defense. In September, Fermi assembled his first nuclear "pile" or reactor, in an attempt to create a slow neutron-induced chain reaction in uranium, but the experiment failed to achieve criticality, due to lack of proper materials, or not enough of the proper materials which were available.
Producing a fission chain reaction in natural uranium fuel was found to be far from trivial. Early nuclear reactors did not use isotopically enriched uranium, and in consequence they were required to use large quantities of highly purified graphite as neutron moderation materials. Use of ordinary water (as opposed to heavy water) in nuclear reactors requires enriched fuel — the partial separation and relative enrichment of the rare 235U isotope from the far more common 238U isotope. Typically, reactors also require inclusion of extremely chemically pure neutron moderator materials such as deuterium (in heavy water), helium, beryllium, or carbon, the latter usually as graphite. (The high purity for carbon is required because many chemical impurities such as the boron-10 component of natural boron, are very strong neutron absorbers and thus poison the chain reaction and end it prematurely.)
Production of such materials at industrial scale had to be solved for nuclear power generation and weapons production to be accomplished. Up to 1940, the total amount of uranium metal produced in the USA was not more than a few grams, and even this was of doubtful purity; of metallic beryllium not more than a few kilograms; and concentrated deuterium oxide (heavy water) not more than a few kilograms. Finally, carbon had never been produced in quantity with anything like the purity required of a moderator.
The problem of producing large amounts of high purity uranium was solved by Frank Spedding using the thermite or "Ames" process. Ames Laboratory was established in 1942 to produce the large amounts of natural (unenriched) uranium metal that would be necessary for the research to come. The critical nuclear chain-reaction success of the Chicago Pile-1 (December 2, 1942) which used unenriched (natural) uranium, like all of the atomic "piles" which produced the plutonium for the atomic bomb, was also due specifically to Szilard's realization that very pure graphite could be used for the moderator of even natural uranium "piles". In wartime Germany, failure to appreciate the qualities of very pure graphite led to reactor designs dependent on heavy water, which in turn was denied the Germans by Allied attacks in Norway, where heavy water was produced. These difficulties—among many others— prevented the Nazis from building a nuclear reactor capable of criticality during the war, although they never put as much effort as the United States into nuclear research, focusing on other technologies (see German nuclear energy project for more details).
In the United States, an all-out effort for making atomic weapons was begun in late 1942. This work was taken over by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1943, and known as the Manhattan Engineer District. The top-secret Manhattan Project, as it was colloquially known, was led by General Leslie R. Groves. Among the project's dozens of sites were: Hanford Site in Washington, which had the first industrial-scale nuclear reactors and produced plutonium; Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which was primarily concerned with uranium enrichment; and Los Alamos, in New Mexico, which was the scientific hub for research on bomb development and design. Other sites, notably the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory and the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, played important contributing roles. Overall scientific direction of the project was managed by the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
In July 1945, the first atomic explosive device, dubbed "Trinity", was detonated in the New Mexico desert. It was fueled by plutonium created at Hanford. In August 1945, two more atomic devices – "Little Boy", a uranium-235 bomb, and "Fat Man", a plutonium bomb – were used against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In the years after World War II, many countries were involved in the further development of nuclear fission for the purposes of nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. The UK opened the first commercial nuclear power plant in 1956. By 2013, there were 437 reactors in 31 countries.
Criticality in nature is uncommon. At three ore deposits at Oklo in Gabon, sixteen sites (the so-called Oklo Fossil Reactors) have been discovered at which self-sustaining nuclear fission took place approximately 2 billion years ago. Unknown until 1972 (but postulated by Paul Kuroda in 1956), when French physicist Francis Perrin discovered the Oklo Fossil Reactors, it was realized that nature had beaten humans to the punch. Large-scale natural uranium fission chain reactions, moderated by normal water, had occurred far in the past and would not be possible now. This ancient process was able to use normal water as a moderator only because 2 billion years before the present, natural uranium was richer in the shorter-lived fissile isotope 235U (about 3%), than natural uranium available today (which is only 0.7%, and must be enriched to 3% to be usable in light-water reactors). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22054 |
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (; born Neil Richard Gaiman, 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, nonfiction, audio theatre, and films. His works include the comic book series "The Sandman" and novels "Stardust", "American Gods", "Coraline", and "The Graveyard Book". He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, "The Graveyard Book" (2008). In 2013, "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards.
Gaiman's family is of Polish Jewish and other Eastern European Jewish origins. His great-grandfather emigrated from Antwerp, Belgium, to the UK before 1914 and his grandfather eventually settled in the south of England in the Hampshire city of Portsmouth and established a chain of grocery stores. Gaiman's grandfather changed his original family name of Chaiman to Gaiman. His father, David Bernard Gaiman, worked in the same chain of stores; his mother, Sheila Gaiman (née Goldman), was a pharmacist. He has two younger sisters, Claire and Lizzy.
After living for a period in the nearby town of Portchester, Hampshire, where Neil was born in 1960, the Gaimans moved in 1965 to the West Sussex town of East Grinstead, where his parents studied Dianetics at the Scientology centre in the town; one of Gaiman's sisters works for the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles. His other sister, Lizzy Calcioli, has said, "Most of our social activities were involved with Scientology or our Jewish family. It would get very confusing when people would ask my religion as a kid. I'd say, 'I'm a Jewish Scientologist. Gaiman says that he is not a Scientologist, and that like Judaism, Scientology is his family's religion. About his personal views, Gaiman has stated, "I think we can say that God exists in the DC Universe. I would not stand up and beat the drum for the existence of God in this universe. I don't know, I think there's probably a 50/50 chance. It doesn't really matter to me."
Gaiman was able to read at the age of four. He said, "I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, and I'd read them—which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd read it." When he was about ten years old, he read his way through the works of Dennis Wheatley, where especially "The Ka of Gifford Hillary" and "The Haunting of Toby Jugg" made an impact on him. One work that made a particular impression on him was J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" from his school library. Although the library only had the first two of the novel's three volumes, Neil consistently checked them out and read them. He later won the school English prize and the school reading prize, enabling him to finally acquire the third volume.
For his seventh birthday, Gaiman received C. S. Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia" series. He later recalled that "I admired his use of parenthetical statements to the reader, where he would just talk to you ... I'd think, 'Oh, my gosh, that is so cool! I want to do that! When I become an author, I want to be able to do things in parentheses.' I liked the power of putting things in brackets." "Narnia" also introduced him to literary awards, specifically the 1956 Carnegie Medal won by the concluding volume. When Gaiman won the 2010 Medal himself, the press reported him recalling, "it had to be the most important literary award there ever was" and observing, "if you can make yourself aged seven happy, you're really doing well – it's like writing a letter to yourself aged seven."
Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" was another childhood favourite, and "a favourite forever. Alice was default reading to the point where I knew it by heart." He also enjoyed Batman comics as a child.
Gaiman was educated at several Church of England schools, including Fonthill School in East Grinstead, Ardingly College (1970–74), and Whitgift School in Croydon (1974–77). His father's position as a public relations official of the Church of Scientology was the cause of the seven-year-old Gaiman being forced to withdraw from Fonthill School and remain at the school that he had previously been attending. He lived in East Grinstead for many years, from 1965 to 1980 and again from 1984 to 1987. He met his first wife, Mary McGrath, while she was studying Scientology and living in a house in East Grinstead that was owned by his father. The couple were married in 1985 after having their first child, Michael.
As a child and a teenager, Gaiman read the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, Mary Shelley, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Lord Dunsany and G. K. Chesterton. A lifetime fan of the Monty Python comedy troupe, as a teenager he owned a copy of "Monty Python's Big Red Book". When he was 19–20 years old, he contacted his favourite science fiction writer, R. A. Lafferty, whom he discovered when he was nine, and asked for advice on becoming an author along with a Lafferty pastiche he had written. The writer sent Gaiman an encouraging and informative letter back, along with literary advice.
Gaiman has said Roger Zelazny was the author who influenced him the most, with this influence particularly seen in Gaiman's literary style and the topics he writes about. Other authors Gaiman says "furnished the inside of my mind and set me to writing" include Moorcock, Ellison, Samuel R. Delany, Angela Carter, Lafferty and Le Guin. Neil Gaiman has also taken inspiration from the folk tales tradition, citing Otta F Swire's book on the legends of the Isle of Skye as his inspiration for The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains.
In the early 1980s, Gaiman pursued journalism, conducting interviews and writing book reviews, as a means to learn about the world and to make connections that he hoped would later assist him in getting published. He wrote and reviewed extensively for the British Fantasy Society. His first professional short story publication was "Featherquest", a fantasy story, in "Imagine Magazine" in May 1984.
When waiting for a train at London's Victoria Station in 1984, Gaiman noticed a copy of "Swamp Thing" written by Alan Moore, and carefully read it. Moore's fresh and vigorous approach to comics had such an impact on Gaiman that he later wrote "that was the final straw, what was left of my resistance crumbled. I proceeded to make regular and frequent visits to London's Forbidden Planet shop to buy comics".
In 1984, he wrote his first book, a biography of the band Duran Duran, as well as "Ghastly Beyond Belief", a book of quotations, with Kim Newman. Even though Gaiman thought he had done a terrible job, the book's first edition sold out very quickly. When he went to relinquish his rights to the book, he discovered the publisher had gone bankrupt. After this, he was offered a job by "Penthouse". He refused the offer.
He also wrote interviews and articles for many British magazines, including "Knave." During this he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms, including Gerry Musgrave, Richard Grey, and "a couple of house names". Gaiman has said he ended his journalism career in 1987 because British newspapers regularly publish untruths as fact.
In the late 1980s, he wrote "" in what he calls a "classic English humour" style. Following this he wrote the opening of what became his collaboration with fellow English author Terry Pratchett on the comic novel "Good Omens", about the impending apocalypse.
After forming a friendship with comic-book writer Alan Moore, Gaiman started writing comic books, picking up "Miracleman" after Moore finished his run on the series. Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham collaborated on several issues of the series before its publisher, Eclipse Comics, collapsed, leaving the series unfinished. His first published comic strips were four short "Future Shocks" for "2000 AD" in 1986–87. He wrote three graphic novels with his favourite collaborator and long-time friend Dave McKean: "Violent Cases", "Signal to Noise", and "The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch". Impressed with his work, DC Comics hired him in February 1987, and he wrote the limited series "Black Orchid". Karen Berger, who later became head of DC Comics's Vertigo, read "Black Orchid" and offered Gaiman a job: to re-write an old character, The Sandman, but to put his own spin on him.
"The Sandman" tells the tale of the ageless, anthropomorphic personification of Dream that is known by many names, including Morpheus. The series began in January 1989 and concluded in March 1996. In the eighth issue of "The Sandman", Gaiman and artist Mike Dringenberg introduced Death, the older sister of Dream, who became as popular as the series' title character. The limited series "" launched DC's Vertigo line in 1993. The 75 issues of the regular series, along with an illustrated prose text and a special containing seven short stories, have been collected into 12 volumes that remain in print, 14 if the "Death: The High Cost of Living" and "" spin-offs are included. Artists include Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel and Michael Zulli, lettering by Todd Klein, colours by Daniel Vozzo, and covers by Dave McKean. The series became one of DC's top selling titles, eclipsing even "Batman" and "Superman". Comics historian Les Daniels called Gaiman's work "astonishing" and noted that "The Sandman" was "a mixture of fantasy, horror, and ironic humor such as comic books had never seen before". DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed that ""The Sandman" became the first extraordinary success as a series of graphic novel collections, reaching out and converting new readers to the medium, particularly young women on college campuses, and making Gaiman himself into an iconic cultural figure."
Gaiman and Jamie Delano were to become co-writers of the "Swamp Thing" series following Rick Veitch. An editorial decision by DC to censor Veitch's final storyline caused both Gaiman and Delano to withdraw from the title.
Gaiman produced two stories for DC's "Secret Origins" series in 1989. A Poison Ivy tale drawn by Mark Buckingham and a Riddler story illustrated by Bernie Mireault and Matt Wagner. A story that Gaiman originally wrote for "Action Comics Weekly" in 1989 was shelved due to editorial concerns but it was finally published in 2000 as "".
In 1990, Gaiman wrote "The Books of Magic", a four-part mini-series that provided a tour of the mythological and magical parts of the DC Universe through a frame story about an English teenager who discovers that he is destined to be the world's greatest wizard. The miniseries was popular, and sired an ongoing series written by John Ney Rieber.
Gaiman's adaptation of "Sweeney Todd", illustrated by Michael Zulli for Stephen R. Bissette's publication "Taboo", was stopped when the anthology itself was discontinued.
In the mid-1990s, he also created a number of new characters and a setting that was to be featured in a title published by Tekno Comix. The concepts were then altered and split between three titles set in the same continuity: "Lady Justice", "Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man", and "Teknophage", and tie-ins. Although Gaiman's name appeared prominently as creator of the characters, he was not involved in writing any of the above-mentioned books.
Gaiman wrote a semi-autobiographical story about a boy's fascination with Michael Moorcock's anti-hero Elric of Melniboné for Ed Kramer's anthology "Tales of the White Wolf." In 1996, Gaiman and Ed Kramer co-edited "". Nominated for the British Fantasy Award, the original fiction anthology featured stories and contributions by Tori Amos, Clive Barker, Gene Wolfe, Tad Williams, and others.
Asked why he likes comics more than other forms of storytelling, Gaiman said: "One of the joys of comics has always been the knowledge that it was, in many ways, untouched ground. It was virgin territory. When I was working on "Sandman", I felt a lot of the time that I was actually picking up a machete and heading out into the jungle. I got to write in places and do things that nobody had ever done before. When I'm writing novels I'm painfully aware that I'm working in a medium that people have been writing absolutely jaw-droppingly brilliant things for, you know, three-four thousand years now. You know, you can go back. We have things like "The Golden Ass". And you go, well, I don't know that I'm as good as that and that's two and a half thousand years old. But with comics I felt like – I can do stuff nobody has ever done. I can do stuff nobody has ever thought of. And I could and it was enormously fun."
Gaiman wrote two series for Marvel Comics. "Marvel 1602" was an eight-issue limited series published from November 2003 to June 2004 with art by Andy Kubert and Richard Isanove. "The Eternals" was a seven-issue limited series drawn by John Romita Jr., which was published from August 2006 to March 2007.
In 2009, Gaiman wrote a two-part Batman story for DC Comics to follow "Batman R.I.P." titled "" a play-off of the classic Superman story "" by Alan Moore. He contributed a twelve-part Metamorpho serial drawn by Mike Allred for "Wednesday Comics", a weekly newspaper-style series. Gaiman and Paul Cornell co-wrote "Action Comics" #894 (December 2010), which featured an appearance by Death. In October 2013, DC Comics released "" with art by J. H. Williams III. Gaiman's Angela character was introduced into the Marvel Universe in the last issue of the "Age of Ultron" miniseries in 2013.
Gaiman is overseeing "The Sandman Universe", a line of comic books published by Vertigo. The four new ongoing series — "House of Whispers", "Lucifer", "The Books of Magic", and "The Dreaming" — are written by new creative teams. The line launched on 8 August 2018.
In a collaboration with author Terry Pratchett, best known for his series of "Discworld" novels, Gaiman's first novel "Good Omens" was published in 1990. In 2011 Pratchett said that while the entire novel was a collaborative effort and most of the ideas could be credited to both of them, Pratchett did a larger portion of writing and editing if for no other reason than Gaiman's scheduled involvement with "Sandman".
The 1996 novelisation of Gaiman's teleplay for the BBC mini-series "Neverwhere" was his first solo novel. The novel was released in tandem with the television series though it presents some notable differences from the television series. Gaiman has since revised the novel twice, the first time for an American audience unfamiliar with the London Underground, the second time because he felt unsatisfied with the original.
In 1999, first printings of his fantasy novel "Stardust" were released. The novel has been released both as a standard novel and in an illustrated text edition. This novel was highly influenced by Victorian fairytales and culture.
"American Gods" became one of Gaiman's best-selling and multi-award-winning novels upon its release in 2001. A special 10th Anniversary edition was released, with the "author's preferred text" 12,000 words longer than the original mass-market editions.
Gaiman has not written a direct sequel to "American Gods" but he has revisited the characters. A glimpse at Shadow's travels in Europe is found in a short story which finds him in Scotland, applying the same concepts developed in "American Gods" to the story of "Beowulf". The 2005 novel "Anansi Boys" deals with Anansi ('Mr. Nancy'), tracing the relationship of his two sons, one semi-divine and the other an unassuming Englishman, as they explore their common heritage. It debuted at number one on "The New York Times" Best Seller list.
In late 2008, Gaiman released a new children's book, "The Graveyard Book". It follows the adventures of a boy named Bod after his family is murdered and he is left to be brought up by a graveyard. It is heavily influenced by Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book". , it had been on "The New York Times" Bestseller children's list for fifteen weeks.
In 2013, "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. The novel follows an unnamed man who returns to his hometown for a funeral and remembers events that began forty years earlier. Themes include the search for self-identity and the "disconnect between childhood and adulthood".
In September 2016, Neil Gaiman announced that he had been working for some years on retellings of Norse mythology. "Norse Mythology" was released in February 2017.
Gaiman wrote the 1996 BBC dark fantasy television series "Neverwhere". He cowrote the screenplay for the movie "MirrorMask" with his old friend Dave McKean for McKean to direct. In addition, he wrote the localised English language script to the anime movie "Princess Mononoke", based on a translation of the Japanese script.
He cowrote the script for Robert Zemeckis's "Beowulf" with Roger Avary, a collaboration that has proved productive for both writers. Gaiman has expressed interest in collaborating on a film adaptation of the "Epic of Gilgamesh".
He was the only person other than J. Michael Straczynski to write a "Babylon 5" script in the last three seasons, contributing the season five episode "Day of the Dead".
Gaiman has also written at least three drafts of a screenplay adaptation of Nicholson Baker's novel "The Fermata" for director Robert Zemeckis, although the project was stalled while Zemeckis made "The Polar Express" and the Gaiman-Roger Avary written "Beowulf" film.
Neil Gaiman was featured in the "History Channel" documentary "Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked".
Several of Gaiman's original works have been optioned or greenlighted for film adaptation, most notably "Stardust", which premiered in August 2007 and stars Charlie Cox, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes and Mark Strong, directed by Matthew Vaughn. A stop-motion version of "Coraline" was released on 6 February 2009, with Henry Selick directing and Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher in the leading voice-actor roles.
In 2007, Gaiman it was announced that after ten years in development, the feature film of "" would finally begin production with a screenplay by Gaiman that he would direct for Warner Independent. Don Murphy and Susan Montford are the producers, and Guillermo del Toro is the film's executive producer. By 2010 it had been reported that it was no longer in production.
Seeing Ear Theatre performed two of Gaiman's audio theatre plays, "Snow, Glass, Apples", Gaiman's retelling of Snow White and "Murder Mysteries", a story of heaven before the Fall in which the first crime is committed. Both audio plays were published in the collection "Smoke and Mirrors" in 1998.
Gaiman's 2009 Newbery Medal winning book "The Graveyard Book" will be made into a movie, with Ron Howard as the director.
Gaiman wrote an episode of the long-running BBC science fiction series "Doctor Who", broadcast in 2011 during Matt Smith's second series as the Doctor. Shooting began in August 2010 for this episode, the original title of which was "The House of Nothing" but which was eventually transmitted as "The Doctor's Wife". The episode won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form). Gaiman made his return to "Doctor Who" with an episode titled "Nightmare in Silver", broadcast on 11 May 2013.
In 2011, it was announced that Gaiman would be writing the script to a new film version of "Journey to the West".
Gaiman appeared as himself on "The Simpsons" episode "The Book Job", which broadcast on 20 November 2011.
In 2015, Starz greenlighted a series adaptation of Gaiman's novel "American Gods". Bryan Fuller and Michael Green wrote and showrun the series.
A six-part radio play of "Neverwhere" was broadcast in March 2013, adapted by Dirk Maggs for BBC Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra. Featured stars include James McAvoy as Richard, Natalie Dormer, Benedict Cumberbatch, Christopher Lee, Bernard Cribbens and Johnny Vegas.
In September 2014, Gaiman and Terry Pratchett joined forces with BBC Radio 4 to make the first ever dramatisation of their co-penned novel "Good Omens", which was broadcast in December in five half-hour episodes and culminated in an hour-long final apocalyptic showdown.
Gaiman frequently performs public readings from his stories and poetry, and has toured with his wife, musician Amanda Palmer. In some of these performances he has also sung songs, in "a novelist's version of singing", despite having "no kind of singing voice".
In 2015, Gaiman delivered a 100-minute lecture for the Long Now Foundation entitled "How Stories Last" about the nature of storytelling and how stories persist in human culture. In April 2018 Gaiman made a guest appearance on the television show "The Big Bang Theory", and his tweet about the show's fictional comic book store becomes the central theme of the episode "The Comet Polarization".
In February 2001, when Gaiman had completed writing "American Gods", his publishers set up a promotional website featuring a weblog in which Gaiman described the day-to-day process of revising, publishing, and promoting the novel. After the novel was published, the website evolved into a more general Official Neil Gaiman Website.
Gaiman generally posts to the blog describing the day-to-day process of being Neil Gaiman and writing, revising, publishing, or promoting whatever the current project is. He also posts reader emails and answers questions, which gives him unusually direct and immediate interaction with fans. One of his answers on why he writes the blog is "because writing is, like death, a lonely business."
The original "American Gods" blog was extracted for publication in the NESFA Press collection of Gaiman miscellany, "Adventures in the Dream Trade".
To celebrate the seventh anniversary of the blog, the novel "American Gods" was provided free of charge online for a month.
Gaiman is an active user of the social networking site Twitter with over 2.7 million followers , using the username "@neilhimself". In 2013, Gaiman was named by IGN as one of "The Best Tweeters in Comics", describing his posts as "sublime." Gaiman also runs a Tumblr account on which he primarily answers fan questions.
Gaiman is a dedicated user of fountain pens and has said that he writes the first draft of all his books with one. He started this practice with "Stardust" which he wrote in fountain pen in order to capture the feeling of the 1920s. He is most closely associated with the Pilot 823, one of which he has said he has used for giving over one million signatures.
Gaiman has lived near Menomonie, Wisconsin, since 1992. Gaiman moved there to be close to the family of his then-wife, Mary McGrath, with whom he has three children. , Gaiman also resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2014, he took up a five-year appointment as professor in the arts at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
Gaiman is married to songwriter and performer Amanda Palmer, with whom he has an open marriage. The couple announced that they were dating in June 2009, and announced their engagement on Twitter on 1 January 2010. On 16 November 2010, Palmer hosted a non-legally binding flash mob wedding for Gaiman's birthday in New Orleans. They were legally married on 2 January 2011. The wedding took place in the parlour of writers Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon. On marrying Palmer, he took her middle name, MacKinnon, as one of his names. In September 2015, they had a son. In May 2020, Palmer announced their separation; Gaiman relocated to the UK, and Palmer stayed in New Zealand.
In May 2020, he traveled from New Zealand to his holiday home on the Isle of Skye, breaking lockdown rules imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ross, Skye and Lochaber MP, Ian Blackford described his behaviour as unacceptable and dangerous. Gaiman published an apology on his website, saying he had endangered the local community.
In 2016, Gaiman, as well as Cate Blanchett, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Peter Capaldi, Douglas Booth, Jesse Eisenberg, Keira Knightley, Juliet Stevenson, Kit Harington, and Stanley Tucci, appeared in the video "What They Took With Them", from the United Nations' refugee agency UNHCR, to help raise awareness of the issue of global refugees.
Gaiman is a supporter and board member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
One of Gaiman's most commented-upon friendships is with the musician Tori Amos, a "Sandman" fan who became friends with Gaiman after making a reference to "Neil and the Dream King" on her 1991 demo tape. He included her in turn as a character (a talking tree) in his novel "Stardust". Amos also mentions Gaiman in her songs, "Tear in Your Hand" ("If you need me, me and Neil'll be hangin' out with the dream king. Neil says hi by the way"), "Space Dog" ("Where's Neil when you need him?"), "Horses" ("But will you find me if Neil makes me a tree?"), "Carbon" ("Get me Neil on the line, no I can't hold. Have him read, 'Snow, Glass, Apples' where nothing is what it seems"), "Sweet Dreams" ("You're forgetting to fly, darling, when you sleep"), and "Not Dying Today" ("Neil is thrilled he can claim he's mammalian, 'but the bad news,' he said, 'girl you're a dandelion'"). He also wrote stories for the tour book of "Boys for Pele" and "Scarlet's Walk", a letter for the tour book of "American Doll Posse", and the stories behind each girl in her album "Strange Little Girls". Amos penned the introduction for his novel "Death: the High Cost of Living", and posed for the cover. She also wrote a song called "Sister Named Desire" based on his "Sandman" character, which was included on his anthology, "Where's Neil When You Need Him?".
Gaiman is godfather to Tori Amos's daughter Tash, and wrote a poem called "Blueberry Girl" for Tori and Tash. The poem has been turned into a book by the illustrator Charles Vess. Gaiman read the poem aloud to an audience at the Sundance Kabuki Theater in San Francisco on 5 October 2008 during his book reading tour for "The Graveyard Book". It was published in March 2009 with the title "Blueberry Girl".
In 1993, Gaiman was contracted by Todd McFarlane to write a single issue of "Spawn", a popular title at the newly created Image Comics company. McFarlane was promoting his new title by having guest authors Gaiman, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Dave Sim each write a single issue.
In issue No. 9 of the series, Gaiman introduced the characters Angela, Cogliostro, and Medieval Spawn. Prior to this issue, Spawn was an assassin who worked for the government and came back as a reluctant agent of Hell but had no real direction in his actions. In Angela, a cruel and malicious angel, Gaiman introduced a character who threatened Spawn's existence, as well as providing a moral opposite. Cogliostro was introduced as a mentor character for exposition and instruction, providing guidance. Medieval Spawn introduced a history and precedent that not all Spawns were self-serving or evil, giving additional character development to Malebolgia, the demon that creates Hellspawn.
As intended, all three characters were used repeatedly throughout the next decade by Todd McFarlane within the wider Spawn universe. In papers filed by Gaiman in early 2002, however, he claimed that the characters were jointly owned by their scripter (himself) and artist (McFarlane), not merely by McFarlane in his role as the creator of the series. Disagreement over who owned the rights to a character was the primary motivation for McFarlane and other artists to form Image Comics (although that argument related more towards disagreements between writers and artists as character creators). As McFarlane used the characters without Gaiman's permission or royalty payments, Gaiman believed his copyrighted work was being infringed upon, which violated their original oral agreement. McFarlane initially agreed that Gaiman had not signed away any rights to the characters, and negotiated with Gaiman to effectively 'swap' McFarlane's interest in the character Marvelman. McFarlane had purchased interest in the character when Eclipse Comics was liquidated while Gaiman was interested in being able to continue his aborted run of the Marvelman title. McFarlane later changed his initial position, claiming that Gaiman's work had only been work-for-hire and that McFarlane owned all of Gaiman's creations entirely. The presiding judge, however, ruled against their agreement being work for hire, based in large part on the legal requirement that "copyright assignments must be in writing."
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court ruling in February 2004 granting joint ownership of the characters to Gaiman and McFarlane. On the specific issue of Cogliostro, presiding Judge John C. Shabaz proclaimed, "The expressive work that is the comic-book character Count Nicholas Cogliostro was the joint work of Gaiman and McFarlane—their contributions strike us as quite equal—and both are entitled to ownership of the copyright". Similar analysis led to similar results for the other two characters, Angela and Medieval Spawn.
This legal battle was brought by Gaiman and the specifically formed Marvels and Miracles, LLC, which Gaiman had previously created to help sort out the legal rights surrounding Marvelman. Gaiman had written "Marvel 1602 "in 2003 to help fund this project and all of Gaiman's profits for the original issues of the series were donated to Marvels and Miracles. Marvelman was eventually purchased by Marvel Comics in 2009.
Gaiman returned to court again over the Spawn characters Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany, claiming that they were "derivative of the three he co-created with McFarlane." The judge ruled that Gaiman was right in these claims as well and gave McFarlane until the beginning of September 2010 to settle the matter.
Gaiman's work is known for a high degree of allusiveness. Dr. Meredith Collins, for instance, has commented upon the degree to which his novel "Stardust" depends on allusions to Victorian fairy tales and culture. Particularly in "The Sandman", literary figures and characters appear often; the character of Fiddler's Green is modelled visually on G. K. Chesterton, both William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer appear as characters, as do several characters from within "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest". The comic also draws from numerous mythologies and historical periods.
Analyzing Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book", bibliographer and librarian Richard Bleiler detects patterns of and allusions to the Gothic novel, from Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto" to Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House". He concludes that Gaiman is "utilizing works, characters, themes, and settings that generations of scholars have identified and classified as Gothic, ... [yet] subverts them and develops the novel by focusing on the positive aspects of maturation, concentrating on the values of learning, friendship, and sacrifice." Regarding another work's assumed connection and allusions to this form, Gaiman himself quipped: "I've never been able to figure out whether "Sandman" is a gothic."
Clay Smith has argued that this sort of allusiveness serves to situate Gaiman as a strong authorial presence in his own works, often to the exclusion of his collaborators. However, Smith's viewpoint is in the minority: to many, if there is a problem with Gaiman scholarship and intertextuality it is that "... his literary merit and vast popularity have propelled him into the nascent comics canon so quickly that there is not yet a basis of critical scholarship about his work."
David Rudd takes a more generous view in his study of the novel "Coraline", where he argues that the work plays and riffs productively on Sigmund Freud's notion of the Uncanny, or the "Unheimlich".
Though Gaiman's work is frequently seen as exemplifying the monomyth structure laid out in Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", Gaiman says that he started reading "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" but refused to finish it: "I think I got about half way through "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" and found myself thinking if this is true – I don't want to know. I really would rather not know this stuff. I'd rather do it because it's true and because I accidentally wind up creating something that falls into this pattern than be told what the pattern is."
"Gaiman, Neil" . "The Locus Index to SF Awards: Index to Literary Nominees". Locus Publications. Retrieved 5 November 2012. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22055 |
Public speaking
Public speaking (also called oratory or oration) is the process or act of performing a speech to a live audience. Public speaking is commonly understood as formal, face-to-face, speaking of a single person to a group of listeners. However, due to the evolution of public speaking, it is modernly viewed as any form of speaking (formally and informally) between an audience and the speaker. Traditionally, public speaking was considered to be a part of the art of persuasion. The act can accomplish particular purposes including to inform, to persuade, and to entertain. Additionally, differing methods, structures, and rules can be utilized according to the speaking situation.
Public speaking was developed in Rome and Greece. Prominent thinkers from these lands influenced the development and evolutionary history of public speaking. Currently, technology continues to transform the art of public speaking through newly available technology such as videoconferencing, multimedia presentations, and other nontraditional forms.
Public speaking can serve the purpose of transmitting information, telling a story, motivating people to act or encouraging people. This type of speech is deliberately structured with three general purposes: to inform, to persuade and to entertain. Knowing when public speaking is most effective and how it is done properly are key to understanding the importance of it.
Public speaking for business and commercial events is often done by professionals. These speakers can be contracted independently, through representation by a speakers bureau, or by other means. Public speaking plays a large role in the professional world. In fact, it is believed that 70 percent of all jobs involve some form of public speaking.
Although there is evidence of public speech training in ancient Egypt, the first known piece on oratory, written over 2,000 years ago, came from ancient Greece. This work elaborated on principles drawn from the practices and experiences of ancient Greek orators. Aristotle was one who first recorded the teachers of oratory to use definitive rules and models. His emphasis on oratory led to oration becoming an essential part of a liberal arts education during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The classical antiquity works written by the ancient Greeks capture the ways they taught and developed the art of public speaking thousands of years ago.
In classical Greece and Rome, rhetoric was the main component of composition and speech delivery, both of which were critical skills for citizens to use in public and private life. In ancient Greece, citizens spoke on their own behalf rather than having professionals, like modern lawyers, speak for them. Any citizen who wished to succeed in court, in politics or in social life had to learn techniques of public speaking. Rhetorical tools were first taught by a group of rhetoric teachers called Sophists who were notable for teaching paying students how to speak effectively using the methods they developed.
Separately from the Sophists, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle developed their own theories of public speaking and taught these principles to students who wanted to learn skills in rhetoric. Plato and Aristotle taught these principles in schools that they founded, The Academy and The Lyceum, respectively. Although Greece eventually lost political sovereignty, the Greek culture of training in public speaking was adopted almost identically by the Romans.
In the political rise of the Roman Republic, Roman orators copied and modified the ancient Greek techniques of public speaking. Instruction in rhetoric developed into a full curriculum, including instruction in grammar (study of the poets), preliminary exercises (progymnasmata), and preparation of public speeches (declamation) in both forensic and deliberative genres.
The Latin style of rhetoric was heavily influenced by Cicero and involved a strong emphasis on a broad education in all areas of humanistic study in the liberal arts, including philosophy. Other areas of study included the use of wit and humor, the appeal to the listener's emotions, and the use of digressions. Oratory in the Roman empire, though less central to political life than in the days of the Republic, remained significant in law and became a big form of entertainment. Famous orators became like celebrities in ancient Rome—very wealthy and prominent members of society.
The Latin style was the primary form of oration until the beginning of the 20th century. After World War II, however, the Latin style of oration began to gradually grow out of style as the trend of ornate speaking was seen as impractical. This cultural change likely had to do with the rise of the scientific method and the emphasis on a "plain" style of speaking and writing. Even formal oratory is much less ornate today than it was in the Classical Era.
Despite the shift in style, the best-known examples of strong public speaking are still studied years after their delivery. Among these examples are:
Throughout the 18th and 19th century, women were banned to speak publicly in the courtroom, the senate floor, and the pulpit. It was also considered improper for women to be heard in a public setting. An exception to this custom was the Quaker religion that allowed women to speak publicly in meetings of the church.
Frances Wright was known as one of the first female public speakers of the United States. She advocated for equal education for women and men through large audiences and through the press. African American Maria Stewart, also said to be the second female speaker of the United States, lectured in Boston in front of both men and women just 4 years after Wright in 1832 and 1833 on educational opportunities and abolition for young girls.
Two sisters named Angelina Grimké and Sarah Grimké created a platform for public lectures to women. They were the first female agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Both sisters also had many tours through the years 1837 and 1839, which was only 5 years after Maria Stewart. The two sisters faced disagreement by churches that did not agree with their public speaking as women . Both sisters spoke about how slavery relates to women's' rights and why women need equality.
Effective public speaking can be developed by joining a club such as Rostrum, Toastmasters International, Association of Speakers Clubs (ASC), or Speaking Circles, in which members are assigned exercises to improve their speaking skills. Members learn by observation and practice, and hone their skills by listening to constructive suggestions followed by new public speaking exercises. These include:
The new millennium has seen a notable increase in the number of training solutions offered in the form of video and online courses. Videos can provide actual examples of behaviors to emulate. Professional public speakers often engage in ongoing training and education to refine their craft. This may include seeking guidance to improve their speaking skills such as learning better storytelling techniques, learning how to effectively use humour as a communication tool, and continuously researching in their topic area of focus.
A common fear of public speaking is called glossophobia (or, informally, "stage fright"), this state of response by many beginners confuse with normal nerves and anxiety with a genuine phobia.
New technology has also opened different forms of public speaking that are nontraditional such as TED Talks, which are conferences that are broadcast globally. This form of public speaking has created a wider audience base because public speaking can now reach both physical and virtual audiences. These audiences can be watching from all around the world. YouTube is another platform that allows public speaking to reach a larger audience. On YouTube, people can post videos of themselves. Audiences are able to watch these videos for all types of purposes.
Multimedia presentations can contain different video clips, sound effects, animation, laser pointers, remote control clickers and endless bullet points. All adding to the presentation and evolving our traditional views of public speaking.
Public speakers may use audience response systems. For large assemblies, the speaker will usually speak with the aid of a public address system or microphone and loudspeaker.
These new forms of public speaking, which can be considered nontraditional, have opened up debates about whether or not these forms of public speaking are actually public speaking. Many people consider YouTube broadcasting to not be true forms of public speaking because there is not a real, physical audience. Others argue that public speaking is about getting a group of people together in order to educate them further regardless of how or where the audience is located .
Telecommunication and videoconferencing are also forms of public speaking. David M. Fetterman of Stanford University wrote in his 1997 article "Videoconferencing over the Internet": "Videoconferencing technology allows geographically disparate parties to hear and see each other usually through satellite or telephone communication systems." This technology is helpful for large conference meetings and face-to-face communication between parties without demanding the inconvenience of travel. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25084 |
Philip II of France
Philip II (21 August 1165 – 14 July 1223), known as Philip Augustus (), was King of France from 1180 to 1223. His predecessors had been known as kings of the Franks, but from 1190 onward, Philip became the first French monarch to style himself "King of France". The son of King Louis VII and his third wife, Adela of Champagne, he was originally nicknamed "Dieudonné" (God-given) because he was a first son and born late in his father's life. Philip was given the epithet "Augustus" by the chronicler Rigord for having extended the crown lands of France so remarkably.
After a twelve-year struggle with the Plantagenet dynasty in the Anglo-French War of 1213–1214, Philip succeeded in breaking up the large Angevin Empire presided over by the crown of England and defeated a coalition of his rivals (German, Flemish and English) at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. This victory would have a lasting impact on western European politics: the authority of the French king became unchallenged, while the English King John was forced by his barons to assent to Magna Carta and deal with a rebellion against him aided by Philip's son Prince Louis, the First Barons' War. The military actions surrounding the Albigensian Crusade helped prepare the expansion of France southward. Philip did not participate directly in these actions, but he allowed his vassals and knights to help carry them out.
Philip transformed France from a small feudal state into the most prosperous and powerful country in Europe. He checked the power of the nobles and helped the towns free themselves from seigneurial authority, granting privileges and liberties to the emergent bourgeoisie. He built a great wall around Paris ("the Wall of Philip II Augustus"), re-organized the French government and brought financial stability to his country.
Philip was born in Gonesse on 21 August 1165. King Louis VII intended to make his son Philip co-ruler with him as soon as possible, in accordance with the traditions of the House of Capet, but these plans were delayed when Philip, at the age of thirteen, was separated from his companions during a royal hunt and became lost in the Forest of Compiègne. He spent much of the following night attempting to find his way out, but to no avail. Exhausted by cold, hunger and fatigue, he was eventually discovered by a peasant carrying a charcoal burner, but his exposure to the elements meant he soon contracted a dangerously high fever. His father went on pilgrimage to the Shrine of Thomas Becket to pray for Philip's recovery and was told that his son had indeed recovered. However, on his way back to Paris, the king suffered a stroke.
In declining health, Louis VII had his 14-year-old son crowned and anointed as king at Reims on 1 November 1179 by Archbishop William of the White Hands. He was married on 28 April 1180 to Isabelle of Hainaut, the daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Hainaut, and Margaret I, Countess of Flanders, who brought the County of Artois as her dowry. From the time of his coronation, all real power was transferred to Philip, as his father slowly descended into senility. The great nobles were discontented with Philip's advantageous marriage, while his mother and four uncles, all of whom exercised enormous influence over Louis, were extremely unhappy with his attainment of the throne, which caused a diminution of their power. Eventually, Louis died on 18 September 1180.
While the royal demesne had increased under Philip I and Louis VI, it had diminished slightly under Louis VII. In April 1182, partially to enrich the French crown, Philip expelled all Jews from the demesne and confiscated their goods. Philip's eldest son Louis was born on 5 September 1187 and inherited the County of Artois in 1190, when his mother Isabelle died. The main source of funding for Philip's army was from the royal demesne. In times of conflict, he could immediately call up 250 knights, 250 horse sergeants, 100 mounted crossbowmen, 133 crossbowmen on foot, 2,000 foot sergeants, and 300 mercenaries. Towards the end of his reign, the king could muster some 3,000 knights, 9,000 sergeants, 6,000 urban militiamen, and thousands of foot sergeants. Using his increased revenues, Philip was the first Capetian king to build a French navy actively. By 1215, his fleet could carry a total of 7,000 men. Within two years, his fleet included 10 large ships and many smaller ones.
In 1181, Philip began a war with Philip, Count of Flanders, over the Vermandois, which King Philip claimed as his wife's dowry and the Count was unwilling to give up. Finally the Count of Flanders invaded France, ravaging the whole district between the Somme and the Oise before penetrating as far as Dammartin. Notified of Philip's impending approach with 2,000 knights, he turned around and headed back to Flanders. Philip chased him, and the two armies confronted each other near Amiens. By this stage, Philip had managed to counter the ambitions of the count by breaking his alliances with Henry I, Duke of Brabant, and Philip of Heinsberg, Archbishop of Cologne. This, together with an uncertain outcome were he to engage the French in battle, forced the Count to conclude a peace. In July 1185, the Treaty of Boves left the disputed territory partitioned, with Amiénois, Artois, and numerous other places passing to the king, and the remainder, with the county of Vermandois proper, left provisionally to the Count of Flanders. It was during this time that Philip II was nicknamed "Augustus" by the monk Rigord for augmenting French lands.
Meanwhile, in 1184, Stephen I, Count of Sancerre and his Brabançon mercenaries ravaged the Orléanais. Philip defeated him with the aid of the Confrères de la Paix.
Philip also began to wage war with King Henry II of England, who was also Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine in France. The death of Henry's eldest son, Henry the Young King, in June 1183, began a dispute over the dowry of Philip's widowed sister Margaret. Philip insisted that the dowry should be returned to France as the marriage did not produce any children, per the betrothal agreement. The two kings would hold conferences at the foot of an elm tree near Gisors, which was so positioned that it would overshadow each monarch's territory, but to no avail. Philip pushed the case further when King Béla III of Hungary asked for the widow's hand in marriage, and thus her dowry had to be returned, to which Henry finally agreed.
The death in 1186 of Henry's fourth son, Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany, began a new round of disputes, as Henry insisted that he retain the guardianship of the duchy for his unborn grandson Arthur I, Duke of Brittany. Philip, as Henry's liege lord, objected, stating that he should be the rightful guardian until the birth of the child. Philip then raised the issue of his other sister, Alys, Countess of Vexin, and her delayed betrothal to Henry's son Richard I of England, nicknamed Richard the Lionheart.
With these grievances, two years of combat followed (1186–1188), but the situation remained unchanged. Philip initially allied with Henry's young sons Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland, who were in rebellion against their father. Philip II launched an attack on Berry in the summer of 1187, but in June made a truce with Henry, which left Issoudun in his hands and also granted him Fréteval in Vendômois. Though the truce was for two years, Philip found grounds for resuming hostilities in the summer of 1188. He skilfully exploited the estrangement between Henry and Richard, and Richard did homage to him voluntarily at Bonsmoulins in November 1188.
In 1189, Henry's health was failing. Richard openly joined forces with Philip to drive Henry into submission. They chased him from Le Mans to Saumur, losing Tours in the process, before forcing him to acknowledge Richard as his heir. Finally, by the Treaty of Azay-le-Rideau (4 July 1189), Henry was forced to renew his own homage, confirm the cession of Issoudun to Philip (along with Graçay), and renounce his claim to suzerainty over Auvergne. Henry died two days later. His death, and the news of the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin, diverted attention from the Franco-English war.
The Angevin kings of England (the line of rulers to which Henry II belonged), were Philip's most powerful and dangerous vassals as Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine and Counts of Anjou. Philip made it his life's work to destroy Angevin power in France. One of his most effective tools was to befriend all of Henry's sons and use them to foment rebellion against their father. He maintained friendships with Henry the Young King and Geoffrey II until their deaths. Indeed, at the funeral of Geoffrey, he was so overcome with grief that he had to be forcibly restrained from casting himself into the grave. He broke off his friendships with Henry's younger sons Richard and John as each acceded to the English throne.
Philip travelled to the Holy Land to participate in the Third Crusade of 1189–1192 with King Richard I of England and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. His army left Vézelay on 1 July 1190. At first, the French and English crusaders travelled together, but the armies split at Lyon, after Richard decided to go by sea, whereas Philip took the overland route through the Alps to Genoa. The French and English armies were reunited in Messina, where they wintered together. On 30 March 1191, the French set sail for the Holy Land and Philip arrived on 20 May. He then marched to Acre, which was already under siege by a lesser contingent of crusaders, and he started to construct siege equipment before Richard arrived on 8 June. By the time Acre surrendered on 12 July, Philip was severely ill with dysentery, which reduced his zeal. Ties with Richard were further strained after the latter acted in a haughty manner after Acre fell to the crusaders.
More importantly, the siege of Acre resulted in the death of Philip, Count of Flanders, who held the county of Vermandois proper. His death threatened to derail the Treaty of Gisors that Philip had orchestrated to isolate the powerful Blois-Champagne faction. Philip decided to return to France to settle the issue of succession in Flanders, a decision that displeased Richard, who said, "It is a shame and a disgrace on my lord if he goes away without having finished the business that brought him hither. But still, if he finds himself in bad health, or is afraid lest he should die here, his will be done." On 31 July 1191, the French army of 10,000 men (along with 5,000 silver marks to pay the soldiers) remained in Outremer under the command of Hugh III, Duke of Burgundy. Philip and his cousin Peter of Courtenay, Count of Nevers, made their way to Genoa and from there returned to France. The decision to return was also fuelled by the realisation that with Richard campaigning in the Holy Land, English possessions in northern France would be open to attack. After Richard's delayed return home, war between England and France would ensue over possession of English-controlled territories.
The immediate cause of Philip's conflict with Richard the Lionheart stemmed from Richard's decision to break his betrothal with Phillip's sister Alys at Messina in 1191. Some of Alys's dowry that had been given over to Richard during their engagement was part of the territory of Vexin. This should have reverted to Philip upon the end of the betrothal, but Philip, to prevent the collapse of the Crusade, agreed that this territory was to remain in Richard's hands and would be inherited by his male descendants. Should Richard die without an heir, the territory would return to Philip, and if Philip died without an heir, those lands would be considered a part of Normandy.
Returning to France in late 1191, Phillip began plotting to find a way to have those territories restored to him. He was in a difficult situation, as he had taken an oath not to attack Richard's lands while he was away on crusade. The Third Crusade ordained territory was under the protection of the Church in any event. Philip had unsuccessfully asked Pope Celestine III to release him from his oath, so he was forced to build his own casus belli.
On 20 January 1192, Philip met with William FitzRalph, Richard's seneschal of Normandy. Presenting some documents purporting to be from Richard, Philip claimed that the English king had agreed at Messina to hand disputed lands over to France. Not having heard anything directly from their sovereign, FitzRalph and the Norman barons rejected Philip's claim to Vexin. Philip at this time also began spreading rumors about Richard's action in the east to discredit the English king in the eyes of his subjects. Among the stories Philip invented included Richard involved in treacherous communication with Saladin, alleging he had conspired to cause the fall of Gaza, Jaffa, and Ashkelon, and that he had participated in the murder of Conrad of Montferrat. Finally, Philip made contact with Prince John, Richard's brother, whom he convinced to join the conspiracy to overthrow the legitimate king of England.
At the start of 1193, Prince John visited Philip in Paris, where he paid homage for Richard's continental lands. When word reached Philip that Richard had finished crusading and had been captured on his way back from the Holy Land, he promptly invaded Vexin. His first target was the fortress of Gisors, commanded by Gilbert de Vascoeuil, which surrendered without putting up a struggle. Philip then penetrated deep into Normandy, reaching as far as Dieppe. To keep the duplicitous John on his side, Philip entrusted him with the defence of the town of Évreux. Meanwhile, Philip was joined by Count Baldwin of Flanders, and together they laid siege to Rouen, the ducal capital of Normandy. Here, Philip's advance was halted by a defense led by the Earl of Leicester. Unable to penetrate this defense, Philip moved on.
At Mantes on 9 July 1193, Philip came to terms with Richard's ministers, who agreed that Philip could keep his gains and would be given some extra territories if he ceased all further aggressive actions in Normandy, along with the condition that Philip would hand back the captured territory if Richard would pay homage. To prevent Richard from spoiling their plans, Philip and John attempted to bribe Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI in order to keep the English king captive for a little while longer. Henry refused, and Richard was released from captivity on 4 February 1194. By 13 March Richard had returned to England, and by 12 May he had set sail for Normandy with some 300 ships, eager to engage Philip in war.
Philip had spent this time consolidating his territorial gains and by now controlled much of Normandy east of the Seine, while remaining within striking distance of Rouen. His next objective was the castle of Verneuil, which had withstood an earlier siege. Once Richard arrived at Barfleur, he soon marched towards Verneuil. As his forces neared the castle, Philip, who had been unable to break through, decided to strike camp. Leaving a large force behind to prosecute the siege, he moved off towards Évreux, which Prince John had handed over to his brother to prove his loyalty. Philip retook the town and sacked it, but during this time, his forces at Verneuil abandoned the siege, and Richard entered the castle unopposed on 30 May. Throughout June, while Philip's campaign ground to a halt in the north, Richard was taking a number of important fortresses to the south. Philip, eager to relieve the pressure off his allies in the south, marched to confront Richard's forces at Vendôme. Refusing to risk everything in a major battle, Philip retreated, only to have his rear guard caught at Fréteval on 3 July. This turned into a general encounter in which Philip barely managed to avoid capture as his army was put to flight. Fleeing back to Normandy, Philip avenged himself on the English by attacking the forces of Prince John and the Earl of Arundel, seizing their baggage train. By now both sides were tiring, and they agreed to the temporary Truce of Tillières.
War continually raged during 1195, when Philip once again besieged Verneuil. Richard arrived to discuss the situation face to face. During negotiations, Philip secretly continued his operations against Verneuil; when Richard found out, he left, swearing revenge. Philip now pressed his advantage in northeastern Normandy, where he conducted a raid at Dieppe, burning the English ships in the harbor while repulsing an attack by Richard at the same time. Philip now marched southward into the Berry region. His primary objective was the fortress of Issoudun, which had just been captured by Richard's mercenary commander, Mercadier. The French king took the town and was besieging the castle when Richard stormed through French lines and made his way in to reinforce the garrison, while at the same time another army was approaching Philip's supply lines. Philip called off his attack, and another truce was agreed.
The war slowly turned against Philip over the course of the next three years. Political and military conditions seemed promising at the start of 1196 when Richard's nephew Arthur I, Duke of Brittany ended up in Philip's hands, and he won the Siege of Aumale, but Philip's good fortune did not last. Richard won over a key ally, Baldwin of Flanders, in 1197. Then, in 1198, Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI died. His successor was to be Otto IV, Richard's nephew, who put additional pressure on Philip. Finally, many Norman lords were switching sides and returning to Richard's camp. This was the state of affairs when Philip launched his campaign of 1198 with an attack on Vexin. He was pushed back and then had to deal with the Flemish invasion of Artois.
On 27 September, Richard entered Vexin, taking Courcelles-sur-Seine and Boury-en-Vexin before returning to Dangu. Philip, believing that Courcelles was still holding out, went to its relief. Discovering what was happening, Richard decided to attack the French king's forces, catching Philip by surprise. Philip's forces fled and attempted to reach the fortress of Gisors. Bunched together, the French knights with king Philip attempted to cross the Epte River on a bridge that promptly collapsed under their weight, almost drowning Philip in the process. He was dragged out of the river and shut himself up in Gisors.
Philip soon planned a new offensive, launching raids into Normandy and again targeting Évreux. Richard countered Philip's thrust with a counterattack in Vexin, while Mercadier led a raid on Abbeville. The upshot was that by autumn 1198, Richard had regained almost all that had been lost in 1193. In desperate circumstances, Philip offered a truce so that discussions could begin towards a more permanent peace, with the offer that he would return all of the territories except for Gisors.
In mid-January 1199, the two kings met for a final meeting, Richard standing on the deck of a boat, Philip standing on the banks of the Seine River. Shouting terms at each other, they could not reach agreement on the terms of a permanent truce, but they did agree to further mediation, which resulted in a five-year truce that held. Later in 1199, Richard was killed during a siege involving one of his vassals.
In May 1200, Philip signed the Treaty of Le Goulet with Richard's successor John Lackland. The treaty was meant to bring peace to Normandy by settling the issue of its much-reduced boundaries. The terms of John's vassalage were not only for Normandy, but also for Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. John agreed to heavy terms, including the abandonment of all the English possessions in Berry and 20,000 marks of silver, while Philip in turn recognised John as king of England, formally abandoning Arthur of Brittany's candidacy, whom he had hitherto supported, recognising instead John's suzerainty over the Duchy of Brittany. To seal the treaty, a marriage between Blanche of Castile, John's niece, and Louis the Lion, Philip's son, was contracted.
This agreement did not bring warfare to an end in France, however, since John's mismanagement of Aquitaine led the province to erupt in rebellion later in 1200, a disturbance that Philip secretly encouraged. To disguise his ambitions, Philip invited John to a conference at Andely and then entertained him at Paris, and both times he committed to complying with the treaty. In 1202, disaffected patrons petitioned the French king to summon John to answer their charges in his capacity as John's feudal lord in France. John refused to appear, so Philip again took up Arthur of Brittany's claims to the English throne and betrothed his six-year-old daughter Marie. In riposte John crossed over into Normandy. His forces soon captured Arthur, and in 1203, the young man disappeared, with most people believing that John had had him murdered. The outcry over Arthur's fate saw an increase in local opposition to John, which Philip used to his advantage. He took the offensive and, apart from a five-month siege of Andely, swept all before him. After Andely surrendered, John fled to England. By the end of 1204, most of Normandy and the Angevin lands, including much of Aquitaine, had fallen into Philip's hands.
What Philip had gained through victory in war, he sought to confirm by legal means. Philip, again acting as John's liege lord over his French lands, summoned him to appear before the Court of the Twelve Peers of France to answer for the murder of Arthur of Brittany. John requested safe conduct, but Philip only agreed to allow him to come in peace, while providing for his return only if it were allowed to after the judgment of his peers. Not willing to risk his life on such a guarantee, John refused to appear, so Philip summarily dispossessed the English of all lands. Pushed by his barons, John eventually launched an invasion of northern France in 1206. He disembarked with his army at La Rochelle during one of Philip's absences, but the campaign was a disaster. After backing out of a conference that he himself had demanded, John eventually bargained at Thouars for a two-year truce, the price of which was his agreement to the chief provisions of the judgment of the Court of Peers, including a loss of his patrimony.
In 1208, Philip of Swabia, the successful candidate to assume the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, was assassinated. As a result, the imperial crown was given to his rival Otto IV, the nephew of King John. Otto, prior to his accession, had promised to help John recover his lost possessions in France, but circumstances prevented him from making good on his promise. By 1212, both John and Otto were engaged in power struggles against Pope Innocent III: John over his refusal to accept the papal nomination for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Otto over his attempt to strip Frederick II, King of the Germans (and later Holy Roman Emperor), of his Sicilian crown. Philip decided to take advantage of this situation, first in Germany, where he aided German noble rebellion in support of the young Frederick. John immediately threw England's weight behind Otto, and Philip now saw his chance to launch a successful invasion of England.
In order to secure the cooperation of all his vassals in his plans for the invasion, Philip denounced John as an enemy of the Church, thereby justifying his attack as motivated solely by religious scruples. He summoned an assembly of French barons at Soissons, which was well attended with the exception of Ferdinand, Count of Flanders. Ferdinand refused to attend, still angry over the loss of the towns of Aire and Saint-Omer that had been captured by Philip's son Louis the Lion. He would not participate in any campaign until restored to all ancient lands.
Philip was eager to prove his loyalty to Rome and thus secure papal support for his planned invasion, announced at Soissons a reconciliation with his estranged wife Ingeborg of Denmark, which the popes had been promoting. The barons fully supported his plan, and they all gathered their forces and prepared to join with Philip at the agreed rendezvous. Through all of this, Philip remained in constant communication with Pandulf Verraccio, the papal legate, who was encouraging Philip to pursue his objective. Verraccio however was also holding secret discussions with King John. Advising the English king of his precarious predicament, he persuaded John to abandon his opposition to papal investiture and agreed to accept the papal legate's decision in any ecclesiastical disputes as final. In return, the pope agreed to accept the Kingdom of England and the Lordship of Ireland as papal fiefs, which John would rule as the pope's vassal, and for which John would do homage to the pope.
No sooner had the treaty between John and the pope been ratified in May 1213 than Verraccio announced to Philip that he would have to abandon his expedition against John, since to attack a faithful vassal of the Holy See would constitute a mortal sin. Philip argued in vain that his plans had been drawn up with the consent of Rome, that his expedition was in support of papal authority that he only undertook on the understanding that he would gain a plenary indulgence; he had spent a fortune preparing for the expedition. The papal legate remained unmoved, but Verraccio did suggest an alternative. The Count of Flanders had denied Philip's right to declare war on England while King John was still excommunicated, and that his disobedience needed to be punished. Philip eagerly accepted the advice, and quickly marched at the head of his troops into the territory of Flanders.
The French fleet, reportedly numbering some 1,700 ships, proceeded first to Gravelines and then to the port of Dam. Meanwhile, the army marched by Cassel, Ypres, and Bruges before laying siege to Ghent. Hardly had the siege begun when Philip learned that the English fleet had captured a number of his ships at Dam and that the rest were so closely blockaded in its harbor that it was impossible for them to escape. After having obtained 30,000 marks as a ransom for the hostages he had taken from the Flemish cities he had captured, Philip quickly retraced his steps to reach Dam. It took him two days, arriving in time to relieve the French garrison, but he discovered he could not rescue his fleet. He ordered it to be burned to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, then he ordered the town of Dam to be burned as well. Determined to make the Flemish pay for his retreat, he ordered that all towns be razed and burned in every district he passed through, and that the peasantry be either killed or sold as slaves.
The destruction of the French fleet had once again raised John's hopes, so he began preparing for an invasion of France and a reconquest of his lost provinces. The English barons were initially unenthusiastic about the expedition, which delayed his departure, so it was not until February 1214 that he disembarked at La Rochelle. John was to advance from the Loire, while his ally Otto IV made a simultaneous attack from Flanders, together with the Count of Flanders. Unfortunately, the three armies could not coordinate their efforts effectively. It was not until John had been disappointed in his hope for an easy victory after being driven from Roche-au-Moine and had retreated to his transports that the Imperial Army, with Otto at its head, assembled in the Low Countries.
On 27 July 1214, the opposing armies suddenly discovered that they were in close proximity to one another, on the banks of a little tributary of the River Lys, near the bridge at Bouvines. It being a Sunday, Philip did not expect the allied army to attack, as it was considered unholy to fight on the Sabbath. Philip's army numbered some 7,000, while the allied forces possessed around 9,000 troops. The armies clashed at what became known as the Battle of Bouvines. Philip was unhorsed by the Flemish pikemen in the heat of battle, and were it not for his mail armor he would have probably been killed. When Otto was carried off the field by his wounded and terrified horse, and the Count of Flanders was severely wounded and taken prisoner, the Flemish and Imperial troops saw that the battle was lost, turned, and fled the field. The French troops began pursuing them, but with night approaching, and with the prisoners they already had too numerous and, more importantly, too valuable to risk in a pursuit, Philip ordered a recall with the trumpets before his troops had moved little more than a mile from the battlefield.
Philip returned to Paris triumphant, marching his captive prisoners behind him in a long procession, as his grateful subjects came out to greet the victorious king. In the aftermath of the battle, Otto retreated to his castle of Harzburg and was soon overthrown as Holy Roman Emperor, to be replaced by Frederick II. Count Ferdinand remained imprisoned following his defeat, while King John's attempt to rebuild the Angevin Empire ended in complete failure.
Philip's decisive victory was crucial in shaping Western European politics in both England and France. In England, the defeated John was so weakened that he was soon required to submit to the demands of his barons and sign Magna Carta, which limited the power of the crown and established the basis for common law. In France, the battle was instrumental in forming the strong central monarchy that would characterise its rule until the first French Revolution.
After the early death of Isabella of Hainaut in childbirth in 1190, Philip decided to marry again. On 15 August 1193, he married Ingeborg, daughter of King Valdemar I of Denmark. She was renamed Isambour, and Stephen of Tournai described her as "very kind, young of age but old of wisdom." Phillip, however, discovered on their wedding night that she had terribly bad breath, and he refused to allow her to be crowned queen. Ingeborg protested at this treatment; his response was to confine her to a convent. He then asked Pope Celestine III for an annulment on the grounds of non-consummation. Philip had not reckoned with Isambour, however; she insisted that the marriage had been consummated, and that she was his wife and the rightful queen of France. The Franco-Danish churchman William of Paris intervened on the side of Ingeborg, drawing up a genealogy of the Danish kings to disprove the alleged impediment of consanguinity.
In the meantime, Philip had sought a new bride. Initial agreement had been reached for him to marry Margaret of Geneva, daughter of William I, Count of Geneva, but the young bride's journey to Paris was interrupted by Thomas, Count of Savoy, who kidnapped Philip's intended new queen and married her instead, claiming that Philip was already bound in marriage. Philip finally achieved a third marriage in June 1196, when he was married to Agnes of Merania from Dalmatia. Their children were Marie and Philip, Count of Clermont, and, by marriage, Count of Boulogne.
Pope Innocent III declared Philip Augustus' marriage to Agnes of Merania null and void, as he was still married to Ingeborg. He ordered the king to part from Agnes, and when he did not, the pope placed France under an interdict in 1199. This continued until 7 September 1200. Due to pressure from the pope and from Ingeborg's brother King Valdemar II of Denmark, Philip finally took Isambour back as his wife in 1201, but it would not be until 1213 that she would be recognized at court as queen.
The only known description of Philip describes him as
When Pope Innocent III called for a crusade against the "Albigensians," or Cathars, in Languedoc in 1208, Philip did nothing to support it, though he did not stop his nobles from joining in. The war against the Cathars did not end until 1244, when their last strongholds were finally captured. The fruits of the victory, the submission of the south of France to the crown, were to be reaped by Philip's son Louis VIII and grandson Louis IX. From 1216 to 1222, Philip also arbitrated in the War of the Succession of Champagne and finally helped the military efforts of Eudes III, Duke of Burgundy, and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II to bring it to an end.
Philip II Augustus played a significant role in one of the greatest centuries of innovation in construction and education in France. With Paris as his capital, he had the main thoroughfares paved, built a central market, Les Halles, continued the construction begun in 1163 of Notre-Dame de Paris, constructed the Louvre as a fortress, and gave a charter to the University of Paris in 1200. Under his guidance, Paris became the first city of teachers the medieval world knew. In 1224, the French poet Henry d'Andeli wrote of the great wine tasting competition that Philip II Augustus commissioned, the Battle of the Wines.
Philip II Augustus died on 14 July 1223 at Mantes-la-Jolie and was interred in the Basilica of St Denis. Philip's son by Isabella of Hainaut, Louis VIII, was his successor.
Sir Walter Scott's novel "The Talisman", depicts deceit and disunity among the leaders of the Third Crusade, including Philip, Richard I of England, and Leopold V of Austria.
In "King Richard and the Crusaders" (1954), a film based on Scott's "The Talisman", King Philip, portrayed by Henry Corden, conspires with Conrad of Montferrat (Michael Pate) against Richard the Lionheart (George Sanders).
In the 1935 Cecil B. DeMille film "The Crusades", he was portrayed by C. Henry Gordon. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25093 |
Peripheral nervous system
The peripheral nervous system (PNS) is one of two components that make up the nervous system of bilateral animals, with the other part being the central nervous system (CNS). The PNS consists of the nerves and ganglia outside the brain and spinal cord. The main function of the PNS is to connect the CNS to the limbs and organs, essentially serving as a relay between the brain and spinal cord and the rest of the body. Unlike the CNS, the PNS is not protected by the vertebral column and skull, or by the blood–brain barrier, which leaves it exposed to toxins and mechanical injuries.
The peripheral nervous system is divided into the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. In the somatic nervous system, the cranial nerves are part of the PNS with the exception of the optic nerve (cranial nerve II), along with the retina. The second cranial nerve is not a true peripheral nerve but a tract of the diencephalon. Cranial nerve ganglia originated in the CNS. However, the remaining ten cranial nerve axons extend beyond the brain and are therefore considered part of the PNS. The autonomic nervous system exerts involuntary control over smooth muscle and glands. The connection between CNS and organs allows the system to be in two different functional states: sympathetic and parasympathetic.
The peripheral nervous system is divided into the somatic nervous system, and the autonomic nervous system. The somatic nervous system is under voluntary control, and transmits signals from the brain to end organs such as muscles. The sensory nervous system is part of the somatic nervous system and transmits signals from senses such as taste and touch (including fine touch and gross touch) to the spinal cord and brain. The autonomic nervous system is a 'self-regulating' system which influences the function of organs outside voluntary control, such as the heart rate, or the functions of the digestive system.
The somatic nervous system includes the sensory nervous system and the somatosensory system and consists of sensory nerves and somatic nerves, and many nerves which hold both functions.
In the head and neck, cranial nerves carry somatosensory data. There are twelve cranial nerves, ten of which originate from the brainstem, and mainly control the functions of the anatomic structures of the head with some exceptions. One unique cranial nerve is the vagus nerve, which receives sensory information from organs in the thorax and abdomen. The accessory nerve is responsible for innervating the sternocleidomastoid and trapezius muscles, neither of which being exclusively in the head.
For the rest of the body, spinal nerves are responsible for somatosensory information. These arise from the spinal cord. Usually these arise as a web ("plexus") of interconnected nerves roots that arrange to form single nerves. These nerves control the functions of the rest of the body. In humans, there are 31 pairs of spinal nerves: 8 cervical, 12 thoracic, 5 lumbar, 5 sacral, and 1 coccygeal. These nerve roots are named according to the spinal vertebrata which they are adjacent to. In the cervical region, the spinal nerve roots come out "above" the corresponding vertebrae (i.e., nerve root between the skull and 1st cervical vertebrae is called spinal nerve C1). From the thoracic region to the coccygeal region, the spinal nerve roots come out "below" the corresponding vertebrae. It is important to note that this method creates a problem when naming the spinal nerve root between C7 and T1 (so it is called spinal nerve root C8). In the lumbar and sacral region, the spinal nerve roots travel within the dural sac and they travel below the level of L2 as the cauda equina.
The first 4 cervical spinal nerves, C1 through C4, split and recombine to produce a variety of nerves that serve the neck and back of head.
Spinal nerve C1 is called the suboccipital nerve, which provides motor innervation to muscles at the base of the skull.
C2 and C3 form many of the nerves of the neck, providing both sensory and motor control. These include the greater occipital nerve, which provides sensation to the back of the head, the lesser occipital nerve, which provides sensation to the area behind the ears, the greater auricular nerve and the lesser auricular nerve.
The phrenic nerve is a nerve essential for our survival which arises from nerve roots C3, C4 and C5. It supplies the thoracic diaphragm, enabling breathing. If the spinal cord is transected above C3, then spontaneous breathing is not possible.
The last four cervical spinal nerves, C5 through C8, and the first thoracic spinal nerve, T1, combine to form the brachial plexus, or plexus brachialis, a tangled array of nerves, splitting, combining and recombining, to form the nerves that subserve the upper-limb and upper back. Although the brachial plexus may appear tangled, it is highly organized and predictable, with little variation between people. See brachial plexus injuries.
The anterior divisions of the lumbar nerves, sacral nerves, and coccygeal nerve form the lumbosacral plexus, the first lumbar nerve being frequently joined by a branch from the twelfth thoracic. For descriptive purposes this plexus is usually divided into three parts:
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls involuntary responses to regulate physiological functions. The brain and spinal cord of the central nervous system are connected with organs that have smooth muscle, such as the heart, bladder, and other cardiac, exocrine, and endocrine related organs, by ganglionic neurons. The most notable physiological effects from autonomic activity are pupil constriction and dilation, and salivation of saliva. The autonomic nervous system is always activated, but is either in the sympathetic or parasympathetic state. Depending on the situation, one state can overshadow the other, resulting in a release of different kinds of neurotransmitters. There is a lesser known division of the autonomic nervous system known as the enteric nervous system. Located only around the digestive tract, this system allows for local control without input from the sympathetic or the parasympathetic branches, though it can still receive and respond to signals from the rest of the body. The enteric system is responsible for various functions related to gastrointestinal system.
The sympathetic system is activated during a “fight or flight” situation in which mental stress or physical danger is encountered. Neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine, and epinephrine are released, which increases heart rate and blood flow in certain areas like muscle, while simultaneously decreasing activities of non-critical functions for survival, like digestion. The systems are independent to each other, which allows activation of certain parts of the body, while others remain rested.
Primarily using the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) as a mediator, the parasympathetic system allows the body to function in a “rest and digest” state. Consequently, when the parasympathetic system dominates the body, there are increases in salivation and activities in digestion, while heart rate and other sympathetic response decrease. Unlike the sympathetic system, humans have some voluntary controls in the parasympathetic system. The most prominent examples of this control are urination and defecation.
Diseases of the peripheral nervous system can be specific to one or more nerves, or affect the system as a whole.
Any peripheral nerve or nerve root can be damaged, called a mononeuropathy. Such injuries can be because of injury or trauma, or compression. Compression of nerves can occur because of a tumour mass or injury. Alternatively, if a nerve is in an area with a fixed size it may be trapped if the other components increase in size, such as carpal tunnel syndrome and tarsal tunnel syndrome. Common symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome include pain and numbness in the thumb, index and middle finger. In peripheral neuropathy, the function one or more nerves are damaged through a variety of means. Toxic damage may occur because of diabetes (diabetic neuropathy), alcohol, heavy metals or other toxins; some infections; autoimmune and inflammatory conditions such as amyloidosis and sarcoidosis. Peripheral neuropathy is associated with a sensory loss in a "glove and stocking" distribution that begins at the peripheral and slowly progresses upwards, and may also be associated with acute and chronic pain. Peripheral neuropathy is not just limited to the somatosensory nerves, but the autonomic nervous system too (autonomic neuropathy). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25096 |
Phase velocity
The phase velocity of a wave is the rate at which the wave propagates in some medium. This is the velocity at which the phase of any one frequency component of the wave travels. For such a component, any given phase of the wave (for example, the crest) will appear to travel at the phase velocity. The phase velocity is given in terms of the wavelength (lambda) and time period as
Equivalently, in terms of the wave's angular frequency , which specifies angular change per unit of time, and wavenumber (or angular wave number) , which represents the proportionality between the angular frequency and the linear speed (speed of propagation) ν,
To understand where this equation comes from, consider a basic cosine wave, . After time , the source has produced oscillations. After the same time, the initial wave front has propagated away from the source through space to the distance to fit the same number of oscillations, .
Thus the propagation velocity "v" is . The wave would have to propagate faster when higher frequency oscillations are distributed less densely in space unless the wave length is compensatorily shortened. Formally, is the phase, where
Since and , the wave velocity is .
Since a pure sine wave cannot convey any information, some change in amplitude or frequency, known as modulation, is required. By combining two sines with slightly different frequencies and wavelengths,
the amplitude becomes a sinusoid with "phase" speed . It is this modulation that represents the signal content. Since each amplitude "envelope" contains a group of internal waves, this speed is usually called the group velocity, "v"g.
In a given medium, the frequency is some function of the wave number, so in general, the phase velocity and the group velocity depend on the frequency and on the medium. The ratio between the speed of light c and the phase velocity "v"p is known as the refractive index, .
Taking the derivative of with respect to , would yield the group velocity,
except one cannot create a group with only a finite number of wave frequencies/wave vectors. (That is: the envelope in such a situation changes shape so rapidly that group velocity loses its meaning.) Noting that , indicates that the group speed is equal to the phase speed only when the refractive index is a constant, and in this case the phase speed and group speed are independent of frequency, .
Otherwise, both the phase velocity and the group velocity vary with frequency, and the medium is called dispersive; the relation is known as the dispersion relation of the medium.
The group velocity of electromagnetic radiation may – under certain circumstances (for example anomalous dispersion) – exceed the speed of light in a vacuum, but this does not indicate any superluminal information or energy transfer. It was theoretically described by physicists such as Arnold Sommerfeld and Léon Brillouin. See dispersion for a full discussion of wave velocities; however, the article fails to address the failure by such researchers to realize that in such cases the so-called index of refraction disobeys fundamental assumptions about such an object (see e.g. J.D.Jackson Classical Electrodynamics) so the "velocity" is not a group velocity at all. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25098 |
Pitot tube
A pitot ( ) tube, also known as pitot probe, is a flow measurement device used to measure fluid flow velocity. The pitot tube was invented by the French engineer Henri Pitot in the early 18th century and was modified to its modern form in the mid-19th century by French scientist Henry Darcy. It is widely used to determine the airspeed of an aircraft, water speed of a boat, and to measure liquid, air and gas flow velocities in certain industrial applications.
The basic pitot tube consists of a tube pointing directly into the fluid flow. As this tube contains fluid, a pressure can be measured; the moving fluid is brought to rest (stagnates) as there is no outlet to allow flow to continue. This pressure is the stagnation pressure of the fluid, also known as the total pressure or (particularly in aviation) the pitot pressure.
The measured stagnation pressure cannot itself be used to determine the fluid flow velocity (airspeed in aviation). However, Bernoulli's equation states:
Which can also be written
Solving that for flow velocity gives
where
NOTE: The above equation applies only to fluids that can be treated as incompressible. Liquids are treated as incompressible under almost all conditions. Gases under certain conditions can be approximated as incompressible. See Compressibility.
The dynamic pressure, then, is the difference between the stagnation pressure and the static pressure. The dynamic pressure is then determined using a diaphragm inside an enclosed container. If the air on one side of the diaphragm is at the static pressure, and the other at the stagnation pressure, then the deflection of the diaphragm is proportional to the dynamic pressure.
In aircraft, the static pressure is generally measured using the static ports on the side of the fuselage. The dynamic pressure measured can be used to determine the indicated airspeed of the aircraft. The diaphragm arrangement described above is typically contained within the airspeed indicator, which converts the dynamic pressure to an airspeed reading by means of mechanical levers.
Instead of separate pitot and static ports, a pitot-static tube (also called a Prandtl tube) may be employed, which has a second tube coaxial with the pitot tube with holes on the sides, outside the direct airflow, to measure the static pressure.
If a liquid column manometer is used to measure the pressure difference formula_7,
where
Therefore,
A pitot-static system is a system of pressure-sensitive instruments that is most often used in aviation to determine an aircraft's airspeed, Mach number, altitude, and altitude trend. A pitot-static system generally consists of a pitot tube, a static port, and the pitot-static instruments. Errors in pitot-static system readings can be extremely dangerous as the information obtained from the pitot static system, such as airspeed, is potentially safety-critical.
Several commercial airline incidents and accidents have been traced to a failure of the pitot-static system. Examples include Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 2553, Northwest Airlines Flight 6231, Birgenair Flight 301 and one of the two X-31s. The French air safety authority BEA said that pitot tube icing was a contributing factor in the crash of Air France Flight 447 into the Atlantic Ocean. In 2008 Air Caraïbes reported two incidents of pitot tube icing malfunctions on its A330s.
Birgenair Flight 301 had a fatal pitot tube failure which investigators suspected was due to insects creating a nest inside the pitot tube; the prime suspect is the black and yellow mud dauber wasp.
Aeroperú Flight 603 had a pitot-static system failure due to the cleaning crew leaving the static port blocked with tape.
In industry, the flow velocities being measured are often those flowing in ducts and tubing where measurements by an anemometer would be difficult to obtain. In these kinds of measurements, the most practical instrument to use is the pitot tube. The pitot tube can be inserted through a small hole in the duct with the pitot connected to a U-tube water gauge or some other differential pressure gauge for determining the flow velocity inside the ducted wind tunnel. One use of this technique is to determine the volume of air that is being delivered to a conditioned space.
The fluid flow rate in a duct can then be estimated from:
In aviation, airspeed is typically measured in knots.
In weather stations with high wind speeds, the pitot tube is modified to create a special type of anemometer called pitot tube static anemometer.
Notes
Bibliography | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25100 |
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the state of Pennsylvania in the United States, and is the county seat of Allegheny County. A population of about 300,286 (2019) residents live within the city limits, making it the 66th-largest city in the U.S. and the second-most populous city in Pennsylvania behind Philadelphia. The Pittsburgh metropolitan area is the anchor of Western Pennsylvania, its population of 2,324,743 is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, and the 27th-largest in the U.S.
Pittsburgh is located in the southwest of the state, at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers. Pittsburgh is known both as "the Steel City" for its more than 300 steel-related businesses and as the "City of Bridges" for its 446 bridges. The city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclined railways, a pre-revolutionary fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. The city developed as a vital link of the Atlantic coast and Midwest, as the mineral-rich Allegheny Mountains made the area coveted by the French and British empires, Virginians, Whiskey Rebels, and Civil War raiders.
Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in manufacturing of aluminum, glass, shipbuilding, petroleum, foods, sports, transportation, computing, autos, and electronics. For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York City and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment; it had the most U.S. stockholders per capita. Deindustrialization in the 1970s and 80s laid off area blue-collar workers as steel and other heavy industries declined, and thousands of downtown white-collar workers also lost jobs when several Pittsburgh-based companies moved out. The population dropped from a peak of 675,000 in 1950 to 370,000 in 1990. However, this rich industrial history left the area with renowned museums, medical centers, parks, research centers, and a diverse cultural district.
After the deindustrialization of the mid-20th century, Pittsburgh has transformed into a hub for the health care, education, and technology industries. Pittsburgh is a leader in the health care sector as the home to large medical providers such as University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). The area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Google, Apple Inc., Bosch, Facebook, Uber, Nokia, Autodesk, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM are among 1,600 technology firms generating $20.7 billion in annual Pittsburgh payrolls. The area has served as the long-time federal agency headquarters for cyber defense, software engineering, robotics, energy research and the nuclear navy. The nation's eighth-largest bank, eight Fortune 500 companies, and six of the top 300 U.S. law firms make their global headquarters in the area, while RAND Corporation (RAND), BNY Mellon, Nova, FedEx, Bayer, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) have regional bases that helped Pittsburgh become the sixth-best area for U.S. job growth.
In 2015, Pittsburgh was listed among the "eleven most livable cities in the world"; "The Economist"s Global Liveability Ranking placed Pittsburgh as the most or second-most livable city in the United States in 2005, 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2014. The region is a hub for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and energy extraction.
Pittsburgh was named in 1758, by General John Forbes, in honor of British statesman William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. As Forbes was a Scot, he probably pronounced the name (similar to Edinburgh). Pittsburgh was incorporated as a borough on April 22, 1794, with the following Act:
"Be it enacted by the Pennsylvania State Senate and Pennsylvania House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ... by the authority of the same, that the said town of Pittsburgh shall be ... erected into a borough, which shall be called the borough of Pittsburgh for ever." From 1891 to 1911, the city's name was federally recognized as "Pittsburg", though use of the final "h" was retained during this period by the city government and other local organizations. After a public campaign, the federal decision to drop the "h" was reversed. The "Pittsburgh Press" continued without the "h" in its nameplate until August 1, 1921.
The area of the Ohio headwaters was long inhabited by the Shawnee and several other settled groups of Native Americans. The first known European to enter the region was the French explorer/trader Robert de La Salle from Quebec during his 1669 expedition down the Ohio River. European pioneers, primarily Dutch, followed in the early 18th century. Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a 1717 manuscript, and later that year European fur traders established area posts and settlements.
In 1749, French soldiers from Quebec launched an expedition to the forks to unite Canada with French Louisiana via the rivers. During 1753–54, the British hastily built Fort Prince George before a larger French force drove them off. The French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalle's 1669 claims. The French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War, began with the future Pittsburgh as its center. British General Edward Braddock was dispatched with Major George Washington as his aide to take Fort Duquesne. The British and colonial force were defeated at Braddock's Field. General John Forbes finally took the forks in 1758. He began construction on Fort Pitt, named after William Pitt the Elder while the settlement was named "Pittsborough".
During Pontiac's Rebellion, native tribes conducted a siege of Fort Pitt for two months until Colonel Henry Bouquet relieved it after the Battle of Bushy Run. Fort Pitt is notable as the site of an early use of smallpox for biological warfare, whose effectiveness is questioned.
During this period, the powerful nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, based in New York, had maintained control of much of the Ohio Valley as hunting grounds by right of conquest after defeating other tribes. By the terms of the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the Penns were allowed to purchase the modern region from the Iroquois. A 1769 survey referenced the future city as the "Manor of Pittsburgh". Both the Colony of Virginia and the Province of Pennsylvania claimed the region under their colonial charters until 1780, when they agreed under a federal initiative to extend the Mason–Dixon line westward, placing Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. On March 8, 1771, Bedford County, Pennsylvania was created to govern the frontier. On April 16, 1771, the city's first civilian local government was created as Pitt Township. William Teagarden was the first constable, and William Troop was the first clerk.
Following the American Revolution, the village of Pittsburgh continued to grow. One of its earliest industries was boat building for settlers of the Ohio Country. In 1784, Thomas Viceroy completed a town plan which was approved by the Penn family attorney. Pittsburgh became a possession of Pennsylvania in 1785. The following year, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was started, and in 1787, the Pittsburgh Academy was chartered. Unrest during the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 resulted in federal troops being sent to the area. By 1797, glass manufacture began, while the population grew to around 1,400. Settlers came via routes over the Appalachian Mountains or through the Great Lakes. Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) at the source of the Ohio River became the main base for settlers moving into the Northwest Territory.
The federal government has recognized Pittsburgh as the starting point for the Lewis and Clark expedition.
The War of 1812 cut off the supply of British goods, stimulating American industry. By 1815, Pittsburgh was producing significant quantities of iron, brass, tin, and glass. On March 18, 1816, the 46-year-old local government became a city. It was served by numerous river steamboats, that increased trading traffic on the rivers.
In the 1830s, many Welsh people from the Merthyr steelworks immigrated to the city following the aftermath of the Merthyr Rising. By the 1840s, Pittsburgh was one of the largest cities west of the Allegheny Mountains. The Great Fire of Pittsburgh destroyed over a thousand buildings in 1845. The city rebuilt with the aid of Irish immigrants who came to escape the Great Famine. By 1857, Pittsburgh's 1,000 factories were consuming 22 million coal bushels yearly. Coal mining and iron manufacturing attracted waves of European immigrants to the area, the most came from Germany.
While Pennsylvania had been established as a free state after the Revolution, enslaved African Americans sought freedom here through escape as refugees from the South, or occasionally fleeing from travelers they were serving who stayed in the city. There were active stations of the Underground Railroad in the city, and numerous refugees were documented as getting help from station agents and African-American workers in city hotels. The Drennen Slave Girl walked out of the Monongahela House in 1850, apparently to freedom. The Merchant's Hotel was also a place where African-American workers would advise slaves the state was free and aid them in getting to nearby stations of the Underground Railroad. Sometimes refugee slaves from the South stayed in Pittsburgh, but other times they continued North, including into Canada. Many slaves left the city and county for Canada after Congress passed the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, as it required cooperation from law enforcement even in free states and increased penalties. From 1850 to 1860, the black population in Allegheny County dropped from 3,431 to 2,725 as people headed to more safety in Canada.
The American Civil War boosted the city's economy with increased iron and armament demand by the Union. Andrew Carnegie began steel production in 1875 at the Edgar Thomson Steel Works in North Braddock, Pennsylvania, which evolved into the Carnegie Steel Company. He adopted the Bessemer process to increase production. Manufacturing was key to growth of Pittsburgh and the surrounding region. Railroad lines were built into the city along both rivers, increasing transportation access to important markets.
In 1901, J. P. Morgan and attorney Elbert H. Gary merged Carnegie Steel Company and several other companies into U.S. Steel. By 1910, Pittsburgh was the nation's 8th-largest city, accounting for between one-third and one-half of national steel output.
The Pittsburgh Agreement was subscribed in May 1918 between the Czech and Slovak nationalities, as envisioned by T. G. Masaryk, concerning the future foundation of Czechoslovakia.
The city's population swelled to more than a half million, attracting numerous European immigrants to its industrial jobs. By 1940, non-Hispanic whites were 90.6% of the city's population. Pittsburgh also became a main destination of the African-American Great Migration from the rural South during the first half of the 20th century. Limited initially by discrimination, some 95% percent of the men became unskilled steel workers.
During World War II, demand for steel increased and area mills operated 24 hours a day to produce 95 million tons of steel for the war effort. This resulted in the highest levels of air pollution in the city's almost century of industry. The city's reputation as the "arsenal of democracy" was being overshadowed by James Parton's 1868 observation of Pittsburgh being "hell with the lid off."
Following the war, the city launched a clean air and civic revitalization project known as the "Renaissance," cleaning up the air and the rivers. The "Renaissance II" project followed in 1977, focused on cultural and neighborhood development. The industrial base continued to expand through the 1970s, but beginning in the early 1980s both the area's steel and electronics industries imploded during national industrial restructuring. There were massive layoffs from mill and plant closures.
In the later 20th century, the area shifted its economic base to education, tourism, and services, largely based on healthcare/medicine, finance, and high technology such as robotics. Although Pittsburgh successfully shifted its economy and remained viable, the city's population has never rebounded to its industrial-era highs. While 680,000 people lived in the city proper in 1950, a combination of suburbanization and economic turbulence resulted in a decrease in city population, even as the metropolitan area population increased again.
During the late 2000s recession, Pittsburgh was economically strong, adding jobs when most cities were losing them. It was one of the few cities in the United States to see housing property values rise. Between 2006 and 2011, the Pittsburgh metropolitan statistical area (MSA) experienced over 10% appreciation in housing prices—the highest appreciation of the largest 25 MSAs in the United States, as 22 of the top 25 MSAs saw a depreciation of housing values. Pittsburgh's story of economic regeneration was the inspiration of President Barack Obama to host the 2009 G-20 Pittsburgh summit.
Pittsburgh has an area of , of which is land and (or 4.75%) is water. The 80th meridian west passes directly through the city's downtown.
The city is on the Allegheny Plateau, within the ecoregion of the Western Allegheny Plateau, The Downtown area (also known as the Golden Triangle) sits where the Allegheny River flowing from the northeast and Monongahela River from the southeast form the Ohio River. The convergence is at Point State Park and is referred to as "the Point." The city extends east to include the Oakland and Shadyside sections, which are home to the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham University, Carnegie Museum and Library, and many other educational, medical, and cultural institutions. The southern, western, and northern areas of the city are primarily residential.
Many Pittsburgh neighborhoods are steeply sloped with two-lane roads. More than a quarter of neighborhood names make reference to "hills," "heights," or similar features.
The steps of Pittsburgh consist of 712 sets of outdoor public stairways with 44,645 treads and 24,090 vertical feet. They include hundreds of streets composed entirely of stairs, and many other steep streets with stairs for sidewalks. Many provide vistas of the Pittsburgh area while attracting hikers and fitness walkers.
Bike and walking trails have been built to border many of the city's rivers and hollows. The Great Allegheny Passage and Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Towpath connect the city directly to downtown Washington, D.C. (some away) with a continuous bike/running trail.
The city consists of the Downtown area, called the Golden Triangle, and four main areas surrounding it. These surrounding areas are subdivided into distinct neighborhoods (Pittsburgh has 90 neighborhoods). Relative to downtown, these areas are known as the Central, North Side/North Hills, South Side/South Hills, East End, and West End.
Downtown Pittsburgh has 30 skyscrapers, nine of which top . The U.S. Steel Tower is the tallest at 841ft (256 m). The Cultural District consists of a 14-block area of downtown along the Allegheny River. This district contains many theaters and arts venues and is home to a growing residential segment. Most significantly, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is embarking on RiverParc, a four-block mixed-use "green" community, featuring 700 residential units and multiple towers between 20 and 30 stories. The Firstside portion of Downtown borders the Monongahela River, the historic Mon Wharf and hosts the distinctive PPG Place Gothic-style glass skyscraper complex. New condo towers have been constructed and historic office towers are converted to residential use, increasing 24-hour residents. Downtown is served by the Port Authority's light rail system and multiple bridges leading north and south.
It is also home to Point Park University and Duquesne University which borders Uptown.
The North Side is home to various neighborhoods in transition. What is known today as Pittsburgh's North Side was once known as Allegheny City, and operated as a city independently of Pittsburgh until it was merged with Pittsburgh in 1907 under great protest from its citizens. The North Side is primarily composed of residential neighborhoods and is noteworthy for its well-constructed and architecturally interesting homes. Many buildings date from the 19th century and are constructed of brick or stone and adorned with decorative woodwork, ceramic tile, slate roofs and stained glass. The North Side is also home to attractions such as Heinz Field, PNC Park, Carnegie Science Center, National Aviary, Andy Warhol Museum, Mattress Factory art museum, Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, Randyland, Penn Brewery, Allegheny Observatory, and Allegheny General Hospital.
The South Side was once the site of the Pennsylvania Railroad railyards and associated dense, inexpensive housing for mill and railroad workers. Since the late 20th century, the city undertook a Main Street program in cooperation with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, encouraging design and landscape improvements on East Carson Street, and supporting new retail. The area has become a local Pittsburgher destination, and the value of homes in the South Side had increased in value by about 10% annually for the 10 years up to 2014. East Carson Street has developed as one of the most vibrant areas of the city, packed with diverse shopping, ethnic eateries, vibrant nightlife, and live music venues.
In 1993 the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh purchased the South Side Works steel mill property. It collaborated with the community and various developers to create a master plan for a mixed-use development, to include a riverfront park, office space, housing, health-care facilities, and indoor practice fields for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Pitt Panthers. Construction began in 1998. The SouthSide Works has been open since 2005, featuring many stores, restaurants, offices, and the world headquarters for American Eagle Outfitters.
The East End of Pittsburgh is home to the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Carlow University, Chatham University, The Carnegie Institute's Museums of Art and Natural History, Phipps Conservatory, and Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall. It is also home to many parks and public spaces including Mellon Park, Westinghouse Park, Schenley Park, Frick Park, The Frick Pittsburgh, Bakery Square, and the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. The neighborhoods of Shadyside and Squirrel Hill are large, wealthy neighborhoods with some apartments and condos, and pedestrian-oriented shopping/business districts. Squirrel Hill is also known as the hub of Jewish life in Pittsburgh, home to approximately 20 synagogues. Oakland, heavily populated by undergraduate and graduate students, is home to most of the universities, and the Petersen Events Center. The Strip District to the west along the Allegheny River is an open-air marketplace by day and a clubbing destination by night. Bloomfield is Pittsburgh's Little Italy and is known for its Italian restaurants and grocers. Lawrenceville is a revitalizing rowhouse neighborhood popular with artists and designers. The Hill District was home to photographer Charles Harris as well as various African-American jazz clubs. Other East End neighborhoods include Point Breeze, Regent Square, Homewood, Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar, Larimer, East Hills, East Liberty, Polish Hill and Hazelwood.
The West End includes Mt. Washington, with its famous view of the Downtown skyline and numerous other residential neighborhoods such as Sheraden and Elliott.
Many of Pittsburgh's patchwork of neighborhoods still retain ethnic characters reflecting the city's settlement history. These include:
Several neighborhoods on the edges of the city are less urban, featuring tree-lined streets, yards and garages, with a more suburban character. Oakland, the South Side, the North Side, and the Golden Triangle are characterized by more density of housing, walking neighborhoods, and a more diverse, urban feel.
Pittsburgh falls within the borders of the Northeastern United States as defined by multiple US Government agencies, but the Pittsburgh Combined Statistical Area extends into both the Southern United States (West Virginia) and the Midwestern United States (Ohio), with the borders of the three regions meeting from the city. Pittsburgh is also in the Great Lakes Megalopolis, a collection of primarily Midwestern and nearby Canadian cities, reflecting Pittsburgh's socio-economic connections to Ohio and points west.
Pittsburgh falls within the borders of Appalachia as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission, and has long been characterized as the "northern urban industrial anchor of Appalachia." In its post-industrial state, Pittsburgh has been characterized as the "Paris of Appalachia", recognizing the city's cultural, educational, healthcare, and technological resources, as well as its status as Appalachia's largest city.
Pittsburgh falls within the hot-summer humid continental climate ("Dfa") zone with warm summers and cold winters. Despite this, it has one of the most pleasant summer climates between medium and large cities in the USA. The city and river valleys lie in the USDA plant hardiness zone 6b while higher elevated areas lie in zone 6a. The area has four distinct seasons: winters are cold and snowy, springs and falls are mild with moderate levels of sunshine, and summers are warm. As measured by percent possible sunshine, summer is by far the sunniest season.
The warmest month of the year in Pittsburgh is July, with a 24-hour average of . Conditions are often humid, and combined with highs reaching on an average 9.5 days a year, a considerable heat index arises. The coolest month is January, when the 24-hour average is , and lows of or below can be expected on an average 2.6 nights per year. Officially, record temperatures range from , on January 19, 1994 to , which occurred three times, most recently on July 16, 1988; the record cold daily maximum is , which occurred three times, most recently the day of the all-time record low, while, conversely, the record warm daily minimum is on July 1, 1901. Due to elevation and location on the windward side of the Appalachian Mountains, + readings are very rare, and were last seen on July 15, 1995.
Average annual precipitation is and precipitation is greatest in May while least in October; annual precipitation has historically ranged from in 1930 to in 2018. On average, December and January have the greatest number of precipitation days. Snowfall averages per season, but has historically ranged from in 1918–19 to in 1950–51. There is an average of 59 clear days and 103 partly cloudy days per year, while 203 days are cloudy. In terms of annual percent-average possible sunshine received, Pittsburgh (45%) is similar to Seattle (49%).
In 2019, the "State of the Air" report from the American Lung Association (ALA) found that air quality in the Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, PA-OH-WV metro area worsened, not only for ozone (smog), but also for the second year in a row for both the daily and long-term measures of fine particle pollution. Outside of California, Allegheny County is the only county in the United States that recorded failing grades for all three.
In a 2013 ranking of 277 metropolitan areas in the United States, the American Lung Association ranked only six U.S. metro areas as having higher amounts of short-term particle pollution, and only seven U.S. metro areas having higher amounts of year-round particle pollution than Pittsburgh. For ozone (smog) pollution, Pittsburgh was ranked 24th among U.S. metro areas. The area has improved its air quality with every annual survey. The ALA's rankings have been disputed by the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD), since data from only the worst of the region's 20 air quality monitors is considered by the ALA, without any context or averaging. The lone monitor used is immediately downwind and adjacent to U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works, the nation's largest coke mill, and several municipalities outside the city's jurisdiction of pollution controls, leading to possible confusion that Pittsburgh is the source or center of the emissions cited in the survey. The region's readings also reflect pollution swept in from Ohio and West Virginia.
Although the county was still below the "pass" threshold, the report showed substantial improvement over previous decades on every air quality measure. Fewer than 15 high ozone days were reported between 2007 and 2009, and just 10 between 2008 and 2010, compared to more than 40 between 1997 and 1999. ACHD spokesman Guillermo Cole stated "It's the best it's been in the lifetime for virtually every resident in this county ... We've seen a steady decrease in pollution levels over the past decade and certainly over the past 20, 30, 40, 50 years, or more."
In the summer of 2017, a crowd sourced air quality monitoring application, Smell PGH, was launched. As air quality is still a concern of many in the area, the app allows for users to report odd smells and informs local authorities.
The city contains 31,000 trees on 900 miles of streets, by the last count conducted in 2005. A 2011 analysis of Pittsburgh's tree cover, which involved sampling more than 200 small plots throughout the city, showed a value of between $10 and $13 million in annual benefits based on the urban forest contributions to aesthetics, energy use and air quality. Energy savings from shade, impact on city air and water quality, and the boost in property values were taken into account in the analysis. The city spends $850,000 annually on street tree planting and maintenance.
The local rivers continue to have pollution levels exceeding EPA limits. This is caused by frequently overflowing untreated sewage into local waterways, due to flood conditions and antiquated infrastructure. Pittsburgh has a Combined sewer system, where its sewage pipes contain both stormwater and wastewater. The pipes were constructed in the early 1900s, and the sewage treatment plant was built in 1959. Due to insufficient improvements over time, the city is faced with public health concerns regarding its water. As little as a tenth of an inch of rain causes runoffs from the sewage system to drain into local rivers. Nine billion gallons of untreated waste and stormwater flow into rivers, leading to health hazards and Clean Water Act violations. The local sewage authority, Allegheny County Sanitary Authority or ALCOSAN, is operating under Consent Decree from the EPA to come up with solutions. In 2017, ALCOSAN proposed a $2 billion upgrade to the system which is moving closer to EPA approval.
The Pittsburgh Sewer and Water Authority (PWSA) is the city's agency required to replace pipes and charge water rates. They have come under fire from both city and state authorities due to alleged mismanagement. In 2017, Mayor William Peduto advocated for a restructuring of the PWSA and a partially privatized water authority. Governor Wolf subsequently assigned the PWSA to be under the oversight of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
At the 2010 Census, there were 305,704 people residing in Pittsburgh, a decrease of 8.6% since 2000. 66.0% of the population was White, 25.8% Black or African American, 0.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 4.4% Asian, 0.3% Other, and 2.3% mixed. 2.3% of Pittsburgh's population was of Hispanic or Latino origin of any race. Non-Hispanic Whites were 64.8% of the population in 2010, compared to 78.7% in 1970.
The five largest European ethnic groups in the city are German (19.7%), Irish (15.8%), Italian (11.8%), Polish (8.4%), and English (4.6%), while the metropolitan area is approximately 22% German-American, 15.4% Italian American and 11.6% Irish American. Pittsburgh has one of the largest Italian-American communities in the nation and the fifth-largest Ukrainian community. Pittsburgh has one of the most extensive Croatian communities in the United States. Overall, the Pittsburgh Metro Area has one of the largest populations of Slavic Americans in the country.
According to a 2010 Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) study, residents include 773,341 "Catholics"; 326,125 "Mainline Protestants"; 174,119 "Evangelical Protestants;" 20,976 "Black Protestants;" and 16,405 "Orthodox Christians," with 996,826 listed as "unclaimed" and 16,405 as "other" in the metro area. A 2017 study by the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University estimated the Jewish population of Greater Pittsburgh was 49,200.
There were 143,739 households, out of which 21.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.2% were married couples living together, 16.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 48.4% were non-families. 39.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.17 and the average family size was 2.95.
In the city, the population was spread out, with 19.9% under the age of 18, 14.8% from 18 to 24, 28.6% from 25 to 44, 20.3% from 45 to 64, and 16.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 90.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.8 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $28,588, and the median income for a family was $38,795. Males had a median income of $32,128 versus $25,500 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,816. About 15.0% of families and 20.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 27.5% of those under the age of 18 and 13.5% ages 65 or older.
In a 2002 study, Pittsburgh ranked 22nd of 69 urban places in the U.S. in the number of residents 25 years or older who had completed a bachelor's degree, at 31%. Pittsburgh ranked 15th of the 69 places in the number of residents 25 years or older who completed a high school degree, at 84.7%.
The metro area has shown greater residential racial integration during the last 30 years. The 2010 census ranked 18 other U.S. metros as having greater black-white segregation, while 32 other U.S. metros rank higher for black-white isolation.
Pittsburgh has adapted since the collapse of its century-long steel and electronics industries. The region has shifted to high technology, robotics, health care, nuclear engineering, tourism, biomedical technology, finance, education, and services. Annual payroll of the region's technology industries, when taken in aggregate, exceeded $10.8 billion in 2007, and in 2010 there were 1,600 technology companies. A National Bureau of Economic Research 2014 report named Pittsburgh the second-best U.S. city for intergenerational economic mobility or the American Dream. Reflecting the citywide shift from industry to technology, former factories have been renovated as modern office space. Google has research and technology offices in a refurbished 1918–1998 Nabisco factory, a complex known as Bakery Square. Some of the factory's original equipment, such as a large dough mixer, were left standing in homage to the site's industrial roots. Pittsburgh's transition from its industrial heritage has earned it praise as "the poster child for managing industrial transition". Other major cities in the northeast and mid-west have increasingly borrowed from Pittsburgh's model in order to renew their industries and economic base.
The largest employer in the city is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, with 48,000 employees. All hospitals, outpatient clinics, and doctor's office positions combine for 116,000 jobs, approximately 10% of the jobs in the region. An analyst recently observed of the city's medical sector: "That's both more jobs and a higher share of the region's total employment than the steel industry represented in the 1970s."
Six Fortune 500 companies call the Pittsburgh area home. These include downtown's PNC Financial Services, PPG Industries, U.S. Steel, The Kraft Heinz Company, WESCO International, and the Findlay Township, Pennsylvania based Dick's Sporting Goods. In 2006, "Expansion Magazine" ranked Pittsburgh among the top 10 metropolitan areas in the nation for climates favorable to business expansion.
The region is home to Allegheny Technologies, American Eagle Outfitters, CONSOL Energy, Kennametal, Mylan Bayer USA, and Alcoa operation headquarters. Other major employers include BNY Mellon, GlaxoSmithKline, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Lanxess. The Northeast U.S. regional headquarters for Chevron Corporation, Nova Chemicals, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, FedEx Ground, Ariba, and the RAND Corporation call the area home. 84 Lumber, Giant Eagle, Highmark, Rue 21, General Nutrition Center (GNC), CNX Gas (CXG), and Genco Supply Chain Solutions are major non-public companies headquartered in the region. The global impact of Pittsburgh technology and business was recently demonstrated in several key components of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner being manufactured and supplied by area companies. Area retail is anchored by over 35 shopping malls and a healthy downtown retail sector, as well as boutique shops along Walnut Street, in Squirrel Hill and Station Square.
The nonprofit arts and cultural industry in Allegheny County generates $341 million in economic activity that supports over 10,000 full-time equivalent jobs with nearly $34 million in local and state taxes raised.
A leader in environmental design, the city is home to 60 total and 10 of the world's first green buildings while billions have been invested in the area's Marcellus natural gas fields. A renaissance of Pittsburgh's 116-year-old film industry—that boasts the world's first movie theater—has grown from the long-running Three Rivers Film Festival to an influx of major television and movie productions. including Disney and Paramount offices with the largest sound stage outside Los Angeles and New York City.
Pittsburgh has hosted many conventions, including INPEX, the world's largest invention trade show, since 1984; Tekko, a four-day anime convention, since 2003; Anthrocon, a furry convention, since 2006; and the DUG East energy trade show since 2009.
Pittsburgh has a rich history in arts and culture dating from 19th century industrialists commissioning and donating public works, such as Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts and the Benedum Center, home to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Pittsburgh Opera, respectively as well as such groups as the River City Brass Band and the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra.
Pittsburgh has a number of small and mid-size arts organizations including the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, Quantum Theatre, the Renaissance and Baroque Society of Pittsburgh, and the early music ensemble Chatham Baroque. Several choirs and singing groups are also present at the cities' universities; some of the most notable include the Pitt Men's Glee Club and the Heinz Chapel Choir.
Pittsburgh Dance Council and the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater host a variety of dance events. Polka, folk, square, and round dancing have a long history in the city and are celebrated by the Duquesne University Tamburitzans, a multicultural academy dedicated to the preservation and presentation of folk songs and dance.
Hundreds of major films have been shot partially or wholly in Pittsburgh. "The Dark Knight Rises" was largely filmed in Downtown, Oakland, and the North Shore. Pittsburgh has also teamed up with a Los Angeles-based production company, and has built the largest and most advanced movie studio in the eastern United States.
Pittsburgh's major art museums include the Andy Warhol Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, The Frick Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, and the Mattress Factory. The ToonSeum, one of three museums in the US dedicated to cartoon art, is downtown. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History is the fourth ranked natural history museum in the US and has extensive dinosaur, mineral, animal, and Egyptian collections. The Carnegie Science Center and associated SportsWorks has interactive technology and science exhibits. The Senator John Heinz History Center and Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum is a Smithsonian affiliated regional history museum in the Strip District and its associated Fort Pitt Museum is in Point State Park. Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum in Oakland houses Western Pennsylvania military exhibits from the Civil War to present. The Children's Museum of Pittsburgh on the North Side features interactive exhibits for children. The eclectic Bayernhof Music Museum is six miles (9km) from downtown while The Clemente Museum is in the city's Lawrenceville section. The Cathedral of Learning's Nationality Rooms showcase pre-19th century learning environments from around the world. There are regular guided and self-guided architectural tours in numerous neighborhoods. Downtown's cultural district hosts quarterly Gallery Crawls and the annual Three Rivers Arts Festival. Pittsburgh is home to a number of art galleries and centers including the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, University Art Gallery of the University of Pittsburgh, the American Jewish Museum, and the Wood Street Galleries.
The Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium, Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, and the National Aviary have served the city for over a century. Pittsburgh is home to the amusement park Kennywood. Pittsburgh is home to one of the several state licensed casinos. The Rivers Casino is on the North Shore along the Ohio River, just west of Carnegie Science Center and Heinz Field.
Pittsburgh is home to the world's second largest furry convention known as Anthrocon, which has been held annually at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center since 2006. In 2017, Anthrocon drew over 7,000 visitors and has had a cumulative economic impact of $53 million over the course of its 11 years of being hosted in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh has a long tradition of jazz, blues, and bluegrass music. The National Negro Opera Company was founded in the city as the first all African-American opera company in the United States. This led to the prominence of African-American singers like Leontyne Price in the world of opera. One of the greatest American musicians and composers of the 20th century, Billy Strayhorn, grew up and was educated in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh's Wiz Khalifa is a recent artist to have a number one record. His anthem "Black and Yellow" (a tribute to Pittsburgh's official colors) reached number one on Billboard's "Hot 100" for the Week of February 19, 2011 Not since Grammy-winning blues guitarist George Benson has a Pittsburgh artist received such national acclaim. Perry Como and Christina Aguilera are from Pittsburgh suburbs. The city is also where the band Rusted Root was formed. Liz Berlin of Rusted Root owns Mr. Smalls, a popular music venue for touring national acts in Pittsburgh. Hip hop artist Mac Miller's album "Blue Slide Park" debuted at the top of Billboard's album chart; its first No. 1 independent release since "Dogg Food" in 1995.
Many punk rock and Hardcore punk acts, such as Aus Rotten and Anti-Flag, originated in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh has also seen many metal bands gain prominence in recent years, most notably Code Orange, who were nominated for a Grammy.
The city's first play was produced at the old courthouse in 1803 and the first theater built in 1812. Collegiate companies include the University of Pittsburgh's Repertory Theatre and Kuntu Repertory Theatre, Point Park University's resident companies at its Pittsburgh Playhouse, and Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama productions and Scotch'n'Soda organization. The Duquesne University Red Masquers, founded in 1912, are the oldest, continuously producing theater company in Pennsylvania. The city's longest-running theater show, Friday Nite Improvs, is an improv jam that has been performed in the Cathedral of Learning and other locations for 20 years. The Pittsburgh New Works Festival utilizes local theatre companies to stage productions of original one-act plays by playwrights from all parts of the country. Similarly, Future Ten showcases new ten-minute plays. Saint Vincent Summer Theatre, Off the Wall Productions, Mountain Playhouse, The Theatre Factory, and Stage Right! in nearby Latrobe, Carnegie, Jennerstown, Trafford, and Greensburg, respectively, employ Pittsburgh actors and contribute to the culture of the region.
Pittsburgh is the birthplace of Gertrude Stein and Rachel Carson, a Chatham University graduate from the suburb of Springdale, Pennsylvania. Modern writers include Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson and Michael Chabon with his Pittsburgh-focused commentary on student and college life. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, David McCullough was born and raised in Pittsburgh. Annie Dillard, a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, was born and raised in Pittsburgh. Much of her memoir An American Childhood takes place in post-World War II Pittsburgh. Award-winning author John Edgar Wideman grew up in Pittsburgh and has based several of his books, including the memoir "Brothers and Keepers", in his hometown. Poet Terrance Hayes, winner of the 2010 National Book Award and a 2014 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where he is a faculty member. Poet Michael Simms, founder of Autumn House Press, resides in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Poet Samuel John Hazo, the first poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, also resides in the city. New writers include Chris Kuzneski who attended the University of Pittsburgh and mentions Pittsburgh in his works and Pittsburgher Brian Celio, author of "Catapult Soul" who captured the Pittsburgh 'Yinzer' dialect in his writing. Pittsburgh's unique literary style extends to playwrights, as well as local graffiti and hip hop artists.
There are also specific Pittsburgh genres that have been adopted in globally, from children's television to sci-fi/fantasy to Yinzer Pittsburghese.
Pittsburgh's position as the birthplace for community owned television and networked commercial television helped spawn the modern children's show genres exemplified by "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood", "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?", "Happy's Party", "Cappelli & Company", and "The Children's Corner", all nationally broadcast.
The "Pittsburgh Dad" series has showcased the Pittsburghese genre to a global YouTube audience since 2011.
The modern fantasy, macabre and science fiction genre was popularized by director George A. Romero, television's Bill Cardille and his "Chiller Theatre", director and writer Rusty Cundieff and makeup effects guru Tom Savini. The genre continues today with the PARSEC writers organization, , the annual "Zombie Fest", and several writer's workshops including Write or Die, Pittsburgh SouthWrites, and Pittsburgh Worldwrights with Barton Paul Levenson, Kenneth Chiacchia and Elizabeth Humphreys Penrose.
Pittsburgh is known for several specialties including pierogies, kielbasa, chipped chopped ham sandwiches, and Klondike bars. In 2019, Pittsburgh was deemed "Food City of the Year" by the San Francisco-based restaurant and hospitality consulting firm af&co. Many restaurants were favorably mentioned, among them were Superior Motors in Braddock, Driftwood Oven in Lawrenceville, Spork in Bloomfield, Fish nor Fowl in Garfield, Bitter Ends Garden & Luncheonette in Bloomfield, and Rolling Pepperoni in Lawrenceville.
The Pittsburgh English dialect, commonly called "Pittsburghese", was influenced by Scots-Irish, German, and Eastern European immigrants and African Americans. Locals who speak the dialect are sometimes referred to as "Yinzers" (from the local word "yinz" [var. "yunz"], a blended form of "you ones," similar to "y'all" and "you all" in the South). Common Pittsburghese terms are: slippy (slippery), redd up (clean up), jagger bush (thorn bush), and gum bands (rubber bands). The dialect is also notable for dropping the verb "to be." In Pittsburghese one would say "the car needs washed" instead of "needs to be washed," "needs washing," or "needs a wash." The dialect has some tonal similarities to other nearby regional dialects of Erie and Baltimore, but is noted for its somewhat staccato rhythms. The staccato qualities of the dialect are thought to originate either from Welsh or other European languages. The many local peculiarities have prompted "The New York Times" to describe Pittsburgh as, "the Galapagos Islands of American dialect." The lexicon itself contains notable loans from Polish and other European languages; examples include babushka, pierogi, and halušky.
Pittsburgh often places high in lists of the nation's most livable cities. After placing fourth and first in the first two editions of "Places Rated Almanac", Pittsburgh finished first in 1985, third in 1989, fifth in 1993, 14th in 1997, and 12th in 2000, before reclaiming the number one spot in 2007. The survey's primary author, David Savageau, has noted Pittsburgh is the only city to finish in the top 20 of every edition.
In 2005, 2009, and 2011, Pittsburgh was ranked as the most livable city in the United States by "The Economist" and, in those years, between the 26th- and 29th-most livable city worldwide. Pittsburgh ranked No. 28 in the book "Cities Ranked and Rated" (2004) by Bert Sperling and Peter Sander.
In 2010, "Forbes" and Yahoo! ranked Pittsburgh as the most livable city in the United States. A month later, "Forbes" named Pittsburgh as the 7th best place to raise a family. Pittsburgh was ranked as the 4th-best city for working mothers by "Forbes" in 2010 and the city was ranked as one of the best for entrepreneurs by "Entrepreneur". "Forbes" ranked Pittsburgh, in an 8-way tie, as the world's 10th cleanest city for 2007.
The "Economist Intelligence Unit" named Pittsburgh the top place to live in the United States in 2011, and behind only Honolulu for 2012 and 2014.
The city was listed among the 10 best U.S. places to retire in 2012 by "CBS Money Watch" and "U.S. News". In February 2013 "Forbes" again placed Pittsburgh among its 10 "most unexpectedly romantic cities" in the world . In April 2014, Niche rated Pittsburgh the 15th-best city for millennials.
Livability rankings typically consider factors such as cost of living, crime, and cultural opportunities. Pittsburgh has a low cost of living compared to other northeastern U.S. cities. According to the Federal Housing Board, the average price for a 3- to 4-bedroom, 2-bath family home in Pittsburgh for 2004 is $162,000, well below the national average of $264,540. Average 2010 rent for all bedrooms in Pittsburgh was $789. This compares to the nationwide average of $1,087. Pittsburgh has five city parks and several parks managed by the Nature Conservancy. The largest, Frick Park, provides of woodland park with extensive hiking and biking trails throughout steep valleys and wooded slopes. Birding enthusiasts love to visit the Clayton Hill area of Frick Park, where well over 100 species of birds have been recorded.
Enhancing Pittsburgh's livability is the fact that the area faces little risk of natural disasters from such causes as earthquake, hurricane, wildfire, or tornado. "Forbes" ranked Pittsburgh as having the 2nd-lowest natural disaster risk in the nation for 2009. Greater Pittsburgh is not entirely free of natural disasters, however. Residents living in extremely low-lying areas near the rivers or one of the 1,400 creeks and streams may have occasional floods, such as those caused when the remnants of Hurricane Ivan hit rainfall records in 2004. River flooding is relatively rare due to federal flood control efforts extensively managing locks, dams, and reservoirs. Residents living near smaller tributary streams are less protected from occasional flooding. The cost of a comprehensive flood control program for the region has been estimated at a prohibitive $50 billion.
Pittsburgh has the greatest number of bars per capita in the nation.
Pittsburgh hosted the first professional football game and the first World Series. The city boasts several professional teams and in 2009 the city won the "Sporting News" title of "Best Sports City" in the United States. and "Sperling's Best Places" "top 15 cities for baseball" in 2013. College sports also have large followings with the University of Pittsburgh in football and sharing Division I basketball fans with Robert Morris and Duquesne.
Pittsburgh has a long history with its major professional sports teams—the Steelers of the National Football League, the Penguins of the National Hockey League, and the Pirates of Major League Baseball—share the same team colors, the official city colors of black and gold. This tradition of solidarity is unique to Pittsburgh. The black-and-gold color scheme has since become widely associated with the city and personified in its famous Terrible Towel.
"Rails to Trails", has converted miles of former rail tracks to recreational trails, including a Pittsburgh-Washington D.C. bike/walking trail. Several mountain biking trails are within the city and suburbs, Frick Park has biking trails and Hartwood Acres Park has many miles of single track trails.
**Pittsburgh's ABA franchise won the 1968 title, but the Steel City Yellow Jackets franchise is heir to it only in location.
The Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, often referred to as the Bucs or the Buccos (derived from buccaneer), is the city's oldest professional sports franchise having been founded in 1881, and plays in the Central Division of the National League. The Pirates are nine-time Pennant winners and five-time World Series Champions, were in the first World Series (1903) and claim two pre-World Series titles in 1901 and 1902. The Pirates play in PNC Park, annually ranked as one of the sports best venues; ESPN.com stated: "[t]his is the perfect blend of location, history, design, comfort and baseball ... The best stadium in baseball is in Pittsburgh." PNC Park hosted the team's MLB record-tying fifth All-Star game in 2006.
Pittsburgh also has a rich Negro League history, with the former Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays credited with as many as 14 league titles and 11 Hall of Famers between them in the 1930s and 1940s, while the Keystones fielded teams in the 1920s. In addition, in 1971 the Pirates were the first Major League team to field an all-minority lineup. One sportswriter claimed, "No city is more synonymous with black baseball than Pittsburgh."
Since the late 20th century, the Pirates had three consecutive National League Championship Series appearances (1990–92) (going 6, 7 and 7 games each), followed by setting the MLB record for most consecutive losing seasons, with 20 from 1993 until 2012. This era was followed by three consecutive postseason appearances: the 2013 National League Division Series and the 2014–2015 Wild Card games. Their September pennant race in 1997 featured the franchises' last no-hitter and last award for Sporting News' Executive of the Year.
Football is the most popular and tradition laden sport in the region. The nation's first professional game was played in the city on November 12, 1892, between the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, the first pro-team in nearby Latrobe and first organized league, the NFL and their inaugural champions: the Pittsburgh Stars.
The city's most popular team is the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers, named after the distribution company the Pittsburgh Steeling company established in 1927. News of the team has preempted news of elections and other events, and are important to the region and its diaspora. The Steelers have been owned by the Rooney family since the team's founding in 1933, show consistency in coaching (only three coaches since the 1960s all with the same basic philosophy) and are noted as one of sports' most respectable franchises. The Steelers have a long waiting list for season tickets, and have sold out every home game since 1972. The team won four Super Bowls in a six-year span in the 1970s, a fifth Super Bowl in 2006, and a league record sixth Super Bowl in 2009. Since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 they have qualified for the most NFL playoff berths (28) and have played in (15) and hosted (11) the most NFL conference championship games.
High school football routinely attract 10,000 fans per game and extensive press coverage. The Tom Cruise film All the Right Moves and ESPN's Bound for Glory with Dick Butkus both filmed in the area to capture the tradition and passion of local high school football.
College football in the city dates to 1889 with the Division I (FBS) Panthers of the University of Pittsburgh posting nine national championships and qualifying 34 total bowl games and appearing in the 2018 ACC Championship Game. Local universities Duquesne and Robert Morris have loyal fan bases that follow their lower (FCS) teams. Duquesne, Carnegie Mellon University, and Washington & Jefferson College all posted major bowl games and AP Poll rankings from the 1920s to the 1940s as that era's equivalent of Top 25 FBS programs.
Heinz Field serves as home for the Steelers, Panthers, and both the suburban and city high school championships. Playoff franchises Pittsburgh Power and Pittsburgh Gladiators competed in the Arena Football League in the 1980s and 2010s respectively. The Gladiators hosted ArenaBowl I in the city, competing in two, but losing both before moving to Tampa, Florida and becoming the Storm. The Pittsburgh Passion has been the city's professional women's football team since 2002 and plays its home games at Highmark Stadium. The Ed Debartolo owned Pittsburgh Maulers featured a Heisman Trophy winner in the mid-1980s, former superstar University of Nebraska running back Mike Rozier.
The NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins have played in Pittsburgh since the team's founding in 1967. The team has won 6 Eastern Conference titles (1991, 1992, 2008, 2009, 2016 and 2017) and 5 Stanley Cup championships (1991, 1992, 2009, 2016 and 2017). Since 1999, Hall of Famer and back-to-back playoff MVP Mario Lemieux has served as Penguins owner. Until moving into the PPG Paints Arena in 2010 (when it was known as Consol Energy Center), the team played their home games at the world's first retractable domed stadium, the Civic Arena, or in local parlance "The Igloo".
Ice hockey has had a regional fan base since the 1890s semi-pro Keystones. The city's first ice rink dates back to 1889, when there was an ice rink at the Casino in Schenley Park. From 1896 to 1956, the Exposition Building on the Allegheny River near The Point and Duquesne Gardens in Oakland offered indoor skating.
The NHL awarded one of its first franchises to the city in 1924 on the strength of the back-to-back USAHA championship winning Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets featuring future Hall of Famers and a Stanley Cup winning coach. The NHL's Pittsburgh Pirates made several Stanley Cup playoff runs with a future Hall of Famer before folding from Great Depression financial pressures. Hockey survived with the Pittsburgh Hornets farm team (1936–1967) and their seven finals appearances and three championships in 18 playoff seasons.
Robert Morris University fields a Division I college hockey team at the Island Sports Center. Pittsburgh is a hotbed for semi-pro and amateur teams such as the top 50 ranked Junior Penguins, Predators and Viper Stars, with the Hornets a top 20 team for the last 7 years. Pro-grade ice rinks such as the Rostraver Ice Garden, Mt. Lebanon Recreation Center and Iceoplex at Southpointe have trained several native Pittsburgh players for NHL play. RMU hosted the city's first Frozen Four college championship in 2013 with the four PPG Paints Arena games televised by ESPN.
Professional basketball in Pittsburgh dates to the 1910s with teams "Monticello" and "Loendi" winning five national titles, the Pirates (1937–45 in the NBL), the Pittsburgh Ironmen (1947–48 NBA inaugural season), the Pittsburgh Rens (1961–63), the Pittsburgh Pipers (first American Basketball Association championship in 1968 led by Connie Hawkins (team then moved); the Pittsburgh Condors (ABA returned in 1970-72), the Pittsburgh Piranhas (CBA Finals in 1995), the Pittsburgh Xplosion (2004–08) and Phantoms (2009–10) both of the ABA. The city has hosted dozens of pre-season and 15 regular season "neutral site" NBA games, including Wilt Chamberlain's record setting performance in both consecutive field goals and field goal percentage on February 24, 1967, NBA records that still stand.
The Duquesne University Dukes and the University of Pittsburgh Panthers have played college basketball in the city since 1914 and 1905 respectively. Pitt and Duquesne have played the annual City Game since 1932.
Duquesne was the city's first team to appear in a Final Four (1940), obtain a number one AP Poll ranking (1954), and to win a post-season national title, the 1955 National Invitation Tournament on its second straight trip to the NIT title game. Duquesne is the only college program to produce back-to-back NBA No. 1 overall draft picks with 1955's Dick Ricketts and 1956's Sihugo Green. Duquesne's Chuck Cooper was the first African American drafted by an NBA team.
The Panthers won two pre-tournament era Helms Athletic Foundation National Championships in 1928 and 1930, competed in a "national title game" against LSU in 1935, and made a Final Four appearance in 1941. Pitt has won 13 conference titles, qualified for the NCAA tournament 26 times including a post season tournament every season between 1999 and 2000 and 2015-2016 during which time it regularly sold out the Petersen Events Center. The program has produced 27 NBA draft picks and 15 All Americans while ranking No. 1 in the nation as recently as 2009.
The suburban Robert Morris University's Colonials have competed in NCAA Division I basketball since the 1970s, qualifying for the NCAA tournament in each of the last four decades (8). In the 2013 National Invitation Tournament the Colonials notched an upset win over the defending national champions Kentucky Wildcats.
Pittsburgh Panthers women's basketball has qualified for 14 post season tournaments (including 4 NCAA tournaments) and boasts of 5 All-Americans selected 6 times with 3 WNBA players. Pitt women began play in 1914 before being reintroduced in 1970. Both Duquesne and Robert Morris also have competitive Division I women's basketball programs.
Pittsburgh launched the nation's first high school all-star game in 1965. The Roundball Classic annually featured future NBA hall of famers at the Civic Arena with ESPN televising. The Civic Arena also hosted the Championship Tournament for the Eastern Eight Conference from 1978 until 1982.
The Riverhounds, an American professional soccer team, were founded in 1998. Like the major league teams in the city, the Riverhounds wear black and gold kits. The club plays in the Eastern Conference of the USL Championship, the second tier of the American soccer pyramid. The Riverhounds play their home games at Highmark Stadium, a soccer-specific stadium located in Station Square.
Golf has deep roots in the area. The oldest U.S. course in continuous use, Foxburg Country Club dating from 1887 calls the region home. Suburban Oakmont Country Club holds the record for most times as host for the U.S. Open (8). U.S. Women's Open (2), PGA Championships (3), and U.S. Amateurs (8) have also called Oakmont home.
Golf legends Arnold Palmer, Jim Furyk, and Rocco Mediate learned the game and began their careers on Pittsburgh area courses. Suburban courses such as Laurel Valley Golf Club and the Fox Chapel Golf Club have hosted PGA Championships (1937, 1965), the Ryder Cup (1975), LPGA Championships (1957–58), Senior Players Championships (2012–14), and the Senior PGA Championship (2005).
Local courses have sponsored annual major tournaments for 40 years:
Pittsburgh hosts several annual major sporting events initiated in the late 20th century, including the:
The city's vibrant rivers have attracted annual world-title fishing competitions of the Forrest Wood Cup in 2009 and the Bassmaster Classic in 2005.
Annual events continue during the winter months at area ski resorts such as Boyce Park, Seven Springs, Hidden Valley Resort, Laurel Mountain, and Wisp. Ice skating rinks are enjoyed at PPG Place and North Park.
Many Wrestlers and promoters in the WWE started their careers in Pittsburgh including Bruno Sammartino, Kurt Angle, Corey Graves, Dominic DeNucci, Elias, and many more.
Pittsburgh was in the Limelight with the Studio Wrestling in the Fineview section of the city.
The Keystone State Wrestling Alliance (KSWA) is a professional wrestling promotion founded in Pittsburgh in 2000. It is the only promotion based in Pittsburgh. It operates in the city's Lawrenceville neighborhood. The KSWA performs Monthly on Saturdays at its main venue on 51st Street.
The Government of Pittsburgh is composed of the Mayor of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh City Council, and various boards and commissions. The mayor and the nine-member council each serve four-year terms. Since the 1950s the Mayor's Chief of Staff has assumed a large role in advising, long term planning, and as a "gatekeeper" to the mayor. City council members are chosen by plurality elections in each of nine districts. The government's official offices are in the Pittsburgh City-County Building.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court holds sessions in Pittsburgh, as well as Harrisburg and Philadelphia. Pittsburgh is represented in the Pennsylvania General Assembly by three Senate Districts and nine House Districts. Federally, Pittsburgh is part of Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district.
In 2006, Council President Luke Ravenstahl was sworn in as mayor at age 26, becoming the youngest mayor in the history of any major American city. His successor, Bill Peduto, was sworn in on January 6, 2014. Current Pittsburgh City Council members are: Darlene Harris, Theresa Kail-Smith, Natalia Rudiak, Corey O'Connor, R. Daniel Lavelle, Deborah Gross, Erika Strassburger, and Rev. Ricky Burgess. They are elected from single-member districts. The president of city council is Bruce Kraus.
Prior to the American Civil War, Pittsburgh was strongly abolitionist. It is considered the birthplace of the national Republican Party, as the party held its first convention here in February 1856. From the Civil War to the 1930s, Pittsburgh was a Republican stronghold. The effects of the Great Depression, combined with entrenched local GOP scandals, resulted in a shift among voters to the Democratic Party. With the exceptions of the 1973 and 1977 elections (where lifelong Democrats ran off the party ticket), Democrats have been elected consecutively to the mayor's office since the 1933 election. The city's ratio of party registration is 5 to 1 Democrat.
Pittsburgh is represented in the Pennsylvania General Assembly by three Senate Districts (Lindsey Williams (D)-38, Wayne D. Fontana (D)-42, and Jay Costa (D)-43) and nine House Districts (Jake Wheatley-19, Adam Ravenstahl-20, Sara Innamorato-21, Dan Frankel-23, Ed Gainey-24, Dan Deasy-27, Summer Lee-34, and Harry Readshaw-36, Dan Miller-42).
Federally, Pittsburgh is part of Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district, represented by Democrat Michael F. Doyle since 1995.
The area's largest law enforcement agency is the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, with close to 850 sworn officers. The city also has separate housing and school police departments. Other agencies also provide police protection within the city because of overlapping jurisdictional boundaries. The Allegheny County Sheriff focuses on jail and courthouse security. The Allegheny County Police primarily patrols county-owned parks and airports, while providing detective/investigatory functions for smaller suburbs and the Port Authority police patrols rapid transit. Pennsylvania State Police Troop B provides patrols for the city and immediate suburbs.
The county's lead law enforcement officer is Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala while the Allegheny County Medical Examiner heads forensics. Crimes of a federal nature are covered by the U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania.
Pittsburgh annually ranks as one of America's safest big cities, in 2013 being named the 3rd "most secure" big city by Farmers Insurance. Among crime rates of the 60 largest U.S. cities, 43 had more instances of property crime while 16 had less when compared to Pittsburgh. More instances of violent crime were reported in 21 of the largest cities while 37 had less. The FBI recommends against using data for ranking.
Per 100,000 persons stats (2012):
At the end of 2019, the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police reported 37 murders in the city that year.
Pittsburgh is home to many colleges, universities and research facilities, the most well-known of which are Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Duquesne University. Also in the city are Carlow University, Chatham University, Point Park University, the Community College of Allegheny County, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science.
The campuses of Carlow, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Pittsburgh are near each other in the Oakland neighborhood that is the city's traditional cultural center. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), a private research university founded by Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon, is ranked 23rd overall on the "US News & World Report" list of America's Best National Universities. CMU is globally respected for its School of Computer Science, College of Engineering, School of Business, Heinz College, College of Fine Arts, writing, Social and Decision Sciences, information systems, statistics, and psychology programs.
The University of Pittsburgh, established in 1787 and popularly referred to as "Pitt", is a state-related school with one of the nation's largest research programs. Pitt is ranked as the 20th national public university by "US News & World Report" and 62nd overall, and is known for the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences, Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh College of Business Administration, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work, and other biomedical and health-related sciences.
Carlow University is a small private Roman Catholic university that while coeducational, has traditionally educated women. Chatham University, a liberal arts college that was founded as a woman's college but became fully coeducational in 2015, is in the Shadyside neighborhood, but also maintains a Eden Hall Farm campus in the North Hills. Duquesne University, a private Catholic university in the Bluff neighborhood and is noted for its song and dance troupe, the Duquesne University Tamburitzans, as well as programs in law, business, and pharmacy. Point Park University was founded in 1961 and is well known for its Conservatory of Performing Arts and its Pittsburgh Playhouse.
Pittsburgh Public Schools teachers are paid well relative to their peers, ranking 17th in 2000 among the 100 largest cities by population for the highest minimum salary. In 2018 the starting teacher salary offered to teachers with a BA was $46,920. The maximum annual salary for a teacher with a master's degree was $95,254.
Local public schools include many charter and magnet schools, including City Charter High School (computer and technology focused), Pittsburgh Montessori School (formerly Homewood Montessori), Pittsburgh Gifted Center, Barack Obama Academy of International Studies 6-12, Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12, Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy, the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, and the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf.
Private schools in Pittsburgh include Bishop Canevin High School, Central Catholic High School, Oakland Catholic High School, Winchester Thurston School, St. Edmund's Academy, Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh, Yeshiva Schools and The Ellis School. Shady Side Academy maintains a PK–5 primary school campus in the Point Breeze neighborhood, in addition to its 6–12 middle and upper school campuses in nearby suburban Fox Chapel. Other private institutions outside of Pittsburgh's limits include North Catholic High School and Seton-La Salle Catholic High School.
The city also has an extensive library system, both public and university. Most notable are the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh's University Library System, which rank 9th-largest (public) and 18th-largest (academic) in the nation, respectively.
There are two major daily newspapers in Pittsburgh: the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" and the "Pittsburgh Tribune-Review" online only (no longer in print for Pittsburgh Area). Weekly papers in the region include the "Pittsburgh Business Times", "Pittsburgh City Paper", "Pittsburgh Catholic", "The Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh", "The New People", and the "New Pittsburgh Courier". Independent student-written university-based newspapers include "The Pitt News" of the University of Pittsburgh, "The Tartan" of Carnegie Mellon University, "The Duquesne Duke" of Duquesne University, and "The Globe" of Point Park University. The University of Pittsburgh School of Law is also home to JURIST, the world's only university-based legal news service.
The Pittsburgh metro area is served by many local television and radio stations. The Pittsburgh designated market area (DMA) is the 22nd-largest in the U.S. with 1,163,150 homes (1.045% of the total U.S.). The major network television affiliates are KDKA-TV 2 (CBS), WTAE 4 (ABC), WPXI 11 (NBC), WPGH-TV 53 (Fox), KNNP-TV, WPCW 19 (CW), WINP-TV 16 (Ion), WPNT 22 (MyNetworkTV), and WPCB 40 (Cornerstone). KDKA-TV, WPCW, WINP-TV, and WPCB are network owned-and-operated stations. WEPA-CD 16 is an independent station owned and operated by the Bruno-Goodworth Network.
WQED 13 is the local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) station in Pittsburgh. It was established on April 1, 1954, and was the first community-sponsored television station and the fifth public station in the United States. The station has produced much original content for PBS, including "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood", several National Geographic specials, and "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"
There is a wide variety of radio stations serving the Pittsburgh market. The first was KDKA 1020 AM, also the world's first commercially licensed radio station, airing on November 2, 1920. Other stations include KQV 1410 AM (news), WBGG 970 AM (sports), KDKA-FM 93.7 FM (sports), WKST-FM 96.1 FM (pop), WAMO-AM 660 AM (hip-hop and R&B) WBZZ 100.7 FM (adult contemporary), WDVE 102.5 FM (album rock), WPGB 104.7 FM (Country), and WXDX 105.9 FM (modern rock). There are also three public radio stations in the area; including WESA 90.5 FM (National Public Radio affiliate), WQED 89.3 FM (classical), and WYEP 91.3 FM (adult alternative). Three non-commercial stations are run by Carnegie Mellon University (WRCT 88.3 FM), the University of Pittsburgh (WPTS 92.1 FM), and Point Park University (WPPJ 670 AM).
Pittsburgh's 116-year-old film industry accelerated after the 2006 passage of the Pennsylvania Film Production Tax Credit. According to the Pittsburgh Film Office, over 124 major motion pictures have been filmed, in whole or in part, in Pittsburgh, including "The Mothman Prophecies", "Wonder Boys", "Dogma", "Hoffa", "The Silence of the Lambs", "Sudden Death", "Flashdance", "Southpaw", "Striking Distance", "Mrs. Soffel", "Jack Reacher", "Inspector Gadget", "The Next Three Days", "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", "Zack and Miri Make a Porno", and "Fences". Pittsburgh became "Gotham City" in 2011 during filming of "The Dark Knight Rises". George A. Romero has shot nearly all his films in the area, including his "Living Dead" series.
The city is served by Duquesne Light, one of the original 1912 power companies founded by George Westinghouse. Water service is provided by the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority and Pennsylvania American Water. Natural gas is provided by Equitable Gas, Columbia Gas, Dominion Resources, Direct Energy, and Novec.
The two largest area health care providers are the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) (since 1893) and Allegheny Health Network (since 1882). Both hospitals annually rank as among the best overall in the United States, with UPMC being among "U.S. News and World Report" "Honor Roll" every year since 2000.
The first military hospital in U.S. history as well as the first west of the Atlantic Plain—General Edward Hand Hospital—served the area from 1777 to 1845. Since 1847, Pittsburgh has hosted the world's first "Mercy Hospital". This was followed by West Penn hospital in 1848, Passavant Hospital in 1849, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1883, Children's Hospital in 1887, and Magee Womens Hospital in 1911. In 1954, Allegheny General (AGH) was among the first to administer Cobalt therapy.
In 1980, UPMC announced a $250 million ($ today) expansion and also hired transplant pioneer Dr. Thomas Starzl. In 1984, Allegheny General surgeons pioneered modern brain surgery. Dr. Starzl arranged the 1985 liver transplant of 5-year-old Amie Garrison as a UPMC surgery team flew to Baylor University, starting its transplant program. Also in 1985, UPMC surgeons Drs. Griffith, Hardesty, and Trento revealed a new device after a heart-lung transplant. In 1986, UPMC announced a $230 million ($ today) modernization. In 1996, UPMC's planned Sicily ISMETT branch was approved by the Italian government as transplant surgeons to supervise and deliver the world's third (both earlier ones done at UPMC)--and first public—cross species marrow transplant at University of California, San Francisco. UPMC's Thomas Detre founded the International Society for Bipolar Disorders at a world medical conference in Pittsburgh in 1999.
The $80 million ($ today) UPMC Sports Performance Complex for the Pittsburgh Panthers & Pittsburgh Steelers opened in 2000. In 2002, AGH opened its $30 million ($ today), 5-floor, 100,000 sq. ft., cancer center. The $130 million ($ today) 350,000 sq. ft. Hillman Cancer Center opened in 2003 as UPMC entered into an 8-year, $420 million ($ today) agreement with IBM to upgrade medical technologies & health information systems.
In 2009, the $600 million ($ today) UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh opened. The campus was featured in world news in 2012 for several unique approaches to patient care. UPMC officially adopted in Erie, Pennsylvania's Hamot Medical Center in 2010. The Pittsburgh Penguins announced a state of the art training facility with UPMC in 2012. UPMC announced in 2013 it had partnered with Nazarbayev University to help found its medical school.
UPMC has pioneered several world firsts including the first known cystic fibrosis heart-lung transplant (1983), the world's first simultaneous liver and heart transplant operation on a child (6-year-old Stormie Jones in 1984), the youngest heart-lung transplant (9 years old in 1985), the world's first heart-liver-kidney transplant (1989), the world's first heart-liver transplant on an infant (1997), the first pediatric heart-double lung-liver transplant (1998), the nation's first double hand transplant (2009), and the first total forearm and hand transplant (2010), as well as the state's first heart transplant (1968).
The Lancet published a 2012 UPMC study of two 9-year quadriplegics being able to move a robotic arm by thought, to pick up objects, shake hands, and even eat. Wiring the brain around spine damage to restore arm and leg muscle function was successful using robotic arms controlled via an embedded computer to translate signals near a small group of neurons with 200 needles.
Pittsburgh is a city of bridges. With 446, it has three bridges more than Venice, Italy, which has historically held the title "City of Bridges." Around 40 bridges cross the three rivers near the city. The Smithfield Street Bridge was the world's first lenticular truss bridge. The city's Three Sisters Bridges offer a picturesque view of the city from the North. The south-western "entrance" to Downtown for travelers coming in from Interstate 79 and the Pittsburgh International Airport is through the Fort Pitt Tunnel and over the Fort Pitt Bridge. The Fort Duquesne Bridge carrying Interstate 279 is the main gateway from Downtown to both PNC Park, Heinz Field and the Rivers Casino. The Panhandle Bridge carries the Port Authority's Blue/Red/Brown subway lines across the Monongahela River. The renovated J&L Steel Company bridge has been a key traffic/running-biking trail conduit connecting the Southside Works and Pittsburgh Technology Center. Over 2,000 bridges span the landscape of Allegheny County.
The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Pittsburgh, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 73 min. 23% of public transit riders ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 17 min, while 33% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is , while 11% travel for over in a single direction.
Locals refer to the interstates fanning out from downtown Pittsburgh as the "parkways." Interstate 376 is both the "parkway east" connecting to Interstate 76 (Pennsylvania Turnpike) and the "parkway west" connecting to Interstate 79, the Pittsburgh International Airport, the Ohio end of the Turnpike and Interstate 80. The "parkway north" is Interstate 279 connecting to I-79. The "crosstown" is Interstate 579 allowing access to the heart of downtown, the Liberty Tunnels and the PPG Paints Arena. The 45-mile-long and 70-mile-long expressway sections of Pennsylvania Route 28 and U.S. Route 22 also carry traffic from downtown to the northeast and western suburbs, respectively. Interstate 70, 79 and 76 (the Turnpike) roughly form a triangular-shaped "beltway" with Interstate 68 and 80 within the media market's northern and southern limits. Turnpike spurs such as the Mon–Fayette Expressway, Pennsylvania Route 576 and Route 66 also help traffic flow. The non-expressway Pittsburgh/Allegheny County Belt System serves navigation in the region.
The city announced plans to make several improvements to the expressways and highways in 2017:
Pittsburgh International Airport provides commercial passenger service from over 15 airlines to the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. Arnold Palmer Regional Airport also provides limited commercial passenger service and is east of Pittsburgh.
Other airports with scheduled commercial service include Morgantown Municipal Airport ( south of Pittsburgh), Youngstown–Warren Regional Airport ( northwest of Pittsburgh), Akron–Canton Airport ( northwest of Pittsburgh), and Erie International Airport ( north of Pittsburgh).
Amtrak provides intercity rail service to Pittsburgh Union Station, via the "Capitol Limited" between Chicago and Washington D.C, and "Pennsylvanian" to New York City.
Megabus, Greyhound Lines, and Fullington Trailways connect Pittsburgh with distant cities by bus; Greyhound and Fullington Trailways buses stop at the Grant Street Transportation Center intercity bus terminal. Popular destinations include Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, D.C..
Until declines in passenger travel in the 1950s and 1960s, several stations served Pittsburgh: Baltimore & Ohio Station, Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Station, Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal and Pittsburgh Union Station.
Port Authority of Allegheny County, commonly known as the Port Authority, but sometimes referred to by its former nickname "PAT" or "PAT Transit", is the region's mass transit system. While serving only a portion of the Pittsburgh area (the nation's 20th largest metro area), it is the 11th largest transit agency in the nation and helped the region rank 8th on commuters that use non-car means to work, second to only Chicago in metros outside the Northeast corridor. Port Authority runs a network of intracity and intercity bus routes, the Monongahela Incline Funicular railway (more commonly known as an "incline") on Mount Washington, a light rail system that runs mostly above-ground in the suburbs and underground as a subway in the city, and one of the nation's largest busway systems. The Duquesne Incline is operated by a non-profit preservation trust, but accepts Port Authority passes and charges Port Authority fares.
The Bus System lines are labeled by number and letter. These are the largest portion of Port Authority and serve on streets and designated busways. Buses serve most of the county, extending as far as Pittsburgh International Airport, Monroeville, McCandless, and the borders of Westmoreland County and Beaver County, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, the light rail system (commonly known as the "T") runs along both new tracks and those refurbished from the street car area. The light rail currently runs from Heinz Field to South Hills Village and Library, while taking commuters through one of two routes; one which serves Castle Shannon, Mt. Lebanon, and Beechview, while the other is an express line using railways through Overbrook
Pittsburgh's rail industry dates to 1851 when the Pennsylvania Railroad first opened service between the city and Philadelphia, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad entered the city in 1871. In 1865 Andrew Carnegie opened the Pittsburgh Locomotive and Car Works which manufactured for the industry until 1919. Carnegie also founded the Union Railroad in 1894 for heavy freight services and it still serves the area's steel industry, while George Westinghouse's Wabtec has been a leader in rail engines and switching since 1869.
Pittsburgh is home to one of Norfolk Southern Railway's busiest freight corridors, the Pittsburgh Line, and operates up to 70 trains per day through the city. The suburban Conway Rail Yard—originally built in 1889—was the largest freight rail center in the world from 1956 until 1980 and is today the nation's second-largest. CSX, the other major freight railroad in the eastern U.S. also has major operations around Pittsburgh.
The Port of Pittsburgh ranks as the 20th-largest port in the United States with almost 34 million short tons of river cargo for 2011, the port ranked 9th-largest in the U.S. when measured in domestic trade.
Pittsburgh has 20 sister cities as of 2019.
a. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25101 |
Psychohistory
Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities. It examines the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. Psychobiography, childhood, group dynamics, mechanisms of psychic defense, dreams, and creativity are primary areas of research. It works to combine the insights of psychology, especially psychoanalysis, with the research methodology of the social sciences and humanities to understand the emotional origin of the behavior of individuals, groups and nations, past and present. Work in the field has been done in the areas of childhood, creativity, dreams, family dynamics, overcoming adversity, personality, political and presidential psychobiography. There are major psychohistorical studies of studies of anthropology, art, ethnology, history, politics and political science, and much else.
Psychohistory derives many of its concepts from areas that are perceived to be ignored by conventional historians and anthropologists as shaping factors of human history, in particular, the effects of parenting practice and child abuse. According to conventional historians "the science of culture is independent of the laws of biology and psychology". and "[t]he determining cause of a social fact should be sought among social facts preceding and not among the states of individual consciousness".
Psychohistorians, on the other hand, suggest that social behavior such as crime and war may be a self-destructive re-enactment of earlier abuse and neglect; that unconscious flashbacks to early fears and destructive parenting could dominate individual and social behavior.
Psychohistory relies heavily on historical biography. Notable examples of psychobiographies are those of Lewis Namier, who wrote about the British House of Commons, and Fawn Brodie, who wrote about Thomas Jefferson.
There are three inter-related areas of psychohistorical study.
Sigmund Freud's well known work, "Civilization and Its Discontents" (1929), included an analysis of history based on his theory of psychoanalysis. Yet, Freud's text is in no way a psycho-historical work since the focus of the study is to examine and explain the level of individual psyche which may arise from the influence of the structures of civilization. It is in fact the opposite of psycho-history in that it claims that the unconscious and the individual psyche are both structural effects of different social forces, i.e., civilization. In 1913, Sigmund Freud published "Totem and Taboo", which attempts to draw a parallel between the psychical experience of neurotics and primitive peoples through contemporaneous sociology, anthropology, and psychoanalytic theory.
Wilhelm Reich combined his psychoanalytic and political theories in his book "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" in 1933.
The psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm wrote about the psychological motivation behind political ideology, starting with "The Fear of Freedom" in 1941.
Another member of the Frankfurt school, Theodor Adorno, published "The Authoritarian Personality", in 1950, which was an influential sociological book which could be taken as something of a proto-psychohistorical book.
Its first academic use appeared in Erik Erikson's book "Young Man Luther" (1958), where the author called for a discipline of "psycho-history" to examine the impact of human character on history.
Lloyd deMause developed a formal psychohistorical approach from 1974 onwards, and continues to be an influential theorist in this field.
Psychohistorians have argued that psychohistory is a separate field of scholarly inquiry with its own particular methods, objectives and theories, which set it apart from conventional historical analysis and anthropology. Some historians, social scientists and anthropologists have, however, argued that their disciplines already describe psychological motivation and that psychohistory is not, therefore, a separate subject. Others regard it as an undisciplined field of study, due to its emphasis given to speculation on the psychological motivations of people in history. Doubt has also been cast on the viability of the application of post-mortem psychoanalysis by Freud's followers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25102 |
Polio
Polio, short for poliomyelitis, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. In about 0.5 percent of cases, there is muscle weakness resulting in an inability to move. This can occur over a few hours to a few days. The weakness most often involves the legs, but may less commonly involve the muscles of the head, neck and diaphragm. Many people fully recover. In those with muscle weakness, about 2 to 5 percent of children and 15 to 30 percent of adults die. For all those infected, in up to 70 percent of infections there are no symptoms. Another 25 percent of people have minor symptoms such as fever and a sore throat, and up to 5 percent have headache, neck stiffness and pains in the arms and legs. These people are usually back to normal within one or two weeks. Years after recovery, post-polio syndrome may occur, with a slow development of muscle weakness similar to that which the person had during the initial infection.
Poliovirus is usually spread from person to person through infected fecal matter entering the mouth. It may also be spread by food or water containing human feces and less commonly from infected saliva. Those who are infected may spread the disease for up to six weeks even if no symptoms are present. The disease may be diagnosed by finding the virus in the feces or detecting antibodies against it in the blood. The disease occurs naturally only in humans.
The disease is preventable with the polio vaccine; however, multiple doses are required for it to be effective. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends polio vaccination boosters for travelers and those who live in countries where the disease is occurring. Once infected there is no specific treatment. In 2018, there were 33 cases of wild polio and 104 cases of vaccine-derived polio. This is down from 350,000 wild cases in 1988. In 2018, the wild disease was spread between people only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2019 there were 175 cases of wild polio and 364 cases of vaccine-derived polio.
Poliomyelitis has existed for thousands of years, with depictions of the disease in ancient art. The disease was first recognized as a distinct condition by the English physician Michael Underwood in 1789 and the virus that causes it was first identified in 1908 by the Austrian immunologist Karl Landsteiner. Major outbreaks started to occur in the late 19th century in Europe and the United States. In the 20th century it became one of the most worrying childhood diseases in these areas. The first polio vaccine was developed in the 1950s by Jonas Salk. Soon after, Albert Sabin developed an oral vaccine, which has become the world standard.
The term "poliomyelitis" is used to identify the disease caused by any of the three serotypes of poliovirus. Two basic patterns of polio infection are described: a minor illness which does not involve the central nervous system (CNS), sometimes called abortive poliomyelitis, and a major illness involving the CNS, which may be paralytic or nonparalytic. In most people with a normal immune system, a poliovirus infection is asymptomatic. Rarely, the infection produces minor symptoms; these may include upper respiratory tract infection (sore throat and fever), gastrointestinal disturbances (nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, constipation or, rarely, diarrhea), and influenza-like illness.
The virus enters the central nervous system in about 1 percent of infections. Most patients with CNS involvement develop nonparalytic aseptic meningitis, with symptoms of headache, neck, back, abdominal and extremity pain, fever, vomiting, lethargy, and irritability. About one to five in 1000 cases progress to paralytic disease, in which the muscles become weak, floppy and poorly controlled, and, finally, completely paralyzed; this condition is known as acute flaccid paralysis. Depending on the site of paralysis, paralytic poliomyelitis is classified as spinal, bulbar, or bulbospinal. Encephalitis, an infection of the brain tissue itself, can occur in rare cases, and is usually restricted to infants. It is characterized by confusion, changes in mental status, headaches, fever, and, less commonly, seizures and spastic paralysis.
Poliomyelitis is caused by infection with a member of the genus "Enterovirus" known as poliovirus (PV). This group of RNA viruses colonize the gastrointestinal tract – specifically the oropharynx and the intestine. The incubation time (to the first signs and symptoms) ranges from three to 35 days, with a more common span of six to 20 days. PV infects and causes disease in humans alone. Its structure is very simple, composed of a single (+) sense RNA genome enclosed in a protein shell called a capsid. In addition to protecting the virus' genetic material, the capsid proteins enable poliovirus to infect certain types of cells. Three serotypes of poliovirus have been identified – poliovirus type 1 (PV1), type 2 (PV2), and type 3 (PV3) – each with a slightly different capsid protein. All three are extremely virulent and produce the same disease symptoms. PV1 is the most commonly encountered form, and the one most closely associated with paralysis.
Individuals who are exposed to the virus, either through infection or by immunization with polio vaccine, develop immunity. In immune individuals, IgA antibodies against poliovirus are present in the tonsils and gastrointestinal tract, and are able to block virus replication; IgG and IgM antibodies against PV can prevent the spread of the virus to motor neurons of the central nervous system. Infection or vaccination with one serotype of poliovirus does not provide immunity against the other serotypes, and full immunity requires exposure to each serotype.
A rare condition with a similar presentation, nonpoliovirus poliomyelitis, may result from infections with nonpoliovirus enteroviruses.
Poliomyelitis is highly contagious via the fecal-oral (intestinal source) and the oral-oral (oropharyngeal source) routes. In endemic areas, wild polioviruses can infect virtually the entire human population. It is seasonal in temperate climates, with peak transmission occurring in summer and autumn. These seasonal differences are far less pronounced in tropical areas. The time between first exposure and first symptoms, known as the incubation period, is usually 6 to 20 days, with a maximum range of 3 to 35 days. Virus particles are excreted in the feces for several weeks following initial infection. The disease is transmitted primarily via the fecal-oral route, by ingesting contaminated food or water. It is occasionally transmitted via the oral-oral route, a mode especially visible in areas with good sanitation and hygiene. Polio is most infectious between 7 and 10 days before and after the appearance of symptoms, but transmission is possible as long as the virus remains in the saliva or feces.
Factors that increase the risk of polio infection or affect the severity of the disease include immune deficiency, malnutrition, physical activity immediately following the onset of paralysis, skeletal muscle injury due to injection of vaccines or therapeutic agents, and pregnancy. Although the virus can cross the maternal-fetal barrier during pregnancy, the fetus does not appear to be affected by either maternal infection or polio vaccination. Maternal antibodies also cross the placenta, providing passive immunity that protects the infant from polio infection during the first few months of life.
Poliovirus enters the body through the mouth, infecting the first cells with which it comes in contact – the pharynx and intestinal mucosa. It gains entry by binding to an immunoglobulin-like receptor, known as the poliovirus receptor or CD155, on the cell membrane. The virus then hijacks the host cell's own machinery, and begins to replicate. Poliovirus divides within gastrointestinal cells for about a week, from where it spreads to the tonsils (specifically the follicular dendritic cells residing within the tonsilar germinal centers), the intestinal lymphoid tissue including the M cells of Peyer's patches, and the deep cervical and mesenteric lymph nodes, where it multiplies abundantly. The virus is subsequently absorbed into the bloodstream.
Known as viremia, the presence of a virus in the bloodstream enables it to be widely distributed throughout the body. Poliovirus can survive and multiply within the blood and lymphatics for long periods of time, sometimes as long as 17 weeks. In a small percentage of cases, it can spread and replicate in other sites, such as brown fat, the reticuloendothelial tissues, and muscle. This sustained replication causes a major viremia, and leads to the development of minor influenza-like symptoms. Rarely, this may progress and the virus may invade the central nervous system, provoking a local inflammatory response. In most cases, this causes a self-limiting inflammation of the meninges, the layers of tissue surrounding the brain, which is known as nonparalytic aseptic meningitis. Penetration of the CNS provides no known benefit to the virus, and is quite possibly an incidental deviation of a normal gastrointestinal infection. The mechanisms by which poliovirus spreads to the CNS are poorly understood, but it appears to be primarily a chance event – largely independent of the age, gender, or socioeconomic position of the individual.
In around 1 percent of infections, poliovirus spreads along certain nerve fiber pathways, preferentially replicating in and destroying motor neurons within the spinal cord, brain stem, or motor cortex. This leads to the development of paralytic poliomyelitis, the various forms of which (spinal, bulbar, and bulbospinal) vary only with the amount of neuronal damage and inflammation that occurs, and the region of the CNS affected.
The destruction of neuronal cells produces lesions within the spinal ganglia; these may also occur in the reticular formation, vestibular nuclei, cerebellar vermis, and deep cerebellar nuclei. Inflammation associated with nerve cell destruction often alters the color and appearance of the gray matter in the spinal column, causing it to appear reddish and swollen. Other destructive changes associated with paralytic disease occur in the forebrain region, specifically the hypothalamus and thalamus. The molecular mechanisms by which poliovirus causes paralytic disease are poorly understood.
Early symptoms of paralytic polio include high fever, headache, stiffness in the back and neck, asymmetrical weakness of various muscles, sensitivity to touch, difficulty swallowing, muscle pain, loss of superficial and deep reflexes, paresthesia (pins and needles), irritability, constipation, or difficulty urinating. Paralysis generally develops one to ten days after early symptoms begin, progresses for two to three days, and is usually complete by the time the fever breaks.
The likelihood of developing paralytic polio increases with age, as does the extent of paralysis. In children, nonparalytic meningitis is the most likely consequence of CNS involvement, and paralysis occurs in only one in 1000 cases. In adults, paralysis occurs in one in 75 cases. In children under five years of age, paralysis of one leg is most common; in adults, extensive paralysis of the chest and abdomen also affecting all four limbs – quadriplegia – is more likely. Paralysis rates also vary depending on the serotype of the infecting poliovirus; the highest rates of paralysis (one in 200) are associated with poliovirus type 1, the lowest rates (one in 2,000) are associated with type 2.
Spinal polio, the most common form of paralytic poliomyelitis, results from viral invasion of the motor neurons of the anterior horn cells, or the ventral (front) grey matter section in the spinal column, which are responsible for movement of the muscles, including those of the trunk, limbs, and the intercostal muscles. Virus invasion causes inflammation of the nerve cells, leading to damage or destruction of motor neuron ganglia. When spinal neurons die, Wallerian degeneration takes place, leading to weakness of those muscles formerly innervated by the now-dead neurons. With the destruction of nerve cells, the muscles no longer receive signals from the brain or spinal cord; without nerve stimulation, the muscles atrophy, becoming weak, floppy and poorly controlled, and finally completely paralyzed. Maximum paralysis progresses rapidly (two to four days), and usually involves fever and muscle pain. Deep tendon reflexes are also affected, and are typically absent or diminished; sensation (the ability to feel) in the paralyzed limbs, however, is not affected.
The extent of spinal paralysis depends on the region of the cord affected, which may be cervical, thoracic, or lumbar. The virus may affect muscles on both sides of the body, but more often the paralysis is asymmetrical. Any limb or combination of limbs may be affected – one leg, one arm, or both legs and both arms. Paralysis is often more severe proximally (where the limb joins the body) than distally (the fingertips and toes).
Making up about two percent of cases of paralytic polio, bulbar polio occurs when poliovirus invades and destroys nerves within the bulbar region of the brain stem. The bulbar region is a white matter pathway that connects the cerebral cortex to the brain stem. The destruction of these nerves weakens the muscles supplied by the cranial nerves, producing symptoms of encephalitis, and causes difficulty breathing, speaking and swallowing. Critical nerves affected are the glossopharyngeal nerve (which partially controls swallowing and functions in the throat, tongue movement, and taste), the vagus nerve (which sends signals to the heart, intestines, and lungs), and the accessory nerve (which controls upper neck movement). Due to the effect on swallowing, secretions of mucus may build up in the airway, causing suffocation. Other signs and symptoms include facial weakness (caused by destruction of the trigeminal nerve and facial nerve, which innervate the cheeks, tear ducts, gums, and muscles of the face, among other structures), double vision, difficulty in chewing, and abnormal respiratory rate, depth, and rhythm (which may lead to respiratory arrest). Pulmonary edema and shock are also possible and may be fatal.
Approximately 19 percent of all paralytic polio cases have both bulbar and spinal symptoms; this subtype is called respiratory or bulbospinal polio. Here, the virus affects the upper part of the cervical spinal cord (cervical vertebrae C3 through C5), and paralysis of the diaphragm occurs. The critical nerves affected are the phrenic nerve (which drives the diaphragm to inflate the lungs) and those that drive the muscles needed for swallowing. By destroying these nerves, this form of polio affects breathing, making it difficult or impossible for the patient to breathe without the support of a ventilator. It can lead to paralysis of the arms and legs and may also affect swallowing and heart functions.
Paralytic poliomyelitis may be clinically suspected in individuals experiencing acute onset of flaccid paralysis in one or more limbs with decreased or absent tendon reflexes in the affected limbs that cannot be attributed to another apparent cause, and without sensory or cognitive loss.
A laboratory diagnosis is usually made based on recovery of poliovirus from a stool sample or a swab of the pharynx. Antibodies to poliovirus can be diagnostic, and are generally detected in the blood of infected patients early in the course of infection. Analysis of the patient's cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which is collected by a lumbar puncture ("spinal tap"), reveals an increased number of white blood cells (primarily lymphocytes) and a mildly elevated protein level. Detection of virus in the CSF is diagnostic of paralytic polio, but rarely occurs.
If poliovirus is isolated from a patient experiencing acute flaccid paralysis, it is further tested through oligonucleotide mapping (genetic fingerprinting), or more recently by PCR amplification, to determine whether it is "wild type" (that is, the virus encountered in nature) or "vaccine type" (derived from a strain of poliovirus used to produce polio vaccine). It is important to determine the source of the virus because for each reported case of paralytic polio caused by wild poliovirus, an estimated 200 to 3,000 other contagious asymptomatic carriers exist.
In 1950, William Hammon at the University of Pittsburgh purified the gamma globulin component of the blood plasma of polio survivors. Hammon proposed the gamma globulin, which contained antibodies to poliovirus, could be used to halt poliovirus infection, prevent disease, and reduce the severity of disease in other patients who had contracted polio. The results of a large clinical trial were promising; the gamma globulin was shown to be about 80 percent effective in preventing the development of paralytic poliomyelitis. It was also shown to reduce the severity of the disease in patients who developed polio. Due to the limited supply of blood plasma gamma globulin was later deemed impractical for widespread use and the medical community focused on the development of a polio vaccine.
Two types of vaccine are used throughout the world to combat polio. Both types induce immunity to polio, efficiently blocking person-to-person transmission of wild poliovirus, thereby protecting both individual vaccine recipients and the wider community (so-called herd immunity).
The first candidate polio vaccine, based on one serotype of a live but attenuated (weakened) virus, was developed by the virologist Hilary Koprowski. Koprowski's prototype vaccine was given to an eight-year-old boy on 27 February 1950. Koprowski continued to work on the vaccine throughout the 1950s, leading to large-scale trials in the then Belgian Congo and the vaccination of seven million children in Poland against serotypes PV1 and PV3 between 1958 and 1960.
The second inactivated polio virus vaccine was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh, and announced to the world on 12 April 1955. The Salk vaccine, or inactivated poliovirus vaccine, is based on poliovirus grown in a type of monkey kidney tissue culture (vero cell line), which is chemically inactivated with formalin. After two doses of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (given by injection), 90 percent or more of individuals develop protective antibody to all three serotypes of poliovirus, and at least 99 percent are immune to poliovirus following three doses.
Subsequently, Albert Sabin developed another live, oral polio vaccine. It was produced by the repeated passage of the virus through nonhuman cells at subphysiological temperatures. The attenuated poliovirus in the Sabin vaccine replicates very efficiently in the gut, the primary site of wild poliovirus infection and replication, but the vaccine strain is unable to replicate efficiently within nervous system tissue. A single dose of Sabin's oral polio vaccine produces immunity to all three poliovirus serotypes in about 50 percent of recipients. Three doses of live-attenuated oral vaccine produce protective antibody to all three poliovirus types in more than 95 percent of recipients. Human trials of Sabin's vaccine began in 1957, and in 1958 it was selected, in competition with the live vaccines of Koprowski and other researchers, by the US National Institutes of Health. Licensed in 1962, it rapidly became the only polio vaccine used worldwide.
Because the oral polio vaccine is inexpensive, easy to administer, and produces excellent immunity in the intestine (which helps prevent infection with wild virus in areas where it is endemic), it has been the vaccine of choice for controlling poliomyelitis in many countries. On very rare occasions (about one case per 750,000 vaccine recipients), the attenuated virus in the oral polio vaccine reverts into a form that can paralyze. In 2017, cases caused by vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) outnumbered wild poliovirus cases for the first time, due to wild polio cases hitting record lows and relaxed vaccination levels. Most industrialized countries have switched to inactivated polio vaccine, which cannot revert, either as the sole vaccine against poliomyelitis or in combination with oral polio vaccine.
There is no cure for polio. The focus of modern treatment has been on providing relief of symptoms, speeding recovery and preventing complications. Supportive measures include antibiotics to prevent infections in weakened muscles, analgesics for pain, moderate exercise and a nutritious diet. Treatment of polio often requires long-term rehabilitation, including occupational therapy, physical therapy, braces, corrective shoes and, in some cases, orthopedic surgery.
Portable ventilators may be required to support breathing. Historically, a noninvasive, negative-pressure ventilator, more commonly called an iron lung, was used to artificially maintain respiration during an acute polio infection until a person could breathe independently (generally about one to two weeks). Today, many polio survivors with permanent respiratory paralysis use modern jacket-type negative-pressure ventilators worn over the chest and abdomen.
Other historical treatments for polio include hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, massage and passive motion exercises, and surgical treatments, such as tendon lengthening and nerve grafting.
Patients with abortive polio infections recover completely. In those who develop only aseptic meningitis, the symptoms can be expected to persist for two to ten days, followed by complete recovery. In cases of spinal polio, if the affected nerve cells are completely destroyed, paralysis will be permanent; cells that are not destroyed, but lose function temporarily, may recover within four to six weeks after onset. Half the patients with spinal polio recover fully; one-quarter recover with mild disability, and the remaining quarter are left with severe disability. The degree of both acute paralysis and residual paralysis is likely to be proportional to the degree of viremia, and inversely proportional to the degree of immunity. Spinal polio is rarely fatal.
Without respiratory support, consequences of poliomyelitis with respiratory involvement include suffocation or pneumonia from aspiration of secretions. Overall, 5 to 10 percent of patients with paralytic polio die due to the paralysis of muscles used for breathing. The case fatality rate (CFR) varies by age: 2 to 5 percent of children and up to 15 to 30 percent of adults die. Bulbar polio often causes death if respiratory support is not provided; with support, its CFR ranges from 25 to 75 percent, depending on the age of the patient. When intermittent positive pressure ventilation is available, the fatalities can be reduced to 15 percent.
Many cases of poliomyelitis result in only temporary paralysis. Nerve impulses return to the formerly paralyzed muscle within a month, and recovery is usually complete in six to eight months. The neurophysiological processes involved in recovery following acute paralytic poliomyelitis are quite effective; muscles are able to retain normal strength even if half the original motor neurons have been lost. Paralysis remaining after one year is likely to be permanent, although modest recoveries of muscle strength are possible 12 to 18 months after infection.
One mechanism involved in recovery is nerve terminal sprouting, in which remaining brainstem and spinal cord motor neurons develop new branches, or axonal sprouts. These sprouts can reinnervate orphaned muscle fibers that have been denervated by acute polio infection, restoring the fibers' capacity to contract and improving strength. Terminal sprouting may generate a few significantly enlarged motor neurons doing work previously performed by as many as four or five units: a single motor neuron that once controlled 200 muscle cells might control 800 to 1000 cells. Other mechanisms that occur during the rehabilitation phase, and contribute to muscle strength restoration, include myofiber hypertrophy – enlargement of muscle fibers through exercise and activity – and transformation of type II muscle fibers to type I muscle fibers.
In addition to these physiological processes, the body possesses a number of compensatory mechanisms to maintain function in the presence of residual paralysis. These include the use of weaker muscles at a higher than usual intensity relative to the muscle's maximal capacity, enhancing athletic development of previously little-used muscles, and using ligaments for stability, which enables greater mobility.
Residual complications of paralytic polio often occur following the initial recovery process. Muscle paresis and paralysis can sometimes result in skeletal deformities, tightening of the joints, and movement disability. Once the muscles in the limb become flaccid, they may interfere with the function of other muscles. A typical manifestation of this problem is equinus foot (similar to club foot). This deformity develops when the muscles that pull the toes downward are working, but those that pull it upward are not, and the foot naturally tends to drop toward the ground. If the problem is left untreated, the Achilles tendons at the back of the foot retract and the foot cannot take on a normal position. Polio victims that develop equinus foot cannot walk properly because they cannot put their heel on the ground. A similar situation can develop if the arms become paralyzed. In some cases the growth of an affected leg is slowed by polio, while the other leg continues to grow normally. The result is that one leg is shorter than the other and the person limps and leans to one side, in turn leading to deformities of the spine (such as scoliosis). Osteoporosis and increased likelihood of bone fractures may occur. An intervention to prevent or lessen length disparity can be to perform an epiphysiodesis on the distal femoral and proximal tibial/fibular condyles, so that limb's growth is artificially stunted, and by the time of epiphyseal (growth) plate closure, the legs are more equal in length. Alternatively, a person can be fitted with custom made footwear which corrects the difference in leg lengths. Other surgery to re-balance muscular agonist/antagonist imbalances may also be helpful. Extended use of braces or wheelchairs may cause compression neuropathy, as well as a loss of proper function of the veins in the legs, due to pooling of blood in paralyzed lower limbs. Complications from prolonged immobility involving the lungs, kidneys and heart include pulmonary edema, aspiration pneumonia, urinary tract infections, kidney stones, paralytic ileus, myocarditis and cor pulmonale.
Between 25 percent and 50 percent of individuals who have recovered from paralytic polio in childhood can develop additional symptoms decades after recovering from the acute infection, notably new muscle weakness and extreme fatigue. This condition is known as post-polio syndrome (PPS) or post-polio sequelae. The symptoms of PPS are thought to involve a failure of the oversized motor units created during the recovery phase of the paralytic disease. Contributing factors that increase the risk of PPS include aging with loss of neuron units, the presence of a permanent residual impairment after recovery from the acute illness, and both overuse and disuse of neurons. PPS is a slow, progressive disease, and there is no specific treatment for it. Post-polio syndrome is not an infectious process, and persons experiencing the syndrome do not shed poliovirus.
Following the widespread use of poliovirus vaccine in the mid-1950s, new cases of poliomyelitis declined dramatically in many industrialized countries. A global effort to eradicate polio began in 1988, led by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and The Rotary Foundation. These efforts have reduced the number of cases diagnosed each year by 99.9 percent; from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to a low of 483 cases in 2001, after which it remained at a level of about 1,000 – 2000 cases per year for a number of years.
In April 2012, the World Health Assembly declared the completion of polio eradication a programmatic emergency for global public health.
In 2015, polio was believed to remain naturally spreading in only two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, although it continued to cause outbreaks in other nearby countries due to hidden or reestablished transmission.
In 2015, cases decreased to 98 and further decreased in 2016 to 37 wild cases and 5 circulating vaccine-derived cases, but increased in 2018 to 33 wild cases and 103 circulating vaccine-derived cases. Polio is one of only two diseases currently the subject of a global eradication program, the other being Guinea worm disease. So far, the only diseases completely eradicated by humankind are smallpox, declared so in 1980, and rinderpest, likewise in 2011.
A concern is the presence of circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses. The oral polio vaccine is not perfect: while the genetic characteristics are carefully balanced to maximize efficacy and minimize virulence, it is possible for the polio virus in the oral vaccine to mutate. As a result, persons given the oral polio vaccine can acquire acute or chronic infections; or can transmit (circulate) mutated virus to other people. Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus cases have exceeded wild-type cases, making it desirable to discontinue use of the oral polio vaccine as soon as safely possible.
The last remaining region with wild polio cases are the South Asian countries Afghanistan and Pakistan. Both major sides of the Afghan civil war support polio vaccination, but after declining rapidly, polio rates are increasing in Afghanistan, with 19 cases in 2015, 13 in 2016, 14 in 2017, and 21 in 2018 out of a population of about 35 million.
In Pakistan, there were 53 cases in 2015 (out of a population of about 200 million) – the highest number for any country, 20 in 2016, 8 in 2017 and 12 in 2018. Vaccination in Pakistan is hindered by conflict and organizational problems. The militant Pakistani Taliban claims vaccination is a Western plot to sterilise local children. 66 vaccinators were killed in 2013 and 2014. Cases dropped by 97 percent from 2014 to 2018; reasons include 440 million dirham support from the United Arab Emirates to vaccinate more than ten million children, changes in the military situation, and arrests of some of those who attacked polio workers.
The Americas were declared polio-free in 1994. The last known case was a boy in Peru in 1991.
In 2000 polio was declared to have been officially eliminated in 37 Western Pacific countries, including China and Australia.
Despite eradication ten years before, an outbreak was confirmed in China in September 2011 involving a strain common in Pakistan.
Europe was declared polio-free in 2002. On 1 September 2015, WHO confirmed two cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 1 in Ukraine.
The last case of polio in the region was in India (part of the WHO's South-East Asia Region) in January 2011. Since January 2011, there have been no reported cases of the wild polio infections in India, and in February 2012 the country was taken off the WHO list of polio endemic countries. It was reported that if there are no cases of wild polio in the country for two more years, it would be declared as a polio-free country.
On 27 March 2014 the WHO announced the eradication of poliomyelitis in the South-East Asia Region, which includes eleven countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, North Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste. With the addition of this region, 80 per cent of the world population was considered to be living in polio-free regions.
However, in September 2019, the Department of Health of the Philippines declared a polio outbreak in the country after a 3-year-old girl was found with the disease on the 14th.
In December 2019, acute poliomyelitis was confirmed in a 3-month-old infant in Tuaran, a town in Sabah state, Borneo, Malaysia. It was the first confirmed case in Malaysia since 1992, and Malaysia had been declared polio-free in 2000. The child reportedly had a fever and muscle weakness, and although in stable condition, required assistance to breathe. Testing of the virus indicated that it was related to the strain that had appeared in the Philippines. Local officials said the strain originated from a weakened virus used in an oral vaccine that was then excreted in feces and spread into the unvaccinated population through unsanitary conditions. It was reported that 23 of 199 children in the local community had not received the polio vaccine.
In Syria difficulties in executing immunization programs in the ongoing civil war led to a return of polio, probably in 2012, acknowledged by the WHO in 2013. 15 cases were confirmed among children in Syria between October and November 2013 in Deir Ezzor. Later, two more cases, one each in rural Damascus and Aleppo, were identified. It was the first outbreak in Syria since 1999. Doctors and international public health agencies report more than 90 cases of polio in Syria, with fears of contagion in rebel areas from lack of sanitation and safe-water services. In May 2014, the World Health Organization declared polio's renewed spread a world health emergency.
A vaccination campaign in Syria operated literally under fire and led to the deaths of several vaccinators, but returned vaccination coverage to pre-war levels.
Another epidemic of polio was confirmed in 2017 in eastern Syria, probably resulting from a mutated form of the virus spreading through contaminated water.
In 2003 in northern Nigeria – a country which at that time was considered provisionally polio free – a fatwa was issued declaring that the polio vaccine was designed to render children sterile. Subsequently, polio reappeared in Nigeria and spread from there to several other countries. In 2013, nine health workers administering polio vaccine were targeted and killed by gunmen on motorcycles in Kano, but this was the only attack. Local traditional and religious leaders and polio survivors worked to revive the campaign, and Nigeria was removed from the polio-endemic list in September 2015 after more than a year without any cases, only to be restored to the list in 2016 when two cases were detected.
In 2013 the Center for Disease Control received reports of 183 cases of polio in Somalia, 14 in Kenya and 8 cases in the Somali Region of Ethiopia, but Africa had no confirmed cases of wild poliovirus (WPV) since 2016. Cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 continue to appear in several countries.
The effects of polio have been known since prehistory; Egyptian paintings and carvings depict otherwise healthy people with withered limbs, and children walking with canes at a young age. The first clinical description was provided by the English physician Michael Underwood in 1789, where he refers to polio as "a debility of the lower extremities". The work of physicians Jakob Heine in 1840 and Karl Oskar Medin in 1890 led to it being known as "Heine–Medin disease". The disease was later called "infantile paralysis", based on its propensity to affect children.
Before the 20th century, polio infections were rarely seen in infants before six months of age, most cases occurring in children six months to four years of age. Poorer sanitation of the time resulted in a constant exposure to the virus, which enhanced a natural immunity within the population. In developed countries during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, improvements were made in community sanitation, including better sewage disposal and clean water supplies. These changes drastically increased the proportion of children and adults at risk of paralytic polio infection, by reducing childhood exposure and immunity to the disease.
Small localized paralytic polio epidemics began to appear in Europe and the United States around 1900. Outbreaks reached pandemic proportions in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand during the first half of the 20th century. By 1950, the peak age incidence of paralytic poliomyelitis in the United States had shifted from infants to children aged five to nine years, when the risk of paralysis is greater; about one-third of the cases were reported in persons over 15 years of age. Accordingly, the rate of paralysis and death due to polio infection also increased during this time. In the United States, the 1952 polio epidemic became the worst outbreak in the nation's history. Of the nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis. Intensive care medicine has its origin in the fight against polio. Most hospitals in the 1950s had limited access to iron lungs for patients unable to breathe without mechanical assistance. Respiratory centers designed to assist the most severe polio patients, first established in 1952 at the Blegdam Hospital of Copenhagen by Danish anesthesiologist Bjørn Ibsen, were the precursors of modern intensive care units (ICU). (A year later, Ibsen would establish the world's first dedicated ICU.)
The polio epidemics not only altered the lives of those who survived them, but also brought profound cultural changes, spurring grassroots fund-raising campaigns that would revolutionize medical philanthropy, and giving rise to the modern field of rehabilitation therapy. As one of the largest disabled groups in the world, polio survivors also helped to advance the modern disability rights movement through campaigns for the social and civil rights of the disabled. The World Health Organization estimates that there are 10 to 20 million polio survivors worldwide. In 1977 there were 254,000 persons living in the United States who had been paralyzed by polio. According to doctors and local polio support groups, some 40,000 polio survivors with varying degrees of paralysis live in Germany, 30,000 in Japan, 24,000 in France, 16,000 in Australia, 12,000 in Canada and 12,000 in the United Kingdom. Many notable individuals have survived polio and often credit the prolonged immobility and residual paralysis associated with polio as a driving force in their lives and careers.
The disease was very well publicized during the polio epidemics of the 1950s, with extensive media coverage of any scientific advancements that might lead to a cure. Thus, the scientists working on polio became some of the most famous of the century. Fifteen scientists and two laymen who made important contributions to the knowledge and treatment of poliomyelitis are honored by the Polio Hall of Fame, which was dedicated in 1957 at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation in Warm Springs, Georgia, US. In 2008 four organizations (Rotary International, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and UNICEF) were added to the Hall of Fame.
World Polio Day (24 October) was established by Rotary International to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop a vaccine against poliomyelitis. Use of this inactivated poliovirus vaccine and subsequent widespread use of the oral poliovirus vaccine developed by Albert Sabin led to establishment of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) in 1988. Since then, GPEI has reduced polio worldwide by 99 percent.
The term derives from the Ancient Greek (), meaning "grey", ( "marrow"), referring to the grey matter of the spinal cord, and the suffix "-itis", which denotes inflammation, i.e., inflammation of the spinal cord's grey matter, although a severe infection can extend into the brainstem and even higher structures, resulting in polio"encephal"itis, resulting in inability to breathe, requiring mechanical assistance such as an iron lung.
The Poliovirus Antivirals Initiative was launched in 2007 with the aim of developing antiviral medications for polio, but while several promising candidates were identified, none have progressed beyond Phase II clinical trials. Pocapavir (a capsid inhibitor) and V-7404 (a protease inhibitor) may speed up viral clearance and are being studied for this purpose. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25107 |
Public limited company
A public limited company (legally abbreviated to PLC) is a type of public company under United Kingdom company law, some Commonwealth jurisdictions, and the Republic of Ireland. It is a limited liability company whose shares may be freely sold and traded to the public (although a PLC may also be privately held, often by another PLC), with a minimum share capital of £50,000 and usually with the letters PLC after its name. Similar companies in the United States are called "publicly traded companies". Public limited companies will also have a separate legal identity.
A PLC can be either an unlisted or listed company on the stock exchanges. In the United Kingdom, a public limited company usually must include the words "public limited company" or the abbreviation "PLC" or "plc" at the end and as part of the legal company name. Welsh companies may instead choose to end their names with , an abbreviation for "". However, some public limited companies (mostly nationalised concerns) incorporated under special legislation are exempted from bearing any of the identifying suffixes.
The term "public limited company" and the "PLC"/"plc" suffix were introduced in 1981; prior to this, all limited companies bore the suffix "Limited" ("Ltd."), which is still used by private limited companies.
When a new company incorporates in England and Wales or in Scotland, it must register with Companies House, an executive agency of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Prior to October 2009 companies in Northern Ireland were registered with the Northern Ireland Executive's Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, but since then Northern company registrations are handled by Companies House along with the rest of the United Kingdom.
Formation of a public limited company requires a minimum of two directors and one secretary (differing from country to country: in India three directors are required). In general terms anyone can be a company director, provided they are not disqualified on one of the following grounds:
The members must agree to take some, or all, of the shares when the company is registered. The memorandum of association must show the names of the people who have agreed to take shares and the number of shares each will take. These people are called the subscribers.
There is a minimum share capital for public limited companies: Before it can start business, it must have allotted shares to the value of at least £50,000. A quarter of them, £12,500, must be paid up. Each allotted share must be paid up to at least one quarter of its nominal value together with the whole of any premium.
A company can increase its authorised share capital by passing an ordinary resolution (unless its articles of association require a special or extraordinary resolution). A copy of the resolution – and notice of the increase on Form 123 – must reach Companies House within 15 days of being passed. No fee is payable to Companies House.
A company can decrease its authorised share capital by passing an ordinary resolution to cancel shares which have not been taken or agreed to be taken by any person. Notice of the cancellation, on Form 122, must reach Companies House within one month. No fee is payable to Companies House.
A company may have as many different types of shares as it wishes, all with different conditions attached to them. Generally share types are divided into the following categories:
Bearer shares are no longer possible, as they were abolished in the UK by the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015. Any existing bearer shares had to be converted to registered shares before February 2016, or face cancellation.
A PLC has access to capital markets and can offer its shares for sale to the public through a recognised stock exchange. It can also issue advertisements offering any of its securities for sale to the public. In contrast, a private company may not offer to the public any shares in itself.
The following documents, together with the registration fee are sent to the Registrar of Companies:
The key difference with the paper process is that there is no Form 12 and requirement for a statutory declaration. This significantly speeds the process and Companies House's record for an Electronic Company formation is 23 minutes.
Because the electronic process requires compatible software that works with Companies House eFiling service, companies are usually formed through a Company Formation Agent.
Every company must deliver an annual return to Companies House at least once every twelve months. It has 28 days from the date to which the return is made up to do this. Failure to file a return is a criminal offence, for which the officers of the company may be fined.
There is an annual document-processing fee of £40 if filed by paper (or £13 for users of the Electronic Filing or WebFilings services), which must be sent to Companies House with the annual return.
Both a private company limited by shares and an unlimited company with a share capital may re-register as a plc, but a company without a share capital cannot do so.
A private company must pass a special resolution that it be so re-registered and deliver a copy of the resolution together with an application form to the Registrar. The resolution must also:
If it does not already have sufficient share capital, the company must issue £50,000 in shares a minimum of 25% part paid. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25109 |
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, officially Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility (PSNS & IMF), is a United States Navy shipyard covering 179 acres (0.7 km²) on Puget Sound at Bremerton, Washington in uninterrupted use since its establishment in 1891; it has also been known as Navy Yard Puget Sound and Bremerton Navy Yard.
It is bordered on the south by Sinclair Inlet, on the west by the Bremerton Annex of Naval Base Kitsap, and on the north and east by the city of Bremerton, Washington. It is the Pacific Northwest's largest naval shore facility and one of Washington state's largest industrial installations. PSNS & IMF provides the Navy with maintenance, modernization, and technical and logistics support, and employs 14,000 people.
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard was established in 1891 as a Naval Station and was designated Navy Yard Puget Sound in 1901. During World War I, the Navy Yard constructed ships, including 25 subchasers, seven submarines, two minesweepers, seven seagoing tugs, and two ammunition ships, as well as 1,700 small boats. During World War II, the shipyard's primary effort was the repair of battle damage to ships of the U.S. fleet and those of its allies.
Following World War II, Navy Yard Puget Sound was designated Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. It engaged in an extensive program of modernizing carriers, including converting conventional flight decks to angle decks. During the Korean War, the shipyard was engaged in the activation of ships. In the late 1950s, it entered an era of new construction with the building of a new class of guided missile frigates. In 1965, USS "Sculpin" (SSN 590) became the first nuclear-powered submarine to be maintained at PSNS. The shipyard was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1992. The historic district includes 22 contributing buildings and 42 contributing structures, as well as 49 non-contributing buildings, structures, and objects.
Perhaps the most visible feature of the shipyard is its huge green hammerhead crane, built in 1933. The PSNS hammerhead crane is tall and wide with a lifting capacity of 250 tons.
The Puget Sound Naval Shipyard contains five historic districts:
These five units are a comprehensive representation of the historic features of the naval shipyard.
In 1990 the Navy authorized the Ship-Submarine Recycling Program (SRP) to recycle nuclear-powered ships at PSNS. Approximately 25% of the shipyard's workload involves inactivation, reactor compartment disposal, and recycling of ships. It has pioneered an environmentally safe method of deactivating and recycling nuclear-powered ships. This process places the U.S. Navy in the role of being the world's only organization to design, build, operate, and recycle nuclear-powered ships. On 15 May 2003 PSNS and IMF were consolidated into what is now known as PSNS & IMF.
PSNS is the only U.S. facility certified to recycle nuclear ships. During all this period Puget Sound Naval Shipyard has scrapped more than 125 submarines and some cruisers.
The shipyard contains a portion of the United States Navy reserve fleet, a large collection of inactive U.S. Navy vessels, including the aircraft carrier . "Kitty Hawk" is mothballed, meaning that she is stored in case she is needed by the Navy in the future.
Gorst Creek Ravine near Port Orchard, Washington was a hazardous waste dump for the Navy's shipyard waste between 1969 and 1970, when the site was not permitted by local authorities to take waste. After several collapses since 1997 the landfill could blow out Highway 3. The landfill is an "ongoing source of pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls and metals flowing downstream with the potential to affect groundwater wells, sport fisheries and the Suquamish Tribe's fish hatchery. In October 2014, the US EPA ordered the Navy to fix the problems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25117 |
Poeciliidae
The Poeciliidae are a family of freshwater fishes of the order Cyprinodontiformes, the tooth-carps, and include well-known live-bearing aquarium fish, such as the guppy, molly, platy, and swordtail. The original distribution of the family was the southeastern United States to north of Río de la Plata, Argentina, and Africa, including Madagascar. However, due to release of aquarium specimens and the widespread use of species of the genera "Poecilia" and "Gambusia" for mosquito control, poeciliids can today be found in all tropical and subtropical areas of the world. In addition, "Poecilia" and "Gambusia" specimens have been identified in hot springs pools as far north as Banff, Alberta.
Although the whole family Poeciliidae is known as "live bearers" (viviparous), some species are egg-scattering with external fertilization. All African species are egg-layers, and (with the exception of the members of the genus "Tomeurus") all American species are live-bearers. Among the three subfamilies, Aplocheilichthyinae is restricted to Africa, Poeciliinae is primarily from the Americas (the only exception is the African "Rhexipanchax"), and Procatopodinae is mainly from Africa (the South American "Fluviphylax" and "Pseudopoecilia" are the only exceptions). This distribution suggests that the Poeciliidae predate the split between Africa and South America 100 million years ago, and that live-bearing subsequently evolved in South America. Poeciliids colonized North America through the Antilles while they were connected 44 million years ago. Poeciliids then moved to Central America by the Aves land bridge on the Caribbean Plate. When South America connected to Central America three million years ago, some further dispersal southward occurred, but South American species did not move into Central America.
Among the live-bearing species, differences in the mode and degree of support the female gives the developing larvae occur. Many members of the family Poeciliidae are considered to be lecithotrophic (the mother provisions the oocyte with all the resources it needs prior to fertilization, so the egg is independent of the mother), but others are matrotrophic (literally "mother feeding": the mother provides the majority of resources to the developing offspring after fertilization).
Members of the genus "Poeciliopsis", for example, show variable reproductive life history adaptations. "Poeciliopsis monacha", "P. lucida", and "P. prolifica" form part of the same clade within that genus. However, their modes of maternal provisioning vary greatly. "P. monacha" can be considered to be lecithotrophic because it does not really provide any resources for its offspring after fertilization - the pregnant female is basically a swimming egg sac. "P. lucida" shows an intermediate level of matrotrophy, meaning that to a certain extent the offspring's metabolism can actually affect the mother's metabolism, allowing for increased nutrient exchange. "P. prolifica" is considered to be highly matrotrophic, and almost all of the nutrients and materials needed for fetal development are supplied to the oocyte after it has been fertilized. This level of matrotrophy allows "Poeciliopsis" to carry several broods at different stages of development, a phenomenon known as superfetation. Because the space for developing embryos is limited, viviparity reduces brood size. Superfetation can compensate for this loss by keeping embryos at various stages and sizes during development.
"P. elongata", "P. turneri" and "P. presidionis" form another clade which could be considered an outgroup to the "P. monacha", "P.lucida", and "P. prolifica" clade. These three species are very highly matrotrophic - so much so that in 1947, C. L. Turner described the follicular cells of "P. turneri" as "pseudo-placenta, pseudo-chorion, and pseudo-allantois".
The family is divided into subfamilies and tribes as follows: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25119 |
Polar coordinate system
In mathematics, the polar coordinate system is a two-dimensional coordinate system in which each point on a plane is determined by a distance from a reference point and an angle from a reference direction. The reference point (analogous to the origin of a Cartesian coordinate system) is called the "pole", and the ray from the pole in the reference direction is the "polar axis". The distance from the pole is called the "radial coordinate", "radial distance" or simply "radius", and the angle is called the "angular coordinate", "polar angle", or "azimuth". The radial coordinate is often denoted by "r" or "ρ", and the angular coordinate by "φ", "θ", or "t". Angles in polar notation are generally expressed in either degrees or radians (2 rad being equal to 360°).
Grégoire de Saint-Vincent and Bonaventura Cavalieri independently introduced the concepts in the mid-seventeenth century, though the actual term "polar coordinates" has been attributed to Gregorio Fontana in the 18th-century. The initial motivation for the introduction of the polar system was the study of circular and orbital motion.
Polar coordinates are most appropriate in any context where the phenomenon being considered is inherently tied to direction and length from a center point in a plane, such as spirals. Planar physical systems with bodies moving around a central point, or phenomena originating from a central point, are often simpler and more intuitive to model using polar coordinates.
The polar coordinate system is extended to three dimensions in two ways: the cylindrical and spherical coordinate systems.
The concepts of angle and radius were already used by ancient peoples of the first millennium BC. The Greek astronomer and astrologer Hipparchus (190–120 BC) created a table of chord functions giving the length of the chord for each angle, and there are references to his using polar coordinates in establishing stellar positions.
In "On Spirals", Archimedes describes the Archimedean spiral, a function whose radius depends on the angle. The Greek work, however, did not extend to a full coordinate system.
From the 8th century AD onward, astronomers developed methods for approximating and calculating the direction to Mecca (qibla)—and its distance—from any location on the Earth. From the 9th century onward they were using spherical trigonometry and map projection methods to determine these quantities accurately. The calculation is essentially the conversion of the equatorial polar coordinates of Mecca (i.e. its longitude and latitude) to its polar coordinates (i.e. its qibla and distance) relative to a system whose reference meridian is the great circle through the given location and the Earth's poles, and whose polar axis is the line through the location and its antipodal point.
There are various accounts of the introduction of polar coordinates as part of a formal coordinate system. The full history of the subject is described in Harvard professor Julian Lowell Coolidge's "Origin of Polar Coordinates." Grégoire de Saint-Vincent and Bonaventura Cavalieri independently introduced the concepts in the mid-seventeenth century. Saint-Vincent wrote about them privately in 1625 and published his work in 1647, while Cavalieri published his in 1635 with a corrected version appearing in 1653. Cavalieri first used polar coordinates to solve a problem relating to the area within an Archimedean spiral. Blaise Pascal subsequently used polar coordinates to calculate the length of parabolic arcs.
In "Method of Fluxions" (written 1671, published 1736), Sir Isaac Newton examined the transformations between polar coordinates, which he referred to as the "Seventh Manner; For Spirals", and nine other coordinate systems. In the journal "Acta Eruditorum" (1691), Jacob Bernoulli used a system with a point on a line, called the "pole" and "polar axis" respectively. Coordinates were specified by the distance from the pole and the angle from the "polar axis". Bernoulli's work extended to finding the radius of curvature of curves expressed in these coordinates.
The actual term "polar coordinates" has been attributed to Gregorio Fontana and was used by 18th-century Italian writers. The term appeared in English in George Peacock's 1816 translation of Lacroix's "Differential and Integral Calculus". Alexis Clairaut was the first to think of polar coordinates in three dimensions, and Leonhard Euler was the first to actually develop them.
The radial coordinate is often denoted by "r" or "ρ", and the angular coordinate by "φ", "θ", or "t". The angular coordinate is specified as "φ" by ISO standard 31-11. However, in mathematical literature the angle is often denoted by θ instead of "φ".
Angles in polar notation are generally expressed in either degrees or radians (2 rad being equal to 360°). Degrees are traditionally used in navigation, surveying, and many applied disciplines, while radians are more common in mathematics and mathematical physics.
The angle "φ" is defined to start at 0° from a "reference direction", and to increase for rotations in either counterclockwise (ccw) or clockwise (cw) orientation. In mathematics, e.g., the reference direction is usually drawn as a ray from the pole horizontally to the right, and the polar angle increases to positive angles for ccw rotations, whereas in navigation (bearing, heading) the 0°-heading is drawn vertically upwards and the angle increases for cw rotations. The polar angles decrease towards negative values for rotations in the respectively opposite orientations.
Adding any number of full turns (360°) to the angular coordinate does not change the corresponding direction. Similarly, any polar coordinate is identical to the coordinate with the negative radial component and the opposite direction (adding 180° to the polar angle). Therefore, the same point ("r", "φ") can be expressed with an infinite number of different polar coordinates and , where "n" is an arbitrary integer. Moreover, the pole itself can be expressed as (0, "φ") for any angle "φ".
Where a unique representation is needed for any point besides the pole, it is usual to limit "r" to positive numbers () and "φ" to the interval [0, 360°) or (−180°, 180°] (in radians, [0, 2) or (−, ]). Another convention, in reverence to the usual codomain of the arctan-function, is to allow for arbitrary nonzero real values of the radial component and restrict the polar angle to . In all cases a unique azimuth for the pole ("r" = 0) must be chosen, e.g., "φ" = 0.
The polar coordinates "r" and "φ" can be converted to the Cartesian coordinates "x" and "y" by using the trigonometric functions sine and cosine:
The Cartesian coordinates "x" and "y" can be converted to polar coordinates "r" and "φ" with "r" ≥ 0 and "φ" in the interval (−, ] by:
where atan2 is a common variation on the arctangent function defined as
If "r" is calculated first as above, then this formula for φ may be stated a little more simply using the standard arccosine function:
The value of "φ" above is the principal value of the complex number function arg applied to "x" + "iy". An angle in the range [0, 2) may be obtained by adding 2 to the value in case it is negative (in other words when "y" is negative).
The equation defining an algebraic curve expressed in polar coordinates is known as a "polar equation". In many cases, such an equation can simply be specified by defining "r" as a function of "φ". The resulting curve then consists of points of the form ("r"("φ"), "φ") and can be regarded as the graph of the polar function "r". Note that, in contrast to Cartesian coordinates, the independent variable "φ" is the "second" entry in the ordered pair.
Different forms of symmetry can be deduced from the equation of a polar function "r". If the curve will be symmetrical about the horizontal (0°/180°) ray, if it will be symmetric about the vertical (90°/270°) ray, and if it will be rotationally symmetric by α clockwise and counterclockwise about the pole.
Because of the circular nature of the polar coordinate system, many curves can be described by a rather simple polar equation, whereas their Cartesian form is much more intricate. Among the best known of these curves are the polar rose, Archimedean spiral, lemniscate, limaçon, and cardioid.
For the circle, line, and polar rose below, it is understood that there are no restrictions on the domain and range of the curve.
The general equation for a circle with a center at and radius "a" is
This can be simplified in various ways, to conform to more specific cases, such as the equation
for a circle with a center at the pole and radius "a".
When 0 = , or when the origin lies on the circle, the equation becomes
In the general case, the equation can be solved for , giving
the solution with a minus sign in front of the square root gives the same curve.
"Radial" lines (those running through the pole) are represented by the equation
where γ is the angle of elevation of the line; that is, , where "m" is the slope of the line in the Cartesian coordinate system. The non-radial line that crosses the radial line perpendicularly at the point ("r0", γ) has the equation
Otherwise stated ("r0", γ) is the point in which the tangent intersects the imaginary circle of radius "r"0.
A polar rose is a mathematical curve that looks like a petaled flower, and that can be expressed as a simple polar equation,
for any constant γ0 (including 0). If "k" is an integer, these equations will produce a "k"-petaled rose if "k" is odd, or a 2"k"-petaled rose if "k" is even. If "k" is rational but not an integer, a rose-like shape may form but with overlapping petals. Note that these equations never define a rose with 2, 6, 10, 14, etc. petals. The variable "a" directly represents the length or amplitude of the petals of the rose, while "k" relates to their spatial frequency. The constant γ0 can be regarded as a phase angle.
The Archimedean spiral is a spiral that was discovered by Archimedes, which can also be expressed as a simple polar equation. It is represented by the equation
Changing the parameter "a" will turn the spiral, while "b" controls the distance between the arms, which for a given spiral is always constant. The Archimedean spiral has two arms, one for and one for . The two arms are smoothly connected at the pole. Taking the mirror image of one arm across the 90°/270° line will yield the other arm. This curve is notable as one of the first curves, after the conic sections, to be described in a mathematical treatise, and as being a prime example of a curve that is best defined by a polar equation.
A conic section with one focus on the pole and the other somewhere on the 0° ray (so that the conic's major axis lies along the polar axis) is given by:
where "e" is the eccentricity and formula_15 is the semi-latus rectum (the perpendicular distance at a focus from the major axis to the curve). If , this equation defines a hyperbola; if , it defines a parabola; and if , it defines an ellipse. The special case of the latter results in a circle of the radius formula_15.
The graphs of two polar functions formula_17 and formula_18 have possible intersections of three types:
Every complex number can be represented as a point in the complex plane, and can therefore be expressed by specifying either the point's Cartesian coordinates (called rectangular or Cartesian form) or the point's polar coordinates (called polar form). The complex number "z" can be represented in rectangular form as
where "i" is the imaginary unit, or can alternatively be written in polar form (via the conversion formulae given above) as
and from there as
where "e" is Euler's number, which are equivalent as shown by Euler's formula. (Note that this formula, like all those involving exponentials of angles, assumes that the angle "φ" is expressed in radians.) To convert between the rectangular and polar forms of a complex number, the conversion formulae given above can be used.
For the operations of multiplication, division, and exponentiation of complex numbers, it is generally much simpler to work with complex numbers expressed in polar form rather than rectangular form. From the laws of exponentiation:
Calculus can be applied to equations expressed in polar coordinates.
The angular coordinate "φ" is expressed in radians throughout this section, which is the conventional choice when doing calculus.
Using and , one can derive a relationship between derivatives in Cartesian and polar coordinates. For a given function, "u"("x","y"), it follows that (by computing its total derivatives)
or
Hence, we have the following formulae:
Using the inverse coordinates transformation, an analogous reciprocal relationship can be derived between the derivatives. Given a function "u"("r","φ"), it follows that
or
Hence, we have the following formulae:
To find the Cartesian slope of the tangent line to a polar curve "r"("φ") at any given point, the curve is first expressed as a system of parametric equations.
Differentiating both equations with respect to "φ" yields
Dividing the second equation by the first yields the Cartesian slope of the tangent line to the curve at the point :
For other useful formulas including divergence, gradient, and Laplacian in polar coordinates, see curvilinear coordinates.
The arc length (length of a line segment) defined by a polar function is found by the integration over the curve "r"("φ"). Let "L" denote this length along the curve starting from points "A" through to point "B", where these points correspond to "φ" = "a" and "φ" = "b" such that . The length of "L" is given by the following integral
Let "R" denote the region enclosed by a curve "r"("φ") and the rays "φ" = "a" and "φ" = "b", where . Then, the area of "R" is
This result can be found as follows. First, the interval is divided into "n" subintervals, where "n" is an arbitrary positive integer. Thus Δ"φ", the angle measure of each subinterval, is equal to (the total angle measure of the interval), divided by "n", the number of subintervals. For each subinterval "i" = 1, 2, ..., "n", let "φ""i" be the midpoint of the subinterval, and construct a sector with the center at the pole, radius "r"("φ""i"), central angle Δ"φ" and arc length "r"("φ""i")Δ"φ". The area of each constructed sector is therefore equal to
Hence, the total area of all of the sectors is
As the number of subintervals "n" is increased, the approximation of the area continues to improve. In the limit as , the sum becomes the Riemann sum for the above integral.
A mechanical device that computes area integrals is the planimeter, which measures the area of plane figures by tracing them out: this replicates integration in polar coordinates by adding a joint so that the 2-element linkage effects Green's theorem, converting the quadratic polar integral to a linear integral.
Using Cartesian coordinates, an infinitesimal area element can be calculated as "dA" = "dx" "dy". The substitution rule for multiple integrals states that, when using other coordinates, the Jacobian determinant of the coordinate conversion formula has to be considered:
Hence, an area element in polar coordinates can be written as
Now, a function, that is given in polar coordinates, can be integrated as follows:
Here, "R" is the same region as above, namely, the region enclosed by a curve "r"("ϕ") and the rays "φ" = "a" and "φ" = "b". The formula for the area of "R" mentioned above is retrieved by taking "f" identically equal to 1.
A more surprising application of this result yields the Gaussian integral, here denoted "K":
Vector calculus can also be applied to polar coordinates. For a planar motion, let formula_52 be the position vector , with "r" and "φ" depending on time "t".
We define the unit vectors
in the direction of formula_52 and
in the plane of the motion perpendicular to the radial direction, where formula_56 is a unit vector normal to the plane of the motion.
Then
The term formula_58 is sometimes referred to as the "centripetal acceleration", and the term formula_59 as the "Coriolis acceleration". For example, see Shankar.
Note: these terms, that appear when acceleration is expressed in polar coordinates, are a mathematical consequence of differentiation; they appear whenever polar coordinates are used. In planar particle dynamics these accelerations appear when setting up Newton's second law of motion in a rotating frame of reference. Here these extra terms are often called fictitious forces; fictitious because they are simply a result of a change in coordinate frame. That does not mean they do not exist, rather they exist only in the rotating frame.
For a particle in planar motion, one approach to attaching physical significance to these terms is based on the concept of an instantaneous "co-rotating frame of reference". To define a co-rotating frame, first an origin is selected from which the distance "r"("t") to the particle is defined. An axis of rotation is set up that is perpendicular to the plane of motion of the particle, and passing through this origin. Then, at the selected moment "t", the rate of rotation of the co-rotating frame Ω is made to match the rate of rotation of the particle about this axis, "dφ"/"dt". Next, the terms in the acceleration in the inertial frame are related to those in the co-rotating frame. Let the location of the particle in the inertial frame be ("r("t"), "φ"("t")), and in the co-rotating frame be ("r(t), "φ"′(t)"). Because the co-rotating frame rotates at the same rate as the particle, "dφ"′/"dt" = 0. The fictitious centrifugal force in the co-rotating frame is "mrΩ2, radially outward. The velocity of the particle in the co-rotating frame also is radially outward, because "dφ"′/"dt" = 0. The "fictitious Coriolis force" therefore has a value −2"m"("dr"/"dt")Ω, pointed in the direction of increasing "φ" only. Thus, using these forces in Newton's second law we find:
where over dots represent time differentiations, and F is the net real force (as opposed to the fictitious forces). In terms of components, this vector equation becomes:
which can be compared to the equations for the inertial frame:
This comparison, plus the recognition that by the definition of the co-rotating frame at time "t" it has a rate of rotation Ω = "dφ"/"dt", shows that we can interpret the terms in the acceleration (multiplied by the mass of the particle) as found in the inertial frame as the negative of the centrifugal and Coriolis forces that would be seen in the instantaneous, non-inertial co-rotating frame.
For general motion of a particle (as opposed to simple circular motion), the centrifugal and Coriolis forces in a particle's frame of reference commonly are referred to the instantaneous osculating circle of its motion, not to a fixed center of polar coordinates. For more detail, see centripetal force.
In the modern terminology of differential geometry, polar coordinates provide coordinate charts for the differentiable manifold ℝ2 \ {(0,0)}, the plane minus the origin. In these coordinates, the Euclidean metric tensor is given byformula_63This can be seen via the change of variables formula for the metric tensor, or by computing the differential forms "dx", "dy" via the exterior derivative of the 0-forms "x = r cos(θ), y = r sin(θ)" and substituting them in the Euclidean metric tensor "ds2 = dx2 + dy2". An orthonormal frame with respect to this metric is given byformula_64with dual coframeformula_65The connection form relative to this frame and the Levi-Civita connection is given by the skew-symmetric matrix of 1-formsformula_66and hence the curvature form Ω = dω + ω∧ω vanishes identically. Therefore, as expected, the punctured plane is a flat manifold.
The polar coordinate system is extended into three dimensions with two different coordinate systems, the cylindrical and spherical coordinate system.
Polar coordinates are two-dimensional and thus they can be used only where point positions lie on a single two-dimensional plane. They are most appropriate in any context where the phenomenon being considered is inherently tied to direction and length from a center point. For instance, the examples above show how elementary polar equations suffice to define curves—such as the Archimedean spiral—whose equation in the Cartesian coordinate system would be much more intricate. Moreover, many physical systems—such as those concerned with bodies moving around a central point or with phenomena originating from a central point—are simpler and more intuitive to model using polar coordinates. The initial motivation for the introduction of the polar system was the study of circular and orbital motion.
Polar coordinates are used often in navigation as the destination or direction of travel can be given as an angle and distance from the object being considered. For instance, aircraft use a slightly modified version of the polar coordinates for navigation. In this system, the one generally used for any sort of navigation, the 0° ray is generally called heading 360, and the angles continue in a clockwise direction, rather than counterclockwise, as in the mathematical system. Heading 360 corresponds to magnetic north, while headings 90, 180, and 270 correspond to magnetic east, south, and west, respectively. Thus, an aircraft traveling 5 nautical miles due east will be traveling 5 units at heading 90 (read zero-niner-zero by air traffic control).
Systems displaying radial symmetry provide natural settings for the polar coordinate system, with the central point acting as the pole. A prime example of this usage is the groundwater flow equation when applied to radially symmetric wells. Systems with a radial force are also good candidates for the use of the polar coordinate system. These systems include gravitational fields, which obey the inverse-square law, as well as systems with point sources, such as radio antennas.
Radially asymmetric systems may also be modeled with polar coordinates. For example, a microphone's pickup pattern illustrates its proportional response to an incoming sound from a given direction, and these patterns can be represented as polar curves. The curve for a standard cardioid microphone, the most common unidirectional microphone, can be represented as at its target design frequency. The pattern shifts toward omnidirectionality at lower frequencies.
Specific
General | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25120 |
Polymath
A polymath (, "", "having learned much"; Latin: "homo universalis", "universal man") is an individual whose knowledge spans a significant number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. The earliest recorded use of the term in English is from 1624, in the second edition of "The Anatomy of Melancholy" by Robert Burton; the form "polymathist" is slightly older, first appearing in the "Diatribae upon the first part of the late History of Tithes" of Richard Montagu in 1621. Use in English of the similar term "polyhistor" dates from the late sixteenth century.
In Western Europe, the first work to use polymathy in its title ("De Polymathia tractatio: integri operis de studiis veterum") was published in 1603 by Johann von Wowern, a Hamburg philosopher. Von Wowern defined polymathy as "knowledge of various matters, drawn from all kinds of studies [...] ranging freely through all the fields of the disciplines, as far as the human mind, with unwearied industry, is able to pursue them". Von Wowern lists erudition, literature, philology, philomathy and polyhistory as synonyms.
Polymaths include the great scholars and thinkers of the Islamic Golden Age, the period of Renaissance and the Enlightenment, who excelled at several fields in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and the arts. In the Italian Renaissance, the idea of the polymath was expressed by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) in the statement that "a man can do all things if he will".
Embodying a basic tenet of Renaissance humanism that humans are limitless in their capacity for development, the concept led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible. This is expressed in the term Renaissance man, often applied to the gifted people of that age who sought to develop their abilities in all areas of accomplishment: intellectual, artistic, social, physical, and spiritual.
"Renaissance man" was first recorded in written English in the early 20th century. It is now used to refer to great thinkers living before, during, or after the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". Many notable polymaths lived during the Renaissance period, a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th through to the 17th century that began in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spread to the rest of Europe. These polymaths had a rounded approach to education that reflected the ideals of the humanists of the time. A gentleman or courtier of that era was expected to speak several languages, play a musical instrument, write poetry and so on, thus fulfilling the Renaissance ideal.
The idea of a universal education was essential to achieving polymath ability, hence the word university was used to describe a seat of learning. At this time, universities did not specialize in specific areas, but rather trained students in a broad array of science, philosophy and theology. This universal education gave them a grounding from which they could continue into apprenticeship toward becoming a master of a specific field.
When someone is called a "Renaissance man" today, it is meant that rather than simply having broad interests or superficial knowledge in several fields, the individual possesses a more profound knowledge and a proficiency, or even an expertise, in at least some of those fields.
Some dictionaries use the term "Renaissance man" to describe someone with many interests or talents, while others give a meaning restricted to the Renaissance and more closely related to Renaissance ideals.
Robert Root-Bernstein is considered the principal responsible for rekindling the interest on polymathy in the scientific community. He is a professor of physiology at Michigan State University and has been awarded the MacArthur Fellowship. He and colleagues, especially Michèle Root-Bernstein, authored many important works spearheading the modern field of polymathy studies.
Root-Bernstein's works emphasize the contrast between the polymath and two other types: the specialist and the dilettante. The specialist demonstrates depth but lacks breadth of knowledge. The dilettante demonstrates superficial breadth but tend to acquire skills merely "for their own sake without regard to understanding the broader applications or implications and without integrating it" (R. Root-Bernstein, 2009, p. 857). Conversely, the polymath is a person with a level of expertise that is able to "put a significant amount of time and effort into their avocations and find ways to use their multiple interests to inform their vocations" (R. Root-Bernstein, 2009, p. 857).
A key point in the work of Root-Bernstein and colleagues is the argument in favor of the universality of the creative process. That is, although creative products, such as a painting, a mathematical model or a poem, can be domain-specific, at the level of the creative process, the mental tools that lead to the generation of creative ideas are the same, be it in the arts or science. These mental tools are sometimes called intuitive tools of thinking. It is therefore not surprising that many of the most innovative scientists have serious hobbies or interests in artistic activities, and that some of the most innovative artists have an interest or hobbies in the sciences.
Root-Bernstein and colleagues' research is an important counterpoint to the claim by some psychologists that creativity is a domain-specific phenomenon. Through their research, Root-Bernstein and colleagues conclude that there are certain comprehensive thinking skills and tools that cross the barrier of different domains and can foster creative thinking: "[creativity researchers] who discuss integrating ideas from diverse fields as the basis of creative giftedness ask not 'who is creative?' but 'what is the basis of creative thinking?' From the polymathy perspective, giftedness is the ability to combine disparate (or even apparently contradictory) ideas, sets of problems, skills, talents, and knowledge in novel and useful ways. Polymathy is therefore the main source of any individual's creative potential" (R. Root-Bernstein, 2009, p. 854). In "Life Stages of Creativity", Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein suggest six typologies of creative life stages. These typologies based on real creative production records first published by Root-Bernstein, Bernstein, and Garnier (1993).
Finally, his studies suggest that understanding polymathy and learning from polymathic exemplars can help structure a new model of education that better promotes creativity and innovation: "we must focus education on principles, methods, and skills that will serve them [students] in learning and creating across many disciplines, multiple careers, and succeeding life stages" (R. Root-Bernstein & M. Root-Bernstein, 2017, p. 161).
Peter Burke, Professor Emeritus of Cultural History and Fellow of Emmanuel College at Cambridge, discussed the theme of polymathy in some of his works. He has presented a comprehensive historical overview of the ascension and decline of the polymath as, what he calls, an "intellectual species" (see Burke, 2012; 2010).
He observes that in ancient and medieval times, scholars did not have to specialize. However, from the 17th century on, the rapid rise of new knowledge in the Western world—both from the systematic investigation of the natural world and from the flow of information coming from other parts of the world—was making it increasingly difficult for individual scholars to master as many disciplines as before. Thus, an intellectual retreat of the polymath species occurred: "from knowledge in every [academic] field to knowledge in several fields, and from making original contributions in many fields to a more passive consumption of what has been contributed by others" (Burke, 2010, p. 72).
Given this change in the intellectual climate, it has since then been more common to find "passive polymaths", who consume knowledge in various domains but make their reputation in one single discipline, than "proper polymaths", who—through a feat of "intellectual heroism"—manage to make serious contributions to several disciplines.
However, Burke warns that in the age of specialization, polymathic people are more necessary than ever, both for synthesis—to paint the big picture—and for analysis. He says: "It takes a polymath to 'mind the gap' and draw attention to the knowledges that may otherwise disappear into the spaces between disciplines, as they are currently defined and organized" (Burke, 2012, p. 183).
Finally, he suggests that governments and universities should nurture a habitat in which this "endangered species" can survive, offering students and scholars the possibility of interdisciplinary work.
James C. Kaufman, from the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut, and Ronald A. Beghetto, from the same university, investigated the possibility that everyone could have the potential for polymathy as well as the issue of the domain-generality or domain-specificity of creativity.
Based on their earlier four-c model of creativity, Beghetto and Kaufman proposed a typology of polymathy, ranging from the ubiquitous mini-c polymathy to the eminent but rare Big-C polymathy, as well as a model with some requirements for a person (polymath or not) to be able to reach the highest levels of creative accomplishment. They account for three general requirements—intelligence, motivation to be creative and an environment that allows creative expression—that are needed for any attempt at creativity to succeed. Then, depending on the domain of choice, more specific abilities will be required. The more that one's abilities and interests match the requirements of a domain, the better. While some will develop their specific skills and motivations for specific domains, polymathic people will display intrinsic motivation (and the ability) to pursue a variety of subject matters across different domains.
Regarding the interplay of polymathy and education, they suggest that rather than asking whether every student has multicreative potential, educators might more actively nurture the multicreative potential of their students. As an example, the authors cite that teachers should encourage students to make connections across disciplines, use different forms of media to express their reasoning/understanding (e.g., drawings, movies, and other forms of visual media).
Bharath Sriraman, of the University of Montana, also investigated the role of polymathy in education. He poses that an ideal education should nurture talent in the classroom and enable individuals to pursue multiple fields of research and appreciate both the aesthetic and structural/scientific connections between mathematics, arts and the sciences.
In 2009, Sriraman published a paper reporting a 3-year study with 120 pre-service mathematics teachers and derived several implications for mathematics pre-service education as well as interdisciplinary education. He utilized a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to recreate the emotions, voices and struggles of students as they tried to unravel Russell's paradox presented in its linguistic form. They found that those more engaged in solving the paradox also displayed more polymathic thinking traits. He concludes by suggesting that fostering polymathy in the classroom may help students change beliefs, discover structures and open new avenues for interdisciplinary pedagogy.
Michael Araki is a professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil. He sought to formalize in a general model how the development of polymathy takes place. His Developmental Model of Polymathy (DMP) is presented in a 2018 article with two main objectives: (i) organize the elements involved in the process of polymathy development into a structure of relationships that is wed to the approach of polymathy as a life project, and (ii) provide an articulation with other well-developed constructs, theories and models, especially from the fields of giftedness and education. The model, which was designed to reflect a structural model, has five major components: (1) polymathic antecedents, (2) polymathic mediators, (3) polymathic achievements, (4) intrapersonal moderators, and (5) environmental moderators.
Regarding the definition of the term polymathy, the researcher, through an analysis of the extant literature, concluded that although there are a multitude of perspectives on polymathy, most of them ascertain that polymathy entails three core elements: breadth, depth and integration.
Breadth refers to comprehensiveness, extension and diversity of knowledge. It is contrasted with the idea of narrowness, specialization, and the restriction of one's expertise to a limited domain. The possession of comprehensive knowledge at very disparate areas is a hallmark of the greatest polymaths.
Depth refers to the vertical accumulation of knowledge and the degree of elaboration or sophistication of one's sets of one's conceptual network. Like Robert Root-Bernstein, Araki uses the concept of dilettancy as a contrast to the idea of profound learning that polymathy entails.
Integration, although not explicit in most definitions of polymathy, is also a core component of polymathy according to the author. Integration involves the capacity of connecting, articulating, concatenating or synthesizing different conceptual networks, which in non-polymathic persons might be segregated. In addition, integration can happen at the personality level, when the person is able to integrate his or her diverse activities in a synergic whole, which can also mean a psychic (motivational, emotional and cognitive) integration.
Finally, the author also suggests that, via a psychoeconomic approach, polymathy can be seen as a "life project". That is, depending on a person's temperament, endowments, personality, social situation and opportunities (or lack thereof), the project of a polymathic self-formation may present itself to the person as more or less alluring and more or less feasible to be pursued.
Aside from "Renaissance man" as mentioned above, similar terms in use are (Latin) and (Italian), which translate to "universal man". The related term "generalist"—contrasted with a "specialist"—is used to describe a person with a general approach to knowledge.
The term "universal genius" or "versatile genius" is also used, with Leonardo da Vinci as the prime example again. The term is used especially for people who made lasting contributions in at least one of the fields in which they were actively involved and when they took a universality of approach.
When a person is described as having encyclopedic knowledge, they exhibit a vast scope of knowledge. However, this designation may be anachronistic in the case of persons such as Eratosthenes, whose reputation for having encyclopedic knowledge predates the existence of any encyclopedic object. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25121 |
PowerBook
The PowerBook (known as Macintosh PowerBook before 1997) is a family of Macintosh laptop computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1991 to 2006. During its lifetime, the PowerBook went through several major revisions and redesigns, often being the first to incorporate features that would later become standard in competing laptops. The PowerBook line was targeted at the professional market, and received numerous awards, especially in the second half of its life, such as the 2001 Industrial Design Excellence Awards "Gold" status, and Engadget's 2005 "Laptop of the Year". In 1999, the line was supplemented by the home and education-focused iBook family.
The PowerBook was replaced by the MacBook Pro in 2006 as part of Apple's transition to Intel processors.
In October 1991, Apple released the first three PowerBooks: the low-end PowerBook 100, the more powerful PowerBook 140, and the high end PowerBook 170, the only one with an active matrix display. These machines caused a stir in the industry with their compact dark grey cases, built-in trackball, and the innovative positioning of the keyboard that left room for palmrests on either side of the pointing device. Portable PC computers at the time were still oriented toward DOS, and tended to have the keyboard forward towards the user, with empty space behind it that was often used for function key reference cards. In the early days of Microsoft Windows, many notebooks came with a clip on trackball that fit on the edge of the keyboard molding. As usage of DOS gave way to the graphical user interface, the PowerBook's arrangement became the standard layout all future notebook computers would follow.
The PowerBook 140 and 170 were the original PowerBook designs, while the PowerBook 100 was the result of Apple having sent the schematics of the Mac Portable to Sony, who miniaturized the components. Hence the PowerBook 100's design does not match those of the rest of the series, as it was actually designed after the 140 and 170 and further benefited from improvements learned during their development. The PowerBook 100, however, did not sell well until Apple dropped the price substantially.
The 100 series PowerBooks were intended to tie into the rest of the Apple desktop products utilizing the corporate Snow White design language incorporated into all product designs since 1986. Unlike the Macintosh Portable, however, which was essentially a battery-powered desktop in weight and size, the light colors and decorative recessed lines did not seem appropriate for the scaled-down designs. In addition to adopting the darker grey colour scheme that coordinated with the official corporate look, they also adopted a raised series of ridges mimicking the indented lines on the desktops. The innovative look not only unified their entire product line, but set Apple apart in the marketplace. These early series would be the last to utilize the aging Snow White look, with the 190 adopting a new look along with the introduction of the 500 series.
The first series of PowerBooks were hugely successful, capturing 40% of all laptop sales. Despite this, the original team left to work at Compaq, setting back updated versions for some time. When attempting to increase processing power, Apple was hampered by the overheating problems of the 68040; this resulted in the 100-series PowerBook being stuck with the aging 68030, which could not compete with newer-generation Intel 80486-based PC laptops introduced in 1994. For several years, new PowerBook and PowerBook Duo computers were introduced that featured incremental improvements, including color screens, but by mid-decade, most other companies had copied the majority of the PowerBook's features. Apple was unable to ship a 68040-equipped PowerBook until the PowerBook 500 series in 1994.
The original PowerBook 100, 140, and 170 were replaced by the 145 (updated to the 145B in 1993), 160, and 180 in 1992. The 160 and 180 having video output allowing them to drive an external monitor. In addition, the PowerBook 180 had a superb-for-the-time active-matrix grayscale display, making it popular with the Mac press. In 1993, the PowerBook 165c was the first PowerBook with a color screen, later followed by the 180c. In 1994, the last true member of the 100-series form factor introduced was the PowerBook 150, targeted at value-minded consumers and students. The PowerBook 190, released in 1995, bears no resemblance to the rest of the PowerBook 100 series, and is in fact simply a Motorola 68LC040-based version of the PowerBook 5300 (and the last Macintosh model to utilize a Motorola 68k-family processor). Like the 190, however, the 150 also used the 5300 IDE-based logic-board architecture. From the 100's 68000 processor, to the 190's 68LC040 processor, the 100 series PowerBooks span the entire Apple 68K line, with the 190 even upgradable to a PowerPC processor.
In 1992 Apple released a hybrid portable/desktop computer, the PowerBook Duo, continuing to streamline the subnotebook features introduced with the PowerBook 100. The Duos were a series of very thin and lightweight laptops with a minimum of features, which could be inserted into a docking station to provide the system with extra video memory, storage space, connectors, and could be connected to a monitor.
1994 saw the introduction of the Motorola 68LC040-based PowerBook 500 series, code-named Blackbird. These models of PowerBooks were much sleeker and faster than the 100 series, which they replaced as the mid and high-end models. The 500 series featured DSTN (520) or active-matrix LCD displays (540 and 550), stereo speakers, and was the first computer to use a trackpad (although a similar technology had been included on the pioneering Gavilan SC 11 years earlier); it was also the first portable computer to offer built-in Ethernet networking. The PowerBook 500 series was the mainstay of the product line until the PowerBook 5300. The 500 series was the first PowerBook to feature PCMCIA slots, although this was an optional feature that required the user to sacrifice one of the two available battery slots to house the PCMCIA expansion cage.
The PowerBook 500 series was released as Apple was already moving its desktop machines to the PowerPC processor range, and a future upgrade was promised from the start. This came in 1995, as an Apple Motherboard containing a 100 MHz 603e processor and 8 MB of RAM (which snapped into a slot containing the previous 25 or 33 MHz 68040 processor and the 4 MB of RAM on the previous daughterboard). At the same time Newer Technology offered an Apple-authorized 117 MHz Motherboard, which was more popular than the Apple product, and optionally came without any RAM. The company later offered 167 MHz and 183 MHz upgrades containing more memory and onboard cache memory to improve performance. Nonetheless, the internal architecture of the 500 series meant that the speed increase provided by the 100 and 117 MHz upgrades was, for most users, relatively small.
The 500 series was completely discontinued upon the introduction of its replacement the PPC-based PowerBook 5300, with the PowerBook 190 replacing the 500 as the only 68LC040 PowerBook Apple offered.
The PowerBook 5300, while highly anticipated as one of the first PowerPC-based PowerBooks (along with the PowerBook Duo 2300c, both released on the same day), had numerous problems. In its 5300ce incarnation with a TFT of 800x600 pixels, Apple offered a 117 MHz PPC, 32 MB of on-board RAM, and a hot-swappable drive bay. With all of these features, though, the 5300ce was quite ahead of other laptop models at the time. Multiple problems with reliability, stability and safety (by some, the model was referred as the "HindenBook" because the lithium ion batteries used actually burst into flame in Apple tests, necessitating a recall and downgrade to nickel metal hydride batteries) were present in the early 5300s. After Apple offered an Extended Repair Program, the series turned into a remarkably attractive machine, but never lost its bad reputation. The bad publicity of 5300 series added to the woes of "beleaguered Apple" during the mid-1990s.
Apple recovered from the 5300 debacle in 1996 and 1997 by introducing three new PowerBooks: the PowerBook 1400, intended to replace the 5300 as a general-purpose PowerBook; the PowerBook 2400, intended as a slim, sleek sub-notebook to replace the PowerBook Duo; and the luxury model PowerBook 3400. The PowerBook 1400 and 3400 were the first PowerBooks ever to include an internal CD drive. Late in 1997, the PowerBook 3400 was adapted into the first PowerBook G3, codenamed the Kanga. This series was the last PowerBook model to employ a "real" keyboard with 1 cm high keys; all later models have flat keys.
The first PowerBook G3 Series (completely redesigned from the Kanga) was released in 1998, although it was still an Old World ROM Mac.
These new PowerBooks took design cues from the 500 series PowerBook, sporting dramatic curves and a jet-black plastic case. They were so fashionable that various G3 models became the personal computer of Carrie Bradshaw in the long-running Sex and the City television show. Debuting at roughly the same time as the G3 iMac, the "WallStreet/Mainstreet" series composed of models with varying features, such as different processing speeds (from 233 to 300 MHz) and the choice of 12-, 13-, or 14-inch screens. They all included dual drive bays capable of accommodating floppy drives, CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives, hard drives, or even extra batteries. A second PowerBook G3 Series code-named "PDQ" was introduced later in 1998, with minor changes in configuration options, notably the inclusion of L2 cache in even the lowest-priced 233 MHz model, which helped overall performance.
Apple introduced two later G3 PowerBook models, similar in appearance (curved, black plastic case with black rubberized sections) but thinner, lighter and with revised internal systems. The "Lombard" appeared in 1999, (AKA: Bronze Keyboard) a thinner, lighter, and faster (333 or 400 MHz) PowerBook with a longer battery life and had both USB and SCSI built in and was a New World ROM Mac, and then the "Pismo" in 2000, which replaced the single SCSI port with two FireWire ports, updated the PowerBook line to AGP graphics, a 100 MHz bus speed, and DVD-ROM optical drives standard, in addition to dropping the "G3" from the PowerBook name. The Pismo revision also brought AirPort wireless networking capability (802.11b), which had debuted in Apple's iBook in July 1999. CPU upgrade cards are available for both Lombard and Pismo models.
Interim CEO Steve Jobs turned his eye to the redesign of the PowerBook series in 2000. The result, introduced in January 2001, was a completely re-designed New World PowerBook with a titanium skin and a 15.2-inch wide-aspect screen suitable for watching widescreen movies. Built with the PowerPC G4 processor, it was billed as "the first supercomputer you can actually take with you on an airplane." It was lighter than most PC based laptops, and due to the low power consumption of the PowerPC it outlasted them by hours.
The "TiBooks", as they were nicknamed, became a fashion item. They were especially popular in the entertainment business, where they adorned many desks in Hollywood motion pictures. Because of their large screens and high performance, Titanium Powerbooks were the first laptops to be widely deployed as desktop replacement computers.
The industrial design of the notebooks quickly became a standard that others in the industry would follow, creating a new wave of wide-screened notebook computers.
The Titanium PowerBooks were released in configurations of 400 MHz, 500 MHz, 550 MHz, 667 MHz, 800 MHz, 867 MHz, and 1 GHz. They are the last PowerBooks able to boot Mac OS 9.
In 2003, Apple launched both the largest-screen laptop in the world and Apple's smallest full-featured notebook computer. Both machines were made of anodized aluminum (coining the new nickname "AlBook"), featured DVD-burning capabilities, AirPort Extreme networking, Bluetooth, and 12.1-inch or 17-inch LCD displays. The 17-inch model included a fiber optic-illuminated keyboard, which eventually became standard on all 15-inch and 17-inch PowerBooks. Two ambient light sensors, located under each speaker grille, adjusted the brightness of the backlit keyboard and the display according to the light level.
The 12-inch PowerBook's screen did not use the same panel as that used on the 12-inch iBook, while the 17-inch PowerBook used the same screen as that used on the 17-inch flat-panel iMac, but with a thinner backlight.
Later in 2003, the 15-inch PowerBooks were redesigned and featured the same aluminum body style as their smaller and larger siblings, and with the same feature set as the 17-inch model (including the backlit keyboard). This basic design would carry through the transition to the Intel-based MacBook Pro, lasting until late 2008.
In April 2004, the aluminum PowerBooks were upgraded. The SuperDrive was upgraded to 4× burning speed for DVDs, the fastest processor available was upgraded to 1.5 GHz, and the graphics cards were replaced with newer models, offering up to 128 MB of video memory. A third built-in speaker was added to the 12-inch model for improved midrange sound. In addition, AirPort Extreme cards became standard for all PowerBooks instead of being offered as an add-on option.
In January 2005, the specifications of the aluminum PowerBooks were revised once more to accompany a price decrease. Processor speeds were increased to a maximum of 1.67 GHz on the higher specification 15-inch and all 17-inch versions, while the lower specification 15-inch model and the 12-inch unit saw an increase in speed to 1.5 GHz. Optical audio output was added to the 17-inch version. Memory and hard drive defaults were increased to 512 MB and 5400 rpm, respectively, with a new storage maximum of 100 GB on the 17-inch model. Each model also received an enhanced trackpad with scrolling capabilities, a revised Bluetooth module supporting BT 2.0+EDR, and a new feature that parks the drive heads when sudden motion is detected by an internal sensor. Support for the 30-inch Apple Cinema display was also introduced in the new 17-inch model and was optional in the 15-inch model via a build-to-order upgrade to the computer's video hardware. The SuperDrive now included DVD+R capability.
In October 2005, the two higher-end PowerBooks were upgraded once again, with higher-resolution displays (1440 × 960 pixels on the 15-inch model, and 1680 × 1050 pixels on the 17-inch model) and faster 533 MHz DDR2 (PC2-4200) memory. The SuperDrive became standard equipment and included support for dual-layer DVDs on the 15- and 17-inch models. The 17-inch model was updated with a 120 GB standard hard drive, as well as a 7200 rpm, 100 GB build-to-order option. These drives were also options on the 15-inch PowerBook. The 12-inch model with SuperDrive remained unchanged in this respect, although each new PowerBook boasted a longer battery life.
On May 20, 2005, Apple and the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall of some Apple PowerBook G4 batteries. The joint Apple/CPSC press release stated that an internal short could cause the battery cells to overheat, posing a fire hazard. Approximately 128,000 defective units were sold.
Though the problems first appeared to be solved, they continued for many users. In early August 2006, Engadget reported that a PowerBook had "violently exploded" because of faulty battery. On August 24, 2006, Apple and the CPSC announced an additional recall of more batteries for the same PowerBook models.
About 1.1 million battery packs in the United States were recalled; an additional 700,000 were sold outside the U.S.
These batteries were manufactured by Sony. Sony, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, HP, Fujitsu and Acer laptops were also affected by the defective batteries.
At the 2006 Macworld Conference & Expo, the MacBook Pro was introduced. The new notebooks, however, only came in 15.4-inch models and the 12-inch and 17-inch PowerBooks remained available for sale at Apple stores and retailers, as well as the 15-inch model, which was sold until supplies ran out. On April 24, 2006 the 17-inch PowerBook G4 was replaced by a 17-inch MacBook Pro variant. The 12-inch PowerBook G4 remained available until May 16, 2006, when the MacBook was introduced as a replacement for the iBook. Because of its availability in highly powerful configurations, it was also considered a replacement for the 12-inch PowerBook, ending the nearly 15-year production of PowerBook-branded computers.
Traditionally, the portable line trailed the desktops in the utilization of the latest processors, with the notable exception of the PowerBook G3, which was released simultaneously with the desktop Power Macintosh G3. PowerBooks would continue to trail behind the desktop Macs, however, never even adopting the G5 processor. This was due primarily to the extreme heat caused by most of the full-sized processors available and unacceptable power consumption. With the introduction of the Intel-based Macs, once again, the MacBook Pro joined the iMac in sharing the new technology simultaneously. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25122 |
Phil Ochs
Philip David Ochs (; December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976) was an American protest singer (or, as he preferred, a topical singer) and songwriter who was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, earnest humanism, political activism, insightful and alliterative lyrics, and distinctive voice. He wrote hundreds of songs in the 1960s and 1970s and released eight albums.
Ochs performed at many political events during the 1960s counterculture era, including anti-Vietnam War and civil rights rallies, student events, and organized labor events over the course of his career, in addition to many concert appearances at such venues as New York City's Town Hall and Carnegie Hall. Politically, Ochs described himself as a "left social democrat" who became an "early revolutionary" after the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago led to a police riot, which had a profound effect on his state of mind.
After years of prolific writing in the 1960s, Ochs's mental stability declined in the 1970s. He eventually succumbed to a number of problems including bipolar disorder and alcoholism, and died by suicide in 1976.
Some of Ochs's major musical influences were Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Bob Gibson, Faron Young, and Merle Haggard. His best-known songs include "I Ain't Marching Anymore", "Changes", "Crucifixion", "Draft Dodger Rag", "Love Me, I'm a Liberal", "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends", "Power and the Glory", "There but for Fortune", and "The War Is Over".
Phil Ochs was born on December 19, 1940, in El Paso, Texas, to Jacob "Jack" Ochs, a physician who was born in New York on August 11, 1910, and Gertrude Phin Ochs, who was born on February 26, 1912, in Scotland. His parents met and married in Edinburgh where Jack was attending medical school. After their marriage, they moved to the United States. Jack, drafted into the army, was sent overseas near the end of World War II, where he treated soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge. His war experiences affected his mental health and he received an honorable medical discharge in November 1945. Suffering from bipolar disorder and depression on his return home, Jack was unable to establish a successful medical practice and instead worked at a series of hospitals around the country. As a result, the Ochs family moved frequently: to Far Rockaway, New York, when Ochs was a teenager; then to Perrysburg in western New York, where he first studied music; and then to Columbus, Ohio. Ochs grew up with an older sister, Sonia (known as Sonny, born 1937), and a younger brother, Michael (born 1943). The Ochs family was middle class and Jewish, but not religious. His father was distant from his wife and children, and was hospitalized for depression; he died on April 30, 1963, from a cerebral hemorrhage. His mother died on March 9, 1994.
As a teenager, Ochs was recognized as a talented clarinet player; in an evaluation, one music instructor wrote: "You have exceptional musical feeling and the ability to transfer it on your instrument is abundant." His musical skills allowed him to play clarinet with the orchestra at the Capital University Conservatory of Music in Ohio, where he rose to the status of principal soloist before he was 16. Although Ochs played classical music, he soon became interested in other sounds he heard on the radio, such as early rock icons Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley and country music artists including Faron Young, Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, Sr., and Johnny Cash. Ochs also spent a lot of time at the movies. He especially liked big screen heroes such as John Wayne and Audie Murphy. Later on, he developed an interest in movie rebels, including Marlon Brando and James Dean.
From 1956 to 1958, Ochs was a student at the Staunton Military Academy in rural Virginia, and when he graduated he returned to Columbus and enrolled in the Ohio State University. Unhappy after his first quarter, he took a leave of absence and went to Florida. While in Miami, the 18-year-old Ochs was jailed for two weeks for sleeping on a park bench, an incident he would later recall:
Somewhere during the course of those fifteen days I decided to become a writer. My primary thought was journalism ... so in a flash I decided — I'll be a writer and a major in journalism.
Ochs returned to Ohio State to study journalism and developed an interest in politics, with a particular interest in the Cuban Revolution of 1959. At Ohio State he met Jim Glover, a fellow student who was a devotee of folk music. Glover introduced Ochs to the music of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and The Weavers. Glover taught Ochs how to play guitar, and they debated politics. Ochs began writing newspaper articles, often on radical themes. When the student paper refused to publish some of his more radical articles, he started his own underground newspaper called "The Word". His two main interests, politics and music, soon merged, and Ochs began writing topical political songs. Ochs and Glover formed a duet called "The Singing Socialists", later renamed "The Sundowners", but the duo broke up before their first professional performance and Glover went to New York City to become a folksinger.
Ochs's parents and brother had moved from Columbus to Cleveland, and Ochs started to spend more time there, performing professionally at a local folk club called Farragher's Back Room. He was the opening act for a number of musicians in the summer of 1961, including the Smothers Brothers. Ochs met folksinger Bob Gibson that summer as well, and according to Dave Van Ronk, Gibson became ""the" seminal influence" on Ochs's writing. Ochs continued at Ohio State into his senior year, but was bitterly disappointed at not being appointed editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, and dropped out in his last quarter without graduating. He left for New York, as Glover had, to become a folksinger.
Ochs arrived in New York City in 1962 and began performing in numerous small folk nightclubs, eventually becoming an integral part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene. He emerged as an unpolished but passionate vocalist who wrote pointed songs about current events: war, civil rights, labor struggles and other topics. While others described his music as "protest songs," Ochs preferred the term "topical songs."
Ochs described himself as a "singing journalist," saying he built his songs from stories he read in "Newsweek". By the summer of 1963, he was sufficiently well known in folk circles to be invited to sing at the Newport Folk Festival, where he performed "Too Many Martyrs" (co-written with Bob Gibson), "Talking Birmingham Jam", and "Power and the Glory"—his patriotic Guthrie-esque anthem that brought the audience to its feet. Other performers at the 1963 folk festival included Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Tom Paxton. Ochs's return appearance at Newport in 1964, when he performed "Draft Dodger Rag" and other songs, was widely praised. However, he was not invited to appear in 1965, the festival when Dylan infamously performed "Maggie's Farm" with an electric guitar. Although many in the folk world decried Dylan's choice, Ochs was amused, and admired Dylan's courage in defying the folk establishment.
During 1963, Ochs performed at New York's Carnegie Hall and Town Hall in hootenannies. He made his first solo appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1966. Throughout his career, Ochs would perform at a wide range of venues, including civil rights rallies, anti-war demonstrations, and concert halls.
Ochs contributed many songs and articles to the influential "Broadside Magazine". He recorded his first three albums for Elektra Records: "All the News That's Fit to Sing" (1964), "I Ain't Marching Anymore" (1965), and "Phil Ochs in Concert" (1966). Critics wrote that each album was better than its predecessors, and fans seemed to agree; record sales increased with each new release.
On these records, Ochs was accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. The albums contain many of Ochs's topical songs, such as "Too Many Martyrs," "I Ain't Marching Anymore," and "Draft Dodger Rag;" and some musical reinterpretation of older poetry, such as "The Highwayman" (poem by Alfred Noyes) and "The Bells" (poem by Edgar Allan Poe). "Phil Ochs in Concert" includes some more introspective songs, such as "Changes" and "When I'm Gone."
During the early period of his career, Ochs and Bob Dylan had a friendly rivalry. Dylan said of Ochs, "I just can't keep up with Phil. And he just keeps getting better and better and better." On another occasion, when Ochs criticized "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" Dylan threw him out of his limousine, saying, "You're not a folksinger. You're a journalist."
In 1962, Ochs married Alice Skinner, who was pregnant with their daughter Meegan, in a City Hall ceremony with Jim Glover as best man and Jean Ray as bridesmaid, and witnessed by Dylan's sometime girlfriend, Suze Rotolo. Phil and Alice separated in 1965, but they never divorced.
Like many people of his generation, Ochs deeply admired President John F. Kennedy, even though he disagreed with the president on issues such as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the growing involvement of the United States in the Vietnamese civil war. When Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Ochs wept. He told his wife that he thought he was going to die that night. It was the only time she ever saw Ochs cry.
Ochs's managers during this part of his career were Albert Grossman (who also managed Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary) followed by Arthur Gorson. Gorson had close ties with such groups as Americans For Democratic Action, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Students for a Democratic Society.
Ochs was writing songs at an amazing pace. Some of the songs he wrote during this period were held back and recorded on his later albums.
In 1967, Ochs—now managed by his brother Michael—left Elektra Records for A&M Records and moved to Los Angeles, California. He recorded four studio albums for A&M: "Pleasures of the Harbor" (1967), "Tape from California" (1968), "Rehearsals for Retirement" (1969), and the ironically titled "Greatest Hits" (1970) (which actually consisted of all new material). For his A&M albums, Ochs moved away from simply produced solo acoustic guitar performances and experimented with ensemble and even orchestral instrumentation, "baroque-folk", in the hopes of producing a pop-folk hybrid that would be a hit.
Critic Robert Christgau, writing in "Esquire" of "Pleasures of the Harbor" in May 1968, did not consider this new direction a good turn. While describing Ochs as "unquestionably a nice guy", he went on to say, "too bad his voice shows an effective range of about half an octave [and] his guitar playing would not suffer much if his right hand were webbed." ""Pleasures of the Harbor"", Christgau continued, "epitomizes the decadence that has infected pop since "Sgt. Pepper". [The] gaudy musical settings ... inspire nostalgia for the three-chord strum." With an ironic sense of humor, Ochs included Christgau's "webbed hand" comment in his 1968 songbook "The War is Over" on a page titled "The Critics Raved", opposite a full-page picture of Ochs standing in a large metal garbage can. Despite his sense of humor, Ochs was unhappy that his work was not receiving the critical acclaim and popular success he had hoped for. Still, Ochs would joke on the back cover of "Greatest Hits" that there were 50 Phil Ochs fans ("50 fans can't be wrong!"), a sarcastic reference to an Elvis Presley album that bragged of 50 million Elvis fans.
None of Ochs's songs became hits, although "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends" received a good deal of airplay. It reached #119 on "Billboard"'s national "Hot Prospect" listing before being pulled from some radio stations because of its lyrics, which sarcastically suggested that "smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer". It was the closest Ochs ever came to the Top 40. Joan Baez, however, did have a Top Ten hit in the U.K. in August 1965, reaching #8 with her cover of Ochs's song "There but for Fortune", which was also nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Folk Recording". In the U.S. it peaked at #50 on the "Billboard" charts—a good showing, but not a hit.
Although he was trying new things musically, Ochs did not abandon his protest roots. He was profoundly concerned with the escalation of the Vietnam War, performing tirelessly at anti-war rallies across the country. In 1967 he organized two rallies to declare that "The War Is Over"—"Is everybody sick of this stinking war? In that case, friends, do what I and thousands of other Americans have done—declare the war over."—one in Los Angeles in June, the other in New York in November. He continued to write and record anti-war songs, such as "The War Is Over" and "White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land". Other topical songs of this period include "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends", inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death outside of her New York City apartment building while dozens of her neighbors reportedly ignored her cries for help, and "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed", about the despair he felt in the aftermath of the Chicago 1968 Democratic National Convention police riot.
Ochs was writing more personal songs as well, such as "Crucifixion", in which he compared the deaths of Jesus Christ and assassinated President John F. Kennedy as part of a "cycle of sacrifice" in which people build up heroes and then celebrate their destruction; "Chords of Fame", a warning against the dangers and corruption of fame; "Pleasures of the Harbor", a lyrical portrait of a lonely sailor seeking human connection far from home; and "Boy in Ohio", a plaintive look back at Ochs's childhood in Columbus.
A lifelong movie fan, Ochs worked the narratives of justice and rebellion that he had seen in films into his music, describing some of his songs as "cinematic". He was disappointed and bitter when his onetime hero John Wayne embraced the Vietnam War with what Ochs saw as the blind patriotism of Wayne's 1968 film, "The Green Berets":
[H]ere we have John Wayne, who was a major artistic and psychological figure on the American scene, ... who at one point used to make movies of soldiers who had a certain validity, ... a certain sense of honor [about] what the soldier was doing. ... Even if it was a cavalry movie doing a historically dishonorable thing to the Indians, even as there was a feeling of what it meant to be a man, what it meant to have some sense of duty. ... Now today we have the same actor making his new war movie in a war so hopelessly corrupt that, without seeing the movie, I'm sure it is perfectly safe to say that it will be an almost robot-view of soldiery, just by definition of how the whole country has deteriorated. And I think it would make a very interesting double feature to show a good old Wayne movie like, say, "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" with "The Green Berets". Because that would make a very striking comment on what has happened to America in general.
Ochs was involved in the creation of the Youth International Party, known as the Yippies, along with Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Stew Albert, and Paul Krassner. At the same time, Ochs actively supported Eugene McCarthy's more mainstream bid for the 1968 Democratic nomination for President, a position at odds with the more radical Yippie point of view. Still, Ochs helped plan the Yippies' "Festival of Life" which was to take place at the 1968 Democratic National Convention along with demonstrations by other anti-war groups including the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Despite warnings that there might be trouble, Ochs went to Chicago both as a guest of the McCarthy campaign and to participate in the demonstrations. He performed in Lincoln Park, Grant Park, and at the Chicago Coliseum, witnessed the violence perpetrated by the Chicago police against the protesters, and was himself arrested at one point. Ochs also purchased the young boar who be known as the Yippie 1968 Presidential candidate "Pigasus the Immortal" from a farm in Illinois.
The events of 1968—the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the police riot in Chicago, and the election of Richard Nixon—left Ochs feeling disillusioned and depressed. The cover of his 1969 album "Rehearsals for Retirement" eerily portrays a tombstone with the words:
PHIL OCHS
(AMERICAN)
BORN: EL PASO, TEXAS, 1940
DIED: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, 1968
At the trial of the Chicago Seven in December 1969, Ochs testified for the defense. His testimony included his recitation of the lyrics to his song "I Ain't Marching Anymore". On his way out of the courthouse, Ochs sang the song for the press corps; to Ochs's amusement, his singing was broadcast that evening by Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News.
After the riot in Chicago and the subsequent trial, Ochs changed direction again. The events of 1968 convinced him that the average American was not listening to topical songs or responding to Yippie tactics. Ochs thought that by playing the sort of music that had moved him as a teenager he could speak more directly to the American public.
Ochs turned to his musical roots in country music and early rock and roll. He decided he needed to be "part Elvis Presley and part Che Guevara", so he commissioned a gold lamé suit from Elvis Presley's costumer Nudie Cohn. Ochs wore the gold suit on the cover of his 1970 album, "Greatest Hits", which consisted of new songs largely in rock and country styles.
Ochs went on tour wearing the gold suit, backed by a rock band, singing his own material along with medleys of songs by Buddy Holly, Elvis, and Merle Haggard. His fans did not know how to respond. This new Phil Ochs drew a hostile reaction from his audience. Ochs's March 27, 1970, concerts at Carnegie Hall were the most successful, and by the end of that night's second show Ochs had won over many in the crowd. The show was recorded and released as "Gunfight at Carnegie Hall".
During this period, Ochs was taking drugs to get through performances. He had been taking Valium for years to help control his nerves, and he was also drinking heavily. Pianist Lincoln Mayorga said of that period, "He was physically abusing himself very badly on that tour. He was drinking a lot of wine and taking uppers. The wine was pulling him one way and the uppers were pulling him another way, and he was kind of a mess. There were so many pharmaceuticals around—so many pills. I'd never seen anything like that." Ochs tried to cut back on the pills, but alcohol remained his drug of choice for the rest of his life.
Depressed by his lack of widespread appreciation and suffering from writer's block, Ochs did not record any further albums. He slipped deeper into depression and alcoholism. His personal problems notwithstanding, Ochs performed at the inaugural benefit for Greenpeace on October 16, 1970, at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver, British Columbia. A recording of his performance, along with performances by Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, was released by Greenpeace in 2009.
In August 1971, Ochs went to Chile, where Salvador Allende, a Marxist, had been democratically elected in the 1970 election. There he met Chilean folksinger Víctor Jara, an Allende supporter, and the two became friends. In October, Ochs left Chile to visit Argentina. Later that month, after singing at a political rally in Uruguay, he and his American traveling companion David Ifshin were arrested and detained overnight. When the two returned to Argentina, they were arrested as they got off the airplane. After a brief stay in an Argentinian prison, Ochs and Ifshin were sent to Bolivia via a commercial airliner where authorities were to detain them. Ifshin had previously been warned by Argentinian leftist friends that when the authorities sent dissidents to Bolivia, they would disappear forever. When the airliner arrived in Bolivia, the American captain of the Braniff International Airways aircraft allowed Ochs and Ifshin to stay on the aircraft, and barred Bolivian authorities from entering. The aircraft then flew to Peru where the two disembarked and they were not detained. Fearful that Peruvian authorities might arrest him, Ochs returned to the United States a few days later.
Ochs was having difficulties writing new songs during this period, but he had occasional breakthroughs. He updated his sarcastic song "Here's to the State of Mississippi" as "Here's to the State of Richard Nixon", with cutting lines such as "the speeches of the Spiro are the ravings of a clown", a reference to Nixon's vitriolic vice president, Spiro Agnew—sung as "the speeches of the President are the ravings of a clown" after Agnew's resignation.
Ochs was personally invited by John Lennon to sing at a large benefit at the University of Michigan in December 1971 on behalf of John Sinclair, an activist poet who had been arrested on minor drug charges and given a severe sentence. Ochs performed at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally along with Stevie Wonder, Allen Ginsberg, David Peel, Abbie Hoffman and many others. The rally culminated with Lennon and Yoko Ono, who were making their first public performance in the United States since the breakup of The Beatles.
Although the 1968 election had left him deeply disillusioned, Ochs continued to work for the election campaigns of anti-war candidates, such as George McGovern's unsuccessful Presidential bid in 1972.
In 1972, Ochs was asked to write the theme song for the film "Kansas City Bomber". The task proved difficult, as Ochs struggled to overcome his writer's block. Although his song was not used in the soundtrack, it was released as a single.
Ochs decided to travel. In mid-1972, he went to Australia and New Zealand. He traveled to Africa in 1973, where he visited Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and South Africa. One night, Ochs was attacked and strangled by robbers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which damaged his vocal cords, causing a loss of the top three notes in his vocal range. The attack also exacerbated his growing mental problems, and he became increasingly paranoid. Ochs believed the attack may have been arranged by government agents—perhaps the CIA. Still, he continued his trip, even recording a single in Kenya, "Bwatue".
On September 11, 1973, the Allende government of Chile was overthrown in a "coup d'état". Allende committed suicide during the bombing of the presidential palace, and singer Victor Jara was publicly tortured and killed. When Ochs heard about the manner in which his friend had been killed, he was outraged and decided to organize a benefit concert to bring to public attention the situation in Chile, and raise funds for the people of Chile. The concert, "An Evening with Salvador Allende", included films of Allende; singers such as Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, and Bob Dylan; and political activists such as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Dylan had agreed to perform at the last minute when he heard that the concert had sold so few tickets that it was in danger of being canceled. Once his participation was announced, the event quickly sold out.
After the Chile benefit, Ochs and Dylan discussed the possibility of a joint concert tour, playing small nightclubs. Nothing came of the Dylan-Ochs plans, but the idea eventually evolved into Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue.
The Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975. Ochs planned a final "War Is Over" rally, which was held in New York's Central Park on May 11. More than 100,000 people came to hear Ochs, joined by Harry Belafonte, Odetta, Pete Seeger and others. Ochs and Joan Baez sang a duet of "There but for Fortune" and he closed with his song "The War Is Over"—finally a true declaration that the war was over.
Ochs's drinking became more and more of a problem, and his behavior became increasingly erratic. He frightened his friends both with his drunken rants about the FBI and CIA, and about his claiming to want to have Elvis's manager Colonel Tom Parker or Kentucky Fried Chicken's Colonel Sanders manage his career.
In mid-1975, Ochs took on the identity of John Butler Train. He told people that Train had murdered Ochs, and that he, John Butler Train, had replaced him. Train was convinced that someone was trying to kill him, so he carried a weapon at all times: a hammer, a knife, or a lead pipe.
Ochs's friends tried to help him. His brother Michael attempted to have him committed to a psychiatric hospital. Friends pleaded with him to get help voluntarily. They feared for his safety, because he was getting into fights with bar patrons. Unable to pay his rent, he began living on the streets.
After several months, the Train persona faded and Ochs returned, but his talk of suicide disturbed his friends and family. They hoped it was a passing phase, but Ochs was determined. One of his biographers explains Ochs's motivation:
In January 1976, Ochs moved to Far Rockaway, New York, to live with his sister Sonny. He was lethargic; his only activities were watching television and playing cards with his nephews. Ochs saw a psychiatrist, who diagnosed his bipolar disorder. He was prescribed medication, and he told his sister he was taking it. On April 9, 1976, Ochs committed suicide by hanging himself in Sonny's home.
Years after his death, it was revealed that the FBI had a file of nearly 500 pages on Ochs. Much of the information in those files relates to his association with counterculture figures, protest organizers, musicians, and other people described by the FBI as "subversive". The FBI was often sloppy in collecting information on Ochs: his name was frequently misspelled "Oakes" in their files, and they continued to consider him "potentially dangerous" after his death.
Congresswoman Bella Abzug (Democrat from New York), an outspoken anti-war activist herself who had appeared at the 1975 "War is Over" rally, entered this statement into the "Congressional Record" on April 29, 1976:
Robert Christgau, who had been so critical of "Pleasures of the Harbor" and Ochs's guitar skills eight years earlier, wrote warmly of Ochs in his obituary in "The Village Voice". "I came around to liking Phil Ochs's music, guitar included," Christgau wrote. "My affection [for Ochs] no doubt prejudiced me, so it is worth [noting] that many observers who care more for folk music than I do remember both his compositions and his vibrato tenor as close to the peak of the genre."
Over 40 years after his death, Ochs's songs remain relevant. Ochs continues to influence singers and fans worldwide, most of whom never saw him perform live. There are mailing lists and online discussion groups dedicated to Ochs and his music; websites that have music samples, photographs, and other links; and articles and books continue to be written and published about him.
Phil Ochs's commitment to fighting against the Vietnam War started early. In 1964, Phil Ochs performed his song "Talking Vietnam Blues," "the first protest song to directly refer to Vietnam by name."
His sister, Sonny Ochs (Tanzman), runs a series of "Phil Ochs Song Nights" with a rotating group of performers who keep Ochs's music and legacy alive by singing his songs in cities across the U.S. Michael Ochs is a photographic archivist of 20th-century music and entertainment personalities. Meegan Lee Ochs worked with Michael to produce a box set of Ochs's music titled "Farewells & Fantasies", the title of which was taken from Ochs's sign-off on the "postcard" on the back of "Tape from California": "Farewells & Fantasies, Folks, P. Ochs". Meegan has a son named Caidan, Ochs's only grandchild. Alice Skinner Ochs was a photographer; she died in November 2010.
In February 2009, the North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance gave the 2009 Elaine Weissman Lifetime Achievement Award to Phil Ochs.
In September 2014, Meegan Ochs announced that she was donating her father's archives to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Included are many of his notebooks, journals, videotapes of his performances, the gold lamé suit, photographs, and other documents and memorabilia that Meegan had preserved since his death.
Phil Ochs was among hundreds of artists whose recordings were destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
Ochs's songs have been covered by scores of performers, including Joan Baez, Bastro, Cher, Judy Collins, John Denver, Ani DiFranco, Ronnie Gilbert, John Wesley Harding, Jason & the Scorchers, Jim and Jean, Jeannie Lewis, Gordon Lightfoot, Melanie, Christy Moore, Morrissey, Ray Naylor, Pete Seeger, They Might Be Giants, Eddie Vedder, and The Weakerthans. Wyclef Jean performed "Here's to the State of Mississippi" in the 2009 documentary "Soundtrack for a Revolution".
In 1998, Sliced Bread Records released "", a two-CD set of 28 covers by artists that includes Eric Andersen, Billy Bragg, John Gorka, Nanci Griffith, Arlo Guthrie, Pat Humphries, Magpie, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Sammy Walker, Peter Yarrow, and others. The liner notes indicate that all record company profits from the sale of the set were to be divided between the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and "Sing Out!" magazine.
Wood Records released an indie rock/experimental rock tribute album titled "" in 2003.
In 2005, Kind Of Like Spitting released an album, "", consisting of covers of nine songs written by Ochs, to pay tribute to his music and raise awareness of the artist, whom they felt had been overlooked.
Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon, on their album "Prairie Home Invasion", recorded a version of "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" with lyrics updated to the Clinton era. Evan Greer, part of the Riot-Folk collective, later updated the song for the George W. Bush era. Ryan Harvey, also part of Riot-Folk, remade "Cops Of The World" with updated lyrics. The Clash used some of the lyrics to "United Fruit" in their song "Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)", which appeared on their 1980 album "Sandinista!". During their performance on "VH1 Storytellers", Pearl Jam covered "Here's to the State of Mississippi" with updated lyrics to include Jerry Falwell, Dick Cheney, John Roberts, Alberto Gonzales, and George W. Bush. In 2002, with the agreement of Ochs's sister Sonny, Richard Thompson added an extra verse to "I Ain't Marching Anymore" to reflect recent American foreign policy. Jefferson Starship recorded "I Ain't Marching Anymore" with additional lyrics by band member Cathy Richardson for their 2008 release "Jefferson's Tree of Liberty".
In 2013, Neil Young performed "Changes" at Farm Aid and included it in his 2014 tour set; it also is the lead track on "A Letter Home", his 2014 album of covers.
In 2016, Richard Barone released his album "Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s", which includes "When I'm Gone". Barone said of the project: "My favorite artist on the album is Phil Ochs. I grew up with Phil Ochs songs. I love his topical songs–and I also like his songs that are not political. He was always really good no matter what he was doing." On tour, Barone also performed "Changes".
In 2020, Welsh singer-songwriter Martyn Joseph released "Days Of Decision: A Tribute to Phil Ochs" containing fourteen Ochs covers, as well as liner notes by Phil's sister, Sonny.
On learning of Ochs's death, Tom Paxton wrote a touching song titled "Phil", which he recorded for his 1978 album "Heroes". Ochs is also the subject of "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night", by Billy Bragg, from his 1990 album "The Internationale", which was based on the Alfred Hayes/Earl Robinson song "Joe Hill" which Ochs helped popularize; Ochs also had his own, different song ("Joe Hill") about the early 20th-century union activist/songwriter. "Thin Wild Mercury," by Peter Cooper and Todd Snider, is about Ochs's infamous clash with Dylan and getting thrown out of Dylan's limo. Ochs is mentioned in the Dar Williams song "All My Heroes Are Dead", the Will Oldham song "Gezundheit", the Chumbawamba song "Love Me", and the They Might Be Giants song "The Day". The Josh Joplin Group recorded a tribute to Ochs on their album "Useful Music". Schooner Fare recorded "Don't Stop To Rest (Song for Phil Ochs)" on their 1981 album "Closer to the Wind". Latin Quarter memorialized him in the song "Phil Ochs" on their album "Long Pig" (1993).
John Wesley Harding recorded a song titled "Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, Steve Goodman, David Blue and Me", the title a reference to the Ochs song "Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Me". Singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith wrote a song about Phil entitled "Radio Fragile", included in her album "Storms". English folk/punk songwriter Al Baker recorded a song about Ochs entitled "All The News That's Fit To Sing", a reference to the title of Ochs's first album. Cajun musician Vic Sadot wrote a song about Ochs entitled "Broadside Balladeer". Singer-songwriter Jen Cass's "Standing In Your Memory", and Harry Chapin's "The Parade's Still Passing By" are tributes to Ochs. Leslie Fish recorded "Chickasaw Mountain", which is dedicated to Ochs, on her 1986 album of that name. The punk band Squirrel Bait cited Ochs as a major creative influence in the liner notes of their 1986 album "Skag Heaven", and cover his "Tape From California". Ochs has also influenced Greek folk-rock songwriters; Dimitris Panagopoulos' "Astathis Isoropia" ("Unstable Equilibrium") (1987) was dedicated to his memory. On the 2005 Kind Of Like Spitting album "In the Red", songwriter Ben Barnett included his song "Sheriff Ochs", which was inspired by reading a biography of Ochs. On April 9, 2009, Jim Glover performed a tribute to Ochs at Mother's Musical Bakery in Sarasota, Florida.
Among Ochs's many admirers were the short story writer Breece D'J Pancake and actor Sean Penn. Meegan Lee Ochs, who worked as Sean Penn's personal assistant from 1983 to 1985, wrote in her Foreword to "Farewells & Fantasies" that she and Penn discussed "over many years" the possibility of making a movie about her father; the plan has not yet come to fruition, although Penn expressed an interest in the project as recently as February 2009. Author Jim Carroll's autobiography, "The Basketball Diaries" (1978), was dedicated in memory of Phil Ochs. On the cover of The Go-Betweens' "The Lost Album", Grant McLennan wore a shirt with the words "Get outta the car, Ochs", a reference to the limousine incident involving Ochs and Dylan. The 1994 film "Spanking the Monkey" makes reference to Ochs and his suicide. Ochs is mentioned in the Stephen King novels "The Tommyknockers" and "Hearts in Atlantis".
In "Revolutionaries", a novel by Joshua Furst, based on the life of Abbie Hoffman, Ochs appears as a character under his own name.
Michael Korolenko directed the 1984 biopic "Chords of Fame", which featured Bill Burnett as Ochs. The film included interviews with people who had known Ochs, including Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, manager Harold Leventhal, and Mike Porco, the owner of Gerde's Folk City. "Chords of Fame" also included performances of Ochs songs by folk musicians who knew him, including Bob Gibson, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, and Eric Andersen.
Filmmaker Ken Bowser directed the documentary film "", which premiered at the 2010 Woodstock Film Festival in Woodstock, New York. Its theatrical run began on January 5, 2011, at the IFC Theater in Greenwich Village, New York City, opening in cities around the US and Canada thereafter. The film features extensive archival footage of Ochs and many pivotal events from the 1960s civil rights and peace movements, as well as interviews with friends, family and colleagues who knew Ochs through music and politics. The PBS "American Masters" series opened its 2012 season with an edited version of the film. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25123 |
Prayer wheel
A prayer wheel is a cylindrical wheel () on a spindle made from metal, wood, stone, leather or coarse cotton.
Traditionally, a mantra is written in Newari language of Nepal, on the outside of the wheel. The mantra Om mani padme hum is most commonly used, but other mantras may be used as well.
Also sometimes depicted are Dakinis, Protectors and very often the eight auspicious symbols Ashtamangala. At the core of the cylinder is a "life tree" often made of wood or metal with certain mantras written on or wrapped around it. Many thousands (or in the case of larger prayer wheels, millions) of mantras are then wrapped around this life tree.
According to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition based on the lineage texts regarding prayer wheels, spinning such a wheel will have much the same meritorious effect as orally reciting the prayers.
Prayer wheel or Mani wheel (). The Tibetan term is a contraction: "Mani" itself is a contraction of Sanskrit "cintamani"; "chos" is Tibetan for "Dharma"; and "khor" or "khorlo" means "chakrano".
The first prayer wheels, which are driven by wind, have been used in Tibet and China since the fourth century. The concept of the prayer wheel is a physical manifestation of the phrase "turning the wheel of Dharma," which describes the way in which the Buddha taught.
Prayer wheels originated from ‘The School of Shakyamuni sutra, volume 3 – pagoda and temple’ which states that:
According to the Tibetan tradition, the prayer wheel lineage traces back to the famous Indian master, Arya Nagarjuna. Tibetan texts also say that the practice was taught by the Indian Buddhist masters Tilopa and Naropa as well as the Tibetan masters Marpa and Milarepa.
According to the lineage texts on prayer wheels, prayer wheels are used to accumulate wisdom and merit (good karma) and to purify negativities (bad karma). In Buddhism, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have created a variety of skillful means (upaya) to help bring practitioners ever closer to realizing enlightenment. The idea of spinning mantras relates to numerous Tantric practices whereby the Tantric practitioner visualizes mantras revolving around the nadis and especially around the meridian chakras such as the heart and crown. Therefore, prayer wheels are a visual aid for developing one's capacity for these types of Tantric visualizations. The spiritual method for those practicing with a prayer wheel is very specific (with slight variations according to different Buddhist sects). The practitioner most often spins the wheel clockwise, as the direction in which the mantras are written is that of the movement of the sun across the sky. On rare occasions, advanced Tantric practitioners such as Senge Dongma, the Lion-Faced Dakini, spin prayer wheels counterclockwise to manifest a more wrathful protective energy. As the practitioner turns the wheel, it is best to focus the mind and repeat the Om Mani Padme Hum mantra. Not only does this increase the merit earned by the wheel's use, but it is a mind-stabilization technique that trains the mind while the body is in motion. Intoning the mani mantra with mindfulness and the "Bodhicitta" motivation dramatically enhances the effects of the prayer wheel. However, it is said that even turning it while distracted has benefits and merits, and it is stated in the lineage text that even insects that cross a prayer wheel's shadow will get some benefit. Each revolution is as meritorious as reading the inscription aloud as many times as it is written on the scroll, and this means that the more Om Mani Padme Hum mantras that are inside a prayer wheel, the more powerful it is. It is best to turn the wheel with a gentle rhythm and not too fast or frantically. While turning smoothly, one keeps in mind the motivation and spirit of compassion and "bodhichitta" (the noble mind that aspires to full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings).
The benefits attributed to the practice of turning the wheel are vast. Not only does it help wisdom, compassion and bodhichitta arise in the practitioner, it also enhances siddhis (spiritual powers such as clairvoyance, precognition, reading others thoughts, etc.). The practitioner can repeat the mantra as many times as possible during the turning of the wheel, stabilizing a calm, meditative mind. At the end of a practice session, there is a Tibetan Buddhist tradition of dedicating any accumulated merits that one may have gathered during practice to the benefit of all sentient beings. Then Om Ah Hum 3 times. This is customary with Tibetans upon completing any Buddhist practice, including the practice of the prayer wheel.
Thubten Zopa Rinpoche has commented that installing a prayer wheel has the capacity to completely transform a place, which becomes "...peaceful, pleasant, and conducive to the mind."
Simply touching a prayer wheel is said to bring great purification to negative karmas and obscurations.
The "mani wheel", or hand prayer wheel, has a cylindrical, generally sheet-metal body (often beautifully embossed) mounted on a metal shaft or pin set into a wooden or metal handle that turns on a circular bearing commonly made of "Turbinella" (conch) shell. The cylinder itself is affixed with a cord or chain terminating in a metal weight allowing it to be spun by a slight rotation of the wrist. The weighted chain, known as a “governor” in Western technology, stabilizes the wheel and keeps it spinning with less input from the practitioner than would otherwise be the case. The common term, “prayer wheel” is a double misnomer. A long strip of rolled-up paper bearing printed or inscribed mantras (Tib. "mani") rather than prayers, per se, is inside the cylinder. The term “mill,” a turning process that generates a particular output, is a better translation of the Tibetan "‘khor-lo" (in contrast to “wheel”) since the spinning cylinder is intended to emanate positive energy, allowing the practitioner to accumulate wisdom and merit. The Tibetan name of this device is mani-chos-'khor (མ་ནི་ཆོས་འཁོར་).
This type of prayer wheel is simply a prayer wheel that is turned by flowing water. The water that is touched by the wheel is said to become blessed and carries its purifying power into all life forms in the oceans and lakes that it feeds into.
This wheel is turned by the heat of a candle or electric light. The light emitted from the prayer wheel then purifies the negative karmas of the living beings it touches.
This type of wheel is turned by wind. The wind that touches the prayer wheel helps alleviate the negative karma of those it touches.
Many monasteries around Tibet have large, fixed, metal wheels set side by side in a row. Passersby can turn the entire row of wheels simply by sliding their hands over each one.
Some prayer wheels are powered by electric motors. "Thardo Khorlo," as these electric wheels are sometimes known, contain one thousand copies of the mantra of Chenrezig and many copies of other mantras. The Thardo Khorlo can be accompanied by lights and music if one so chooses
Electricity can certainly be considered similar to the above sources of energy for PW (water, fire, wind). The merit generated by the PW is due to the power of the Dharma Texts and Mantras; not necessarily the "power" which rotates them. These PW turn all day, all night, all through the year. The Lamas and practitioners who build, maintain and pay for the electricity rightly help to generate and dedicate the merit. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25125 |
Postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the face or address-side of any item of mail—an envelope or other postal cover (e.g., packet, box, mailing cylinder)—that they wish to send. The item is then processed by the postal system, where a postmark or cancellation mark—in modern usage indicating date and point of origin of mailing—is applied to the stamp and its left and right sides to prevent its reuse. The item is then delivered to its addressee.
Always featuring the name of the issuing nation (with the exception of the United Kingdom), a denomination of its value, and often an illustration of persons, events, institutions, or natural realities that symbolize the nation's traditions and values, every stamp is printed on a piece of usually rectangular, but sometimes triangular or otherwise shaped special custom-made paper whose back is either glazed with an adhesive gum or self-adhesive.
Because governments issue stamps of different denominations in unequal numbers and routinely discontinue some lines and introduce others, and because of their illustrations and association with the social and political realities of the time of their issue, they are often prized for their beauty and historical significance by stamp collectors whose study of their history and of mailing systems is called philately. Because collectors often buy stamps from an issuing agency with no intention to use them for postage, the revenues from such purchases and payments of postage can make them a source of net profit to that agency. On 1 May 1840, the Penny Black, the first adhesive postage stamp, was issued in the United Kingdom. Within three years postage stamps were introduced in Switzerland and Brazil, a little later in the United States, and by 1860, they were in 90 countries around the world. The first postage stamps did not need to show the issuing country, so no country name was included on them. Thus the UK remains the only country in the world to omit its name on postage stamps; the monarch's image signifies the UK as the country of origin.
Throughout modern history, numerous methods were used to indicate that postage had been paid on a mailed item, so several different men have received credit for inventing the postage stamp.
In 1680, William Dockwra, an English merchant in London, and his partner Robert Murray established the London Penny Post, a mail system that delivered letters and small parcels inside the city of London for the sum of one penny. Confirmation of paid postage was indicated by the use of a hand "stamp" to frank the mailed item. Though this 'stamp' was applied to the letter or parcel itself, rather than to a separate piece of paper, it is considered by many historians to be the world's first postage stamp.
In 1835, the civil servant Lovrenc Košir from Ljubljana in Austria-Hungary (now Slovenia), suggested the use of "artificially affixed postal tax stamps" using "gepresste Papieroblate" ("pressed paper wafers"), but although civil bureaucrats considered the suggestion in detail, it was not adopted. The 'Papieroblate' were to produce stamps as paper decals so thin as to prevent their reuse.
In 1836, Robert Wallace, a Member of (British) Parliament, gave Sir Rowland Hill numerous books and documents about the postal service, which Hill described as a "half hundred weight of material". After a detailed study, on 4 January 1837 Hill submitted a pamphlet entitled "Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability", marked "private and confidential", and not released to the general public, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Thomas Spring Rice. The Chancellor summoned Hill to a meeting at which he suggested improvements and changes to be presented in a supplement, which Hill duly produced and submitted on 28 January 1837.
Summoned to give evidence before the Commission for Post Office Enquiry on 13 February 1837, Hill read from the letter he wrote to the Chancellor that included a statement saying that the notation of paid postage could be created "... by using a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash ...". This would eventually become the first unambiguous description of a modern adhesive postage stamp (though the term "postage stamp" originated at later date). Shortly afterward, Hill's revision of the booklet, dated 22 February 1837, containing some 28,000 words, incorporating the supplement given to the Chancellor and statements he made to the commission, was published and made available to the general public. Hansard records that on 15 December 1837, Benjamin Hawes asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer "whether it was the intention of the Government to give effect to the recommendation of the Commissioners of the Post-office, contained in their ninth report relating to the reduction of the rates of postage, and the issuing of penny stamps?"
Hill's ideas for postage stamps and charging paid-postage based on weight soon took hold, and were adopted in many countries throughout the world. With the new policy of charging by weight, using envelopes for mailing documents became the norm. Hill's brother Edwin invented a prototype envelope-making machine that folded paper into envelopes quickly enough to match the pace of the growing demand for postage stamps.
Rowland Hill and the reforms he introduced to the United Kingdom postal system appear on several of its commemorative stamps.
In the 1881 book "The Penny Postage Scheme of 1837", Scotsman Patrick Chalmers claimed that his father, James Chalmers, published an essay in August 1834 describing and advocating a postage stamp, but submitted no evidence of the essay's existence. Nevertheless, until he died in 1891, Patrick Chalmers campaigned to have his father recognized as the inventor of the postage stamp.
The first independent evidence for Chalmers' claim is an essay, dated 8 February 1838 and received by the Post Office on 17 February 1838, in which he proposed adhesive postage stamps to the General Post Office. In this approximately 800-word document concerning methods of indicating that postage had been paid on mail he states:
Chalmers' original document is now in the United Kingdom's National Postal Museum.
Since Chalmers used the same postage denominations that Hill had proposed in February 1837, it is clear that he was aware of Hill's proposals, but whether he obtained a copy of Hill's booklet or simply read about it in one or both of the two detailed accounts (25 March 1837 and 20 December 1837) published in "The Times" is unknown. Neither article mentioned "a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp", so Chalmers could not have known that Hill had made such a proposal. This suggests that either Chalmers had previously read Hill's booklet and was merely elaborating Hill's idea, or he had independently developed the idea of the modern postage stamp.
James Chalmers organized petitions "for a low and uniform rate of postage". The first such petition was presented in the House of Commons on 4 December 1837 (from Montrose). Further petitions organised by him were presented on 1 May 1838 (from Dunbar and Cupar), 14 May 1838 (from the county of Forfar), and 12 June 1839. At this same time, other groups organised petitions and presented them to Parliament. All petitions for consumer-oriented, low-cost, volume-based postal rates followed publication of Hill's proposals.
Other claimants include or have included
Although a number of people laid claim to the concept of the postage stamp, it is well documented that stamps were first introduced in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 1 May 1840 as a part of postal reforms promoted by Sir Rowland Hill. With its introduction, the postage fee was paid by the sender and not the recipient, though it was still possible to send mail without prepaying. From when the first postage stamps were used, postmarks were applied to prevent the stamps being used again.
The first stamp, the "Penny black", became available for purchase 1 May 1840, to be valid as of 6 May 1840. Two days later, 8 May 1840, the Two penny blue was introduced. The Penny black was sufficient for a letter less than half an ounce to be sent anywhere within the UK. Both stamps included an engraving of the young Queen Victoria, without perforations, as the first stamps were separated from their sheets by cutting them with scissors.
The first stamps did not need to show the issuing country, so no country name was included on them. The UK remains the only country to omit its name on postage stamps, using the reigning monarch's head as country identification. Following the introduction of the postage stamp in the UK, prepaid postage considerably increased the number of letters mailed. Before 1839, the number of letters sent in the UK was typically 76 million. By 1850 this increased five-fold to 350 million, continuing to grow rapidly until the end of the 20th century when newer methods of indicating the payment of postage reduced the use of stamps.
Other countries soon followed the UK with their own stamps. The Canton of Zürich in Switzerland issued the Zurich 4 and 6 rappen on 1 March 1843. Although the Penny black could be used to send a letter less than half an ounce anywhere within the UK, the Swiss did not initially adopt that system, instead continuing to calculate mail rates based on distance to be delivered. Brazil issued the Bull's Eye stamp on 1 August 1843. Using the same printer used for the Penny black, Brazil opted for an abstract design instead of the portrait of Emperor Pedro II, so his image would not be disfigured by a postmark.
In 1845 some postmasters in the United States issued their own stamps, but it was not until 1847 that the first official U.S. stamps were issued: 5 and 10 cent issues depicting Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. A few other countries issued stamps in the late 1840s. The famous Mauritius "Post Office" stamps were issued by Mauritius in September 1847. Many others, such as India, started their use in the 1850s, and by the 1860s most countries issued stamps.
Perforation of postage stamps began in January 1854. The first officially perforated stamps were issued in February 1854. Stamps from Henry Archer's perforation trials were issued in the last few months of 1850; during the 1851 parliamentary session at the House of Commons of the United Kingdom; and finally in 1853/54 after the UK government paid Archer £4,000 for his machine and the patent.
The Universal Postal Union, established in 1874, prescribed that nations shall only issue postage stamps according to the quantity of real use, and no living persons shall be taken as subjects. The latter rule lost its significance after World War I.
After World War II, it became customary in some countries, especially small Arab nations, to issue postage stamps "en masse" as it was realized how profitable that was.
During the 21st century, the amount of mail — and the use of postage stamps, accordingly — has reduced in the world because of electronic mail and other technological innovations. Iceland has already announced that it will not issue new stamps anymore because the sales have decreased and there are enough stamps in the stock.
When the first postage stamps were issued in the 1840s, they followed an almost identical standard in shape, size and general subject matter. They were rectangular in shape. They bore the images of Queens, Presidents and other political figures. They also depicted the denomination of the postage-paid, and with the exception of the United Kingdom, depicted the name of the country from which issued. Nearly all early postage stamps depict images of national leaders only.
Soon after the introduction of the postage stamp, other subjects and designs began to appear. Some designs were welcome, others widely criticized. For example, in 1869, the U.S. Post Office broke tradition of depicting presidents or other famous historical figures, instead using other subjects including a train, and horse. (See: 1869 Pictorial Issue.) The change was greeted with general disapproval, and sometimes harsh criticism from the American public.
Perforations are small holes made between individual postage stamps on a sheet of stamps, facilitating separation of a desired number of stamps. The resulting frame-like, rippled edge surrounding the separated stamp defines a characteristic meme for the appearance of a postage stamp.
In the first decade of postage stamps' existence (depending on the country), stamps were issued without perforations. Scissors or other cutting mechanisms were required to separate a desired number of stamps from a full sheet. If cutting tools were not used, individual stamps were torn off. This is evidenced by the ragged edges of surviving examples. Mechanically separating stamps from a sheet proved an inconvenience for postal clerks and businesses, both dealing with large numbers of individual stamps on a daily basis. By 1850, methods such as rouletting wheels were being devised in efforts of making stamp separation more convenient, and less time-consuming.
The United Kingdom was the first country to issue postage stamps with perforations. The first machine specifically designed to perforate sheets of postage stamps was invented in London by Henry Archer, an Irish landowner and railroad man from Dublin, Ireland. The 1850 Penny Red was the first stamp to be perforated during trial course of Archer's perforating machine. After a period of trial and error and modifications of Archer's invention, new machines based on the principles pioneered by Archer were purchased and in 1854 the U.K. postal authorities started continuously issuing perforated postage stamps in the Penny Red and all subsequent designs.
In the U.S. the use of postage stamps caught on quickly and became more widespread when on March 3, 1851, the last day of its legislative session, Congress passed the "Act of March 3, 1851" ("An Act to reduce and modify the Rates of Postage in the United States"). Similarly introduced on the last day of the Congressional session four years later, the "Act of March 3, 1855" required the prepayment of postage on all mailings. Thereafter, postage stamp use in the U.S. quickly doubled, and by 1861 had quadrupled.
In 1856, under the direction of Postmaster General James Campbell, Toppan and Carpenter, ("commissioned by the U.S. government to print U.S. postage stamps through the 1850s") purchased a rotary machine designed to separate stamps, patented in England in 1854 by William and Henry Bemrose, who were printers in Derby, England. The original machine cut slits into the paper rather than punching holes, but the machine was soon modified.
The first stamp issue to be officially perforated, the 3-cent George Washington, was issued by the U.S. Post Office on February 24, 1857. Between 1857 and 1861 all stamps originally issued between 1851 and 1856 were reissued with perforations. Initial capacity was insufficient to perforate all stamps printed, thus perforated issues used between February and July 1857 are scarce and quite valuable.
In addition to the most common rectangular shape, stamps have been issued in geometric (circular, triangular and pentagonal) and irregular shapes. The United States issued its first circular stamp in 2000 as a hologram of the earth. Sierra Leone and Tonga have issued stamps in the shapes of fruit. Stamps that are printed on sheets are generally separated by perforations, though, more recently, with the advent of gummed stamps that do not have to be moistened prior to affixing them, designs can incorporate smooth edges (although a purely decorative perforated edge is often present).
Stamps are most commonly made from paper designed specifically for them, and are printed in sheets, rolls, or small booklets. Less commonly, postage stamps are made of materials other than paper, such as embossed foil (sometimes of gold). Switzerland made a stamp that contained a bit of lace and one of wood. The United States produced one of plastic. East Germany issued a stamp of synthetic chemicals. In the Netherlands a stamp was made of silver foil. Bhutan issued one with its national anthem on a playable record.
The subjects found on the face of postage stamps are generally what defines a particular stamp issue to the public and are often a reason why they are saved by collectors or history enthusiasts. Graphical subjects found on postage stamps have ranged from the early portrayals of kings, queens and presidents to later depictions of ships, birds and satellites, famous people, historical events, comics, dinosaurs, hobbies (knitting, stamp collecting), sports, holiday themes, and a wealth of other subjects too numerous to list.
Artists, designers, engravers and administrative officials are involved with the choice of subject matter and the method of printing stamps. Early stamp images were almost always produced from an engraving — a design etched into a steel die, which was then hardened and whose impression was transferred to a printing plate. Using an "engraved" image was deemed a more secure way of printing stamps as it was nearly impossible to counterfeit a finely detailed image with raised lines for anyone but a master engraver. In the mid-20th century, stamp issues produced by other forms of printing began to emerge, such as lithography, photogravure, intaglio and web offset printing. These later printing methods were less expensive and typically produced images of lesser quality.
Apart from these, there are also Revenue (used to collect taxes or fees on items such as documents, tobacco, alcoholic drinks, hunting licenses and medicines) and Telegraph stamps (for sending telegrams), which fall in a separate category from postage stamps.
Postage stamps are first issued on a specific date, often referred to as the "First day of issue." A "first day cover" usually consists of an envelope, a postage stamp and a postmark with the date of the stamp's first day of issue thereon. Starting in the mid-20th century some countries began assigning the first day of issue to a place associated with the subject of the stamp design, such as a specific town or city. There are two basic types of "First Day Covers" (FDCs) noted by collectors. The first and often most desirable type among advanced collectors is a cover sent through the mail in the course of everyday usage, without the intention of the envelope and stamp ever being retrieved and collected. The second type of FDC is often referred to as "Philatelic", that is, an envelope and stamp sent by someone with the intention of retrieving and collecting the mailed item at a later time and place. The envelope used for this type of FDC often bears a printed design or cachet of its own in correspondence with the stamp's subject and is usually printed well in advance of the first day of issue date. The latter type of FDC is usually far more common, and is usually inexpensive and relatively easy to acquire. Covers that were sent without any secondary purpose are considered "non-philatelic" and often are much more challenging to find and collect.
Postage stamps are sometimes issued in souvenir sheets or miniature sheets containing one or a small number of stamps. Souvenir sheets typically include additional artwork or information printed on the selvage, the border surrounding the stamps. Sometimes the stamps make up a greater picture. Some countries, and some issues, are produced as individual stamps as well as sheets.
Stamp collecting is a hobby. Collecting is not the same as philately, which is defined as the study of stamps. The creation of a valuable or comprehensive collection, however, may require some philatelic knowledge.
Stamp collectors are an important source of revenue for some small countries that create limited runs of elaborate stamps designed mainly to be bought by stamp collectors. The stamps produced by these countries may far exceed their postal needs. Hundreds of countries, each producing scores of different stamps each year, resulted in 400,000 different types of stamps in existence by the year 2000. Annual world output averages about 10,000 types.
Some countries authorize the production of postage stamps that have no postal use, but are intended instead solely for collectors. Other countries issue large numbers of low denomination stamps that are bundled together in starter packs for new collectors. "Official reprints" are often printed by companies who have purchased or contracted for those rights and such reprints see no postal use. All of these stamps are often found "canceled to order", meaning they are postmarked without ever having passed through the postal system. Most national post offices produce stamps that would not be produced if there were no collectors, some to a far more prolific degree than others.
Sales of stamps to collectors who do not use them for mailing can result in large profits. Examples of excessive issues have been the stamps produced by Nicholas F. Seebeck and stamps produced for the component states of the United Arab Emirates. Seebeck operated in the 1890s as an agent of Hamilton Bank Note Company. He approached Latin American countries with an offer to produce their entire postage stamp needs for free. In return he would have exclusive rights to market stamps to collectors. Each year a new issue would be produced, but would expire at the end of the year. This assured Seebeck of a continuing supply of remainders. In the 1960s, printers such as the Barody Stamp Company contracted to produce stamps for the separate Emirates and other countries. The sparse population of the desert states made it wholly unlikely that many of these stamps would ever be used for mailing purposes, and earned them the name of the "sand dune" countries. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25126 |
Ponte Vecchio
The Ponte Vecchio ("Old Bridge", ) is a medieval stone closed-spandrel segmental arch bridge over the Arno River, in Florence, Italy. It is noted for the shops built along it, as was once common. Butchers, tanners, and farmers initially occupied the shops; the present tenants are jewelers, art dealers, and souvenir sellers. The Ponte Vecchio's two neighboring bridges are the Ponte Santa Trinita and the Ponte alle Grazie.
The bridge spans the Arno at its narrowest point where it is believed that a bridge was first built in Roman times, when the via Cassia crossed the river at this point. The Roman piers were of stone, the superstructure of wood. The bridge first appears in a document of 996 and was destroyed by a flood in 1117 and reconstructed in stone. In 1218 the Ponte alla Carraia, a wooden structure, was established nearby which led to it being referred to as "Ponte Nuovo" relative to the older (Vecchio) structure. It was swept away again in 1333 except for two of its central piers, as noted by Giovanni Villani in his "Nuova Cronica". It was rebuilt in 1345. Giorgio Vasari recorded the traditional view of his day that attributed its design to Taddeo Gaddi — besides Giotto one of the few artistic names of the trecento still recalled two hundred years later. Modern historians present Neri di Fioravanti as a possible candidate as builder. Sheltered in a little loggia at the central opening of the bridge is a weathered dedication stone, which once read "Nel trentatrè dopo il mille-trecento, il ponte cadde, per diluvio dell' acque: poi dieci anni, come al Comun piacque, rifatto fu con questo adornamento". The Torre dei Mannelli was built at the southeast corner of the bridge to defend it.
The bridge consists of three segmental arches: the main arch has a span of the two side arches each span . The rise of the arches is between 3.5 and 4.4 meters (11½ to 14½ feet), and the span-to-rise ratio 5:1. The shallow segmental arches, which require fewer piers than the semicircular arch traditionally used by Romans, enabled ease of access and navigation for animal-drawn carts. Another notable design element is the large piazza at the center of the bridge that Leon Battista Alberti described as a prominent ornament in the city.
It has always hosted shops and merchants who displayed their goods on tables before their premises, after authorization by the Bargello (a sort of a lord mayor, a magistrate and a police authority). The back shops ("retrobotteghe") that may be seen from upriver, were added in the seventeenth century.
During World War II, the Ponte Vecchio was not destroyed by the German army during their retreat at the advance of the British 8th Army on 4 August 1944, unlike all the other bridges in Florence. This was, according to many locals and tour guides, because of an express order by Hitler. Access to the Ponte Vecchio was, however, obstructed by the destruction of the buildings at both ends of the bridge, which have since been rebuilt using a combination of original and modern designs.
In order to connect the Palazzo Vecchio (Florence's town hall) with the Palazzo Pitti, in 1565 Cosimo I de' Medici had Giorgio Vasari build the Vasari Corridor above it. To enhance the prestige and clean up the bridge, in 1593 the Medici Grand Dukes prohibited butchers from operating and selling there in favor of gold and silver merchants. A decree was made in 1595 that excluded butchers from this bridge (only goldsmiths and jewelers are allowed) that is in effect to this day. The association of butchers had monopolized the shops on the bridge since 1442. A stone with an inscription from Dante ("Paradiso" xvi. 140-7) records the spot at the entrance to the bridge where Buondelmonte de' Buondelmonti was murdered by the Amidei clan in 1215, which began the urban fighting of the Guelfs and Ghibellines.
In 1900, to honor and mark the fourth century of the birth of the great Florentine sculptor and master goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini, the leading goldsmiths of the bridge commissioned the Florentine sculptor, Raffaello Romanelli, to create a bronze bust of Cellini to stand atop a fountain in the middle of the Eastern side of the bridge, where it stands to this day.
Between 2005 and 2006, 5,500 padlocks, known as love locks, which were attached to the railings around the bust of Cellini, were removed by the city council. According to the council, the padlocks were aesthetically displeasing and damaged the bust and its railings. There is now a fine for attaching love locks to the bridge.
The bridge was severely damaged in the 1966 flood of the Arno. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25130 |
Peenemünde Army Research Center
The Peenemünde Army Research Centre (, HVP) was founded in 1937 as one of five military proving grounds under the German Army Weapons Office ("Heereswaffenamt"). Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including the V-2 rocket. The works were attacked by the British in Operation Crossbow from August 1943, before falling to the Soviets in May 1945.
On April 2, 1936, the aviation ministry paid 750,000 reichsmarks to the town of Wolgast for the whole Northern peninsula of the Baltic island of Usedom. By the middle of 1938, the Army facility had been separated from the Luftwaffe facility and was nearly complete, with personnel moved from Kummersdorf. The Army Research Center ("Peenemünde Ost") consisted of "Werk Ost" and "Werk Süd", while "Werk West" (Peenemünde West) was the Luftwaffe Test Site (), one of the four test and research facilities of the Luftwaffe, with its headquarters facility at "Erprobungsstelle Rechlin".
Wernher von Braun was the HVP technical director (Dr. Walter Thiel was deputy director) and there were nine major departments:
The Measurements Group (Gerhard Reisig) was part of the BSM, and additional departments included the Production Planning Directorate (Detmar Stahlknecht), the Personnel Office (Richard Sundermeyer), and the Drawings Change Service.
Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including the V-2 rocket (A-4) (see test launches), and the Wasserfall (35 Peenemünde trial firings), Schmetterling, Rheintochter, Taifun, and Enzian missiles. The HVP also performed preliminary design work on very-long-range missiles for use against the United States. That project was sometimes called "V-3" and its existence is well documented. The Peenemünde establishment also developed other technologies such as the first closed-circuit television system in the world, installed at Test Stand VII to track the launching rockets.
According to Walter Dornberger, "Rockets worked under water." In the summer of 1942, led by Ernst Steinhoff, Pennemünde worked on sea launches, either from launching racks on the deck of a submerged submarine, or from towed floats. Dornberger summarized the launches from a depth of 30 to 50 feet, "A staggering sight it was when those twenty heavy powder rockets suddenly rose, with a rush and a roar, from the calm waters of the Baltic."
The supersonic wind tunnel at Peenemünde's "Aerodynamic Institute" eventually had nozzles for speeds up to the record speed of Mach 4.4 (in 1942 or 1943), as well as an innovative desiccant system to reduce the condensation clouding caused by the use of liquid oxygen, in 1940. Led by Rudolph Hermann, who arrived in April 1937 from the University of Aachen, the number of technical staff members reached two hundred in 1943, and it also included Hermann Kurzweg of the (University of Leipzig) and Walter Haeussermann.
Initially set up under the HVP as a rocket training battery (Number 444), "Heimat-Artillerie-Park 11 Karlshagen/Pomerania" (HAP 11) also contained the A-A Research Command North for the testing of anti-aircraft rockets. The chemist Magnus von Braun, the youngest brother of Wernher von Braun, was employed in the attempted development at Peenemünde of anti-aircraft rockets. These were never very successful as weapons during World War II. Their development as practical weapons took another decade of development in the United States and in the U.S.S.R.
In November 1938, Walther von Brauchitsch ordered construction of an A-4 production plant at Peenemünde, and in January 1939, Walter Dornberger created a subsection of Wa Pruf 11 for planning the Peenemünde Production Plant project, headed by G. Schubert, a senior Army civil servant. By midsummer 1943, the first trial runs of the assembly-line in the Production Works at "Werke Süd" were made,
but after the end of July 1943 when the enormous hangar "Fertigungshalle 1" (F-1, Mass Production Plant No. 1) was just about to go into operation, Operation Hydra bombed Peenemünde. On August 26, 1943, Albert Speer called a meeting with Hans Kammler, Dornberger, Gerhard Degenkolb, and Karl Otto Saur to negotiate the move of A-4 main production to an underground factory in the Harz mountains. In early September, Peenemünde machinery and personnel for production (including Alban Sawatzki, Arthur Rudolph, and about ten engineers) were moved to the Mittelwerk, which also received machinery and personnel from the two other planned A-4 assembly sites. On October 13, 1943, the Peenemünde prisoners from the small F-1 concentration camp boarded rail cars bound for Kohnstein mountain.
Two Polish janitors of Peenemünde's Camp Trassenheide in early 1943 provided maps, sketches and reports to Polish Home Army Intelligence, and in June 1943 British intelligence had received two such reports which identified the "rocket assembly hall", "experimental pit", and "launching tower". The Allies also received information about the V-2 rockets and the production sites from the Austrian resistance group around the priest Heinrich Maier.
As the opening attack of the British Operation Crossbow, the Operation "Hydra" air-raid attacked the HVP's "Sleeping & Living Quarters" (to specifically target scientists), then the "Factory Workshops", and finally the "Experimental Station" on the night of August 17/18, 1943. The Polish janitors were given advance warning of the attack, but the workers could not leave due to SS security and the facility had no air raid shelters for the prisoners.
A year later on July 18, August 4, and August 25, the U.S. Eighth Air Force conducted three additional Peenemünde raids to counter suspected hydrogen peroxide production.
As with the move of the V-2 Production Works to the Mittelwerk, the complete withdrawal of the "development" of guided missiles was approved by the Army and SS in October 1943. On August 26, 1943, at a meeting in Albert Speer's office, Hans Kammler suggested moving the A-4 Development Works to a proposed underground site in Austria. After a site survey in September by Papa Riedel and Schubert, Kammler chose the code name Zement ("cement") for it in December, and work to blast a cavern into a cliff in Ebensee near Lake Traunsee commenced in January 1944. To build the tunnels, a concentration camp (a sub unit of Mauthausen-Gusen) was erected in the vicinity of the planned production sites. In early 1944, construction work started for the test stands and launching pads in the Austrian Alps (code name Salamander), with target areas planned for the Tatra Mountains, the Arlberg range, and the area of the Ortler mountain. Other evacuation locations included:
For people being relocated from Peenemünde, the new organization was to be designated Entwicklungsgemeinschaft Mittelbau () and Kammler's order to relocate to Thuringia arrived by teleprinter on January 31, 1945. On February 3, 1945, at the last meeting at Peenemünde held regarding the relocation, the HVP consisted of A-4 development/ modification (1940 people), A-4b development (27), Wasserfall and Taifun development (1455), support and administration (760). The first train departed on February 17 with 525 people en route to Thuringia (including Bleicherode, Sangerhausen (district), and Bad Sachsa) and the evacuation was complete in mid-March.
Another reaction to the aerial bombing was the creation of a back-up research test range near Blizna, in southeastern Poland. Carefully camouflaged, this secret facility was built by 2000 prisoners from the Pustkow concentration camp. The Polish resistance movement ("Armia Krajowa") succeeded in capturing an intact V2 rocket here in 1943. It had been launched but didn't explode and was later retrieved intact from the Bug River and transferred secretly to London.
The last V-2 launch at Peenemünde happened in February 1945, and on May 5, 1945, the soldiers of the Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front under General Konstantin Rokossovsky captured the seaport of Swinemünde and all of Usedom Island. Soviet infantrymen under the command of Major Anatole Vavilov stormed the installations at Peenemünde and found "75 percent wreckage". All of the research buildings and rocket test stands had been demolished.
Although rumors spread that the Soviet space program revived Peenemünde as a test range, more destruction of the technical facilities of Peenemünde took place between 1948 and 1961. Only the power station, the airport, and the railroad link to Zinnowitz remained functional. The gas plant for the production of liquid oxygen still lies in ruins at the entrance to Peenemünde. Very little remains of most of the other Nazi German facilities there.
The Peenemünde Historical Technical Museum opened in 1992 in the shelter control room and the area of the former power station and is an anchor point of ERIH, the European Route of Industrial Heritage.
A different spelling is "Heeresversuchsstelle Peenemünde", and "Heeresanstalt Peenemünde" appears on a German document with Wasserfall velocity calculations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25134 |
Padstow
Padstow (; ) is a town, civil parish and fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town is situated on the west bank of the River Camel estuary approximately northwest of Wadebridge, northwest of Bodmin and northeast of Newquay. The population of Padstow civil parish was 3,162 in the 2001 census, reducing to 2,993 at the 2011 census. In addition an electoral ward with the same name exists but extends as far as Trevose Head. The population for this ward is 4,434
Padstow was originally named "Petroc-stow", Petroc-stowe, or 'Petrock's Place', after the Welsh missionary Saint Petroc, who landed at Trebetherick around AD 500. After his death a monastery (Lanwethinoc, the church of Wethinoc, an earlier holy man) was established here which was of great importance until "Petroces stow" (probably Padstow) was raided by the Vikings in 981, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Whether as a result of this attack or later, the monks moved inland to Bodmin, taking with them the relics of St Petroc. The cult of St Petroc was important both in Padstow and Bodmin.
Padstow is recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) when it was held by Bodmin Monastery. There was land for 4 ploughs, 5 villeins who had 2 ploughs, 6 smallholders and 24 acres of pasture. It was valued at 10/- (10 shillings or 50p).
In the medieval period Padstow was commonly called Aldestowe ('old place' in contrast to Bodmin, the 'new place'). or Hailemouth ("hayle" being Cornish for estuary). The modern Cornish form "Lannwedhenek" derives from "Lanwethinoc" and in a simpler form appears in the name of the Lodenek Press, a publisher based in Padstow.
The seal of the borough of Padstow was a ship with three masts, the sails furled and an anchor hanging from the bow, with the legend "Padstow."
"Time Team" visited Padstow for the episode "From Constantinople to Cornwall," broadcast on 9 March 2008.
There are two Cornish crosses in the parish: one is built into a wall in the old vicarage garden and another is at Prideaux Place (consisting of a four-holed head and part of an ornamented cross shaft). There is also part of a decorated cross shaft in the churchyard.
The church of St Petroc is one of four said to have been founded by the saint, the others being Little Petherick, Parracombe and Bodmin. It is quite large and mostly of 13th and 14th century date. There is a fine 15th century font of Catacleuse; the pulpit of c. 1530 is also of interest. There are two fine monuments to members of the Prideaux family (Sir
Nicholas, 1627 and Edmund, 1693): there is also a monumental brass of 1421.
Traditionally a fishing port, Padstow is now a popular tourist destination. Although some of its former fishing fleet remains, it is mainly a yachting haven on a dramatic coastline with few easily navigable harbours. The influence of restaurateur Rick Stein can be seen in the port, and tourists travel from long distances to eat at his restaurant and cafés. This has led to the town being dubbed "Padstein", by food writers in the British media.
However, the boom in the popularity of the port has caused house price inflation both in the port and surrounding areas, as people buy homes to live in, or as second or holiday homes. This has meant significant numbers of locals cannot afford to buy property in the area, with prices often well over 10 times the average salary of around £15,000. This has led to a population decline.
Plans to build a skatepark in Padstow have been proposed and funds are being raised to create this at the Recreation Ground (Wheal Jubilee Parc).
During the mid-19th century, ships carrying timber from Canada (particularly Quebec City) arrived at Padstow and offered cheap travel to passengers wishing to emigrate. Shipbuilders in the area also benefited from the quality of their cargoes. Among the ships that sailed were the barques "Clio", "Belle" and "Voluna"; and the brig "Dalusia".
The approach from the sea into the River Camel is partially blocked by the Doom Bar, a bank of sand extending across the estuary which is a significant hazard to shipping and the cause of many shipwrecks.
For ships entering the estuary, the immediate loss of wind due to the cliffs was a particular hazard, often resulting in ships being swept onto the Doom Bar. A manual capstan was installed on the west bank of the river (its remains can still be seen) and rockets were fired to carry a line to ships so that they could be winched to safety.
There have been ferries across the Camel estuary for centuries and the current service, the Black Tor Ferry, carries pedestrians between Padstow and Rock daily throughout the year.
From 1899 until 1967, Padstow railway station was the westernmost point of the former Southern Railway. The railway station was the terminus of an extension from Wadebridge of the former Bodmin and Wadebridge Railway and North Cornwall Railway. These lines were part of the London and South Western Railway (LSWR), then incorporated into the Southern Railway in 1923 and British Railways in 1948, but were proposed for closure during the Beeching Axe of the 1960s.
The LSWR (and Southern Railway) promoted Padstow as a holiday resort; these companies were rivals to the Great Western Railway (which was the larger railway in the West of England). Until 1964, Padstow was served by the Atlantic Coast Express – a direct train service to/from London (Waterloo) – but the station was closed in 1967. The old railway line is now the Camel Trail, a footpath and cycle path which is popular owing to its picturesque route beside the River Camel. One of the railway mileposts is now embedded outside the Shipwright's Arms public house on the Harbour Front.
Today, the nearest railway station is at , a few miles south of Bodmin. Plymouth Bus operates buses to the station.
The South West Coast Path runs on both sides of the River Camel estuary and crosses from Padstow to Rock via the Black Tor ferry. The path gives walking access to the coast with Stepper Point and Trevose Head within an easy day's walk of Padstow.
The Saints' Way long-distance footpath runs from Padstow to Fowey on the south coast of Cornwall.
The Camel Trail cycleway follows the course of the former railway ("see above") from Padstow. It is open to walkers, cyclists and horse riders and suitable for disabled access. The long route leads to Wadebridge and on to Wenford Bridge and Bodmin, and is used by an estimated 400,000 users each year generating an income of approximately £3 million a year.
Padstow is best known for its "'Obby 'Oss" festival. Although its origins are unclear, it most likely stems from an ancient fertility rite, perhaps the Celtic festival of Beltane. The festival starts at midnight on May Eve when townspeople gather outside the Golden Lion Inn to sing the "Night Song." By morning, the town has been dressed with greenery and flowers placed around the maypole. The excitement begins with the appearance of one of the 'Obby 'Osses. Male dancers cavort through the town dressed as one of two 'Obby 'Osses, the "Old" and the "Blue Ribbon" 'Obby 'Osses; as the name suggests, they are stylised kinds of horses. Prodded on by acolytes known as "Teasers," each wears a mask and black frame-hung cape under which they try to catch young maidens as they pass through the town. Throughout the day, the two parades, led by the "Mayer" in his top hat and decorated stick, followed by a band of accordions and drums, then the 'Oss and the Teaser, with a host of people - all singing the "Morning Song." - pass along the streets of the town. Finally, late in the evening, the two 'osses meet, at the maypole, before returning to their respective stables where the crowd sings of the 'Obby 'Oss death, until its resurrection the following May Eve.
On Boxing Day and New Year's Day, it is a tradition for some residents to don blackface and parade through the town singing 'minstrel' songs. This is an ancient midwinter celebration that occurs every year in Padstow and was originally part of the pagan heritage of midwinter celebrations that were regularly celebrated all over Cornwall where people would guise dance and disguise themselves by blackening up their faces or wearing masks. Recently (since 2007), the people of Penzance have revived its midwinter celebration with the Montol Festival which like Padstow at times would have had people darkening or painting their skin to disguise themselves as well as masking.)
Folklorists associate the practice with the widespread British custom of blacking up for mumming and morris dancing, and suggest there is no record of slave ships coming to Padstow. Once an unknown local charity event, the day has recently become controversial, perhaps since a description was published.
Also some now suggest it is racist for white people to "black up" for any reason.
Although "outsiders" have linked the day with racism, Padstonians insist that this is not the case and are incredulous at both description and allegations. Long before the controversy Charlie Bate, noted Padstow folk advocate, recounted that in the 1970s the content and conduct of the day were carefully reviewed to avoid potential offence.
The Devon and Cornwall Constabulary have taken video evidence twice and concluded there were no grounds for prosecution.
Nonetheless protests resurface annually. The day has now been renamed "Mummers' Day" in an attempt to avoid offence and identify it more clearly with established Cornish tradition.
The debate has now been subject to academic scrutiny.
Other similar traditions that use the black-face disguise and are still celebrated within the United Kingdom are the Border Morris dancers, and Molly dancers of the East Midlands and East Anglia. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25135 |
Dakar Rally
The Dakar Rally (or simply "The Dakar"; formerly known as the "Paris–Dakar Rally") is an annual rally raid organised by the Amaury Sport Organisation. Most events since the inception in 1978 were staged from Paris, France, to Dakar, Senegal, but due to security threats in Mauritania, which led to the cancellation of the 2008 rally, events from 2009 to 2019 were held in South America. The 2020 edition was held in Saudi Arabia. The rally is open to amateur and professional entries, amateurs typically making up about eighty percent of the participants.
The rally is an off-road endurance event. The terrain that the competitors traverse is much tougher than that used in conventional rallying, and the vehicles used are true off-road vehicles rather than modified on-road vehicles. Most of the competitive special sections are off-road, crossing dunes, mud, camel grass, rocks, and erg among others. The distances of each stage covered vary from short distances up to per day.
The race originated in December 1977, a year after Thierry Sabine got lost in the Ténéré desert whilst competing in the Abidjan-Nice rally and decided that the desert would be a good location for a regular rally. 182 vehicles took the start of the inaugural rally in Paris, with 74 surviving the trip to the Senegalese capital of Dakar. Cyril Neveu holds the distinction of being the event's first winner, riding a Yamaha motorcycle. The event rapidly grew in popularity, with 216 vehicles taking the start in 1980 and 291 in 1981. Neveu won the event for a second time in 1980, Hubert Auriol taking honours in 1981 for BMW. By this stage, the rally had already begun to attract the participation of famous names from elsewhere in motorsport, such as Henri Pescarolo and Jacky Ickx.
In 1982, there were 382 racers, more than double the amount that took the start in 1979. Neveu won the event for a third time in 1982, this time riding a Honda motorcycle, while victory in the car class went to the Marreau brothers, driving a privately entered Renault 20, whose buccaneering exploits seemed to perfectly capture the spirit of the early years of the rally. Auriol captured his second bikes class victory in 1983, the first year that Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi competed in the rally, beginning an association that would last all the way until 2009.
At the behest of 1983 car class winner Jacky Ickx, Porsche entered the Dakar in 1984, with the total number of entries now at 427. The German marque won the event at their first attempt courtesy of René Metge, who had previously won in the car category in 1981, whilst Ickx finished sixth. Gaston Rahier meanwhile continued BMW's success in the motorcycle category with back-to-back wins in 1984 and 1985, the year of Mitsubishi's first victory of 12 in the car category, Patrick Zaniroli taking the spoils. The 1986 event, won by Metge and Neveu, was marred by the death of event founder Sabine in a helicopter crash, his father Gilbert taking over organisation of the rally.
The 1987 rally marked the start of an era of increased official factory participation in the car category, as French manufacturer Peugeot arrived and won the event with former World Rally champion Ari Vatanen. The 1987 event was also notable for a ferocious head-to-head duel between Neveu and Auriol in the motorcycle category, the former taking his fifth victory after Auriol was forced to drop out of the rally after breaking both ankles in a fall. The 1988 event reached its zenith in terms of entry numbers, with 603 starters. Vatanen's title defence was derailed when his Peugeot was stolen from the service area at Bamako. Though it was later found, Vatanen was subsequently disqualified from the event, victory instead going to compatriot and teammate Juha Kankkunen.
Peugeot and Vatanen returned to winning ways in 1989 and 1990, the latter marking Peugeot's final year of rally competition before switching to the World Sportscar Championship. Sister brand Citroën took Peugeot's place, Vatanen taking a third consecutive victory in 1991. The 1991 event also saw Stéphane Peterhansel take his first title in the motorcycle category with Yamaha, marking the beginning of an era of domination by the Frenchman.
For the 1992 event, the finish line moved to Cape Town, South Africa in a bid to combat a declining number of competitors, where GPS technology was used for the first time. Auriol became the first person to win in multiple classes after taking Mitsubishi's second victory in the car class, while Peterhansel successfully defended his motorcycle category title. The 1993 rally entry list slumped to 153 competitors, around half of the preceding year's figure and around a quarter of that of 1988. The event was the last to be organised by Gilbert Sabine and the Amaury Sport Organisation took over the following year. With the finish line now back in its traditional location of Dakar, Bruno Saby won a third title for Mitsubishi and Peterhansel took a third straight success in the motorcycle category.
The 1994 event returned to Paris after reaching Dakar, resulting in a particularly grueling event. Pierre Lartigue took Citroën's second win in acrimonious circumstances, as Mitsubishi's leading drivers were forced to withdraw from exhaustion after traversing some particularly demanding sand dunes in the Mauritanian desert that the Citroen crews had opted to skip. Peterhansel's did not compete due to a disagreement between Yamaha and the race organizers over the regulations. Edi Orioli claimed a third title in the bikes category. The 1995 and 1996 events begin in the Spanish city of Granada, with Lartigue racking up wins for Citroen in both years. Peterhansel returned to take a fourth bikes category win in 1995, but lost to Orioli in 1996 because of refuelling problems.
The 1997 rally ran exclusively in Africa for the first time, with the route running from Dakar to Agadez, Niger and back to Dakar. Citroen's withdrawal due to a rule change paved the way for Mitsubishi to take a fourth victory. Japan's Kenjiro Shinozuka became the first non-European to win the event. Peterhansel equalled Neveu's record of five motorcycle category wins in 1997, before going one better in 1998, when the event returned to its traditional Paris-Dakar route. 1998, Dakar veteran Jean-Pierre Fontenay posted another win for Mitsubishi in the car class.
1999 started in Granada and a maiden success for erstwhile Formula One and sports car driver Jean-Louis Schlesser, who had been constructing his own buggies since 1992. With the help of Renault backing, Schlesser overcame the works Mitsubishi and Nissan crews to win, whilst Peterhansel's decision to switch to the car category allowed Richard Sainct to take BMW's first title in the bikes category since 1985. Schlesser and Sainct both successfully defended their titles in 2000, traversing the route from Dakar to the Egyptian capital of Cairo.
2001 was the final time that the rally used the familiar Paris-Dakar route, and was notable for Mitsubishi's Jutta Kleinschmidt, as she was the first woman to win the rally - albeit only after Schlesser was penalised one hour for unsportsmanlike conduct. Fabrizio Meoni took the first Dakar win for Austrian manufacturer KTM, beginning a winning streak that has lasted until the present day. The 2002 began in the French town of Arras and long-time Dakar participant Hiroshi Masuoka won the event for Mitsubishi (Masouka had led for much of the previous year's rally.) The 2003 rally featured an unorthodox route from Marseille to Sharm El Sheikh. Masuoka defend his title after teammate and long-time leader Peterhansel was plagued by mechanical problems in the penultimate stage. Sainct meanwhile took honours in the motorcycle category, the third title for both him and KTM.
By 2004, the entry list had increased to 595, up from 358 in 2001, with a record 688 competitors starting in 2005. Alongside Mitsubishi and Nissan, Volkswagen now boasted a full factory effort, while Schlesser's Ford-powered buggies and BMWs of the German X-raid team proved thorns in the side of the big budget works teams. The 2004 route was from Clermont-Ferrand to Dakar, and was the year Peterhansel emulated Hubert Auriol's feat of winning the rally on both two wheels and four. The Frenchman defended his title in 2005, when the rally began for the first time in Barcelona. In the bikes category, KTM continued their success with Nani Roma in 2004, who switched to the car category the following year, and Cyril Despres in 2005.
The 2006 event moved to Lisbon. Nissan pulled out having failed to provide effective opposition to Mitsubishi, who took a sixth consecutive victory, this time with former skiing champion Luc Alphand after Peterhansel committed a series of errors late in the rally. Peterhansel made amends in 2007, however, taking his third title in the car category for Mitsubishi after a close contest with Alphand after the increasingly competitive Volkswagens retired with mechanical problems. In what would be the final African event of the Dakar, Despres took his second title in the bikes category, having conceded victory in 2006 to Marc Coma after suffering an injury.
The 2008 event, due to start in Lisbon, was cancelled on 4 January 2008 amid fears of terrorist attacks in Mauritania following the 2007 killing of four French tourists. Chile and Argentina offered to host subsequent events, which were later accepted by the ASO for the 2009 event.
The ASO also decided to establish the Dakar Series competition, whose first event was the 2008 Central Europe Rally, located in Hungary and Romania, which acted as a replacement for the cancelled 2008 edition of the Dakar.
The 2009 event, the first held in South America with a respectable 501 competitors, saw Volkswagen take its first win in the Dakar as a works entrant courtesy of Giniel de Villiers. Initially, Teammate and former WRC champion Carlos Sainz led the race comfortably until crashing out, but went on to win the event in 2010. After a poor showing in 2009, Mitsubishi withdrew from the competition and left Volkswagen as the sole works entrant. The German marque won the race for a third time in 2011, this time with Nasser Al-Attiyah, before they withdrew to focus on their upcoming WRC entry and leaving the Dakar with no factory participants in the car class. In the bikes, Despres and Coma stretched KTM's incredible unbroken run of success. Both tied on three victories apiece after Coma's third win in 2011.
In the 2012 rally, the X-raid team came to the fore, now using Minis in lieu of BMWs. Peterhansel had joined the team in 2010 after Mitsubishi's departure, but had been unable to challenge the Volkswagen drivers. Following Volkswagen's withdrawal, Peterhansel was able to secure his fourth win in the car category and his tenth in total, his main opposition coming from within his own team. Peterhansel successfully defended his title in 2013 as the Damen Jefferies buggies of Sainz and Al-Attiyah failed to last the distance. Despres also racked up a further two wins for KTM in the bikes class in 2012 and 2013, bringing his tally to five, aided by Coma's absence due to injury in the latter year. Coma struck back on his return to the Dakar in 2014, taking a comfortable fourth title and a 13th in succession for KTM, whilst Nani Roma emulated Auriol and Peterhansel by taking his maiden title in the cars class a decade on from his victory on two wheels - albeit only after team orders by X-raid slowed down Peterhansel.
Peugeot returned for the 2015 event with an all-new, diesel-powered, two-wheel drive contender, but failed to make an impact as X-raid's Minis once more dominated. Al-Attiyah won the event in his second year for the team, while Coma racked up a fifth title in the bikes after the defection of long-time rival Despres to the car class and Peugeot. Peugeot did however see success in 2016 with Peterhansel behind the wheel, racking up his 6th win in the car category, and again in 2017 and 2018 until Peugeot decide to officially leave the competition. In 2019 Toyota won for the first time with Nasser Al-Attiyah (in his third victory with three different manufacturers). The bike category saw the KTM works team rider, Australian Toby Price, take his first Dakar victory, winning his second title in 2019. Sam Sunderland and Matthias Walkner won the 2017 and 2018 edition also for the team from Mattighofen (18 overall victories as in 2019).
The five competitive groups in the Dakar are the motorcycles, quads, the cars class (which ranges from buggies to small SUVs), UTVs, and the trucks class. Many vehicle manufacturers use the rally's harsh environment as both a testing ground and an opportunity to show off their vehicles' durability—though, in fact, most vehicles are heavily modified or purpose-built.
As of 2011, the engine capacity limit for all motorbikes competing in the Dakar Rally is 450cc. Engines may be either single or twin cylinder. Riders are divided into two groups, "Elite" (Group 1) and Non-Elite (Group 2), with the latter subdivided into two further groups - the "Super Production" (Group 2.1) and "Marathon" (Group 2.2) classes. "Marathon" competitors are not permitted to change such key components as the engine (including the engine case, cylinders and cylinder heads), the frame, the forks or swinging arm, whereas those in the "Super Production" and "Elite" classes may replace these components.
A subcategory for both motorbikes and quads is the "Original by Motul" (formerly called Malle Moto due to only one trunk of luggage allowed). Since these competitors are not allowed any support persons, the rider has to service everything self. It is often called the toughest of the tough, and one for the Dakar purists.
KTM has dominated the motorcycle class in recent years, although Honda, Yamaha, Sherco, Husqvarna, and Gas Gas also compete currently. BMW and Cagiva have also enjoyed success in the past.
Prior to 2009, Quads were a subdivision of the motorbike category, but they were granted their own separate classification in 2009 and are designated Group 3 in the current regulations. They are divided into two subgroups - Group 3.1, which features two-wheel drive quads with a single cylinder engine with a maximum capacity of 750cc, and Group 3.2, which permits four-wheel drive quads with a maximum engine capacity of 900cc, in either single or twin cylinder layout.
Yamaha are unbeaten in the Quad category since 2009, with their main current opposition coming courtesy of Honda and Can-Am.
The car class is made up of vehicles weighing less than , which are subdivided into several categories. The T1 Group is made up of "Improved Cross-Country Vehicles", subdivided according to engine type (petrol or diesel) and drive type (two-wheel or four-wheel drive). The T2 Group is made up of "Cross-Country Series Production Vehicles", which are subdivided into petrol and diesel categories, while the T3 Group is for "Light Vehicles". There is also an "Open" category catering for vehicles conforming to SCORE regulations.
Mini have been the most successful marque in the car category in recent years, thanks to the efforts of the non-factory X-raid team, with limited involvement currently coming from Toyota, Ford and Haval. Several constructors also produce bespoke buggies for the event, most notably SMG and Damen Jefferies.
Mitsubishi is historically the most successful manufacturer in the car class, with Volkswagen, Citroen, Peugeot and Porsche having all tasted success in the past with factory teams. Jean-Louis Schlesser has also won the event twice with his Renault-supported buggies. Factory teams from Nissan and SEAT have also won stages, as has BMW, courtesy of the X-raid team.
The Truck class (Group T4), first run as a separate category in 1980, is made up of vehicles weighing more than . Trucks participating in the competition are subdivided into "Series Production" trucks (T4.1) and "Modified" trucks (T4.2), whilst Group T4.3 (formerly known as T5) trucks are rally support trucks - meaning they travel from bivouac to bivouac to support the competition vehicles. These were introduced to the rally in 1998. The truck event was not run in 1989 after it was decided the vehicles, by this stage with twin engines generating in excess of 1000 horsepower, were too dangerous following the death of a DAF crew member in an accident during the 1988 rally.
Kamaz has dominated the truck category since the turn of the century, although it has come under increasing pressure from rivals such as Iveco, MAN, Renault, and Tatra, which enjoyed much success in the 1990s. Hino, DAF, Perlini, and Mercedes-Benz have also been among the winners in the past. In the 21st century Kamaz almost always won the truck class, winning fourteen out of eighteen times.
The UTVs class was introduced in 2017. Previously run under the car category as the T3 class, Side by Side (UTV) vehicles are now run under their own class in Dakar competition.
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Perception
Perception (from the Latin "perceptio", meaning gathering or receiving) is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment.
All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sensory system. For example, vision involves light striking the retina of the eye; smell is mediated by odor molecules; and hearing involves pressure waves.
Perception is not only the passive receipt of these signals, but it's also shaped by the recipient's learning, memory, expectation, and attention. Sensory input is a process that transforms this low-level information to higher-level information (e.g., extracts shapes for object recognition). The process that follows connects a person's concepts and expectations (or knowledge), restorative and selective mechanisms (such as attention) that influence perception.
Perception depends on complex functions of the nervous system, but subjectively seems mostly effortless because this processing happens outside conscious awareness.
Since the rise of experimental psychology in the 19th century, psychology's understanding of perception has progressed by combining a variety of techniques. Psychophysics quantitatively describes the relationships between the physical qualities of the sensory input and perception. Sensory neuroscience studies the neural mechanisms underlying perception. Perceptual systems can also be studied computationally, in terms of the information they process. Perceptual issues in philosophy include the extent to which sensory qualities such as sound, smell or color exist in objective reality rather than in the mind of the perceiver.
Although the senses were traditionally viewed as passive receptors, the study of illusions and ambiguous images has demonstrated that the brain's perceptual systems actively and pre-consciously attempt to make sense of their input. There is still active debate about the extent to which perception is an active process of hypothesis testing, analogous to science, or whether realistic sensory information is rich enough to make this process unnecessary.
The perceptual systems of the brain enable individuals to see the world around them as stable, even though the sensory information is typically incomplete and rapidly varying. Human and animal brains are structured in a modular way, with different areas processing different kinds of sensory information. Some of these modules take the form of sensory maps, mapping some aspect of the world across part of the brain's surface. These different modules are interconnected and influence each other. For instance, taste is strongly influenced by smell.
"Percept" is also a term used by Deleuze and Guattari to define perception independent from perceivers.
The process of perception begins with an object in the real world, known as the "distal stimulus" or "distal object". By means of light, sound, or another physical process, the object stimulates the body's sensory organs. These sensory organs transform the input energy into neural activity—a process called "transduction". This raw pattern of neural activity is called the "proximal stimulus". These neural signals are then transmitted to the brain and processed. The resulting mental re-creation of the distal stimulus is the "percept".
To explain the process of perception, an example could be an ordinary shoe. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. When light from the shoe enters a person's eye and stimulates the retina, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus. The image of the shoe reconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept. Another example could be a ringing telephone. The ringing of the phone is the distal stimulus. The sound stimulating a person's auditory receptors is the proximal stimulus. The brain's interpretation of this as the "ringing of a telephone" is the percept.
The different kinds of sensation (such as warmth, sound, and taste) are called "sensory modalities" or "stimulus modalities".
Psychologist Jerome Bruner developed a model of perception, in which people put "together the information contained in" a target and a situation to form "perceptions of ourselves and others based on social categories." This model is composed of three states:
According to Alan Saks and Gary Johns, there are three components to perception:
Stimuli are not necessarily translated into a percept and rarely does a single stimulus translate into a percept. An ambiguous stimulus may sometimes be transduced into one or more percepts, experienced randomly, one at a time, in a process termed ""multistable perception"." The same stimuli, or absence of them, may result in different percepts depending on subject's culture and previous experiences.
Ambiguous figures demonstrate that a single stimulus can result in more than one percept. For example, the Rubin vase can be interpreted either as a vase or as two faces. The percept can bind sensations from multiple senses into a whole. A picture of a talking person on a television screen, for example, is bound to the sound of speech from speakers to form a percept of a talking person.
In many ways, vision is the primary human sense. Light is taken in through each eye and focused in a way which sorts it on the retina according to direction of origin. A dense surface of photosensitive cells, including rods, cones, and intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells captures information about the intensity, color, and position of incoming light. Some processing of texture and movement occurs within the neurons on the retina before the information is sent to the brain. In total, about 15 differing types of information are then forwarded to the brain proper via the optic nerve.
Hearing (or "audition") is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations (i.e., "sonic" detection). Frequencies capable of being heard by humans are called "audio" or "audible" "frequencies", the range of which is typically considered to be between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. Frequencies higher than audio are referred to as "ultrasonic", while frequencies below audio are referred to as "infrasonic".
The auditory system includes the outer ears, which collect and filter sound waves; the middle ear, which transforms the sound pressure (impedance matching); and the inner ear, which produces neural signals in response to the sound. By the ascending auditory pathway these are led to the primary auditory cortex within the temporal lobe of the human brain, from where the auditory information then goes to the cerebral cortex for further processing.
Sound does not usually come from a single source: in real situations, sounds from multiple sources and directions are as they arrive at the ears. Hearing involves the computationally complex task of separating out sources of interest, identifying them and often estimating their distance and direction.
The process of recognizing objects through touch is known as "haptic perception". It involves a combination of somatosensory perception of patterns on the skin surface (e.g., edges, curvature, and texture) and proprioception of hand position and conformation. People can rapidly and accurately identify three-dimensional objects by touch. This involves exploratory procedures, such as moving the fingers over the outer surface of the object or holding the entire object in the hand. Haptic perception relies on the forces experienced during touch.
Gibson defined the haptic system as "the sensibility of the individual to the world adjacent to his body by use of his body." Gibson and others emphasized the close link between body movement and haptic perception, where the latter is "active exploration."
The concept of haptic perception is related to the concept of extended physiological proprioception according to which, when using a tool such as a stick, perceptual experience is transparently transferred to the end of the tool.
Taste (formally known as "gustation") is the ability to perceive the flavor of substances, including, but not limited to, food. Humans receive tastes through sensory organs concentrated on the upper surface of the tongue, called "taste buds" or "gustatory calyculi". The human tongue has 100 to 150 taste receptor cells on each of its roughly-ten thousand taste buds.
Traditionally, there have been four primary tastes: sweetness, bitterness, sourness, and saltiness. However, the recognition and awareness of umami, which is considered the fifth primary taste, is a relatively recent development in Western cuisine. Other tastes can be mimicked by combining these basic tastes, all of which contribute only partially to the sensation and flavor of food in the mouth. Other factors include smell, which is detected by the olfactory epithelium of the nose; texture, which is detected through a variety of mechanoreceptors, muscle nerves, etc.; and temperature, which is detected by thermoreceptors. All basic tastes are classified as either "appetitive" or "aversive", depending upon whether the things they sense are harmful or beneficial.
Smell is the process of absorbing molecules through olfactory organs, which are absorbed by humans through the nose. These molecules diffuse through a thick layer of mucus; come into contact with one of thousands of cilia that are projected from sensory neurons; and are then absorbed into a receptor (one of 347 or so). It is this process that causes humans to understand the concept of smell from a physical standpoint.
Smell is also a very interactive sense as scientists have begun to observe that olfaction comes into contact with the other sense in unexpected ways. It is also the most primal of the senses, as it is known to be the first indicator of safety or danger, therefore being the sense that drives the most basic of human survival skills. As such, it can be a catalyst for human behavior on a subconscious and instinctive level.
Social perception is the part of perception that allows people to understand the individuals and groups of their social world. Thus, it is an element of social cognition.
"Speech perception" is the process by which spoken language is heard, interpreted and understood. Research in this field seeks to understand how human listeners recognize the sound of speech (or "phonetics") and use such information to understand spoken language.
Listeners manage to perceive words across a wide range of conditions, as the sound of a word can vary widely according to words that surround it and the tempo of the speech, as well as the physical characteristics, accent, tone, and mood of the speaker. Reverberation, signifying the persistence of sound after the sound is produced, can also have a considerable impact on perception. Experiments have shown that people automatically compensate for this effect when hearing speech.
The process of perceiving speech begins at the level of the sound within the auditory signal and the process of audition. The initial auditory signal is compared with visual information—primarily lip movement—to extract acoustic cues and phonetic information. It is possible other sensory modalities are integrated at this stage as well. This speech information can then be used for higher-level language processes, such as word recognition.
Speech perception is not necessarily uni-directional. Higher-level language processes connected with morphology, syntax, and/or semantics may also interact with basic speech perception processes to aid in recognition of speech sounds. It may be the case that it is not necessary (maybe not even possible) for a listener to recognize phonemes before recognizing higher units, such as words. In an experiment, Richard M. Warren replaced one phoneme of a word with a cough-like sound. His subjects restored the missing speech sound perceptually without any difficulty. Moreover, they were not able to accurately identify which phoneme had even been disturbed.
"Facial perception" refers to cognitive processes specialized in handling human faces (including perceiving the identity of an individual) and facial expressions (such as emotional cues.)
The "somatosensory cortex" is a part of the brain that receives and encodes sensory information from receptors of the entire body.
Affective touch is a type of sensory information that elicits an emotional reaction and is usually social in nature. Such information is actually coded differently than other sensory information. Though the intensity of affective touch is still encoded in the primary somatosensory cortex, the feeling of pleasantness associated with affective touch is activated more in the anterior cingulate cortex. Increased blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) contrast imaging, identified during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), shows that signals in the anterior cingulate cortex, as well as the prefrontal cortex, are highly correlated with pleasantness scores of affective touch. Inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the primary somatosensory cortex inhibits the perception of affective touch intensity, but not affective touch pleasantness. Therefore, the S1 is not directly involved in processing socially affective touch pleasantness, but still plays a role in discriminating touch location and intensity.
Multi-modal perception refers to concurrent stimulation in more than one sensory modality and the effect such has on the perception of events and objects in the world.
Chronoception refers to how the passage of time is perceived and experienced. Although the sense of time is not associated with a specific sensory system, the work of psychologists and neuroscientists indicates that human brains do have a system governing the perception of time, composed of a highly distributed system involving the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. One particular component of the brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, is responsible for the circadian rhythm (commonly known as one's "internal clock"), while other cell clusters appear to be capable of shorter-range timekeeping, known as an "ultradian rhythm".
One or more dopaminergic pathways in the central nervous system appear to have a strong modulatory influence on mental chronometry, particularly interval timing.
"Sense of agency" refers to the subjective feeling of having chosen a particular action. Some conditions, such as schizophrenia, can cause a loss of this sense, which may lead a person into delusions, such as feeling like a machine or like an outside source is controlling them. An opposite extreme can also occur, where people experience everything in their environment as though they had decided that it would happen.
Even in non-pathological cases, there is a measurable difference between the making of a decision and the feeling of agency. Through methods such as the Libet experiment, a gap of half a second or more can be detected from the time when there are detectable neurological signs of a decision having been made to the time when the subject actually becomes conscious of the decision.
There are also experiments in which an illusion of agency is induced in psychologically normal subjects. In 1999, psychologists Wegner and Wheatley gave subjects instructions to move a mouse around a scene and point to an image about once every thirty seconds. However, a second person—acting as a test subject but actually a confederate—had their hand on the mouse at the same time, and controlled some of the movement. Experimenters were able to arrange for subjects to perceive certain "forced stops" as if they were their own choice.
Recognition memory is sometimes divided into two functions by neuroscientists: "familiarity" and "recollection". A strong sense of familiarity can occur without any recollection, for example in cases of deja vu.
The temporal lobe (specifically the perirhinal cortex) responds differently to stimuli that feel novel compared to stimuli that feel familiar. Firing rates in the perirhinal cortex are connected with the sense of familiarity in humans and other mammals. In tests, stimulating this area at 10–15 Hz caused animals to treat even novel images as familiar, and stimulation at 30–40 Hz caused novel images to be partially treated as familiar. In particular, stimulation at 30–40 Hz led to animals looking at a familiar image for longer periods, as they would for an unfamiliar one, though it did not lead to the same exploration behavior normally associated with novelty.
Recent studies on lesions in the area concluded that rats with a damaged perirhinal cortex were still more interested in exploring when novel objects were present, but seemed unable to tell novel objects from familiar ones—they examined both equally. Thus, other brain regions are involved with noticing unfamiliarity, while the perirhinal cortex is needed to associate the feeling with a specific source.
Sexual stimulation is any stimulus (including bodily contact) that leads to, enhances, and maintains sexual arousal, possibly even leading to orgasm. Distinct from the general sense of touch, sexual stimulation is strongly tied to hormonal activity and chemical triggers in the body. Although sexual arousal may arise without physical stimulation, achieving orgasm usually requires physical sexual stimulation (stimulation of the Krause-Finger corpuscles found in erogenous zones of the body.)
Other senses enable perception of body balance, acceleration, gravity, position of body parts, temperature, and pain. They can also enable perception of internal senses, such as suffocation, gag reflex, abdominal distension, fullness of rectum and urinary bladder, and sensations felt in the throat and lungs.
In the case of visual perception, some people can actually see the percept shift in their mind's eye. Others, who are not picture thinkers, may not necessarily perceive the 'shape-shifting' as their world changes. This esemplastic nature has been demonstrated by an experiment that showed that ambiguous images have multiple interpretations on the perceptual level.
This confusing ambiguity of perception is exploited in human technologies such as camouflage and biological mimicry. For example, the wings of European peacock butterflies bear eyespots that birds respond to as though they were the eyes of a dangerous predator.
There is also evidence that the brain in some ways operates on a slight "delay" in order to allow nerve impulses from distant parts of the body to be integrated into simultaneous signals.
Perception is one of the oldest fields in psychology. The oldest quantitative laws in psychology are Weber's law, which states that the smallest noticeable difference in stimulus intensity is proportional to the intensity of the reference; and Fechner's law, which quantifies the relationship between the intensity of the physical stimulus and its perceptual counterpart (e.g., testing how much darker a computer screen can get before the viewer actually notices). The study of perception gave rise to the Gestalt School of Psychology, with an emphasis on holistic approach.
A "sensory system" is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information. A sensory system consists of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception. Commonly recognized sensory systems are those for vision, hearing, somatic sensation (touch), taste and olfaction (smell), as listed above. It has been suggested that the immune system is an overlooked sensory modality. In short, senses are transducers from the physical world to the realm of the mind.
The receptive field is the specific part of the world to which a receptor organ and receptor cells respond. For instance, the part of the world an eye can see, is its receptive field; the light that each rod or cone can see, is its receptive field. Receptive fields have been identified for the visual system, auditory system and somatosensory system, so far. Research attention is currently focused not only on external perception processes, but also to "interoception", considered as the process of receiving, accessing and appraising internal bodily signals. Maintaining desired physiological states is critical for an organism's well being and survival. Interoception is an iterative process, requiring the interplay between perception of body states and awareness of these states to generate proper self-regulation. Afferent sensory signals continuously interact with higher order cognitive representations of goals, history, and environment, shaping emotional experience and motivating regulatory behavior.
"Perceptual constancy" is the ability of perceptual systems to recognize the same object from widely varying sensory inputs. For example, individual people can be recognized from views, such as frontal and profile, which form very different shapes on the retina. A coin looked at face-on makes a circular image on the retina, but when held at angle it makes an elliptical image. In normal perception these are recognized as a single three-dimensional object. Without this correction process, an animal approaching from the distance would appear to gain in size. One kind of perceptual constancy is "color constancy": for example, a white piece of paper can be recognized as such under different colors and intensities of light. Another example is "roughness constancy": when a hand is drawn quickly across a surface, the touch nerves are stimulated more intensely. The brain compensates for this, so the speed of contact does not affect the perceived roughness. Other constancies include melody, odor, brightness and words. These constancies are not always total, but the variation in the percept is much less than the variation in the physical stimulus. The perceptual systems of the brain achieve perceptual constancy in a variety of ways, each specialized for the kind of information being processed, with phonemic restoration as a notable example from hearing.
The "principles of grouping" (or "Gestalt laws of grouping") are a set of principles in psychology, first proposed by Gestalt psychologists, to explain how humans naturally perceive objects as organized patterns and objects. Gestalt psychologists argued that these principles exist because the mind has an innate disposition to perceive patterns in the stimulus based on certain rules. These principles are organized into six categories:
Later research has identified additional grouping principles.
A common finding across many different kinds of perception is that the perceived qualities of an object can be affected by the qualities of context. If one object is extreme on some dimension, then neighboring objects are perceived as further away from that extreme.
"Simultaneous contrast effect" is the term used when stimuli are presented at the same time, whereas "successive contrast" applies when stimuli are presented one after another.
The contrast effect was noted by the 17th Century philosopher John Locke, who observed that lukewarm water can feel hot or cold depending on whether the hand touching it was previously in hot or cold water. In the early 20th Century, Wilhelm Wundt identified contrast as a fundamental principle of perception, and since then the effect has been confirmed in many different areas. These effects shape not only visual qualities like color and brightness, but other kinds of perception, including how heavy an object feels. One experiment found that thinking of the name "Hitler" led to subjects rating a person as more hostile. Whether a piece of music is perceived as good or bad can depend on whether the music heard before it was pleasant or unpleasant. For the effect to work, the objects being compared need to be similar to each other: a television reporter can seem smaller when interviewing a tall basketball player, but not when standing next to a tall building. In the brain, brightness contrast exerts effects on both neuronal firing rates and neuronal synchrony.
Cognitive theories of perception assume there is a poverty of stimulus. This is the claim that sensations, by themselves, are unable to provide a unique description of the world. Sensations require 'enriching', which is the role of the mental model.
The perceptual ecology approach was introduced by James J. Gibson, who rejected the assumption of a poverty of stimulus and the idea that perception is based upon sensations. Instead, Gibson investigated what information is actually presented to the perceptual systems. His theory "assumes the existence of stable, unbounded, and permanent stimulus-information in the ambient optic array. And it supposes that the visual system can explore and detect this information. The theory is information-based, not sensation-based." He and the psychologists who work within this paradigm detailed how the world could be specified to a mobile, exploring organism via the lawful projection of information about the world into energy arrays. "Specification" would be a 1:1 mapping of some aspect of the world into a perceptual array. Given such a mapping, no enrichment is required and perception is direct .
From Gibson's early work derived an ecological understanding of perception known as "perception-in-action," which argues that perception is a requisite property of animate action. It posits that, without perception, action would be unguided, and without action, perception would serve no purpose. Animate actions require both perception and motion, which can be described as "two sides of the same coin, the coin is action." Gibson works from the assumption that singular entities, which he calls "invariants," already exist in the real world and that all that the perception process does is home in upon them.
The constructivist view, held by such philosophers as Ernst von Glasersfeld, regards the continual adjustment of perception and action to the external input as precisely what constitutes the "entity," which is therefore far from being invariant. Glasersfeld considers an "invariant" as a target to be homed in upon, and a pragmatic necessity to allow an initial measure of understanding to be established prior to the updating that a statement aims to achieve. The invariant does not, and need not, represent an actuality. Glasersfeld describes it as extremely unlikely that what is desired or feared by an organism will never suffer change as time goes on. This social constructionist theory thus allows for a needful evolutionary adjustment.
A mathematical theory of perception-in-action has been devised and investigated in many forms of controlled movement, and has been described in many different species of organism using the General Tau Theory. According to this theory, tau information, or time-to-goal information is the fundamental "percept" in perception.
Many philosophers, such as Jerry Fodor, write that the purpose of perception is knowledge. However, evolutionary psychologists hold that the primary purpose of perception is to guide action. They give the example of depth perception, which seems to have evolved not to help us know the distances to other objects but rather to help us move around in space.
Evolutionary psychologists argue that animals ranging from fiddler crabs to humans use eyesight for collision avoidance, suggesting that vision is basically for directing action, not providing knowledge. Neuropsychologists showed that perception systems evolved along the specifics of animals' activities. This explains why bats and worms can perceive different frequency of auditory and visual systems than, for example, humans.
Building and maintaining sense organs is metabolically expensive. More than half the brain is devoted to processing sensory information, and the brain itself consumes roughly one-fourth of one's metabolic resources. Thus, such organs evolve only when they provide exceptional benefits to an organism's fitness.
Scientists who study perception and sensation have long understood the human senses as adaptations. Depth perception consists of processing over half a dozen visual cues, each of which is based on a regularity of the physical world. Vision evolved to respond to the narrow range of electromagnetic energy that is plentiful and that does not pass through objects. Sound waves provide useful information about the sources of and distances to objects, with larger animals making and hearing lower-frequency sounds and smaller animals making and hearing higher-frequency sounds. Taste and smell respond to chemicals in the environment that were significant for fitness in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. The sense of touch is actually many senses, including pressure, heat, cold, tickle, and pain. Pain, while unpleasant, is adaptive. An important adaptation for senses is range shifting, by which the organism becomes temporarily more or less sensitive to sensation. For example, one's eyes automatically adjust to dim or bright ambient light. Sensory abilities of different organisms often co-evolve, as is the case with the hearing of echolocating bats and that of the moths that have evolved to respond to the sounds that the bats make.
Evolutionary psychologists claim that perception demonstrates the principle of modularity, with specialized mechanisms handling particular perception tasks. For example, people with damage to a particular part of the brain suffer from the specific defect of not being able to recognize faces ("prosopagnosia"). EP suggests that this indicates a so-called face-reading module.
The theory of closed-loop perception proposes dynamic motor-sensory closed-loop process in which information flows through the environment and the brain in continuous loops.
With experience, organisms can learn to make finer perceptual distinctions, and learn new kinds of categorization. Wine-tasting, the reading of X-ray images and music appreciation are applications of this process in the human sphere. Research has focused on the relation of this to other kinds of learning, and whether it takes place in peripheral sensory systems or in the brain's processing of sense information. Empirical research show that specific practices (such as yoga, mindfulness, Tai Chi, meditation, Daoshi and other mind-body disciplines) can modify human perceptual modality. Specifically, these practices enable perception skills to switch from the external (exteroceptive field) towards a higher ability to focus on internal signals ("proprioception"). Also, when asked to provide verticality judgments, highly self-transcendent yoga practitioners were significantly less influenced by a misleading visual context. Increasing self-transcendence may enable yoga practitioners to optimize verticality judgment tasks by relying more on internal (vestibular and proprioceptive) signals coming from their own body, rather than on exteroceptive, visual cues.
Past actions and events that transpire right before an encounter or any form of stimulation have a strong degree of influence on how sensory stimuli are processed and perceived. On a basic level, the information our senses receive is often ambiguous and incomplete. However, they are grouped together in order for us to be able to understand the physical world around us. But it is these various forms of stimulation, combined with our previous knowledge and experience that allows us to create our overall perception. For example, when engaging in conversation, we attempt to understand their message and words by not only paying attention to what we hear through our ears but also from the previous shapes we have seen our mouths make. Another example would be if we had a similar topic come up in another conversation, we would use our previous knowledge to guess the direction the conversation is headed in.
A "perceptual set", also called "perceptual expectancy" or just "set" is a predisposition to perceive things in a certain way. It is an example of how perception can be shaped by "top-down" processes such as drives and expectations. Perceptual sets occur in all the different senses. They can be long term, such as a special sensitivity to hearing one's own name in a crowded room, or short term, as in the ease with which hungry people notice the smell of food. A simple demonstration of the effect involved very brief presentations of non-words such as "sael". Subjects who were told to expect words about animals read it as "seal", but others who were expecting boat-related words read it as "sail".
Sets can be created by motivation and so can result in people interpreting ambiguous figures so that they see what they want to see. For instance, how someone perceives what unfolds during a sports game can be biased if they strongly support one of the teams. In one experiment, students were allocated to pleasant or unpleasant tasks by a computer. They were told that either a number or a letter would flash on the screen to say whether they were going to taste an orange juice drink or an unpleasant-tasting health drink. In fact, an ambiguous figure was flashed on screen, which could either be read as the letter B or the number 13. When the letters were associated with the pleasant task, subjects were more likely to perceive a letter B, and when letters were associated with the unpleasant task they tended to perceive a number 13.
Perceptual set has been demonstrated in many social contexts. People who are primed to think of someone as "warm" are more likely to perceive a variety of positive characteristics in them, than if the word "warm" is replaced by "cold". When someone has a reputation for being funny, an audience is more likely to find them amusing. Individual's perceptual sets reflect their own personality traits. For example, people with an aggressive personality are quicker to correctly identify aggressive words or situations.
One classic psychological experiment showed slower reaction times and less accurate answers when a deck of playing cards reversed the color of the suit symbol for some cards (e.g. red spades and black hearts).
Philosopher Andy Clark explains that perception, although it occurs quickly, is not simply a bottom-up process (where minute details are put together to form larger wholes). Instead, our brains use what he calls "predictive coding". It starts with very broad constraints and expectations for the state of the world, and as expectations are met, it makes more detailed predictions (errors lead to new predictions, or "learning processes)". Clark says this research has various implications; not only can there be no completely "unbiased, unfiltered" perception, but this means that there is a great deal of feedback between perception and expectation (perceptual experiences often shape our beliefs, but those perceptions were based on existing beliefs). Indeed, predictive coding provides an account where this type of feedback assists in stabilizing our inference-making process about the physical world, such as with perceptual constancy examples. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25140 |
Pitch of brass instruments
The pitch of a brass instrument corresponds to the lowest playable resonance frequency of the open instrument. The combined resonances resemble a harmonic series. The fundamental frequency of the harmonic series can be varied by adjusting the length of the tubing using the instrument's valve, slide, key or crook system, while the player's embouchure, lip tension and air flow serve to select a specific harmonic from the available series for playing. The fundamental is actually missing from the resonances and is impractical to play on some brass instruments, but the overtones account for most pitches.
The following table provides the pitch of the lowest playable resonance (the second harmonic, an octave above the fundamental frequency) and length for some common brass instruments in descending order of pitch. This pitch is notated transpositionally as middle C for many of these brass instruments.
The normal playing range of most three-valved brass instruments extends from three whole tones below the 2nd harmonic of the instrument to the 10th harmonic. Skilled players can produce tones outside this range. For many transposing brass instruments, this range is written as extending from F♯ below middle C to E two octaves and a third above middle C.
The orchestral horn is an exception as it was classically assigned a range beginning at its fourth harmonic.
The ease with which a player produces the fundamental note of each harmonic series for each tubing length of a modern brass instrument varies with the instrument's design. As bore width increases relative to length, it becomes easier for the player to resist the instrument's tendency to jump to the second harmonic instead of producing the fundamental frequency. Brass instruments with sufficient bore to play fundamentals with relative ease and accuracy are called "whole-tube" instruments, while instruments that are limited to the second harmonic as a lowest note in practical use are called "half-tube" instruments. These terms stem from a comparison to organ pipes, which produce the same pitch as the pedal tone (fundamental) of a brass instrument of equal length.
Certain low brass instruments such as trombone, tuba, euphonium, and alto horn are whole-tube and can play the fundamental tone of each harmonic series with relative ease. Furthermore, the low brass often use extra valves to extend their range uniformly, since the fundamental is chromatically discontinuous with the lowest 2nd harmonic reachable on a three-valve instrument or via the seven-position slide on a trombone. Trombone and tuba in particular are often called upon to play pedal tones and "false tones" or "privileged tones" which have a pitch between the normal range and the fundamental.
The modern standard orchestral horn is a double B/F horn. The player can switch between the two modes using a thumb-operated fourth valve. The fundamental pitch of the F horn is near that of the tuba. Horn notation is a complex subject beyond the scope of this article, but what is written as middle C for the horn is the fourth harmonic of the unlengthened instrument, not the second. Horn music makes greater use of the higher range of the harmonic series than do most other modern brass instruments.
The modern bass trombone is the same length as a tenor trombone, but typically has two valves, one pitched in F and one in G. When combined, these valves put the instrument into D. Modern contrabass trombones are constructed in F and B. The F contrabass trombone is often fitted with a valve that puts it into D, and a valve that puts it into E, and when combined, these put the instrument into the key of B. The B contrabass is often fitted with a valve in F and has been fitted with both a valve in F and G, so that it matches its bass trombone counterpart, but is pitched an octave lower.
See Types of trombones
The bass tuba is commonly available in F and E, while contrabass tubas are available in C and B. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25141 |
Pig
A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the even-toed ungulate family Suidae. Pigs include domestic pigs and their ancestor, the common Eurasian wild boar ("Sus scrofa"), along with other species. Pigs, like all suids, are native to the Eurasian and African continents, ranging from Europe to the Pacific islands. Suids other than the pig are the babirusa of Indonesia, the pygmy hog of Asia, the warthog of Africa, and another genus of pigs from Africa. The suids are a sister clade to peccaries.
Juvenile pigs are known as piglets. Pigs are highly social and intelligent animals.
With around 1 billion individuals alive at any time, the domestic pig is among the most populous large mammals in the world. Pigs are omnivores and can consume a wide range of food. Pigs are biologically similar to humans and are thus frequently used for human medical research.
The "Online Etymology Dictionary" provides anecdotal evidence as well as linguistic, saying that the term derives
probably from Old English *"picg", found in compounds, ultimate origin unknown. Originally "young pig" (the word for adults was "swine"). Apparently related to Low German "bigge", Dutch "big" ("but the phonology is difficult" -- "OED"). ... Another Old English word for "pig" was "fearh", related to "furh" "furrow," from PIE *"perk"- "dig, furrow" (source also of Latin "porc-us" "pig," see "pork"). "This reflects a widespread IE tendency to name animals from typical attributes or activities" [Roger Lass]. Synonyms "grunter", "oinker" are from sailors' and fishermen's euphemistic avoidance of uttering the word pig at sea, a superstition perhaps based on the fate of the Gadarene swine, who drowned.
The "Online Etymology Dictionary" also traces the evolution of sow, the term for a female pig, through various historical languages:
Old English "sugu", "su" "female of the swine," from Proto-Germanic *"su"- (cognates: Old Saxon, Old High German "su", German "Sau", Dutch "zeug", Old Norse "syr"), from PIE root *"su"- (cognates: Sanskrit "sukarah" "wild boar, swine;" Avestan "hu" "wild boar;" Greek "hys" "swine;" Latin "sus" "swine", "suinus" "pertaining to swine"; Old Church Slavonic "svinija" "swine;" Lettish "sivens" "young pig;" Welsh "hucc", Irish "suig" "swine; Old Irish "socc" "snout, plowshare"), possibly imitative of pig noise; note that Sanskrit "sukharah" means "maker of (the sound) "su".
An adjectival form is "porcine". Another adjectival form (technically for the subfamily rather than genus name) is "suine" (comparable to "bovine", "canine", etc.); for the family, it is "suid" (as with "bovid", "canid").
A typical pig has a large head with a long snout that is strengthened by a special prenasal bone and by a disk of cartilage at the tip. The snout is used to dig into the soil to find food and is a very acute sense organ. There are four hoofed toes on each foot, with the two larger central toes bearing most of the weight, but the outer two also being used in soft ground.
The dental formula of adult pigs is , giving a total of 44 teeth. The rear teeth are adapted for crushing. In the male, the canine teeth form tusks, which grow continuously and are sharpened by constantly being ground against each other.
Occasionally, captive mother pigs may savage their own piglets, often if they become severely stressed. Some attacks on newborn piglets are non-fatal. Others may cause the death of the piglets and sometimes, the mother may eat the piglets. It is estimated that 50% of piglet fatalities are due to the mother attacking, or unintentionally crushing, the newborn pre-weaned animals.
With around 1 billion individuals alive at any time, the domestic pig is one of the most numerous large mammals on the planet.
The ancestor of the domestic pig is the wild boar, which is one of the most numerous and widespread large mammals. Its many subspecies are native to all but the harshest climates of continental Eurasia and its islands and Africa as well, from Ireland and India to Japan and north to Siberia.
Long isolated from other pigs on the many islands of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, pigs have evolved into many different species, including wild boar, bearded pigs, and warty pigs. Humans have introduced pigs into Australia, North and South America, and numerous islands, either accidentally as escaped domestic pigs which have gone feral, or as wild boar.
The wild boar ("Sus scrofa") can take advantage of any forage resources. Therefore, they can live in virtually any productive habitat that can provide enough water to sustain large mammals such as pigs. If there is increased foraging of wild boars in certain areas, they can cause a nutritional shortage which can cause the pig population to decrease. If the nutritional state returns to normal, the pig population will most likely rise due to the pigs' naturally increased reproduction rate.
Pigs are omnivores, which means that they consume both plants and animals. In the wild, they are foraging animals, primarily eating leaves, roots, fruits, and flowers, in addition to some insects and fish. As livestock, pigs are fed mostly corn and soybean meal with a mixture of vitamins and minerals added to the diet. Traditionally, they were raised on dairy farms and called "mortgage lifters", due to their ability to use the excess milk as well as whey from cheese and butter making combined with pasture. Older pigs will consume three to five gallons of water per day. When kept as pets, the optimal healthy diet consists mainly of a balanced diet of raw vegetables, although some may give their pigs conventional mini pig pellet feed.
Domesticated pigs, especially miniature breeds, are commonly kept as pets. Domestic pigs are raised commercially as livestock; materials that are garnered include their meat (known as pork), leather, and their bristly hairs which are used to make brushes. Because of their foraging abilities and excellent sense of smell, they are used to find truffles in many European countries. Both wild and feral pigs are commonly hunted.
The relatively short, stiff, coarse hairs of the pig are called bristles, and were once so commonly used in paintbrushes that in 1946 the Australian Government launched Operation Pig Bristle. In May 1946, in response to a shortage of pig bristles for paintbrushes to paint houses in the post-World War II construction boom, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) flew in 28 short tons of pig bristles from China, their only commercially available source at the time.
Human skin is very similar to pig skin, therefore pig skin has been used in many preclinical studies. In addition to providing use in biomedical research and for drug testing, genetic advances in human healthcare have provided a pathway for domestic pigs to become xenotransplantation candidates
for humans.
The genus "Sus" is currently thought to contain eight living species. A number of extinct species (†) are known from fossils.
The pygmy hog, formerly "Sus salvanius" is now placed in the monotypic genus "Porcula".
Pigs have been domesticated since ancient times in the Old World. Archaeological evidence suggests that pigs were being managed in the wild in a way similar to the way they are managed by some modern New Guineans from wild boar as early as 13,000–12,700 BP in the Near East in the Tigris Basin, Çayönü, Cafer Höyük, Nevalı Çori. Remains of pigs have been dated to earlier than 11,400 BP in Cyprus that must have been introduced from the mainland which suggests domestication in the adjacent mainland by then. A separate domestication also occurred in China.
In India, pigs have been domesticated for a long time mostly in Goa and some rural areas for pig toilets. This was also done in China. Though ecologically logical as well as economical, pig toilets are waning in popularity as use of septic tanks and/or sewerage systems is increasing in rural areas.
Pigs were brought to southeastern North America from Europe by Hernando de Soto and other early Spanish explorers. Pigs are particularly valued in China and on certain oceanic islands, where their self-sufficiency allows them to be turned loose, although the practice is not without its drawbacks (see environmental impact).
The domestic pig ("Sus scrofa domesticus") is usually given the scientific name "Sus scrofa", although some taxonomists call it "S. domesticus", reserving "S. scrofa" for the wild boar. It was domesticated approximately 5,000 to 7,000 years ago. The upper canines form sharp distinctive tusks that curve outward and upward. Compared to other artiodactyles, their head is relatively long, pointed, and free of warts. Their head and body length ranges from and they can weigh between .
In November 2012, scientists managed to sequence the genome of the domestic pig. The similarities between the pig and human genomes mean that the new data may have wide applications in the study and treatment of human genetic diseases.
In August 2015, a study looked at over 100 pig genome sequences to ascertain their process of domestication. The process of domestication was assumed to have been initiated by humans, involved few individuals and relied on reproductive isolation between wild and domestic forms. The study found that the assumption of reproductive isolation with population bottlenecks was not supported. The study indicated that pigs were domesticated separately in Western Asia and China, with Western Asian pigs introduced into Europe where they crossed with wild boar. A model that fitted the data included admixture with a now extinct ghost population of wild pigs during the Pleistocene. The study also found that despite back-crossing with wild pigs, the genomes of domestic pigs have strong signatures of selection at DNA loci that affect behavior and morphology. The study concluded that human selection for domestic traits likely counteracted the homogenizing effect of gene flow from wild boars and created domestication islands in the genome. The same process may also apply to other domesticated animals.
Pigs have been important in culture across the world since neolithic times. They appear in art, literature, and religion. In Asia the wild boar is one of 12 animal images comprising the Chinese zodiac, while in Europe the boar represents a standard charge in heraldry. In Islam and Judaism pigs and those who handle them are viewed negatively, and the consumption of pork is forbidden. Pigs are alluded to in animal epithets and proverbs.
The pig has been celebrated throughout Europe since ancient times in its carnivals, the name coming from the Italian "carne levare", the lifting of meat.
Pigs have been brought into literature for varying reasons, ranging from the pleasures of eating, as in Charles Lamb's "A Dissertation upon Roast Pig", to William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" (with the fat character "Piggy"), where the rotting boar's head on a stick represents Beelzebub, "lord of the flies" being the direct translation of the Hebrew בעל זבוב, and George Orwell's allegorical novel "Animal Farm", where the central characters, representing Soviet leaders, are all pigs.
Domestic pigs that have escaped from urban areas or were allowed to forage in the wild, and in some cases wild boars which were introduced as prey for hunting, have given rise to large populations of feral pigs in North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and other areas where pigs are not native. Accidental or deliberate releases of pigs into countries or environments where they are an alien species have caused extensive environmental change. Their omnivorous diet, aggressive behaviour, and their feeding method of rooting in the ground all combine to severely alter ecosystems unused to pigs. Pigs will even eat small animals and destroy nests of ground nesting birds. The Invasive Species Specialist Group lists feral pigs on the list of the world's 100 worst invasive species and says:
Because of the biological similarities between each other, pigs can harbour a range of parasites and diseases that can be transmitted to humans. These include trichinosis, "Taenia solium", cysticercosis, and brucellosis. Pigs are also known to host large concentrations of parasitic ascarid worms in their digestive tract.
Some strains of influenza are endemic in pigs. Pigs also can acquire human influenza. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25142 |
Packet radio
Packet radio is a digital radio communications mode used to send packets of data. Packet radio uses packet switching to transmit datagrams. This is very similar to how packets of data are transferred between nodes on the Internet. Packet radio can be used to transmit data long distances.
Packet radio is frequently used by amateur radio operators. The AX.25 (Amateur X.25) protocol was derived from the X.25 data link layer protocol and adapted for amateur radio use. Every AX.25 packet includes the sender's amateur radio callsign, which satisfies the US FCC requirements for amateur radio station identification. AX.25 allows other stations to automatically repeat packets to extend the range of transmissions. It is possible for any packet station to act as a digipeater, linking distant stations with each other through ad hoc networks. This makes packet radio especially useful for emergency communications.
Packet radio can be used in mobile communications. Some mobile packet radio stations transmit their location periodically using the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS). If the APRS packet is received by an "igate" station, position reports and other messages can be routed to an internet server, and made accessible on a public web page. This allows amateur radio operators to track the locations of vehicles, hikers, high-altitude balloons, etc., along with telemetry and other messages around the world.
Some packet radio implementations also use dedicated point-to-point links such as TARPN. In cases such as this, new protocols have emerged such as Improved Layer 2 Protocol (IL2P) supporting forward error correction for noisy and weak signal links.
Earlier digital radio communications modes were telegraphy (using Morse code), teleprinter (using Baudot code) and facsimile.
Since radio circuits inherently possess a broadcast network topology (i.e., many or all nodes are connected to the network simultaneously), one of the first technical challenges faced in the implementation of packet radio networks was a means to control access to a shared communication channel. Professor Norman Abramson of the University of Hawaii led development of a packet radio network known as ALOHAnet and performed a number of experiments beginning in the 1970s to develop methods to arbitrate access to a shared radio channel by network nodes. This system operated on UHF frequencies at 9,600 baud. From this work the Aloha multiple access protocol was derived. Subsequent enhancements in channel access techniques made by Leonard Kleinrock "et al." in 1975 would lead Robert Metcalfe to use carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) protocols in the design of the now commonplace Ethernet local area network (LAN) technology.
Over 1973–76, DARPA created a packet radio network called PRNET in the San Francisco Bay area and conducted a series of experiments with SRI to verify the use of ARPANET (a precursor to the Internet) communications protocols (later known as IP) over packet radio links between mobile and fixed network nodes. This system was quite advanced, as it made use of direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) modulation and forward error correction (FEC) techniques to provide 100 kbit/s and 400 kbit/s data channels. These experiments were generally considered to be successful, and also marked the first demonstration of Internetworking, as in these experiments data was routed between the ARPANET, PRNET, and SATNET (a satellite packet radio network) networks. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, DARPA operated a number of terrestrial and satellite packet radio networks connected to the ARPANET at various military and government installations.
Amateur radio operators began experimenting with packet radio in 1978, when—after obtaining authorization from the Canadian government—Robert Rouleau, VE2PY; Bram Frank, VE2BFH; Norm Pearl, VE2BQS; and Jacques Orsali, VE2EHP of the Montreal Amateur Radio Club Montreal, Quebec began experimenting with transmitting ASCII encoded data over VHF amateur radio frequencies using homebuilt equipment. In 1980, Doug Lockhart VE7APU, and the Vancouver Area Digital Communications Group (VADCG) in Vancouver, British Columbia began producing standardized equipment (Terminal Node Controllers) in quantity for use in amateur packet radio networks. In 2003, Rouleau was inducted into CQ Amateur Radio magazine's hall of fame for his work on the Montreal Protocol in 1978.
Not long after this activity began in Canada, amateurs in the US became interested in packet radio. In 1980, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted authorization for United States amateurs to transmit ASCII codes via amateur radio. Repeaters may be designed for amateur packet radio, these are dubbed "digipeaters". The first known amateur packet radio activity in the US occurred in San Francisco during December 1980, when a packet repeater was put into operation on 2 meters by Hank Magnuski KA6M, and the Pacific Packet Radio Society (PPRS). In keeping with the dominance of DARPA and ARPANET at the time, the nascent amateur packet radio network was dubbed the AMPRNet in DARPA style. Magnuski obtained IP address allocations in the network for amateur radio use worldwide.
Many groups of amateur radio operators interested in packet radio soon formed throughout the country including the Pacific Packet Radio Society (PPRS) in California, the Tucson Amateur Packet Radio Corporation (TAPR) in Arizona and the Amateur Radio Research and Development Corporation (AMRAD) in Washington, D.C.
By 1983, TAPR was offering the first TNC available in kit form. Packet radio started becoming more and more popular across North America and by 1984 the first packet-based bulletin board systems began to appear. Packet radio proved its value for emergency operations following the crash of an Aeromexico airliner in a neighborhood in Cerritos, California Labor Day weekend, 1986. Volunteers linked several key sites to pass text traffic via packet radio which kept voice frequencies clear.
For an objective description of early developments in amateur packet radio, refer to the article "Packet Radio in the Amateur Service".
Many commercial operations, particularly those that make use of vehicle dispatch (i.e. taxis, tow trucks, police) were quick to note the value of packet radio systems to provide simple mobile data systems. This led to the rapid development of a number of commercial packet radio systems:
One of the first challenges faced by amateurs implementing packet radio is that almost all amateur radio equipment (and most surplus commercial/military equipment) has historically been designed to transmit voice, not data. Like any other digital communications system that uses analog media, packet radio systems require a modem. Since the radio equipment to be used with the modem was intended for voice, early amateur packet systems used AFSK modems that followed telephone standards (notably the Bell 202 standard). While this approach worked, it was not optimal, because it used a 25 kHz FM channel to transmit at 1,200 baud. When using a direct FSK modulation like G3RUH's packet radio modem, a 9,600 baud transmission is easily made in the same channel.
In addition, the baseband characteristics of the audio channel provided by voice radios are often quite different from those of telephone audio channels. This led to the need in some cases to enable or disable pre-emphasis or de-emphasis circuits in the radios and/or modems.
Another problem faced by early "packeteers" was the issue of asynchronous versus synchronous data transfer. At the time, most personal computers had asynchronous RS-232 serial ports for data communications between the computer and devices such as modems. The RS-232 standard specifies an asynchronous, start-stop mode of data transmission where data is sent in groups (characters) of 7 or 8 bits. Unfortunately, the simple AFSK modems typically used provide no timing signal to indicate the start of a packet frame. That led to the need for a mechanism to enable the receiver to know when to start assembling each packet frame. The method used is called asynchronous framing. The receiver looks for the "frame boundary octet," then begins decoding the packet data that follows it. Another frame boundary octet marks the end of the packet frame.
A number of data "conversations" are possible on a single radio channel over a finite period.
A basic packet radio station consists of a computer or dumb terminal, a modem, and a transceiver with an antenna. Traditionally, the computer and modem are combined in one unit, the terminal node controller (TNC), with a dumb terminal (or terminal emulator) used to input and display data. Increasingly, personal computers are taking over the functions of the TNC, with the modem either a standalone unit or implemented entirely in software. Alternatively, multiple manufacturers (including Kenwood and Alinco) now market handheld or mobile radios with built-in TNCs, allowing connection directly to the serial port of a computer or terminal with no other equipment required.
The computer is responsible for managing network connections, formatting data as AX.25 packets, and controlling the radio channel. Frequently it provides other functionality as well, such as a simple bulletin board system to accept messages while the operator is away.
Following the OSI model, packet radio networks can be described in terms of the physical, data link, and network layer protocols on which they rely.
Modems used for packet radio vary in throughput and modulation technique, and are normally selected to match the capabilities of the radio equipment in use.
Most commonly used method is one using audio frequency-shift keying (AFSK) within the radio equipment's existing speech bandwidth.
The first amateur packet radio stations were constructed using surplus Bell 202 1,200 bit/s modems, and despite its low data rate, Bell 202 modulation has remained the standard for VHF operation in most areas. More recently, 9,600 bit/s has become a popular, although more technically demanding, alternative. At HF frequencies, Bell 103 modulation is used, at a rate of 300 bit/s.
Due to historical reasons, all commonly used modulations are based on an idea of minimal modification to the radio itself, usually just connecting the computer's audio output directly to the transmitter's microphone input and receiver's audio output directly to the computer's microphone input. Upon adding a "turn the transmitter on" output signal ("PTT") for transmitter control, one has made a "radio modem".
Due to this simplicity, and just having suitable microchips at hand, the "Bell 202" modulation became standard way to send the packet radio data over the radio as two distinct tones. The tones are 1,200 Hz for Mark and 2,200 Hz for space (1,000 Hz shift). In the case of "Bell 103" modulation, a 200 Hz shift is used. The data is differentially encoded with a NRZI pattern, where a data zero bit is encoded by a change in tones and a data one bit is encoded by no change in tones.
Ways to achieve higher speeds than 1,200 bits/s, include using telephone modem chips via the microphone and audio out connectors. This has been proven to work at speeds up to 4,800 bit/s using fax V.27 modems in half-duplex mode. These modems use phase shift keying which works fine when there is no amplitude shift keying, but at faster speeds such as 9,600 bit/s, signal levels become critical and they are extremely sensitive to group delay in the radio. These systems were pioneered by Simon Taylor (G1NTX) and Jerry Sandys (G8DXZ) in the 1980s. Other systems which involved small modification of the radio were developed by James Miller (G3RUH) and operated at 9,600 bit/s.
1,200 bit/s AFSK node controllers on 2 meters (144–148 MHz) are the most commonly found packet radio. For 1,200/2,400 bit/s UHF/VHF packet radio, amateurs use commonly available narrow band FM voice radios. For HF packet, 300 bit/s data is used over single sideband (SSB) modulation. For high speed packet (9,600 bit/s upwards), special radios or modified FM radios must be used.
Custom modems have been developed which allow throughput rates of 19.2 kbit/s, 56 kbit/s, and even 1.2 Mbit/s over amateur radio links on FCC permitted frequencies of 440 MHz and above. However, special radio equipment is needed to carry data at these speeds. The interface between the "modem" and the "radio" is at the "intermediate frequency" part of the radio as opposed to the audio section used for 1,200 bit/s operation. The adoption of these high-speed links has been limited.
In many commercial data radio applications, audio baseband modulation is not used. Data is transmitted by altering the transmitter output frequency between two distinct frequencies (in the case of FSK modulation, other alternates exist).
The 2.4 GHz "Wi-Fi" band partially overlaps an amateur radio band, so commercial Wi-Fi hardware can be adapted and used by licensed amateur radio operators at higher power levels, although restrictions on amateur radio limit the appeal of using packet radio to connect to the internet. US FCC regulations do not allow amateur radio communications to be encrypted or private, in addition to other content restrictions.
Packet radio networks rely on the AX.25 data link layer protocol, derived from the X.25 protocol suite and intended specifically for amateur radio use. Despite its name, AX.25 defines both the physical and data link layers of the OSI model. (It also defines a network layer protocol, though this is seldom used.)
Packet radio has most often been used for direct, keyboard-to-keyboard connections between stations, either between two live operators or between an operator and a bulletin board system. No network services above the data link layer are required for these applications.
To provide automated routing of data between stations (important for the delivery of electronic mail), several network layer protocols have been developed for use with AX.25. Most prominent among these network layer protocols are NET/ROM & TheNET, ROSE, FlexNet and TexNet.
In principle, any network layer protocol may be used, including the ubiquitous Internet protocol. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25144 |
Pizza cheese
Pizza cheese encompasses several varieties and types of cheeses and dairy products that are designed and manufactured for use specifically on pizza. These include processed and modified cheese such as mozzarella-like processed cheeses and mozzarella variants. The term can also refer to any type of cheese suitable for use on pizza. The most popular cheeses used in the preparation of pizza are mozzarella (accounting for about 30%), provolone, cheddar and Parmesan. Emmental, Romano and ricotta are often used as toppings, and processed pizza cheeses manufactured specifically for pizza are mass-produced. Some mass-produced pizza cheeses are frozen after manufacturing and shipped frozen.
Processed pizza cheese is manufactured to produce optimal qualities in browning, melting, stretchiness and fat and moisture content. Several studies and experiments have analyzed the impact of vegetable oil, manufacturing and culture processes, denatured whey proteins and other changes to create ideal and economical pizza cheeses. In 1997, it was estimated that annual production of pizza cheese products was 2 billion pounds in the United States and 200 million pounds in Europe, and in 2000 demand for the product in Europe was increasing by 8% per year. The trend of steadily-increasing production and consumption of mozzarella and pizza cheese continued into the first decade of the 21st century in the United States.
The "International Dictionary of Food and Cooking" defines pizza cheese as "a soft spun-curd cheese similar to Mozzarella made from cow's milk..." that is "...used particularly for pizzas and contains somewhat less water than real Mozzarella..." Most are at least 95 percent Mozzarella, with different moisture and fat densities. Cheese for frozen pizzas may be "comminuted", in which the cheese is processed into minute granules or fragments. Low-moisture Mozzarella can be formulated specifically for pizza. Cheese may be processed into blocks, from which the product can be grated, made into granules or sliced for use on pizza or other foods. Pizza cheese frequently consists of a blend of two or more cheeses, such as low-moisture Mozzarella or Provolone. Low-moisture Mozzarella was first manufactured in dairy factories in the Midwestern United States, and was originally called "pizza cheese". Compared to standard Mozzarella, low-moisture Mozzarella has a firmer texture, is easier to grate, has better browning and melting characteristics, and is less perishable.
Globally, Mozzarella is the most popular pizza cheese. However, it has been estimated that in the United States only 30% of all pizza cheese used is actual Mozzarella. Provolone is the second most popular one. Cheddar may be mixed with Mozzarella to preserve chewiness. Grated Parmesan may be added to the top of a pizza, and typically does not melt well when cooked. A diverse variety of processed pizza cheeses are produced, including analogue cheese. Provel is one example. Other pizza cheeses include Emmental, Romano and Ricotta for calzones or as a topping.
Several cheeses may be mixed together in its formulation, and each has individual browning and blistering characteristics. For example, a combination of Mozzarella and Cheddar may blister less when cooked compared to other combinations, because cheddar has less elasticity, while Mozzarella and provolone may brown less compared to other combinations.
Pasteurized and processed cheese-like products for pizza that are quicker and cheaper to produce than real cheese and designed to melt well and remain chewy are used on many mass-produced pizzas in North America and the United Kingdom. These products are referred to as "analogue" (or "analog") "pizza cheese"; in the UK the term "cheese analogue" is used, making clear that it is not actually cheese. In the book "Technology of Cheesemaking", editors Law and Tamimethat state that analogue pizza cheese appears to be the leading type of cheese analogue produced globally. Each year in the United States, 700 million frozen pizzas are sold, three-quarters of which contain cheese substitutes.
Analogue pizza cheeses may be formulated for processing with less sophisticated cheese-making equipment than is required for Mozzarella cheese, such as using simple mixing and molding. They tend to have a soft texture and once melted, may have a slightly "stringy" quality when pulled or bitten into. They may lack in a fusion, or melting together of the shredded product when cooked, in which the cheese gels together. New stabilizer systems have been developed that have helped to enable the creation of analogue pizza cheeses.
An example of a processed pizza cheese is Provel, which uses Cheddar, Swiss, and Provolone cheeses as flavorants. Some analogue types are made with casein, a by-product of milk, and vegetable oil, rather than milk fat. Casein-based Mozzarella-like imitation processed cheeses prepared using rennet are also used as a Mozzarella substitute on frozen pizzas.
In some instances, the production of analogue pizza cheese can be similar to the production of cream cheese, although production may be different and homogenization may be avoided. In some varieties, the product is heated to remain at a specific temperature and for a specific amount of time, which causes the proteins in the mix to gelatinize. During this process, salts in the mix serve to emulsify it and thus improve the meltability of the final product. The heated product is then placed in packaging such as bags-in-boxes while still hot, as it is more easily handled in this state compared to when in a solid state. During packaging, these types of pizza cheeses are then quick-cooled to avoid browning of the product, which can occur via the Maillard reaction.
Manufacturers and academics have conducted studies and experiments in an effort to improve the stretchiness, melting characteristics, browning, fat content and water retention of pizza cheese. Several patents exist for specialized varieties of pizza cheese and for its processing. A study by Rudan and Barbano found that the addition of a thin layer of vegetable oil atop low- and reduced-fat pizza cheese increased meltability and reduced browning and dehydration when the product was cooked, but the texture remained overly chewy and tough. A study by Perry et al. found various methods to heighten the melt of low-fat pizza cheese by increasing its moisture, including the use of pre-acidification, fat-replacers, and exopolysaccharide starter cultures as well as higher pasteurization temperatures.
Manufacturers aim for a moisture content of 50-to-52 percent and a fat-in-dry-matter content of 35-to-40 percent. A study published in the "International Journal of Food & Science Technology" found that a 12.5:87.5 blend of vetch milk and bovine milk improved stretchiness and melting characteristics. Vetch is a legume that has seeds which are similar to lentils. An experiment published in the "International Journal of Dairy Technology" suggested that the level of galactose, a monosaccharide sugar that is less sweet than glucose and fructose, can be reduced using different culture techniques. An article in the "International Journal of Food Engineering" found that trisodium citrate, a food additive used to preserve and add flavor to foods, slightly improved the preferred qualities of pizza cheese. Research published in "Dairy Industries International" suggested that denatured whey proteins increased moisture retention, but that the improvements were very slight and not economically worthwhile relative to the minor improvements.
Some consumers prefer pizza cheese with less browning, which can be achieved using low-moisture part-skim Mozzarella with a low galactose content. Some varieties derived from skim mozzarella variants were designed not to require aging or the use of fermentation starter. Others can be produced through the direct acidification of milk, which may be used in place of bacterial fermentation.
In the United States, the production and consumption of Mozzarella and pizza cheese steadily increased in the mid-20th century, and this trend has continued into the first decade of the 21st century. In the U.S., several hundred million pounds of pizza cheese is consumed annually. In 1997, it was estimated that annual production of the product was 1 million tons (2 billion pounds) in the United States and 100,000 tonnes (98,000 long tons; 110,000 short tons, 220,460,000 pounds) in Europe. It has been estimated that 30% of all pizza cheese used in the United States is Mozzarella cheese. As of 2000, demand for the product was growing in Europe by 8 percent per year.
Mass-produced pizza cheese is used by the foodservice industry, quick service restaurants, and other industries and businesses. The world's largest manufacturer of pizza cheese, Leprino Foods Company, processes 600,000 tonnes (590,000 long tons; 660,000 short tons, 1,322,760,000 pounds) a year. Leprino Foods holds patents for some specialized Mozzarella production processes that enable the quick manufacture of the product. One such product is a frozen shredded cheese used for pizza that is created in a few hours from milk. Other U.S. companies also mass-produce pizza cheese, which is shipped in a frozen state. As of 2000, Glanbia is the largest producer of pizza cheese in Europe. Some retail and commercially mass-produced frozen pizzas have cheese stuffed into the pizza crust.
Significant amounts of pizza cheese are used in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Whole milk mozzarella is popular in pizzas in the East and Southwest regions of the U.S., while one survey showed that Provolone was more popular on the east and west coast. Cheddar may be used more in the Eastern and Southern regions of the U.S. Provel cheese is typically used in the preparation of St. Louis-style pizza in the U.S. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25146 |
Peggy Lee
Norma Deloris Egstrom (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002), known professionally as Peggy Lee, was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress, over a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, Lee created a sophisticated persona, writing music for films, acting, and recording conceptual record albums combining poetry and music.
Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota on May 26, 1920, the seventh of the eight children of Selma Amelia (née Anderson) Egstrom and Marvin Olof Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad. She and her family were Lutherans. Her father was Swedish-American and her mother was Norwegian-American. After her mother died when Lee was four, her father married Minnie Schaumberg Wiese.
Lee first sang professionally over KOVC radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She later had her own series on a radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her salary in food. Both during and after her high school years, Lee sang for small sums on local radio stations.
Radio personality Ken Kennedy, of WDAY in Fargo, North Dakota (the most widely heard station in North Dakota), changed her name to Peggy Lee. Lee left home and traveled to Los Angeles at the age of 17.
She returned to North Dakota for a tonsillectomy, and was later noticed by hotel owner Frank Bering while working at the Doll House in Palm Springs, California. It was here that she developed her trademark sultry purr, having decided to compete with the noisy crowd with subtlety rather than volume. Bering offered her a gig at The Buttery Room, a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel East in Chicago. There, she was noticed by bandleader Benny Goodman. According to Lee, "Benny's then-fiancée, Lady Alice Duckworth, came into The Buttery, and she was very impressed. So the next evening she brought Benny in, because they were looking for a replacement for Helen Forrest. And although I didn't know, I was it. He was looking at me strangely, I thought, but it was just his preoccupied way of looking. I thought that he didn't like me at first, but it just was that he was preoccupied with what he was hearing." She joined his band in 1941 and stayed for two years.
In 1942 Lee had her first No. 1 hit, "Somebody Else Is Taking My Place", followed in 1943 by "Why Don't You Do Right?", which sold more than one million copies and made her famous. She sang with Goodman's orchestra in two 1943 films, "Stage Door Canteen" and "The Powers Girl".
In March 1943 Lee married Dave Barbour, a guitarist in Goodman's band. Lee said, "David joined Benny's band and there was a ruling that no one should fraternize with the girl singer. But I fell in love with David the first time I heard him play, and so I married him. Benny then fired David, so I quit, too. Benny and I made up, although David didn't play with him anymore. Benny stuck to his rule. I think that's not too bad a rule, but you can't help falling in love with somebody."
She drifted back to songwriting and occasional recording sessions for the Capitol Records in 1947, for whom she recorded a long string of hits, many of them with lyrics and music by Lee and Barbour, including "I Don't Know Enough About You" in 1946 and then "Golden Earings" and "It's a Good Day" in 1947. Her recording of "Golden Earrings", the title song of a 1947 movie, was a hit throughout 1947-1948. With the release of the U.S, No. 1-selling record of 1948, "Mañana", her "retirement" was over. In 1948, Lee's work was part of Capitol's library of electrical transcriptions for radio stations. An ad for Capitol Transcriptions in a trade magazine noted that the transcriptions included "special voice introductions by Peggy."
In 1948 Lee joined vocalists Perry Como and Jo Stafford as a host of the NBC Radio musical program "The Chesterfield Supper Club". She was a regular on "The Jimmy Durante Show" and appeared frequently on Bing Crosby's radio shows during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Her relationship with Capitol spanned almost three decades aside from a brief detour (1952–1956) at Decca. For that label she recorded "Black Coffee" and had hit singles such as "Lover" and "Mister Wonderful".
In 1957, she recorded a popular version of "Fever" by Little Willie John, written by Eddie Cooley and John Davenport, to which she added her uncopyrighted lyrics ("Romeo loved Juliet", "Captain Smith and Pocahontas").
In 1952, Lee starred opposite Danny Thomas in "The Jazz Singer" (1952), a remake of the Al Jolson film, "The Jazz Singer" (1927). She played an alcoholic blues singer in "Pete Kelly's Blues" (1955), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She provided speaking and singing voices for several characters in the Disney movie "Lady and the Tramp" (1955), playing the human "Darling", the dog "Peg", and the two Siamese cats, "Si and Am". In 1957, she guest starred on the short-lived variety program "The Guy Mitchell Show".
Lee was married four times: to guitarist and composer Dave Barbour (1943–1951), actor Brad Dexter (1953), actor Dewey Martin (1956–1958), and percussionist Jack Del Rio (1964–1965). All the marriages ended in divorce.
She gave birth to her only child at age 23, a daughter Nicki Lee Foster on November 11, 1943. Nicki's father was her first husband, Dave Barbour.
Peggy Lee was among hundreds of artists whose studio masters were destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
Lee continued to perform into the 1990s, sometimes confined to a wheelchair. After years of poor health, she died of complications from diabetes and a heart attack on January 21, 2002, at the age of 81. She was cremated and her ashes were buried at a pool site with a bench-style monument in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Her daughter Nicki died 13 years after her, on November 14, 2014.
In 2003, "There'll Be Another Spring: A Tribute to Miss Peggy Lee" was held at Carnegie Hall. Produced by recording artist Richard Barone, the sold-out event included performances by Cy Coleman, Debbie Harry, Nancy Sinatra, Rita Moreno, Marian McPartland, Chris Connor, Petula Clark, Maria Muldaur, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Quincy Jones, Shirley Horn, and others. In 2004 Barone brought the event to a sold-out Hollywood Bowl, and then to Chicago's Ravinia Festival, with expanded casts including Maureen McGovern, Jack Jones and Bea Arthur. The Carnegie Hall concert was broadcast on NPR's "JazzSet".
Lee was nominated for twelve Grammy Awards, winning Best Contemporary Vocal Performance for her 1969 hit "Is That All There Is?" In 1995 she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
She received the Rough Rider Award from the state of North Dakota, the Pied Piper Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the Presidents Award from the Songwriters Guild of America, the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society of Singers, and the Living Legacy Award from the Women's International Center. In 1999 she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Lee was a successful songwriter, with songs from the Disney movie "Lady and the Tramp", for which she supplied the singing and speaking voices of four characters. Her collaborators included Laurindo Almeida, Harold Arlen, Sonny Burke, Cy Coleman, Duke Ellington, Dave Grusin, Quincy Jones, Francis Lai, Jack Marshall, Johnny Mandel, Marian McPartland, Willard Robison, Lalo Schifrin, and Victor Young.
Her first published song was in 1941, "Little Fool". "What More Can a Woman Do?" was recorded by Sarah Vaughan with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. "Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me)" was number one on the Billboard singles chart for nine weeks in 1948, from the week of March 13 to May 8.
Lee was a mainstay of Capitol Records when rock and roll came onto the American music scene. She was among the first of the "old guard" to recognize this new genre, as seen by her recording music from The Beatles, Randy Newman, Carole King, James Taylor, and other up-and-coming songwriters. From 1957 until her final disc for the company in 1972, she produced a steady stream of two or three albums per year that usually included standards (often arranged quite differently from the original), her own compositions, and material from young artists.
She wrote the lyrics for the following songs:
Film
Television | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25147 |
Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy
Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) is a rare and often fatal viral disease characterized by progressive damage ("-pathy") or inflammation of the white matter ("leuko-") of the brain ("-encephalo-") at multiple locations ("multifocal"). It is caused by the JC virus, which is normally present and kept under control by the immune system. The JC virus is harmless except in cases of weakened immune systems. In general, PML has a mortality rate of 30–50% in the first few months, and those who survive can be left with varying degrees of neurological disabilities.
PML occurs almost exclusively in patients with severe immune deficiency, most commonly among patients with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), but people on chronic immunosuppressive medications including chemotherapy are also at increased risk of PML, such as patients with transplants, Hodgkin's lymphoma, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and other autoimmune diseases.
Symptoms can develop over several weeks to months, and they depend on location of damage in the brain and the degree of damage. The most prominent symptoms are "clumsiness, progressive weakness, and visual, speech, and sometimes personality changes".
The lesions affecting the parietal and occipital lobes of the brain can lead to a phenomenon known as alien hand syndrome.
The cause of PML is a type of polyomavirus called the JC virus (JCV), after the initials of the person from whose tissue the virus was first successfully cultured. Recent publications indicate 39 to 58% of the general population are seropositive for antibodies to JCV, indicating current or previous infection with the virus. Other publications put the percentage at 70 to 90% of the general population. JCV causes persistent asymptomatic infection in about one-third of the adult population, based on viral shedding into the urine from the site of asymptomatic infection in the kidney. The virus causes disease only when the immune system has been severely weakened.
PML is most common in people with HIV1 infection; prior to the advent of effective antiretroviral therapy, as many as 5% of people with AIDS eventually developed PML. It is unclear why PML occurs more frequently in people with AIDS than in other immunosuppressive conditions; some research suggests the effects of HIV on brain tissue, or on JCV itself, make JCV more likely to become active in the brain and increase its damaging inflammatory effects.
PML can still occur in people on immunosuppressive therapy, such as efalizumab, belatacept, and various transplant drugs, which are meant to weaken the immune system.
Natalizumab (Tysabri) was approved in 2004 by the FDA for MS. It was subsequently withdrawn from the market by its manufacturer after it was linked with three cases of PML. All three initial cases were taking natalizumab in combination with interferon beta-1a. After a safety review, the drug was returned to the market in 2006 as a monotherapy for MS under a special prescription program. As of May 2011, over 130 cases of PML had been reported in MS patients, all in patients who had taken natalizumab for more than a year. While none of them had taken the drug in combination with other disease-modifying treatments, previous use of MS treatments increases the risk of PML between three and four-fold. The estimated prevalence of PML in MS is 1.5 cases per thousand natalizumab users. Around 20% of MS patients with PML die, and most of the rest are very disabled. One case study describes a MS patient who, during a 4-year course of dimethyl fumarate, developed PML and died.
Fingolimod (Gilenya) was approved in 2010 by the FDA for MS. In 2015, the first case of PML, as well as a case of "probable PML" was reported by two Gilenya users that could not be tied to previous immunosuppressant therapies. These new cases are now being added to the drug information sheet included with every prescription (i.e. the "drug label").
PML is a demyelinating disease, in which the myelin sheath covering the axons of nerve cells is gradually destroyed, impairing the transmission of nerve impulses. It affects the subcortical white matter, particularly that of the parietal and occipital lobes. PML destroys oligodendrocytes and produces intranuclear inclusions. It is similar to another demyelinating disease, MS, but progresses much more quickly. The breakdown of myelin is commensurate with the degree of immunocompromise.
PML is diagnosed in a patient with a progressive course of the disease, finding JC virus DNA in spinal fluid together with consistent white-matter lesions on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); alternatively, a brain biopsy is diagnostic when the typical histopathology of demyelination, bizarre astrocytes, and enlarged oligodendroglial nuclei are present, coupled with techniques showing the presence of JC virus.
Characteristic evidence of PML on brain CT scan images are multifocal, noncontrast enhancing hypodense lesions without mass effect, but MRI is far more sensitive than CT. The most common area of involvement is the cortical white matter of frontal and parietooccipital lobes, but lesions may occur anywhere in the brain, such as the basal ganglia, external capsule, and posterior cranial fossa structures such as the brain stem and cerebellum.
Although typically multifocal, natalizumab-associated PML is often monofocal, predominantly in the frontal lobe.
No drugs effectively inhibit or cure the virus infection without toxicity. Therefore, treatment aims at reversing the immune deficiency to slow or stop the disease progress. In patients on immunosuppression, this means stopping the drugs or using plasma exchange to accelerate the removal of the biologic agent that put the person at risk for PML.
In HIV-infected people, this may mean starting highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). AIDS patients starting HAART after being diagnosed with PML tend to have a slightly longer survival time than patients who were already on HAART and then develop PML. Some AIDS patients with PML have been able to survive for several years, with HAART. A rare complication of effective HAART is immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS), in which increased immune system activity actually increases the damage caused by the JCV infection; although IRIS can often be managed with medication, it is extremely dangerous in PML.
Cidofovir was studied as possible treatment for PML and has been used on a case-by-case basis, working in some, but not others.
Cytarabine (also known as ARA-C), a chemotherapy drug used to treat certain cancers, has been prescribed on an experimental basis for a small number of non-AIDS PML patients, and stabilized the neurological condition of a minority of these patients. One patient regained some cognitive function lost as a result of PML.
In June 2010, the first case report appeared of a PML patient being successfully treated with the antimalarial drug mefloquine with activity against the JC virus. The patient cleared the virus and had no further neurological deterioration.
Two case reports of using interleukin-2 successfully have been published. Some success have been reported with mirtazapine, but this has not been demonstrated in clinical trials.
A number of drugs work against JC virus in cell culture, but no proven, effective therapy is known in humans.
For example, 1-O-hexadecyloxypropyl-cidofovir (CMX001), suppresses JCV, but has been found to have toxicity at therapeutic dosage.
Infusion of donor T cells specific to the related BK polyomavirus has shown possible effect in treating PML in one small study by Katy Rezvani's group, but needs further study.
One-third to one-half of people with PML die in the first few months following diagnosis, depending on the severity of their underlying disease. Survivors can be left with variable degrees of neurological disability. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25160 |
Idiopathic intracranial hypertension
Idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH), previously known as pseudotumor cerebri and benign intracranial hypertension, is a condition characterized by increased intracranial pressure (pressure around the brain) without a detectable cause. The main symptoms are headache, vision problems, ringing in the ears with the heartbeat, and shoulder pain. Complications may include vision loss.
Risk factors include being overweight or a recent increase in weight. Tetracycline may also trigger the condition. The diagnosis is based on symptoms and a high intracranial pressure found during a lumbar puncture with no specific cause found on a brain scan.
Treatment includes a healthy diet, salt restriction, and exercise. Bariatric surgery may also be used to help with weight loss. The medication acetazolamide may also be used along with the above measures. A small percentage of people may require surgery to relieve the pressure.
About 2 per 100,000 people are newly affected per year. The condition most commonly affects women aged 20–50. Women are affected about 20 times more often than men. The condition was first described in 1897.
The most common symptom of IIH is headache, which occurs in almost all (92–94%) cases. It is characteristically worse in the morning, generalized in character and throbbing in nature. It may be associated with nausea and vomiting. The headache can be made worse by any activity that further increases the intracranial pressure, such as coughing and sneezing. The pain may also be experienced in the neck and shoulders. Many have pulsatile tinnitus, a whooshing sensation in one or both ears (64–87%); this sound is synchronous with the pulse. Various other symptoms, such as numbness of the extremities, generalized weakness, loss of smell, and loss of coordination, are reported more rarely; none are specific for IIH. In children, numerous nonspecific signs and symptoms may be present.
The increased pressure leads to compression and traction of the cranial nerves, a group of nerves that arise from the brain stem and supply the face and neck. Most commonly, the abducens nerve (sixth nerve) is involved. This nerve supplies the muscle that pulls the eye outward. Those with sixth nerve palsy therefore experience horizontal double vision which is worse when looking towards the affected side. More rarely, the oculomotor nerve and trochlear nerve (third and fourth nerve palsy, respectively) are affected; both play a role in eye movements. The facial nerve (seventh cranial nerve) is affected occasionally –- the result is total or partial weakness of the muscles of facial expression on one or both sides of the face.
The increased pressure leads to papilledema, which is swelling of the optic disc, the spot where the optic nerve enters the eyeball. This occurs in practically all cases of IIH, but not everyone experiences symptoms from this. Those who do experience symptoms typically report "transient visual obscurations", episodes of difficulty seeing that occur in both eyes but not necessarily at the same time. Long-term untreated papilledema leads to visual loss, initially in the periphery but progressively towards the center of vision.
Physical examination of the nervous system is typically normal apart from the presence of papilledema, which is seen on examination of the eye with a small device called an ophthalmoscope or in more detail with a fundus camera. If there are cranial nerve abnormalities, these may be noticed on eye examination in the form of a squint (third, fourth, or sixth nerve palsy) or as facial nerve palsy. If the papilledema has been longstanding, visual fields may be constricted and visual acuity may be decreased. Visual field testing by automated (Humphrey) perimetry is recommended as other methods of testing may be less accurate. Longstanding papilledema leads to optic atrophy, in which the disc looks pale and visual loss tends to be advanced.
"Idiopathic" means of unknown cause. Therefore, IIH can only be diagnosed if there is no alternative explanation for the symptoms. Intracranial pressure may be increased due to medications such as high-dose vitamin A derivatives (e.g., isotretinoin for acne), long-term tetracycline antibiotics (for a variety of skin conditions) and hormonal contraceptives.
There are numerous other diseases, mostly rare conditions, that may lead to intracranial hypertension. If there is an underlying cause, the condition is termed "secondary intracranial hypertension". Common causes of secondary intracranial hypertension include obstructive sleep apnea (a sleep-related breathing disorder), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), chronic kidney disease, and Behçet's disease.
The cause of IIH is not known. The Monro–Kellie rule states that the intracranial pressure is determined by the amount of brain tissue, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood inside the bony cranial vault. Three theories therefore exist as to why the pressure might be raised in IIH: an excess of CSF production, increased volume of blood or brain tissue, or obstruction of the veins that drain blood from the brain.
The first theory, that of increased production of cerebrospinal fluid, was proposed in early descriptions of the disease. However, there is no experimental data that supports a role for this process in IIH.
The second theory posits that either increased blood flow to the brain or increase in the brain tissue itself may result in the raised pressure. Little evidence has accumulated to support the suggestion that increased blood flow plays a role, but recently Bateman et al. in phase contrast MRA studies have quantified cerebral blood flow (CBF) in vivo and suggests that CBF is abnormally elevated in many people with IIH. Both biopsy samples and various types of brain scans have shown an increased water content of the brain tissue. It remains unclear why this might be the case.
The third theory suggests that restricted venous drainage from the brain may be impaired resulting in congestion. Many people with IIH have narrowing of the transverse sinuses. It is not clear whether this narrowing is the pathogenesis of the disease or a secondary phenomenon. It has been proposed that a positive biofeedback loop may exist, where raised ICP (intracranial pressure) causes venous narrowing in the transverse sinuses, resulting in venous hypertension (raised venous pressure), decreased CSF resorption via arachnoid granulation and further rise in ICP.
The diagnosis may be suspected on the basis of the history and examination. To confirm the diagnosis, as well as excluding alternative causes, several investigations are required; more investigations may be performed if the history is not typical or the person is more likely to have an alternative problem: children, men, the elderly, or women who are not overweight.
Neuroimaging, usually with computed tomography (CT/CAT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), is used to exclude any mass lesions. In IIH these scans typically appear to be normal, although small or slit-like ventricles, dilatation and buckling of the optic nerve sheaths and "empty sella sign" (flattening of the pituitary gland due to increased pressure) and enlargement of Meckel's caves may be seen.
An MR venogram is also performed in most cases to exclude the possibility of venous sinus stenosis/obstruction or cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. A contrast-enhanced MRV (ATECO) scan has a high detection rate for abnormal transverse sinus stenoses. These stenoses can be more adequately identified and assessed with catheter cerebral venography and manometry. Buckling of the bilateral optic nerves with increased perineural fluid is also often noted on MRI imaging.
Lumbar puncture is performed to measure the opening pressure, as well as to obtain cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to exclude alternative diagnoses. If the opening pressure is increased, CSF may be removed for transient relief (see below). The CSF is examined for abnormal cells, infections, antibody levels, the glucose level, and protein levels. By definition, all of these are within their normal limits in IIH. Occasionally, the CSF pressure measurement may be normal despite very suggestive symptoms. This may be attributable to the fact that CSF pressure may fluctuate over the course of the normal day. If the suspicion of problems remains high, it may be necessary to perform more long-term monitoring of the ICP by a pressure catheter.
The original criteria for IIH were described by Dandy in 1937.
They were modified by Smith in 1985 to become the "modified Dandy criteria". Smith included the use of more advanced imaging: Dandy had required ventriculography, but Smith replaced this with computed tomography. In a 2001 paper, Digre and Corbett amended Dandy's criteria further. They added the requirement that the person is awake and alert, as coma precludes adequate neurological assessment, and require exclusion of venous sinus thrombosis as an underlying cause. Furthermore, they added the requirement that no other cause for the raised ICP is found.
In a 2002 review, Friedman and Jacobson propose an alternative set of criteria, derived from Smith's. These require the absence of symptoms that could not be explained by a diagnosis of IIH, but do not require the actual presence of any symptoms (such as headache) attributable to IIH. These criteria also require that the lumbar puncture is performed with the person lying sideways, as a lumbar puncture performed in the upright sitting position can lead to artificially high pressure measurements. Friedman and Jacobson also do not insist on MR venography for every person; rather, this is only required in atypical cases (see "diagnosis" above).
The primary goal in treatment of IIH is the prevention of visual loss and blindness, as well as symptom control. IIH is treated mainly through the reduction of CSF pressure and. IIH may resolve after initial treatment, may go into spontaneous remission (although it can still relapse at a later stage), or may continue chronically.
The first step in symptom control is drainage of cerebrospinal fluid by lumbar puncture. If necessary, this may be performed at the same time as a diagnostic LP (such as done in search of a CSF infection). In some cases, this is sufficient to control the symptoms, and no further treatment is needed.
The procedure can be repeated if necessary, but this is generally taken as a clue that additional treatments may be required to control the symptoms and preserve vision. Repeated lumbar punctures are regarded as unpleasant by people, and they present a danger of introducing spinal infections if done too often. Repeated lumbar punctures are sometimes needed to control the ICP urgently if the person's vision deteriorates rapidly.
The best-studied medical treatment for intracranial hypertension is acetazolamide (Diamox), which acts by inhibiting the enzyme carbonic anhydrase, and it reduces CSF production by six to 57 percent. It can cause the symptoms of hypokalemia (low blood potassium levels), which include muscle weakness and tingling in the fingers. Acetazolamide cannot be used in pregnancy, since it has been shown to cause embryonic abnormalities in animal studies. Also, in human beings it has been shown to cause metabolic acidosis as well as disruptions in the blood electrolyte levels of newborn babies. The diuretic furosemide is sometimes used for a treatment if acetazolamide is not tolerated, but this drug sometimes has little effect on the ICP.
Various analgesics (painkillers) may be used in controlling the headaches of intracranial hypertension. In addition to conventional agents such as paracetamol, a low dose of the antidepressant amitriptyline or the anticonvulsant topiramate have shown some additional benefit for pain relief.
The use of steroids in the attempt to reduce the ICP is controversial. These may be used in severe papilledema, but otherwise their use is discouraged.
Venous sinus stenoses leading to venous hypertension appear to play a significant part in relation to raised ICP, and stenting of a transverse sinus may resolve venous hypertension, leading to improved CSF resorption, decreased ICP, cure of papilledema and other symptoms of IIH.
A self-expanding metal stent is permanently deployed within the dominant transverse sinus across the stenosis under general anaesthesia. In general, people are discharged the next day. People require double antiplatelet therapy for a period of up to 3 months after the procedure and aspirin therapy for up to 1 year.
In a systematic analysis of 19 studies with 207 cases, there was an 87% improvement in overall symptom rate and 90% cure rate for treatment of papilledema. Major complications only occurred in 3/207 people (1.4%). In the largest single series of transverse sinus stenting there was an 11% rate of recurrence after one stent, requiring further stenting.
Due to the permanence of the stent and small but definite risk of complications, most experts will recommend that person with IIH must have papilledema and have failed medical therapy or are intolerant to medication before stenting is undertaken.
Two main surgical procedures exist in the treatment of IIH: "optic nerve sheath decompression and fenestration" and shunting. Surgery would normally only be offered if medical therapy is either unsuccessful or not tolerated. The choice between these two procedures depends on the predominant problem in IIH. Neither procedure is perfect: both may cause significant complications, and both may eventually fail in controlling the symptoms. There are no randomized controlled trials to guide the decision as to which procedure is best.
Optic nerve sheath fenestration is an operation that involves the making of an incision in the connective tissue lining of the optic nerve in its portion behind the eye. It is not entirely clear how it protects the eye from the raised pressure, but it may be the result of either diversion of the CSF into the orbit or the creation of an area of scar tissue that lowers the pressure. The effects on the intracranial pressure itself are more modest. Moreover, the procedure may lead to significant complications, including blindness in 1–2%. The procedure is therefore recommended mainly in those who have limited headache symptoms but significant papilledema or threatened vision, or in those who have undergone unsuccessful treatment with a shunt or have a contraindication for shunt surgery.
Shunt surgery, usually performed by neurosurgeons, involves the creation of a conduit by which CSF can be drained into another body cavity. The initial procedure is usually a lumboperitoneal (LP) shunt, which connects the subarachnoid space in the lumbar spine with the peritoneal cavity. Generally, a pressure valve is included in the circuit to avoid excessive drainage when the person is erect. LP shunting provides long-term relief in about half the cases; others require revision of the shunt, often on more than one occasion—usually due to shunt obstruction. If the lumboperitoneal shunt needs repeated revisions, a "ventriculoatrial" or "ventriculoperitoneal shunt" may be considered. These shunts are inserted in one of the lateral ventricles of the brain, usually by stereotactic surgery, and then connected either to the right atrium of the heart or the peritoneal cavity, respectively. Given the reduced need for revisions in ventricular shunts, it is possible that this procedure will become the first-line type of shunt treatment.
It has been shown that in obese people, bariatric surgery (and especially gastric bypass surgery) can lead to resolution of the condition in over 95%.
It is not known what percentage of people with IIH will remit spontaneously, and what percentage will develop chronic disease.
IIH does not normally affect life expectancy. The major complications from IIH arise from untreated or treatment-resistant papilledema. In various case series, the long-term risk of ones vision being significantly affected by IIH is reported to lie anywhere between 10 and 25%.
On average, IIH occurs in about one per 100,000 people, and can occur in children and adults. The median age at diagnosis is 30. IIH occurs predominantly in women, especially in the ages 20 to 45, who are four to eight times more likely than men to be affected. Overweight and obesity strongly predispose a person to IIH: women who are more than ten percent over their ideal body weight are thirteen times more likely to develop IIH, and this figure goes up to nineteen times in women who are more than twenty percent over their ideal body weight. In men this relationship also exists, but the increase is only five-fold in those over 20 percent above their ideal body weight.
Despite several reports of IIH in families, there is no known genetic cause for IIH. People from all ethnicities may develop IIH. In children, there is no difference in incidence between males and females.
From national hospital admission databases it appears that the need for neurosurgical intervention for IIH has increased markedly over the period between 1988 and 2002. This has been attributed at least in part to the rising prevalence of obesity, although some of this increase may be explained by the increased popularity of shunting over optic nerve sheath fenestration.
The first report of IIH was by the German physician Heinrich Quincke, who described it in 1893 under the name serous meningitis The term "pseudotumor cerebri" was introduced in 1904 by his compatriot Max Nonne. Numerous other cases appeared in the literature subsequently; in many cases, the raised intracranial pressure may actually have resulted from underlying conditions. For instance, the otitic hydrocephalus reported by London neurologist Sir Charles Symonds may have resulted from venous sinus thrombosis caused by middle ear infection. Diagnostic criteria for IIH were developed in 1937 by the Baltimore neurosurgeon Walter Dandy; Dandy also introduced subtemporal decompressive surgery in the treatment of the condition.
The terms "benign" and "pseudotumor" derive from the fact that increased intracranial pressure may be associated with brain tumors. Those people in whom no tumour was found were therefore diagnosed with "pseudotumor cerebri" (a disease mimicking a brain tumor). The disease was renamed benign intracranial hypertension in 1955 to distinguish it from intracranial hypertension due to life-threatening diseases (such as cancer); however, this was also felt to be misleading because any disease that can blind someone should not be thought of as benign, and the name was therefore revised in 1989 to "idiopathic (of no identifiable cause) intracranial hypertension".
Shunt surgery was introduced in 1949; initially, ventriculoperitoneal shunts were used. In 1971, good results were reported with lumboperitoneal shunting. Negative reports on shunting in the 1980s led to a brief period (1988–1993) during which optic nerve fenestration (which had initially been described in an unrelated condition in 1871) was more popular. Since then, shunting is recommended predominantly, with occasional exceptions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25161 |
Plymouth Hoe
Plymouth Hoe, referred to locally as the Hoe, is a large south-facing open public space in the English coastal city of Plymouth. The Hoe is adjacent to and above the low limestone cliffs that form the seafront and it commands views of Plymouth Sound, Drake's Island, and across the Hamoaze to Mount Edgcumbe in Cornwall. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon word "Hoe", a sloping ridge shaped like an inverted foot and heel.
Until the early 17th century large outline images of the giants Gog and Magog (or Goemagot and Corineus) had for a long time been cut into the turf of the Hoe exposing the white limestone beneath. These figures were periodically re-cut and cleaned. No trace of them remains today, but this likely commemorates the Cornish foundation myth, being the point, "Lam Goemagot – the Giant's Leap -" from which the Giant was cast into the sea by the hero Corin.
Plymouth Hoe is perhaps best known for the probably apocryphal story that Sir Francis Drake played his famous game of bowls here in 1588 while waiting for the tide to change before sailing out with the English fleet to engage with the Spanish Armada. The British Library holds a 1591 Spry map of Plimmouth from this era.
A Tudor fortress guarded the neck of water between the eastern Hoe and Mount Batten and some sheer granite and limestone cannon points remain, however in the late 1660s, following The Restoration, a massive star-shaped stone fortress known as the Royal Citadel, was constructed to replace it. Its purpose was to protect the port and probably also to intimidate the townsfolk who had leaned towards Parliament during the Civil War. It remains occupied by the military.
From 1880 there was a popular bandstand on the Hoe. It was removed for scrap metal during the Second World War and never rebuilt. A three tier belvedere built in 1891 survives; it was built on the site of a camera obscura, probably built in the 1830s, which showed views of the harbour. Below this site was the Bull Ring (now a memorial garden), and a grand pleasure pier, started in 1880, which provided a dance hall, refreshment, promenading and a landing place for boat trips. The pier was destroyed by German bombing in World War II.
There is an imposing series of Victorian terraces to the west of the naval memorial which previously continued to the Grand Hotel and, until it was destroyed by bombing, the grand clubhouse of the Royal Western Yacht Club. The club then merged with the Royal Southern and occupied that club's older premises which it had created from the regency public steam baths by the basin at West Hoe before the rejuvenated club moved in the late 1980s to Queen Anne Battery.
A prominent landmark on the Hoe is Smeaton's Tower. This is the upper portion of John Smeaton's Eddystone Lighthouse, which was originally built on the Eddystone Rocks, located to the south, in 1759. It was dismantled in 1877 and moved, stone by stone, to the Hoe where it was re-erected.
Smeaton's Tower overlooks Tinside Pool, an unusual 1930s outdoor lido which sits upon the limestone shoreline at the base of the cliff. Most of the works to create the swimming areas and Madeira Road were carried out to make work for the local unemployed during the Depression.
A statue of Sir Francis Drake by Joseph Boehm (a copy of the original in his home town of Tavistock) was placed here in 1884 to commemorate him. There are also several war memorials along the northern side of the Hoe. The largest commemorates the Royal Naval dead of the two world wars; its central obelisk is by Robert Lorimer and was unveiled in 1924, while the surrounding sunken garden was added by Edward Maufe in 1954. The Armada Memorial was opened in 1888 to celebrate the tercentenary of the Spanish Armada.
The Hoe also includes a long broad tarmacked promenade (currently a disabled motorists car park) which serves as a spectacular military parade ground and which is often used for displays by Plymouth-based Royal Navy, Royal Marines, the Army garrison, as well as for travelling funfairs and open-air concerts.
Set into the shape of the southern sea facing fortifications of the Royal Citadel is the Citadel Hill Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association of the UK, which also houses the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science. Below and to the east, perched on the rocky foreshore is the clubhouse of the Royal Plymouth Corinthian Yacht Club.
The Hoe is a popular area for Plymothians and visitors. There is always a great deal of activity on the water, including frequent warship movements, ferries going and coming from France and Spain, fishing trawlers and a swarm of larger and smaller sailing boats. The Fastnet yacht race ends here. The annual two-day British Firework Championships attracts tens of thousands of spectators.
For forty years, there has been controversy about development on the edges of the Hoe green space. The erection of two discount hotel chain box buildings, at the southern end of Armada Way and the other at the Sound end of Leigham Street, contrast with their Victorian surroundings. The former Grand Hotel has been converted into apartments and the long derelict yacht club site has now been filled by a modern block of flats.
The Plymouth Dome, a turreted and domed building, built into a small old quarry site above Tinside as an historical theme tourist attraction, failed to obtain sufficient funding and closed in 2006, despite having been visited by 2.3 million people. Between 2013 and 2016 it was a restaurant owned by celebrity chef Gary Rhodes.
Plymouth Hoe has become notorious for the practice of tombstoning which involves leaping feet-first into the sea from any accessible high point. This has caused a number of serious injuries and deaths, leading to the dismantling of seafront diving boards and closure of parts of the waterfront to discourage the activity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25162 |
Plymouth Sound
Plymouth Sound, or locally just The Sound, is a bay on the English Channel at Plymouth in England.
Its southwest and southeast corners are Penlee Point in Cornwall and Wembury Point in Devon, a distance of about 3 nautical miles (6 km). Its northern limit is Plymouth Hoe giving a north-south distance of nearly 3 nautical miles (6 km).
The Sound has three water entrances. The marine entrance is from the English Channel to the south, with a deep-water channel to the west of the Plymouth Breakwater. There are two freshwater inlets: one, from the northwest, is from the River Tamar via the Hamoaze and Devonport Dockyard, the largest naval dockyard in western Europe. The other, at northeast, is from the River Plym disgorging into its narrow estuary, Cattewater harbour between Mount Batten and the Royal Citadel.
In addition to ships of the Royal Navy, large commercial vessels, including ferries to France and Spain use the Sound from Millbay Docks. Fishing vessels use it from Sutton Harbour beside the old town of Plymouth, called the Barbican. There are marinas at Sutton Harbour, Mount Wise in the Hamoaze and at Turnchapel. Waterborne traffic in the Sound is controlled by the Queen's Harbour Master for Plymouth.
In the centre of the Sound, midway between Bovisand Bay and Cawsand Bay, is Plymouth Breakwater, which creates a harbour protecting anchored ships from the frequent south-western storms. The breakwater is around long, stands in around 11 metres / 36 feet of water and was built by John Rennie and Joseph Whidbey starting in 1812. The breakwater has a lighthouse on its western end and a beacon with a spherical cage on top at the eastern end. It is said that the cage is a lifesaving device designed to keep wrecked sailors from drowning in the huge waves of a storm on the low-lying breakwater.
Drake's Island is 400 metres long and around 100 metres wide and situated at the north of the Sound. It was fortified to defend Drake's Channel, the only deep-water route to Devonport. The "Bridge" is a shallow reef that links Drake's Island and the Cornish mainland. At low water the depth of the Bridge can be less than one metre but at high water it can rise to 5 metres. In World War I this natural barrier was supplemented by other obstructions to prevent submarines and small ships attacking the naval base.
Mount Batten, a former Royal Air Force flying boat and search and rescue base, is located at the northeast corner of the Sound. T. E. Lawrence was stationed here as Aircraftman Shaw.
Over the years, the Sound has been defended by Drake's Island, Picklecombe Fort, Cawsand Fort, the Breakwater Fort, Fort Bovisand, Staddon Fort and Stamford Fort.
A harbour and reservoir were built at Bovisand before the fort existed to supply men-o-war anchored in the Sound with fresh water. Joseph Whidbey supervised the building of the Breakwater from Bovisand Lodge, from which there is a view down the full length of the breakwater.
The "Titanic" was supposed to have docked here briefly on its return voyage to Britain, and the ship had a painting of Plymouth Sound on board.
As of 2019, there is a campaign to create the first National Marine Park in Britain off Plymouth Sound.
The Sound has been the site of a number of aircraft crashes and shipwrecks: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25163 |
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American filmmaker and actor. His films are characterized by unconventional nonlinear storylines, aestheticization of violence, extended scenes of dialogue, ensemble casts, references to popular culture and a wide variety of other films, soundtracks primarily containing songs and score pieces from the 1960s to the 1980s, alternate history, and features of neo-noir film.He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of cinema history of all time.
He began his career as an independent filmmaker with the release of "Reservoir Dogs" in 1992, which was funded by money from the sale of his screenplay "True Romance" (1993). "Empire" magazine hailed "Reservoir Dogs" as the "Greatest Independent Film of All Time". His second film, "Pulp Fiction" (1994), a comedy crime film, was a major success both among critics and audiences. He also wrote the screenplay for the horror "From Dusk Till Dawn" (1996), in which he also starred. Tarantino paid homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s with "Jackie Brown" (1997), an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel "Rum Punch".
"Kill Bill", a highly stylized "revenge flick" in the cinematic traditions of kung fu films, Japanese martial arts, and Spaghetti Westerns, followed six years later, and was released as two films: "" in 2003 and "" in 2004. Tarantino next directed the exploitation slasher film "Death Proof" in 2007, as part of a double feature with Robert Rodriguez, released in the tradition of grindhouse cinema of the 1970s under the collective title "Grindhouse". His long-postponed "Inglourious Basterds", which tells an alternate history of Nazi Germany, was released in 2009 to critical acclaim. He followed that with another critical success, "Django Unchained" (2012), a Western set in the Antebellum South. His eighth film, "The Hateful Eight" (2015), was released in its roadshow version in 70 mm film format, with opening "overture" and halfway-point intermission. His ninth film, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", an alternate history of the Tate–LaBianca murders, was released in 2019.
Tarantino's films have garnered both critical and commercial success as well as a dedicated cult-following. He has received many industry awards, including two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and the Palme d'Or, and has been nominated for an Emmy and five Grammys. In 2005, he was included on the annual "Time" 100 list of the most influential people in the world. Filmmaker and historian Peter Bogdanovich has called him "the single most influential director of his generation". In December 2015, Tarantino received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry.
Tarantino was born on March 27, 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee, the only child of Connie Pender and Tony Tarantino, an actor and producer. His father is of Italian descent, and his mother has Irish ancestry. He was named for Quint Asper, Burt Reynolds' character in the CBS series "Gunsmoke". Tarantino's mother met his father during a trip to Los Angeles, where Tony was a law student and would-be entertainer. She married him soon after, to gain independence from her parents, but their marriage was brief. After the divorce, Connie Tarantino left Los Angeles and moved to Knoxville, where her parents lived. In 1966, Tarantino and his mother moved back to Los Angeles.
Tarantino's mother married musician Curtis Zastoupil soon after arriving in Los Angeles, and the family moved to Torrance, a city in Los Angeles County's South Bay area. Zastoupil encouraged Tarantino's love of movies, and accompanied him to numerous film screenings. Tarantino's mother allowed him to see movies with adult content, such as "Carnal Knowledge" (1971) and "Deliverance" (1972). After his mother divorced Zastoupil in 1973, and received a misdiagnosis of Hodgkin's lymphoma, Tarantino was sent to live with his grandparents in Tennessee. He remained there less than a year before returning to California.
At 14 years old, Tarantino wrote one of his earliest works, a screenplay called "Captain Peachfuzz and the Anchovy Bandit", based on Hal Needham's 1977 film "Smokey and the Bandit" starring Burt Reynolds. The summer after his 15th birthday, Tarantino was grounded by his mother for shoplifting Elmore Leonard's novel "The Switch" from Kmart. He was allowed to leave only to attend the Torrance Community Theater, where he participated in such plays as "Two Plus Two Makes Sex" and "Romeo and Juliet". At age 15, Tarantino dropped out of Narbonne High School in Harbor City, Los Angeles. He then worked as an usher at an adult movie theater in Torrance, called the Pussycat Theater. Later, Tarantino attended acting classes at the James Best Theatre Company, where he met several of his eventual collaborators. While at James Best, Tarantino also met Craig Hamann, with whom he later collaborated to produce "My Best Friend's Birthday".
Throughout the 1980s, Tarantino worked a number of jobs. He spent time as a recruiter in the aerospace industry, and for five years, he worked at Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California. Former "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" actor Danny Strong described Tarantino as "such a movie buff. He had so much knowledge of films that he would try to get people to watch really cool movies." After meeting Lawrence Bender at a Hollywood party, Bender encouraged Tarantino to write a screenplay. His first attempt on a script, which he described as a "straight 70s exploitation action movie", was never published and was abandoned soon after. Tarantino co-wrote and directed his first movie, "My Best Friend's Birthday", in 1987. The film was left uncompleted, but its screenplay later formed the basis for "True Romance".
In 1986, Tarantino was employed in his first Hollywood job, working with Roger Avary as production assistants on Dolph Lundgren's exercise video, "Maximum Potential". The following year, he played an Elvis impersonator in "Sophia's Wedding: Part 1", an episode in the fourth season of "The Golden Girls", which was broadcast on November 19, 1988.
Tarantino received his first paid writing assignment in the early 1990s when Robert Kurtzman hired him to write the script for "From Dusk till Dawn".
In January 1992, Tarantino's neo-noir crime thriller "Reservoir Dogs"—which he wrote, directed, and acted in as Mr. Brown—was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. It was an immediate hit, with the film receiving a positive response from critics. The dialogue-driven heist film set the tone for Tarantino's later films. Tarantino wrote the script for the film in three-and-a-half weeks and Bender forwarded it to director Monte Hellman. Hellman helped Tarantino to secure funding from Richard N. Gladstein at Live Entertainment (which later became Artisan, now known as Lionsgate). Harvey Keitel read the script and also contributed to the budget, taking a role as co-producer and also playing a major part in the picture.
Tarantino's screenplay "True Romance" was optioned and the film was eventually released in 1993. The second script that Tarantino sold was for the film "Natural Born Killers", which was revised by Dave Veloz, Richard Rutowski and director Oliver Stone. Tarantino was given story credit and stated in an interview that he wished the film well, but later disowned the final film. The film engendered enmity, and the publication of a "tell-all" book titled "Killer Instinct" by Jane Hamsher—who, with Don Murphy, had an original option on the screenplay and produced the film—led to Tarantino physically assaulting Murphy in the AGO restaurant in West Hollywood, California in October 1997. Murphy subsequently filed a $5 million lawsuit against Tarantino; the case ended with the judge ordering Tarantino to pay Murphy $450. Tarantino was also an uncredited screenwriter on both "Crimson Tide" (1995) and "The Rock" (1996).
Following the success of "Reservoir Dogs", Tarantino was approached by Hollywood and offered numerous projects, including "Speed" (1994) and "Men in Black" (1997), but he instead retreated to Amsterdam to work on his script for "Pulp Fiction".
Tarantino wrote, directed, and acted in the black comedy crime film "Pulp Fiction" in 1994, maintaining the aestheticization of violence for which he is known, as well as his non-linear storylines. Tarantino received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, which he shared with Roger Avary, who contributed to the story. He also received a nomination in the Best Director category. The film received another five nominations, including for Best Picture. Tarantino also won the Palme d'Or for the film at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. The film grossed over $200 million and was met with critical acclaim.
In 1995, Tarantino participated in the anthology film "Four Rooms", a collaboration that also included directors Robert Rodriguez, Allison Anders, and Alexandre Rockwell. Tarantino directed and acted in the fourth segment of "The Man from Hollywood", a tribute to the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode "Man from the South". He re-teamed with Rodriguez later in the year with a supporting role in "Desperado", while in 1996 "From Dusk till Dawn" was finally released with Rodriguez directing and Tarantino starring alongside Keitel, George Clooney, and Juliette Lewis. His third feature film was "Jackie Brown" (1997), an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel "Rum Punch". A homage to blaxploitation films, it starred Pam Grier, who starred in many of the films of that genre in the 1970s. It received positive reviews and was called a "comeback" for Grier and co-star Robert Forster. Leonard considered "Jackie Brown" to be his favorite of the 26 different screen adaptations of his novels and short stories.
In 1998, Tarantino made his major Broadway stage debut as an amoral psycho killer in a revival of the 1966 play "Wait Until Dark", which received unfavorable reviews from critics, but his star power ensured a nearly sold-out production for its limited, 16-week Broadway run. In December 1999, Tarantino was attached to a film adaptation of the Marvel comic Iron Man for New Line Cinema. Nothing came about the project. Throughout the 1990s, Tarantino had a number of minor acting roles, including in "Eddie Presley" (1992), "The Coriolis Effect" (1994), "Sleep With Me" (1994), "Somebody to Love" (1994), "All-American Girl" (1995), "Destiny Turns on the Radio" (1995), "Desperado" (1995), "From Dusk till Dawn" (1996), and "Girl 6" (1996). He also starred in "Steven Spielberg's Director's Chair", a simulation video game that uses pre-generated film clips.
Tarantino had planned to start work on "Inglourious Basterds", as it was provisionally titled, but postponed this to write and direct "", a highly stylized "revenge flick" in the cinematic traditions of "Wuxia" (Chinese martial arts), "Jidaigeki" (Japanese period cinema), Spaghetti Westerns and Italian horror. It was originally set for a single theatrical release, but its 4-hour running time prompted Tarantino to divide it into two movies. "" was released in late 2003 and "" was released in 2004. It was based on a character called The Bride and a plot that he and "Kill Bill"s lead actress Uma Thurman had developed during the making of "Pulp Fiction".
From 2002–2004, Tarantino portrayed villain McKenas Cole in the ABC television series "Alias". In 2002, while in negotiations with Lucy Liu for "", the two helped produce the Hungarian sports documentary "Freedom's Fury". When Tarantino was approached about a documentary about the Blood in the Water match, he said "This is the best story I've ever been told. I'd love to be involved".
In 2004, Tarantino attended the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where he served as President of the Jury. Although "Kill Bill" was not in competition, "Vol. 2" had an evening screening, and was also shown on the morning of the final day in its original 3-hour plus version, with Tarantino himself attending the full screening. Tarantino went on to be credited as "Special Guest Director" in Robert Rodriguez's 2005 neo-noir film "Sin City", for his work directing the car sequence featuring Clive Owen and Benicio del Toro.
In May 2005, Tarantino co-wrote and directed "Grave Danger", the finale of "". For this episode, Tarantino was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series at the 57th Primetime Emmy Awards. Tarantino's next film project was "Grindhouse", which he co-directed with Rodriguez. Released in theaters on April 6, 2007, Tarantino's contribution to the "Grindhouse" project was titled "Death Proof". It began as a take on 1970s slasher films, but evolved dramatically as the project unfolded. Box-office sales were low but the film garnered mostly positive reviews.
Tarantino's film "Inglourious Basterds", released in 2009, is the story of a group of Jewish-American guerrilla soldiers in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. Filming began in October 2008. The film opened on August 21, 2009, to very positive reviews and reached the spot at the box office worldwide. It went on to become Tarantino's highest-grossing film until it was surpassed by "Django Unchained" three years later. For the film, Tarantino received his second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director and Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
In 2011, production began on "Django Unchained", a film about the revenge of a former slave in the U.S. South in 1858. The film stemmed from Tarantino's desire to produce a Spaghetti Western set in America's Deep South. Tarantino called the proposed style "a southern", stating that he wanted "to do movies that deal with America's horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it's ashamed of it, and other countries don't really deal with because they don't feel they have the right to". The film was released on December 25, 2012. In an interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 News, Tarantino reacted angrily when, in light of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, he was questioned about an alleged link between movie violence and real-life violence, and informed Guru-Murthy he was "shutting [his] butt down". Tarantino further defied the journalist, saying: "I refuse your question. I'm not your slave and you're not my master. You can't make me dance to your tune. I'm not a monkey."
In November 2013, Tarantino said he was working on a new film and that it would be another Western. He stated that it would not be a sequel to "Django". On January 12, 2014, it was revealed that the film would be titled "The Hateful Eight". Production of the Western would most likely have begun in the summer of 2014, but after the script for the film leaked in January 2014, Tarantino considered dropping the movie and publishing it as a novel instead. He stated that he had given the script to a few trusted colleagues, including Bruce Dern, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen.
On April 19, 2014, Tarantino directed a live reading of the leaked script at the United Artists Theater in the Ace Hotel Los Angeles. The event was organized by the Film Independent at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as part of the "Live Read" series. Tarantino explained that they would read the first draft of the script, and added that he was writing two new drafts with a different ending. The actors who joined Tarantino included Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Amber Tamblyn, James Parks, Walton Goggins, and the first three actors to be given the script before the leak, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen. In October 2014, Jennifer Jason Leigh was in talks to play the female lead in the film. Leigh, Channing Tatum, and Demián Bichir joined the cast in November.
"The Hateful Eight" was released on December 25, 2015, as a roadshow presentation in 70 mm film format theaters, before being released in digital theaters on December 30, 2015. Tarantino narrated several scenes in the film. He edited two versions of the film, one for the roadshow version and the other for general release. The roadshow version runs for three hours and two minutes, and includes an overture and intermission, after the fashion of big-budget films of the 1960s and early 1970s; the general release is six minutes shorter and contains alternate takes of some scenes. Tarantino has stated that the general release cut was created as he felt that some of the footage he shot for 70 mm would not play well on smaller screens. The film has received mostly positive reviews from critics, with a score of 74% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
On July 11, 2017, it was reported that Tarantino's next project would be a film about the Manson Family murders. In February 2018, it was announced that the film's title will be "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," and that Leonardo DiCaprio would play Rick Dalton, a fictional star of television Westerns, with Brad Pitt as Dalton's longtime stunt double Cliff Booth. Tarantino wrote the screenplay for the film. Margot Robbie also starred as real life actress Sharon Tate, portrayed as Dalton's next-door neighbor. Among the film's supporting cast were Timothy Olyphant, Kurt Russell, Michael Madsen and Al Pacino. Filming took place in the summer of 2018. In wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations, Tarantino severed ties to The Weinstein Company permanently and sought a new distributor after working with Weinstein for his entire career. The film first officially premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it was in competition for the Palme d'Or. It received positive reviews at the festival, with praise for the DiCaprio, Pitt and Robbie, although reactions were mixed regarding the ending of the film. It received a seven-minute standing ovation, although it did not win in any category. Sony Pictures distributed the film, which was theatrically released on July 26, 2019.
In recent years, Tarantino has used his Hollywood power to give smaller and foreign films more attention than they might have received otherwise. These films are often labeled "Presented by Quentin Tarantino" or "Quentin Tarantino Presents". The first of these productions was in 2001, with the Hong Kong martial arts film "Iron Monkey", which made over $14 million in the United States, seven times its budget. In 2004, he brought the Chinese martial arts film "Hero" to U.S. shores. It ended up having a number one opening at the box office and earning $53.5 million. In 2006, another "Quentin Tarantino presents" production, "Hostel", opened at number one at the box office with a $20.1 million opening weekend. He presented 2006's "The Protector", and is a producer of the 2007 film "". In 2008, he produced the Larry Bishop-helmed "Hell Ride", a revenge biker film.
In addition, in 1995, Tarantino formed Rolling Thunder Pictures with Miramax to release or re-release several independent and foreign features. By 1997, Miramax had shut down the company due to poor sales. The following films were released by Rolling Thunder Pictures: "Chungking Express" (1994, dir. Wong Kar-wai), "Switchblade Sisters" (1975, dir. Jack Hill), "Sonatine" (1993, dir. Takeshi Kitano), "Hard Core Logo" (1996, dir. Bruce McDonald), "The Mighty Peking Man" (1977, dir. Ho Meng Hua), "Detroit 9000" (1973, dir. Arthur Marks), "The Beyond" (1981, dir. Lucio Fulci), and "Curdled" (1996, dir. Reb Braddock).
Early on in his career, Tarantino considered filming comic book adaptations. In the early 1990s, while fresh from his critical success with "Reservoir Dogs", Tarantino came to Constantin Productions with a script for a Silver Surfer film, but was turned away. Following the release of "Reservoir Dogs", Tarantino considered making a film adaptation of Luke Cage, but chose to make "Pulp Fiction" instead. In the late 1990s, he was offered to direct a film adaptation of Green Lantern before there was even a script, but Tarantino declined the offer. In 1999, Quentin Tarantino was also linked to a live-action "Iron Man" film, as director and writer.
Before "Inglourious Basterds", Tarantino had considered making "The Vega Brothers". The film would have starred Michael Madsen and John Travolta reprising their roles of Vic (Mr. Blonde) from "Reservoir Dogs" and Vincent from "Pulp Fiction". In 2007, because of the age of the actors and the onscreen deaths of both characters, he claimed that the film—which he intended to call "Double V Vega"—is "kind of unlikely now".
In 2009, in an interview for Italian television, after being asked about the success of the two "Kill Bill" films, Tarantino said, "You haven't asked me about the third one", and implied that he would be making a third "Kill Bill" film with the words, "The Bride will fight again!" Later that year, at the Morelia International Film Festival, Tarantino announced that he would like to film "Kill Bill: Volume 3." He explained that he wanted ten years to pass between The Bride's last conflict, in order to give her and her daughter a period of peace. In a 2012 interview for the website "We Got This Covered", Tarantino said that a third "Kill Bill" film would "probably not" happen. He also said that he would not be directing a new James Bond film, saying that he was only interested in directing "Casino Royale" at one point.
Sometime in that same year he was asked about the "Kill Bill" films, he has stated that he was a huge fan of Simon Pegg, and sought to adapt the Len Deighton novels into a film starring Pegg, Kate Winslet, Michael Caine, and Anthony Hopkins.
In a late 2012 interview with the online magazine "The Root", Tarantino clarified his remarks and described his next film as being the final entry in a ""Django-Inglourious Basterds"" trilogy called "Killer Crow". The film will depict a group of World War II-era black troops who have "been fucked over by the American military and kind of go apeshit. They basically – the way Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and the Basterds are having an 'Apache resistance' – [the] black troops go on an Apache warpath and kill a bunch of white soldiers and white officers on a military base and are just making a warpath to Switzerland."
A long-running rumor in the industry is that Tarantino is interested in filming a new version of Bret Easton Ellis's 1985 novel "Less Than Zero". His friend Roger Avary adapted "The Rules of Attraction", another novel by Ellis, to film in 2002, and since both he and Tarantino like the works by Ellis, Tarantino has been eyeing the possibility of adapting "Less Than Zero". Ellis confirmed in a 2010 interview that Tarantino had been "trying to get Fox to let him remake it". In 2012, when asked whether "Less Than Zero" would be remade, Ellis once again confirmed that Tarantino "has shown interest" in adapting the story. At the San Diego Comic-Con in 2014, Tarantino revealed he is contemplating a possible science-fiction film. In November 2014, Tarantino said he would retire from films after directing his tenth film.
In November 2017, Tarantino and J. J. Abrams pitched an idea for a "Star Trek" film with Abrams assembling a writers room. If both approve of the script, Tarantino will direct and Abrams will produce the film. Mark L. Smith was hired to write the screenplay the same month. In January 2020, Tarantino stated the film might be made, but he would not direct it.
In June 2019, Tarantino had picked Jerrod Carmichael to co-write a film adaptation based on the "Django/Zorro" crossover comic book series.
In the 2012 "Sight & Sound" directors' poll, Tarantino listed his top 12 films: "Apocalypse Now", "The Bad News Bears", "Carrie", "Dazed and Confused", "The Great Escape", "His Girl Friday", "Jaws", "Pretty Maids All in a Row", "Rolling Thunder", "Sorcerer", "Taxi Driver" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", with the last being his favorite. In 2009, he named Kinji Fukasaku's violent action film "Battle Royale" as his favorite film released since he became a director in 1992. In 2020, Tarantino named David Fincher's film "The Social Network" his favorite movie of the 2010s. He is also a fan of the 1981 film "Blow Out", directed by Brian De Palma, which led to his casting of John Travolta in "Pulp Fiction". Tarantino praised Mel Gibson's 2006 film "Apocalypto", saying, "I think it's a masterpiece. It was perhaps the best film of that year." Tarantino has also labeled "Rio Bravo" as another one his favorites numerous times. He listed the Australian suspense film "Roadgames" (1981) as another favorite film. Tarantino is also a noted fan of Elaine May's 1987 film "Ishtar", despite its reputation as being a notorious box-office flop and one of the worst films ever made.
In August 2007, while teaching in a four-hour film course during the 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival in Manila, Tarantino cited Filipino directors Cirio H. Santiago, Eddie Romero and Gerardo de León as personal icons from the 1970s. He referred to De Leon's "soul-shattering, life-extinguishing" movies on vampires and female bondage, citing in particular "Women in Cages"; "It is just harsh, harsh, harsh", he said, and described the final shot as one of "devastating despair". Upon his arrival in the Philippines, Tarantino was quoted in the local newspaper as saying, "I'm a big fan of RP [Republic of the Philippines] cinema."
Tarantino's films often feature graphic violence, a tendency which has sometimes been criticized. "Reservoir Dogs" was initially denied United Kingdom certification because of his use of torture as entertainment. Tarantino has frequently defended his use of violence, saying that "violence is so good. It affects audiences in a big way". Tarantino has stated that the celebrated animation-action sequence in "Kill Bill: Volume 1" was inspired by the use of 2D animated sequences in actor Kamal Haasan's Tamil film "Aalavandhan". He often blends esthetics elements, in tribute to his favorite films and filmmakers. In "Kill Bill", he melds comic strip formulas and esthetics within a live action film sequence, in some cases by the literal use of cartoon or anime images.
Tarantino has also occasionally used a nonlinear story structure in his films, most notably with "Pulp Fiction." He has also used the style in "Reservoir Dogs", "Kill Bill", and "The Hateful Eight". Tarantino's script for "True Romance" was originally told in a nonlinear style, before director Tony Scott decided to use a more linear approach. Critics have since referred to the use of this shifting timeline in films as the "Tarantino Effect". Actor Steve Buscemi has described Tarantino's novel style of filmmaking as "bursting with energy" and "focused". According to Tarantino, a hallmark of all his movies is that there is a different sense of humor in each one, which prompts the viewer to laugh at scenes that are not funny. However, he insists that his films are dramas, not comedies.
He also creates his own products and brands that he uses in his films to varying degrees. His own fictional brands, including "Acuña Boys Tex-Mex Food", "Big Kahuna Burger", "G.O. Juice", "Jack Rabbit Slim's", "K-Billy", "Red Apple cigarettes", "Tenku Brand Beer" and "Teriyaki Donut", replace the use of product placement, sometimes to a humorous extent. Tarantino is also known for his choice of music in his films, including soundtracks that often use songs from the 1960s and 70s. In 2011, he was recognized at the 16th Critics' Choice Awards with the inaugural Music+Film Award.
On the biopic genre, Tarantino has said that he has "no respect" for biopics, saying that they "are just big excuses for actors to win Oscars. ... Even the most interesting person – if you are telling their life from beginning to end, it's going to be a fucking boring movie." However, in an interview with Charlie Rose, he said, "There is one story that I could be interested in, but it would probably be one of the last movies I [ever make] ... My favorite hero in American history is John Brown. He's my favorite American who ever lived. He basically single-handedly started the road to end slavery and ... he killed people to do it. He decided, 'If we start spilling white blood, then they're going to start getting the idea.'"
Tarantino has stated in many interviews that his writing process is like writing a novel before formatting it into a script, saying that this creates the blueprint of the film and makes the film feel like literature. About his writing process he told website The Talks, "[My] head is a sponge. I listen to what everyone says, I watch little idiosyncratic behavior, people tell me a joke and I remember it. People tell me an interesting story in their life and I remember it. ... when I go and write my new characters, my pen is like an antenna, it gets that information, and all of a sudden these characters come out more or less fully formed. I don't write their dialogue, I get them talking to each other." In 2013, a survey of seven academics was carried out to discover which filmmakers had been referenced the most in essays and dissertations on film that had been marked in the previous five years. It revealed that Tarantino was the most-studied director in the United Kingdom, ahead of Christopher Nolan, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
Tarantino has stated that he does not believe that violence in movies inspires acts of violence in real life. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre accused him of being insensitive to the event. In an interview with Terry Gross, he expressed "annoyance" at the suggestion that there is a link between the two, saying, "I think it's disrespectful to [the] memory of those who died to talk about movies ... Obviously the issue is gun control and mental health." Soon after, in response to a Hollywood PSA video titled "Demand a Plan", which featured celebrities rallying for gun control legislation, a pro-gun group used scenes from Tarantino's film "Django Unchained" to label celebrities as "hypocrites" for appearing in violent movies.
In 1997, Spike Lee questioned Tarantino's use of racial slurs in his films, especially the word "nigger" and "gooks", particularly in "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown". In a "Variety" interview discussing "Jackie Brown", Lee said, "I'm not against the word ... And some people speak that way". Tarantino responded on "Charlie Rose" by stating:
In addition, Tarantino retaliated on "The Howard Stern Show" by stating that Lee would have to "stand on a chair to kiss [his] ass". Samuel L. Jackson, who has appeared in both directors' films, defended Tarantino's use of the word. At the Berlin Film Festival, where "Jackie Brown" was being screened, Jackson responded to Lee's criticism by saying, "I don't think the word is offensive in the context of this film ... Black artists think they are the only ones allowed to use the word. Well, that's bull. "Jackie Brown" is a wonderful homage to black exploitation films. This is a good film, and Spike hasn't made one of those in a few years." Tarantino has defended his use of the word, arguing that black audiences have an appreciation of his blaxploitation-influenced films that eludes some of his critics, and indeed, that "Jackie Brown" was primarily made for "black audiences".
"Django Unchained" was the subject of controversy because of its use of racial slurs and depiction of slavery. Reviewers have defended the use of the language by pointing out the historic context of race and slavery in America. Lee, in an interview with "Vibe" magazine, said that he would not see the film, explaining, "All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors. That's just me ... I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody else." Lee later tweeted, "American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them." Writing in the "Los Angeles Times", journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan noted the difference between Tarantino's "Jackie Brown" and "Django Unchained": "It is an institution whose horrors need no exaggerating, yet "Django" does exactly that, either to enlighten or entertain. A white director slinging around the n-word in a homage to '70s blaxploitation à la "Jackie Brown" is one thing, but the same director turning the savageness of slavery into pulp fiction is quite another".
At the 73rd Golden Globe Awards in 2016, Tarantino received criticism after using the term "ghetto" while accepting the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score on behalf of composer Ennio Morricone, saying, "Wow, this is really cool. Do you realize that Ennio Morricone, who, as far as I am concerned, is my favorite composer – and when I say "favorite composer", I don't mean movie composer, that ghetto. I'm talking about Mozart. I'm talking about Beethoven. I'm talking about Schubert." His use of the word seemed to be taken as a racial slight by award presenter Jamie Foxx, who, after Tarantino left the stage, walked up to the microphone and sternly said, "ghetto?"
On October 18, 2017, Tarantino gave an interview discussing sexual harassment and assault allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein. Tarantino admitted to knowing about accusations against Weinstein since the mid-1990s, when his girlfriend Mira Sorvino told him about her experience with Weinstein. Tarantino confronted Weinstein at the time and received an apology. Tarantino said: "What I did was marginalize the incidents, I knew enough to do more than I did."
On February 3, 2018, in an interview with "The New York Times", "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill" actress Uma Thurman revealed that Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her, which she reported to Tarantino. Tarantino claimed that he confronted Weinstein, as he had previously when Weinstein made advances on his former partner, demanded he apologize and banned him from contact with Thurman for the rest of production.
Uma Thurman described how she had been in a serious car accident on the set of "Kill Bill" because Tarantino had insisted she perform her own driving stunts. Thurman was told by a crew member that the car had been reconfigured and may not be safe to drive. Thurman strongly objected to doing the stunt but Tarantino would not accept her objections. As a result of the crash, Thurman sustained permanent injuries to her neck and knees. Two weeks later, Thurman requested footage of the crash from Tarantino, but Miramax said they would only hand it over to her if she signed a document "releasing them of any consequences of [her] future pain and suffering." She did not sign the document, and it was only in 2018 that Tarantino gave her the footage: "Quentin finally atoned by giving it to me after 15 years, right? Not that it matters now, with my permanently damaged neck and my screwed-up knees." Tarantino defended himself, saying that he did not force her to do the stunt herself, having checked the car by driving down the road of the shoot, then assuring her it was safe, upon which she agreed to do so. Though Thurman found the incident "negligent to the point of criminality," she did not believe Tarantino had "malicious intent" and that Tarantino expressed regret; rather she placed the blame on Weinstein and other producers.
In February 2018, audio resurfaced of a 2003 interview on "The Howard Stern Show" during which Tarantino defended Roman Polanski over his 1977 sexual abuse case. Tarantino told Howard Stern: "He didn't rape a 13-year-old. It was statutory rape. That's not quite the same thing ... He had sex with a minor, all right. That's not rape. To me, when you use the word rape, you're talking about violent, throwing them down." He said that the victim, Samantha Geimer, was "down to party with Roman" and "wanted to have it".
After the statements drew international attention, Tarantino issued an apology, stating, "Ms. Geimer "was" raped by Roman Polanski. When Howard brought up Polanski, I incorrectly played devil's advocate in the debate for the sake of being provocative ... So, Ms. Geimer, I was ignorant, and insensitive, and above all, incorrect."
As a child, Tarantino was a fan of the early eras of Marvel Comics, particularly those that were written by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and is an admitted fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to this day.
Tarantino has said that he plans to retire from filmmaking when he is 60, in order to focus on writing novels and film literature. He is skeptical of the film industry going digital, saying, "If it actually gets to the place where you can't show 35 mm film in theaters anymore and everything is digital projection, I won't even make it to 60." He has also stated that he has a plan, although "not etched in stone", to retire after making his tenth movie: "If I get to the 10th, do a good job and don't screw it up, well that sounds like a good way to end the old career."
In February 2010, Tarantino bought the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Tarantino allowed the previous owners to continue operating the theater, but stated he would make occasional programming suggestions. He was quoted as saying: "As long as I'm alive, and as long as I'm rich, the New Beverly will be there, showing films shot on 35 mm." Starting in 2014, Tarantino took a more active role in programming film screenings at the New Beverly, showing his own films as well as prints from his personal collection.
In an interview with AXS TV at the time of "The Hateful Eight"s release, Tarantino was asked if he had religious beliefs and his response was, "I think I was born Catholic, but I was never practiced ... As time has gone on, as I've become a man and made my way further as an adult, I'm not sure how much any of that I believe in. I don't really know if I believe in God, especially not in this Santa Claus character that people seemed to have conjured up."
On June 30, 2017, Tarantino became engaged to Israeli singer Daniella Pick, daughter of musician Svika Pick. They met when Tarantino was in Israel to promote "Inglourious Basterds" in 2009. They married on November 28, 2018, in a Reform Jewish ceremony in their Beverly Hills Home. On August 21, 2019, it was announced that the couple was expecting their first child. He lives with his wife in Ramat Aviv Gimel, Israel. On February 22, 2020 their son, Leo, was born in Israel.
As a director:
Tarantino has built up an informal "repertory company" of actors who have appeared in multiple roles in films that he has directed. Most notable of these is Samuel L. Jackson, who has appeared in six films directed by Tarantino, and a seventh that was written by him, "True Romance". Other frequent collaborators include Uma Thurman, who has been featured in three films and whom Tarantino has described as his "muse"; Michael Madsen, James Parks, and Tim Roth, who respectively appear in five, four, and three films, though Roth appeared in "Four Rooms", which is an anthology film where Tarantino directed the final segment, as well as having filmed a scene for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" before the scene was cut for time; and Zoë Bell, who has acted or performed stunts in seven Tarantino films. Other actors who have appeared in several films by Tarantino include Michael Bacall, Michael Bowen, Bruce Dern, Harvey Keitel, Michael Parks, Kurt Russell, and Craig Stark, all of whom appear in three films each. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt have each appeared in two Tarantino films, the second of which, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", they appear in together. Like Jackson, Pitt also appeared in the Tarantino-penned "True Romance".
Several actors have been nominated for Academy Awards for their roles in Tarantino's films. Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, and John Travolta were each nominated for "Pulp Fiction" (for Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Actor, respectively); Robert Forster was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in "Jackie Brown" and Jennifer Jason Leigh earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in "The Hateful Eight". Christoph Waltz won Best Supporting Actor in 2010 for "Inglourious Basterds" and again in 2013 for "Django Unchained". Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively, for their roles in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" with Pitt winning.
Editor Sally Menke, who worked on all Tarantino films until her death in 2010, was described by Tarantino in 2007 as "hands down my number one collaborator". Editing duties since her death have been taken over by Fred Raskin.
Tarantino has also had a long partnership and collaboration with Lawrence Bender, who produced all his directorial efforts from "Reservoir Dogs" through "Inglourious Basterds", except for "Death Proof". Robert Richardson has been director of photography for all films from "" through "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", except for "Death Proof".
†: as stuntwoman
Throughout his career, Tarantino and his films have frequently received nominations for major awards, including for seven Academy Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, two Directors Guild of America Awards, and sixteen Saturn Awards. He has four times been nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, winning once for "Pulp Fiction" in 1994. In addition to his recognition for writing and directing films, Tarantino has received five Grammy Award nominations and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
In 2005, Tarantino was awarded the honorary Icon of the Decade at the 10th Empire Awards. He has earned lifetime achievement awards from two organizations in 2007, from Cinemanila, and from the Rome Film Festival in 2012. In 2011, Tarantino was awarded the Honorary César by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25169 |
Quartile
A quartile is a type of quantile which divides the number of data points into four more or less equal parts, or quarters. The first quartile ("Q"1) is defined as the middle number between the smallest number and the median of the data set. It is also known as the lower quartile or the 25th empirical quartile and it marks where 25% of the data is below or to the left of it (if data is ordered on a timeline from smallest to largest). The second quartile ("Q"2) is the median of a data set and 50% of the data lies below this point. The third quartile ("Q"3) is the middle value between the median and the highest value of the data set. It is also known as the upper quartile or the 75th empirical quartile and 75% of the data lies below this point. Due to the fact that the data needs to be ordered from smallest to largest to compute quartiles, quartiles are a form of Order statistic.
Along with the minimum and the maximum of the data, which are also quartiles, the three quartiles described above provide a five-number summary of the data. This summary is important in statistics because it provides information about both the center and the spread of the data. Knowing the lower and upper quartile provides information on how big the spread is and if the dataset is skewed toward one side. Since quartiles divide the number of data points evenly, the range is not the same between quartiles (i.e., "Q"3-"Q"2 ≠ "Q"2-"Q"1). While the maximum and minimum also show the spread of the data, the upper and lower quartiles can provide more detailed information on the location of specific data points, the presence of outliers in the data, and the difference in spread between the middle 50% of the data and the outer data points.
For a visual representation see: https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/quartiles.html
For discrete distributions, there is no universal agreement on selecting the quartile values.
This rule is employed by the TI-83 calculator boxplot and "1-Var Stats" functions.
The values found by this method are also known as "Tukey's hinges"; see also midhinge.
If we have an ordered dataset formula_1, we can interpolate between data points to find the formula_2th empirical quantile if formula_3 is in the formula_4 quantile. If we denote the integer part of a number formula_5 by formula_6, then the empirical quantile function is given by,
formula_7,
where formula_8 and formula_9.
To find the first, second, and third quartiles of the dataset we would evaluate formula_10, formula_11, and formula_12 respectively.
Ordered Data Set: 6, 7, 15, 36, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 49
Ordered Data Set: 7, 15, 36, 39, 40, 41
As there are an even number of data points, the first three methods all give the same results.
If we define a continuous probability distributions as formula_13 where formula_14 is a real valued random variable, its cumulative distribution function (CDF) is given by,
formula_15.
The CDF gives the probability that the random variable formula_14 is less than the value formula_17. Therefore, the first quartile is the value of formula_17 when formula_19, the second quartile is formula_17 when formula_21, and the third quartile is formula_17 when formula_23. The values of formula_17 can be found with the quantile function formula_25where formula_26 for the first quartile, formula_27 for the second quartile, and formula_28 for the third quartile. The quantile function is the inverse of the cumulative distribution function if the cumulative distribution function is monotonically increasing.
There are methods by which to check for outliers in the discipline of statistics and statistical analysis. Outliers could be a result from a shift in the location (mean) or in the scale (variability) of the process of interest. Outliers could also may be evidence of a sample population that has a non-normal distribution or of a contaminated population data set. Consequently, as is the basic idea of descriptive statistics, when encountering an outlier, we have to explain this value by further analysis of the cause or origin of the outlier. In cases of extreme observations, which are not an infrequent occurrence, the typical values must be analyzed. In the case of quartiles, the Interquartile Range (IQR) may be used to characterize the data when there may be extremities that skew the data; the interquartile range is a relatively robust statistic (also sometimes called "resistance") compared to the range and standard deviation. There is also a mathematical method to check for outliers and determining "fences", upper and lower limits from which to check for outliers.
After determining the first and third quartiles and the interquartile range as outlined above, then fences are calculated using the following formula:
where "Q"1 and "Q"3 are the first and third quartiles, respectively. The lower fence is the "lower limit" and the upper fence is the "upper limit" of data, and any data lying outside these defined bounds can be considered an outlier. Anything below the Lower fence or above the Upper fence can be considered such a case. The fences provide a guideline by which to define an outlier, which may be defined in other ways. The fences define a "range" outside which an outlier exists; a way to picture this is a boundary of a fence, outside which are "outsiders" as opposed to outliers. It is common for the lower and upper fences along with the outliers to be represented by a boxplot. For a boxplot, only the vertical heights correspond to the visualized data set while horizontal width of the box is irrelevant. Outliers located outside the fences in a boxplot can be marked as any choice of symbol, such as an "x" or "o". The fences are sometimes also referred to as "whiskers" while the entire plot visual is called a "box-and-whisker" plot.
When spotting an outlier in the data set by calculating the interquartile ranges and boxplot features, it might be simple to mistakenly view it as evidence that the population is non-normal or that the sample is contaminated. However, this method should not take place of a hypothesis test for determining normality of the population. The significance of the outliers vary depending on the sample size. If the sample is small, then it is more probable to get interquartile ranges that are unrepresentatively small, leading to narrower fences. Therefore, it would be more likely to find data that are marked as outliers.
Excel:
The Excel function "QUARTILE(array, quart)" provides the desired quartile value for a given array of data. In the "Quartile" function, array is the dataset of numbers that is being analyzed and quart is any of the following 5 values depending on which quartile is being calculated.
MATLAB:
In order to calculate quartiles in Matlab, the function "quantile(A,p)" can be used. Where A is the vector of data being analyzed and p is the percentage that relates to the quartiles as stated below. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25170 |
Quadratic equation
In algebra, a quadratic equation (from the Latin for "square") is any equation that can be rearranged in standard form as
where represents an unknown, and , , and represent known numbers, where . If , then the equation is linear, not quadratic, as there is no formula_2 term. The numbers , , and are the "coefficients" of the equation and may be distinguished by calling them, respectively, the "quadratic coefficient", the "linear coefficient" and the "constant" or "free term".
The values of that satisfy the equation are called "solutions" of the equation, and "roots" or "zeros" of the expression on its left-hand side. A quadratic equation has at most two solutions. If there is no real solution, there are two complex solutions. If there is only one solution, one says that it is a double root. A quadratic equation always has two roots, if complex roots are included and a double root is counted for two. A quadratic equation can be factored into an equivalent equation
where and are the solutions for . Completing the square on a quadratic equation in standard form results in the quadratic formula, which expresses the solutions in terms of , , and . Solutions to problems that can be expressed in terms of quadratic equations were known as early as 2000 BC.
Because the quadratic equation involves only one unknown, it is called "univariate". The quadratic equation only contains powers of that are non-negative integers, and therefore it is a polynomial equation. In particular, it is a second-degree polynomial equation, since the greatest power is two.
A quadratic equation with real or complex coefficients has two solutions, called "roots". These two solutions may or may not be distinct, and they may or may not be real.
It may be possible to express a quadratic equation as a product . In some cases, it is possible, by simple inspection, to determine values of "p", "q", "r," and "s" that make the two forms equivalent to one another. If the quadratic equation is written in the second form, then the "Zero Factor Property" states that the quadratic equation is satisfied if or . Solving these two linear equations provides the roots of the quadratic.
For most students, factoring by inspection is the first method of solving quadratic equations to which they are exposed. If one is given a quadratic equation in the form , the sought factorization has the form , and one has to find two numbers and that add up to and whose product is (this is sometimes called "Vieta's rule" and is related to Vieta's formulas). As an example, factors as . The more general case where does not equal can require a considerable effort in trial and error guess-and-check, assuming that it can be factored at all by inspection.
Except for special cases such as where or , factoring by inspection only works for quadratic equations that have rational roots. This means that the great majority of quadratic equations that arise in practical applications cannot be solved by factoring by inspection.
The process of completing the square makes use of the algebraic identity
which represents a well-defined algorithm that can be used to solve any quadratic equation. Starting with a quadratic equation in standard form,
We illustrate use of this algorithm by solving
The plus-minus symbol "±" indicates that both and are solutions of the quadratic equation.
Completing the square can be used to derive a general formula for solving quadratic equations, called the quadratic formula. The mathematical proof will now be briefly summarized. It can easily be seen, by polynomial expansion, that the following equation is equivalent to the quadratic equation:
Taking the square root of both sides, and isolating , gives:
Some sources, particularly older ones, use alternative parameterizations of the quadratic equation such as or , where has a magnitude one half of the more common one, possibly with opposite sign. These result in slightly different forms for the solution, but are otherwise equivalent.
A number of alternative derivations can be found in the literature. These proofs are simpler than the standard completing the square method, represent interesting applications of other frequently used techniques in algebra, or offer insight into other areas of mathematics.
A lesser known quadratic formula, as used in Muller's method provides the same roots via the equation
This can be deduced from the standard quadratic formula by Vieta's formulas, which assert that the product of the roots is .
One property of this form is that it yields one valid root when , while the other root contains division by zero, because when , the quadratic equation becomes a linear equation, which has one root. By contrast, in this case, the more common formula has a division by zero for one root and an indeterminate form for the other root. On the other hand, when , the more common formula yields two correct roots whereas this form yields the zero root and an indeterminate form .
It is sometimes convenient to reduce a quadratic equation so that its leading coefficient is one. This is done by dividing both sides by "a", which is always possible since "a" is non-zero. This produces the "reduced quadratic equation":
where "p" = "b"/"a" and "q" = "c"/"a". This monic equation has the same solutions as the original.
The quadratic formula for the solutions of the reduced quadratic equation, written in terms of its coefficients, is:
or equivalently:
In the quadratic formula, the expression underneath the square root sign is called the "discriminant" of the quadratic equation, and is often represented using an upper case or an upper case Greek delta:
A quadratic equation with "real" coefficients can have either one or two distinct real roots, or two distinct complex roots. In this case the discriminant determines the number and nature of the roots. There are three cases:
Thus the roots are distinct if and only if the discriminant is non-zero, and the roots are real if and only if the discriminant is non-negative.
The function is a quadratic function. The graph of any quadratic function has the same general shape, which is called a parabola. The location and size of the parabola, and how it opens, depend on the values of , , and . As shown in Figure 1, if , the parabola has a minimum point and opens upward. If , the parabola has a maximum point and opens downward. The extreme point of the parabola, whether minimum or maximum, corresponds to its vertex. The "-coordinate" of the vertex will be located at formula_21, and the "-coordinate" of the vertex may be found by substituting this "-value" into the function. The "-intercept" is located at the point .
The solutions of the quadratic equation correspond to the roots of the function , since they are the values of for which . As shown in Figure 2, if , , and are real numbers and the domain of is the set of real numbers, then the roots of are exactly the -coordinates of the points where the graph touches the -axis. As shown in Figure 3, if the discriminant is positive, the graph touches the -axis at two points; if zero, the graph touches at one point; and if negative, the graph does not touch the -axis.
The term
is a factor of the polynomial
if and only if is a root of the quadratic equation
It follows from the quadratic formula that
In the special case where the quadratic has only one distinct root ("i.e." the discriminant is zero), the quadratic polynomial can be factored as
The solutions of the quadratic equation
may be deduced from the graph of the quadratic function
which is a parabola.
If the parabola intersects the -axis in two points, there are two real roots, which are the -coordinates of these two points (also called -intercept).
If the parabola is tangent to the -axis, there is a double root, which is the -coordinate of the contact point between the graph and parabola.
If the parabola does not intersect the -axis, there are two complex conjugate roots. Although these roots cannot be visualized on the graph, their real and imaginary parts can be.
Let and be respectively the -coordinate and the -coordinate of the vertex of the parabola (that is the point with maximal or minimal -coordinate. The quadratic function may be rewritten
Let be the distance between the point of -coordinate on the axis of the parabola, and a point on the parabola with the same -coordinate (see the figure; there are two such points, which give the same distance, because of the symmetry of the parabola). Then the real part of the roots is , and their imaginary part are . That is, the roots are
or in the case of the example of the figure
Although the quadratic formula provides an exact solution, the result is not exact if real numbers are approximated during the computation, as usual in numerical analysis, where real numbers are approximated by floating point numbers (called "reals" in many programming languages). In this context, the quadratic formula is not completely stable.
This occurs when the roots have different order of magnitude, or, equivalently, when and are close in magnitude. In this case, the subtraction of two nearly equal numbers will cause loss of significance or catastrophic cancellation in the smaller root. To avoid this, the root that is smaller in magnitude, , can be computed as formula_32 where is the root that is bigger in magnitude.
A second form of cancellation can occur between the terms and of the discriminant, that is when the two roots are very close. This can lead to loss of up to half of correct significant figures in the roots.
The golden ratio is found as the positive solution of the quadratic equation formula_33
The equations of the circle and the other conic sections—ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas—are quadratic equations in two variables.
Given the cosine or sine of an angle, finding the cosine or sine of the angle that is half as large involves solving a quadratic equation.
The process of simplifying expressions involving the square root of an expression involving the square root of another expression involves finding the two solutions of a quadratic equation.
Descartes' theorem states that for every four kissing (mutually tangent) circles, their radii satisfy a particular quadratic equation.
The equation given by Fuss' theorem, giving the relation among the radius of a bicentric quadrilateral's inscribed circle, the radius of its circumscribed circle, and the distance between the centers of those circles, can be expressed as a quadratic equation for which the distance between the two circles' centers in terms of their radii is one of the solutions. The other solution of the same equation in terms of the relevant radii gives the distance between the circumscribed circle's center and the center of the excircle of an ex-tangential quadrilateral.
Babylonian mathematicians, as early as 2000 BC (displayed on Old Babylonian clay tablets) could solve problems relating the areas and sides of rectangles. There is evidence dating this algorithm as far back as the Third Dynasty of Ur. In modern notation, the problems typically involved solving a pair of simultaneous equations of the form:
which is equivalent to the statement that and are the roots of the equation:
The steps given by Babylonian scribes for solving the above rectangle problem, in terms of and , were as follows:
In modern notation this means calculating formula_36, which is equivalent to the modern day quadratic formula for the larger real root (if any) formula_37 with , , and .
Geometric methods were used to solve quadratic equations in Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, China, and India. The Egyptian Berlin Papyrus, dating back to the Middle Kingdom (2050 BC to 1650 BC), contains the solution to a two-term quadratic equation. Babylonian mathematicians from circa 400 BC and Chinese mathematicians from circa 200 BC used geometric methods of dissection to solve quadratic equations with positive roots. Rules for quadratic equations were given in "The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art", a Chinese treatise on mathematics. These early geometric methods do not appear to have had a general formula. Euclid, the Greek mathematician, produced a more abstract geometrical method around 300 BC. With a purely geometric approach Pythagoras and Euclid created a general procedure to find solutions of the quadratic equation. In his work "Arithmetica", the Greek mathematician Diophantus solved the quadratic equation, but giving only one root, even when both roots were positive.
In 628 AD, Brahmagupta, an Indian mathematician, gave the first explicit (although still not completely general) solution of the quadratic equation as follows: "To the absolute number multiplied by four times the [coefficient of the] square, add the square of the [coefficient of the] middle term; the square root of the same, less the [coefficient of the] middle term, being divided by twice the [coefficient of the] square is the value." ("Brahmasphutasiddhanta", Colebrook translation, 1817, page 346) This is equivalent to:
The "Bakhshali Manuscript" written in India in the 7th century AD contained an algebraic formula for solving quadratic equations, as well as quadratic indeterminate equations (originally of type ). Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (Persia, 9th century), inspired by Brahmagupta, developed a set of formulas that worked for positive solutions. Al-Khwarizmi goes further in providing a full solution to the general quadratic equation, accepting one or two numerical answers for every quadratic equation, while providing geometric proofs in the process. He also described the method of completing the square and recognized that the discriminant must be positive, which was proven by his contemporary 'Abd al-Hamīd ibn Turk (Central Asia, 9th century) who gave geometric figures to prove that if the discriminant is negative, a quadratic equation has no solution. While al-Khwarizmi himself did not accept negative solutions, later Islamic mathematicians that succeeded him accepted negative solutions, as well as irrational numbers as solutions. Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam (Egypt, 10th century) in particular was the first to accept irrational numbers (often in the form of a square root, cube root or fourth root) as solutions to quadratic equations or as coefficients in an equation. The 9th century Indian mathematician Sridhara wrote down rules for solving quadratic equations.
The Jewish mathematician Abraham bar Hiyya Ha-Nasi (12th century, Spain) authored the first European book to include the full solution to the general quadratic equation. His solution was largely based on Al-Khwarizmi's work. The writing of the Chinese mathematician Yang Hui (1238–1298 AD) is the first known one in which quadratic equations with negative coefficients of 'x' appear, although he attributes this to the earlier Liu Yi. By 1545 Gerolamo Cardano compiled the works related to the quadratic equations. The quadratic formula covering all cases was first obtained by Simon Stevin in 1594. In 1637 René Descartes published "La Géométrie" containing the quadratic formula in the form we know today.
Vieta's formulas give a simple relation between the roots of a polynomial and its coefficients. In the case of the quadratic polynomial, they take the following form:
and
These results follow immediately from the relation:
which can be compared term by term with
The first formula above yields a convenient expression when graphing a quadratic function. Since the graph is symmetric with respect to a vertical line through the vertex, when there are two real roots the vertex's -coordinate is located at the average of the roots (or intercepts). Thus the -coordinate of the vertex is given by the expression
The -coordinate can be obtained by substituting the above result into the given quadratic equation, giving
As a practical matter, Vieta's formulas provide a useful method for finding the roots of a quadratic in the case where one root is much smaller than the other. If , then , and we have the estimate:
The second Vieta's formula then provides:
These formulas are much easier to evaluate than the quadratic formula under the condition of one large and one small root, because the quadratic formula evaluates the small root as the difference of two very nearly equal numbers (the case of large ), which causes round-off error in a numerical evaluation. Figure 5 shows the difference between (i) a direct evaluation using the quadratic formula (accurate when the roots are near each other in value) and (ii) an evaluation based upon the above approximation of Vieta's formulas (accurate when the roots are widely spaced). As the linear coefficient increases, initially the quadratic formula is accurate, and the approximate formula improves in accuracy, leading to a smaller difference between the methods as increases. However, at some point the quadratic formula begins to lose accuracy because of round off error, while the approximate method continues to improve. Consequently, the difference between the methods begins to increase as the quadratic formula becomes worse and worse.
This situation arises commonly in amplifier design, where widely separated roots are desired to ensure a stable operation (see step response).
In the days before calculators, people would use mathematical tables—lists of numbers showing the results of calculation with varying arguments—to simplify and speed up computation. Tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions were common in math and science textbooks. Specialized tables were published for applications such as astronomy, celestial navigation and statistics. Methods of numerical approximation existed, called prosthaphaeresis, that offered shortcuts around time-consuming operations such as multiplication and taking powers and roots. Astronomers, especially, were concerned with methods that could speed up the long series of computations involved in celestial mechanics calculations.
It is within this context that we may understand the development of means of solving quadratic equations by the aid of trigonometric substitution. Consider the following alternate form of the quadratic equation,
[1] formula_47
where the sign of the ± symbol is chosen so that and may both be positive. By substituting
[2] formula_48
and then multiplying through by , we obtain
[3] formula_49
Introducing functions of and rearranging, we obtain
[4] formula_50
[5] formula_51
where the subscripts and correspond, respectively, to the use of a negative or positive sign in equation [1]. Substituting the two values of or found from equations [4] or [5] into [2] gives the required roots of [1]. Complex roots occur in the solution based on equation [5] if the absolute value of exceeds unity. The amount of effort involved in solving quadratic equations using this mixed trigonometric and logarithmic table look-up strategy was two-thirds the effort using logarithmic tables alone. Calculating complex roots would require using a different trigonometric form.
If the quadratic equation formula_27 with real coefficients has two complex roots—the case where formula_61 requiring "a" and "c" to have the same sign as each other—then the solutions for the roots can be expressed in polar form as
where formula_63 and formula_64
The quadratic equation may be solved geometrically in a number of ways. One way is via Lill's method. The three coefficients , , are drawn with right angles between them as in SA, AB, and BC in Figure 6. A circle is drawn with the start and end point SC as a diameter. If this cuts the middle line AB of the three then the equation has a solution, and the solutions are given by negative of the distance along this line from A divided by the first coefficient or SA. If is the coefficients may be read off directly. Thus the solutions in the diagram are −AX1/SA and −AX2/SA.
The Carlyle circle, named after Thomas Carlyle, has the property that the solutions of the quadratic equation are the horizontal coordinates of the intersections of the circle with the horizontal axis. Carlyle circles have been used to develop ruler-and-compass constructions of regular polygons.
The formula and its derivation remain correct if the coefficients , and are complex numbers, or more generally members of any field whose characteristic is not . (In a field of characteristic 2, the element is zero and it is impossible to divide by it.)
The symbol
in the formula should be understood as "either of the two elements whose square is , if such elements exist". In some fields, some elements have no square roots and some have two; only zero has just one square root, except in fields of characteristic . Even if a field does not contain a square root of some number, there is always a quadratic extension field which does, so the quadratic formula will always make sense as a formula in that extension field.
In a field of characteristic , the quadratic formula, which relies on being a unit, does not hold. Consider the monic quadratic polynomial
over a field of characteristic . If , then the solution reduces to extracting a square root, so the solution is
and there is only one root since
In summary,
See quadratic residue for more information about extracting square roots in finite fields.
In the case that , there are two distinct roots, but if the polynomial is irreducible, they cannot be expressed in terms of square roots of numbers in the coefficient field. Instead, define the 2-root of to be a root of the polynomial , an element of the splitting field of that polynomial. One verifies that is also a root. In terms of the 2-root operation, the two roots of the (non-monic) quadratic are
and
For example, let denote a multiplicative generator of the group of units of , the Galois field of order four (thus and are roots of over . Because , is the unique solution of the quadratic equation . On the other hand, the polynomial is irreducible over , but it splits over , where it has the two roots and , where is a root of in .
This is a special case of Artin–Schreier theory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25175 |
Quark
A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. Due to a phenomenon known as "color confinement", quarks are never found in isolation; they can be found only within hadrons, which include baryons (such as protons and neutrons) and mesons, or in quark–gluon plasmas. Up and down quarks have the lowest masses of all quarks. The heavier quarks rapidly change into up and down quarks through a process of particle decay: the transformation from a higher mass state to a lower mass state. Because of this, up and down quarks are generally stable and the most common in the universe, whereas strange, charm, bottom, and top quarks can only be produced in high energy collisions (such as those involving cosmic rays and in particle accelerators). For every quark flavor there is a corresponding type of antiparticle, known as an antiquark, that differs from the quark only in that some of its properties (such as the electric charge) have equal magnitude but opposite sign.
The quark model was independently proposed by physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig in 1964. Quarks were introduced as parts of an ordering scheme for hadrons, and there was little evidence for their physical existence until deep inelastic scattering experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1968. Accelerator experiments have provided evidence for all six flavors. The top quark, first observed at Fermilab in 1995, was the last to be discovered.
The Standard Model is the theoretical framework describing all the currently known elementary particles. This model contains six flavors of quarks (), named up (), down (), strange (), charm (), bottom (), and top (). Antiparticles of quarks are called "antiquarks", and are denoted by a bar over the symbol for the corresponding quark, such as for an up antiquark. As with antimatter in general, antiquarks have the same mass, mean lifetime, and spin as their respective quarks, but the electric charge and other charges have the opposite sign.
Quarks are spin- particles, implying that they are fermions according to the spin–statistics theorem. They are subject to the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that no two identical fermions can simultaneously occupy the same quantum state. This is in contrast to bosons (particles with integer spin), of which any number can be in the same state. Unlike leptons, quarks possess color charge, which causes them to engage in the strong interaction. The resulting attraction between different quarks causes the formation of composite particles known as "hadrons" (see "Strong interaction and color charge" below).
The quarks that determine the quantum numbers of hadrons are called "valence quarks"; apart from these, any hadron may contain an indefinite number of virtual "sea" quarks, antiquarks, and gluons, which do not influence its quantum numbers. There are two families of hadrons: baryons, with three valence quarks, and mesons, with a valence quark and an antiquark. The most common baryons are the proton and the neutron, the building blocks of the atomic nucleus. A great number of hadrons are known (see list of baryons and list of mesons), most of them differentiated by their quark content and the properties these constituent quarks confer. The existence of "exotic" hadrons with more valence quarks, such as tetraquarks () and pentaquarks (), was conjectured from the beginnings of the quark model but not discovered until the early 21st century.
Elementary fermions are grouped into three generations, each comprising two leptons and two quarks. The first generation includes up and down quarks, the second strange and charm quarks, and the third bottom and top quarks. All searches for a fourth generation of quarks and other elementary fermions have failed, and there is strong indirect evidence that no more than three generations exist. Particles in higher generations generally have greater mass and less stability, causing them to decay into lower-generation particles by means of weak interactions. Only first-generation (up and down) quarks occur commonly in nature. Heavier quarks can only be created in high-energy collisions (such as in those involving cosmic rays), and decay quickly; however, they are thought to have been present during the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang, when the universe was in an extremely hot and dense phase (the quark epoch). Studies of heavier quarks are conducted in artificially created conditions, such as in particle accelerators.
Having electric charge, mass, color charge, and flavor, quarks are the only known elementary particles that engage in all four fundamental interactions of contemporary physics: electromagnetism, gravitation, strong interaction, and weak interaction. Gravitation is too weak to be relevant to individual particle interactions except at extremes of energy (Planck energy) and distance scales (Planck distance). However, since no successful quantum theory of gravity exists, gravitation is not described by the Standard Model.
See the table of properties below for a more complete overview of the six quark flavors' properties.
The quark model was independently proposed by physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig in 1964. The proposal came shortly after Gell-Mann's 1961 formulation of a particle classification system known as the "Eightfold Way" – or, in more technical terms, SU(3) flavor symmetry, streamlining its structure. An early attempt at constituent organization was available in the Sakata model.
At the time of the quark theory's inception, the "particle zoo" included, among other particles, a multitude of hadrons. Gell-Mann and Zweig posited that they were not elementary particles, but were instead composed of combinations of quarks and antiquarks. Their model involved three flavors of quarks, up, down, and strange, to which they ascribed properties such as spin and electric charge. The initial reaction of the physics community to the proposal was mixed. There was particular contention about whether the quark was a physical entity or a mere abstraction used to explain concepts that were not fully understood at the time.
In less than a year, extensions to the Gell-Mann–Zweig model were proposed. Sheldon Lee Glashow and James Bjorken predicted the existence of a fourth flavor of quark, which they called "charm". The addition was proposed because it allowed for a better description of the weak interaction (the mechanism that allows quarks to decay), equalized the number of known quarks with the number of known leptons, and implied a mass formula that correctly reproduced the masses of the known mesons.
In 1968, deep inelastic scattering experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) showed that the proton contained much smaller, point-like objects and was therefore not an elementary particle. Physicists were reluctant to firmly identify these objects with quarks at the time, instead calling them "partons" – a term coined by Richard Feynman. The objects that were observed at SLAC would later be identified as up and down quarks as the other flavors were discovered. Nevertheless, "parton" remains in use as a collective term for the constituents of hadrons (quarks, antiquarks, and gluons).
The strange quark's existence was indirectly validated by SLAC's scattering experiments: not only was it a necessary component of Gell-Mann and Zweig's three-quark model, but it provided an explanation for the kaon () and pion () hadrons discovered in cosmic rays in 1947.
In a 1970 paper, Glashow, John Iliopoulos and Luciano Maiani presented the so-called GIM mechanism to explain the experimental non-observation of flavor-changing neutral currents. This theoretical model required the existence of the as-yet undiscovered charm quark. The number of supposed quark flavors grew to the current six in 1973, when Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa noted that the experimental observation of CP violation could be explained if there were another pair of quarks.
Charm quarks were produced almost simultaneously by two teams in November 1974 (see November Revolution) – one at SLAC under Burton Richter, and one at Brookhaven National Laboratory under Samuel Ting. The charm quarks were observed bound with charm antiquarks in mesons. The two parties had assigned the discovered meson two different symbols, and ; thus, it became formally known as the meson. The discovery finally convinced the physics community of the quark model's validity.
In the following years a number of suggestions appeared for extending the quark model to six quarks. Of these, the 1975 paper by Haim Harari was the first to coin the terms "top" and "bottom" for the additional quarks.
In 1977, the bottom quark was observed by a team at Fermilab led by Leon Lederman. This was a strong indicator of the top quark's existence: without the top quark, the bottom quark would have been without a partner. However, it was not until 1995 that the top quark was finally observed, also by the CDF and DØ teams at Fermilab. It had a mass much larger than had been previously expected, almost as large as that of a gold atom.
For some time, Gell-Mann was undecided on an actual spelling for the term he intended to coin, until he found the word "quark" in James Joyce's book "Finnegans Wake":
The word "quark" itself is a Slavic borrowing in German and denotes a dairy product, but is also a colloquial term for "rubbish". Gell-Mann went into further detail regarding the name of the quark in his book "The Quark and the Jaguar":
Zweig preferred the name "ace" for the particle he had theorized, but Gell-Mann's terminology came to prominence once the quark model had been commonly accepted.
The quark flavors were given their names for several reasons. The up and down quarks are named after the up and down components of isospin, which they carry. Strange quarks were given their name because they were discovered to be components of the strange particles discovered in cosmic rays years before the quark model was proposed; these particles were deemed "strange" because they had unusually long lifetimes. Glashow, who co-proposed charm quark with Bjorken, is quoted as saying, "We called our construct the 'charmed quark', for we were fascinated and pleased by the symmetry it brought to the subnuclear world." The names "bottom" and "top", coined by Harari, were chosen because they are "logical partners for up and down quarks". In the past, bottom and top quarks were sometimes referred to as "beauty" and "truth" respectively, but these names have somewhat fallen out of use. While "truth" never did catch on, accelerator complexes devoted to massive production of bottom quarks are sometimes called "beauty factories".
Quarks have fractional electric charge values – either (−) or (+) times the elementary charge (e), depending on flavor. Up, charm, and top quarks (collectively referred to as "up-type quarks") have a charge of + e, while down, strange, and bottom quarks ("down-type quarks") have − e. Antiquarks have the opposite charge to their corresponding quarks; up-type antiquarks have charges of − e and down-type antiquarks have charges of + e. Since the electric charge of a hadron is the sum of the charges of the constituent quarks, all hadrons have integer charges: the combination of three quarks (baryons), three antiquarks (antibaryons), or a quark and an antiquark (mesons) always results in integer charges. For example, the hadron constituents of atomic nuclei, neutrons and protons, have charges of 0 e and +1 e respectively; the neutron is composed of two down quarks and one up quark, and the proton of two up quarks and one down quark.
Spin is an intrinsic property of elementary particles, and its direction is an important degree of freedom. It is sometimes visualized as the rotation of an object around its own axis (hence the name ""), though this notion is somewhat misguided at subatomic scales because elementary particles are believed to be point-like.
Spin can be represented by a vector whose length is measured in units of the reduced Planck constant "ħ" (pronounced "h bar"). For quarks, a measurement of the spin vector component along any axis can only yield the values +"ħ"/2 or −"ħ"/2; for this reason quarks are classified as spin- particles. The component of spin along a given axis – by convention the "z" axis – is often denoted by an up arrow ↑ for the value + and down arrow ↓ for the value −, placed after the symbol for flavor. For example, an up quark with a spin of + along the "z" axis is denoted by u↑.
A quark of one flavor can transform into a quark of another flavor only through the weak interaction, one of the four fundamental interactions in particle physics. By absorbing or emitting a W boson, any up-type quark (up, charm, and top quarks) can change into any down-type quark (down, strange, and bottom quarks) and vice versa. This flavor transformation mechanism causes the radioactive process of beta decay, in which a neutron () "splits" into a proton (), an electron () and an electron antineutrino () (see picture). This occurs when one of the down quarks in the neutron () decays into an up quark by emitting a virtual boson, transforming the neutron into a proton (). The boson then decays into an electron and an electron antineutrino.
Both beta decay and the inverse process of "inverse beta decay" are routinely used in medical applications such as positron emission tomography (PET) and in experiments involving neutrino detection.
While the process of flavor transformation is the same for all quarks, each quark has a preference to transform into the quark of its own generation. The relative tendencies of all flavor transformations are described by a mathematical table, called the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa matrix (CKM matrix). Enforcing unitarity, the approximate magnitudes of the entries of the CKM matrix are:
where "V""ij" represents the tendency of a quark of flavor "i" to change into a quark of flavor "j" (or vice versa).
There exists an equivalent weak interaction matrix for leptons (right side of the W boson on the above beta decay diagram), called the Pontecorvo–Maki–Nakagawa–Sakata matrix (PMNS matrix). Together, the CKM and PMNS matrices describe all flavor transformations, but the links between the two are not yet clear.
According to quantum chromodynamics (QCD), quarks possess a property called "color charge". There are three types of color charge, arbitrarily labeled "blue", "green", and "red". Each of them is complemented by an anticolor – "antiblue", "antigreen", and "antired". Every quark carries a color, while every antiquark carries an anticolor.
The system of attraction and repulsion between quarks charged with different combinations of the three colors is called strong interaction, which is mediated by force carrying particles known as "gluons"; this is discussed at length below. The theory that describes strong interactions is called quantum chromodynamics (QCD). A quark, which will have a single color value, can form a bound system with an antiquark carrying the corresponding anticolor. The result of two attracting quarks will be color neutrality: a quark with color charge "ξ" plus an antiquark with color charge −"ξ" will result in a color charge of 0 (or "white" color) and the formation of a meson. This is analogous to the additive color model in basic optics. Similarly, the combination of three quarks, each with different color charges, or three antiquarks, each with anticolor charges, will result in the same "white" color charge and the formation of a baryon or antibaryon.
In modern particle physics, gauge symmetries – a kind of symmetry group – relate interactions between particles (see gauge theories). Color SU(3) (commonly abbreviated to SU(3)c) is the gauge symmetry that relates the color charge in quarks and is the defining symmetry for quantum chromodynamics. Just as the laws of physics are independent of which directions in space are designated "x", "y", and "z", and remain unchanged if the coordinate axes are rotated to a new orientation, the physics of quantum chromodynamics is independent of which directions in three-dimensional color space are identified as blue, red, and green. SU(3)c color transformations correspond to "rotations" in color space (which, mathematically speaking, is a complex space). Every quark flavor "f", each with subtypes "f"B, "f"G, "f"R corresponding to the quark colors, forms a triplet: a three-component quantum field that transforms under the fundamental representation of SU(3)c. The requirement that SU(3)c should be local – that is, that its transformations be allowed to vary with space and time – determines the properties of the strong interaction. In particular, it implies the existence of eight gluon types to act as its force carriers.
Two terms are used in referring to a quark's mass: "current quark mass" refers to the mass of a quark by itself, while "constituent quark mass" refers to the current quark mass plus the mass of the gluon particle field surrounding the quark. These masses typically have very different values. Most of a hadron's mass comes from the gluons that bind the constituent quarks together, rather than from the quarks themselves. While gluons are inherently massless, they possess energy – more specifically, quantum chromodynamics binding energy (QCBE) – and it is this that contributes so greatly to the overall mass of the hadron (see mass in special relativity). For example, a proton has a mass of approximately 938 MeV/c2, of which the rest mass of its three valence quarks only contributes about 9 MeV/c2; much of the remainder can be attributed to the field energy of the gluons. See Chiral symmetry breaking.
The Standard Model posits that elementary particles derive their masses from the Higgs mechanism, which is associated to the Higgs boson. It is hoped that further research into the reasons for the top quark's large mass of ~173 GeV/c2, almost the mass of a gold atom, might reveal more about the origin of the mass of quarks and other elementary particles.
In QCD, quarks are considered to be point-like entities, with zero size. As of 2014, experimental evidence indicates they are no bigger than 10−4 times the size of a proton, i.e. less than 10−19 metres.
The following table summarizes the key properties of the six quarks. Flavor quantum numbers (isospin ("I"3), charm ("C"), strangeness ("S", not to be confused with spin), topness ("T"), and bottomness ("B"′)) are assigned to certain quark flavors, and denote qualities of quark-based systems and hadrons. The baryon number ("B") is + for all quarks, as baryons are made of three quarks. For antiquarks, the electric charge ("Q") and all flavor quantum numbers ("B", "I"3, "C", "S", "T", and "B"′) are of opposite sign. Mass and total angular momentum ("J"; equal to spin for point particles) do not change sign for the antiquarks.
"J" = total angular momentum, "B" = baryon number, "Q" = electric charge, "I"3 = isospin, "C" = charm, "S" = strangeness, "T" = topness, "B"′ = bottomness. * Notation such as ± 710 denotes two types of measurement uncertainty. In the case of the top quark, the first uncertainty is statistical in nature, and the second is systematic.
As described by quantum chromodynamics, the strong interaction between quarks is mediated by gluons, massless vector gauge bosons. Each gluon carries one color charge and one anticolor charge. In the standard framework of particle interactions (part of a more general formulation known as perturbation theory), gluons are constantly exchanged between quarks through a virtual emission and absorption process. When a gluon is transferred between quarks, a color change occurs in both; for example, if a red quark emits a red–antigreen gluon, it becomes green, and if a green quark absorbs a red–antigreen gluon, it becomes red. Therefore, while each quark's color constantly changes, their strong interaction is preserved.
Since gluons carry color charge, they themselves are able to emit and absorb other gluons. This causes "asymptotic freedom": as quarks come closer to each other, the chromodynamic binding force between them weakens. Conversely, as the distance between quarks increases, the binding force strengthens. The color field becomes stressed, much as an elastic band is stressed when stretched, and more gluons of appropriate color are spontaneously created to strengthen the field. Above a certain energy threshold, pairs of quarks and antiquarks are created. These pairs bind with the quarks being separated, causing new hadrons to form. This phenomenon is known as "color confinement": quarks never appear in isolation. This process of hadronization occurs before quarks, formed in a high energy collision, are able to interact in any other way. The only exception is the top quark, which may decay before it hadronizes.
Hadrons contain, along with the "valence quarks" () that contribute to their quantum numbers, virtual quark–antiquark () pairs known as "sea quarks" (). Sea quarks form when a gluon of the hadron's color field splits; this process also works in reverse in that the annihilation of two sea quarks produces a gluon. The result is a constant flux of gluon splits and creations colloquially known as "the sea". Sea quarks are much less stable than their valence counterparts, and they typically annihilate each other within the interior of the hadron. Despite this, sea quarks can hadronize into baryonic or mesonic particles under certain circumstances.
Under sufficiently extreme conditions, quarks may become "deconfined" out of bound states and propagate as thermalized "free" excitations in the larger medium. In the course of asymptotic freedom, the strong interaction becomes weaker at increasing temperatures. Eventually, color confinement would be effectively lost in an extremely hot plasma of freely moving quarks and gluons. This theoretical phase of matter is called quark–gluon plasma.
The exact conditions needed to give rise to this state are unknown and have been the subject of a great deal of speculation and experimentation. An estimate puts the needed temperature at kelvin. While a state of entirely free quarks and gluons has never been achieved (despite numerous attempts by CERN in the 1980s and 1990s), recent experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider have yielded evidence for liquid-like quark matter exhibiting "nearly perfect" fluid motion.
The quark–gluon plasma would be characterized by a great increase in the number of heavier quark pairs in relation to the number of up and down quark pairs. It is believed that in the period prior to 10−6 seconds after the Big Bang (the quark epoch), the universe was filled with quark–gluon plasma, as the temperature was too high for hadrons to be stable.
Given sufficiently high baryon densities and relatively low temperatures – possibly comparable to those found in neutron stars – quark matter is expected to degenerate into a Fermi liquid of weakly interacting quarks. This liquid would be characterized by a condensation of colored quark Cooper pairs, thereby breaking the local SU(3)c symmetry. Because quark Cooper pairs harbor color charge, such a phase of quark matter would be color superconductive; that is, color charge would be able to pass through it with no resistance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25179 |
Quantization (physics)
In physics, quantization (quantisation) is the process of transition from a classical understanding of physical phenomena to a newer understanding known as quantum mechanics. (It is a procedure for constructing a quantum field theory starting from a classical field theory.) This is a generalization of the procedure for building quantum mechanics from classical mechanics. Also related is field quantization, as in the "quantization of the electromagnetic field", referring to photons as field "quanta" (for instance as light quanta). This procedure is basic to theories of particle physics, nuclear physics, condensed matter physics, and quantum optics.
Quantization converts classical fields into operators acting on quantum states of the field theory. The lowest energy state is called the vacuum state. The reason for quantizing a theory is to deduce properties of materials, objects or particles through the computation of quantum amplitudes, which may be very complicated. Such computations have to deal with certain subtleties called renormalization, which, if neglected, can often lead to nonsense results, such as the appearance of infinities in various amplitudes. The full specification of a quantization procedure requires methods of performing renormalization.
The first method to be developed for quantization of field theories was canonical quantization. While this is extremely easy to implement on sufficiently simple theories, there are many situations where other methods of quantization yield more efficient procedures for computing quantum amplitudes. However, the use of canonical quantization has left its mark on the language and interpretation of quantum field theory.
Canonical quantization of a field theory is analogous to the construction of quantum mechanics from classical mechanics. The classical field is treated as a dynamical variable called the canonical coordinate, and its time-derivative is the canonical momentum. One introduces a commutation relation between these which is exactly the same as the commutation relation between a particle's position and momentum in quantum mechanics. Technically, one converts the field to an operator, through combinations of creation and annihilation operators. The field operator acts on quantum states of the theory. The lowest energy state is called the vacuum state. The procedure is also called second quantization.
This procedure can be applied to the quantization of any field theory: whether of fermions or bosons, and with any internal symmetry. However, it leads to a fairly simple picture of the vacuum state and is not easily amenable to use in some quantum field theories, such as quantum chromodynamics which is known to have a complicated vacuum characterized by many different condensates.
Even within the setting of canonical quantization, there is difficulty associated to quantizing arbitrary observables on the classical phase space. This is the "ordering ambiguity": Classically the position and momentum variables "x" and "p" commute, but their quantum mechanical counterparts do not. Various "quantization schemes" have been proposed to resolve this ambiguity, of which the most popular is the Weyl quantization scheme. Nevertheless, the "Groenewold–van Hove theorem" says that no perfect quantization scheme exists. Specifically, if the quantizations of "x" and "p" are taken to be the usual position and momentum operators, then no quantization scheme can perfectly reproduce the Poisson bracket relations among the classical observables. See Groenewold's theorem for one version of this result.
There is a way to perform a canonical quantization without having to resort to the non covariant approach of foliating spacetime and choosing a Hamiltonian. This method is based upon a classical action, but is different from the functional integral approach.
The method does not apply to all possible actions (for instance, actions with a noncausal structure or actions with gauge "flows"). It starts with the classical algebra of all (smooth) functionals over the configuration space. This algebra is quotiented over by the ideal generated by the Euler–Lagrange equations. Then, this quotient algebra is converted into a Poisson algebra by introducing a Poisson bracket derivable from the action, called the Peierls bracket. This Poisson algebra is then formula_1-deformed in the same way as in canonical quantization.
There is also a way to quantize actions with gauge "flows". It involves the Batalin–Vilkovisky formalism, an extension of the BRST formalism.
In mathematical physics, geometric quantization is a mathematical approach to defining a quantum theory corresponding to a given classical theory. It attempts to carry out quantization, for which there is in general no exact recipe, in such a way that certain analogies between the classical theory and the quantum theory remain manifest. For example, the similarity between the Heisenberg equation in the Heisenberg picture of quantum mechanics and the Hamilton equation in classical physics should be built in.
One of the earliest attempts at a natural quantization was Weyl quantization, proposed by Hermann Weyl in 1927. Here, an attempt is made to associate a quantum-mechanical observable (a self-adjoint operator on a Hilbert space) with a real-valued function on classical phase space. The position and momentum in this phase space are mapped to the generators of the Heisenberg group, and the Hilbert space appears as a group representation of the Heisenberg group. In 1946, H. J. Groenewold considered the product of a pair of such observables and asked what the corresponding function would be on the classical phase space. This led him to discover the phase-space star-product of a pair of functions.
More generally, this technique leads to deformation quantization, where the ★-product is taken to be a deformation of the algebra of functions on a symplectic manifold or Poisson manifold. However, as a natural quantization scheme (a functor), Weyl's map is not satisfactory. For example, the Weyl map of the classical angular-momentum-squared is not just the quantum angular momentum squared operator, but it further contains a constant term 3ħ2/2. (This extra term is actually physically significant, since it accounts for the nonvanishing angular momentum of the ground-state Bohr orbit in the hydrogen atom. As a mere representation change, however, Weyl's map underlies the alternate Phase space formulation of conventional quantum mechanics.
A more geometric approach to quantization, in which the classical phase space can be a general symplectic manifold, was developed in the 1970s by Bertram Kostant and Jean-Marie Souriau. The method proceeds in two stages. First, once constructs a "prequantum Hilbert space" consisting of square-integrable functions (or, more properly, sections of a line bundle) over the phase space. Here one can construct operators satisfying commutation relations corresponding exactly to the classical Poisson-bracket relations. On the other hand, this prequantum Hilbert space is too big to be physically meaningful. One then restricts to functions (or sections) depending on half the variables on the phase space, yielding the quantum Hilbert space.
See Loop quantum gravity.
A classical mechanical theory is given by an action with the permissible configurations being the ones which are extremal with respect to functional variations of the action. A quantum-mechanical description of the classical system can also be constructed from the action of the system by means of the path integral formulation.
See Uncertainty principle.
See Schwinger's quantum action principle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25182 |
Quantile
In statistics and probability, quantiles are cut points dividing the range of a probability distribution into continuous intervals with equal probabilities, or dividing the observations in a sample in the same way. There is one fewer quantile than the number of groups created. Thus quartiles are the three cut points that will divide a dataset into four equal-sized groups. Common quantiles have special names: for instance quartile, decile (creating 10 groups: see below for more). The groups created are termed halves, thirds, quarters, etc., though sometimes the terms for the quantile are used for the groups created, rather than for the cut points.
-quantiles are values that partition a finite set of values into subsets of (nearly) equal sizes. There are of the -quantiles, one for each integer satisfying . In some cases the value of a quantile may not be uniquely determined, as can be the case for the median (2-quantile) of a uniform probability distribution on a set of even size. Quantiles can also be applied to continuous distributions, providing a way to generalize rank statistics to continuous variables (see percentile rank). When the cumulative distribution function of a random variable is known, the -quantiles are the application of the quantile function (the inverse function of the cumulative distribution function) to the values }.
Some -quantiles have special names:
As in the computation of, for example, standard deviation, the estimation of a quantile depends upon whether one is operating with a statistical population or with a sample drawn from it. For a population, of discrete values or for a continuous population density, the -th -quantile is the data value where the cumulative distribution function crosses . That is, is a -th -quantile for a variable if
and
For a finite population of equally probable values indexed from lowest to highest, the -th -quantile of this population can equivalently be computed via the value of . If is not an integer, then round up to the next integer to get the appropriate index; the corresponding data value is the -th -quantile. On the other hand, if is an integer then any number from the data value at that index to the data value of the next can be taken as the quantile, and it is conventional (though arbitrary) to take the average of those two values (see Estimating quantiles from a sample).
If, instead of using integers and , the “-quantile” is based on a real number with then replaces in the above formulas. Some software programs (including Microsoft Excel) regard the minimum and maximum as the 0th and 100th percentile, respectively; however, such terminology is an extension beyond traditional statistics definitions.
The following two examples use the Nearest Rank definition of quantile with rounding. For an explanation of this definition, see percentiles.
Consider an ordered population of 10 data values {3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 13, 15, 16, 20}. What are the 4-quantiles (the "quartiles") of this dataset?
So the first, second and third 4-quantiles (the "quartiles") of the dataset {3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 13, 15, 16, 20} are {7, 9, 15}. If also required, the zeroth quartile is 3 and the fourth quartile is 20.
Consider an ordered population of 11 data values {3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16, 20}. What are the 4-quantiles (the "quartiles") of this dataset?
So the first, second and third 4-quantiles (the "quartiles") of the dataset {3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16, 20} are {7, 9, 15}. If also required, the zeroth quartile is 3 and the fourth quartile is 20.
The asymptotic distribution of formula_1-th sample quantile is well-known: it is asymptotically normal around the formula_1-th quantile with variance equal to
where formula_4 is the value of the distribution density at the formula_1-th quantile. However, this distribution relies on knowledge of the population distribution; which is equivalent to knowledge of the population quantiles, which we are trying to estimate! Modern statistical packages thus rely on a different technique — or selection of techniques — to estimate the quantiles.
Mathematica, Matlab, R and GNU Octave programming languages include nine sample quantile methods. SAS includes five sample quantile methods, SciPy and Maple both include eight, EViews includes the six piecewise linear functions, Stata includes two, Python includes two, and Microsoft Excel includes two. Mathematica supports an arbitrary parameter for methods that allows for other, non-standard, methods.
In effect, the methods compute , the estimate for the -th -quantile, where , from a sample of size by computing a real valued index . When is an integer, the -th smallest of the values, , is the quantile estimate. Otherwise a rounding or interpolation scheme is used to compute the quantile estimate from , , and . (For notation, see floor and ceiling functions).
The estimate types and interpolation schemes used include:
Notes:
The standard error of a quantile estimate can in general be estimated via the bootstrap. The Maritz–Jarrett method can also be used.
Computing approximate quantiles from data arriving from a stream can be done efficiently using compressed data structures. The most popular methods are t-digest and KLL. These methods read a stream of values in a continuous fashion and can, at any time, be queried about the approximate value of a specified quantile.
Both algorithms are based on a similar idea: compressing the stream of values by summarizing identical or similar values with a weight. If the stream is made of a repetition of 100 times v1 and 100 times v2, there is no reason to keep a sorted list of 200 elements, it is enough to keep two elements and two counts to be able to recover the quantiles. With more values, these algorithms maintain a trade-off between the number of unique values stored and the precision of the resulting quantiles. Some values may be discarded from the stream and contribute to the weight of a nearby value without changing the quantile results too much. t-digest uses an approach based on k-means clustering to group similar values whereas KLL uses a more sophisticated "compactor" method that leads to better control of the error bounds.
Both methods belong to the family of "data sketches" that are subsets of Streaming Algorithms with useful properties: t-digest or KLL sketches can be combined. Computing the sketch for a very large vector of values can be split into trivially parallel processes where sketches are computed for partitions of the vector in parallel and merged later.
Standardized test results are commonly misinterpreted as a student scoring "in the 80th percentile," for example, as if the 80th percentile is an interval to score "in," which it is not; one can score "at" some percentile, or between two percentiles, but not "in" some percentile. Perhaps by this example it is meant that the student scores between the 80th and 81st percentiles, or "in" the group of students whose score placed them at the 80th percentile.
If a distribution is symmetric, then the median is the mean (so long as the latter exists). But, in general, the median and the mean can differ. For instance, with a random variable that has an exponential distribution, any particular sample of this random variable will have roughly a 63% chance of being less than the mean. This is because the exponential distribution has a long tail for positive values but is zero for negative numbers.
Quantiles are useful measures because they are less susceptible than means to long-tailed distributions and outliers. Empirically, if the data being analyzed are not actually distributed according to an assumed distribution, or if there are other potential sources for outliers that are far removed from the mean, then quantiles may be more useful descriptive statistics than means and other moment-related statistics.
Closely related is the subject of least absolute deviations, a method of regression that is more robust to outliers than is least squares, in which the sum of the absolute value of the observed errors is used in place of the squared error. The connection is that the mean is the single estimate of a distribution that minimizes expected squared error while the median minimizes expected absolute error. Least absolute deviations shares the ability to be relatively insensitive to large deviations in outlying observations, although even better methods of robust regression are available.
The quantiles of a random variable are preserved under increasing transformations, in the sense that, for example, if is the median of a random variable , then is the median of , unless an arbitrary choice has been made from a range of values to specify a particular quantile. (See quantile estimation, above, for examples of such interpolation.) Quantiles can also be used in cases where only ordinal data are available. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25184 |
Q
Q or q is the 17th letter of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its name in English is "cue" (pronounced ), plural "cues".
The Semitic sound value of Qôp was (voiceless uvular stop), and the form of the letter could have been based on the eye of a needle, a knot, or even a monkey with its tail hanging down. is a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in many European languages. Some have even suggested that the form of the letter Q is even more ancient: it could have originated from Egyptian hieroglyphics.
In Greek, qoppa (Ϙ) probably came to represent several labialized velar stops, among them and . As a result of later sound shifts, these sounds in Greek changed to and respectively. Therefore, qoppa was transformed into two letters: qoppa, which stood for the number 90, and phi (Φ), which stood for the aspirated sound that came to be pronounced in Modern Greek.
The Etruscans used Q in conjunction with V to represent , and this usage was copied by the Romans with the rest of their alphabet. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the two sounds and , which were not differentiated in writing. Of these, Q was used before a rounded vowel (e.g. 'ego'), K before /a/ (e.g. 'calendis'), and C elsewhere. Later, the use of C (and its variant G) replaced most usages of K and Q: Q survived only to represent /k/ when immediately followed by a /w/ sound.
Depending on the typeface used to typeset the letter Q, the letter's tail may either bisect its bowl as in Helvetica, meet the bowl as in Univers, or lie completely outside the bowl as in PT Sans. In writing block letters, bisecting tails are fastest to write, as they require less precision. All three styles are considered equally valid, with most serif typefaces having a Q with a tail that meets the circle, while sans-serif typefaces are more equally split between those with bisecting tails and those without. Typefaces with a disconnected Q tail, while uncommon, have existed since at least 1529. A common method among typographers to create the shape of the Q is by simply adding a tail to the letter O.
Old-style serif fonts, such as Garamond, may contain two capital Qs: one with a short tail to be used in short words, and another with a long tail to be used in long words. Some early metal type fonts included up to 3 different Qs: a short-tailed Q, a long-tailed Q, and a long-tailed Q-u ligature. This print tradition was alive and well until the 19th century, when long-tailed Qs fell out of favor: even recreations of classic typefaces such as Caslon began being distributed with only short Q tails. Not a fan of long-tailed Qs, American typographer D. B. Updike celebrated their demise in his 1922 book "Printing Types", claiming that Renaissance printers made their Q tails longer and longer simply to "outdo each other". Latin-language words, which are much more likely than English words to contain "Q" as their first letter, have also been cited as the reason for their existence. The long-tailed Q had fallen completely out of use with the advent of early digital typography, as many early digital fonts could not choose different glyphs based on the word that the glyph was in, but it has seen something of a comeback with the advent of OpenType fonts and LaTeX, both of which can automatically typeset the long-tailed Q when it is called for and the short-tailed Q when not.
Owing to the allowable variation in the Q, the letter is a very distinctive feature of a typeface; like the ampersand, the Q is cited as a letter that gives typographers a chance to express themselves.
Identifont, an automated typeface identification service that identifies typefaces by questions about their appearance, asks about the Q tail second if the "sans-serif" option is chosen. Out of Identifont's database, Q tails are divided thus:
Some typographers prefer one "Q" design over another: Adrian Frutiger, famous for the airport typeface that bears his name, remarked that most of his typefaces feature a Q tail that meets the bowl and then extends horizontally. Frutiger considered such Qs to make for more "harmonious" and "gentle" typefaces. Some typographers, such as Sophie Elinor Brown, have listed "Q" as being among their favorite letters.
The lowercase "q" is usually seen as a lowercase "o" or "c" with a descender (i.e., downward vertical tail) extending from the right side of the bowl, with or without a swash (i.e., flourish), or even a reversed lowercase p. The "q"'s descender is usually typed without a swash due to the major style difference typically seen between the descenders of the "g" (a loop) and "q" (vertical). When handwritten, or as part of a handwriting font, the descender of the "q" sometimes finishes with a rightward swash to distinguish it from the letter "g" (or, particularly in mathematics, the digit "9").
The International Phonetic Alphabet uses for the voiceless uvular stop.
In English, the digraph most often denotes the cluster ; however, in borrowings from French, it represents , as in 'plaque'. See the list of English words containing Q not followed by U. Q is the second least frequently used letter in the English language (after Z), with a frequency of just 0.1% in words. Q has the third fewest English words where it is the first letter, after Z and X.
In most European languages written in the Latin script, such as in Romance and Germanic languages, appears almost exclusively in the digraph . In French, Occitan, Catalan and Portuguese, represents or ; in Spanish, it represents . replaces for before front vowels and , since in those languages represents a fricative or affricate before front vowels. In Italian represents (where is the semivowel allophone of ).
It is not considered to be part of the Cornish (Standard Written Form), Estonian, Icelandic, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbo-Croatian, Scottish Gaelic, Slovenian, Turkish, or Welsh alphabets.
The capital letter Q is used as the currency sign for the Guatemalan quetzal.
The Roman numeral is sometimes used to represent the number 500,000. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25185 |
History of Qatar
The history of Qatar from its first duration of human occupation to its formation as a modern state. Human occupation of Qatar dates back to 50,000 years ago, and Stone Age encampments and tools have been unearthed in the peninsula. Mesopotamia was the first civilization to have a presence in the area during the Neolithic period, evidenced by the discovery of potsherds originating from the Ubaid period near coastal encampments.
The peninsula fell under the domain of several different empires during its early years of settlement, including the Seleucid, the Parthians and the Sasanians. In 628 AD, the population was introduced to Islam after Muhammad sent an envoy to Munzir ibn Sawa who was the Sasanid governor of Eastern Arabia. It became a pearl trading center by the 8th century. The Abbasid era saw the rise of several settlements. After the Bani Utbah and other Arab tribes conquered Bahrain in 1783, the Al Khalifa imposed their authority over Bahrain and mainland Qatar. Over the proceeding centuries, Qatar was a site of contention between the Wahhabi of Najd and the Al Khalifa. The Ottomans expanded their empire into Eastern Arabia in 1871, withdrawing from the area in 1915 after the beginning of World War I.
In 1916, Qatar became a British protectorate and Abdullah Al Thani signed a treaty stipulating that he could only cede territory to the British in return for protection from all aggression by sea and support in case of a land attack. A 1934 treaty granted more extensive protection. In 1935, a 75-year oil concession was granted to the Qatar Petroleum Company and high-quality oil was discovered in 1940 in Dukhan.
During the 1950s and 1960s, increasing oil revenues brought prosperity, rapid immigration, substantial social progress, and the beginnings of the country's modern history. After Britain announced a policy of ending the treaty relationships with the Persian Gulf sheikdoms in 1968, Qatar joined the other eight states then under British protection in a plan to form a federation of Arab emirates. By mid-1971, as the termination date of the British treaty relationship approached, the nine still had not agreed on terms of union. Accordingly, Qatar declared its independence on September 3, 1971. In June 1995, deputy emir Hamad bin Khalifa became the new emir after his father Khalifa bin Hamad in a bloodless coup. The emir permitted more liberal press and municipal elections as a precursor to parliamentary elections. A new constitution was approved via public referendum in April 2003 and came into effect in June 2005.
In 1961, a Danish archaeological expedition carried out on the peninsula uncovered approximately 30,000 stone implements from 122 paleolithic sites. Most of the sites were situated along the coastline, and were divided into four separate cultural groups based on flint typology. Macrolithic tools such as scrapers, arrowheads and hand axes dating to the lower and middle paleolithic periods were among the discoveries.
The flooding of the Persian Gulf, which occurred roughly 8,000 years ago, resulted in the displacement of Persian Gulf inhabitants, the formation of the Qatari Peninsula and the occupation of Qatar to capitalize on its coastal resources. From this time onward, Qatar was regularly used as rangeland for nomadic tribes from the Najd and al-Hasa regions in Saudi Arabia, and a number of seasonal encampments were constructed around sources of water.
Al Da'asa, a settlement located on the northeast coast of Qatar, is the most extensive Ubaid site in the country. It was excavated by a Danish team in 1961. The site is theorized to have accommodated a small sasonal encampment, possibly a lodging for a hunting-fishing-gathering group who made recurrent visits. This is evidenced by the discovery of nearly sixty fire pits at the site, which may have been used to cure and dry fish, in addition to flint tools such as scrapers, cutters, blades and arrow heads. Furthermore, many painted Ubaid potsherds and a carnelian bead were found in the fire pits, suggesting overseas connections.
In an excavation done in Al Khor in 1977–78, several Ubaid-period graves were uncovered in what is considered the earliest recorded burial site in the country. One grave contained the cremated remains of a young woman with no grave goods. Eight other graves contained grave goods, including beads made of shell, carnelian and obsidian. The obsidian most likely originated from Najran in south west Arabia.
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The Qatari Peninsula was close enough to the Dilmun civilization in Bahrain to have felt its influence. Barbar pottery was excavated in two sites by the Qatar Archaeology Project, evidencing the country's involvement in Dilmun's trade network. When the people of Dilmun began engaging in maritime activities around 2100 to 1700 BC, the inhabitants of Qatar started diving for pearls in the Persian Gulf. The Qataris were engaged in the trading of pearls and date palms during this era.
It has been argued that the remains of Dilmun settlements found in Qatar do not represent major evidence of long-term human habitation. Qatar remained largely uninhabited during this period due to regular migration by nomadic Arab tribes searching for untapped sources food and water. The settlements dating to the Dilmun period, particularly in Al Khor Island, may have been established to expedite trade journeys between Bahrain to the closest significant settlement in the Persian Gulf, Tell Abraq. Another scenario entails that the encampments were created by visiting fishermen or pearl fishers from Dilmun. It has also been suggested that the presence of pottery is indicative of trade between the inhabitants of Qatar and the Dilmun civilization, though this is considered unlikely due to the scarce population of the peninsula during this period.
Kassite Babylonian-influenced materials dating back to the second millennium BC, which were found in Al Khor Island, reveal evidence of trade relations between the inhabitants of Qatar and the Kassite. Among the findings were 3,000,000 crushed snail shells and Kassite potsherds. It has been asserted that Qatar was the site of the earliest known production of shellfish dye owing to a purple dye industry operated by the Kassite which existed on the island. The dye was obtained from the Murex snail and was known as "Tyrian purple". Dye production may have been supervised by the Kassite administration in Bahrain with the purpose of exporting the dye to Mesopotamia.
Assyrian king Esarhaddon led a successful campaign against "Bazu", an area which encompassed Dilmun and Qatar, in c. 680 BC. To date, no archaeological evidence of early Iron Age settlements have been discovered in the Peninsula. This is likely due to adverse climatic changes rendering Qatar less inhabitable during this period.
In the 5th century BC, Greek historian Herodotus published the earliest known description of the population of Qatar, describing its inhabitants as 'sea-faring Canaanites'.
Around 325 BC, Alexander the Great sent his top admiral, Androsthenes of Thasos, to survey the entire Persian Gulf. The requested charts arrived shortly after Alexander died in 323. Seleucus I Nicator was awarded the eastern part of the Ancient Greek Empire after Alexander's death. Starting from 312, he expanded the Seleucid Empire eastward of Babylon, purportedly encompassing parts of Eastern Arabia. Archaeological evidence of Greek-influenced materials has been discovered in Qatar. Excavations north of Dukhan uncovered potsherds of Seleucid characteristic, and a cairnfield consisting of 100 burial mounds dating to the era was discovered in Ras Abrouq. The relatively large number of cairns suggest a sizeable sea-faring community prevailed in the area.
After losing most of their territories in the Persian Gulf, Seleucid influence ceased in the area by c. 250 BC.
Following the eviction of the Seleucid by the Parthian Empire in c. 250 BC, the latter gained dominion over the Persian Gulf and Arabian Coast. As the Parthians were dependent on trade routes through the Persian Gulf, they established garrisons along the coast. Pottery recovered from expeditions in Qatar has demonstrated links to the Parthian Empire.
Ras Abrouq, a coastal city north of Dukhan, housed a fishing station which foreign vessels used to dry fish in 140 BC. A number of stone structures and large quantities of fish bones were recovered from the site.
Pliny the Elder, a Roman author, wrote an account on the inhabitants of the peninsula around the mid-first century AD. He referred to them as the "Catharrei" and described them as nomads who constantly roamed in search of water and food. Around the second century, Ptolemy produced the first known map to depict the landmass, referring to it as "Catura".
In 224 AD, the Sasanian Empire gained control over the territories surrounding the Persian Gulf. Qatar played a role in the commercial activity of the Sasanids, contributing to at least two commodities: precious pearls and purple dye. Sasanid pottery and glassware were found in Mezru'ah, a city north-west of Doha, and fragments of glassware and pottery were discovered in a settlement in Umm al-Ma'a.
Under the Sasanid reign, many of the inhabitants in Eastern Arabia were introduced to Christianity after the religion was dispersed eastward by Mesopotamian Christians. Monasteries were constructed in Qatar during this era, and further settlements were founded. During the latter part of the Christian era, Qatar was known by the Syriac name 'Beth Qatraye' (ܒܝܬ ܩܛܪܝܐ; "region of the Qataris"). A variant of this was 'Beth Catara'. The region was not limited to Qatar; it also included Bahrain, Tarout Island, Al-Khatt, and Al-Hasa. The dioceses of Beth Qatraye did not form an ecclesiastical province, except for a short period during the mid-to-late seventh century. They were instead subject to the Metropolitan of Fars.
Muhammad sent Al-Ala'a Al-Hadrami, a Muslim envoy, to a Persian ruler in Eastern Arabia named Munzir ibn Sawa Al Tamimi in 628 and requested that he and his people accept Islam. Munzir obliged his request and most Arab tribes in Qatar converted to Islam. It has been proposed by historian Habibur Rahman that Munzir ibn Sawa's seat of administration existed in the Murwab or Umm al-Ma'a area of Qatar. This theory is lent credence by an archaeological find of approximately 100 small stone-built Islamic-period houses and fortified palaces of a tribal leader in Murwab, which are thought to have originated from the early Islamic period. After the adoption of Islam, the Arabs led the Muslim conquest of Persia which resulted in the fall of the Sasanian Empire.
It is likely that some settled populations in Qatar did not immediately convert to Islam. Isaac of Nineveh, a 7th-century Syriac Christian bishop regarded as a saint in some churches, was born in Beth Qatraye. Other notable Christian scholars dating to this period who hailed from Beth Qatraye include Dadisho Qatraya, and Ahob of Qatar. In 674, the bishops of Beth Qatraye stopped attending synods.
Qatar was described as a famous horse and camel breeding centre during the Umayyad period. It began benefiting from its commercially strategic position in the Persian Gulf during the 8th century, going on to become a center of pearl trading.
During the Second Fitna, a renowned Khariji commander named Qatari ibn al-Fuja'a, who was described as the most popular, admired and powerful Khariji leader, led the Azariqa, a sub-sect of the Khawarij, in to numerous battles. He held the title of Amir al-Mu'minin and ruled over the radical Azariqa movement for more than 10 years. Born in Al Khuwayr in Qatar, he also minted the first known Kharjite coins, the earliest of which dated to 688 or 689.
The Umayyad Caliphate brought about much political and religious change in western Asia starting from the late seventh century. As a result, there were many revolts against the Umayyad at the end of the seventh century, particularly in Qatar and Bahrain. Ibn al-Fuja'a led an uprising against the Umayyad caliphs for more than twenty years.
In 750, discontent in the caliphate had reached a critical level due to the treatment of non-Arab citizens in the Empire. The Abbasid Revolution resulted in the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate, ushering in the Abbasid period.
Several settlements, including Murwab, were developed during the Abbasid period. Over 100 stone-built houses, two mosques, and an Abbasid fort were constructed in Murwab during this era. Murwab fort is the oldest intact fort in the country and was built over the ruins of a previous fort which was destroyed by fire. The town was the site of the first sizable settlement established off the coastal area of Qatar. A similar site, containing T'ang stoneware and dating to the 9th and 10th centuries, was discovered in Al Naman (north of Zubarah).
Substantial development in the pearling industry around the Qatari Peninsula occurred during the Abbasid era. Ships from Basra en route to India and China would make stops in the port of Qatar during this period. Chinese porcelain, West African coins and pieces from Thailand have been discovered in Qatar. Archaeological remains from the 9th century suggest that Qatar's inhabitants used greater wealth, perhaps from pearl trade, to construct higher quality homes and public buildings. However, when the caliphate's prosperity declined in Iraq, so too did it in Qatar.
Most of Eastern Arabia, particularly Bahrain and the Qatari Peninsula, were sites of revolt against the Abbasid Caliphate around 868. Mohammed ibn Ali, a revolutionary, roused the people of Bahrain and Qatar into a rebellion, but the rebellion was unsuccessful and he relocated to Basra. He was later successful in instigating the Zanj Rebellion.
A radical Isma'ili group called the Qarmatians established a utopian republic in Eastern Arabia in 899. They considered the pilgrimage to Mecca a superstition and once in control of the Bahraini state they launched raids along the pilgrim routes crossing the Arabian Peninsula. In 906 they ambushed the pilgrim caravan returning from Mecca and massacred 20,000 pilgrims.
Qatar is mentioned in 13th-century Muslim scholar Yaqut al-Hamawi's book, "Mu'jam Al-Buldan (Dictionary of Countries)", which alludes to the Qataris' fine striped woven cloaks and their skills in improvement and finishing of spears, known as khattiyah spears. The spears acquired their name as an homage to the region of Al-Khatt which encompassed present-day Qatif, Uqair and Qatar.
Much of Eastern Arabia was controlled by the Usfurids in 1253, but control of the region was later seized by the prince of Ormus in 1320. Qatar's pearls provided the kingdom with one of its main sources of income. The Portuguese defeated the Ormus by 1507 following the destruction of their fleet by Afonso de Albuquerque's forces. However, Albuquerque's captains grew rebellious and he was compelled to abandon the Ormus island. Ultimately, in 1515, King Manuel I killed Sultan Saifuddin's vizier Reis Hamed, pressuring the sultan to become a vassal of King Manuel.
Bahrain and mainland Qatar had been seized by the Portuguese in 1521. After the Portuguese claimed control, they constructed a series of fortresses along the Arabian Coast. However, there have been no significant Portuguese ruins found in Qatar. The Portuguese focused on creating a commercial empire in Eastern Arabia, and exported gold, silver, silks, cloves, amber, horses and pearls. The population of Al-Hasa submitted voluntarily to the rule of the Ottomans in 1550, preferring them to the Portuguese.
After the Portuguese were expelled from the area in 1602 by the Dutch and British, the Ottomans saw little need to maintain a military presence in the Al-Hasa region. As a result, the Ottomans were expelled by the Bani Khalid in 1670.
The Al Bin Ali Tribe are the original descendants of Bani Utbah tribe being that they are the only tribe to carry and nurture the last name Al-Utbi in their Ownership's documents of Palm gardens in Bahrain as early as the year 1699 - 1111 Hijri. They are specifically descendants of their great grand father Ali Al-Utbi who is a descendant of their great grand father Utbah hence the name Bani Utbah which means sons of Utbah. Utbah is the great grandfather of the Bani Utbah which is a section of Khafaf from Bani Sulaim bin Mansoor from Mudhar from Adnan. The plural word for Al-Utbi is Utub and the name of the tribe is Bani Utbah.
Having expelled the Ottomans, the Bani Khalid held jurisdiction over Qatar from 1670 onward. In 1766, the Utub clans of Al Jalahma and Al Khalifa migrated from Kuwait to Zubarah in Qatar. By the time of their arrival in Zubarah, the Bani Khalid exercised weak power over Qatar, though the largest village was ruled by distant kin of the Bani Khalid. After the Persian Occupation of Basra in 1777 many merchants and families moved from Basra and Kuwait to Zubarah. The town became a thriving center of trade and pearling in the Persian Gulf region after this movement.
The Al Khalifa claimed Qatar and Bahrain by 1783, whereas Bani Khalid control of neighboring Al-Hasa officially came to an end in 1795.
Following Persian aggression towards Zubarah, the Utub and other Arab tribes drove out the Persians from Bahrain in 1783. Al Jalahma seceded from the Utub alliance sometime before the Utub annexed Bahrain in 1783 and returned to Zubarah. This left the Al Khalifa tribe in undisputed possession of Bahrain, who then transferred their power base from Zubarah to Manama. They continued to exert authority over the mainland, and paid tribute to the Wahhabi to ward off challenges on Qatar. However, Qatar did not develop a centralized authority because the Al Khalifa oriented their focus towards Bahrain. As a result, Qatar went through many periods of 'transitory sheikhs', with the most notable being Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah. By 1790, Zubarah was described as a safe heaven for merchants who enjoyed complete protection and no customs duties.
The town came under threat by the Wahhabi from 1780 onward due to the intermittent raids launched on the Bani Khalid strongholds in Al-Hasa. The Wahhabi speculated that the population of Zubarah would conspire against their regime with the help of the Bani Khalid. They also believed that its residents practiced teachings contrary to the Wahhabi doctrine, and regarded the town as an important gateway to the Persian Gulf. Saudi general Sulaiman ibn Ufaysan led a raid against the town in 1787. Five years later, a massive Wahhabi force conquered Al Hasa, forcing many refugees to flee to Zubarah. Wahhabi forces besieged Zubarah and several neighboring settlements in 1794 later as punishment for accommodating asylum seekers. The local chieftains were allowed to continue carrying out administrative tasks but were required to pay a tax.
After defeating the Bani Khalid in 1795, the Wahhabi were attacked on two fronts. The Ottomans and Egyptians assaulted the western front, while the Al Khalifa in Bahrain and the Omanis launched an attack against the eastern front. The Wahhabi allied themselves with the Al Jalahmah tribe in Qatar, who proceeded to engage the Al Khalifa and Omanis on the eastern frontier.
Upon being made aware of advancements by the Egyptians on the western frontier, in 1811, the Wahhabi amir reduced his garrisons in Bahrain and Zubarah in order to re-position his troops. Said bin Sultan of Muscat capitalized on this opportunity and attacked the Wahhabi garrisons in Bahrain and Zubarah. The fort in Zubarah was set ablaze and the Al Khalifa were effectively returned to power.
Britain's desire for secure passage for East India Company ships led it to impose its own order in the Persian Gulf. An agreement known as the General Maritime Treaty was signed between the East India Company and the sheikhs of the coastal area (later to be known as the Trucial Coast) in 1820. It acknowledged British authority in the Persian Gulf and sought to end piracy and the slave trade. Bahrain became a party to the treaty, and it was assumed that Qatar, as a dependency, was also a party to it.
A report compiled by Major Colebrook in 1820 gives the first descriptions of the major towns in Qatar. All of the coastal cities mentioned in his report were situated near the Persian Gulf pearl banks and had been practicing pearl fishing for millenniums. Until the late eighteenth century, all of the principal towns of Qatar including Al Huwaila, Fuwayrit, Al Bidda and Doha were situated on the east coast. Doha developed around the largest of these, Al Bidda. The population consisted of nomadic and settled Arabs and a significant proportion of slaves brought from East Africa. As punishment for piracy committed by the inhabitants of Doha, an East India Company vessel bombarded the town in 1821. They razed the town, forcing between 300 and 400 natives to flee.
A survey carried out by the British in 1825 notes that Qatar did not have a central authority and was governed by local sheikhs. Doha was ruled by the Al-Buainain tribe. In 1828, a member of the Al-Buainain murdered a native of Bahrain, prompting the Bahraini sheikh to imprison the offender. The Al-Buainain tribe revolted, provoking the Al Khalifa to destroy their fort and expel them from Doha. The expulsion of the Al-Buainain granted the Al Khalifa more jurisdiction over Doha.
Desiring to keep surveillance over the proceedings of the Wahhabi, Bahrain stationed a government official named Abdullah bin Ahmad Al-Khalifa on the coast of Qatar as early as 1833. Turning against the Bahrainis, he instigated the people of Al Huwailah to revolt against the Al Khalifa and open up a correspondence with the Wahhabi in 1835. Shortly after the revolt, a peace agreement was signed by both parties under the mediation of the son of the Sultan of Muscat. As part of the stipulations, Al Huwailah was demolished and its residents were removed to Bahrain. Nephews of Abdullah bin Ahmed almost immediately violated the agreement when they incited members of the Al Kuwari tribe to attack Al Huwailah, however.
Residents of the peninsula were susceptible to skirmishes between the forces of the sheikh of Bahrain and the Egyptian military commander of Al-Hasa. At the end of 1839 or beginning of 1840, the governor of Al-Hasa dispatched troops to lay waste to Qatar following the refusal of the Al Nuaim tribe of Zubarah to pay the demanded tribute. The assassination of a governor in Hofuf prematurely ended the expedition before the forces could reach the country.
In 1847, Abdullah bin Ahmed Al Khalifa and a Qatari chief named Isa bin Tarif formed a coalition against Mohammed bin Khalifa, the ruler of Bahrain. In November, bin Khalifa landed in Al Khor with 500 troops and military support from the governors of Qatif and Al-Hasa. The opposition forces numbered 600 troops and were led by bin Tarif. On 17 November, a decisive battle, which came to be known as the Battle of Fuwayrit, took place between the coalition forces and the Bahraini forces. The coalition forces were defeated after bin Tarif and eighty of his men were killed. After he defeated the resistance troop, bin Khalifa demolished Al Bidda and moved its inhabitants to Bahrain. He sent his brother, Ali bin Khalifa, as an envoy to Al Bidda. However, he did not exercise any administrative powers, and local tribal leaders remained responsible for the internal affairs of Qatar.
After having concocted a plan to invade Bahrain, the Wahhabi amir Faisal bin Turki left his headquarters in Najd with a platoon of troops in February 1851. Several offers of appeasement were made on behalf of Mohammed bin Khalifa, but these were met with rejection by Faisal. In anticipation of the impending invasion, Ali bin Khalifa moved to enlist military support in Qatar, but Mohammed bin Thani was persuaded to grant support to Faisal's forces when they reached Al Bidda in May. On June 8, forces loyal to Al Thani took possession of an important tower situated close to Ali bin Khalifa's residence in the Al Bidda Fort. This prompted Bahrain to initiate negotiations for a protective treaty with the British in an attempt to thwart Faisal's advances. They were initially unsuccessful in doing so, but the British reconsidered their position after receiving an intelligence report on the conflict and hastily situated a naval blockade in Manama. Accompanying a peace treaty on 25 July 1851, the sheikh of Bahrain agreed to pay a fee of 4,000 German krones in return for the restoration of the Bahraini-occupied Al Bidda Fort and the disassociation of the Wahhabi from the inhabitants of Qatar.
In a move which angered Mohammed bin Khalifa, Faisal bin Turki provided a safe haven for Abdullah bin Ahmed's sons in Dammam in 1852. Consequently, the Bahrainis attempted to drive away residents of Al Bidda and Doha who were suspected of being loyal to the Wahhabi by imposing an economic blockade on the inhabitants which prevented them from engaging in pearl hunting. The blockade continued until the end of the year. In February 1853, the Wahhabi began marching from Al-Hasa to Al Khor. After Bahrain received assurance from the Qatar that they would not cooperate with the Wahhabi forces if they crossed into their borders, they sent Ali bin Khalifa to the mainland to act as a collaborator with the local resistance. A British-mediated peace agreement was reached between the two parties in 1853.
Hostilities were provoked again after the Bahraini sheikh, in response to the harboring of Bahraini fugitives in Dammam, stopped paying tribute to the Wahhabi amir in 1859 and proceeded to instigate Qatari tribes to attack its subjects. Following threats made by Abdullah bin Faisal to attack Bahrain, the British navy dispatched a ship off the coast of Dammam to prevent any attacks. The situation escalated in May 1860 when Abdullah threatened to occupy the coast of Qatar until the annual tribute was paid. In May 1861, Bahrain signed a treaty with the British government in which the latter agreed to offer protection and recognize Qatar as a dependent of Bahrain. In February 1862, the treaty was ratified by the Indian government.
Proceeding the British involvement, the sway that the Al Khalifa tribe held over Qatar's affairs began declining. Mohammed bin Thani was described by Gifford Palgrave as the acknowledged governor of the Qatar Peninsula in 1863. Some of Al Wakrah's inhabitants were forced to vacate the town by the Bahraini sheikh in April 1863 due to alleged links with the Wahhabi. The town's chief, Mohammed Bu Kuwara, was taken into custody on a similar charge. In 1866, a report by the British revealed that Qatar was paying an annual zakat of 4,000 German krones to the Wahhabi, in encroachment of the 1861 British treaty. The report also contended that the Al Khalifa were taxing the people of Qatar for the same annual payment.
In June 1867, a representative of Mohammed Al Khalifa seized a Bedouin from Al Wakrah and deported him to Bahrain. Mohammed bin Thani demanded his release, but the representative refused. This prompted Mohammed bin Thani to expel him from Al Wakrah. Upon receiving news of this, Mohammed Al Khalifa released the Bedouin prisoner and expressed his desire of renewed peace talks. Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani, the son of Mohammed bin Thani, traveled to Bahrain to negotiate on his behalf. He was imprisoned on arrival and a large number of ships and troops were soon sent to punish the people of Al Wakrah and Al Bidda. Abu Dhabi joined on Bahrain's behalf due to the conception that Al Wakrah served as a refuge for fugitives from Oman. Later that year, the combined forces sacked the two aforementioned Qatari cities with 2,000 men in what would come to be known as the Qatari–Bahraini War. A British record later stated: In June 1868, Qatari tribes retaliated against Bahrain and a battle ensued in which 60 boats were sunk and 1000 men were killed. Afterwards, the Bahraini sheikh agreed to free Jassim bin Mohammed in return for captured Bahraini prisoners.
The joint Bahraini-Abu Dhabi incursion and Qatari counterattack prompted the British political agent, Colonel Lewis Pelly, to impose a settlement in 1868. Pelly's mission to Bahrain and Qatar and the peace treaty that resulted were milestones in Qatar's history. It implicitly recognized the distinctness of Qatar from Bahrain and explicitly acknowledged the position of Mohammed bin Thani as an important representative of the Peninsula's tribes.
The Ottoman Empire expanded into Eastern Arabia in 1871. After establishing themselves on Al-Hasa coast, they advanced towards Qatar. Al Bidda soon came to serve as a base of operations for Bedouins harassing the Ottomans in the south, and Abdullah II Al-Sabah of Kuwait was sent to the town to secure a landing for the Ottoman troops. He brought with him four Ottoman flags for the most influential personages in Qatar. Mohammed bin Thani received and accepted one of the flags, but he sent it to Al Wakrah and continued hoisting the local flag above his house. Jassim bin Mohammed accepted a flag and flew it above his house. A third flag was given to Ali bin Abdul Aziz, the ruler of Al Khor.
The British reacted negatively to the Ottoman's advancements as they felt their interests were at stake. Receiving no response to their objections, the British gunboat Hugh Rose arrived in Qatar on 19 July 1871. After inspecting the situation, Sidney Smith, the assistant political resident in the Persian Gulf, discovered that Qatar flew the flags willingly. To further add to their apprehension, Jassim bin Mohammed, who assumed his father's role during this period, authorized the Ottomans to send 100 troops and equipment to Al Bidda in December 1871. By January 1872, the Ottomans incorporated Qatar into their dominion. It was designated a province in Najd under the control of the sanjak of Najd. Jassim bin Mohammed was appointed as the Kaymakam (sub-governor) of the district, and most other Qataris were allowed to keep their positions in the new government.
Charles Grant, the assistant political resident, falsely reported that the Ottomans sent a contingent of 100 troops from Qatif to Zubarah under the command of Hossein Effendi in August 1873. The sheikh of Bahrain reacted negatively to this because the Al Nuaim tribe which resided in Zubarah had signed a treaty agreeing to be subjects of his. Upon being confronted by the sheikh, Grant referred him to political resident Edward Ross. Ross informed the sheikh that he believed he had no right to protect tribes residing in Qatar. In September, the sheikh reiterated his sovereignty over the town and tribe. Grant replied by arguing that there was no special mention of the Al Nuaim or Zubarah in any treaties signed with Bahrain. A British government official concurred with his views, stating that the sheikh of Bahrain "should, as far as practicable abstain from interfering in complications on the mainland."
Another chance arose for the Al Khalifa to renew their claim on Zubarah in 1874 after an opposition leader named Nasir bin Mubarak moved to Qatar. They believed that Mubarak, with the assistance of Jassim bin Mohammed, would target the Al Nuaim living in Zubarah as a prelude to an invasion. As a result, a contingent of Bahraini reinforcements were sent to Zubarah, much to the disapproval of the British who suggested that the sheikh was involving himself in complications. Edward Ross made it apparent that a government council decision advised the sheikh that he should not interfere in the affairs of Qatar. The Al Khalifa remained in consistent contact with the Al Nuaim, drafting 100 members of the tribe in their army and offering financial assistance. Jassim bin Mohammed expelled some members of the tribe after they attacked ships near Al Bidda in 1878.
Despite the opposition of many prominent Qatari tribes, Jassim bin Mohammed continued to show support for the Ottomans. However, there were no signs of improvement in the partnership between the two parties, and relations further deteriorated when the Ottomans refused to aid Jassim in his expedition of Abu Dhabi-occupied Khawr al Udayd in 1882. In addition, the Ottomans supported the Ottoman subject Mohammed bin Abdul Wahab who attempted to supplant Jassim bin Mohammed in 1888.
In February 1893, Mehmed Hafiz Pasha arrived in Qatar in the interests of seeking unpaid taxes and accosting Jassim bin Mohammed's opposition to proposed Ottoman administrative reforms. Fearing that he would face death or imprisonment, Jassim bin Mohammed moved to Al Wajbah (10 miles west of Doha); he was accompanied by several tribe members. Mehmed demanded that he disband his troops and pledge his loyalty to the Ottomans. However, Jassim bin Mohammed remained adamant in his refusal to comply with Ottoman authority. In March 1893, Mehmed imprisoned his brother, Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Thani, in addition to 13 prominent Qatari tribal leaders on the Ottoman corvette 'Merrikh'. After Mehmed declined an offer to release the captives for a fee of ten thousand liras, he ordered a column of approximately 200 Ottoman troops to advance towards Jassim bin Mohammed's fortress in Al Wajbah under the command of Yusuf Effendi.
Shortly after arriving to Al Wajbah, Effendi's troops came under heavy gunfire by Qatari infantry and cavalry troops, which totaled 3,000 to 4,000 men. They retreated to Shebaka fortress, where they once again sustained casualties from a Qatari incursion. After they retreated to the fortress of Al Bidda, Jassim bin Mohammed's advancing column besieged the fortress and cut off the water supply of the neighborhood. The Ottomans conceded defeat and agreed to relinquish the Qatari captives in return for the safe passage of Mehmed Pasha's cavalry to Hofuf by land. Although Qatar did not gain full independence from the Ottoman Empire, the result of the battle forced a treaty that would later form the basis of Qatar emerging as an autonomous separate country within the empire.
On the cusp of Ottoman withdrawal from the Peninsula in 1915, the British government wrote the following description of the Ottoman presence in Qatar:
The Ottomans officially renounced sovereignty over Qatar in 1913, and in 1916 the new ruler Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani signed a treaty with Britain, thereby instating the area under the trucial system. This meant that Qatar relinquished its autonomy in foreign affairs, such as the power to cede territory, and other affairs, in exchange for Britain's military protection from external threats. The treaty also had provisions suppressing slavery, piracy, and gunrunning, but the British were not strict about enforcing those provisions.
Despite Qatar coming under British protection, Abdullah bin Jassim's position was insecure. Recalcitrant tribes refused to pay tribute; disgruntled family members intrigued against him; and he felt vulnerable to the designs of Bahrain and the Wahhabi. The Al Thani were merchant princes, reliant on trade and especially the pearl trade, and dependent on other tribes to do their fighting for them, primarily the Bani Hajer who owed their allegiance to Ibn Saud, amir of the Najd and Al-Hasa. Despite numerous requests by Abdullah bin Jassim for strong military support, weapons, and a loan, the British were reluctant to become involved in inland affairs. This changed in the 1930s, when competition for oil concessions in the region intensified.
The scramble for oil raised the stakes in regional territorial disputes and signified the need to establish territorial borders. The first move came in 1922 at a boundary conference in Uqair when prospector Major Frank Holmes attempted to include Qatar in an oil concession he was discussing with Ibn Saud. Sir Percy Cox, the British representative, saw through the ploy and drew a line on the map separating the Qatar Peninsula from the mainland. The first oil survey took place in 1926 under the direction of George Martin Lees, a geologist contracted to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, but no oil was found. The oil issue raised its head again in 1933 after an oil strike in Bahrain. Lees had already noted that, in such an eventuality, Qatar should be investigated again. After lengthy negotiations on 17 May 1935, Abdullah bin Jassim signed a concession agreement with Anglo-Persian representatives for a period of 75 years in return for 400,000 rupees on signature and 150,000 rupees per annum with royalties. As part of the agreement, Great Britain made more specific promises of assistance than they had in earlier treaties. Anglo-Persian transferred the concession to the IPC subsidiary company Petroleum Development (Qatar) Ltd. in order to meet its obligations under the Red Line Agreement.
Bahrain claimed rule over a group of islands encompassing the two countries in 1936. The largest island was Hawar Islands, situated off the west coast of Qatar, where the Bahrainis had established a small military garrison. Britain accepted the Bahraini claim over Abdullah bin Jassim's objections, in large part because the Bahraini sheikh's personal British adviser was able to phrase their case in a legal manner familiar to British officials. In 1937, the Bahrainis again laid claim to the deserted town of Zubarah after being involved in a dispute involving the Al Nuaim tribe. Abdullah bin Jassim sent a large, heavily armed force and succeeded in defeating the Al Nuaim. The British political resident in Bahrain supported Qatar's claim and warned Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, the ruler of Bahrain, not to intervene militarily. Indignant over the loss of Zubarah, Hamad ibn Isa imposed a crushing embargo on trade and travel to Qatar.
Drilling of the first oil well began in Dukhan in October 1938 and over a year later, the well struck oil in the Upper Jurassic limestone. Unlike the Bahraini strike, this was similar to Saudi Arabia's Dammam field discovered three years before. Production was halted between 1942 and 1947 because of World War II and its aftermath. The disruption of food supplies caused by the war prolonged a period of economic hardship in Qatar which began in the 1920s with the collapse of the pearl trade and was exacerbated in the early 1930s with the onsets of the Great Depression and the Bahraini embargo. As was the case in previous times of privation, entire families and tribes moved to other parts of the Persian Gulf, leaving many Qatari villages deserted. Abdullah bin Jassim went into debt and groomed his favored second son, Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani, to be his successor in preparation for his retirement. However, Hamad bin Abdullah's death in 1948 led to a succession crisis in which the main candidates were Abdullah bin Jassim's eldest son, Ali bin Abdullah Al Thani, and Hamad bin Abdullah's teenage son, Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani.
Oil exports and payments for offshore rights began in 1949 and marked a turning point in Qatar. The oil revenues would dramatically transform the economy and society and would also provide the focus for domestic disputes and foreign relations. This became apparent to Abdullah bin Jassim when several of his relatives threatened armed opposition if they did not receive increases in their allowances. Aged and anxious, Abdullah bin Jassim turned to the British. He promised to abdicate and agreed to an official British presence in Qatar in exchange for recognition and support of Ali bin Abdullah as ruler in 1949.
Under British tutelage, the 1950s witnessed the development of government structures and public services. Ali bin Abdullah was at first reluctant to share power, which had centered in his household, with an infant bureaucracy run and staffed mainly by outsiders. Ali bin Abdullah's increasing financial difficulties and inability to control striking oil workers and obstreperous sheikhs led him to succumb to British pressure. The first official budget was drawn up by a British adviser in 1953. By 1954 there were forty-two Qatari government employees.
Large numbers of protests against the British and the ruling family occurred during the 1950s. One of the largest protests took place in 1956; it drew 2,000 participants, most of whom were high-ranking Qataris allied with Arab nationalists and dissatisfied oil workers. During another protest which took place in August 1956, the participants waved Egyptian flags and chanted anti-colonialism slogans. In October 1956, protesters tried to sabotage oil pipelines in the Persian Gulf by destroying the pipelines with a bulldozer. These were major impetuses to the development of the British-run police force which was established by the British in 1949. The demonstrations led Ali bin Abdullah to invest the police with his personal authority and support. This was a significant reversal of his previous reliance on his retainers and Bedouin fighters.
Public services developed slowly during the 1950s. The first telephone exchange opened in 1953, the first desalination plant in 1954, and the first power plant in 1957. Also built in this period were a dock, a customs warehouse, an airstrip, and a police headquarters. In the 1950s, 150 adult males of the ruling family received grants from the government. Sheikhs also received land and government positions. This mollified them as long as oil revenues increased. However, when revenues declined in the late 1950s, Ali bin Abdullah could not handle the family pressures this engendered. Discontent was fueled by his residence in Switzerland, extravagant spending, and hunting trips in Pakistan, especially among those who were excluded from the regime's largesse (non-Al Thani Qataris) and among other branches of Al Thani who desired more privileges. Seniority and proximity to the sheikh determined the size of allowances.
Succumbing to family pressures and poor health, Ali bin Abdullah abdicated in 1960. Instead of handing power over to Khalifa bin Hamad, who had been named heir apparent in 1948, he made his son, Ahmad bin Ali, ruler. Nonetheless, Khalifa bin Hamad gained considerable power as heir apparent and deputy ruler, in large part because Ahmad bin Ali spent much time outside the country. One of his first acts was to increase funding for the sheikhs at the expense of development projects and social services. In addition to allowances, adult male Al Thani were given government positions. This added to the anti-regime resentment already felt by, among others, oil workers, low-ranking Al Thani, dissident sheikhs, and some leading government officials. These individuals formed the National Unity Front in response to a fatal shooting of a protester on 19 April 1963 by one of Sheikh Ahmad bin Ali's nephews. While the Saudi monarch was at the ruler's palace on 20 April 1963, a demonstration occurred in front of the building. Police fired and killed three demonstrators, prompting the National Unity Front to organize a general strike on 21 April. The strike lasted around two weeks, and most public services were affected.
The group made a statement that week where it listed 35 of its demands to the government entailing less authority for the ruling family; protection for oil workers; recognition of trade unions; voting rights for citizens and the Arabization of the leadership. Ahmed bin Ali rejected most of these demands and moved to arrest and detain fifty of the most prominent National Unity Front members and sympathizers without trial in early May. The government also instituted some reforms in response to the movements. This included the provision of land and loans to poor farmers, instituting a policy of preferential hiring of Qatari citizens, and the election of a municipal council.
The infrastructure, foreign labor force, and bureaucracy continued to grow in the 1960s, largely under the instruction of Khalifa bin Hamad. There were also some early attempts at diversifying Qatar's economic base, most notably with the establishment of a cement factory, a national fishing company, and small-scale agriculture. An official gazette was first published in 1961, and in 1962, a nationality law was introduced. No cabinets existed during this period, however, British and Egyptian advisers helped establish a number of governmental departments, such as the Department of Agriculture and a Department of Labor and Social Affairs.
In 1968, Britain announced its plans of withdrawing its military commitments east of Suez (including those in force with Qatar) in the proceeding three years. Because of the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms' vulnerability and small size, the rulers of Bahrain, Qatar and the Trucial Coast contemplated forming a federation after the British withdrawal. The federation was first proposed in February 1968, when the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai announced their intention to form a coalition, extending an invitation to other Gulf states to join. Later that month, in a summit meeting attended by the rulers of Bahrain, Qatar and the Trucial Coast, the government of Qatar proposed the formation of a federation of Arab Emirates to be governed by a higher council composed of nine rulers. This proposal was accepted and a declaration of union was approved. There were, however, several disagreements between the rulers on matters such as the location of the capital, the drafting of the constitution and the distribution of ministries.
The rulers remained divided on multiple issues despite Khalifa bin Hamad's election as chairman of the Temporary Federal Council in July 1968 and the establishment of numerous ministries. Two opposing blocs surfaced soon after the initial proposal, with Qatar and Dubai aligning together to oppose the inclinations of Bahrain and Abu Dhabi. Bahrain, being backed by Abu Dhabi, made efforts to marginalize the other rulers' roles in the union in an attempt to assume a leadership role and thus gain political leverage over their long-standing territorial disputes with Iran. The last meeting took place in October 1969 when Zayed Al Nahyan and Khalifa bin Hamad were elected the first president and prime minister of the federation, respectively. There were stalemates on numerous issues during the meeting, including the position of vice-president, the defense of the federation, and whether a constitution was required. Shortly after the meeting, the Political Agent in Abu Dhabi revealed the British government's interests in the outcome of the session, prompting Qatar and Ras al-Khaimah to withdraw from the federation over perceived foreign interference in internal affairs. The federation was consequently disbanded despite efforts by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Britain to reinvigorate discussions.
Ahmad bin Ali subsequently promulgated a provisional constitution in April 1970 which declared Qatar an independent Arab Islamic state with the Sharia as its basic law. Khalifa bin Hamad was appointed prime minister in May. The first Council of Ministers was sworn in on 1 January 1970 and seven of its ten members were Al Thani. Khalifa bin Hamad's argument prevailed with regard to the federation proposal.
Qatar declared its independence on 1 September 1971 and became an independent state on 3 September. When Ahmad bin Ali issued the formal announcement from his Swiss villa instead of from his palace in Doha, many Qataris were convinced that it was time for a change in leadership. On 22 February 1972, Khalifa bin Hamad deposed Ahmad bin Ali when he was on a hunting trip in Iran. Khalifa bin Hamad had the tacit support of the Al Thani and Britain and also had the political, financial and military support of Saudi Arabia.
In contrast to his predecessor's policies, Khalifa bin Hamad cut family allowances and increased spending on social programs, including housing, health, education, and pensions. In addition, he filled many top government posts with close relatives. In 1993, Khalifa bin Hamad remained the Emir, but his son, Hamad bin Khalifa, the heir apparent and minister of defense, had taken over much of the day-to-day running of the country. The two consulted with each other on all matters of importance.
In 1991, Qatar played a significant role in the Gulf War, particularly during the Battle of Khafji in which Qatari tanks rolled through the streets of the town and provided fire support for Saudi Arabian National Guard units which were engaging Iraqi Army troops. Qatar allowed coalition troops from Canada to use the country as an airbase to launch aircraft on CAP duty, and also permitted air forces from the United States and France to operate in its territories.
On 27 June 1995, deputy emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa deposed his father Khalifa in a bloodless coup. An unsuccessful counter-coup was staged in 1996. The emir and his father are now reconciled, although some supporters of the counter-coup remain in prison. The emir announced his intention for Qatar to move toward democracy and permitted more liberal press and municipal elections as a precursor to expected parliamentary elections. A new constitution was approved via public referendum in April 2003 and came into effect in June 2005. Economic, social, and democratic reforms occurred in the proceeding years. In 2003, a woman was appointed to the cabinet as minister of education.
Qatar and Bahrain have had disputes over the ownership of Hawar Islands since the mid-20th century. In 2001, the International Court of Justice awarded Bahrain sovereignty over Hawar Islands while allotting Qatar sovereignty over smaller disputed islands and the Zubarah region in mainland Qatar. During the trial, Qatar provided the court with 82 forged documents to substantiate their claims of sovereignty over the territories in question. These claims were withdrawn at a later stage after Bahrain discovered the forgeries.
In 2003, Qatar served as the US Central Command headquarters and one of the main launching sites of the invasion of Iraq. In March 2005, a suicide bombing killed a British teacher at the Doha Players Theatre, shocking the country, which had not previously experienced acts of terrorism. The bombing was carried out by Omar Ahmed Abdullah Ali, an Egyptian resident in Qatar who had suspected ties to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In June 2013, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa stepped down as emir and transferred leadership to his son and heir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
As a means to manage the revenue gained from LNG sales, the Qatar Investment Authority was established in 2005. In 2008, the government launched Qatar National Vision 2030, which provides a framework for Qatar's long-term development as well as identifying threats and solutions.
Qatar played a role in the revolutionary wave of demonstrations, protests and civil wars in the Arab world collectively known as the Arab Spring. Having shifted from its traditional diplomatic role as a mediator, Qatar moved to support several transitional states and upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa.
During the initial months of the Arab Spring, the country's most extensive media network, Al Jazeera, helped mobilize Arab support and shaped the narratives of protests and demonstrations. Qatar sent hundreds of ground troops to support the National Transitional Council during the 2011 Libyan Civil War. The troops were primarily military advisers, and were sometimes labelled as "mercenaries" by the media. Qatar also participated in the aerial campaign alongside several other coalition members.
Qatar has taken a proactive role in the Syrian Civil War, which began in Spring of 2011. In 2012, Qatar announced they would begin arming and bankrolling the opposition. It was further reported that Qatar had funded the Syrian rebellion by "as much as $3 billion" over the first two years of the civil war.
Beginning in 2015, Qatar has participated in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against the Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was deposed in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings.
In March 2014, in protest of Qatar's alleged involvement in financing factions and political parties in ongoing Middle Eastern conflicts, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors to Qatar. The three countries returned their ambassadors in November of that year after an agreement was reached.
On 5 June 2017, a number of countries led by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt (collectively referred to as the 'Quartet') severed ties with Qatar and enacted several punitive measures, such as closing air, land and sea borders to Qatar. Saudi Arabia also halted Qatari involvement in the ongoing war in Yemen. The Quartet justified their actions by alluding to alleged Qatari ties to 'terrorist groups' in the region. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25187 |
Geography of Qatar
Qatar is a peninsula in the east of Arabia, bordering the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia, in a strategic location near major petroleum deposits. Qatar occupies on a peninsula that extends approximately to north into the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Peninsula.
Varying in width between , the land is mainly flat (the highest point is ) and rocky. Notable features include coastal salt pans, elevated limestone formations (the Dukhan anticline) along the west coast under which lies the Dukhan oil field, and massive sand dunes surrounding Khawr al Udayd, an inlet of the Persian Gulf in the southeast known to local English speakers as the Inland Sea.
The peninsula of Qatar is low-lying. Its shape is the surface expression of the Qatar Arch, one of the largest structural characteristics of the Arabian Plate. It is enveloped by loose sand and pebbles broken off the outcropping limestone. Smooth plains are found in the east, where the surface is covered by fine-grained dust. The south and south-west portion of the peninsula mainly comprises sand dunes and salt flats. Hill ranges (called 'jebels') can be found in western Qatar near the Dukhan area and at Jebel Fuwayrit on the northeast coast. Jebel Nakhsh is a notable mountain ridge south of Dukhan and contains substantial deposits of gypsum.
The coastline, which is roughly 700km², is emergent and gently slopes toward the sea. Many flat, low-lying offshore islands are located near the coast and are accompanied by coral reefs. As a result of salt water coming into contact with the low-lying land, many salt flats (known locally as sabkhas) have formed near the coast. The coastline from Mesaieed to Khawr al Udayd is particularly rich in sabkhas. Inland sabkhas can be found in western in Qatar near Dukhan and Sawda Natheel.
A sabkha (salt-flat) ecosystem known as the Dukhan Sabkha is found in the northern section of the Dukhan region in western Qatar. This sabkha, considered the largest inland sabkha in the Persian Gulf, runs for approximately 20 km, occupies an area of 73 km², has a width of 2 to 4 km and a depth of between 6 and 7 meters. It also accommodates the lowest point of Qatar, at six meters below sea level. Studies suggest that the sabkha is fed by seawater from the Bay of Zekreet, north by approximately 3 km.
The long summer (May through September) is characterized by intense heat and alternating dryness and humidity, with temperatures reaching . Temperatures are moderate from November to April, ranging from as high as in April to as low as in January. Rainfall is negligible, averaging per year, confined to the winter months, and falling in brief, sometimes heavy storms that often flood the small ravines and the usually dry wadis.
Sudden, violent dust storms occasionally descend on the peninsula, blotting out the sun, causing wind damage, and temporarily disrupting transport and other services.
The scarcity of rainfall and the limited underground water, most of which has such a high mineral content that it is unsuitable for drinking or irrigation, restricted the population and the extent of agricultural and industrial development the country could support until desalination projects began. Although water continues to be provided from underground sources, most is obtained by desalination of seawater.
Although most of the country consists of sand deserts, a small part of the country houses different vegetation zones, where trees, reeds and shrubs like tamarind, phragmites, and mace can grow. These regions are mostly to the east, near the coast. The inherent limiting factor for vegetation growth is water availability. Certain geographical features partially alleviate this water scarcity, such as rawdas, which are large depressions found on the soil surface and which help recharge the aquifers. As these sites constitute the most easily obtainable sources of shallow groundwater, they are also among the areas most abundant in wild vegetation.
In the south, where groundwater is exceedingly scarce, vegetation can found growing in wadis (dry river valleys) fed by run-off from nearby hills and in rawdas.
There are 21 species of mammals that have been recorded in Qatar. Larger terrestrial mammals such as the Arabian oryx and Arabian gazelle are protected animals and are held in nature reserves. The Arabian gazelle is the only native gazelle species to Qatar and is locally referred to as 'rheem'.
Qatar's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf are rich in marine life. Sea turtles nest en masse on the coastline from Fuwayrit to Ras Laffan. The Ministry of Environment (MME) carries out routine patrols of nesting areas to ensure their conservation. Dugongs are known to congregate off the country's coasts. In the course of a study being carried out in 1986 and 1999 on the Persian Gulf, the largest-ever group sightings were made of more than 600 individuals to the west of Qatar.
Qatar has one land border. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the south. The boundary with Saudi Arabia was settled in 1965 but never demarcated. Qatar's northwest coast is fewer than from the main islands of Bahrain, while the small Hawar Islands of Bahrain are only 1.4 km (0.8 mi) off that coast. The peninsula's northernmost point is Ras Rakan.
"contiguous zone:"
"exclusive economic zone:"
"territorial sea:"
Of the islands belonging to Qatar, Halul is the most important. Lying about east of Doha, it serves as a storage area and loading terminal for oil from the surrounding offshore fields. Hawar and the adjacent islands immediately off the west coast are the subject of a territorial dispute between Qatar and Bahrain.
Based on estimates in 2011 estimates, 5.6% of the land is agricultural. Arable land comprises 1.1%, permanent crops 0.2% and permanent pasture 4.6%. 94.4% of the land was used for other uses. In 2003, of land was irrigated.
Most of Qatar's surface lies on Cenozoic strata. These strata have an abundance of mineral resources, most of which have not yet been exploited, such as limestone and clay. The Upper Dammam Formation in the Middle Eocene period is the most predominant surface layer. It is constituted by limestone and Dolomite. The northern zone of Qatar, which comprises the most significant source of fresh groundwater in the peninsula, primarily draws its water from the Umm Err Radhuma Formation and Rus Formation dating to the Paleocene and Lower Eocene periods, respectively. The Mesozoic strata are the most important layers as they contain petroleum. The first substantial deposit of crude oil was discovered in 1940 in the Jurassic period Arab Formation.
The capital, Doha, is located on the central east coast on a sweeping (if shallow) harbor. Other ports include Umm Said, Al Khawr, and Al Wakrah. Only Doha and Umm Said are capable of handling commercial shipping, although a large port and a terminal for loading natural gas are planned at Ras Laffan Industrial City, north of Al Khawr. Coral reefs and shallow coastal waters make navigation difficult in areas where channels have not been dredged.
Doha is the capital of the country and the major administrative, commercial, and population center. In 1993 it was linked to other towns and development sites by a system of about of paved roads. Doha's international airport has an approximately main runway, capable of receiving all kinds of aircraft.
Historically, settlement distribution in Qatar has mainly been dictated by the presence of obtainable fresh groundwater. Rawdas, which are depressions with shallow groundwater, have typically been the most popular sites of settlement throughout the peninsula. In Qatar's south, where groundwater is exceedingly difficult to obtain, settlement formation was mostly limited to wadis (dry river valleys) fed by run-off from nearby hills and rawdas.
Qatar is currently party to the following international environmental agreements: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25188 |
Demographics of Qatar
Natives of the Arabian Peninsula, many Qataris () are descended from a number of migratory Arab tribes that came to Qatar in the 18th century from mainly the neighboring areas of Nejd and Al-Hasa. Some are descended from Omani tribes. Qatar has about 2.6 million inhabitants as of early 2017, the vast majority of whom (about 92%) live in Doha, the capital. Foreign workers amount to around 88% of the population, with Indians being the largest community numbering around 1,230,000. The treatment of these foreign workers has been heavily criticized in recent years, with living conditions suggested to be exploitative and abusive.
The Qataris are mainly Sunni Muslims. Islam is the official religion, and Islamic jurisprudence is the basis of Qatar's legal system. A significant minority of the population is Hindu. Arabic is the official language and English is the lingua franca of business. Hindi and Urdu are also widely spoken, especially by the South Asian foreign workers. Education is compulsory and free for all citizens 6–16 years old. Qatar has an increasingly high literacy rate.
Qataris can be divided into three ethnic groups: Bedouins, Hadar, and African-origin. Bedouins are descended from the nomads of the Arabian Peninsula. 115,000 Westerners live in Qatar.
A 2011–2014 report by the International Organization for Migration recorded 176,748 Nepali Citizens of Madhesi ethnicity living in Qatar as migrant workers. In 2012 about 7,000 Turkish nationals lived in Qatar and in 2016 about 1,000 Colombian nationals and descendants lived in Qatar.
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook unless otherwise indicated.
Source:
Arabic is the official language of Qatar according to Article 1 of the Constitution.
English is the de facto second language of Qatar, and is very commonly used in business. Because of Qatar's varied ethnic landscape, English has been recognized as the most convenient medium for people of different backgrounds to communicate with each other. The history of English use in the country dates back to the mid-19th and early 20th centuries when the British Empire would frequently draft treaties and agreements with the emirates of the Persian Gulf. One such treaty was the 1916 protectorate treaty signed between Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani and the British representative Percy Cox, under which Qatar would be placed under British administration in exchange for protection. Another agreement drafted in English came in 1932 and was signed between the Qatari government and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. These agreements were mainly facilitated by foreign interpreters due to neither party possessing the required language skills for such complex arrangements. For instance, a translator and native Arabic speaker named A. A. Hilmy interpreted the 1932 agreement for Qatar.
Hindi, Urdu, Tagalog, Bengali, Tamil and Malayalam are commonly used among Asian migrants. In 2015, there were more newspapers being printed by the government in Malayalam than in Arabic or English.
Y-Chromosome DNA Y-DNA represents the male lineage, The Qatari Y-chromosome in large belongs to haplogroup J which comprises two thirds of the total chromosomes
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) represents the female lineage The Qatari mitochondrial DNA shows much more diversity than the Y-DNA lineages, with more than 35% of the lineages showing African ancestry (East African & Subsaharan) & the rest of the lineages being Eurasian. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25189 |
Politics of Qatar
The political system of Qatar is either an absolute monarchy or a constitutional monarchy, with the Emir of Qatar as head of state and head of government. Under the 2003 constitutional referendum it should be a constitutional monarchy. Sharia law is the main source of Qatari legislation.
Sharia law is the main source of Qatari legislation according to Qatar's Constitution. Sharia law is applied to laws pertaining to family law, inheritance, and several criminal acts (including adultery, robbery and murder). In some cases in Sharia-based family courts, a female's testimony is worth half a man's and in some cases a female witness is not accepted at all. Codified family law was introduced in 2006. In practice, Qatar's legal system is a mixture of civil law and Islamic law.
Flogging is used in Qatar as a punishment for alcohol consumption or illicit sexual relations. Article 88 of Qatar's criminal code declares the punishment for adultery is 100 lashes. Adultery is punishable by death when a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man are involved. In 2006, a Filipino woman was sentenced to 100 lashes for adultery. In 2010, at least 18 people (mostly foreign nationals) were sentenced to flogging of between 40 and 100 lashes for offences related to “illicit sexual relations” or alcohol consumption. In 2011, at least 21 people (mostly foreign nationals) were sentenced to floggings of between 30 and 100 lashes for offences related to “illicit sexual relations” or alcohol consumption. In 2012, six expatriates were sentenced to floggings of either 40 or 100 lashes. Only Muslims considered medically fit were liable to have such sentences carried out. It is unknown if the sentences were implemented. More recently in April 2013, a Muslim expatriate was sentenced to 40 lashes for alcohol consumption. In June 2014, a Muslim expatriate was sentenced to 40 lashes for consuming alcohol and driving under the influence. Judicial corporal punishment is common in Qatar due to the Hanbali interpretation of Sharia Law.
In 2016 Saudi Instagram star and model King Luxy was arrested in Qatar for allegedly being homosexual. He spent 2 months in custody before he was released.
Stoning is a legal punishment in Qatar. Apostasy is a crime punishable by the death penalty in Qatar. Blasphemy is punishable by up to seven years in prison and proselytizing can be punished by up to 10 years in prison. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by the death penalty for Muslims.
Alcohol consumption is partially legal in Qatar, some five-star luxury hotels are allowed to sell alcohol to their non-Muslim customers. Muslims are not allowed to consume alcohol in Qatar and Muslims caught consuming alcohol are liable to flogging or deportation. Non-Muslim expatriates can obtain a permit to purchase alcohol for personal consumption. The Qatar Distribution Company (a subsidiary of Qatar Airways) is permitted to import alcohol and pork; it operates the one and only liquor store in the country, which also sells pork to holders of liquor licences. Qatari officials have also indicated a willingness to allow alcohol in "fan zones" at the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Until recently, restaurants on the Pearl-Qatar (a man-made island near Doha) were allowed to serve alcoholic drinks. In December 2011, however, restaurants on the Pearl were told to stop selling alcohol. No explanation was given for the ban. Speculation about the reason includes the government's desire to project a more pious image in advance of the country's first election of a royal advisory body and rumours of a financial dispute between the government and the resort's developers.
In 2014, Qatar launched a modesty campaign to remind tourists of the modest dress code. Female tourists are advised not to wear leggings, miniskirts, sleeveless dresses and short or tight clothing in public. Men are advised against wearing only shorts and singlets.
As of 2014, certain provisions of the Qatari Criminal Code allows punishments such as flogging and stoning to be imposed as criminal sanctions. The UN Committee Against Torture found that these practices constituted a breach of the obligations imposed by the UN Convention Against Torture. Qatar retains the death penalty, mainly for threats against national security.
Under the provisions of Qatar's sponsorship law, sponsors have the unilateral power to cancel workers' residency permits, deny workers' ability to change employers, report a worker as "absconded" to police authorities, and deny permission to leave the country. As a result, sponsors may restrict workers’ movements and workers may be afraid to report abuses or claim their rights. According to the ITUC, the visa sponsorship system allows the exaction of forced labour by making it difficult for a migrant worker to leave an abusive employer or travel overseas without permission. Qatar also does not maintain wage standards for its immigrant labour. Qatar commissioned international law firm DLA Piper to produce a report investigating the immigrant labour system. In May 2014 DLA Piper released over 60 recommendations for reforming the kafala system including the abolition of exit visas and the introduction of a minimum wage which Qatar has pledged to implement.
Cases of ill-treatment of immigrant labour have been observed. The Nepalese ambassador to Qatar, Maya Kumari Sharma, described the emirate as an "open jail".
Qatar does not have national occupational health standards or guidelines, and workplace injuries are the third highest cause of accidental deaths. In May 2012, Qatari officials declared their intention to allow the establishment of an independent trade union. Qatar also announced it will scrap its sponsor system for foreign labour, which requires that all foreign workers be sponsored by local employers, who in some cases hold workers' passports and can deny them permission to change jobs.
In Qatar, the ruling Al Thani (ال ثاني) family continued to hold power following the declaration of independence in 1971. The head of state is the Emir, and the right to rule Qatar is passed on within the Al Thani family. Politically, Qatar is evolving from a traditional society into a modern welfare state. Government departments have been established to meet the requirements of social and economic progress. The Basic Law of Qatar 1970 institutionalized local customs rooted in Qatar's conservative Islamic heritage, granting the Emir preeminent power. The Emir's role is influenced by continuing traditions of consultation, rule by consensus, and the citizen's right to appeal personally to the Emir. The Emir, while directly accountable to no one, cannot violate the Sharia (Islamic law) and, in practice, must consider the opinions of leading notables and the religious establishment. Their position was institutionalized in the Advisory Council, an appointed body that assists the Emir in formulating policy. There is no electoral system. No Political parties exist and none can be formed.
The influx of expatriate Arabs has introduced ideas that call into question the tenets of Qatar's traditional society, but there has been no serious challenge to Al Thani rule.
In February 1972, the heir apparent and Prime Minister, Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani, deposed his cousin, Emir Ahmad, and assumed power. This move was supported by the key members of Al Thani and took place without violence or signs of political unrest.
On 27 June 1995, the heir apparent, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, deposed his father, Emir Khalifa, in a bloodless coup. Emir Hamad and his father reconciled in 1996. Increased freedom of the press followed, and the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television channel (founded late 1996) is widely regarded as an example of an uncensored source of news in Arab countries. However, the network has been met with negative responses by the governments of many Arab states.
On 25 June 2013 Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani became the Emir of Qatar after his father Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani handed over power in a televised speech.
Source: Ministry of Interior
The Consultative Assembly ("Majlis as-Shura") has 35 appointed members with only consultative tasks. However, the 2003 Constitution of Qatar calls for a 45-member elected Legislature, which is to be made up of 30 elected representatives and 15 appointed by the Emir. In 2006, Prime Minister Al Thani – then the Deputy PM – announced that elections would be held in 2007.Due to voting laws, those who did not have family in the country pre-1930 were not allowed to vote. This excluded 75% of the population. However, only a legislative council to review the subject was created that year. The actual elections were postponed several times. , the elections were planned to be held in 2019.
Qatar held a constitutional referendum in 2003, which was overwhelmingly supported. The first municipal elections with men and women voters and candidates were held in 1999 Central Municipal Council. The first legislative election, for two thirds of the legislative council's 45 seats, were planned for 2016. In June 2016 they were effectively postponed to at least 2019.
Suffrage is currently limited to municipal elections and two thirds of the seats in the legislative council, with the voting age set at 18. Expatriate residents are excluded, as are the vast number of residents who are prevented from applying for citizenship. The elected Municipal Council has no executive powers but may offer advice to the Minister.
The Qatari authorities keep a relatively tight rein on freedom of expression. The Freedom in the World 2015 report by Freedom House lists Qatar as "Not Free", and on a 1–7 scale (1 being the most "free") rates the country a 6 for political rights and 5 for civil liberties. , the Democracy Index describes Qatar as an "authoritarian regime" with a score of 3.18 out of ten, and it ranks 136th out of the 167 countries covered.
There are 8 municipalities (baladiyat, singular - baladiyah) of Qatar; Ad Dawhah, Al Daayen, Al Khor, Al Wakrah, Al Rayyan, Al-Shahaniya, Al Shamal, and Umm Salal. Each municipality assumes administrative responsibilities over zones (cities and districts) within their boundaries.
On October 10, 2005, for the first time, Qatar was elected to a two-year term on the UN Security Council for 2006–2007.
According to BBC, in April 2006 Qatar announced that it will give US$50 million (£28 million) to the new Hamas-led Palestinian government.
In May 2006, Qatar pledged more than $100 million to Hurricane Katrina relief to colleges and universities in Louisiana affected by the hurricane. Some of this money was also distributed to families looking to repair damaged homes by Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, Inc.
With the advent of the Arab Spring in 2011, Qatar has been seen as meddling in the affairs of other Arab countries, supporting insurgents. This policy has led to rebukes by neighboring Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates., who also support radical groups and insurgents all over the Middle East. Qatar joined NATO operations in Libya and reportedly armed Libyan opposition groups. It also became a major provider of money and support for rebel groups in the Syrian civil war. With close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The government and royal family of Qatar owns the Al Jazeera television network. The Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalfia provided a loan of QAD 500 million (USD 137 million) to start the channel. The network has been accused of being biased and taking an active role in the affairs of other countries specifically during the Arab Spring in 2011. Numerous countries have complained about biased reporting in support of Qatar policy.
Most of the developed countries (plus Brunei and Indonesia) are exempt from visa requirements. Citizens of exempted countries can also request a joint visa that allows them to travel to Oman as well.
Qatar is member of ABEDA, AFESD, AL, AMF, ESCWA, FAO, G-77, GCC, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICRM, IDB, IFAD, IFRCS, IHO (pending member), ILO, IMF, International Maritime Organization, Inmarsat, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, ISO (correspondent), ITU, NAM, OAPEC, OIC, OPCW, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WCO, WHO, WIPO, WMO, and WTO.
Qatar may suffer significant geopolitical losses if there is a global transition to renewable energy. It is ranked 152 out of 156 countries in the index of Geopolitical Gains and Losses after energy transition (GeGaLo). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25190 |
Economy of Qatar
The economy of Qatar is one of the richest in the world based on GDP per capita, ranking between fifth and seventh on world rankings for 2015 and 2016 data compiled by the World Bank, United Nations, and IMF. The country's economy has grown despite sanctions by neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Petroleum and natural gas are the cornerstones of Qatar's economy and account for more than 70% of total government revenue, more than 60% of gross domestic product, and roughly 85% of export earnings. Qatar has the world's third largest proven natural gas reserve and is the second-largest exporter of natural gas.
Before the emergence of petrol-based industry, Qatar was a poor pearl diving country. The exploration of oil and gas fields began in 1939. In 1973, oil production and revenues increased dramatically, moving Qatar out of the ranks of the world's poorest countries and providing it with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.
Qatar's economy was in a downturn from 1982 to 1989. OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) quotas on crude oil production, the lower price for oil, and the generally unpromising outlook on international markets reduced oil earnings. In turn, the Qatari government's spending plans had to be cut to match lower income. The resulting recessionary local business climate caused many firms to lay off expatriate staff. With the economy recovering in the 1990s, expatriate populations, particularly from Egypt and South Asia, have grown again.
Oil production will not long remain at peak levels of 500,000 barrels (80,000 m³) per day, as oil fields are projected to be mostly depleted by 2023. However, large natural gas reserves have been located off Qatar's northeast coast. These offshore gas fields also may contain significant oil and condensate reserves. For example, the state owned Qatar Petroleum found 2 offshore oil fields in the 1960s. At the time production was too expensive. However, technological development led to production over 30 years later.
The gas condensate can be refined to usual oil products in specialised refineries. The costs are a bit higher but it is normal today for companies to use the gas condensate too. Oil offshore production in 2008 for PS-2 and PS-3 blocks was about 31.1 million barrels (84,995 b/d). Joint Ventures facilities (PS-1, ALK, K & A): Combined oil production from these three joint venture production facilities in 2008 was 57.4 million barrels (156,873 b/d). Like with gas fields there are more offshore blocks which need to be explored and could increase the oil output. So the 500,000 bpd peak and a depletion in 2023 is delayed. With higher oil prices it is expected that the offshore exploration of oil and/or natural gas fields will go on. Oil production in June 2016 seemed to be around 670,000 barrels per day, a bit down from February 2016 production of 692,000 barrels per day. Taking all liquids together Qatar is already far beyond a million barrels per day.
Qatar's proved reserves of gas are the third-largest in the world, exceeding 7000 km³ (250 trillion cubic feet). The economy was boosted in 1991 by completion of the $1.5-billion Phase I of North Field gas development. In 1996, the Qatargas project began exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Japan. Further phases of North Field gas development costing billions of dollars are in various stages of planning and development.
Qatar's heavy industrial projects, all based in Umm Said, include a refinery with a 50,000 barrels (8,000 m³) per day capacity, a fertilizer plant for urea and ammonia, a steel plant, and a petrochemical plant. All these industries use gas for fuel. Most are joint ventures between European and Japanese firms and the state-owned Qatar General Petroleum Corporation (QGPC). The U.S. is the major equipment supplier for Qatar's oil and gas industry, and U.S. companies are playing a major role in North Field gas development.
890-
Qatar pursues a vigorous program of "Qatarization", under which all joint venture industries and government departments strive to move Qatari nationals into positions of greater authority. Growing numbers of foreign-educated Qataris, including many educated in the U.S., are returning home to assume key positions formerly occupied by expatriates. In order to control the influx of expatriate workers, Qatar has tightened the administration of its foreign manpower programs over the past several years. Security is the principal basis for Qatar's strict entry and immigration rules and regulations.
The government considers industry to be an integral part of its plan to diversify the economy and maximize its huge natural gas reserves, which serve as the primary feedstock for the sector. Accordingly, careful planning has gone into industrial development. With an eye towards exports, development has been clustered around the ports of Ras Laffan Industrial City and Mesaieed Industrial Area, which are key centers of energy. The result has seen considerable growth over the years. Industries Qatar (IQ), a producer of petrochemicals, fertilizers and steel, is a regional powerhouse, surpassed only in size by Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), the Middle East's largest chemical producer. In 2007 the manufacturing sector made the third-largest contribution to GDP among non-oil and gas sectors, equivalent to about 7.5% of GDP. Industry in Qatar is regulated by the Ministry of Business and Trade.
Petrochemicals and fertilizers supply make up a large portion of the industrial base, along with steel and other construction materials, through Qatar Steel and Qatar Primary Material Company (QPMC). Indeed, over the past few years, demand for construction materials experienced a major surge as the development boom swept the Persian Gulf region. But the global financial crisis has put a significant dent in demand in the region, as project credit lines dry up and investor sentiment remains cautious. The crisis has in fact impacted the whole of the industrial sector – IQ saw its net profit drop in the fourth quarter of 2008 more than 90% over the same period the previous year. But in relative terms, the sector has fared better than most and IQ still managed to post an annual profit of $2bn. Large profit chunks from years past have been channeled into capital investments, which should help the sector ride out the storm. IQ, for example, is pushing several major expansion projects, worth almost $6bn, ahead. Qatar is expected to be one of the fastest growing economies in 2009 – the hope is it will be enough to keep the industrial sector on an upward trajectory.
The Qatari banking sector managed to escape the direct impact of the global subprime fallout, but was not altogether unscathed by its aftershocks. Overall, it was the best performing of the Gulf Cooperation Council markets in the last quarter of 2008 and most banks posted substantial profits for 2008. But the sector is also facing issues of liquidity, declining customer confidence and a forced reluctance to lend. In a bid to strengthen the banks’ positions, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) announced in early 2009 that it was willing to take a 10-20% stake in any interested local listed banks by way of a capital injection, although this was later reduced to 5% stakes and an additional 5% at the end of 2009.
The Qatari government also announced in March 2009 that it was planning to buy the investment portfolio of the banks in the hope this would encourage them to continue lending. Cautious sector sentiment has also been compounded by the Qatar Central Bank's (QCB's) lending restrictions, which demand a loan-to-deposit ratio of 90%. Given the high level of integration between Qatar's economy and the Persian Gulf region, as well as the wider world, a slowdown in business and banking activity seemed inevitable. Nevertheless, Qatar's banking sector has been faring relatively well, considering the strife experienced in other countries, and insiders are confident that activity will return to its previous brisk pace in the second half of 2009 as confidence slowly rebuilds around the globe.
The International Monetary Fund in its spring assessment 2019 said that Qatar has “successfully absorbed the shocks” of the blockade imposed in 2017 and the dropped oil prices from 2014 to 2016. S&P Global had marked Qatar's outlook to negative in 2017, but changed it to stable in 2019.
In August 2019, Qatar Central Bank stated that the country's economic growth will see a boost over the next two years amid expectations of stable oil prices and continued strong exports. The GDP is expected to grow at an average rate of 2.8% between 2018 and 2020, with the budget surplus falling to 4.35 billion riyals in 2019, from a surplus of 15.1 billion riyals in 2018.
The Islamic finance sector enjoyed increased activity in 2008 and is expected to continue to grow into 2009 as more sophisticated financial instruments spark the interest of investors. In addition to Islamic banks, such as Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), Qatar International Islamic Bank (QIIB) and newcomer Masraf Al Rayyan, conventional banks have also been entering the sharia-compliant sector and are coming to view an Islamic subsidiary as a virtual necessity in order to maintain market standing. Islamic banks currently take the lion's share of sharia-compliant business, though the conventional banks are working hard to take a greater share of market activity. Both Islamic banks and Islamic subsidiaries did remarkably well in the first three quarters of 2008, during which overall financing activity increased by 70.6% compared to the same period in the previous year. The global financial crisis slowed this growth though. Poor market conditions have contributed to a marked slowdown of Islamic bond, or sukuk, activity in 2008 throughout the Persian Gulf. But other segments, such as Islamic insurance, or takaful, have not seen a similar downturn. Overall, challenges to further growth remain, including a lack of qualified staff to meet the growing demand for sharia-compliant banking services.
The stock market capitalisation of listed companies in Qatar was valued at $95,487 million in 2007 by the World Bank. As 2008 drew to a close, no capital markets around the globe, including Qatar's, were immune to the effects of the sub-prime fallout. That said, there is considerable optimism that Qatar's bourse, the Doha Securities Market (DSM), will remain relatively resilient to the ongoing international turbulence. It has followed the same peak-trough trajectory as many others around the globe, hitting record highs in mid-2008, before diving in late 2008 and early 2009. Between December 2006 and July 2008 the DSM Index rose about 117% before the global financial crisis wiped out most of these gains. In the first few months of 2009, the DSM lost about 40% of its value. In an effort to stave off further losses, the government announced in February 2009 that it would step in to buy up shares of troubled banks amounting to about 10% of the market's capitalisation. The move improved investor optimism and is hoped to prevent the market from falling further. The proposal to create a single unified regulator as early as 2010 to oversee all banking and financial services is viewed as another promising development that will transform the financial sector for the better.
Under the ambitious five-year development plan of the Qatar Tourism and Exhibitions Authority (QTEA), the government aimed to boost the number of visitors from 964,000 as of 2007 to 1.5m by 2010. The funding required to meet this goal was present in sufficient amounts; in 2008 the state allocated some $17bn for tourism development through 2014, most of which was allocated towards hotels, exhibition space and infrastructure. In order to keep up with a rising number of visitors, the government set a goal of increasing hotel capacity 400% by 2012. In addition to financial support, the government has also worked to ease business regulations in a bid to increase private sector activity. A major aspect of expansion plans is the Hamad International Airport, which will have the capacity to handle up to 24m passengers upon the completion of the first phase in 2012.
Other niche tourism segments receiving special focus include cultural tourism on the back of the high publicity opening of Doha's Museum of Islamic Art, and sports tourism, initially spurred by the Asian Games, to which Qatar played host in 2006. The government appears to be committed to long-term expansion plans, but challenges nevertheless remain, including effective marketing to the international community as well as the effect of the financial crisis on global tourism appetite.
With a fast-expanding population and substantial economic growth over the past decade, a reliable and extensive transportation network is becoming increasingly necessary within Qatar. So far the government, the primary transport developer, has done well in terms of keeping up with demand for new transportation options. In 2008 the Public Works Authority (Ashghal), one of the bodies that oversees infrastructure development, underwent a major reorganisation in order to streamline and modernise the authority in preparation for major project expansions across all segments in the near future. Ashghal works in tandem with the Urban Planning and Development Authority (UPDA), the body that designed the transportation master plan, instituted in March 2006 and running to 2025.
As driving is the primary mode of transport in Qatar, the road network is a major focus of the plan. Project highlights in this segment include the multibillion-dollar Doha Expressway and the Qatar Bahrain Causeway, which will connect Qatar to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and is considered a milestone in regional interconnectivity. Mass-transit options, such as a Doha metro, light-rail system and more extensive bus networks, are also under development to ease road congestion. In addition, the railway system is being significantly expanded and could eventually form an integral part of a GCC-wide network linking all the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. The airport, too, is expanding capacity to keep up with rising visitor numbers. The New Doha International Airport is one of the largest projects in Qatar today and will boast a capacity of 50m passengers upon completion in 2015. Finally, port infrastructure is seen as an integral part of Qatar's economic development as it focuses on LNG and industrial exports. The port at Mesaieed is undergoing expansion. While the financial crisis may present challenges to infrastructure development, once all projects are completed Qatar will have one of the most advanced and modern transport infrastructures in the region.
Qatar is now the richest country in the world, on a per person basis. Current GDP per capita registered a world record-breaking peak growth of 1,156% in the 70s. This became quickly unsustainable and Qatar's current GDP per capita contracted 53% in the 80s. But rising global oil demand helped current GDP per capita to expand 94% in the 90s. Diversification is still a long-term issue for this over-exposed economy.
This table is of Qatar's gross domestic product at market prices as estimated by the International Monetary Fund with figures in millions of Qatari Rials.
For purchasing power parity comparisons only, the US Dollar is exchanged at 3.67 Qatari Riyals. Mean wages were $59.99 per man-hour in 2009.
In February 2012, the International Bank of Qatar reported that GDP grew by 19.9% in 2011, but estimated that 2012 growth would slow to 9.8%
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017. Inflation below 2% is in green.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Qatar's economic performance improved in 2018 despite the economic embargo. The GDP growth is expected to increase to 2.6% in 2019 from 2.2% in 2018.
12910128/Economic_Diversification_in_the_Arab_Gulf_States
https://www.academia.edu/12910128/Economic_Diversification_in_the_Arab_Gulf_States
https://www.academia.edu/32219974/Economic_Inclination_of_Qatar_Towards_Asian_Region_With_Special_Reference_To_India | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25191 |
Telecommunications in Qatar
Telephones - main lines in use:
327,000 (2012)
Telephones - mobile cellular:
2,600,000 (2012)
Telephone system:
modern system centered in Doha
"domestic:"
NA
"international:"
tropospheric scatter to Bahrain; microwave radio relay to Saudi Arabia and UAE; submarine cable to Bahrain and UAE; satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (1 Atlantic Ocean and 1 Indian Ocean) and 1 Arabsat
Radio broadcast stations:
AM 6, FM 5, shortwave 1 (1998)
Radios:
256,000 (1997)
Television broadcast stations:
1 (plus three repeaters) (1997)
Televisions:
230,000 (1997)
As of 2015, there are two ISPs in Qatar: Ooredoo (formerly Q-Tel) and Vodafone Qatar. There were 563,800 internet users in 2009. The country code (top level domain) is QA. ADSL was launched in 2002 in Qatar by Ooredoo. There were 25,000 ADSL users in 2005.
A 2015 report by the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development ranked Qatar in first place among the developing countries by their respective percentage population using internet. The country also ranked second globally for percentage of households with internet. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25192 |
Transport in Qatar
This article is about transport in Qatar.
In 2002, the Qatari government launched Mowasalat, a company 100% owned by the government, managed and operated by the state authorities to ensure the smooth provision of "integrated ground transport services" for the entire country. Previously, 3,000 privately owned orange taxicabs used to rule the streets of Qatar but the government took them off the roads as they saw them as a threat to the new Mowasalat taxis. There has been much controversy over this move, as it is now very hard to find a taxi in Doha.
Public buses now service over 35 routes covering most locations of Doha with minimal fares making public transport in Qatar an inexpensive solution to the problems of rush hours and parking difficulties.
Mowasalat, under the brand-name 'Karwa', now operates more than 3,000 new taxi sedans including the recently acquired airport taxis with spacious cabins using the 2007 Ford Freestars, and more than 120 public buses, school buses and private-hire coaches. In 2009, the Mowasalat created a world record for the largest parade of buses numbering 300 in all. In addition, its Doha Limousine Service has 100 standard limousines and 200 Jaguar XJ VIP units that are mostly placed at the Doha International Airport and at major hotels.
However, those without personal transportation still face difficulties to move around since the number of taxis is much lower than the actual need of the population. All buses operate only on specific assigned lines based at the Central Bus Stations at Al-Ghanem area of the old city.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications stated that Public bus ridership has increased by 40% between 2015 and 2018.
In August 2008 Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment created a joint venture with Deutsche Bahn International of Germany, Qatar Railway Development Company to plan a railway network in Qatar.
On 22 November 2009 Deutsche Bahn and Qatari signed a memorandum of Agreement to build high-speed railway lines and underground transport networks in Qatar and Bahrain. This agreement has never been executed.
The Qatar Railways Development Company (QRDC) was created in 2011, and, soon after this, it has been decided that Qatar Rail will be the sole owner and manager of Qatar's rail network and will be responsible for the design, construction, commissioning, operation and maintenance of the entire rail network and systems. However,
Qatar Rail consist of:
The total length of the Qatar Rail network consist of approximately:
In June 2013, Qatar Rail awarded four design and build contracts worth approximately $8.2 billion for phase one of the Doha metro. The project will include four rail lines and an underground section in the center of the capital Doha and will link stadiums for the 2022 World Cup soccer tournament. The contracts were for the Red Line North project, the Red Line South project, the Green Line project and another one to design and build the metro's major stations. The projects are expected to employ more than 20,000 workers at its peak, construction is scheduled to begin later this year for completion by 2019. Construction of the metro was originally planned to start in the first quarter of 2010.
Doha Metro's Red Line became the first line officially opened to the public on 8 May, 2019. This was followed by the launch of the Gold Line on 21 November, 2019, and the opening of the Green Line on 10 December 2019.
Most of the main roads in this tiny country have been updated to multilane, double carriageway motorways, including the following:
Crude Oil 235 km; Natural Gas 400 km
Hamad International Airport is the only international passenger airport in Qatar. There are five other airfields in the country, three paved, two unpaved. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25193 |
Qatar Armed Forces
The Qatar Armed Forces are the military forces of Qatar. Since 2015, Qatar has implemented mandatory military conscription with an average of 2000 graduates per year. As of 2010, Qatar's defence expenditures added up to a total of $1.913 billion, about 1.5% of the national GDP, according to the SIPRI. Qatar has recently signed defence pacts with the United States in 2002 and 2013 and with the United Kingdom, as well as with France earlier, in 1994. Qatar plays an active role in the collective defense efforts of the Gulf Cooperation Council; the other five members are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, and Oman. Qatar also hosts the largest American military base in the Middle East and in 2017 inaugurated a military attache office in Washington.
SIPRI states that Qatar's plans to transform and significantly enlarge its armed forces have accelerated in 2014, and in 2010-14 Qatar was the 46th largest arms importer in the world. Orders in 2013 for 562 tanks and 75 self-propelled guns from Germany were followed in 2014 by a number of other contracts, including 34 combat helicopters and 13 AEW aircraft from the USA, and 6 tanker aircraft from Spain. As of 2016, Qatar maintains advanced anti air and anti ship capabilities with deliveries of Patriot PAC-3 MSE Batteries, Exocet MM40 Block 3 and Marte ER anti-ship missiles.
The armed forces were founded in 1971 after the country gained independence from the United Kingdom.
Qatar took part in the Gulf War of 1991, with a battalion at the Battle of Khafji. It also hosted the 614th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Doha. The Canadian Air Task Group with 26 CF-18s was also based in Doha, Qatar flying combat missions during the Gulf War.
In July 2008, the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency announced Qatar’s official request for logistics support, training, and associated equipment and services. The total value of the support arrangements could be as high as $400 million.
In March 2011, Qatar announced the participation of its Air Force in the enforcement of the Libyan no-fly zone.
According to Aljazeera news, in December 2016 Qatar deployed 1,000 ground troops in Yemen to fight in behalf of the ousted president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, Qatar Armed Forces soldiers, backed by 200 armoured vehicles and 30 Apache helicopters, head to Yemen's Marib province.
The Armed Forces of Qatar have suffered 4 killed and 2 wounded during the deployment in Yemen.
The Qatar Emiri Land Force is the largest branch of the Qatar Armed Forces.
Initially outfitted with British weaponry, Qatar shifted much of its procurement to France during the 1980s in response to French efforts to develop closer relations. The tank battalion was equipped with French-built AMX-30 main battle tanks, before later being replaced by German Leopard 2A7's. Other armored vehicles include French AMX-10P APCs and the French VAB, adopted as the standard wheeled combat vehicle. The artillery unit has a few French 155mm self-propelled howitzers. The principal antitank weapons are French Milan and HOT wire-guided missiles.
Qatar had also illicitly acquired a few Stinger shoulder-fired SAMs, possibly from Afghan rebel groups, at a time when the United States was trying to maintain tight controls on Stingers in the Middle East. When Qatar refused to turn over the missiles, the United States Senate in 1988 imposed a ban on the sale of all weapons to Qatar. The ban was repealed in late 1990 when Qatar satisfactorily accounted for its disposition of the Stingers.
Qatari tank battalion fought in the Gulf war in 1991, their AMX-30s took part in the battle of Khafji. Qatari contingent, composed mostly of Pakistani recruits, acquitted itself well during the war.
Qatar signed a contract with the German defence company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) for the delivery of 24 artillery systems PzH 2000 and 62 LEOPARD 2 main battle tanks.
The US DSCA announces that Qatar wants to join its neighbor the UAE, and field 2 medium-range THAAD batteries of its own.
Their request is worth up to $6.5 billion, and includes up to 12 THAAD Launchers, 150 THAAD missiles, 2 THAAD Fire Control and Communications units, 2 AN/TPY-2 THAAD Radars, and 1 Early Warning Radar (EWR). The USA would also sell them the required trucks, generators, electrical power units, trailers, communications equipment, fire unit test & maintenance equipment, system integration and checkout, repair and return, training, and other support. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25194 |
Foreign relations of Qatar
Qatar achieved full independence from the United Kingdom on 3 September 1971. Arab states were among the first to recognize Qatar, and the country gained admittance to the United Nations and the Arab League in the same year. Qatar established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and Communist China in 1988. The country was an early member of OPEC and a founding member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Qatar is a strategic ally of China, with relationship between the two countries growing stronger.
Over the past two decades, Qatar has grown its international profile and punched above its weight in international affairs. It has been "very confident of itself and believes that it has the capabilities and capacity to adopt an independent foreign policy." The country is a member of numerous international organizations and maintains bilateral relations around the globe because, as Islam Hassan Research Analyst at Center for International and Regional Studies- Georgetown University in Qatar argues, the monarchy believes that a way of regime survival here is to have recognition on the regional and international level."
Qatar also uses its massive wealth to purchase influence abroad; its state-funded news media company Al Jazeera serves as a means of exerting international soft power. Qatar buys influence in Western countries through investments and donations. For example, the country has made large donations to the prominent Washington-based think tank the Brookings Institution, purchased British retailer Harrods, and donated $1 million to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was U.S. Secretary of State.
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the emir of Qatar from 1995 to 2013, helped establish Qatar's reputation as an influential player in Middle East politics. The first major move in this regard was the founding of Al Jazeera, a state-owned news media company.
Qatar has also cultivated close relationships with Western powers, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom. Al Udeid Air Base hosts American and British air forces. Qatar has invested extensively in London real estate, and the country has also made donations to prominent research centers in the United States. At the same time, Qatar maintains ties to Western adversaries, including Iran, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and extremist elements in Syria.
Qatar has a population of around 1.8 million people, however only 280,000 of these are citizens. The vast majority of the population are migrant laborers who suffer severe human rights abuses including unfit living conditions, abuse by employers, and seizure of passports and other immigration documents. These human rights abuses have caused tensions between Qatar and liberal western democracies. It is also one of the few countries in which citizens do not have to pay any taxes.
Qatar is a member of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Gulf Cooperation Council, OPEC and the Council of Arab Economic Unity.
According to American sociologist and historical social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein, Qatar is seeking to become a major regional player in Middle East politics. Wallerstein has argued that Qatar aimed to do the same in the Syrian Civil War, and has provided support to extremist elements in Syria. According to Wallerstein, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are competing for influence in regional politics.
Qatar has been influential in political and religious upheavals in the Middle East. Qatar supported several rebel groups during the Arab Spring financially and by asserting global influence through its expanding news group, Al Jazeera.
Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood and allied groups throughout the Middle East, as well as positions taken by Al Jazeera have led to increasing tensions with other Gulf States. On 5 March 2014, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar in protest at what they claimed was Qatar's non-compliance with a November 2013 agreement not to "interfere" in countries' internal affairs.
Some financial economists have interpreted the 2014 Saudi-Qatari rift as the tangible political sign of a growing economic rivalry between oil and natural gas producers, which could “have deep and long-lasting consequences” beyond the Middle East.
In March 2014 Qatar made overtures to Oman in order to counteract the influence of Saudi Arabia on politics in the region.
In May 2017, an alleged hack of state media led to stories quoting the Emir as enquiring US resentment towards Iran and remarking on Hamas. Doha reported it as false and gave no indication on where it originated. However, news organizations in the region reported the emir's comments as fact. This led to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar on 5 June 2017.
Qatar voiced support for the Turkish invasion of northern Syria aimed at ousting U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds from the enclave of Afrin. Spokeswoman of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lulwah Rashif Al-Khater said that: "The launching of the Turkish military operation last Saturday was motivated by legitimate concerns related to its national security and the security of its borders, in addition to protecting Syria's territorial integrity from the danger of secession. Turkey, a NATO member, has always been a stabilizing factor in the region."
The onset of the Arab spring in January 2011 complicated Qatar's ability to mediate having forced Gulf leaders to side with revolutionaries or the longstanding autocratic regimes. Sheikh Hamad stated in that Qatar would support the uprisings, a position that clashed with neighboring Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Qatar provided extensive support, in funding and weapons, to Libyan revolutionaries and aided in the removal of Muammar Gaddafi by mobilising Arab support behind NATO airstrikes. In Egypt, Qatar supported President Mohamed Morsi and has suffered from strained relations with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi following Morsi's removal. In Syria, Qatar has provided arms and funding to various opposition groups.
Starting in 2013 Qatar was accused of financing Islamic extremists in Syria, a charge which has been refuted by Emir Sheikh Tamim on CNN and by Foreign Minister Khaled Al-Attiyah in an opinion piece in the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. According to the Royal United Services Institute, Qatar plays an important role in Syria and Iraq as an interlocutor between Western powers and resistant groups that cannot be engaged directly. This role is consistent with Qatar's efforts as an interlocutor with the Taliban in Afghanistan, hosting a small Embassy in Doha where US officials are able to meet with the Taliban behind closed doors.
Prior to the abdication of Emir Sheikh Hamad, Qatar's mediation was fronted by the Qatari Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ahmad Abdullah Al Mahmud. On 4 May 2009, the Qatari Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ahmad Abdullah Al Mahmud announced that Chad and Sudan had agreed to end hostilities against each other and to normalize relations during Qatari-mediated talks in Doha; however the agreement quickly broke down. Qatar also brokered an agreement between the Sudanese government and the strongest Darfur rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, in Doha in February 2010. The agreement fell apart in May 2010 and the conflict is ongoing.
Qatar hosted a donors conference to help rebuild war-ravaged Darfur in April 2013.
In June 2010, Qatari peacekeeping forces deployed in the disputed Ras Doumeira area on the border between Djibouti and Eritrea after the latter withdrew from the area. The intention was to help start bilateral negotiations and solve the territorial dispute which had turned violent. Qatar withdrew its 450 troops from the Djibouti-Eritrea border in June 2017 after the two countries severed ties with Qatar.
In a controversial bidding process marred by bribery and corruption scandals, Qatar was selected to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Qatar will be the first Middle Eastern country to host the popular international sporting event. Qatar-funded Qatar Airways has gone on an aggressive expansion campaign by competing with nearby Emirates Airline to reach more destinations and serve more passengers.
The sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly was presided over by former permanent representative of Qatar to the UN Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser. The country has not accepted compulsory International Court of Justice jurisdiction.
In September 2013, Qatar funded 70% of a US$16 million mosque to be built in Slovenia (the only mosque in that country). It is due for completion in 2016. Due to its natural resource revenue and low indigenous population, Qatar has been able to take bold moves in expanding its global presence, particularly its regional role following the Arab Spring funding the oppositions in the Libyan Civil War and the Syrian civil war, as well as the Islamist government of Egypt (which was opposed by other fellow GCC states).
Qatar’s international aid program has expanded dramatically since the beginning of 2010, and focuses heavily on the Arab world, most notably in the humanitarian crises in Syria and Gaza.
According to the UN OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service, Qatar’s international aid increased from less than $10 million annually in the pre-Arab Spring period to the hundreds of millions following the event.
For example in 2012, according to the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the country donated more than QAR3 billion (or c. £524 million) through governmental and non-governmental aid to nearly 100 countries across the globe.
Qatari leadership has since pledged publicly to reduce suffering of victims and to achieve and support global partnerships for the achievement of foreign countries’ Millennium Development Goals. The state is engaged in investments in a wide range of humanitarian and developmental sectors. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25195 |
Quotation
A quotation is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written. In oral speech, it is the representation of an utterance (i.e. of something that a speaker actually said) that is introduced by a quotative marker, such as a verb of saying. For example: "We cannot let this, we’ve never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around, 16, we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle, way they, we can both have a democracy and at the same time, correct the public health" -Joe Biden 2020. Quotations in oral speech are also signaled by special prosody in addition to quotative markers. In written text, quotations are signaled by quotation marks. Quotations are also used to present well-known statement parts that are explicitly attributed by citation to their original source; such statements are marked with (punctuated with) quotation marks.
Quotations are often used as a literary device to represent someone's point of view. They are also widely used in spoken language when an interlocutor wishes to present a proposition that they have come to know via hearsay.
A quotation can also refer to the repeated use of units of any other form of expression, especially parts of artistic works: elements of a painting, scenes from a movie or sections from a musical composition.
Quotations are used for a variety of reasons: to illuminate the meaning or to support the arguments of the work in which it is being quoted, to provide direct information about the work being quoted (whether in order to discuss it, positively or negatively), to pay homage to the original work or author, to make the user of the quotation seem well-read, and/or to comply with copyright law. Quotations are also commonly printed as a means of inspiration and to invoke philosophical thoughts from the reader. Pragmatically speaking, quotations can also be used as language games (in the Wittgensteinian sense of the term) to manipulate social order and the structure of society.
Famous quotations are frequently collected in books that are sometimes called quotation dictionaries or treasuries. Of these, "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations", "The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations", "The Yale Book of Quotations" and "The Macmillan Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Famous Phrases" are considered among the most reliable and comprehensive sources. Diaries and calendars often include quotations for entertainment or inspirational purposes, and small, dedicated sections in newspapers and weekly magazines—with recent quotations by leading personalities on current topics—have also become commonplace.
Many quotations are routinely incorrect or attributed to the wrong authors, and quotations from obscure or unknown writers are often attributed to far more famous writers. Examples of this are Winston Churchill, to whom many political quotations of uncertain origin are attributed, and Oscar Wilde, to whom anonymous humorous quotations are sometimes attributed.
The "Star Trek" catchphrase "Beam me up, Scotty" did not appear in that form in the original series. Other misquotations include "Just the facts, ma'am" (attributed to Jack Webb's character of Joe Friday on "Dragnet"), "Heavy lies the crown" from Shakespeare's Play Henry IV, Part 2, "Elementary, my dear Watson" (attributed to Sherlock Holmes; it was, however, said in the films "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and "The Return of Sherlock Holmes"), "Luke, I am your father" (attributed to Darth Vader in Star Wars), "Play it again, Sam" (attributed to Ilsa in "Casablanca"), "Do you feel lucky, punk?" (attributed to Harry Callahan in "Dirty Harry") and "We don't need no stinkin' badges!" (attributed to Gold Hat in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre").
Quotative inversion occurs in sentences where the direct quotation can occur before a verb of saying or after a verb of saying. It can trigger inversion of the verb and the verb's subject. Subject-verb inversion occurs most often in written works, being rare in speech. Quotations may appear before the inverted verb, but can also appear after the subject, such as: ""I am going to follow you all the rest of my life," declared the man" and "Said the woman: "I see you with both my eyes.""
In syntactic terms, these direct quotations can be presented in two forms. The first is as the complement of a quotative verb (e.g. Marie said: "My brother has arrived"), and the second being as a head clause with a quotative adjunct (e.g. "My brother has arrived", Marie announces). The verb phrase can be further expanded to include a complement, such as: "They'll never make it!" cried John "to Mary". Subjects must precede the complement, otherwise the structure formed will be ungrammatical (e.g. *"They'll never make it!" cried "to Mary" John). Quotative inversion is only allowed when the verb is in the simple present or the simple past. The most common pairing is the verb "said" with a nominal subject, such as: "That's the whole trouble," said Gwen. Additionally, noun phrases are not permitted in addition to the subject when inversion takes place. They are allowed only when there is no subject-verb inversion, or when part of a preposition phrase.
In English, both verb-subject and subject-verb word orders are permitted:
This however, is not the case in all languages. For example, in Peninsular Spanish, this inversion is not allowed. Quotatives must follow verb-subject order:
Traditionally, quotations—more specifically known as direct quotations—have been distinguished from indirect quotations. Direct quotations differ from indirect quotations in that they are reported from the perspective of the experiencer, while indirect quotations are reported from the perspective of the reporting speaker (e.g. "He said: 'I am leaving now'” versus "He said (that) he was leaving immediately"); are free in their syntactic form, while indirect quotations are subject to language-specific structural requirements (e.g. indirect quotations in many Indo-European languages are required to have the syntactic form of a well-formed declarative subordinate clause); incorporate extralinguistic material and pragmatic markers, while indirect quotations do not. Crucially, direct quotations have a performative aspect (i.e. occur simultaneously with re-enactments of previous behaviours), which indirect quotations lack.
Both direct and indirect quotations in spoken discourse are not intended to be verbatim reproductions of an utterance that has been produced. Instead, direct quotations convey the approximative meaning of such an utterance along with the way in which that utterance was produced. From a sociolinguistic perspective, a direct quotation in spoken discourse can therefore also be defined as “a performance whereby speakers re-enact previous behaviour (speech/thought/sound/voice effect and gesture) while assuming the dramatic role of the original source of this reported behaviour”. Indirect quotations are simply paraphrases of something that a reporting speaker heard.
Quotations are employed in spoken discourse for many reasons. They are often used by speakers to depict stories and events that have occurred in the past to other interlocutors. The speaker does not necessarily have to have been an original participant in the story or event. Therefore, they can quote something that they did not hear firsthand. Quotations are also used to express thoughts that have never been uttered aloud prior to being quoted. For example, while telling a story, a speaker quotes inner thoughts that they had during a specific situation. Finally, speakers use quotations to propose future dialogue for participants in a situation that may take place in the future. For example, two friends talk about their 10-year high school reunion that will take place in the future and propose what they would say. While future dialogue can be proposed for a situation that will likely happen, it can also be based on a situation that will not actually take place. In the latter usage, the proposed dialogue only exists in the conversational context.
The quoted material is usually not a verbatim replication of an utterance that someone originally said. Instead, quotations in spoken discourse reproduce what a speaker wishes to communicate to their recipients; quotations demonstrate something that someone said, the manner in which that person said it, and the current speaker’s feelings about what was said. In this way, quotations are an especially effective storytelling device; the speaker is able to give a voice to the protagonists in their stories themselves, which allows the speaker’s audience to experience the situation in the way that the speaker themselves experienced it.
In most languages, quotations in spoken discourse are introduced by a verb of saying and a pronoun. For example, a quotation in English can be introduced by “She said”. In some languages, there is a discourse marker in addition to the verb of saying that functions as verbal quotation marks. For example, Japanese uses the quotative particle (a type of quotative marker) "to" along with the conjugated verb of saying "itta":
Gloss: TOP=Topic Marker DAT=Dative NOM=Nominative COM=complementizer
Verbs of saying (known as quotative verbs when used to introduce quotations) and quotative particles are used as quotative markers, which signal quotations in utterances. Quotative evidentials are also used in some languages to indicate quoted speech (e.g. Cusco Quechua spoken in Peru, Nanti spoken in lowland southeastern Peru, Laal spoken in Chad).
Quotative markers are used to mark a section of an utterance as quoted speech (i.e. a quotation). In oral speech, quotative markers act as quotation marks and often include a verb of saying (e.g. "say"). A quotative marker usually appears either before or after the reported speech or thought, depending on the syntax of the language. For example, compare the following languages:
In English, the quotative verb "say" occurs before the quotation:
In American English, verbs such as "be like", "go", and "be all" are non-standard quotatives that are commonly used in colloquial speech. They are observed in the speech of young people not only in American English, but in other varieties of English as well (e.g. "be like" in New Zealand English, "be like" and "go" in Glasgow English). Though not semantically considered verbs of saying, they are used to convey the same meaning as such verbs. Like "say", "be like", "go", and "be all" occur before the quotation:
In conversational speech, the use of "say" and "be like" occurs at about the same frequency, though "say" tends to be used in more formal contexts (e.g. office hours between professors and students) and "be like" tends to occur in more informal contexts (e.g. a conversation between two young people).
In Japanese, the quotative particle "to" along with the verb of saying "iu" (say) occur after the quotation; the conjugated form of "iu" (say) is "itta":
Gloss: TOP=Topic Marker ACC=Accusative COM=Complementizer HON=Honorific/Polite form
The quotative particle "to" can also occur with verbs of thinking, such as "omou" (think). Like "to" and "iu" (say), "to" and "omou" occur after the quotation.
In Laal, the quotative evidential "mɨ́" is used for non-self quotation (i.e. quotation in which the speaker quotes someone else, not themself); it is used with a quotative verb "ɓɨ́lá". The use of "mɨ́" results in an indirect quotation translation. The quotative verb "bɨ́lá" occurs before the quotation, while the quotative evidential "mɨ́" occurs within the quoted speech "já mɨ́ nyàg tāā wó":
Gloss: QEV=Quotative Evidential NEG=Negation
As the above sentence involves a non-self quotation, "à" (he) and "já" (I) have different indices to show that they refer to different referents; only this interpretation is well-formed. The interpretation in which they share identical indices is ill-formed (i.e. ungrammatical), as indicated by the asterisk.
In addition to quotative markers, speakers also use prosodic shifts, pauses, pronominal choices, and tense to detect the occurrence and boundaries of quotations in spoken utterances.
Different versions of quotative verbs, particles, and evidentials can be used to express the same idea with varying nuances, often to frame how the primary speaker, or the person who is quoting, feels about a quotation. The syntax of quotations varies cross-linguistically. A primary speaker may use the tense and linguistic idiosyncrasies of the speech at the time it was uttered in a quotation, independent from the tense in the main clause in some languages, or use the same tense in both the main clause and quotation in other languages. They will also use coreferenced pronouns to the direct quotation's first-person subject in the main clause: Shex said, "Ix..."; theyy said "wey ..." In many languages, the primary speaker may also attempt to quote an utterance in the same language the original speaker used, even if an interlocutor does not understand it; however, it is mainly context-dependent such as when telling stories.
Quotative verbs are lexical verbs that indicate the speech, thoughts, or perceptions of the original speaker.
Quotations can be introduced as the complement to a quotative verb or as the head phrase to an adjunct phrase containing a quotative verb in some languages like English and French.
English also displays verb-second (V2) order vestige only in quotation contexts (quotative inversion), requiring the finite verb to appear in the second position of a clause. For example: "No no no" "says" Harry.
Direct and indirect quotations are sometimes not distinguishable. Traditionally, English uses an overt complementizer "that" after a quotative verb to indicate indirect quotation, but it is also seen to prompt direct quotation in some English varieties like Indian English, Hong Kong English, and Kenyan English.
The newer quotative verb "be like" in English is used to only introduce direct quotations. "Be like" includes the use of the demonstrative "that", which is null in most English varieties, but can be optionally overt in some varieties like Glasgow English. Dutch's quotative verb "hebben zoiets van" has a similar structure to Standard American English in that it has a null demonstrative that precedes the quotation. It differs from the English structures in that it uses an overt quantifier "zoiets" to be well-formed.
Quotative or hearsay particles are grammatical markers equivalent to full lexical verbs with meanings of ""say, mention, tell, etc."" In many languages, they are grammaticalized to different extremes from their previously lexical form. Common patterns of grammaticalization trajectories include verb to complementizer in many African and Asian languages and verb to tense-aspect-mood markers primarily in African languages, but also in Australian languages and multiple other language families.
Japanese, for example, uses a sentence-final quotative particle "tte" verbally to mean "I heard (quote)" with some uncertainty. In sentence-medial position, "tte" is sometimes regarded along with "to" to be either a quotative particle or complementizer meaning "I heard (quote)" with less uncertainty and often more knowledge of the origin of the quote.
Gloss: QP=Quotative Particle FP=Final Particle
Verbs of saying are highly restricted in Australian languages and almost always immediately proceed the complement verb.
Gloss: PL=Plural FUT=Future Tense PST=Past Tense OBL=Oblique Case IRR= Irregular
Quotative or hearsay evidentials provide knowledge of who or where information originated from in speech based on logical assumption. Languages indicate this in various ways: through grammatical marking, additional words and phrases, prosody, gestures, or systematic affixes of verbs. Quotative readings of evidentials are typologically rare. For example, English can express evidentials with an optional adverb, ""Allegedly", Annie pulled the trigger." The interlocutor then knows the source of the quotation is from elsewhere, but this is not a quotative reading as there is no direct performative quoting or verbs of saying. Languages including Cusco Quechua, Kham, Tagalog, and Kaalallisut are documented as containing quotative evidentials. In languages with "true" quotative evidentials (which usually introduce quoted statements), it is also possible for them to occur with interrogatives and imperatives, yielding quoted interrogatives and quoted imperatives. Similar to quotative particles, quotative evidentials are usually grammaticalized from full lexical verbs.
Nhêengatú, a Tupí-Guaraní lingua franca of North-West Amazonia, has a reported evidential marker "paá". An example scenario is as followed: X saw John go fishing. Mary then and asks X where John went. X replies “u-sú u-piniatika” (he went fishing). Later, Peter asks Mary where John went. She replies to Peter that she did not see John go herself, but rather heard it from a different source using the evidential marker “u-sú u-piniatika "paá."”
Gloss: REP=Reported Evidential Marker
Tagalog's quotative evidentials are used with imperative quotations.
Gloss: INF=Infix REP=Reported Evidential Marker
Cusco Quechua's quotative evidential comes as a derivation of a clitic, "=si", for interrogative quotations.
Gloss: ACC=Accusative REP=Reported Evidential Marker TOP=Topic PST=Past Tense | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25199 |
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics (QM; also known as quantum physics, quantum theory, the wave mechanical model and matrix mechanics), part of quantum field theory, is a fundamental theory in physics. It describes physical properties of nature on an atomic scale.
Classical physics, the description of physics that existed before the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale, while quantum mechanics explains the aspects of nature at small (atomic and subatomic) scales, for which classical mechanics is insufficient.
Most theories in classical physics can be derived from quantum mechanics as an approximation valid at large (macroscopic) scale. Quantum mechanics differs from classical physics in that energy, momentum, angular momentum, and other quantities of a bound system are restricted to discrete values (quantization), objects have characteristics of both particles and waves (wave-particle duality), and there are limits to how accurately the value of a physical quantity can be predicted prior to its measurement, given a complete set of initial conditions (the uncertainty principle).
Quantum mechanics arose gradually, from theories to explain observations which could not be reconciled with classical physics, such as Max Planck's solution in 1900 to the black-body radiation problem, and the correspondence between energy and frequency in Albert Einstein's 1905 paper which explained the photoelectric effect. Early quantum theory was profoundly re-conceived in the mid-1920s by Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and others. The modern theory is formulated in various specially developed mathematical formalisms. In one of them, a mathematical function, the wave function, provides information about the probability amplitude of energy, momentum, and other physical properties of a particle.
Scientific inquiry into the wave nature of light began in the 17th and 18th centuries, when scientists such as Robert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens and Leonhard Euler proposed a wave theory of light based on experimental observations. In 1803 English polymath Thomas Young described the famous double-slit experiment. This experiment played a major role in the general acceptance of the wave theory of light.
In 1838 Michael Faraday discovered cathode rays. These studies were followed by the 1859 statement of the black-body radiation problem by Gustav Kirchhoff, the 1877 suggestion by Ludwig Boltzmann that the energy states of a physical system can be discrete, and the 1900 quantum hypothesis of Max Planck. Planck's hypothesis that energy is radiated and absorbed in discrete "quanta" (or energy packets) precisely matched the observed patterns of black-body radiation.
In 1896 Wilhelm Wien empirically determined a distribution law of black-body radiation, called Wien's law. Ludwig Boltzmann independently arrived at this result by considerations of Maxwell's equations. However, it was valid only at high frequencies and underestimated the radiance at low frequencies.
The foundations of quantum mechanics were established during the first half of the 20th century by Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Louis de Broglie, Arthur Compton, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Max Born, John von Neumann, Paul Dirac, Enrico Fermi, Wolfgang Pauli, Max von Laue, Freeman Dyson, David Hilbert, Wilhelm Wien, Satyendra Nath Bose, Arnold Sommerfeld, and . The Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr became widely accepted.
Max Planck corrected this model using Boltzmann's statistical interpretation of thermodynamics and proposed what is now called Planck's law, which led to the development of quantum mechanics. After Planck's solution in 1900 to the black-body radiation problem (reported 1859), Albert Einstein offered a quantum-based explanation of the photoelectric effect (1905, reported 1887). Around 1900–1910, the atomic theory but not the corpuscular theory of light first came to be widely accepted as scientific fact; these latter theories can be considered quantum theories of matter and electromagnetic radiation, respectively. However, the photon theory was not widely accepted until about 1915. Even until Einstein's Nobel Prize, Niels Bohr did not believe in the photon.
Among the first to study quantum phenomena were Arthur Compton, C. V. Raman, and Pieter Zeeman, each of whom has a quantum effect named after him. Robert Andrews Millikan studied the photoelectric effect experimentally, and Albert Einstein developed a theory for it. At the same time, Ernest Rutherford experimentally discovered the nuclear model of the atom, and Niels Bohr developed a theory of atomic structure, confirmed by the experiments of Henry Moseley. In 1913 Peter Debye extended Bohr's theory by introducing elliptical orbits, a concept also introduced by Arnold Sommerfeld. This phase is known as old quantum theory.
According to Planck, each energy element ("E")" "is proportional to its frequency ("ν"):
where "h" is Planck's constant.
Planck cautiously insisted that this was only an aspect of the processes of absorption and emission of radiation and was not the "physical reality" of the radiation. In fact, he considered his quantum hypothesis a mathematical trick to get the right answer rather than a sizable discovery. However, in 1905 Albert Einstein interpreted Planck's quantum hypothesis realistically and used it to explain the photoelectric effect, in which shining light on certain materials can eject electrons from the material. Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.
Einstein further developed this idea to show that an electromagnetic wave such as light could also be described as a particle (later called the photon), with a discrete amount of energy that depends on its frequency. In his paper “On the Quantum Theory of Radiation,” Einstein expanded on the interaction between energy and matter to explain the absorption and emission of energy by atoms. Although overshadowed at the time by his general theory of relativity, this paper articulated the mechanism underlying the stimulated emission of radiation, which became the basis of the laser.
In the mid-1920s quantum mechanics was developed to become the standard formulation for atomic physics. In the summer of 1925, Bohr and Heisenberg published results that closed the old quantum theory. Due to their particle-like behavior in certain processes and measurements, light quanta came to be called photons (1926). In 1926 Erwin Schrödinger suggested a partial differential equation for the wave functions of particles like electrons. And when effectively restricted to a finite region, this equation allowed only certain modes, corresponding to discrete quantum states – whose properties turned out to be exactly the same as implied by matrix mechanics. Einstein's simple postulation spurred a flurry of debate, theorizing, and testing. Thus, the entire field of quantum physics emerged, leading to its wider acceptance at the Fifth Solvay Conference in 1927.
It was found that subatomic particles and electromagnetic waves are neither simply particle nor wave but have certain properties of each. This originated the concept of wave–particle duality.
By 1930 quantum mechanics had been further unified and formalized by David Hilbert, Paul Dirac and John von Neumann with greater emphasis on measurement, the statistical nature of our knowledge of reality, and philosophical speculation about the 'observer'. It has since permeated many disciplines, including quantum chemistry, quantum electronics, quantum optics, and quantum information science. It also provides a useful framework for many features of the modern periodic table of elements, and describes the behaviors of atoms during chemical bonding and the flow of electrons in computer semiconductors, and therefore plays a crucial role in many modern technologies. Its speculative modern developments include string theory and quantum gravity theory.
While quantum mechanics was constructed to describe the world of the very small, it is also needed to explain some macroscopic phenomena such as superconductors and superfluids.
The word "quantum" derives from the Latin, meaning "how great" or "how much". In quantum mechanics, it refers to a discrete unit assigned to certain physical quantities such as the energy of an atom at rest (see Figure 1). The discovery that particles are discrete packets of energy with wave-like properties led to the branch of physics dealing with atomic and subatomic systems which is today called quantum mechanics. It underlies the mathematical framework of many fields of physics and chemistry, including condensed matter physics, solid-state physics, atomic physics, molecular physics, computational physics, computational chemistry, quantum chemistry, particle physics, nuclear chemistry, and nuclear physics. Some fundamental aspects of the theory are still actively studied.
Quantum mechanics is essential for understanding the behavior of systems at atomic length scales and smaller. If the physical nature of an atom were solely described by classical mechanics, electrons would not "orbit" the nucleus, since orbiting electrons emit radiation (due to circular motion) and so would quickly lose energy and collide with the nucleus. This framework was unable to explain the stability of atoms. Instead, electrons remain in an uncertain, non-deterministic, "smeared", probabilistic wave–particle orbital about the nucleus, defying the traditional assumptions of classical mechanics and electromagnetism.
Quantum mechanics was initially developed to provide a better explanation and description of the atom, especially the differences in the spectra of light emitted by different isotopes of the same chemical element, as well as subatomic particles. In short, the quantum-mechanical atomic model has succeeded spectacularly in the realm where classical mechanics and electromagnetism falter.
Broadly speaking, quantum mechanics incorporates four classes of phenomena for which classical physics cannot account:
In the mathematically rigorous formulation of quantum mechanics developed by Paul Dirac, David Hilbert, John von Neumann, and Hermann Weyl, the possible states of a quantum mechanical system are symbolized as unit vectors (called "state vectors"). Formally, these vectors are elements of a complex separable Hilbert space – variously called the "state space" or the "associated Hilbert space" of the system – that is well defined up to a complex number of norm 1 (the phase factor). In other words, the possible states are points in the projective space of a Hilbert space, usually called the complex projective space. The exact nature of this Hilbert space is dependent on the system – for example, the state space for position and momentum states is the space of square-integrable functions, while the state space for the spin of a single proton is just the product of two complex planes. Each observable is represented by a maximally Hermitian (precisely: by a self-adjoint) linear operator acting on the state space. Each eigenstate of an observable corresponds to an eigenvector of the operator, and the associated eigenvalue corresponds to the value of the observable in that eigenstate. If the operator's spectrum is discrete, the observable can attain only those discrete eigenvalues.
In the formalism of quantum mechanics, the state of a system at a given time is described by a complex wave function, also referred to as state vector in a complex vector space. This abstract mathematical object allows for the calculation of probabilities of outcomes of concrete experiments. For example, it allows one to compute the probability of finding an electron in a particular region around the nucleus at a particular time. Contrary to classical mechanics, one can never make simultaneous predictions of conjugate variables, such as position and momentum, to arbitrary precision. For instance, electrons may be considered (to a certain probability) to be located somewhere within a given region of space, but with their exact positions unknown. Contours of constant probability density, often referred to as "clouds", may be drawn around the nucleus of an atom to conceptualize where the electron might be located with the most probability. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle quantifies the inability to precisely locate the particle given its conjugate momentum.
According to one interpretation, as the result of a measurement, the wave function containing the probability information for a system collapses from a given initial state to a particular eigenstate. The possible results of a measurement are the eigenvalues of the operator representing the observable – which explains the choice of "Hermitian" operators, for which all the eigenvalues are real. The probability distribution of an observable in a given state can be found by computing the spectral decomposition of the corresponding operator. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is represented by the statement that the operators corresponding to certain observables do not commute.
The probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics thus stems from the act of measurement. This is one of the most difficult aspects of quantum systems to understand. It was the central topic in the famous Bohr–Einstein debates, in which the two scientists attempted to clarify these fundamental principles by way of thought experiments. In the decades after the formulation of quantum mechanics, the question of what constitutes a "measurement" has been extensively studied. Newer interpretations of quantum mechanics have been formulated that do away with the concept of "wave function collapse" (see, for example, the relative state interpretation). The basic idea is that when a quantum system interacts with a measuring apparatus, their respective wave functions become entangled, so that the original quantum system ceases to exist as an independent entity. For details, see the article on measurement in quantum mechanics.
Generally, quantum mechanics does not assign definite values. Instead, it makes a prediction using a probability distribution; that is, it describes the probability of obtaining the possible outcomes from measuring an observable. Often these results are skewed by many causes, such as dense probability clouds. Probability clouds are approximate (but better than the Bohr model) whereby electron location is given by a probability function, the wave function eigenvalue, such that the probability is the squared modulus of the complex amplitude, or quantum state nuclear attraction. Naturally, these probabilities will depend on the quantum state at the "instant" of the measurement. Hence, uncertainty is involved in the value. There are, however, certain states that are associated with a definite value of a particular observable. These are known as eigenstates of the observable ("eigen" can be translated from German as meaning "inherent" or "characteristic").
In the everyday world, it is natural and intuitive to think of everything (every observable) as being in an eigenstate. Everything appears to have a definite position, a definite momentum, a definite energy, and a definite time of occurrence. However, quantum mechanics does not pinpoint the exact values of a particle's position and momentum (since they are conjugate pairs) or its energy and time (since they too are conjugate pairs). Rather, it provides only a range of probabilities in which that particle might be given its momentum and momentum probability. Therefore, it is helpful to use different words to describe states having "uncertain" values and states having "definite" values (eigenstates).
Usually, a system will not be in an eigenstate of the observable (particle) we are interested in. However, if one measures the observable, the wave function will instantaneously be an eigenstate (or "generalized" eigenstate) of that observable. This process is known as wave function collapse, a controversial and much-debated process that involves expanding the system under study to include the measurement device. If one knows the corresponding wave function at the instant before the measurement, one will be able to compute the probability of the wave function collapsing into each of the possible eigenstates.
For example, the free particle in the previous example will usually have a wave function that is a wave packet centered around some mean position "x"0 (neither an eigenstate of position nor of momentum). When one measures the position of the particle, it is impossible to predict with certainty the result. It is probable, but not certain, that it will be near "x"0, where the amplitude of the wave function is large. After the measurement is performed, having obtained some result "x", the wave function collapses into a position eigenstate centered at "x".
The time evolution of a quantum state is described by the Schrödinger equation, in which the Hamiltonian (the operator corresponding to the total energy of the system) generates the time evolution. The time evolution of wave functions is deterministic in the sense that – given a wave function at an "initial" time – it makes a definite prediction of what the wave function will be at any "later" time.
During a measurement, on the other hand, the change of the initial wave function into another, later wave function is not deterministic, it is unpredictable (i.e., random). A time-evolution simulation can be seen here.
Wave functions change as time progresses. The Schrödinger equation describes how wave functions change in time, playing a role similar to Newton's second law in classical mechanics. The Schrödinger equation, applied to the aforementioned example of the free particle, predicts that the center of a wave packet will move through space at a constant velocity (like a classical particle with no forces acting on it). However, the wave packet will also spread out as time progresses, which means that the position becomes more uncertain with time. This also has the effect of turning a position eigenstate (which can be thought of as an infinitely sharp wave packet) into a broadened wave packet that no longer represents a (definite, certain) position eigenstate.
Some wave functions produce probability distributions that are constant, or independent of time – such as when in a stationary state of definite energy, time vanishes in the absolute square of the wave function (this is the basis for the energy-time uncertainty principle). Many systems that are treated dynamically in classical mechanics are described by such "static" wave functions. For example, a single electron in an unexcited atom is pictured classically as a particle moving in a circular trajectory around the atomic nucleus, whereas in quantum mechanics, it is described by a static, spherically symmetric wave function surrounding the nucleus () (however, only the lowest angular momentum states, labeled "s", are spherically symmetric.)
The Schrödinger equation acts on the "entire" probability amplitude, not merely its absolute value. Whereas the absolute value of the probability amplitude encodes information about probabilities, its phase encodes information about the interference between quantum states. This gives rise to the "wave-like" behavior of quantum states.
Analytic solutions of the Schrödinger equation are known for very few relatively simple model Hamiltonians including the quantum harmonic oscillator, the particle in a box, the dihydrogen cation, and the hydrogen atom. Even the helium atom – which contains just two electrons – has defied all attempts at a fully analytic treatment.
However, there are techniques for finding approximate solutions. One method, called perturbation theory, uses the analytic result for a simple quantum mechanical model to create a result for a related but more complicated model by (for example) the addition of a weak potential energy. Another method is called "semi-classical equation of motion", which applies to systems for which quantum mechanics produces only small deviations from classical behavior. These deviations can then be computed based on the classical motion. This approach is particularly important in the field of quantum chaos.
There are many mathematically equivalent formulations of quantum mechanics. One of the oldest and most common is the "transformation theory" proposed by Paul Dirac, which unifies and generalizes the two earliest formulations of quantum mechanics – matrix mechanics (invented by Werner Heisenberg) and wave mechanics (invented by Erwin Schrödinger).
Especially since Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932 for the creation of quantum mechanics, the role of Max Born in the development of QM was overlooked until the 1954 Nobel award. The role is noted in a 2005 biography of Born, which recounts his role in the matrix formulation and the use of probability amplitudes. Heisenberg acknowledges having learned matrices from Born, as published in a 1940 "festschrift" honoring Max Planck. In the matrix formulation, the instantaneous state of a quantum system encodes the probabilities of its measurable properties, or "observables". Examples of observables include energy, position, momentum, and angular momentum. Observables can be either continuous (e.g., the position of a particle) or discrete (e.g., the energy of an electron bound to a hydrogen atom). An alternative formulation of quantum mechanics is Feynman's path integral formulation, in which a quantum-mechanical amplitude is considered as a sum over all possible classical and non-classical paths between the initial and final states. This is the quantum-mechanical counterpart of the action principle in classical mechanics.
The rules of quantum mechanics are fundamental. They assert that the state space of a system is a Hilbert space (crucially, that the space has an inner product) and that observables of the system are Hermitian operators acting on vectors in that space – although they do not tell us which Hilbert space or which operators. These can be chosen appropriately in order to obtain a quantitative description of a quantum system. An important guide for making these choices is the correspondence principle, which states that the predictions of quantum mechanics reduce to those of classical mechanics when a system moves to higher energies or, equivalently, larger quantum numbers, i.e. whereas a single particle exhibits a degree of randomness, in systems incorporating millions of particles averaging takes over and, at the high energy limit, the statistical probability of random behaviour approaches zero. In other words, classical mechanics is simply a quantum mechanics of large systems. This "high energy" limit is known as the "classical" or "correspondence limit". One can even start from an established classical model of a particular system, then try to guess the underlying quantum model that would give rise to the classical model in the correspondence limit.
When quantum mechanics was originally formulated, it was applied to models whose correspondence limit was non-relativistic classical mechanics. For instance, the well-known model of the quantum harmonic oscillator uses an explicitly non-relativistic expression for the kinetic energy of the oscillator, and is thus a quantum version of the classical harmonic oscillator.
Early attempts to merge quantum mechanics with special relativity involved the replacement of the Schrödinger equation with a covariant equation such as the Klein–Gordon equation or the Dirac equation. While these theories were successful in explaining many experimental results, they had certain unsatisfactory qualities stemming from their neglect of the relativistic creation and annihilation of particles. A fully relativistic quantum theory required the development of quantum field theory, which applies quantization to a field (rather than a fixed set of particles). The first complete quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics, provides a fully quantum description of the electromagnetic interaction. The full apparatus of quantum field theory is often unnecessary for describing electrodynamic systems. A simpler approach, one that has been used since the inception of quantum mechanics, is to treat charged particles as quantum mechanical objects being acted on by a classical electromagnetic field. For example, the elementary quantum model of the hydrogen atom describes the electric field of the hydrogen atom using a classical formula_2 Coulomb potential. This "semi-classical" approach fails if quantum fluctuations in the electromagnetic field play an important role, such as in the emission of photons by charged particles.
Quantum field theories for the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force have also been developed. The quantum field theory of the strong nuclear force is called quantum chromodynamics, and describes the interactions of subnuclear particles such as quarks and gluons. The weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force were unified, in their quantized forms, into a single quantum field theory (known as electroweak theory), by the physicists Abdus Salam, Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg. These three men shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 for this work.
It has proven difficult to construct quantum models of gravity, the remaining fundamental force. Semi-classical approximations are workable, and have led to predictions such as Hawking radiation. However, the formulation of a complete theory of quantum gravity is hindered by apparent incompatibilities between general relativity (the most accurate theory of gravity currently known) and some of the fundamental assumptions of quantum theory. The resolution of these incompatibilities is an area of active research. Candidates for a future theory of quantum gravity include string theory.
Classical mechanics has also been extended into the complex domain, with complex classical mechanics exhibiting behaviors similar to quantum mechanics.
Predictions of quantum mechanics have been verified experimentally to an extremely high degree of accuracy. According to the correspondence principle between classical and quantum mechanics, all objects obey the laws of quantum mechanics, and classical mechanics is just an approximation for large systems of objects (or a statistical quantum mechanics of a large collection of particles). The laws of classical mechanics thus follow from the laws of quantum mechanics as a statistical average at the limit of large systems or large quantum numbers (Ehrenfest theorem). However, chaotic systems do not have good quantum numbers, and quantum chaos studies the relationship between classical and quantum descriptions in these systems.
Quantum coherence is an essential difference between classical and quantum theories as illustrated by the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox – an attack on a certain philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics by an appeal to local realism. Quantum interference involves adding together "probability amplitudes", whereas classical "waves" infer that there is an adding together of "intensities". For microscopic bodies, the extension of the system is much smaller than the coherence length, which gives rise to long-range entanglement and other nonlocal phenomena characteristic of quantum systems. Quantum coherence is not typically evident at macroscopic scales, except maybe at temperatures approaching absolute zero at which quantum behavior may manifest macroscopically. This is in accordance with the following observations:
A big difference between classical and quantum mechanics is that they use very different kinematic descriptions.
In Niels Bohr's mature view, quantum mechanical phenomena are required to be experiments, with complete descriptions of all the devices for the system, preparative, intermediary, and finally measuring. The descriptions are in macroscopic terms, expressed in ordinary language, supplemented with the concepts of classical mechanics. The initial condition and the final condition of the system are respectively described by values in a configuration space, for example a position space, or some equivalent space such as a momentum space. Quantum mechanics does not admit a completely precise description, in terms of both position and momentum, of an initial condition or "state" (in the classical sense of the word) that would support a precisely deterministic and causal prediction of a final condition. In this sense, a quantum phenomenon is a process, a passage from initial to final condition, not an instantaneous "state" in the classical sense of that word. Thus there are two kinds of processes in quantum mechanics: stationary and transitional. For a stationary process, the initial and final condition are the same. For a transition, they are different. Obviously by definition, if only the initial condition is given, the process is not determined. Given its initial condition, prediction of its final condition is possible, causally but only probabilistically, because the Schrödinger equation is deterministic for wave function evolution, but the wave function describes the system only probabilistically.
For many experiments, it is possible to think of the initial and final conditions of the system as being a particle. In some cases it appears that there are potentially several spatially distinct pathways or trajectories by which a particle might pass from initial to final condition. It is an important feature of the quantum kinematic description that it does not permit a unique definite statement of which of those pathways is actually followed. Only the initial and final conditions are definite, and, as stated in the foregoing paragraph, they are defined only as precisely as allowed by the configuration space description or its equivalent. In every case for which a quantum kinematic description is needed, there is always a compelling reason for this restriction of kinematic precision. An example of such a reason is that for a particle to be experimentally found in a definite position, it must be held motionless; for it to be experimentally found to have a definite momentum, it must have free motion; these two are logically incompatible.
Classical kinematics does not primarily demand experimental description of its phenomena. It allows completely precise description of an instantaneous state by a value in phase space, the Cartesian product of configuration and momentum spaces. This description simply assumes or imagines a state as a physically existing entity without concern about its experimental measurability. Such a description of an initial condition, together with Newton's laws of motion, allows a precise deterministic and causal prediction of a final condition, with a definite trajectory of passage. Hamiltonian dynamics can be used for this. Classical kinematics also allows the description of a process analogous to the initial and final condition description used by quantum mechanics. Lagrangian mechanics applies to this. For processes that need account to be taken of actions of a small number of Planck constants, classical kinematics is not adequate; quantum mechanics is needed.
Even with the defining postulates of both Einstein's theory of general relativity and quantum theory being indisputably supported by rigorous and repeated empirical evidence, and while they do not directly contradict each other theoretically (at least with regard to their primary claims), they have proven extremely difficult to incorporate into one consistent, cohesive model.
Gravity is negligible in many areas of particle physics, so that unification between general relativity and quantum mechanics is not an urgent issue in those particular applications. However, the lack of a correct theory of quantum gravity is an important issue in physical cosmology and the search by physicists for an elegant "Theory of Everything" (TOE). Consequently, resolving the inconsistencies between both theories has been a major goal of 20th- and 21st-century physics. Many prominent physicists, including Stephen Hawking, worked for many years to create a theory underlying "everything". This TOE would combine not only the models of subatomic physics, but also derive the four fundamental forces of nature – the strong force, electromagnetism, the weak force, and gravity – from a single force or phenomenon. However, after considering Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, Hawking concluded that a theory of everything is not possible, and stated so publicly in his lecture "Gödel and the End of Physics" (2002).
The quest to unify the fundamental forces through quantum mechanics is ongoing. Quantum electrodynamics (or "quantum electromagnetism"), which is (at least in the perturbative regime) the most accurately tested physical theory in competition with general relativity, has been merged with the weak nuclear force into the electroweak force; work continues, to merge it with the strong force into the electrostrong force. Current predictions state that at around 1014 GeV these three forces fuse into a single field. Beyond this "grand unification", it is speculated that it may be possible to merge gravity with the other three gauge symmetries, expected to occur at roughly 1019 GeV. However – and while special relativity is parsimoniously incorporated into quantum electrodynamics – the expanded general relativity, currently the best theory describing the gravitation force, has not been fully incorporated into quantum theory. One of those searching for a coherent TOE is Edward Witten, a theoretical physicist who formulated the M-theory, which is an attempt at describing the supersymmetrical based string theory. M-theory posits that our apparent 4-dimensional spacetime is, in reality, actually an 11-dimensional spacetime containing 10 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension, although 7 of the spatial dimensions are – at lower energies – completely "compactified" (or infinitely curved) and not readily amenable to measurement or probing.
Another popular theory is loop quantum gravity (LQG) proposed by Carlo Rovelli, that describes quantum properties of gravity. It is also a theory of quantum spacetime and quantum time, because in general relativity the geometry of spacetime is a manifestation of gravity. LQG is an attempt to merge and adapt standard quantum mechanics and standard general relativity. This theory describes space as granular analogous to the granularity of photons in the quantum theory of electromagnetism and the discrete energy levels of atoms. More precisely, space is an extremely fine fabric or networks "woven" of finite loops called spin networks. The evolution of a spin network over time is called a spin foam. The predicted size of this structure is the Planck length, which is approximately 1.616×10−35 m. According to this theory, there is no meaning to length shorter than this (cf. Planck scale energy).
Since its inception, the many counter-intuitive aspects and results of quantum mechanics have provoked strong philosophical debates and many interpretations. Even fundamental issues, such as Max Born's basic rules about probability amplitudes and probability distributions, took decades to be appreciated by society and many leading scientists. Richard Feynman once said, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." According to Steven Weinberg, "There is now in my opinion no entirely satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics."
The Copenhagen interpretation – due largely to Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg – remains most widely accepted some 75 years after its enunciation. According to this interpretation, the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics is not a "temporary" feature which will eventually be replaced by a deterministic theory, but is instead a "final" renunciation of the classical idea of "causality". It also states that any well-defined application of the quantum mechanical formalism must always make reference to the experimental arrangement, due to the conjugate nature of evidence obtained under different experimental situations.
Albert Einstein, himself one of the founders of quantum theory, did not accept some of the more philosophical or metaphysical interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as rejection of determinism and of causality. He famously said about this, "God does not play with dice". He rejected the concept that the state of a physical system depends on the experimental arrangement for its measurement. He held that a state of nature occurs in its own right, regardless of whether or how it might be observed. That view is supported by the currently accepted definition of a quantum state, which does not depend on the configuration space for its representation, that is to say, manner of observation. Einstein also believed that underlying quantum mechanics must be a theory that thoroughly and directly expresses the rule against action at a distance; in other words, he insisted on the principle of locality. He considered, but rejected on theoretical grounds, a particular proposal for hidden variables to obviate the indeterminism or acausality of quantum mechanical measurement. He believed that quantum mechanics was a currently valid but not a permanently definitive theory for quantum phenomena. He thought its future replacement would require profound conceptual advances, and would not come quickly or easily. The Bohr-Einstein debates provide a vibrant critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation from an epistemological point of view. In arguing for his views, he produced a series of objections, of which the most famous has become known as the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox.
John Bell showed that this EPR paradox led to experimentally testable differences between quantum mechanics and theories that rely on added hidden variables. Experiments confirmed the accuracy of quantum mechanics, thereby showing that quantum mechanics cannot be improved upon by addition of hidden variables. Alain Aspect's experiments in 1982 and many later experiments definitively verified quantum entanglement. Entanglement, as demonstrated in Bell-type experiments, does not violate causality, since it does not involve transfer of information. By the early 1980s, experiments had shown that such inequalities were indeed violated in practice – so that there were in fact correlations of the kind suggested by quantum mechanics. At first these just seemed like isolated esoteric effects, but by the mid-1990s, they were being codified in the field of quantum information theory, and led to constructions with names like quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation. Quantum cryptography is proposed for use in high-security applications in banking and government.
The Everett many-worlds interpretation, formulated in 1956, holds that "all" the possibilities described by quantum theory "simultaneously" occur in a multiverse composed of mostly independent parallel universes. This is not accomplished by introducing a "new axiom" to quantum mechanics, but by "removing" the axiom of the collapse of the wave packet. "All" possible consistent states of the measured system and the measuring apparatus (including the observer) are present in a "real" physical – not just formally mathematical, as in other interpretations – quantum superposition. Such a superposition of consistent state combinations of different systems is called an entangled state. While the multiverse is deterministic, we perceive non-deterministic behavior governed by probabilities, because we can only observe the universe (i.e., the consistent state contribution to the aforementioned superposition) that we, as observers, inhabit. Everett's interpretation is perfectly consistent with John Bell's experiments and makes them intuitively understandable. However, according to the theory of quantum decoherence, these "parallel universes" will never be accessible to us. The inaccessibility can be understood as follows: once a measurement is done, the measured system becomes entangled with "both" the physicist who measured it "and" a huge number of other particles, some of which are photons flying away at the speed of light towards the other end of the universe. In order to prove that the wave function did not collapse, one would have to bring "all" these particles back and measure them again, together with the system that was originally measured. Not only is this completely impractical, but even if one "could" theoretically do this, it would have to destroy any evidence that the original measurement took place (including the physicist's memory).
In light of the Bell tests, Cramer in 1986 formulated his transactional interpretation which is unique in providing a physical explanation for the Born rule. Relational quantum mechanics appeared in the late 1990s as the modern derivative of the Copenhagen Interpretation.
Quantum mechanics has had enormous success in explaining many of the features of our universe. Quantum mechanics is often the only theory that can reveal the individual behaviors of the subatomic particles that make up all forms of matter (electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, and others). Quantum mechanics has strongly influenced string theories, candidates for a Theory of Everything (see reductionism).
Quantum mechanics is also critically important for understanding how individual atoms are joined by covalent bonds to form molecules. The application of quantum mechanics to chemistry is known as quantum chemistry. Quantum mechanics can also provide quantitative insight into ionic and covalent bonding processes by explicitly showing which molecules are energetically favorable to which others and the magnitudes of the energies involved. Furthermore, most of the calculations performed in modern computational chemistry rely on quantum mechanics.
In many aspects modern technology operates at a scale where quantum effects are significant.
Important applications of quantum theory include quantum chemistry, quantum optics, quantum computing, superconducting magnets, light-emitting diodes, the optical amplifier and the laser, the transistor and semiconductors such as the microprocessor, medical and research imaging such as magnetic resonance imaging and electron microscopy. Explanations for many biological and physical phenomena are rooted in the nature of the chemical bond, most notably the macro-molecule DNA.
Many modern electronic devices are designed using quantum mechanics. Examples include the laser, the transistor (and thus the microchip), the electron microscope, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The study of semiconductors led to the invention of the diode and the transistor, which are indispensable parts of modern electronics systems, computer and telecommunication devices. Another application is for making laser diode and light emitting diode which are a high-efficiency source of light.
Many electronic devices operate under effect of quantum tunneling. It even exists in the simple light switch. The switch would not work if electrons could not quantum tunnel through the layer of oxidation on the metal contact surfaces. Flash memory chips found in USB drives use quantum tunneling to erase their memory cells. Some negative differential resistance devices also utilize quantum tunneling effect, such as resonant tunneling diode. Unlike classical diodes, its current is carried by resonant tunneling through two or more potential barriers (see right figure). Its negative resistance behavior can only be understood with quantum mechanics: As the confined state moves close to Fermi level, tunnel current increases. As it moves away, current decreases. Quantum mechanics is necessary to understanding and designing such electronic devices.
Researchers are currently seeking robust methods of directly manipulating quantum states. Efforts are being made to more fully develop quantum cryptography, which will theoretically allow guaranteed secure transmission of information.
An inherent advantage yielded by quantum cryptography when compared to classical cryptography is the detection of passive eavesdropping. This is a natural result of the behavior of quantum bits; due to the observer effect, if a bit in a superposition state were to be observed, the superposition state would collapse into an eigenstate. Because the intended recipient was expecting to receive the bit in a superposition state, the intended recipient would know there was an attack, because the bit's state would no longer be in a superposition.
Another goal is the development of quantum computers, which are expected to perform certain computational tasks exponentially faster than classical computers. Instead of using classical bits, quantum computers use qubits, which can be in superpositions of states. Quantum programmers are able to manipulate the superposition of qubits in order to solve problems that classical computing cannot do effectively, such as searching unsorted databases or integer factorization. IBM claims that the advent of quantum computing may progress the fields of medicine, logistics, financial services, artificial intelligence and cloud security.
Another active research topic is quantum teleportation, which deals with techniques to transmit quantum information over arbitrary distances.
While quantum mechanics primarily applies to the smaller atomic regimes of matter and energy, some systems exhibit quantum mechanical effects on a large scale. Superfluidity, the frictionless flow of a liquid at temperatures near absolute zero, is one well-known example. So is the closely related phenomenon of superconductivity, the frictionless flow of an electron gas in a conducting material (an electric current) at sufficiently low temperatures. The fractional quantum Hall effect is a topological ordered state which corresponds to patterns of long-range quantum entanglement. States with different topological orders (or different patterns of long range entanglements) cannot change into each other without a phase transition.
Quantum theory also provides accurate descriptions for many previously unexplained phenomena, such as black-body radiation and the stability of the orbitals of electrons in atoms. It has also given insight into the workings of many different biological systems, including smell receptors and protein structures. Recent work on photosynthesis has provided evidence that quantum correlations play an essential role in this fundamental process of plants and many other organisms. Even so, classical physics can often provide good approximations to results otherwise obtained by quantum physics, typically in circumstances with large numbers of particles or large quantum numbers. Since classical formulas are much simpler and easier to compute than quantum formulas, classical approximations are used and preferred when the system is large enough to render the effects of quantum mechanics insignificant.
For example, consider a free particle. In quantum mechanics, a free matter is described by a wave function. The particle properties of the matter become apparent when we measure its position and velocity. The wave properties of the matter become apparent when we measure its wave properties like interference. The wave–particle duality feature is incorporated in the relations of coordinates and operators in the formulation of quantum mechanics. Since the matter is free (not subject to any interactions), its quantum state can be represented as a wave of arbitrary shape and extending over space as a wave function. The position and momentum of the particle are observables. The Uncertainty Principle states that both the position and the momentum cannot simultaneously be measured with complete precision. However, one "can" measure the position (alone) of a moving free particle, creating an eigenstate of position with a wave function that is very large (a Dirac delta) at a particular position "x", and zero everywhere else. If one performs a position measurement on such a wave function, the resultant "x" will be obtained with 100% probability (i.e., with full certainty, or complete precision). This is called an eigenstate of position – or, stated in mathematical terms, a "generalized position eigenstate (eigendistribution)". If the particle is in an eigenstate of position, then its momentum is completely unknown. On the other hand, if the particle is in an eigenstate of momentum, then its position is completely unknown.
In an eigenstate of momentum having a plane wave form, it can be shown that the wavelength is equal to "h/p", where "h" is Planck's constant and "p" is the momentum of the eigenstate.
The particle in a one-dimensional potential energy box is the most mathematically simple example where restraints lead to the quantization of energy levels. The box is defined as having zero potential energy everywhere "inside" a certain region, and therefore infinite potential energy everywhere "outside" that region. For the one-dimensional case in the formula_3 direction, the time-independent Schrödinger equation may be written
With the differential operator defined by
the previous equation is evocative of the classic kinetic energy analogue,
with state formula_7 in this case having energy formula_8 coincident with the kinetic energy of the particle.
The general solutions of the Schrödinger equation for the particle in a box are
or, from Euler's formula,
The infinite potential walls of the box determine the values of formula_11 and formula_12 at formula_13 and formula_14 where formula_7 must be zero. Thus, at formula_13,
and formula_18. At formula_14,
in which formula_21 cannot be zero as this would conflict with the Born interpretation. Therefore, since formula_22, formula_23 must be an integer multiple of formula_24,
The quantization of energy levels follows from this constraint on formula_26 since
formula_27
The ground state energy of the particles is formula_28 for formula_29
The energy of the particle in the formula_30th state is formula_31
Particle in a box with boundary condition formula_32
In this condition the general solution will be same, there will little change to the final result, since the boundary conditions are changed only slightly:
formula_33
At formula_34 the wave function is not actually zero at all values of formula_35
Clearly, from the wave function variation graph we have, At formula_36 the wave function follows a cosine curve with formula_13 as the origin.
At formula_38 the wave function follows a sine curve with formula_13 as the origin.
From this observation we can conclude that the wave function is alternatively sine and cosine.
So in this case the resultant wave equation is
formula_40
A finite potential well is the generalization of the infinite potential well problem to potential wells having finite depth.
The finite potential well problem is mathematically more complicated than the infinite particle-in-a-box problem as the wave function is not pinned to zero at the walls of the well. Instead, the wave function must satisfy more complicated mathematical boundary conditions as it is nonzero in regions outside the well.
This is a model for the quantum tunneling effect which plays an important role in the performance of modern technologies such as flash memory and scanning tunneling microscopy. Quantum tunneling is central to physical phenomena involved in superlattices.
As in the classical case, the potential for the quantum harmonic oscillator is given by
This problem can either be treated by directly solving the Schrödinger equation, which is not trivial, or by using the more elegant "ladder method" first proposed by Paul Dirac. The eigenstates are given by
where "Hn" are the Hermite polynomials
and the corresponding energy levels are
This is another example illustrating the quantification of energy for bound states.
The potential in this case is given by:
The solutions are superpositions of left- and right-moving waves:
and
with coefficients A and B determined from the boundary conditions and by imposing a continuous derivative on the solution, and where the wave vectors are related to the energy via
and
Each term of the solution can be interpreted as an incident, reflected, or transmitted component of the wave, allowing the calculation of transmission and reflection coefficients. Notably, in contrast to classical mechanics, incident particles with energies greater than the potential step are partially reflected.
The following titles, all by working physicists, attempt to communicate quantum theory to lay people, using a minimum of technical apparatus.
More technical:
On Wikibooks | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25202 |
Quilting
Quilting is the term given to the process of joining a minimum of three layers of fabric together either through stitching manually by hand using a needle and thread, or mechanically with a sewing machine or specialised longarm quilting system. An array of stitches is passed through all layers of the fabric to create a three dimensional padded surface. The three layers are typically referred to as the top fabric or quilt top, batting or insulating material and the backing.
Quilting varies from a purely functional fabric joinery technique to highly elaborate, decorative three dimensional surface treatments. A wide variety of textile products are traditionally associated with quilting that includes bed coverings, soft home furnishings, garments and costumes, wall hangings, artistic objects and cultural artefacts.
A wide range of effects can be employed by the quilter that contribute to the final surface quality and utility of the quilted material. The quilter controls these effects through the manipulation of elements such as material type and thickness, stitch length and style, pattern design, piecing and cutting. Two dimensional effects such as optical illusions can be achieved through aesthetic choices regarding colour, texture and print. Three dimensional and sculptural components of quilted material can be manipulated and enhanced with further embellishment which may include appliqué, embroidery techniques such as shisha mirror work, and the inclusion of other objects or elements such as pearls, beads, buttons, sequins. Some quilters dye or create their own fabrics. In contemporary artistic quilting, new and experimental materials such as plastics, paper, naturally occurring fibres and plants amongst a diverse array of other materials have been used.
Quilting can be considered one of the first examples of upcycling, as it has historically made extensive use of remnants and offcuts for the creation of new products.
The origin of the term 'quilt' is linked to the Latin word "culcita", meaning a bolster or cushion. Usage of the term seems to have first been used in England in the 13th century. However the sewing techniques of piecing, appliqué, and quilting have been used for clothing and furnishings in diverse parts of the world for several millennia and a wide range of quilting styles and techniques have uniquely evolved around the globe.
The earliest known quilted garment is depicted on the carved ivory figure of a Pharaoh dating from the ancient Egyptian First Dynasty (). In 1924 archaeologists discovered a quilted floor covering in Mongolia, estimated to date between 100 BC and 200 AD.
In Europe, quilting has been part of the needlework tradition from about the fifth century, with early objects containing Egyptian cotton, which may indicate that Egyptian and Mediterranean trade provided a conduit for the technique. However, quilted objects were relatively rare in Europe until approximately the twelfth century, when quilted bedding and other items appeared after the return of the Crusaders from the Middle East. The medieval quilted gambeson, aketon and arming doublet were garments worn under or instead of armor of maille or plate armor. These developed into the later quilted doublet worn as part of fashionable European male clothing from the fourteenth to seventeenth century. The earliest known surviving European bed quilt is from late-fourteenth-century Sicily: the Tristan quilt made of linen and padded with wool. The blocks across the center are scenes from the legend of Tristan. The quilt is and is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The word "quilt" comes from the Latin "culcita" meaning a stuffed sack, but it came into the English language from the French word "cuilte".
In American Colonial times, quilts were predominantly whole-cloth quilts—a single piece of fabric layered with batting and backing held together with fine needlework quilting. Broderie perse quilts were popular during this time and the majority of pierced or appliqued quilts made during the 1170–1800 period were medallion-style quilts (quilts with a central ornamental panel and one or more borders). Patchwork quilting in America dates to the 1770s, the decade the United States gained its independence from England. These late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century patchwork quilts often mixed wool, silk, linen, and cotton in the same piece, as well as mixing large-scale (often chintz) and small-scale (often calico) patterns. Some antique quilts made in North America have worn-out blankets or older quilts as the internal batting layer, quilted between new layers of fabric and thereby extending the usefulness of old material.
During American pioneer days, foundation piecing became popular. Paper was cut into shapes and used as a pattern; each individual piece of cut fabric was basted around the paper pattern. Paper was a scarce commodity in the early American west so women would save letters from home, postcards, newspaper clippings, and catalogs to use as patterns. The paper not only served as a pattern but as an insulator. The paper found between the old quilts has become a primary source of information about pioneer life.
Quilts made without any insulation or batting were referred to as summer quilts. They were not made for warmth, only to keep the chill off during cooler summer evenings.
There is a long tradition of African-American quilting beginning with quilts made by slaves, both for themselves and for their owners. The style of these quilts was determined largely by time period and region, rather than race, and the documented slave-made quilts generally resemble those made by white women in their region. After 1865 and the end of slavery in the United States, African-Americans began to develop their own distinctive style of quilting.
Harriet Powers, a slave-born African American woman, made two famous story quilts. She was just one of the many African-American quilters who contributed to the evolution of quilting. The first nationwide recognition of African-American quilt-making came when the Gee's Bend quilting community was celebrated in an exhibition that opened in 2002 and traveled to many museums, including the Smithsonian. Gee's Bend is a small, isolated community of African-Americans in southern Alabama with a quilt-making tradition that goes back several generations and is characterized by pattern improvisation, multiple patterning, bright and contrasting colors, visual motion, and a lack of rules. The contributions made by Harriet Powers and other quilters of Gee's Bend, Alabama have been recognized by the US Postal Service with a series of stamps. The "communal" nature of the quilting process (and how it can bring together women of varied races and backgrounds) was honored in the series of stamps.
Beginning with the children's story "Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt" (1989) a legend has grown that slaves used quilts as a means to share and transmit secret messages to escape slavery and travel the Underground Railroad. Consensus among historians is that there is no sound basis for this belief, and no documented mention among the thousands of slave narratives or other contemporary records.
Another American group to develop a distinct style of quilting were the Amish. Typically, these quilts use only solid fabrics, are pieced from geometric shapes, do not contain appliqué, and construction is simple (corners are butted, rather than mitered, for instance) and done entirely by hand. Amish quilters also tend to use simple patterns: Lancaster County Amish are known for their Diamond-in-a-Square and Bars patterns, while other communities use patterns such as Brick, Streak of Lightning, Chinese Coins, and Log Cabins, and midwestern communities are known for their repeating block patterns. Borders and color choice also vary by community. For example, Lancaster quilts feature wide borders with lavish quilting, while Midwestern quilts feature narrower borders to balance the fancier piecing.
Some Native Americans are thought to have learned quilting through observation of white settlers; others learned it from missionaries who taught quilting to Native American women along with other homemaking skills. Native American women quickly developed their own unique style, the Lone Star design (also called the Star of Bethlehem), a variation on Morning Star designs that had been featured on Native American clothing and other items for centuries. These quilts often featured floral appliqué framing the star design. Star quilts have become an important part of many Plains Indian ceremonies, replacing buffalo robes traditionally given away at births, marriages, tribal elections, and other ceremonies. Pictorial quilts, created with appliqué, were also common.
Another distinctive style of Native American quilting is Seminole piecing, created by Seminoles living in the Florida Everglades. The style evolved out a need for cloth (the closest town was often a week's journey away). Women would make strips of sewing the remnants of fabric rolls together, then sew these into larger pieces to make clothing. Eventually the style began to be used not just for clothing but for quilts as well. In 1900, with the introduction of sewing machines and readily available fabric in Seminole communities, the patterns became much more elaborate and the style continues to be in use today, both by Seminole women and by others who have copied and adapted their designs and techniques.
"Hawaiian quilting was well established by the beginning of the twentieth century. Hawaiian women learned to quilt from the wives of missionaries from New England in the 1820s. Though they learned both pieced work and applique, by the 1870s they had adapted applique techniques to create a uniquely Hawaiian mode of expression. The classic Hawaiian quilt design is a large, bold, curvilinear appliqué pattern that covers much of the surface of the quilt, with the symmetrical design cut from only one piece of fabric."
There are two primary forms of quilting that originate in South Asia: Nakshi Kantha and Ralli. Nakshi Kantha quilts originated in India and are typically made of scraps and worn-out fabric stitched together with old sari threads using kantha embroidery stitches. "The layers of cloth were spread on the ground, held in place with weights at the edges, and sewn together with rows of large basting stitches. The cloth was then folded and worked on whenever there was time." The first recorded kantha are more than 500 years old.
Ralli quilts are traditionally made in Pakistan, western India, and the surrounding area. They are made by every sector of society including Hindu and Muslim women, women of different castes, and women from different towns or villages or tribes with the colors and designs varying among these groups. The name comes from "ralanna", a word meaning to mix or connect. Quilts tops were designed and pieced by one woman using scraps of hand-dyed cotton. This cotton often comes from old dresses or shawls. Once pieced, the quilt top is placed on a reed mat with the other layers and sewn together using thick, colored thread in straight parallel lines by members of the designer's family and community.
Quilting originated in Sweden in the fifteenth century with heavily stitched and appliquéd quilts made for the very wealthy. These quilts, created from silk, wool, and felt, were intended to be both decorative and functional and were found in churches and in the homes of nobility. Imported cotton first appeared in Sweden in 1870, and began to appear in Swedish quilts soon after along with scraps of wool, silk, and linen. As the availability of cotton increased and its price went down, quilting became widespread among all classes of Swedish society. Wealthier quilters used wool batting while others used linen scraps, rags, or paper mixed with animal hair. In general, these quilts were simple and narrow, made by both men and women. The biggest influence on Swedish quilting in this time period is thought to have come from America as Swedish immigrants to the United States returned to their home country when conditions there improved.
During the late 20th century, art quilts became popular for their aesthetic and artistic qualities rather than for functionality as they are displayed on a wall or table rather than being used on a bed.. "It is believed that decorative quilting came to Europe and Asia during the Crusades (A.D. 1100–1300), a likely idea because textile arts were more developed in China and India than in the West."
In the early 21st century, modern quilting became a more prominent area of quilting. Modern quilting follows a distinct aesthetic style which draws on inspiration from modern style in architecture, art, and design using traditional quilt making techniques. Modern quilts are different from art quilts in that they are made to be used. Modern quilts are also influenced by the Quilters of Gee's Bend, Amish quilts, Nancy Crow, Denyse Schmidt, Gwen Marston, Yoshiko Jinzenji, Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle.
The Modern Quilt Guild has attempted to define modern quilting. The characteristics of a modern quilt may include: the use of bold colors and prints, high contrast and graphic areas of solid color, improvisational piecing, minimalism, expansive negative space, and alternate grid work.
The Modern Quilt Guild, a non-profit corporation, with 14,000 members in more than 200 members guilds in 39 countries, fosters modern quilting via local guilds, workshops, webinars, and Quiltcon—an annual modern quilting conference and convention. The founding Modern Quilt Guild formed in October 2009 in Los Angeles.
QuiltCon features a quilt show with 400+ quilts, quilt vendors, lectures, and quilting workshops and classes. The first QuiltCon was February 21–24, 2013 in Austin, TX. QuiltCon 2020 will be held in Austin, Texas, February 20–23, 2020 and will feature 400 juried modern quilts from quilters around the world.
Unusual quilting designs have increasingly become popular as decorative textiles. As industrial sewing technology has become more precise and flexible, quilting using exotic fabrics and embroidery began to appear in home furnishings in the early 21st century.
The quilt block is traditionally a sub-unit composed of several pieces of fabric sewn together. The quilt blocks are repeated, or sometimes alternated with plain blocks, to form the overall design of a quilt. Barbara Brackman has documented over 4000 different quilt block patterns from the early 1830s to the 1970s in the "Encyclopedia Of Pieced Quilt Patterns". Some of the simpler designs for quilt blocks include the Nine-Patch, Shoo Fly, Churn Dash, and the Prairie Queen.
Most geometric quilt block designs fit into a "grid," the number of squares a pattern block is divided into. The five categories into which most square patterns fall are Four Patch, Nine Patch, Five-Patch, Seven-Patch, and Eight-Pointed Star. Each block can be subdivided into multiples: a Four-Patch can be constructed of 16 or 64 squares, for example.
A simple Nine Patch is made by sewing five patterned or dark pieces (patches) to four light square pieces in alternating order. These nine sewn squares make one block.
The Shoo Fly varies from this Nine Patch by dividing each of the four corner pieces into a light and dark triangle.
Another variation develops when one square piece is divided into two equal rectangles in the basic Nine Patch design. The Churn Dash block combines the triangles and rectangle to expand the Nine Patch.
The Prairie Queen block combines two large scale triangles in the corner section with the middle section using four squares. The center piece is one full size square. Each of the nine sections does have the same overall measurement and fits together.
The number of patterns possible by subdividing Four-, Five-, Seven-, Nine-Patches and Eight-Pointed Stars and using triangles instead of squares in the small subdivisions is almost endless.
Many types of quilting exist today. The two most widely used are hand-quilting and machine quilting.
Hand quilting is the process of using a needle and thread to sew a running stitch by hand across the entire area to be quilted. This binds the layers together. A quilting frame or hoop is often used to assist in holding the piece being quilted off the quilter's lap. A quilter can make one stitch at a time by first driving the needle through the fabric from the right side, then pushing it back up through the material from the wrong side to complete the stitch; this is called a stab stitch. Another option is called a rocking stitch, where the quilter has one hand, usually with a finger wearing a thimble, on top of the quilt, while the other hand is located beneath the piece to push the needle back up. A third option is called "loading the needle" and involves doing four or more stitches before pulling the needle through the cloth. Hand quilting is still practiced by the Amish and Mennonites within the United States and Canada, and is enjoying a resurgence worldwide.
Machine quilting is the process of using a home sewing machine or a longarm machine to sew the layers together. With the home sewing machine, the layers are tacked together before quilting. This involves laying the top, batting, and backing out on a flat surface and either pinning (using large safety pins) or tacking the layers together. Longarm quilting involves placing the layers to be quilted on a special frame. The frame has bars on which the layers are rolled, keeping these together without the need for tacking or pinning. These frames are used with a professional sewing machine mounted on a platform. The platform rides along tracks so that the machine can be moved across the layers on the frame. A longarm machine is moved across the fabric. In contrast, the fabric is moved through a home sewing machine.
Tying is another technique of fastening the three layers together. This is done primarily on quilts that are made to be used and are needed quickly. The process of tying the quilt is done with yarns or multiple strands of thread. Square knots are used to finish off the ties so that the quilt may be washed and used without fear of the knots coming undone. This technique is commonly called "tacking." In the Midwest, tacked bed covers are referred to as comforters.
Quilting is now taught in some American schools. It is also taught at senior centers around the U.S., but quilters of all ages attend classes. These forms of workshops or classes are also available in other countries in guilds and community colleges.
Contemporary quilters use a wide range of quilting designs and styles, from ancient and ethnic to post-modern futuristic patterns. There is no one single school or style that dominates the quilt-making world. Regardless of skill level, all quilters know the importance of having the right tools when quilting. Having the right tools increases the fluid process of making a quilt and can even be improved over time with practice. Having the right tools will maximize efficiency and make the quilting experience one to remember. Below is a list of the different tools and tips that can be used to make a quilt by hand or machine:
A good quality sewing machine is a helpful addition to the process of piecing together a quilt top. Some also use a home sewing machine for quilting together the layers of the quilt, as well as binding the final product. While almost all home sewing machines can be used to quilt layers together, having a wide throat, the space to the right of the needle mechanism, is very helpful because it is easier to manipulate a bulky quilt through the machine when the throat is both high and long. It is important to understand how your particular model functions in order to select the correct settings, thread the needle and bobbin, and operate the machine. Here is a handy guide on using a machine.
When making a quilt it is important to mark the fabric that you are cutting in order to have some kind of guidance when cutting the fabric, or you could use a quilting ruler and rotary cutter. When marking the fabric it is advised that you use a fabric marker, which is a marker that washes out when the quilt is washed or will fade away after repeated washes.
The longarm quilting machine makes it easier to make larger quilts because of the extended arm that is used. Being able to leverage the larger machine and not having to hold the material that is being used while quilting helps the process move along much faster and makes it easier on the quilter. Some quilt shops offer longarm services, where one can pay for their project to be quilted and in some cases, bound as well.
When quilting, one of the most important tools that is used is the needle. Whether you are quilting by hand or by machine, the needle that is being used is critical to the final result. Using the wrong needle can lead to puckering, bumps, or even the material being torn. Machine quilting needs a sharp needle to easily pierce the three-part quilt sandwich and properly sew together the quilt top, batting and backing.
The traditional needles used for quilting are called "betweens" and are generally smaller and stronger than normal sewing needles. They have a very small eye which prevents any extra bump at the head of the needles when you are pulling through the thread.
Understanding how pins and thimbles work is also very important in the process of making quilts. Many different combinations of pinning can be used in order get similar results and the exciting part is figuring out existing combinations as well as coming up with new ones. Thimbles are not required but are good for keeping fingers safe.
Choosing the right types of threads for a quilt can be difficult and beginners may need some assistance from an expert or more advanced quilter. The color, composition, and type of thread that is used will have a pivotal role in the outcome of the final quilt.
What a quilter uses to cut the fabric is a vital step in the quilting process. It is very important each piece is perfectly aligned in order to prevent an uneven or sloppy appearance and to prevent rework. Rotary cutters revolutionized quiltmaking when they appeared in the late 1970s. A rotary cutter offers even the shakiest of hands the ability to produce perfect, even slices and minimizes the chance of error.
Quilts can have many different templates or patterns and they can have a large impact on the final result. There are a number of mediums that can be used and depending on the usage, size, and style they will give your quilt a varied look. Templates are generally considered the basis of the structure of the quilt, like a blueprint for a house. If used properly it can help quilters produce a quilt of their liking and give them a sense of satisfaction and vision for future quilts they want to make. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25203 |
Qt (software)
Qt (pronounced "cute") is a free and open-source widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications that run on various software and hardware platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS, Android or embedded systems with little or no change in the underlying codebase while still being a native application with native capabilities and speed.
Qt is currently being developed by The Qt Company, a publicly listed company, and the Qt Project under open-source governance, involving individual developers and organizations working to advance Qt. Qt is available under both commercial licenses and open-source GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, and LGPL 3.0 licenses.
Qt is used for developing graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and multi-platform applications that run on all major desktop platforms and most mobile or embedded platforms.
Most GUI programs created with Qt have a native-looking interface, in which case Qt is classified as a "widget toolkit". Also non-GUI programs can be developed, such as command-line tools and consoles for servers. An example of such a non-GUI program using Qt is the Cutelyst web framework.
Qt supports various compilers, including the GCC C++ compiler and the Visual Studio suite and has extensive internationalization support. Qt also provides Qt Quick, that includes a declarative scripting language called QML that allows using JavaScript to provide the logic. With Qt Quick, rapid application development for mobile devices became possible, while logic can still be written with native code as well to achieve the best possible performance.
Other features include SQL database access, XML parsing, JSON parsing, thread management and network support.
The latest version is Qt 5.14.2, which was released on 1 April 2020.
The current LTS version is Qt 5.12 LTS. It was released on 6 December 2018 and will be supported for 3 years. Actual Version is 5.12.8.
The initial release of Qt software was on 20 May 1995.
In 2017, the Qt Company estimated a community of about 1 million developers worldwide in over 70 industries.
Graphical user-interfaces and desktop environments that utilize Qt/QML as widget toolkit:
Many notable open-source or proprietary cross-platform software are using Qt or QML:
There are cases where applications have ported their user interface code from another cross-platform toolkit to Qt to solve the problems they had with them:
Qt is utilized by a wide range of companies and organizations such as
Qt is built on these key concepts:
Starting with Qt 4.0 the framework was split into individual modules. With Qt 5.0 the architecture was modularized even further. Qt is now split into "essential" and "add-on" modules.
There are four editions of Qt available: "Community", "Indie Mobile", "Professional" and "Enterprise". The Community version is under the open source licenses, while the Indie Mobile, Professional and Enterprise versions, which contain additional functionality and libraries, e.g. Enterprise Controls are commercially sold by The Qt Company.
Qt works on many different platforms; the following are officially supported:
After Nokia opened the Qt source code to the community on Gitorious various ports appeared. There are also some ports of Qt that may be available, but are not supported anymore. These platforms are listed in List of platforms supported by Qt. See also there for current community support for other lesser known platforms, such as SailfishOS.
Qt is available under the following free software licenses: GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, LGPL 3.0 and LGPL 2.1 (with Qt special exception). Note that some modules are available only under a GPL license, which means that applications which statically link to these modules need to comply with that license.
In addition, Qt has always been available under a commercial license, like the Qt Commercial License, that allows developing proprietary applications with no restrictions on licensing.
Qt comes with its own set of tools to ease cross-platform development, which can otherwise be cumbersome due to different set of development tools.
Qt Creator is a cross-platform IDE for C++ and QML. Qt Designer's GUI layout/design functionality is integrated into the IDE, although Qt Designer can still be started as a standalone tool.
In addition to Qt Creator, Qt provides qmake, a cross-platform build script generation tool that automates the generation of Makefiles for development projects across different platforms.
There are other tools available in Qt, including the Qt Designer interface builder and the Qt Assistant help browser (which are both embedded in Qt Creator), the Qt Linguist translation tool, uic (user interface compiler), and moc (Meta-Object Compiler).
In the summer of 1990, Haavard Nord and Eirik Chambe-Eng (the original developers of Qt and the CEO and President, respectively, of Trolltech) were working together on a database application for ultrasound images written in C++ and running on Mac OS, Unix, and Windows. They began development of "Qt" in 1991, three years before the company was incorporated as Quasar Technologies, then changed the name to Troll Tech and then to Trolltech.
The toolkit was called Qt because the letter Q looked appealing in Haavard's Emacs typeface, and "t" was inspired by Xt, the X toolkit.
The first two versions of Qt had only two flavors: Qt/X11 for Unix and Qt/Windows for Windows.
On 20 May 1995 Troll Tech publicly released Qt 0.90 for X11/Linux with the source code under the "Qt Free Edition License". This license was viewed as not compliant with the free software definition by Free Software Foundation because, while the source was available, it did not allow the redistribution of modified versions. Trolltech used this license until version 1.45. Controversy erupted around 1998 when it became clear that the K Desktop Environment was going to become one of the leading desktop environments for Linux. As it was based on Qt, many people in the free software movement worried that an essential piece of one of their major operating systems would be proprietary.
The Windows platform was available only under a proprietary license, which meant free/open source applications written in Qt for X11 could not be ported to Windows without purchasing the proprietary edition.
With the release of version 2.0 of the toolkit, the license was changed to the Q Public License (QPL), a free software license, but one regarded by the Free Software Foundation as incompatible with the GPL. Compromises were sought between KDE and Trolltech whereby Qt would not be able to fall under a more restrictive license than the QPL, even if Trolltech was bought out or went bankrupt. This led to the creation of the KDE Free Qt foundation, which guarantees that Qt would fall under a BSD-style license should no free/open source version of Qt be released during 12 months.
In 2000, Qt/X11 2.2 was released under the GPL v2, ending all controversy regarding GPL compatibility.
At the end of 2001, Trolltech released Qt 3.0, which added support for Mac OS X (now known as macOS). The Mac OS X support was available only in the proprietary license until June 2003, when Trolltech released Qt 3.2 with Mac OS X support available under the GPL.
In 2002, members of the KDE on Cygwin project began porting the GPL licensed Qt/X11 code base to Windows. This was in response to Trolltech's refusal to license Qt/Windows under the GPL on the grounds that Windows was not a free/open source software platform. The project achieved reasonable success although it never reached production quality.
This was resolved when Trolltech released Qt 4.0 also for Windows under the GPL in June 2005. Qt 4 supported the same set of platforms in the free software/open source editions as in the proprietary edition, so it is possible, with Qt 4.0 and later releases, to create GPL-licensed free/open source applications using Qt on all supported platforms. The GPL v3 with special exception was later added as an added licensing option. The GPL exception allows the final application to be licensed under various GPL-incompatible free software/open source licenses such as the Mozilla Public License 1.1.
Nokia acquired Trolltech ASA on 17 June 2008 and changed the name first to Qt Software, then to Qt Development Frameworks.
Nokia focused on turning Qt into the main development platform for its devices, including a port to the Symbian S60 platform. Version 1.0 of the Nokia Qt SDK was released on 23 June 2010. The source code was made available over Gitorious, a community oriented git source code repository, with a goal of creating a broader community using and improving Qt.
On 14 January 2009, Qt version 4.5 added another option, the LGPL, to make Qt more attractive for both non-GPL open source projects and closed applications.
In February 2011, Nokia announced its decision to drop Symbian technologies and base their future smartphones on the Windows Phone platform instead (and since then support for that platform has also been dropped). One month later, Nokia announced the sale of Qt's commercial licensing and professional services to Digia, with the immediate goal of taking Qt support to Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms, and to continue focusing on desktop and embedded development, although Nokia was to remain the main development force behind the framework at that time.
In March 2011, Nokia sold the commercial licensing part of Qt to Digia creating Qt Commercial. In August 2012, Digia announced that it would acquire Qt from Nokia. The Qt team at Digia started their work in September 2012. They released Qt 5.0 within a month and newer versions every 6 months with new features and additional supported platforms.
In September 2014, Digia transferred the Qt business and copyrights to their wholly owned subsidiary, The Qt Company, which owns 25 brands related to Qt. In May 2016, Digia and Qt demerged completely into two independent companies.
Qt 5 was officially released on 19 December 2012. This new version marked a major change in the platform, with hardware-accelerated graphics, QML and JavaScript playing a major role. The traditional C++-only QWidgets continued to be supported, but did not benefit from the performance improvements available through the new architecture. Qt 5 brings significant improvements to the speed and ease of developing user interfaces.
Framework development of Qt 5 moved to open governance at qt-project.org, which made it possible for developers outside Digia to submit patches for review.
Aside from The Qt Company, many organizations and individuals using Qt as their development platform participate in the open development of Qt via the Qt Project.
One such Qt contributor is Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, a Swedish Qt consulting company. KDAB is involved in many areas, including maintenance of several components.
Together with RIM/BlackBerry, KDAB is maintaining the QNX and BlackBerry 10 ports of Qt.
Another participator is Intel, contributing for example Wayland support. AudioCodes maintains IBM ClearCase support in Qt Creator.
As a heavy user of Qt, the KDE project submits many patches and features from its developer library KDE Frameworks back to Qt.
Qt Wiki provides a comprehensive list of English books about Qt. This is a list of notable books: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25204 |
QuakeC
QuakeC is a compiled language developed in 1996 by John Carmack of id Software to program parts of the video game "Quake". Using QuakeC, a programmer is able to customize "Quake" to great extents by adding weapons, changing game logic and physics, and programming complex scenarios. It can be used to control many aspects of the game itself, such as parts of the AI, triggers, or changes in the level. The "Quake" engine was the only game engine to use QuakeC. Following engines used DLL game modules for customization written in C, and C++ from id Tech 4 on.
The QuakeC source to the original id Software "Quake" game logic was published in 1996 and used as the basis for modifications like capture the flag and others. QuakeC source code is compiled using a tool called qcc into a bytecode kept in a file called progs.dat. The programmers of "Quake" modifications could then publish their progs.dat bytecode without revealing their source code. Most "Quake" mods were published this way.
QuakeC allowed the "Quake" engine to dominate the direction of the first-person shooter genre. Thanks to Carmack's idea of extending video game life by adding unlimited expandability (extensibility already played a big role in "Doom"), an enormous Internet community of gamers and programmers alike has arisen and many modern multiplayer games are extensible in some form.
QuakeC is known as interpreted because as "Quake" runs, it is continually interpreting the progs.dat file.
The syntax of QuakeC is based on that of the C programming language, explaining its name, but it does not support the implementation of new types, structures, arrays, or any kind of referencing other than the "entity" type (which is always a reference). QuakeC also suffers from the fact that many built-in functions (functions prototyped in the QuakeC code but actually defined within the game engine and written in C) return strings in a temporary string buffer, which can only hold one string at any given time. In other words, a construct such as
will fail because the second call to codice_2 (which converts a floating-point value to a string) overwrites the string returned by the first call before SomeFunction can do something with it. QuakeC does not contain any string handling functions or file handling functions, which were simply not needed by the original game.
Most video games at the time had their game logic written in plain C/C++ and compiled into the executable, which is faster. However, this makes it harder for the community to create mods and it makes the process of porting the game to another platform (such as GNU/Linux) more costly.
Despite its advantages, the choice of implementing game logic using a custom scripting language and interpreter was dropped from the next generation Quake II engine in favor of compiled C code due to the overall inflexibility of QuakeC, the increasingly complex game logic, the performance to be gained by packaging game logic into a native dynamic link library, and the advantage of leveraging an already established programming language's community, tools, educational materials, and documentation.
Distributing native code created new security and portability concerns. QuakeC bytecode afforded little opportunity for mischief, while native code has access to the whole machine. QuakeC bytecode also worked on any machine that could run Quake. Compiling to native code added an additional barrier to entry for novice mod developers, because they were being asked to set up a more complicated programming environment. The eventual solution, implemented by the Quake III engine, was to combine the advantages of original QuakeC with the advantages of compiling C to native code. The lcc C compiler was extended to compile standard C into bytecode, which could be interpreted by a virtual machine in a manner similar to QuakeC. This addressed the security, portability, and tool chain problems, but lost the performance advantage of native code. That was solved by further compiling the bytecode into native code at run time on supported machines.
id Software released the source of codice_3, their QuakeC compiler, along with the original QuakeC code in 1996. Modified versions soon sprung up, including Jonathan Roy's codice_4 and Ryan "FrikaC" Smith's FrikQCC. These added functionality, optimizations, and compiling speed boosts.
In 1999, when id Software released the code from Quake's engine under the GNU General Public License (GPL), the workings of the bytecode interpreter were examined and new QuakeC compilers were released, such as J.P. Grossman's codice_5 and a new version of FrikQCC. These compilers took advantage of newly discovered features in a backwards-compatible way so that the bytecode could still be properly interpreted by unmodified Quake engines. New features include arrays, pointers, integers, for loops and string manipulation.
With the "Quake" engine source code now able to be changed, further features were added to QuakeC in the form of new built-in functions. Features long yearned for by QuakeC coders finally reached realization as QuakeC now had file and string handling functions, enlarged string buffers, more math functions, and so on. However, programmers taking advantage of these changes lost backwards compatibility with the unmodified Quake engine.
"Xonotic" since version 0.7 uses the gmqcc compiler.
Some enhanced Quake engines (notably Darkplaces and FTEQW) have support for an extension of regular QuakeC (now commonly referred to as Server Side QuakeC or SSQC) that allows client side only scripting of the Quake engine. This is especially useful for GUIs, HUDs and any visually heavy effects that do not need to be simulated on the server and transferred over the network. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25207 |
Quad Cities
The Quad Cities is a region of five cities in the U.S. states of Iowa and Illinois: Davenport and Bettendorf in southeastern Iowa, and Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline in northwestern Illinois. These cities are the center of the Quad Cities metropolitan area, which as of 2013 had a population estimate of 383,781 and a Combined Statistical Area (CSA) population of 474,937, making it the 90th-largest CSA in the nation.
Before European settlers came to inhabit the Quad Cities, the confluence of rivers had attracted many varying cultures of indigenous peoples, who used the waterways and riverbanks for their settlements for thousands of years. At the time of European encounter, it was a home and principal trading place of the Sauk and Fox tribes of Native Americans. "Saukenuk" was the principal village of the Sauk tribe and birthplace of its 19th-century war chief, Black Hawk. In 1832, Sauk chief "Keokuk" and General Winfield Scott signed a treaty in Davenport after the US defeated the Sauk and their allies in the Black Hawk War. The treaty resulted in the Native Americans ceding of land to the United States in exchange for a much smaller reservation elsewhere. Black Hawk State Historic Site in Rock Island preserves part of historic Saukenuk and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The history of urban settlements in the Quad Cities was stimulated by riverboat traffic. For between LeClaire, Iowa, and Rock Island, the Mississippi River flowed across a series of finger-like rock projections protruding from either bank. These rapids were difficult for steamboats to traverse. As demand for river-based transportation increased along the upper Mississippi, the navigability of the river throughout the "Rock Island Rapids" became a greater concern. Over time, a minor industry grew up in the area to meet the steamboats' needs. Boat crews needed rest areas to stop before encountering the rapids, places to hire expert pilots such as Phillip Suiter, who was the first licensed pilot on the upper Mississippi River, to guide the boat through the rocky waters, or, when the water was low, places where goods could be removed and transported by wagon on land past the rapids. Today, the rocks are submerged six feet underwater by a lake formed by two locks and dams.
As the Industrial Revolution developed in the United States, many enterprising industrialists looked to the Mississippi River as a promising source of water power. The combination of energy and easy access to river transportation attracted entrepreneurs and industrialists to the Quad Cities for development. In 1848, John Deere moved his plough business to Moline. His business was incorporated as Deere & Company in 1868. Deere & Company is the largest employer today in the Quad Cities.
The first railroad bridge built across the Mississippi River connected Davenport and Rock Island in 1856. It was built by the Rock Island Railroad Company, and replaced the slow seasonal ferry service and winter ice bridges as the primary modes of transportation across the river. Steamboaters saw the nationwide railroads as a threat to their business. On May 6, 1856, just weeks after completion of the bridge, an angry steamboater crashed the "Effie Afton" into it. John Hurd, the owner of the "Effie Afton", filed a lawsuit against the Rock Island Railroad Company. The Rock Island Railroad Company selected Abraham Lincoln as their trial lawyer and won after he took the case to the US Supreme Court. Phillip Suiter was one of his expert witnesses. It was a pivotal trial in Lincoln's career.
After the Civil War, the region began to gain a common identity. The river towns that were thoughtfully planned and competently led flourished, while other settlements, usually get-rich-quick schemes for speculators, failed to pan out. By World War I, the towns of Davenport, Rock Island, and Moline had begun to style themselves as the "Tri-Cities," a cluster of three more-or-less equally-sized river communities growing around the small bend of the Mississippi River where it flows west. But with the growth of Rock Island County, during the 1930s the term "Quad Cities" came into vogue, as East Moline was given "equal status." Despite the fact that the region had earned the name "Quad Cities," the National Basketball Association had a franchise in Moline, Illinois, from 1946 to 1951 called the "Tri-Cities Blackhawks." Then, with the opening of an Alcoa (now Arconic) plant east of Davenport in 1948, the town of Bettendorf underwent so much growth that many people in the community discussed the adoption of the name "Quint Cities", But by this time, the name "Quad Cities" had become known well beyond the area, and "Quint Cities" never caught on, despite the efforts of WOC-TV (as KWQC-TV was then called) and others. Consequently, when Bettendorf passed East Moline in size, there was some debate about whether Bettendorf had "displaced" East Moline. Instead, local officials, such as the Chamber of Commerce, have chosen an inclusive approach, maintaining the name "Quad Cities" yet including all five cities.
Beginning in the late 1970s, economic conditions caused major industrial restructuring, which disrupted the basis of the region's economy. The major companies, agricultural manufacturers, ceased or scaled back operations in the Quad Cities. Factories which closed included International Harvester in Rock Island and Case IH in Bettendorf. Moline-based John Deere cut its labor headcount by one half. Later in the 1980s, Caterpillar Inc. closed its factories at Mount Joy and Bettendorf.
Since the 1990s, the Quad Cities governments, businesses, non-profits and residents have worked hard to redevelop the region. They have achieved national attention for their accomplishments.
Examples of revitalization and rebirth include:
Over the years, several communities in the Quad City area have proposed or performed mergers. As it grew, Davenport annexed the communities of Rockingham, Nahant, Probstei, East Davenport, Oakdale, Cawiezeel, Blackhawk, Mt. Joy, Green Tree, and others. Bettendorf annexed portions of Pleasant Valley in the 1970s. In 1987, Rock Island, Moline, East Moline, Milan, Carbon Cliff, Hampton, Coal Valley and Silvis considered a super-city merger which would have seen the Illinois cities become the second-largest city in the state, but the proposal ultimately failed. Moline and East Moline considered a merger in 1997. That same year, Green Rock and Colona did merge.
The Quad Cities is located at the confluence of the Rock and Mississippi rivers, approximately west of Chicago, and form the largest metropolitan area along the Mississippi River between Minneapolis–Saint Paul and the St. Louis metropolitan area. Interstate 80 crosses the Mississippi River here. The Quad Cities area is distinctive because the Mississippi River flows from east to west as it passes through the heart of the area; the Iowa cities of Davenport and Bettendorf are located due north of Rock Island and Moline, respectively.
The Quad Cities area is one where the telephone companies cooperate with regional phone calls. Iowa and Illinois have different area codes (563 and 309 respectively), yet most calls originating and terminating within the core urban area are placed without long-distance charges by dialing just a 7-digit number. This helps the bi-state area promote itself as a single community, "joined by a river."
The Quad Cities Metropolitan Area consists of three counties: Scott County in Iowa, and Rock Island County and Henry County in Illinois. The Quad City metro population is 382,268. The Quad Cities Metropolitan Area is also considered part of the Great Lakes Megalopolis.
According to the 2010 United States Census estimate, the metropolitan area grew to 471,551 (error: Number quoted is from the 2010 CSA count). As of the 2000 census, a total of 96,495 households and 60,535 families resided in the area.
The racial makeup of the area is 90.6% White (410,861), 3.7% Black or African American (27,757), 0.6% American Indian and Alaskan Native (1,255), 1.0% Asian (6,624), 0.03% Pacific Islander (156), and 2.0% from two or more races (11,929). 7.1% of the population is Hispanic or Latino of any race (37,070). The predominant ethnicities in the Quad Cities are of northern European descent, including German, Irish, and English, as well Scandinavian (Mostly Swedish and Norwegian) and Dutch. The primary minority groups in the area are African-Americans, which in Davenport make up the third largest black population in the state of Iowa, a community dating back to the 1830s when Iowa was a free territory. Many of the city's African-American residents have roots in the Southern/Border states of the U.S., including Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, and Missouri. The most significant Asian-American populations are South Asian and Vietnamese American.
According to resources, Christianity is the largest religion to be practiced in the area. However, the two states have a different population of Christian groups. In Davenport and Bettendorf, Catholics make up an 18.5% plurality, but Protestants with 15.1% Mainline and 11.6% Evangelical make up large minorities as well. The Black Protestants on the Iowa side comes in at 1.2%. On the Illinois side, between Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline, Catholicism is less prevalent at 12.4%, and at 12.5% Evangelical and 11.0% Mainline have smaller declines.
The Jewish population is about 500–600, which is down from about 1,800–2,000 in the 1950s and 1960s.
According to Quad Cities website, the top employers in the Quad Cities area are:
"Alphabetical by first name"
Since 1916, the region has supported the Quad City Symphony Orchestra, which presents a year-round schedule of concerts at the Adler Theatre in Davenport and Centennial Hall in Rock Island. The Handel Oratorio Society, dating to 1880, is the second-oldest organization of its kind in the nation and presents annual performances of "Messiah" along with another major work for choir and orchestra. The Augustana Choir, founded at Rock Island's Augustana College in 1934, is one of the nation's leading collegiate choruses. Major outdoor summer music festivals include the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival, Mississippi Valley Blues Festival, and River Roots Live.
The Quad Cities' three traditional community theaters – Playcrafters Barn Theatre (founded in 1920, comedies and dramas) and Quad City Music Guild (1948, musicals) in Moline, and Genesius guild (1957, outdoor Shakespeare and Greek comedies and tragedies) in Rock Island – were joined in 1976 by Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, a professional dinner theater in downtown Rock Island's historic Fort Theatre. Ballet is performed at Ballet Quad Cities. ComedySportz provides improv comedy. Bluebox Limited is a Bettendorf-based film production company, and many outside productions companies have filmed movies in the Quad Cities in recent years. Historic buildings and sites listed on state and the National Register of Historic Places interpret the history of people's settlement and lives in the area.
The Quad Cities is the 151st largest radio market in the United States. It is ranked 97th by Nielsen Media Research for the 2008–09 television season with 309,600 television households.
The area is served by over 13 commercial radio stations, 8 non-commercial radio stations, 3 low power FM radio stations, 8 TV stations and 3 daily newspapers.
In 2012, the Mississippi Valley Fair that is held in Davenport served as the film location for Rodney Atkins' music video "Just Wanna Rock N' Roll."
Also in 2012, the PBS Frontline documentary "Poor Kids" was filmed in and around the Quad Cities showing poverty from a child's perspective.
Four interstate highways serve the Quad Cities: Interstate 80, Interstate 280, Interstate 74 serve both states while Interstate 88 serves just Illinois. United States highways include U.S. Route 6 and U.S. Route 67 which run through both Iowa and Illinois, while U.S. Route 61 serves just Iowa and U.S. Route 150 serves just Illinois.
A total of five bridges accessible by automobiles connect Iowa with Illinois in the Quad Cities across the Mississippi River. The Fred Schwengel Memorial Bridge carries Interstate 80 and connects Le Claire, Iowa, with Rapids City, Illinois. Continuing downstream, the I-74 Bridge connects Bettendorf, Iowa, with Moline, Illinois, and is the busiest bridge with an average of 70,400 cars a day. The Government Bridge connects Downtown Davenport with the Rock Island Arsenal. Three bridges connect Davenport with Rock Island, Illinois; The Rock Island Centennial Bridge, The Crescent Rail Bridge, and the furthest downstream bridge, the Sergeant John F. Baker, Jr. Bridge which carries I-280.
Several state highways also serve the area. Iowa Highway 22 is on Davenport's southwest side and runs west through the county, while Iowa Highway 130 runs along Northwest Boulevard on Davenport's north edge. Illinois Route 5 (John Deere Road) runs from Rock Island east till it runs into Interstate 88. Illinois Route 92 runs along the Mississippi River, while Illinois Route 84 runs along the east side of Rock Island County. Illinois Route 192 connects Highway 92 with Illinois Route 94 near Taylor Ridge. The Chicago – Kansas City Expressway also serves the area along Interstates 74, 80, and 88.
There are three transit operators in the Quad Cities with limited interconnection between them. Rock Island County Metropolitan Mass Transit District (Quad Cities MetroLINK) serves the Illinois cities of Rock Island, Moline, East Moline, Milan, Silvis, Carbon Cliff, Hampton and Colona. It has 12 routes and a fleet of about 52 buses. It operates a river craft during summer months. In Iowa, Davenport Citibus has 10 fixed routes and operates 20 buses, seven days a week and Bettendorf Transit operates three routes, Monday–Saturday, and has eight buses.
Amtrak currently does not serve the Quad Cities. The closest station is about away in Galesburg, Illinois. In 2008, the two current United States Senators from Iowa, Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, and former President Barack Obama sent a letter to Amtrak asking them to begin plans to bring rail service to the Quad Cities. In October 2010, a $230 million federal fund was announced that will bring Amtrak service to the Quad Cities, with a new line running from Moline to Chicago. They hoped to have the line completed in 2015, and offer two round trips daily to Chicago.
In December 2011, the federal government awarded $177 million in funding for the Amtrak connection. Budgetary and logistical issues have delayed the completion of all necessary track improvements, but the project is still in development. The multi-modal Moline Q Station building was completed in early 2018, with the attached Westin Element hotel opening in February. When the full project is completed, it will establish passenger rail through the Quad Cities, for the first time since the 1970s.
The Quad Cities is served by the Quad City International Airport, Illinois' third-busiest airport, located in Moline. The airport is marketed as a regional alternative to the larger airports in Chicago, nearly away. The smaller Davenport Municipal Airport is the home of the Quad City Air Show.
From 1907 to 1926, Rock Island was home to the NFL's Rock Island Independents. The franchise was a charter member on the National Football League (NFL) in 1920. The first NFL Game ever was played by the Islanders at Douglas Park in September 1920. Football legend Jim Thorpe was a member of the team in 1924.
The Tri-Cities Blackhawks, named in honor of the Sauk war chief Black Hawk, was the next top-level professional sports franchise. The club played in the National Basketball League (NBL) from 1946 until its merger in 1949 with the Basketball Association of America to become the National Basketball Association (NBA). Hall of famer Red Auerbach coached the Blackhawks during their first NBA season.
After the 1950–51 basketball season, the team moved to Milwaukee, where they were named the Hawks. After a second move to St. Louis, the team is now the Atlanta Hawks.
Professional basketball returned to the Quad Cities during the 1980s and 1990s with the Quad City Thunder of the Continental Basketball Association. The CBA served as the NBA's premier developmental league and produced many highly regarded NBA stars. From 1987 through the 1992–93 season, the Thunder played at Wharton Field House in Moline. Starting with the 1993–94 season, the team played at The MARK of the Quad Cities (now the TaxSlayer Center.) After the CBA folded in 2001, the Thunder franchise ceased operations permanently. The TaxSlayer Center occasionally hosts NCAA Division I college basketball conference tournaments as well as NBA and NHL exhibitions.
The Quad Cities has hosted minor league baseball teams since the Davenport Brown Stockings first played in 1878. The Rock Island Islanders and Moline Plowboys each fielded teams for many seasons. The Islanders began play in 1901and played primarily at Douglas Park. The Plowboys were founded in 1914. Their home was Browning Field.
The Davenport franchise has been a member of the Midwest League since 1960. They have played at Modern Woodman Park since 1931. Today, the Quad Cities River Bandits are a Class A affiliate of the Houston Astros.
The PGA Tour makes an annual stop in the Quad Cities. The golf tournament is currently known as the John Deere Classic. It has drawn dozens of top PGA players over the years, including Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, and Payne Stewart.
The Quad Cities Marathon has run annually in late September since 1998. Roughly 400-500 participants race through the four cities, beginning and ending in Moline. The race weekend also offers a half marathon and a 5K as well as races for children. Kenyan Kiplangat Terer holds the men's record with a 2:14:04, run in 2013. Ethiopian Hirut Guangul holds the woman's record at 2:35:07, from her 2012 win. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25208 |
Quantum chemistry
Quantum chemistry, also called molecular quantum mechanics, is a branch of chemistry focused on the application of quantum mechanics in physical models and experiments of chemical systems. Understanding electronic structure and molecular dynamics using the Schrödinger equations are central topics in quantum chemistry.
Experimental quantum chemists rely heavily on spectroscopy, through which information regarding the quantization of energy on a molecular scale can be obtained. Common methods are infra-red (IR) spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, and scanning probe microscopy.
Theoretical quantum chemistry, the workings of which also tend to fall under the category of computational chemistry, seeks to calculate the predictions of quantum theory as atoms and molecules can only have discrete energies.
Quantum chemistry studies the ground state of individual atoms and molecules, and the excited states, and transition states that occur during chemical reactions.
On the calculations, quantum chemical studies use also semi-empirical and other methods based on quantum mechanical principles, and deal with time dependent problems. Many quantum chemical studies assume the nuclei are at rest (Born–Oppenheimer approximation). Many calculations involve iterative methods that include self-consistent field methods. Major goals of quantum chemistry include increasing the accuracy of the results for small molecular systems, and increasing the size of large molecules that can be processed, which is limited by scaling considerations—the computation time increases as a power of the number of atoms.
Some view the birth of quantum chemistry as starting with the discovery of the Schrödinger equation and its application to the hydrogen atom in 1926. However, the 1927 article of Walter Heitler (1904–1981) and Fritz London, is often recognized as the first milestone in the history of quantum chemistry. This is the first application of quantum mechanics to the diatomic hydrogen molecule, and thus to the phenomenon of the chemical bond. In the following years much progress was accomplished by Robert S. Mulliken, Max Born, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Linus Pauling, Erich Hückel, Douglas Hartree, Vladimir Fock, to cite a few. The history of quantum chemistry also goes through the 1838 discovery of cathode rays by Michael Faraday, the 1859 statement of the black-body radiation problem by Gustav Kirchhoff, the 1877 suggestion by Ludwig Boltzmann that the energy states of a physical system could be discrete, and the 1900 quantum hypothesis by Max Planck that any energy radiating atomic system can theoretically be divided into a number of discrete energy elements "ε" such that each of these energy elements is proportional to the frequency "ν" with which they each individually radiate energy and a numerical value called Planck's constant. Then, in 1905, to explain the photoelectric effect (1839), i.e., that shining light on certain materials can function to eject electrons from the material, Albert Einstein postulated, based on Planck's quantum hypothesis, that light itself consists of individual quantum particles, which later came to be called photons (1926). In the years to follow, this theoretical basis slowly began to be applied to chemical structure, reactivity, and bonding. Probably the greatest contribution to the field was made by Linus Pauling.
The first step in solving a quantum chemical problem is usually solving the Schrödinger equation (or Dirac equation in relativistic quantum chemistry) with the electronic molecular Hamiltonian. This is called determining the electronic structure of the molecule. It can be said that the electronic structure of a molecule or crystal implies essentially its chemical properties. An exact solution for the Schrödinger equation can only be obtained for the hydrogen atom (though exact solutions for the bound state energies of the hydrogen molecular ion have been identified in terms of the generalized Lambert W function). Since all other atomic, or molecular systems, involve the motions of three or more "particles", their Schrödinger equations cannot be solved exactly and so approximate solutions must be sought.
Although the mathematical basis of quantum chemistry had been laid by Schrödinger in 1926, it is generally accepted that the first true calculation in quantum chemistry was that of the German physicists Walter Heitler and Fritz London on the hydrogen (H2) molecule in 1927. Heitler and London's method was extended by the American theoretical physicist John C. Slater and the American theoretical chemist Linus Pauling to become the valence-bond (VB) [or Heitler–London–Slater–Pauling (HLSP)] method. In this method, attention is primarily devoted to the pairwise interactions between atoms, and this method therefore correlates closely with classical chemists' drawings of bonds. It focuses on how the atomic orbitals of an atom combine to give individual chemical bonds when a molecule is formed, incorporating the two key concepts of orbital hybridization and resonance.
An alternative approach was developed in 1929 by Friedrich Hund and Robert S. Mulliken, in which electrons are described by mathematical functions delocalized over an entire molecule. The Hund–Mulliken approach or molecular orbital (MO) method is less intuitive to chemists, but has turned out capable of predicting spectroscopic properties better than the VB method. This approach is the conceptional basis of the Hartree–Fock method and further post Hartree–Fock methods.
The Thomas–Fermi model was developed independently by Thomas and Fermi in 1927. This was the first attempt to describe many-electron systems on the basis of electronic density instead of wave functions, although it was not very successful in the treatment of entire molecules. The method did provide the basis for what is now known as density functional theory (DFT). Modern day DFT uses the Kohn–Sham method, where the density functional is split into four terms; the Kohn–Sham kinetic energy, an external potential, exchange and correlation energies. A large part of the focus on developing DFT is on improving the exchange and correlation terms. Though this method is less developed than post Hartree–Fock methods, its significantly lower computational requirements (scaling typically no worse than "n"3 with respect to "n" basis functions, for the pure functionals) allow it to tackle larger polyatomic molecules and even macromolecules. This computational affordability and often comparable accuracy to MP2 and CCSD(T) (post-Hartree–Fock methods) has made it one of the most popular methods in computational chemistry.
A further step can consist of solving the Schrödinger equation with the total molecular Hamiltonian in order to study the motion of molecules. Direct solution of the Schrödinger equation is called "quantum molecular dynamics", within the semiclassical approximation "semiclassical molecular dynamics", and within the classical mechanics framework "molecular dynamics (MD)". Statistical approaches, using for example Monte Carlo methods, are also possible.
In adiabatic dynamics, interatomic interactions are represented by single scalar potentials called potential energy surfaces. This is the Born–Oppenheimer approximation introduced by Born and Oppenheimer in 1927. Pioneering applications of this in chemistry were performed by Rice and Ramsperger in 1927 and Kassel in 1928, and generalized into the RRKM theory in 1952 by Marcus who took the transition state theory developed by Eyring in 1935 into account. These methods enable simple estimates of unimolecular reaction rates from a few characteristics of the potential surface.
Non-adiabatic dynamics consists of taking the interaction between several coupled potential energy surface (corresponding to different electronic quantum states of the molecule). The coupling terms are called vibronic couplings. The pioneering work in this field was done by Stueckelberg, Landau, and Zener in the 1930s, in their work on what is now known as the Landau–Zener transition. Their formula allows the transition probability between two diabatic potential curves in the neighborhood of an avoided crossing to be calculated. Spin-forbidden reactions are one type of non-adiabatic reactions where at least one change in spin state occurs when progressing from reactant to product. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25211 |
QWERTY
QWERTY () is a keyboard design for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to E. Remington and Sons in 1873. It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, and remains in ubiquitous use.
The QWERTY layout was devised and created in the early 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper editor and printer who lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In October 1867, Sholes filed a patent application for his early writing machine he developed with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soulé.
The first model constructed by Sholes used a piano-like keyboard with two rows of characters arranged alphabetically as shown below:
The construction of the "Type Writer" had two flaws that made the product susceptible to jams.
Firstly, characters were mounted on metal arms or type bars, which would clash and jam if neighbouring arms were pressed at the same time or in rapid succession. Secondly, its printing point was located beneath the paper carriage, invisible to the operator, a so-called "up-stroke" design. Consequently, jams were especially serious, because the typist could only discover the mishap by raising the carriage to inspect what had been typed.
Sholes struggled for the next five years to perfect his invention, making many trial-and-error rearrangements of the original machine's alphabetical key arrangement. The study of bigram (letter-pair) frequency by educator Amos Densmore, brother of the financial backer James Densmore, is believed to have influenced the array of letters, but the contribution was later called into question. Others suggest instead that the letter groupings evolved from telegraph operators' feedback.
In November 1868 he changed the arrangement of the latter half of the alphabet, O to Z, right-to-left. In April 1870 he arrived at a four-row, upper case keyboard approaching the modern QWERTY standard, moving six vowel letters, A, E, I, O, U, and Y, to the upper row as follows:
In 1873 Sholes's backer, James Densmore, successfully sold the manufacturing rights for the Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer to E. Remington and Sons. The keyboard layout was finalized within a few months by Remington's mechanics and was ultimately presented:
After they purchased the device, Remington made several adjustments, creating a keyboard with essentially the modern QWERTY layout. These adjustments included placing the "R" key in the place previously allotted to the period key. Apocryphal claims that this change was made to let salesmen impress customers by pecking out the brand name "TYPE WRITER QUOTE" from one keyboard row are not formally substantiated. Vestiges of the original alphabetical layout remained in the "home row" sequence DFGHJKL.
The modern layout is:
The QWERTY layout became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, the first typewriter to include both upper and lower case letters, using a shift key.
The QWERTY layout depicted in Sholes's 1878 patent is slightly different from the modern layout, most notably in the absence of the numerals 0 and 1, with each of the remaining numerals shifted one position to the left of their modern counterparts. The letter M is located at the end of the third row to the right of the letter L rather than on the fourth row to the right of the N, the letters X and C are reversed, and most punctuation marks are in different positions or are missing entirely. 0 and 1 were omitted to simplify the design and reduce the manufacturing and maintenance costs; they were chosen specifically because they were "redundant" and could be recreated using other keys. Typists who learned on these machines learned the habit of using the uppercase letter I (or lowercase letter L) for the digit one, and the uppercase O for the zero.
In early designs, some characters were produced by printing two symbols with the carriage in the same position. For instance, the exclamation point, which shares a key with the numeral 1 on post-mechanical keyboards, could be reproduced by using a three-stroke combination of an apostrophe, a backspace, and a period. A semicolon (;) was produced by printing a comma (,) over a colon (:). As the backspace key is slow in simple mechanical typewriters (the carriage was heavy and optimized to move in the opposite direction), a more professional approach was to block the carriage by pressing and holding the space bar while printing all characters that needed to be in a shared position. To make this possible, the carriage was designed to advance forward only after releasing the space bar.
The 0 key was added and standardized in its modern position early in the history of the typewriter, but the 1 and exclamation point were left off some typewriter keyboards into the 1970s.
In the era of mechanical typewriters, combined characters such as "é" and "õ" were created by the use of dead keys for the diacritics ("′, ~") , which did not move the paper forward. Thus the "′" and "e" would be printed at the same location on the paper, creating "é".
There were no particular technological requirements for the QWERTY layout, since at the time there were ways to make a typewriter without the "up-stroke" typebar mechanism that had required it to be devised. Not only were there rival machines with "down-stroke" and "frontstroke" positions that gave a visible printing point, the problem of typebar clashes could be circumvented completely: examples include Thomas Edison's 1872 electric print-wheel device which later became the basis for Teletype machines; Lucien Stephen Crandall's typewriter (the second to come onto the American market) whose type was arranged on a cylindrical sleeve; the Hammond typewriter of 1887 which used a semi-circular "type-shuttle" of hardened rubber (later light metal); and the Blickensderfer typewriter of 1893 which used a type wheel. The early Blickensderfer's "Ideal" keyboard was also non-QWERTY, instead having the sequence "DHIATENSOR" in the home row, these 10 letters being capable of composing 70% of the words in the English language.
Alternating hands while typing is a desirable trait in a keyboard design. While one hand types a letter, the other hand can prepare to type the next letter, making the process faster and more efficient. However, when a string of letters is typed with the same hand, the chances of stuttering are increased and a rhythm can be broken, thus decreasing speed and increasing errors and fatigue. In the QWERTY layout many more words can be spelled using only the left hand than the right hand. In fact, thousands of English words can be spelled using only the left hand, while only a couple of hundred words can be typed using only the right hand (the three most frequent letters in the English language, ETA, are all typed with the left hand). In addition, more typing strokes are done with the left hand in the QWERTY layout. This is helpful for left-handed people but disadvantages right-handed people.
Contrary to popular belief, the QWERTY layout was not designed to slow the typist down, but rather to speed up typing. Indeed, there is evidence that, aside from the issue of jamming, placing often-used keys farther apart increases typing speed, because it encourages alternation between the hands. There is another origin story in the Smithsonian that the QWERTY keyboard was made for telegraph operators and has this layout to make it easy for the telegraph operator to work. (On the other hand, in the German keyboard the Z has been moved between the T and the U to help type the frequent digraphs TZ and ZU in that language.) Almost every word in the English language contains at least one vowel letter, but on the QWERTY keyboard only the vowel letter "A" is on the home row, which requires the typist's fingers to leave the home row for most words.
A feature much less commented-on than the order of the keys is that the keys do not form a rectangular grid, but rather each column slants diagonally. This is because of the mechanical linkages – each key is attached to a lever, and hence the offset prevents the levers from running into each other – and has been retained in most electronic keyboards. Some keyboards, such as the Kinesis or TypeMatrix, retain the QWERTY layout but arrange the keys in vertical columns, to reduce unnecessary lateral finger motion.
The words 'typewriter', 'proprietor', 'perpetuity', and 'repertoire' (from French) are the longest English words that can be written using only the keys in the top row.
The first computer terminals such as the Teletype were typewriters that could produce and be controlled by various computer codes. These used the QWERTY layouts and added keys such as escape (ESC) which had special meanings to computers. Later keyboards added function keys and arrow keys. Since the standardization of PC-compatible computers and Windows after the 1980s, most full-sized computer keyboards have followed this standard (see drawing at right). This layout has a separate numeric keypad for data entry at the right, 12 function keys across the top, and a cursor section to the right and center with keys for Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down with cursor arrows in an inverted-T shape.
Different computer operating systems have methods of support for input of different languages such as Chinese, Hebrew or Arabic. QWERTY was designed for English, a language with accents appearing only in a few words of foreign origin. Thus, QWERTY keyboards have no standard way of typing these "diacritics". The standard US keyboard for Microsoft Windows has no provision for it at all; the need was later met by the so called "US-International" keyboard layout, which uses dead keys to type accents without having to add more keys. The same principle is used in the standard "US" keyboard layout for MacOS, but in a different way. Third-party layouts exist that try to overcome this shortcoming, necessarily customised for a limited subset of languages. Most European PC keyboards (Windows, Linux, ChromeOS but not MacOS) have an AltGr key (Alternative Graphics key, replaces the right Alt key) that enables easy access to the most common diacritics used in the territory where sold. (Where this key is not provided, some layouts provide its equivalent using +the letter to be accented, which can mean some chords that require additional manual dexterity).
Depending on the operating system and sometimes the application program being used, there are many ways to generate Latin characters with accents independently of the layout in use. Naturally, this can lead to confusion, when the imprints on the keys are different from what the software produces.
Minor changes to the arrangement are made for other languages. There are a large number of different keyboard layouts used for different languages written in Latin script. They can be divided into three main families according to where the , , , , and keys are placed on the keyboard. These are usually named after the first six letters, for example this QWERTY layout and the AZERTY layout.
The following sections give general descriptions of QWERTY keyboard variants along with details specific to certain operating systems. The emphasis is on Microsoft Windows.
English-speaking Canadians have traditionally used the same keyboard layout as in the United States, unless they are in a position where they have to write French on a regular basis. French-speaking Canadians respectively have favoured the Canadian French keyboard layout (see below).
The Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard layout is used by some Canadians. Though the caret (^) is missing, it is easily inserted by typing the circumflex accent followed by a space.
This keyboard layout is commonly used in Canada by French-speaking Canadians. It is the most common layout for laptops and stand-alone keyboards targeting French speakers. Unlike the French layout used in France and Belgium, it is a true QWERTY layout and as such is also relatively commonly used by English speakers in the US and Canada (using standard QWERTY keyboards) for easy access to the accented letters found in some French loanwords. It can be used to type all accented French characters, as well as some from other languages, and serves all English functions as well. It is popular mainly because of its close similarity to the basic US keyboard commonly used by English-speaking Canadians and Americans, historical use of US-made typewriters by French-Canadians, and is the standard for keyboards in Quebec. It can also easily map to a standard English QWERTY keyboard with the sole loss the guillemet/degree sign key. Use of the European French layout in Quebec is practically unheard of.
In some variants, the key names are translated to French:
The typewriter came to the Czech-speaking area in the late 19th century, when it was part of Austria-Hungary where German was the dominant language of administration. Therefore, Czech typewriters have the QWERTZ layout.
However, with the introduction of imported computers, especially since the 1990s, the QWERTY keyboard layout is frequently used for computer keyboards. The Czech QWERTY layout differs from QWERTZ in that the characters (e.g. @$& and others) missing from the Czech keyboard are accessible with AltGr on the same keys where they are located on an American keyboard. In Czech QWERTZ keyboards the positions of these characters accessed through AltGr differs.
Both the Danish and Norwegian keyboards include dedicated keys for the letters Å/å, Æ/æ and Ø/ø, but the placement is a little different, as the and keys are swapped on the Norwegian layout. (The Finnish–Swedish keyboard is also largely similar to the Norwegian layout, but the and are replaced with and . On some systems, the Danish keyboard may allow typing Ö/ö and Ä/ä by holding the or key while striking and , respectively.)
Though it is seldom used (most Dutch keyboards use US International layout), the Dutch layout uses QWERTY but has additions for the € sign, the diaresis (¨), and the braces ({ }) as well as different locations for other symbols. An older version contained a single-stroke key for the Dutch character IJ/ij, which is usually typed by the combination of and . In the 1990s, there was a version with the now-obsolete florin sign (Dutch: guldenteken) for IBM PCs.
In Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), "AZERTY" keyboards are used instead, due to influence from the French-speaking part of Belgium.
See also #US-International in the Netherlands below.
The keyboard layout used in Estonia is virtually the same as the Swedish layout. The main difference is that the and keys (to the right of ) are replaced with and respectively (the latter letter being the most distinguishing feature of the Estonian alphabet). Some special symbols and dead keys are also moved around.
The same as the Danish layout with added (Eth), since the Faroe Islands are a self-governed part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
The visual layout used in Finland is basically the same as the Swedish layout. This is practical, as Finnish and Swedish share the special characters Ä/ä and Ö/ö, and while the Swedish Å/å is unnecessary for writing Finnish, it is needed by Swedish-speaking Finns and to write Swedish family names which are common.
As of 2008, there is a new standard for the Finnish multilingual keyboard layout, developed as part of a localization project by CSC. All the engravings of the traditional Finnish–Swedish visual layout have been retained, so there is no need to change the hardware, but the functionality has been extended considerably, as additional characters (e.g., Æ/æ, Ə/ə, Ʒ/ʒ) are available through the key, as well as dead keys, which allow typing a wide variety of letters with diacritics (e.g., Ç/ç, Ǥ/ǥ, Ǯ/ǯ).
Based on the Latin letter repertory included in the Multilingual European Subset No. 2 (MES-2) of the Unicode standard, the layout has three main objectives. First, it provides for easy entering of text in both Finnish and Swedish, the two official languages of Finland, using the familiar keyboard layout but adding some advanced punctuation options, such as dashes, typographical quotation marks, and the non-breaking space (NBSP).
Second, it is designed to offer an indirect but intuitive way to enter the special letters and diacritics needed by the other three Nordic national languages (Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic) as well as the regional and minority languages (Northern Sámi, Southern Sámi, Lule Sámi, Inari Sámi, Skolt Sámi, Romani language as spoken in Finland, Faroese, Kalaallisut also known as Greenlandic, and German).
As a third objective, it allows for relatively easy entering of particularly names (of persons, places or products) in a variety of European languages using a more or less extended Latin alphabet, such as the official languages of the European Union (excluding Bulgarian and Greek). Some letters, like Ł/ł needed for Slavic languages, are accessed by a special "overstrike" key combination acting like a dead key.
However, the Romanian letters Ș/ș and Ț/ț (S/s and T/t with comma below) are not supported; the presumption is that Ş/ş and Ţ/ţ (with cedilla) suffice as surrogates.
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg use QWERTZ layouts, where the letter Z is to the right of T.
The Icelandic keyboard layout is different from the standard QWERTY keyboard because the Icelandic alphabet has some special letters, most of which it shares with the other Nordic countries:
Þ/þ, Ð/ð, Æ/æ, and Ö/ö. (Æ/æ also occurs in Norwegian, Danish and Faroese, Ð/ð in Faroese, and Ö/ö in Swedish, Finnish and Estonian. In Norwegian Ö/ö could be substituted for Ø/Ø which is the same sound/letter and is widely understood).
The letters Á/á, Ý/ý, Ú/ú, Í/í, and É/é are produced by first pressing the dead key and then the corresponding letter. The Nordic letters Å/å and Ä/ä can be produced by first pressing , located below the key, and (for ¨) which also works for the non-Nordic ÿ, Ü/ü, Ï/ï, and Ë/ë. These letters are not used natively in Icelandic, but may have been implemented for ease of communication in other Nordic languages. Additional diacritics may be found behind the key: for ˋ (grave accent) and for ˆ (circumflex).
Microsoft Windows includes an Irish layout which supports acute accents with for the Irish language and grave accents with the dead key for Scottish Gaelic. The other Insular Celtic languages have their own layout.
The UK or UK-Extended layout is also frequently used.
There is an alternate layout, which differs only in disposition of characters accessible through , and includes the tilde and the curly brackets. It is commonly used in IBM keyboards.
Italian typewriters often have the QZERTY layout instead.
The Italian-speaking part of Switzerland uses the QWERTZ keyboard.
Although rarely used, a keyboard layout specifically designed for the Latvian language called ŪGJRMV exists. The Latvian QWERTY keyboard layout is most commonly used - its layout is the same as latin ones, but with a dead key, which allows entering special characters (āčēģīķļņšūž, sometimes ō and ŗ). The most common dead key is the apostrophe ('), which is followed by Alt+Gr (Windows default for Latvian layout). Some prefer using the tick (`).
In Lithuanian QWERTY keyboards the number keys on the top row have the following meanings: Ą, Č, Ę, Ė, Į, Š, Ų, Ū instead of their counterparts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Besides these changes the keyboard is standard QWERTY. Besides QWERTY, the ĄŽERTY layout is used.
The Maltese language uses Unicode (UTF-8) to display the Maltese diacritics: ċ Ċ; ġ Ġ; ħ Ħ; ż Ż (together with à À; è È; ì Ì; ò Ò; ù Ù). There are two standard keyboard layouts for Maltese, according to "MSA 100:2002 Maltese Keyboard Standard"; one of 47 keys and one of 48 keys. The 48-key layout is the most popular.
The Norwegian languages use the same letters as Danish, but the Norwegian keyboard differs from the Danish layout regarding the placement of the , and (backslash) keys. On the Danish keyboard, the and are swapped. The Swedish keyboard is also similar to the Norwegian layout, but and are replaced with and . On some systems, the Norwegian keyboard may allow typing Ö/ö and Ä/ä by holding the or key while striking and , respectively.
There is also an alternative keyboard layout called "Norwegian with Sámi", which allows for easier input of the characters required to write various Sámi languages. All the Sámi characters are accessed through the key.
On Macintosh computers, the "Norwegian" and "Norwegian extended" keyboard layouts have a slightly different placement for some of the symbols obtained with the help of the or keys. Notably, the "$" sign is accessed with and "¢" with . Furthermore, the frequently used "@" is placed between and .
Most typewriters use a QWERTZ keyboard with Polish letters (with diacritical marks) accessed directly (officially approved as "Typist's keyboard", , Polish Standard PN-87), which is mainly ignored in Poland as impractical (except custom-made, e.g., in public sector and some Apple computers); the "Polish programmer's" () layout has become the "de facto" standard, used on virtually all computers sold on the Polish market.
Most computer keyboards in Poland are laid out according to the standard US visual and functional layout. Polish diacritics are accessed by using the "AltGr" key with a corresponding similar letter from the base Latin alphabet. Normal capitalization rules apply with respect to "Shift" and "Caps Lock" keys. For example, to enter "Ź", one can type "Shift+AltGr+X" with "Caps Lock" off, or turn on "Caps Lock" and type "AltGr+X".
Both ANSI and ISO mechanical layouts are common sights, and even some non-standard mechanical layouts are in use. ANSI is often preferred, as the additional key provides no additional function, at least in Microsoft Windows where it duplicates the backslash key, while taking space from the Shift key. Many keyboards do not label "AltGr" as such, leaving the "Alt" marking as in the US layout - the right "Alt" key nevertheless functions as "AltGr" in this layout, causing possible confusion when keyboard shortcuts with the "Alt" key are required (these usually work only with the left "Alt") and causing the key to be commonly referred to as "right Alt" (). However, keyboards with "AltGr" marking are available and it is also officially used by Microsoft when depicting the layout.
Also, on MS Windows, the tilde character "~" ("Shift"+"`") acts as a dead key to type Polish letters (with diacritical marks) thus, to obtain an "Ł", one may press "Shift"+"`" followed by "L". The tilde character is obtained with ("Shift"+"`") then "space".
In Linux-based systems, the euro symbol is typically mapped to Alt+5 instead of Alt+U, the tilde acts as a normal key, and several accented letters from other European languages are accessible through combinations with left Alt. Polish letters are also accessible by using the compose key.
Software keyboards on touchscreen devices usually make the Polish diacritics available as one of the alternatives which show up after long-pressing the corresponding Latin letter. However, modern predictive text and autocorrection algorithms largely mitigate the need to type them directly on such devices.
The Brazilian computer keyboard layout is specified in the ABNT NBR 10346 variant 2 (alphanumeric portion) and 10347 (numeric portion) standards.
Essentially, the Brazilian keyboard contains dead keys for five variants of diacritics in use in the language; the letter Ç, the only application of the cedilla in Portuguese, has its own key. In some keyboard layouts the + combination produces the ₢ character (Unicode 0x20A2), symbol for the old currency cruzeiro, a symbol that is not used in practice (the common abbreviation in the eighties and nineties used to be Cr$). The cent sign ¢, is accessible via +, but is not commonly used for the centavo, subunit of previous currencies as well as the current real, which itself is represented by R$. The Euro sign € is not standardized in this layout. The masculine and feminine ordinals ª and º are accessible via combinations. The section sign § (Unicode U+00A7), in Portuguese called "parágrafo", is nowadays practically only used to denote sections of laws.
Variant 2 of the Brazilian keyboard, the only which gained general acceptance (MS Windows treats both variants as the same layout), has a unique mechanical layout, combining some features of the ISO 9995-3 and the "JIS" keyboards in order to fit 12 keys between the left and right Shift (compared to the American standard of 10 and the international of 11). Its modern, IBM PS/2-based variations, are thus known as 107-keys keyboards, and the original PS/2 variation was 104-key. Variant 1, never widely adopted, was based on the ISO 9995-2 keyboards. To make this layout usable with keyboards with only 11 keys in the last row, the rightmost key (/?°) has its functions replicated across the +, +, and + combinations.
Essentially, the Portuguese keyboard contains dead keys for five variants of diacritics; the letter Ç, the only application of the cedilla in Portuguese, has its own key, but there are also a dedicated key for the ordinal indicators and a dedicated key for quotation marks. The + combination for producing the euro sign € (Unicode 0x20AC) has become standard. On some QWERTY keyboards the key labels are translated, but the majority are labelled in English.
During the 20th century, a different keyboard layout, HCESAR, was in widespread use in Portugal.
The current Romanian National Standard SR 13392:2004 establishes two layouts for Romanian keyboards: a "primary" one and a "secondary" one.
The "primary" layout is intended for traditional users who have learned how to type with older, Microsoft-style implementations of the Romanian keyboard. The "secondary" layout is mainly used by programmers as it does not contradict the physical arrangement of keys on a US-style keyboard. The "secondary" arrangement is used as the default Romanian layout by Linux distributions, as defined in the "X Keyboard Configuration Database".
There are four Romanian-specific characters that are incorrectly implemented in versions of Microsoft Windows until Vista came out:
The cedilla-versions of the characters do not exist in the Romanian language (they came to be used due to a historic bug). The UCS now says that encoding this was a mistake because it messed up Romanian data and the letters with cedilla and the letters with comma are the same letter with a different style.
Since Romanian hardware keyboards are not widely available, Cristian Secară has created a driver that allows Romanian characters to be generated with a US-style keyboard in all versions of Windows prior to Vista through the use of the AltGr key modifier.
MS Windows 7 now includes the correct diacritical signs in the default Romanian Keyboard layout. This layout has the Z and Y keys mapped like in English layouts and also includes characters like the 'at' (@) and dollar ($) signs, among others. The older cedilla-version layout is still included albeit as the 'Legacy' layout.
In Slovakia, similarly to the Czech Republic, both QWERTZ and QWERTY keyboard layouts are used. QWERTZ is the default keyboard layout for Slovak in Microsoft Windows.
The Spanish keyboard layout is used to write in Spanish and in other languages of Spain such as Catalan, Basque, Galician, Aragonese, Asturian and Occitan. It includes Ñ for Spanish, Asturian and Galician, the acute accent, the diaeresis, the inverted question and exclamation marks (¿, ¡), the superscripted o and a (º, ª) for writing abbreviated ordinal numbers in masculine and feminine in Spanish and Galician, and finally, some characters required only for typing Catalan and Occitan, namely Ç, the grave accent and the interpunct (' / ', used in "l·l, n·h, s·h"; located at Shift-3). It can also be used to write other international characters, such as those using a circumflex accent (used in French and Portuguese among others) or a tilde (used in both Spanish and Portuguese), which are available as dead keys. However, it lacks two characters used in Asturian: Ḥ and Ḷ (historically, general support for these two has been poor – they aren't present in the ISO 8859-1 character encoding standard, or any other ISO/IEC 8859 standard); several alternative distributions, based on this one or created from scratch, have been created to address this issue (see the Other original layouts and layout design software section for more information)).
On most keyboards, € is marked as Alt Gr + E and not Alt Gr + 5 as shown in the image. However, in some keyboards, € is found marked twice. An alternative version exists, supporting all of ISO 8859-1.
Spanish keyboards are usually labelled in Spanish instead of English, its abbreviations being:
On some keyboards, the c-cedilla key (Ç) is located one or two lines above, rather than on the right of, the acute accent key (´). In some cases it is placed on the right of the plus sign key (+), while in other keyboards it's situated on the right of the inverted exclamation mark key (¡).
The Latin American Spanish keyboard layout is used throughout Mexico, Central and South America. Before its design, Latin American vendors had been selling the Spanish (Spain) layout as default.
Its most obvious difference from the Spanish (Spain) layout is the lack of a Ç key; on Microsoft Windows it lacks a tilde (~) dead key, whereas on Linux systems the dead tilde can be optionally enabled. This is not a problem when typing in Spanish, but it is rather problematic when typing in Portuguese, which can be an issue in countries with large commercial ties to Brazil (Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay).
Normally "Bloq Mayús" is used instead of "Caps Lock", and "Intro" instead of "Enter".
The central characteristics of the Swedish keyboard are the three additional letters Å/å, Ä/ä, and Ö/ö. The same visual layout is also in use in Finland and Estonia, as the letters Ä/ä and Ö/ö are shared with the Swedish language, and even Å/å is needed by Swedish-speaking Finns. However, the Finnish multilingual keyboard adds new letters and punctuation to the functional layout.
The Norwegian keyboard largely resembles the Swedish layout, but the and are replaced with and . The Danish keyboard is also similar, but it has the and swapped. On some systems, the Swedish or Finnish keyboard may allow typing Ø/ø and Æ/æ by holding the or key while striking and , respectively.
The "Swedish with Sámi" keyboard allows typing not only Ø/ø and Æ/æ, but even the letters required to write various Sámi languages. This keyboard has the same function for all the keys engraved on the regular Swedish keyboard, and the additional letters are available through the key.
On Macintosh computers, the "Swedish" and "Swedish Pro" keyboards differ somewhat from the image shown above, especially as regards the characters available using the or keys. (on the upper row) produces the "°" sign, and produces the "€" sign. The digit keys produce "©@£$∞§|[]≈" with and "¡"¥¢‰¶\{}≠" with .
On Linux systems, the Swedish keyboard may also give access to additional characters as follows:
Several of these characters function as dead keys.
Today the majority of Turkish keyboards are based on QWERTY (the so-called Q-keyboard layout), although there is also the older F-keyboard layout specifically designed for the language.
The United Kingdom and Ireland use a keyboard layout based on the 48-key version defined in the (now withdrawn) British Standard BS 4822. It is very similar to that of the United States, but has an AltGr key and a larger Enter key, includes £ and € signs and some rarely used EBCDIC symbols (¬, ¦), and uses different positions for the characters @, ", #, ~, \, and |. See the article British and American keyboards for details.
The BS 4822:1994 standard did not make any use of the AltGr key and lacked support for any non-ASCII characters other than ¬ and £. It also assigned a key for the non-ASCII character broken bar (¦), but lacks one for the far more commonly used ASCII character vertical bar (|). It also lacked support for various diacritics used in the Welsh alphabet, and the Scottish Gaelic alphabet; and also is missing the letter yogh, ȝ, used very rarely in the Scots language. Therefore, various manufacturers have modified or extended the BS 4822 standard:
In many Commonwealth countries and other English-speaking jurisdictions (e.g., Canada, Australia, the Caribbean nations, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Singapore, New Zealand, and South Africa), local spelling conforms more closely to British English usage, while the supplied keyboard is or based on the English (US) keyboard. In Windows 8 and later versions, the backslash key (left of Z or space) is duplicated onto the hash key (left of Enter), press which with key to type backslash , with and keys to type vertical bar . This aids users who are familiar with UK keyboard layout while the keyboard lacks this key (e.g. US Standard keyboard and Japan JIS keyboard).
The British version of the Apple Keyboard does not use the standard UK layout. Instead, some older versions have the US layout (see below) with a few differences: the sign is reached by and the sign by , the opposite to the US layout. The is also present and is typed with . Umlauts are reached by typing and then the vowel, and ß is reached by typing .
Newer Apple "British" keyboards use a layout that is relatively unlike either the US or traditional UK keyboard. It uses an elongated return key, a shortened left with and in the newly created position, and in the upper left of the keyboard are and instead of the traditional EBCDIC codes. The middle-row key that fits inside the key has and .
Apple's Mac OS X does not include UK Extended, as it has key combinations for accents on any keyboard layout.
From Windows XP SP2 onwards, Microsoft has included a variant of the British QWERTY keyboard (the "United Kingdom Extended" keyboard layout) that can additionally generate several diacritical marks. This supports input on a standard physical UK keyboard for many languages without changing positions of frequently used keys, which is useful when working with text in Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish — languages native to parts of the UK (Wales, parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively).
In this layout, the grave accent key becomes, as it also does in the US International layout, a dead key modifying the character generated by the next key pressed, but the apostrophe, double-quote, tilde and caret keys are not changed. Instead, the additional characters are obtained using the key. The extended keyboard is software installed from the Windows control panel, and the extended characters are not normally engraved on keyboards.
The UK International keyboard uses mostly the AltGr key to add diacritics to the letters a, e, i, n, o, u, w and y (the last two being used in Welsh) as appropriate for each character, as well as to their capitals. Pressing the key and then a character that does not take the specific diacritic produces the behaviour of a standard keyboard. The key presses followed by spacebar generate a stand-alone mark.:
The and letter method used for acutes and cedillas does not work for applications which assign shortcut menu functions to these key combinations.
These combinations are intended to be mnemonic and designed to be easy to remember: the circumflex accent (e.g. â) is similar to a caret (codice_1), printed above the key; the diaeresis/umlaut (e.g. ö) is visually similar to the double-quote (codice_2) above on the UK keyboard; the tilde (codice_3) is printed on the same key as the .
The UK "extended" layout is almost entirely transparent to users familiar with the UK layout. A machine with the extended layout behaves exactly as with the standard UK, except for the rarely used grave accent key. This makes this layout suitable for a machine for shared or public use by a user population in which some use the extended functions.
Despite being created for multilingual users, UK-Extended in Windows does have some gaps — there are many languages that it cannot cope with, including Romanian and Turkish, and all languages with different character sets, such as Greek and Russian. t also does not cater for thorn (þ, Þ) in Old English, the ß in German, the œ in French, nor for the å, æ, ø, ð, þ in Nordic languages.
The UK Extended layout in Chrome OS provides all the same combinations as with Windows, but adds many more symbols and dead keys via AltGr.
Notes: Dotted circle (◌) is used here to indicate a dead key. The key is the only one that acts as a free-standing dead key and thus does not respond as shown on the key-cap. All others are combinations with AltGr.
Finally, any arbitrary Unicode glyph can be produced given its hexadecimal code point: , release, then the hex value, then or . For example (release) produces the Ethiopic syllable SEE, ሴ.
The arrangement of the character input keys and the Shift keys contained in this layout is specified in the US national standard ANSI-INCITS 154-1988 (R1999) (formerly ANSI X3.154-1988 (R1999)), where this layout is called "ASCII keyboard". The complete US keyboard layout, as it is usually found, also contains the usual function keys in accordance with the international standard ISO/IEC 9995-2, although this is not explicitly required by the US American national standard.
US keyboards are used not only in the United States, but also in many other English-speaking places, including India, Australia, English Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines, including Indonesia that uses the same 26-letter alphabets as English. However, the United Kingdom and Ireland use a slightly different layout because of the Irish language.
The US keyboard layout has a second Alt key instead of the AltGr key and does not use any dead keys; this makes it inefficient for all but a handful of languages. On the other hand, the US keyboard layout (or the similar UK layout) is occasionally used by programmers in countries where the keys for []{} are located in less convenient positions on the locally customary layout.
On some keyboards the enter key is bigger than traditionally and takes up also a part of the line above, more or less the area of the traditional location of the backslash key (\). In these cases the backslash is located in alternative places. It can be situated one line above the default location, on the right of the equals sign key (=). Sometimes it's placed one line below its traditional situation, on the right of the apostrophe key (') (in these cases the enter key is narrower than usual on the line of its default location). It may also be two lines below its default situation on the right of a narrower than traditionally right shift key. A variant of this layout is used in Arabic-speaking countries.
This variant has the | \ key to the left of Z, ~ ` key where the | \ key is in the usual layout, and the > < key where the ~ ` key is in the usual layout.
An alternative layout uses the physical US keyboard to type diacritics in some operating systems (including Windows). This is the US-International layout, which uses the right key as an key to support many additional characters directly as an additional shift key. (Since many smaller keyboards don't have a right key, Windows also allows + to be used as a substitute for .) This layout also uses keys , , , and as dead keys to generate characters with diacritics by pressing the appropriate key, then the letter on the keyboard. The international keyboard is a software setting installed from the Windows control panel or similar; the additional functions (shown in blue) may or may not be engraved on the keyboard, but are always functional. It can be used to type most major languages from Western Europe: Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, and Swedish. Some less common western European languages, such as Welsh and Maltese (the Welsh language using circumflexes and Maltese using the stroked H, among other accents), are not fully supported by the US-International keyboard layout.
A diacritic key is activated by pressing and releasing it, then pressing the letter that requires the diacritic. After the two strokes, the single character with diacritics is generated. Note that only certain letters, such as vowels and "n", can have diacritics in this way. To generate the symbols ', `, ", ^ and ~, when the following character is capable of having a diacritic, press the after the key.
Characters with diacritics can be typed with the following combinations:
The US-International layout is not entirely transparent to users familiar with the US layout; when using a machine with the international layout the commonly used single- and double-quote keys and the less commonly used grave accent, tilde, and caret keys behave unexpectedly. This could be disconcerting on a machine for shared or public use.
There are also alternative US-International formats, whereby modifier keys such as shift and alt are used, and the keys for the characters with diacritics are in different places from their unmodified counterparts, for example, using the AltGr modifier key to activate dead keys, so that the ASCII quotation marks or circumflex symbol are not affected and can be typed normally with a single keystroke.
The standard keyboard layout in the Netherlands is US-International, as it provides easy access to diacritics on common UK- or US-like keyboards. The Dutch layout is historical, and keyboards with this layout are rarely used. Many US keyboards sold do not have the extra US-International characters or engraved on the keys, although € () always is; nevertheless, the keys work as expected even if not marked. Many computer-literate Dutch people have retained the old habit of using + number codes to type accented characters; others routinely type without diacritics, then use a spelling checker to produce the correct forms.
There are three kinds of Apple Keyboards for English: the United States, the United Kingdom and International English. The International English version features the same changes as the United Kingdom version, only without substituting for the symbol on , and as well lacking visual indication for the symbol on (although this shortcut is present with all Apple QWERTY layouts).
Differences from the US layout are:
The Vietnamese keyboard layout is an extended Latin QWERTY layout. The letters Ă, Â, Ê, and Ô are found on what would be the number keys – on the US English keyboard, with – producing the tonal marks (grave accent, hook, tilde, acute accent and dot below, in that order), producing Đ, producing the đồng sign (₫) when not shifted, and brackets () producing Ư and Ơ.
Several alternatives to QWERTY have been developed over the years, claimed by their designers and users to be more efficient, intuitive, and ergonomic. Nevertheless, none have seen widespread adoption, partly due to the sheer dominance of available keyboards and training. Although some studies have suggested that some of these may allow for faster typing speeds, many other studies have failed to do so, and many of the studies claiming improved typing speeds were severely methodologically flawed or deliberately biased, such as the studies administered by August Dvorak himself before and after World War II. Economists Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis have noted that rigorous studies are inconclusive as to whether they actually offer any real benefits, and some studies on keyboard layout have suggested that, for a skilled typist, layout is largely irrelevant – even randomized and alphabetical keyboards allow for similar typing speeds to QWERTY and Dvorak keyboards, and that switching costs always outweigh the benefits of further training on whichever keyboard you already use.
The most widely used such alternative is the Dvorak keyboard layout; another alternative is Colemak, which is based partly on QWERTY and is claimed to be easier for an existing QWERTY typist to learn while offering several supposed optimisations. Most modern computer operating systems support these and other alternative mappings with appropriate special mode settings, with some modern operating systems allowing the user to map their keyboard in any way they like, but few keyboards are made with keys labeled according to any other standard.
Comparisons have been made, between Dvorak, Colemak, QWERTY, and other keyboard input systems, namely stenotype or its electronic implementations (e.g., Plover an opensource project ). However, stenotype is a fundamentally different system, which relies on Phonetics and simultaneous key presses or chords.
Although stenography has long been known as a faster and more accurate typing system, adoption has been limited, likely due to the historically high cost of equipment, steeper initial learning curve, and low awareness of the benefits within primary education and in the general public.
The first typed shorthand machines appeared around 1830, with English versions gaining popularity in the early 1900s. Traditionally, stenotype output required interpretation back to longhand by a trained professional, comparable to reading Gregg shorthand, which was very much in vogue at the time and taught publicly until the 1980s. Gregg shorthand also did not require much more than training and a pen, however machines gradually gained traction in the courtroom. Modern electronic stenotype machines or programs such as Plover Steno, output to written language, which provides an experience similar to other keyboard setups that immediately produce legible work.
A half QWERTY keyboard is a combination of an alpha-numeric keypad and a QWERTY keypad, designed for mobile phones. In a half QWERTY keyboard, two characters share the same key, which reduces the number of keys and increases the surface area of each key, useful for mobile phones that have little space for keys. It means that 'Q' and 'W' share the same key and the user must press the key once to type 'Q' and twice to type 'W'. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25213 |
Quake III Arena
Quake III Arena is a 1999 multiplayer-focused first-person shooter developed by id Software. It is the third game in the "Quake" series; it differs from previous games by excluding a story-based single-player mode and highly focusing on multiplayer gameplay. The single-player mode is played against computer-controlled bots. It features music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly founder Bill Leeb.
Notable features of "Quake III Arena" include the minimalist design, lacking rarely used items and features, the extensive customizability of player settings such as field of view, texture detail and enemy model, and advanced movement features such as strafe-jumping and rocket-jumping.
"Quake III Arena" is available on a number of platforms and contains mature content and Satanic symbolism. The game was highly praised by reviewers who, for the most part, described the gameplay as fun and engaging. Many liked the crisp graphics and focus on multiplayer.
"Quake III Arena" has also been used extensively in professional electronic sports tournaments such as QuakeCon, Cyberathlete Professional League, DreamHack, and the Electronic Sports World Cup.
Unlike its predecessors, "Quake III Arena" does not have a plot-based single-player campaign. Instead, it simulates the multiplayer experience with computer-controlled players known as bots. The game's story is brief: "the greatest warriors of all time fight for the amusement of a race called the Vadrigar in the Arena Eternal." The introduction video shows the abduction of such a warrior, Sarge, while making a last stand. Continuity with prior games in the "Quake" series and even "Doom" is maintained by the inclusion of player models and biographical information. A familiar mixture of gothic and technological map architecture as well as specific equipment is included, such as the Quad Damage power-up, the rocket launcher, and the BFG.
In "Quake III Arena", the player progresses through tiers of maps, combating different bot characters that increase in difficulty, from Crash (at Tier 0) to Xaero (at Tier 7). As the game progresses, the fights take place in more complex arenas and against tougher opponents. While deathmatch maps are designed for up to 16 players, tournament maps are designed for duels between 2 players and in the single-player game could be considered 'boss battles'.
The weapons are balanced by role, with each weapon having advantages in certain situations, such as the railgun at long-range and the lightning gun at close quarters. The BFG super-weapon is an exception to this; compared to other similarly named weapons in the "Doom"/"Quake" series, "Quake III Arena"'s incarnation of this weapon is basically a fast-firing rocket launcher and it is found in hard-to-reach locations. Weapons appear as level items, spawning at regular intervals in set locations on the map. If a player dies, all of their weapons are lost and they receive the spawn weapons for the current map, usually the gauntlet and machine gun. Players also drop the weapon they were using when killed, which other players can then pick up.
"Quake III Arena" comes with several gameplay modes: Free for All (FFA), a classic deathmatch, where each player competes against the rest for the highest score, Team Deathmatch (TDM), where usually two teams of four compete for the highest team frag (kill) total, Tournament (1v1), a deathmatch between two players, usually ending after a set time, Capture the Flag, which is played on symmetrical maps where teams have to recover the enemy flag from the opponents' base while retaining their own, and Freeze Rails, which is a freeze tag team deathmatch played with only the rail gun and gauntlet as weapons.
"Quake III Arena" was specifically designed for multiplayer. The game allows players whose computers are connected by a network or to the internet, to play against each other in real time, and incorporates a handicap system. It employs a client–server model, requiring all players' clients to connect to a server. "Quake III Arena"'s focus on multiplayer gameplay spawned a lively community, similar to QuakeWorld, that is active to this day.
Quake III Arena features several characters from previous entries in the "Quake" series including "Bitterman" from Quake 2, the "Ranger" character from Quake 1, as well as Doomguy from id Software's sister franchise "Doom".
During early March 1999, ATI leaked the internal hardware vendor (IHV) copy of the game (which shown to the public in Macworld Conference & Expo at Moscone Center in January and Makuhari Messe in February). This was a functional version of the engine with a textured level and working guns. The IHV contained most of the weapons (excepting the Gauntlet) that would make it into the final game although most were not fully modeled; a chainsaw and grappling hook were also in the IHV but did not make it into the final release. Many of the sounds that would make it into the final release were also included.
After the IHV leak, id Software released a beta of the game called "Quake III Arena Test" on April 24, 1999, initially only for Mac OS before expanding to Windows at a later date. The Q3Test started with version 1.05 and included three levels that would be included in the final release: dm7, dm17, and q3tourney2. Id Software continued to update Q3Test up until version 1.09.
id co-founder and former technical director John Carmack has stated that "Quake III Arena" is his favorite game he has worked on.
"Quake III Arena" was shipped to retailers on December 2, 1999; the official street date for the game was December 5, although id Software chief executive officer Todd Hollenshead expected the game to be available as early as December 3 from retailers like Babbage's and EB Games.
The "id Tech 3" engine is the name given to the engine that was developed for "Quake III Arena". Unlike most other games released at the time, "Quake III Arena" requires an OpenGL-compliant graphics accelerator to run. The game does not include a software renderer.
The graphic technology of the game is based tightly around a "shader" system where the appearance of many surfaces can be defined in text files referred to as "shader scripts." "Quake 3" also introduced spline-based curved surfaces in addition to planar volumes, which are responsible for many of the surfaces present within the game. "Quake 3" also provided support for models animated using vertex animation with attachment tags (known as the .md3 format), allowing models to maintain separate torso and leg animations and hold weapons. "Quake 3" is one of the first games where the third-person model is able to look up and down and around as the head, torso and legs are separate. Other visual features include volumetric fog, mirrors, portals, decals, and wave-form vertex distortion.
For networking, id Tech 3 uses a "snapshot" system to relay information about game "frames" to the client over UDP. The server attempts to omit as much information as possible about each frame, relaying only differences from the last frame the client confirmed as received (Delta encoding). "id Tech 3" uses a virtual machine to control object behavior on the server, effects and prediction on the client and the user interface. This presents many advantages as mod authors do not need to worry about crashing the entire game with bad code, clients could show more advanced effects and game menus than was possible in "Quake II" and the user interface for mods was entirely customizable. Unless operations which require a specific endianness are used, a QVM file will run the same on any platform supported by "Quake III Arena." The engine also contains bytecode compilers for the x86 and PowerPC architectures, executing QVM instructions via an interpreter.
"Quake III Arena" features an advanced AI with five difficulty levels which can accommodate both a beginner and an advanced player, though they usually do not pose a challenge to high-tier or competitive players. Each bot has its own, often humorous, 'personality', expressed as scripted lines that are triggered to simulate real player chat. If the player types certain phrases, the bots may respond: for example, typing "You bore me" might cause a bot to reply "You should have been here 3 hours ago!". Each bot has a number of alternative lines to reduce the repetition of bot chatter. The Gladiator bots from "Quake II" were ported to "Quake III Arena" and incorporated into the game by their creator - Jan Paul van Waveren, aka Mr. Elusive. Bot chat lines were written by R. A. Salvatore, Seven Swords and Steve Winter. Xaero, the hardest opponent in the game, was based on the Gladiator bot Zero. The bot Hunter appears on magazine covers in the later id game Doom 3.
On August 19, 2005, id Software released the complete source code for "Quake III Arena" under the GNU General Public License, as they have for most of their prior engines. As before, the "engine", but not the content such as textures and models, was released, so that anyone who wishes to build the game from source will still need an original copy of the game to play it as intended.
Like its predecessors, "Quake" and "Quake II", "Quake III Arena" can be heavily modified, allowing the engine to be used for many different games. Mods range from small gameplay adjustments like "Rocket Arena 3" and "Orange Smoothie Productions" to total conversions such as "Smokin' Guns", "DeFRaG", and "Loki's Revenge". The source code's release has allowed total conversion mods such as "Tremulous", "World of Padman", "OpenArena", and "Urban Terror" to evolve into free standalone games. Other mods like "Weapons Factory Arena" have moved to more modern commercial engines. "Challenge ProMode Arena" became the primary competitive mod for "Quake III Arena" since the Cyberathlete Professional League announced CPMA as its basis for competition. CPMA includes alternative gameplays, including air-control, rebalanced weapons, instant weapon switching, and additional jumping techniques. Another mod that underwent several open beta versions and was very popular in 1999-2001 was "Quake 3 Fortress" (Q3F). The initial version of this game was an indirect port of the "Quakeworld" "Team Fortress" mod with many clans and leagues competing in both games simultaneously. Q3F was eventually ported to another Quake 3 mod "Enemy Territory Fortress" which had limited success. The developers of Q3F eventually abandoned the mod but used it to create the standalone 2003 game "", which uses the Quake 3 engine and is still popular with approximately 9,400 active players in 2018.
An expansion pack titled "Quake III: Team Arena" was released on December 18, 2000 in North America, January 15, 2001 in Japan and January 26, 2001 in Europe. It was developed by id Software and published by Activision. The expansion focused on team-based gameplay through new game modes, as well as the addition of three new weapons (the Chaingun, Nailgun, and Prox Launcher), and new items and player models. "Quake III: Team Arena" was criticized, as its additions were long overdue and had already been implemented by fan modifications. "Quake III: Gold" was later released on September 26, 2001 in North America, March 29, 2002 in Japan and August 9, 2002 in Europe, including the original "Quake III Arena" and the "Quake III: Team Arena" expansion pack bundled together. Front Line Assembly made the soundtrack for the expansion, the counterpart to Sonic Mayhem's "Quake III Arena: Noize".
"Quake III Arena" was released for the Dreamcast (ported by Raster Productions and released by Sega) in 2000 and featured 4 player online play versus Dreamcast and PC gamers. It is often considered one of the best PC to console ports of its time due to its smooth frame rate and online play. There are still communities that play this version online on the remaining dedicated servers running patch version 1.16n and the required map pack.
"Quake III Revolution" (ported by Bullfrog Productions, published by Electronic Arts in North America and Electronic Arts Square in Japan) was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2001 featuring several elements adopted from "Team Arena", along with a more mission-based single-player mode. It features split-screen multiplayer for up to 4 players (with PS2 Multitap), as well as the Id Software new animated logo called "The Laboratory" , but lacks mouse support. It also lacks online play, as the PS2's network adapter was not released outside of Japan until 2004. Gamerankings.com rated the release at 83%. The PlayStation 2 version was widely criticized for having long loading times (which typically averaged over a minute compared to the Dreamcast and PC version).
"Quake III: Team Arena" was revealed in an ESRB listing for the Xbox 360. The title was developed by Pi Studios. "Quake III Arena" for the 360 was officially announced by id at QuakeCon 2007. The title, jointly developed by id and Pi Studios, was released on Xbox Live Arcade on December 15, 2010. The retail price of the game was set at 1200 Microsoft Points, or $15 USD. "Quake Arena DS" for the Nintendo DS was announced at QuakeCon on August 4, 2007. John Carmack announced the game and said that touch screen controls would not be implemented as much as in "Metroid Prime Hunters", for example. He stated that he would like all shooting in the game to be controlled with the D-pad instead of the Touch Screen. This version was silently cancelled. "Quake Zero" was announced at QuakeCon on August 3, 2007 and will be an updated version of "Quake 3 Arena", distributed by free download, run in a browser window and supported by built-in advertising content. On February 20, 2008 id announced that "Quake Zero" would be launched as "Quake Live". "Quake Live" was released in 2010.
"Quake III Arena" has been unofficially ported to several consoles, including the PlayStation Portable handheld and Xbox console. These versions require a modified console or handheld and the assets to the game to go along with the source port.
Carmack has said that Quake Trilogy (including Arena) will be ported on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. An unofficial version for iOS was released through Cydia for jailbroken iOS devices in April 2008; it is a demo version similar to the original except that it integrates the iPhone and iPod Touch's accelerometer and touch controls to make gameplay possible. A high-definition version for iPad was released in November 2010, featuring re-created controls, sharper graphics, better gameplay, and better framerate; this improved version was also integrated into the iPhone and iPod touch version of the port.
A Moorestown prototype version was demonstrated on a reference design that demonstrated performance of up to 90 frames per second. An unofficial port of Quake III for Symbian mobile devices was made. It requires PAK files from original game to run. An unofficial port of the game to Android was created based on the released source code. This means the game can be run on several Android powered devices, most notably the Motorola Milestone, Motorola Droid, and the Nexus One, as well as other high specification Handsets.
In August 2011, the ARM-based Raspberry Pi credit card-sized computer was shown running a specially compiled ARM version of "Quake III" on Debian.
"Quake III"s sales surpassed 50,000 copies during its first three days of release, by which time 1 million copies had been printed. It debuted at #5 on PC Data's weekly computer game sales chart for the December 5–11 period. The game rose to fourth place in the weekly top 10 the following week. Domestically, it sold 222,840 copies and earned revenues of $10.1 million by early 2000.
In North America, "Quake III" sold 168,309 copies and earned $7.65 million from January through October 2000, according to PC Data. Its overall sales in the region, including its launch in 1999, totaled 319,970 units by November 2000. Its sales for 2000 alone ultimately reached 190,950 units and $8.4 million by the end of the year. The game later received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom.
Reviews for the game were very positive, with many describing the game as fast and addictive Curved surfaces were a welcome addition to the series. Most reviewers felt the game was best when played with others online. A GameSpot review by Jeff Gerstmann described the game as outstanding. He noted the fun level designs, great-looking textures, impressive special effects and weapons sounds. The GameSpot review criticised the narrator's voice and thought that some levels could become too crowded when playing multiplayer. An IGN review felt the game lacked originality but enjoyed the detailed wall textures and outer space jump levels. The high number of character skins and the artificial intelligence of opponent bots were praised but the weapons were said to be "bland and predictable". A Eurogamer review described the game as "polished" and "stunning" and thought that it "was extremely well balanced and plays very well". The reviewer was especially pleased with the customisable 3D engine and looked forward to new maps and mods.
Blake Fischer reviewed the PC version of the game for "Next Generation", rating it five stars out of five, and stated that "The best deathmatch yet. Period. End of story. If you want single-player or a storyline, buy "Half-Life". It you want great DM and near-infinite expandability, "Quake III" is the best in the business."
Frank O'Connor reviewed the Dreamcast version of the game for "Next Generation", rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "A brilliant, if flawed, conversion of arguably the best online game ever made – it's sure a hell of a lot more interesting use of the Dreamcast modem than "Chu Chu Rocket"."
Garrett Kenyon reviewed the PlayStation 2 version of the game for "Next Generation", rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "All in all, this is a fast and beautiful game – easily the best shooter available for PS2."
"Quake III Arena" won "PC Gamer US"s 1999 "Special Achievement in Graphics" award, and wrote that it "set a new high-water mark in 3D graphics this year." The game was a finalist for the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' 1999 "Action Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to "".
In January 2016, Red Bull labeled Q3DM17 (The Longest Yard) one of the 10 greatest FPS multiplayer levels of all time.
"Quake III Arena"'s multiplayer-focused development led to it developing a large community of competitive players and like its predecessors it was used extensively in professional electronic sports tournaments. In competitive "Quake III Arena" there are two distinct gameplays, often referred to as 'rulesets', the out-of-the-box "Quake III Arena" game, also known as vanilla "Quake 3" (VQ3), and the CPM ruleset of the "Challenge Pro Mode Arena" mod. On July 26, 2006, "Challenge Pro Mode Arena" with VQ3 gameplay was chosen by Cyberathlete Professional League as the mod of choice for their tournament, making it the standard competitive mod for "Quake III Arena". Previously, "Orange Smoothie Productions" was the most widely used tournament mod.
The following competitions have held "Quake III" events:
These competitions have now moved on to more recent games or have transitioned to its variant successor, "Quake Live". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25215 |
Afghan Civil War (1928–1929)
The Afghan Civil War was fought from 14 November 1928 to 13 October 1929. Rebelling, and subsequently governing Saqqawist forces under Habibullāh Kalakāni fought against various opposing tribes and rival monarchs in the Kingdom of Afghanistan, among whom Mohammed Nādir Khān eventually achieved a preponderant role. Despite early successes, such as the capture of Kabul and defeat of Amanullah Khan on 17 January 1929 or the capture of Kandahar on 3 June, the Saqqawists were eventually deposed by anti-Saqqawist forces led by Nadir on 13 October 1929, leading to Nadir's ascension as King of Afghanistan, who ruled until his assassination on 3 November 1933.
The war began when the Shinwari tribe revolted in Jalalabad and drew a manifesto of 10 grievances, 5 of which related to Amanullah's meddling with the status of women. Although this revolt was quelled by a force led by Ali Ahmad Khan, a concurrent Saqqawist uprising in the north managed to capture the besieged city of Jabal al-Siraj, before attacking Kabul on 14 December 1928. Although the first Saqqawist assault on Kabul was repulsed, the second Saqqawist assault succeeded at capturing Kabul on 17 January 1929. The government at that time was focused on social reforms, such as the expansion of women's rights and the adoption of a military draft, which had earlier led to the unsuccessful Alizai rebellion and Khost rebellion. Kalakani denounced his opponents as kuffar, while his forces committed acts of rape and looting.
After capturing Kabul, the Saqqawists defeated a rival government in Jalalabad led by Ali Ahmad Khan on 9 February. Despite a setback in the Battle of Shaykhabad in early March, the Saqqawists managed to extend their control to Kandahar in June after a short siege. However, they were unable to defeat Nadir Khan in the Logar valley, who had entered the area together with Amanullah in March, although the latter left the country on 23 May. After a months-long stalemate, Nadir Khan eventually managed to force the Saqqawists to retreat into Kabul in October 1929, and subsequently into the Arg. The capture of the Arg on 13 October 1929 marked the end of the civil war, although Saqqawist activity continued until 1931. The civil war was fought concurrently with a Soviet operation in northern Afghanistan to fight the Basmachi movement.
During the anti-Saqqawist capture of Kabul, Nadir's forces sacked the city against his orders. After the civil war, Nadir did not cede control of the Afghan throne back to Amanullah, and this led to several rebellions, including the Shinwari rebellion, the Kuhistan rebellion, the Ghilzai rebellion, and Mazrak's revolt. During World War II, Amanullah would unsuccessfully try to regain the throne with Axis help.
Amānullāh Khān reigned in Afghanistan from 1919, achieving full independence from the British Empire shortly afterwards. Before the Treaty of Rawalpindi was concluded in 1921, Afghanistan had already begun to establish its own foreign policy, including diplomatic relations with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1919. During the 1920s, Afghanistan established diplomatic relations with most major countries.
The second round of Anglo–Afghan negotiations for final peace were inconclusive. Both sides were prepared to agree on Afghan independence in foreign affairs, as provided for in the previous agreement. The two nations disagreed, however, on the issue that had plagued Anglo-Afghan relations for decades and would continue to cause friction for many more — authority over Pashtun tribes on both sides of the Durand Line. The British refused to concede Afghan control over the tribes on the British side of the line while the Afghans insisted on it. The Afghans regarded the 1921 agreement as only an informal one.
The rivalry of the great powers in the region might have remained subdued had it not been for the dramatic change in government in Moscow brought about by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In their efforts to placate Muslims within their borders, the new Soviet leaders were eager to establish cordial relations with neighboring Muslim states. In the case of Afghanistan, the Soviets could achieve a dual purpose: by strengthening relations with the leadership in Kabul, they could also threaten Britain, which was one of the Western states supporting counterrevolution in the Soviet Union. In his attempts to end British control of Afghan foreign policy, Amanullah sent an emissary to Moscow in 1919; Vladimir Lenin received the envoy warmly and responded by sending a Soviet representative to Kabul to offer aid to Amānullāh's government.
Throughout Amānullāh's reign, Soviet-Afghan relations fluctuated according to Afghanistan's value to the Soviet leadership at a given time; Afghanistan was either viewed as a tool for dealing with Soviet Muslim minorities or for threatening the British. Whereas the Soviets sought Amanullah's assistance in suppressing anti-Bolshevik elements in Central Asia in return for help against the British, the Afghans were more interested in regaining lands across the Amu Darya lost to Russia in the nineteenth century. Afghan attempts to regain the oases of Merv and Panjdeh were easily subdued by the Soviet Red Army.
In May 1921, the Afghans and the Soviets signed a Treaty of Friendship, Afghanistan's first international agreement since gaining full independence in 1919. The Soviets provided Amanullah with aid in the form of cash, technology and military equipment. Despite this, Amanullah grew increasingly disillusioned with the Soviets, especially as he witnessed the widening oppression of his fellow Muslims across the border.
Anglo-Afghan relations soured over British fear of an Afghan-Soviet friendship, especially with the introduction of a few Soviet planes into Afghanistan. British unease increased when Amanullah maintained contacts with Indian nationalists and gave them asylum in Kabul, and also when he sought to stir up unrest among the Pashtun tribes across the border. The British responded by refusing to address Amanullah as "Your Majesty," and imposing restrictions on the transit of goods through India.
Amānullāh's domestic reforms were no less dramatic than his foreign policy initiatives, but those reforms could not match his achievement of complete, lasting independence. Mahmud Tarzi, Amanullah's father-in-law and Foreign Minister, encouraged the monarch's interest in social and political reform but urged that it be gradually built upon the basis of a strong central government, as had occurred in Turkey under Kemal Atatürk. Socially, Amanullah enjoyed many of Mahmud Tarzi's thoughts at the time, such as giving women more rights and allowing freedom of press through publishing. Tarzi, being heavily influenced by the West, brought this influence to Afghanistan - Amanullah enjoyed Western dress and etiquette. His wife, Queen Soraya Tarzi, became the face of Amanullah Khan's reforms in regard to women.
Amānullāh's reforms touched on many areas of Afghan life. In 1921 he established an air force, albeit with only a few Soviet planes and pilots; Afghan personnel later received training in France, Italy and Turkey. Although he came to power with army support, Amanullah alienated many army personnel by reducing both their pay and size of the forces and by altering recruiting patterns to prevent tribal leaders from controlling who joined the service. Amanullah's Turkish advisers suggested the king retire the older officers, men who were set in their ways and might resist the formation of a more professional army. Amanullah's minister of war, General Muhammad Nadir Khan, a member of the Musahiban branch of the royal family, opposed these changes, preferring instead to recognize tribal sensitivities. The king rejected Nadir Khan's advice and an anti-Turkish faction took root in the army; in 1924 Nadir Khan left the government to become ambassador to France.
If fully enacted, Amānullāh's reforms would have totally transformed Afghanistan. Most of his proposals, however, died with his abdication. His transforming social and educational reforms included: adopting the solar calendar, requiring Western dress in parts of Kabul and elsewhere, discouraging the veiling and seclusion of women, abolishing slavery and forced labor, introducing secular education (for girls as well as boys); adult-education classes and educating nomads. His economic reforms included restructuring, reorganizing and rationalizing the entire tax structure, anti-smuggling and anti-corruption campaigns, a livestock census for taxation purposes, the first budget (in 1922), implementing the metric system (which did not take hold), establishing the Bank-i-Melli (National Bank) in 1928, and introducing the Afghani as the new unit of currency in 1923. The political and judicial reforms Amānullāh proposed were equally radical for the time and included the creation of Afghanistan's first constitution (in 1923), the guarantee of civil rights (first by decree and later constitutionally), national registration and identity cards for the citizenry, the establishment of a legislative assembly, a court system to enforce new secular penal, civil and commercial codes, prohibition of blood money, and abolition of subsidies and privileges for tribal chiefs and the royal family.
Although sharia (Islamic law) was to be the residual source of law, it regained prominence after the Khost rebellion of 1924–25. Religious leaders, who had gained influence under Habibullah Khan, were unhappy with Amānullāh's extensive religious reforms. Conventional wisdom holds that the tribal revolt that overthrew Amanullah grew out of opposition to his reform program, although those people most affected by his reforms were urban dwellers not universally opposed to his policies, rather than the tribes. Nevertheless, the king had managed to alienate religious leaders and army members.
According to a later British ambassador in Afghanistan, William Kerr Fraser-Tytler, the British empire, though officially neutral, was very concerned about the situation in Afghanistan and they "made up a set of rules to govern the situation. It was unneutral to refuse an Afghan entry into Afghanistan, but once he was in he became a contestant, and it would be unneutral to allow him to recross the border, seeking a brief asylum before plunging again into the fray. And so in a mixture of the rules of cricket and football it was ordained that a player might go on the field once, and play for the crown. But if he was forced into touch, and recrossed the line, whether voluntarily or not, he was 'out' and the referee would not let him back into the game."
Many commentators in Afghanistan and elsewhere hold the belief that Britain played a part in the fall of Amanullah in January 1929, and this is supported by Soviet Historiography. According to Encyclopædia Iranica, "While it can not be dismissed out of hand, the fact remains that no evidence to support it can be found in the copious British Indian archives pertaining to this period. There can be no doubt, however, that behind the stance of official neutrality which the British maintained throughout the crisis of 1929 lay an unwillingness to help Amān-Allāh to reconquer his throne and a benevolence toward the moves of Nāder Khan. While the Soviet authorities favored Amān-Allāh (though reluctantly) and aided a foray on his behalf by Ḡolām Nabī Čarḵī in the Balḵ region, the British authorities allowed Nāder Khan to reenter Afghanistan through India and to obtain a decisive addition of strength through his recruitment of thousands of armed Wazīr and Masʿūd frontier tribesmen. Also helpful was their decision to lift a restriction order, imposing residence at a fixed address in India, on Fażl ʿOmar Mojaddedī, who was to play an apparently decisive role in persuading the Naqšbandī "mollā"s of Afghanistan to change sides and later was to become Nāder Shah’s first minister of justice. In short, while all the evidence indicates that Bačča-ye Saqqā (Kalakani)’s rise was due solely to the internal disintegration of King Amān-Allāh’s régime, there can be no doubt that British policy, tacit rather than explicit, helped to bring about Bačča-ye Saqqā’s fall".
After coming to power in Afghanistan, the Saqqawists allowed Basmachi insurgents to operate in northern Afghanistan, who then had established themselves in parts of Kunduz, Takhar and Badakshshan provinces by March 1929. Repeated Basmachi incursions into Soviet territory eventually prompted the start of a Soviet operation in Afghanistan.
The Iranian military attache, Colonel Ali Khan, was under instruction by the Iranian Shah to protect the Shiite community of Afghanistan to the greatest possible extent that would not invite a Saqqawist attack on Iran.
While Germany itself was uninvolved in the war, the Afghan-German Trading Company was requested by Kalakani to assassinate Amanullah Khan on 15 April 1929, and were promised a large reward if they did so.
The unraveling began when Shinwari Pashtun tribesmen revolted and besieged Jalalabad on 14
November 1928, cutting telegraph wires and cutting the road to the capital, after which they drew a manifesto of ten grievances, five of which related to what they saw as Amanullah's unsupportable meddling with the status of women. However, during the Shinwari rebellion two years later, the Shinwari claimed that this revolt was "not so much anti-Amanullah as against the local tax-collectors at Jelalabad". The initial response of the government was to send a small contingent to relieve Jalalabad, which was halted at Nimla, 20 miles (32 km) west of Jalalabad, before that force found itself surrounded and destroyed shortly after. Thereafter, Amanullah sent two representatives to suppress the uprising - His foreign minister, Ghulam Siddiq Khan, and the head of the National Council, Shayr Ahmad Khan. However, In late November, they had a falling out, and according to Fayz Muhammad, were negotiating separately with the tribes. Ghulam Siddiq is said to have incited some of the Shinwari to attack Shayr Ahmad Khan, the main consequence of which was that the Shinwari burned the Emir's winter palace in Jalalabad to the ground.
On 3 December 1928, Amanullah then decided to send his brother-in-law, Ali Ahmad Khan Luynab, to deal with the problem, and sent him off with regular troops, militia levies, and a sizable treasury with which to conciliate the tribal leaders. Ghulam Siddiq and Shayr Ahmad were ordered back to Kabul.
In the meantime, calls had gone out for tribal levies to assist the regular army in dealing with the Shinwari uprising, and armed tribesmen from the east, south and west, which included Waziri, Wardak, Ghilzai and Tajik tribesmen, but also more recently the Mangal tribesmen (who recently were at war with Amanullah's government) trickled into the capital to help. These men had no particular loyalty to the government and saw the situation simply as an opportunity for enrichment. As it turned out, there was no need to send them to Jalalabad, Ali Ahmad managed to conciliate the Shinwari leaders and put an end to the uprising, but as it took a while for this news to spread through the countryside, the levy tribesmen continued to arrive in the capital.
Amanullah presumably welcomed the news of the reconciliation. However, any feeling of relief would have been very temporary - forces led by a Tajik leader, Habibullah Kalakani, were moving toward Kabul from the north. Kalakani was a native of Kalakan, a village thirty kilometers north of Kabul. In late November, they besieged Jabal al-Siraj, north of Kabul, and on either 11 or 12 December, after 18 days of siege, Ahmad Ali Lodi peacefully surrendered the citadel, handing over all government funds as well as 18 machine guns, and an unspecified number of heavy weapons and rifles.
Emboldened by the victory, Kalakani attacked Kabul with 2000 men (only 200 of which were armed with rifles, and the rest armed with sticks and axes) on 14 December 1928. He and his forces entered the Murad Beg Fort on the northern slopes of the Kuh-i Kutal, nearby the village of Khayr Khanah. The rebels, feeling that deposing an emir would be against the shariah, performed a ritual and declared Kalakani the new emir, and then passed through the village of Dih-i Kupak at 3:00 PM. Around 3:15 PM, they reached the Bagh-i Bala park. They also occupied Bagh-i Bala palace, formerly the summer residence of Abdur Rahman Khan, which had now been turned into a military hospital for the Emir's personal guard and the residence of a Turkish physician, Bahjet Beg. After disarming and dismissing the guards and the embassy, they stationed their own guards, reassuring the employees of the embassy that they were guests of the nation and as such no harm would come to them.
The rebels also managed to enter the house and fortress tower of Shahr Ara, which was defended by Shawkat Beg, a Turkish officer who was the son of Muhammad Akbar Khan. His small force, as well as a group of cavalry officers, managed to prevent the Rebels from entering the old city.
As the battle continued, the whole city was filled the sounds of artillery and gunfire. However, only the cavalry of the Emir's personal guard and a few other loyal soldiers actually put up a fight against Kalakani's forces. The rest of the army was in a mutinous mood, as their officers had been appropriating the soldier's rations. Holding their commanders rather than the rebels to blame for the trouble, when ordered to shoot, the soldiers simply fired their weapons in the air. Tumult and confusion were now widespread. The emir was furious when he heard of the mutiny, and ordered all the weapons to be distributed to the residents of Kabul and to the tribesmen who had come into the city but had not yet left for Jalalabad to fight the Shinwari. However, the near-universal loathing of the Afghans for Amanullah led to the majority of them refusing to take up arms against Kalakani. To make matters worse for Amanullah, Some Waziri, Mangal and Ahmadzai tribesmen defected to Kalakani, took up positions on the Asmai Hill in the center of Kabul, and fired on the Emir's troops.
Ghulam Ghaws, Whose father, Malik Jahandad Ahmadzai, had been executed following a rebellion, headed towards his hometown costs, carrying with him more than 300 rifles, armed the people there, and rose up against the government. Other tribes acted similarly because there was no control over the distribution of weapons.
The battle took a drastic turn on 25 December, when Kalakani was wounded in the shoulder from an aerial bomb, causing him to retreat 20 kilometers north, to Murad Beg Fort, in the Kuhdaman region.
Kalakani's retreat gave Amanullah a chance to regroup. In late December, he began shelling Murad Beg Fort, and this shelling lasted until 13 January. However, the shelling failed to provide any results, and this disheartened the king. In the early morning of 14 January, Amanullah abdicated the throne to his oldest brother, Inayatullah Khan, who ruled for only three days before escaping into exile in British-India. Amanullah's efforts to recover power by leading a small, ill-equipped force toward Kabul failed. The deposed king crossed the border into British-India and went into exile in Italy and remained in Europe until his 1960 death in Zürich, Switzerland. At the time of his abdication, Amanullah's troops were fighting in the Khayr Khanah (Khirskhanah) pass, seven miles (11 km) north of Kabul.
After accessing to the Afghan throne, Inayatullah Khan sent a peace envoy to Kalakani. The envoys informed Kalakani that Inayatullah's accession had been illegal in accordance to the shariah, since Kalakani had ascended the throne in the Islamic month of Rajab, and Inayatullah's accession had taken place in the Islamic month of Sha'ban. Rejoiced, Kalakani and 28 armed men, accompanied by a group of unarmed Kuhdamanis passed through the village of Dih-i Afghanan and attacked the capital, shouting "ya chahar yar" and firing guns at the air. On the very first day of his reign, Inayatullah was forced to barricade himself in the Arg with several of his ministers.
On the 16th of January, while 80 Hazaras from Bihsud were defending the Qalah-i Buland Fortress, as well as the arsenal at Kulula Pasha, some officials declared their allegiance to Kalakani. These included Shayr Ahmad, head of the national council, Fayz Muhammad Khan, former minister of trade, Abd al-Hadi Khan, the minister of finance, and the sons of Abdur Rahman Khan: Mir Hashim, Sardar Amin Allah Khan, Muhammad Umar Khan, as well as a number of deputy ministers and heads of state bureaus.
On the 17th of January, Inayatullah, unnerved by the lack of support from the Kabulis, surrendered to Kalakani and abdicated the throne. Kalakani allowed him to peacefully leave Kabul with his family and 3000 rupees.
Having become King of Afghanistan, Kalakani appointed a number of people into office, including:
On 9 May, Kalakani passed a decree in Kabul which forbade citizens of Kabul from moving out of the city without permission, even into the government-controlled Bandar-i Arghandah, Charasya, Bini Hisar, Butkhak, Kutal-i Pay Manar, Kutal-i Khayr Khanah, Maydan, Jalriz, Logar, Khurd Kabul, Tangi Gharu or Dih Sabz.
On 31 May, Kalakani paid a visit to the shrine at Mazar-i Khwajah Musafir, which lies near the village of Chihil Tan above the village of Shaykh Muhammad Riza-yi Khurasani which lies in the Paghman District, 6 miles (9.6 km) west of Kabul
Following his takeover, Kalakani, fearful of a counterattack by the Amanullah loyalists, swiftly moved the treasury to Kudhaman.
The first concerted opposition to Kalakani came from Ali Ahmad Khan, who was still stationed in Jalalabad after suppressing the Shinwari revolt. There, the locals proclaimed Ali as the new Emir upon receiving the news of Kalakani's accession. Ali then marched his troops on Samucha-i Mulla Omar, Tangi Khurd Kabul, and Chanri, and took up positions there. At the head of a 2,000 men strong army and a tribal militia, he marched to Jagdalak, where he waited for a force of Mohmands who had promised to join him. Over the course of 23 to 29 January, Ali sent out proclamations of his new emirate to Kabul, Logar, the Hazarahjat, the Southern province, and elsewhere, and called on people to join him.
Malik Qays of the Khugyani tribe, who had initially allied himself with Ali, defected to Kalakani, captured Ali and brought Ali to Kalakani in exchange for 17,000 rupees and the rank of lieutenant general, ending Ali's reign on 9 February.
Sometime before 13 March, the Battle of Shaykhabad took place, 46 miles (74 km) from Kabul and halfway across the Kabul-Ghazni road.
It was here where Karim Khan Wardak, who refused to pledge allegiance to Kalakani, had made defensive preparations. Around this time, Abd al-Wakil Khan, who had earlier been appointed field marshal by Kalakani, was dispatched to Ghazni and Qandahar with a force of 3,000 men. When Abd al-Wakil reached the village of Bini Badam and Qalah-i Durrani, 30 miles (48 kilometres) from Kabul, he halted there to deal with Karim Khan Wardak's forces, only then to proceed. But Karim Khan, along with Wazir and Hazara leaders who had gathered in support of Aman Allah, sent a joint message to the field marshal that said:
Abd al-Wakil accepted this message at face value, and he sent the Model Battalion, which at the time numbered 1,800 men and was stationed at Qal ah-yi Durrani, to march on Shaykhabad along with 400 royal cavalry and 800 Kuhistani and Kuhdamani infantry militia which had halted near the village of Bini Badam. After an exhausting march through snow-covered hills, Abd al-Wakil's forces were ambushed near Zarani, at the edge of the Daht-i Tup waste land by Wardak tribesmen, who came thundering down the hills after a soldier's shot at a bird alerted them that Kalakani's troops were nearby. Many of Abd al-Wakil's troops were killed in the ambush; only 20 of 400 cavalrymen survived.
The people of Maydan, Jalriz and Sanglakh refused to offer allegiance to Kalakani, and formed an alliance with the Wardak and surrounded Kalakani's armies in Maydan, and defeated them in Qalah-i Durrani, before advancing to Arghandah, 14 miles (22.5 kilometres) west of Kabul, where some Kalakani's forced decided to retreat toward Qalah-i Qazi, Chardihi and Kuhdaman.
On 5:30 on 22 March, Kalakani personally headed from Kabul to Arghandah to bolster the spirits of his soldiers and managed to convince the soldiers to advance on Kutal-i Shaykh, a small village near the intersection with the road west to the Unay Pass. They accepted, and the battle of Kutal-i Shaykh lasted until the evening with a victory for Kalakani.
In the morning of 23 March, Kalakani ordered 500 militamen to be brought back to Kabul from Najrab, because they had been fighting against the Tagabis and Kalakani was worried that Najrab might defect. On 24 March, Kalakani ordered some Kuhdamanis, Kuhistanis, and people from the villages of Dih-i Nur, Maydan and Arghandah to cover the army rear which was then at Qalah-i Durrani and Pul-i Maydan and so deny those awaiting its defeat the chance to march on Chardihi and Kuhdaman. Later that same day, Kalakani's Field Marshall, Purdil Khan (who had since been named as Minister of Defense) shelled Maydan, which strengthened the resolve among the Maydan, Arghandah and Sanglakjh to fight Kalakani. On the 25th, Purdil Khan managed to capture Maydan, but the great casualties inflicted prevented him from advancing towards Wardak and Ghazni, and he withdrew to Arghandah and Qalah the following day.
At this time, Amanullah had supposedly returned to Afghanistan and was marching from Qandahar with an army made of Durrani, Khattak, Ghilzai, and Hazara fighters. Four days after entering Afghanistan, Amanullah learnt of a Saqqawist uprising in Herat. On 27 March, Habibullah Kalakani ordered his brother, Hamid Allah Kalakani, to lead a force of Panjshiris backed by 14 siege guns, to Maydan. At Kutal-i Shaykh, this force won a major victory which allowed it to continue advancing towards Maydan, where it took 25 prisoners and destroyed several forts. On the night of the 28th, anti-Saqqawist tribesmen ambushed Hamid Allah's force, and while they were able to deal vast casualties and capture many field guns and rifles, they were unable to disloge Hamid from his position. On the 30th, the anti-Saqqawist tribes renewed the battle, and this time they managed to almost completely expel Hamid Allah's forces from Maydan, except for a few detachments which were surrounded in the fortress known as Qalah-i Abd al-Ghani Khan Beg Samandi, about 14 miles (22.5 km) west of Shaykhabad. A large part of Hamid's defeated army retreated to Arghandah and Qalah-i Qazi.
On the 31st, Kalakani started another offensive on Maydan and made some progress. On 2 April, a force from Bihsuf occupied the Unay Pass and reached an agreement with the militias of the Surkh-i Parsa, Turkman, Bamyan, Balkhab and Shaykh Ali Hazarah for them to attack Kuhistan and Kuhdaman via the Ghurband Valley road while it simultaneously attacks Kabul via the road through Maydan. On 3 April, Kalakani's forces clashed in Shash Gaw, 13 miles (20.9 km) north of Ghazni. On 7 April they were defeated while advancing along the road not so far from Ghazni near Shiniz in Wardak. On 7 April, they clashed at Shiniz, and on the 9th they clashed in Shaykhabad and Jaghatu, northwest of Ghazni. Fayz Muhammed reports that Kalakani suffered a major defeat near Ghazni on 9 April and that his forces fled to Qalah-i Durrani, but historian Robert D. McChesney believes this to be false. By the 12th, there were rumours in Kabul that Ghazni was surrounded by anti-Saqqawist forces. In mid-March, Mohammed Nadir Shah, who had departed from France in January, arrived in Jalalabad to centralize the opposition to Kalakani. It was reported on 16 April that Ghazni had fallen to anti-Saqqawist forces, and that Kalakani's forces had been defeated at Shaykh Amir, near the Majid Pass. By the 20th, there were reports that anti-Saqqawist forces were on the doorstep of Paghman, just west of Kabul, and that Hazarah forces from Bihsud crossed the Unay pass and were heading on their way to Ghurband, while another force occupied positions there to prevent Kalakani from using it to cross to Hazarahjat. The force sent to Ghazni retreated to Shiniz-i Wardak. On the 21st, soldiers loyal to Kalakani left Kabul to reinforce Ghazni. At this time, Kalakani decided to reinforce the Qalah-i Durrani fort to prevent rebel tribes from advancing past it. On the 24th, Kalakani's forces were clashing in Shash Gaw, 13 miles (21 km) northwest of Ghazni. On the 26th, while laying siege to Ghazni, Amanullah had inexplicably given the order to retreat to Qandahar. On the 28th, it was reported that Kalakani's army had captured Ghazni. On 30 April, anti-Saqqawist forces re-entered Ghazni, renewing the battle. On the same day, a large anti-Saqqawist offensive managed to dislodge Kalakani's forces from positions in Shaykhabad, Takiya and Shash Gaw, forcing some of them to retreat towards Daht-i Tup. On 1 May, anti-Saqqawist forces continued their offensive, clashing in Dasht-i Tup and Shaykhabad, and on 2 May fighting was taking place in Shaykhabad, Dasht-i Tup and Qalah-yi Durrani. On 7 May, units were sent from Kabul to Mahtab and Arghandah to prepare defenses there. On 8 May, while there was fighting in Dasht-i Tup and Bini Badam, Saqqawist forces under Purdil Khan departed for Charikar. One of Kalakani's generals, Muhammad Unar Khan, died on 14 May. The next day, Kalakani sent units to Kuh-i Asmai and Shayr Darwazah. On the 19th, Amanullah was rumoured to be besieged at Kalat, 80 miles (128.75 km) north of Qandahar. On the 23rd, Amanullah Khan fled Afghanistan into the British Raj, leaving his brother Inayatullah Khan in charge of anti-Saqqawist resistance. By that time, Kalakani held control of the entire Ghazni region, and the road south of Ghazni as open. By 1 June, anti-Saqqawist forces who at this time were at Qarabagh decided to retreat Qandahar, while Kalakani's armies were able to take Kalat and had surrounded the city of Qandahar, which duly fell on 3 June or 31 May.
On 8 March, Nadir Khan crossed into Afghanistan just east of Matun in the Kurram Valley. On 16 March, Kalakani dispatched troops in two directions: along the route to Maydan through Qalah-i Mahtab Bagh, Qalah-i Durrani, Qalah-i Qazi, and Arghandah, and via Charasya and Musai to Logar. 129 troops were also dispatched by Kalakani to the Logar Valley, which were defeated at Waghjan Gorge (Between Kushi in Kulangar and Shikar Qalah), forcing them to retreat to Rishkhur, south of Kabul. On 23 March, heavy fighting was occurring in Najrab, north of Kabul. The next day, 500 of Kalakani's troops who were marching from Charasya to Kulangar were ambushed, with many killed or wounded.
By 31 March, there were some reversals for Kalakani on the Maydan front. On 23 March, 6000 Mangal tribesmen joined Nadir Khan at Khost. Four days later, he left for Urgun, which he reached on 5 April. A few days later, he took Baladah, and on the 15th he captured Gardez. On the 23rd, Nadir was residing in Safid Qalah, at the southern entrance of the Altamur (or Tirah) pass. On the 24th, he continued through the pass to Charkh, where he was confronted by a force sent by Kalakani. After initial success in capturing the village of Dabar in Charkh, he was ultimately forced to retreat to Sijinak, east of Gardiz on the 27th. On the 22nd, Kalakani sent troops to Logar to defend it against Nadir, whose forces captured Dubandi and the village of Kushi that same day. On the 23rd there were rumours in Kabul that Kalakani's armies had been defeated and forced to retreat to Qalah-i Durrani on the Maydan-Ghazni road. On the 23rd, Nadir reached the Waghjan Gorge. On the 24th, there were rumours in Kabul that Nadir's forces had entered the village of Aghujan, 22 miles (35.4 km) south of Kabul. On the 25th, Nadir reached Hisarak in the Logar valley, and on that same day it was rumoured that he had suffered a defeat in a battle at Tirah Pass. On 1 May, while a battle in the Southern province had been going on for three days, Kalakani's forces carried out a raid on Khushi in Logar and plundered its inhabitants. By 3 May, Nadir had established a fort at Surkhab and was harassing Kalakani's troops to prevent Kalakani from advancing into the Southern province. On the sixth, Kalakani sent new troops to Charikar. On the 11th there were rumours that Nadir arrived in Charkh in Logar. Robert D. McChesney believes this to be false, and says this was just wishful thinking. On 8 May, Hashim (Nadir Khan's brother) persuaded tribes of the Eastern province to unite against Kalakani, who agreed to raise 40,000 troops who would advance in three formations through Tagab, Tangi Gharu, Ghakari and Lataband to attack Kuhdaman, Kuhistan and Kabul. That same day, Nadir's forces reached the region of Pul-i Hashim Khayl in Gandamak and at Tagab made plans to continue further down the road. On 11 May pro-Nadir tribes moved on Kabul but were stopped by Saqqawist Shinwari at Surkhrud. On 12 May there were rumours that Nadir had inflicted a defeat upon Kalakani at Bidak. On 15 May Nadir crossed the Tirah Pass and began an incursion into the Logar valley, which continued the 16th, when Nadir pursued the local Saqqawist forces as far as Kulangar, Kutti Khayl and Muhammad Aghah, and was fighting over control of the Ghurband Valley. Also on the 16th, Nadir reached Khak-i Jabbar via the road through Hisarak. On the 23rd, when peace negotiations were ongoing, Kalakani sent a force of 300 men to Logar. On 26 June, Kalakani's forces recaptured Gardiz.
On 14 July, Nadir Khan's forces entered the Logar valley, won a victory at Padkhwab-i Rughani and from there, advanced on Surkhab where they surrounded and besieged one of Kalakani's forces at Kariz-i Darwish, which surrendered the next day. On 18 July, Kalakani's forces fought a battle with the Khugyani near Khurd Kabul. In order to get the upper hand in the battle, Kalakani confiscated all automobiles and horse carriages in Kabul, so that reinforcements could arrive more quickly. This plan worked, and on 19 July the situation was stabilized. On 18 August, Nadir moved his headquarters to Ali Khayl with the Jaji tribe, which had assured him of their unswerving loyalty.
Sometime before 17 March, anti-Saqqawist tribes from Tagab launched a surprise attack on Sarubi and Gugamandan, opening what Robert D. McChesney labels "The Tagab Front". This attack took the local garrisons by surprise and allowed the Tagabis to capture two cannons, weaponry and other military supplies. After this success, the Tagabis planned a northward assault on Jamal Afgha in Kuhistan, which was successfully undertaken on the 18th. On 23 March, people of Durnama, Sujnan and Bulaghin attacked the Tagabis, defeated them, and occupied their positions, which stabilized the Tagab Front. On 1 April, prisoners arrived from Tagab.
On 2 August, the Tagab front was re-opened following a local uprising. On 12 August, after days of skirimishes, Kalakani's forces launched a large counteroffensive and forced the Tagabis to surrender the next day. This ended the Tagab front.
On 2 April, there were rumours in Kabul that anti-Saqqawist Hazaras had occupied positions in Balkh, while others were able to march on Aqchah, Andkhuy, Maymanah and Mazar-i Sharif. On the 7th, anti-Saqqawist forces arrived in Siyahgird in Ghurband. On the 17th, Sayyid Hussayn had left for Charikar. anti-Saqqawist forces closed the road in the Ghurband valley leading to Kuhistan and Kuhdaman, and on the 18th they had reportedly reached Ghurband. On the 19th, a counteroffensive by Ghulam Rasul Khan against the Hazaras was called off by Kalakani, who wanted instead to focus on Charikar, which was reportedly under attack by local anti-Saqqawist partisans. On the 20th, Sayyid Husayn left for Charikar, where he ambushed and killed Ata Muhammed, whose fianceé Sayyid had taken as a wife in the years prior, for which Ata Muhammed had sworn to kill him. On the 26th, word spread in Kabul that Hazara units had reached Katan mountain, west of Shakar Dara, and from there captured the Khudamani villages of Shakar Darra, Farza, Ghaza, Saray Khwajah, and Charikar. On the 27th, anti-Saqqawist Hazaras reportedly attacked Farza, Shakar Darra and Istalif (towns in Kuhdaman). That same day, in response to Hazara advances, Kalakani sent Hamid Allah on a counteroffensive which succeeded forcing the Hazaras to pull back. However, the situation remained dire for Kalakani and on 3 May he withdrew troops and munitions from other fronts to reinforce the Ghurband front. On 4 May, on the same day which Amanullah withdrew from Wardak, there were rumours in Kabul that Sayyid Husayn, one of Kalakani's generals, had made a breakthrough in Ghurband, and on the next day he reportedly was marching on Mazar-i Sharif via the road through Qunduz. Before this march on Mazar-i Sharif, the city had earlier been the site of a mutiny by Kuhistani and Kuhdamani forces, which began in January after Kalakani captured Kabul, and was ended on 30 April by anti-Saqqawist forces. It's after this point that sources disagree - Faiz Mohammad records the mutineers of Mazar-i Sharif retreating to Herat and capturing it sometime before 15 May, while Ademec says that Herat was captured sometime after Saqqawist forces captured Mazar-i Sharif in June, after Amanullah left Afghanistan for the British Raj, and then gradually extended their control to Maymanah and then Herat.
On 10 May, word had spread in Kabul that Ghulam Jalani Khan had occupied Andarab and Khanabad in Qataghan and the governor of Qataghan-Badakhshan Province, Mir Baba Sahib Charikari had been killed. On 9 or 10 May, Sayyid Husayn suffered a severe setback in the Battle of Shibar Pass, where his 12,000-man strong army was routed by a local Hazara militia which sought revenge for destruction of cattle, which ended Sayyid's hopes of taking Mazar-i Sharif. On May 12, Sayyid found himself besieged in Kuhistan and was reportedly wounded. On that same day, one of Kalakani's generals, Abd Al-Wakil Khan captured Fayzabad in Badakhshan while some of his units reached Farjaghan (at the head of the Alishang Valley near Tagab and Najrab). Also on 12 May anti-Saqqawist forces won a victory in a battle near Pul-i Matak after marching on Tagab. On 13 May 900 men from Kalakani's army were captured in Ghurband after a brief battle. On the 14th, another 2000 Saqqawist soldiers were defeated and their weapons, materiel and ammunition was seized.
On the 15th, Sayyid Husayn began another offensive against anti-Saqqawist forces, but after taking the Pansjir Valley on the 15th he was stopped at the Khawak Pass on the 16th. On the 19th, there were rumours in Kabul that Sayyid Husayn had died and that anti-Saqqawist forces had marched on Charikar, which Robert D. McChesney believes to be either highly exaggerated or completely false. On the 26th, Sayyid Husayn returned to Kabul alive and well, dispelling rumours about his death, and by the beginning of June, the routes via the Ghurband Valley and the Salang and Khawak Passes were firmly in the hands of Kalakani. On 29 May, 2300 men were sent north to reinforce the Ghurband front. On 31 May, Kalakani's army, which had advanced as far as Bamyan en route to Mazar-i Sharif had been routed and forced to retreat to Jabal al-Siraj. On 11 April, Nadir arrived in Khushi in the Logar valley. On 20 April, the son of Abd Allah Khan Tukhi, whose brother, Ata Muhammad, had raised a rebellion in Mazar-i Sharif against Kalakani, was hanged in Kabul. On 7 May 12,000 anti-Saqqawist forces occupied the Unay Pass and the Safidkhak Pass, while others were positioned on the lower slopes of the Paghman and Shakar Darrah. At this time, various anti-Saqqawist tribes planned a coordinated assault on Kabul. However, ethnic differences and poor communications led the attack to never materialize. On 2 June, Kalakani sent troops to Sar-i Chashmah, where they were ordered not to fire on anyone who swears allegiance as long as they were unarmed. On 23 May, Amanullah left Afghanistan for a last time, never to return. That same day, Kalakani sent 6500 men to conquer the Hazarahjat. Sometime before 19 June, Kalakani's forces won a victory at Bamyan, where they at first found themselves encircled, before the commander of the besieging Hazara forces was bribed to retreat. As of 23 June, anti-Saqqawist forces continued to occupy the Unay pass. As of 27 June, anti-Saqqawist forces had advanced two miles (3.2 km) from the Unay Pass towards Sar-i Chashmah. On 28 June, Kalakani's forces fought an offensive battle against Hazara militias at Qalah-i Karim. After capturing the village and burning it to the ground, they were ambushed by Hazaras who were subsequently driven off with artillery fire and forced to retreat into the mountains. After this victory, Kalakani's forces took control of the Unay Pass. On 29 June, Kalakani's forces advanced on Qalah-i Yurt. On 30 June, Kalakani's forces advanced toward Qalah-i Yurt after getting as far as Jawqul. On 1 July, Kalakani's forces looted homes in Takana, Jalriz and Kuhnah Khumar. On 2 July, Kalakani's forces suffered a defeat at Jawqul and were forced to retreat to Sar-i Chashmah, and then to Chandawul through Bazar-i Sar-i Chawk, Baghban Kuchan and Chandawul. On 3 July, Hamid Allah renewed the offensive, but was beaten back after being surrounded by Hazara militias, and was then pursued on his retreat as far as Sar-i Chashmah. As of 8 July, the Hazaras continued to fight Kalakani's forces and attacked a 5,000-man regiment, forcing them to retreat to Jalriz. However, the Hazarahs did not follow up this victory with an attack on Kabul - Robert D. McChesney points out that politics in Afghanistan tend to be extremely local, and once the Hazarahs secured control of their own regions, they had little interest in fighting for more territory.
On 10 July, Umar Khan promised to Kalakani that he would take upon himself the task of either forcing the Hazara's submission or crushing them. Faiz Mohammad quotes him as saying "Purdil Khan has taken Ghazni and captured Qandahar; Major General Muhammad Siddiq and Abd al-Qayyum Ibrahim Khayl Paghmani have advanced toward the Southern Province; and Muhammad Umar General Sur-i Satranj has defeated the opposition in numerous battles. I don't want to lose ground to my peers here. I should be able to make short work of the Hazarahs and extract their submission." He set off for Jalriz and linked up with soldiers who had been recently been skirmishing with Hazaras, won a victory at Sar-i Chasmah and conducted operations as far as Takana. However, success soon stalled, and after being wounded in the leg, Umar was forced to retreat, leaving the Hazaras to re-occupy all lost territory.
On 17 July, Hazara militias attacked Saqqawist forces in the Unay Pass and Qalah-i Safid, routing them and pursuing them to Takana and Jalriz. From 25 to 29 July, fighting took place in Jalriz, however on 30 July the Hazaras withdrew from Jalriz back to the Hazarahjat after they heard that Nadir suffered setbacks in the eastern province, which, for the time being, ended the Hazara's hopes of joining Nadir in a multi-pronged offensive toward Kabul. On 1 August the Hazaras began another offensive, attacking Qalah-i Majid (near Siyah Baghal) and Qalah-i Safid, a fort in the Unay Pass, chasing Kalakani's forces as far as Jalriz once again. On 3 August, Kalakani's forces were reportedly defeated at Jalriz once again. On 15 August, Hazara militias launched an offensive against Turkmen tribes who had pledged allegiance to Kalakani on 31 July, occupying positions in Darrah-i Suf, Kuh-i Shadyan and Marmal, and besieged fort Dih Dadi (a garrison village midway between the site of ancient balkh and Mazar-i Sharif).
On 18 August, an anti-Saqqawist uprising took place in Bamyan, Ghuri and Baghlan, blocking Kalakani's force's route to Turkistan and forcing them to retreat to Ghurband. On 21 August, the Sayyid of Shaykh Ali launched an offensive against Kalakani, advancing as far as Khanabad, Andarab and Ghurband. On 26 August, there were rumours in Kabul that Hazara settlers successfully attacked Mazar-i Sharif. In early September, the Saqqawists won their last victory by taking Jalalabad. On 23 September, an pro-Nadir uprising in Kandahar succeeded at driving out Kalakani's forces from the city. On 29 September, a pro-Nadir force under Shah Wali crossed the Durand Line and occupied Khushi. On the 30th, he sent a 1000-man force ahead to Tangi Waghjan, the gorge on the road to the Logar Valley. On 3 October, after an intense battle, anti-Saqqawist forces captured the town of Muhammad Aghah, placing themselves within striking distance of Kabul. Kalakani himself took part in this battle, trying to lift his soldier's spirits, to no avail. anti-Saqqawist forces continued to slowly push towards Kabul, seizing Charasya, Chihil Tan and Chihil Sutun on 5 October. By 7 October, Kalakani's forces had retreated from almost all territory outside Kabul, and prepared for their last stand. On 9 October, after dozens of hours of street fighting in Kabul, the Arg was put under siege. On 13 October, after several days of bombardment, Nadir's forces entered the Arg, and after a short but fierce battle, captured it, ending the civil war. Upon hearing this news, a small contingent of Kalakani's army which was besieged at Jabal al-Siraj resolved to surrender that same day.
On 15 October, Mohammed Nadir Shah arrived in Kabul after hearing word of Kalakani's defeat. He considered pardoning Kalakani, but pressure from loyal tribes led him to execute Kalakani on 1 November 1929. Kalakani, his brother, and 9 others were lined up against the west wall of the arg and shot. During the reign of Nadir, the Saqqawists attempted another uprising, the Kuhistan rebellion (July 1930), which was crushed within a week. Saqqawist activity continued until 1930 in Kuhdaman, and 1931 in Herat.
Upon winning the civil war, Nadir did not cede control of the Afghan throne to Amanullah, and this led to several rebellions. The first of these, the Shinwari rebellion and the Kuhistan rebellion (February–April 1930), occurred in 1930. In 1938, there was also the Ghilzai rebellion. In the 1940s, Mohammed Zahir Shah faced several tribal revolts, and the leader of the Zadran revolt, Mazrak Zadran, sought to restore Amanullah. During World War II, western press reported that Amanullah Khan was working as an agent for Nazi Germany in Berlin. It is believed he was involved in plans to regain his throne with Axis help.
According to "Resort to war: a data guide to inter-state, extra-state, intra-state, and non-state wars, 1816-2007", both sides suffered 7500 combat deaths during the civil war.
During the Afghan Civil War, there were incidents of rape and looting among Saqqawist troops. One such incident took place on 28 June 1929, when Saqqawists attacked the Hazara settlement of Qalah-i Karim, looting anything movable and driving off livestock. Another incident, which took place on 23 July 1929, was described by contemporary Afghan historian Fayz Muhammad as follows:
Following the anti-Saqqawist capture of Kabul in October 1929, Kabul was sacked by Nadir's forces. Some sources state that this sacking had been authorized by Nadir, but this contested by historian Vartan Gregorian. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26464 |
General recursive function
In mathematical logic and computer science, a general recursive function (often shortened to recursive function) or μ-recursive function, is a partial function from natural numbers to natural numbers that is "computable" in an intuitive sense. In computability theory, it is shown that the μ-recursive functions are precisely the functions that can be computed by Turing machines (this is one of the theorems that supports the Church–Turing thesis). The μ-recursive functions are closely related to primitive recursive functions, and their inductive definition (below) builds upon that of the primitive recursive functions. However, not every μ-recursive function is a primitive recursive function—the most famous example is the Ackermann function.
Other equivalent classes of functions are the functions of lambda calculus and the functions that can be computed by Markov algorithms.
The subset of all "total" recursive functions with values in is known in computational complexity theory as the complexity class R.
The μ-recursive functions (or general recursive functions) are partial functions that take finite tuples of natural numbers and return a single natural number. They are the smallest class of partial functions that includes the initial functions and is closed under composition, primitive recursion, and the μ operator.
The smallest class of functions including the initial functions and closed under composition and primitive recursion (i.e. without minimisation) is the class of primitive recursive functions. While all primitive recursive functions are total, this is not true of partial recursive functions; for example, the minimisation of the successor function is undefined. The primitive recursive functions are a subset of the total recursive functions, which are a subset of the partial recursive functions. For example, the Ackermann function can be proven to be total recursive, and to be non-primitive.
Primitive or "basic" functions:
Operators (the domain of a function defined by an operator is the set of the values of the arguments such that every function application that must be done during the computation provides a well-defined result):
The strong equality operator formula_31 can be used to compare partial μ-recursive functions. This is defined for all partial functions "f" and "g" so that
holds if and only if for any choice of arguments either both functions are defined and their values are equal or both functions are undefined.
In the equivalence of models of computability, a parallel is drawn between Turing machines that do not terminate for certain inputs and an undefined result for that input in the corresponding partial recursive function.
The unbounded search operator is not definable by the rules of primitive recursion as those do not provide a mechanism for "infinite loops" (undefined values).
A normal form theorem due to Kleene says that for each "k" there are primitive recursive functions formula_33 and formula_34 such that for any μ-recursive function formula_35 with "k" free variables there is an "e" such that
The number "e" is called an index or Gödel number for the function "f". A consequence of this result is that any μ-recursive function can be defined using a single instance of the μ operator applied to a (total) primitive recursive function.
Minsky (1967) observes (as does Boolos-Burgess-Jeffrey (2002) pp. 94–95) that the U defined above is in essence the μ-recursive equivalent of the universal Turing machine:
A number of different symbolisms are used in the literature. An advantage to using the symbolism is a derivation of a function by "nesting" of the operators one inside the other is easier to write in a compact form. In the following we will abbreviate the string of parameters x1, ..., xn as x:
Example: Kleene gives an example of how to perform the recursive derivation of f(b, a) = b + a (notice reversal of variables a and b). He starts with 3 initial functions
He arrives at: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26469 |
Rat
Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. Species of rats are found throughout the order Rodentia, but stereotypical rats are found in the genus "Rattus". Other rat genera include "Neotoma" (pack rats), "Bandicota" (bandicoot rats) and "Dipodomys" (kangaroo rats).
Rats are typically distinguished from mice by their size. Generally, when someone discovers a large muroid rodent, its common name includes the term "rat", while if it is smaller, its name includes the term "mouse". The common terms "rat" and "mouse" are not taxonomically specific.
The best-known rat species are the black rat ("Rattus rattus") and the brown rat ("Rattus norvegicus"). This group, generally known as the Old World rats or true rats, originated in Asia. Rats are bigger than most Old World mice, which are their relatives, but seldom weigh over in the wild.
The term "rat" is also used in the names of other small mammals that are not true rats. Examples include the North American pack rats (aka wood rats) and a number of species loosely called kangaroo rats. Rats such as the bandicoot rat ("Bandicota bengalensis") are murine rodents related to true rats but are not members of the genus "Rattus".
Male rats are called "bucks"; unmated females, "does", pregnant or parent females, "dams"; and infants, "kittens" or "pups". A group of rats is referred to as a "mischief".
The common species are opportunistic survivors and often live with and near humans; therefore, they are known as commensals. They may cause substantial food losses, especially in developing countries. However, the widely distributed and problematic commensal species of rats are a minority in this diverse genus. Many species of rats are island endemics, some of which have become endangered due to habitat loss or competition with the brown, black, or Polynesian rat.
Wild rodents, including rats, can carry many different zoonotic pathogens, such as "Leptospira", "Toxoplasma gondii", and "Campylobacter". The Black Death is traditionally believed to have been caused by the microorganism "Yersinia pestis", carried by the tropical rat flea ("Xenopsylla cheopis"), which preyed on black rats living in European cities during the epidemic outbreaks of the Middle Ages; these rats were used as transport hosts. Another zoonotic disease linked to the rat is foot-and-mouth disease.
Rats become sexually mature at age 6 weeks, but reach social maturity at about 5 to 6 months of age. The average lifespan of rats varies by species, but many only live about a year due to predation.
The black and brown rats diverged from other Old World rats in the forests of Asia during the beginning of the Pleistocene.
The characteristic long tail of most rodents is a feature that has been extensively studied in various rat species models, which suggest three primary functions of this structure: thermoregulation, minor proprioception, and a nocifensive-mediated degloving response. Rodent tails—particularly in rat models—have been implicated with a thermoregulation function that follows from its anatomical construction. This particular tail morphology is evident across the family Muridae, in contrast to the bushier tails of Sciuridae, the squirrel family. The tail is hairless and thin skinned but highly vascularized, thus allowing for efficient countercurrent heat exchange with the environment. The high muscular and connective tissue densities of the tail, along with ample muscle attachment sites along its plentiful caudal vertebrae, facilitate specific proprioceptive senses to help orient the rodent in a three-dimensional environment. Lastly, murids have evolved a unique defense mechanism termed "degloving" that allows for escape from predation through the loss of the outermost integumentary layer on the tail. However, this mechanism is associated with multiple pathologies that have been the subject of investigation.
Multiple studies have explored the thermoregulatory capacity of rodent tails by subjecting test organisms to varying levels of physical activity and quantifying heat conduction via the animals' tails. One study demonstrated a significant disparity in heat dissipation from a rat's tail relative to its abdomen. This observation was attributed to the higher proportion of vascularity in the tail, as well as its higher surface-area-to-volume ratio, which directly relates to heat's ability to dissipate via the skin. These findings were confirmed in a separate study analyzing the relationships of heat storage and mechanical efficiency in rodents that exercise in warm environments. In this study, the tail was a focal point in measuring heat accumulation and modulation.
On the other hand, the tail's ability to function as a proprioceptive sensor and modulator has also been investigated. As aforementioned, the tail demonstrates a high degree of muscularization and subsequent innervation that ostensibly collaborate in orienting the organism. Specifically, this is accomplished by coordinated flexion and extension of tail muscles to produce slight shifts in the organism's center of mass, orientation, etc., which ultimately assists it with achieving a state of proprioceptive balance in its environment. Further mechanobiological investigations of the constituent tendons in the tail of the rat have identified multiple factors that influence how the organism navigates its environment with this structure. A particular example is that of a study in which the morphology of these tendons is explicated in detail. Namely, cell viability tests of tendons of the rat's tail demonstrate a higher proportion of living fibroblasts that produce the collagen for these fibers. As in humans, these tendons contain a high density of golgi tendon organs that help the animal assess stretching of muscle in situ and adjust accordingly by relaying the information to higher cortical areas associated with balance, proprioception, and movement.
The characteristic tail of murids also displays a unique defense mechanism known as "degloving" in which the outer layer of the integument can be detached in order to facilitate the animal's escape from a predator. This evolutionary selective pressure has persisted despite a multitude of pathologies that can manifest upon shedding part of the tail and exposing more interior elements to the environment. Paramount among these are bacterial and viral infection, as the high density of vascular tissue within the tail becomes exposed upon avulsion or similar injury to the structure. The degloving response is a nocifensive response, meaning that it occurs when the animal is subjected to acute pain, such as when a predator snatches the organism by the tail.
Specially bred rats have been kept as pets at least since the late 19th century. Pet rats are typically variants of the species brown rat - but black rats and giant pouched rats are also sometimes kept. Pet rats behave differently from their wild counterparts depending on how many generations they have been kept as pets. Pet rats do not pose any more of a health risk than pets such as cats or dogs. Tamed rats are generally friendly and can be taught to perform selected behaviors.
In 1895, Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, established a population of domestic albino brown rats to study the effects of diet and for other physiological studies. Over the years, rats have been used in many experimental studies, adding to our understanding of genetics, diseases, the effects of drugs, and other topics that have provided a great benefit for the health and wellbeing of humankind.
The aortic arches of the rat are among the most commonly studied in murine models due to marked anatomical homology to the human cardiovascular system. Both rat and human aortic arches exhibit subsequent branching of the brachiocephalic trunk, left common carotid artery, and left subclavian artery, as well as geometrically similar, nonplanar curvature in the aortic branches. Aortic arches studied in rats exhibit abnormalities similar to those of humans, including altered pulmonary arteries and double or absent aortic arches. Despite existing anatomical analogy in the inthrathoracic position of the heart itself, the murine model of the heart and its structures remains a valuable tool for studies of human cardiovascular conditions.
The rat's larynx has been used in experimentations that involve inhalation toxicity, allograft rejection, and irradiation responses. One experiment described four features of the rat's larynx. The first being the location and attachments of the thyroarytenoid muscle, the alar cricoarytenoid muscle, and the superior cricoarytenoid muscle, the other of the newly named muscle that ran from the arytenoid to a midline tubercle on the cricoid. The newly named muscles were not seen in the human larynx. In addition, the location and configuration of the laryngeal alar cartilage was described. The second feature was that the way the newly named muscles appear to be familiar to those in the human larynx. The third feature was that a clear understanding of how MEPs are distributed in each of the laryngeal muscles was helpful in understanding the effects of botulinum toxin injection. The MEPs in the posterior
cricoarytenoid muscle, lateral cricoarytenoid muscle, cricothyroid muscle, and superior
cricoarytenoid muscle were focused mostly at the midbelly. In addition, the medial thyroarytenoid muscle were focused at the midbelly while the lateral thyroarytenoid muscle MEPs were focused at the anterior third of the belly. The fourth and final feature that was cleared up was how the MEPs were distributed in the thyroarytenoid muscle.
Laboratory rats have also proved valuable in psychological studies of learning and other mental processes (Barnett 2002), as well as to understand group behavior and overcrowding (with the work of John B. Calhoun on behavioral sink). A 2007 study found rats to possess metacognition, a mental ability previously only documented in humans and some primates.
Domestic rats differ from wild rats in many ways. They are calmer and less likely to bite; they can tolerate greater crowding; they breed earlier and produce more offspring; and their brains, livers, kidneys, adrenal glands, and hearts are smaller (Barnett 2002).
Brown rats are often used as model organisms for scientific research. Since the publication of the rat genome sequence, and other advances, such as the creation of a rat SNP chip, and the production of knockout rats, the laboratory rat has become a useful genetic tool, although not as popular as mice. When it comes to conducting tests related to intelligence, learning, and drug abuse, rats are a popular choice due to their high intelligence, ingenuity, aggressiveness, and adaptability. Their psychology seems in many ways similar to that of humans.
Entirely new breeds or "lines" of brown rats, such as the Wistar rat, have been bred for use in laboratories. Much of the genome of "Rattus norvegicus" has been sequenced.
Early studies found evidence both for and against measurable intelligence using the "g factor" in rats. Part of the difficulty of understanding animal cognition generally, is determining what to measure. One aspect of intelligence is the ability to learn, which can be measured using a maze like the T-maze. Experiments done in the 1920s showed that some rats performed better than others in maze tests, and if these rats were selectively bred, their offspring also performed better, suggesting that in rats an ability to learn was heritable in some way.
Rat meat is a food that, while taboo in some cultures, is a dietary staple in others.
Rats have been used as working animals. Tasks for working rats include the sniffing of gunpowder residue, demining, acting and animal-assisted therapy.
Rats have a keen sense of smell and are easy to train. These characteristics have been employed, for example, by the Belgian non-governmental organization APOPO, which trains rats (specifically African giant pouched rats) to detect landmines and diagnose tuberculosis through smell.
Rats can serve as zoonotic vectors for certain pathogens and thus spread disease, such as bubonic plague, Lassa fever, leptospirosis, and Hantavirus infection.
They are also associated with human dermatitis because they are frequently infested with blood feeding rodent mites such as the tropical rat mite ("Ornithonyssus bacoti") and spiny rat mite ("Laelaps echidnina"), which will opportunistically bite and feed on humans, where the condition is known as rat mite dermatitis"."
Rats have long been considered deadly pests. Once considered a modern myth, the rat flood in India occurs every fifty years, as armies of bamboo rats descend upon rural areas and devour everything in their path. Rats have long been held up as the chief villain in the spread of the Bubonic Plague; however, recent studies show that rats alone could not account for the rapid spread of the disease through Europe in the Middle Ages. Still, the Center for Disease Control does list nearly a dozen diseases directly linked to rats.
Most urban areas battle rat infestations. A 2015 study by the American Housing Survey (AHS) found that eighteen percent of homes in Philadelphia showed evidence of rodents. Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C., also demonstrated significant rodent infestations. Indeed, rats in New York City are famous for their size and prevalence. The urban legend that the rat population in Manhattan equals that of its human population was definitively refuted by Robert Sullivan in his book "Rats" but illustrates New Yorkers' awareness of the presence, and on occasion boldness and cleverness, of the rodents. New York has specific regulations for eradicating rats; multifamily residences and commercial businesses must use a specially trained and licensed rat catcher.
Rats have the ability to swim up sewer pipes into toilets. Rats will infest any area that provides shelter and easy access to sources of food and water, including under sinks, near garbage, and inside walls or cabinets.
When introduced into locations where rats previously did not exist, they can wreak an enormous degree of environmental degradation. "Rattus rattus", the black rat, is considered to be one of the world's worst invasive species. Also known as the ship rat, it has been carried worldwide as a stowaway on seagoing vessels for millennia and has usually accompanied men to any new area visited or settled by human beings by sea. The similar species "Rattus norvegicus", the brown rat or wharf rat, has also been carried worldwide by ships in recent centuries.
The ship or wharf rat has contributed to the extinction of many species of wildlife, including birds, small mammals, reptiles, invertebrates, and plants, especially on islands. True rats are omnivorous, capable of eating a wide range of plant and animal foods, and have a very high birth rate. When introduced to a new area, they quickly reproduce to take advantage of the new food supply. In particular, they prey on the eggs and young of forest birds, which on isolated islands often have no other predators and thus have no fear of predators. Some experts believe that rats are to blame for between forty percent and sixty percent of all seabird and reptile extinctions, with ninety percent of those occurring on islands. Thus man has indirectly caused the extinction of many species by accidentally introducing rats to new areas.
Rats are found in nearly all areas of Earth which are inhabited by human beings. The only rat-free continent is Antarctica, which is too cold for rat survival outdoors, and its lack of human habitation does not provide buildings to shelter them from the weather. However, rats have been introduced to many of the islands near Antarctica, and because of their destructive effect on native flora and fauna, efforts to eradicate them are ongoing. In particular, Bird Island (just off rat-infested South Georgia Island), where breeding seabirds could be badly affected if rats were introduced, is subject to special measures and regularly monitored for rat invasions.
As part of island restoration, some islands' rat populations have been eradicated to protect or restore the ecology. Hawadax Island, Alaska was declared rat free after 229 years and Campbell Island, New Zealand after almost 200 years. Breaksea Island in New Zealand was declared rat free in 1988 after an eradication campaign based on a successful trial on the smaller Hawea Island nearby.
In January 2015, an international "Rat Team" set sail from the Falkland Islands for the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands on board a ship carrying three helicopters and 100 tons of rat poison with the objective of "reclaiming the island for its seabirds". Rats have wiped out more than 90% of the seabirds on South Georgia, and the sponsors hope that once the rats are gone, it will regain its former status as home to the greatest concentration of seabirds in the world. The South Georgia Heritage Trust, which organized the mission describes it as "five times larger than any other rodent eradication attempted worldwide". That would be true if it were not for the rat control program in Alberta (see below).
The Canadian province of Alberta is notable for being the largest inhabited area on Earth which is free of true rats due to very aggressive government rat control policies. It has large numbers of native pack rats, also called bushy-tailed wood rats, but they are forest-dwelling vegetarians which are much less destructive than true rats.
Alberta was settled relatively late in North American history and only became a province in 1905. Black rats cannot survive in its climate at all, and brown rats must live near people and in their structures to survive the winters. There are numerous predators in Canada's vast natural areas which will eat non-native rats, so it took until 1950 for invading rats to make their way over land from Eastern Canada. Immediately upon their arrival at the eastern border with Saskatchewan, the Alberta government implemented an extremely aggressive rat control program to stop them from advancing further. A systematic detection and eradication system was used throughout a control zone about long and wide along the eastern border to eliminate rat infestations before the rats could spread further into the province. Shotguns, bulldozers, high explosives, poison gas, and incendiaries were used to destroy rats. Numerous farm buildings were destroyed in the process. Initially, tons of arsenic trioxide were spread around thousands of farm yards to poison rats, but soon after the program commenced the rodenticide and medical drug warfarin was introduced, which is much safer for people and more effective at killing rats than arsenic.
Forceful government control measures, strong public support and enthusiastic citizen participation continue to keep rat infestations to a minimum. The effectiveness has been aided by a similar but newer program in Saskatchewan which prevents rats from even reaching the Alberta border. Alberta still employs an armed rat patrol to control rats along Alberta's borders. About ten single rats are found and killed per year, and occasionally a large localized infestation has to be dug out with heavy machinery, but the number of permanent rat infestations is zero.
Ancient Romans did not generally differentiate between rats and mice, instead referring to the former as "mus maximus" (big mouse) and the latter as "mus minimus" (little mouse).
On the Isle of Man, there is a taboo against the word "rat".
The rat (sometimes referred to as a mouse) is the first of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. People born in this year are expected to possess qualities associated with rats, including creativity, intelligence, honesty, generosity, ambition, a quick temper and wastefulness. People born in a year of the rat are said to get along well with "monkeys" and "dragons", and to get along poorly with "horses".
In Indian tradition, rats are seen as the vehicle of Ganesha, and a rat's statue is always found in a temple of Ganesh. In the northwestern Indian city of Deshnoke, the rats at the Karni Mata Temple are held to be destined for reincarnation as Sadhus (Hindu holy men). The attending priests feed milk and grain to the rats, of which the pilgrims also partake.
European associations with the rat are generally negative. For instance, "Rats!" is used as a substitute for various vulgar interjections in the English language. These associations do not draw, "per se", from any biological or behavioral trait of the rat, but possibly from the association of rats (and fleas) with the 14th-century medieval plague called the Black Death. Rats are seen as vicious, unclean, parasitic animals that steal food and spread disease. However, some people in European cultures keep rats as pets and conversely find them to be tame, clean, intelligent, and playful.
Rats are often used in scientific experiments; animal rights activists allege the treatment of rats in this context is cruel. The term "lab rat" is used, typically in a self-effacing manner, to describe a person whose job function requires them to spend a majority of their work time engaged in bench-level research (such as postgraduate students in the sciences).
Rats are frequently blamed for damaging food supplies and other goods, or spreading disease. Their reputation has carried into common parlance: in the English language, "rat" is often an insult or is generally used to signify an unscrupulous character; it is also used, as a synonym for the term "nark", to mean an individual who works as a police informant or who has turned state's evidence. Writer/director Preston Sturges created the humorous alias "Ratskywatsky" for a soldier who seduced, impregnated, and abandoned the heroine of his 1944 film, "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek". It is a term (noun and verb) in criminal slang for an informant – "to rat on someone" is to betray them by informing the authorities of a crime or misdeed they committed. Describing a person as "rat-like" usually implies he or she is unattractive and suspicious.
Among trade unions, the word "rat" is also a term for nonunion employers or breakers of union contracts, and this is why unions use inflatable rats.
Depictions of rats in fiction are historically inaccurate and negative. The most common falsehood is the squeaking almost always heard in otherwise realistic portrayals (i.e. nonanthropomorphic). While the recordings may be of actual squeaking rats, the noise is uncommon – they may do so only if distressed, hurt, or annoyed. Normal vocalizations are very high-pitched, well outside the range of human hearing. Rats are also often cast in vicious and aggressive roles when in fact, their shyness helps keep them undiscovered for so long in an infested home.
The actual portrayals of rats vary from negative to positive with a majority in the negative and ambiguous. The rat plays a villain in several mouse societies; from Brian Jacques's "Redwall" and Robin Jarvis's "The Deptford Mice", to the roles of Disney's Professor Ratigan and Kate DiCamillo's Roscuro and Botticelli. They have often been used as a mechanism in horror; being the titular evil in stories like "The Rats" or H.P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and in films like "Willard" and "Ben". Another terrifying use of rats is as a method of torture, for instance in Room 101 in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" or "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe.
Selfish helpfulness —those willing to help for a price— has also been attributed to fictional rats. Templeton, from E. B. White's "Charlotte's Web", repeatedly reminds the other characters that he is only involved because it means more food for him, and the cellar-rat of John Masefield's "The Midnight Folk" requires bribery to be of any assistance.
By contrast, the rats appearing in the Doctor Dolittle books tend to be highly positive and likeable characters, many of whom tell their remarkable life stories in the Mouse and Rat Club established by the animal-loving doctor.
Some fictional works use rats as the main characters. Notable examples include the society created by O'Brien's "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH", and others include "Doctor Rat", and Rizzo the Rat from The Muppets. Pixar's 2007 animated film "Ratatouille" is about a rat described by Roger Ebert as "earnest... lovable, determined, [and] gifted" who lives with a Parisian garbage-boy-turned-chef.
"Mon oncle d'Amérique" (""My American Uncle""), a 1980 French film, illustrates Henri Laborit's theories on evolutionary psychology and human behaviors by using short sequences in the storyline showing lab rat experiments.
In Harry Turtledove's science fiction novel "Homeward Bound", humans unintentionally introduce rats to the ecology at the home world of an alien race which previously invaded Earth and introduced some of its own fauna into its environment. A. Bertram Chandler pitted the space-bound protagonist of a long series of novels, Commodore Grimes, against giant, intelligent rats who took over several stellar systems and enslaved their human inhabitants. "The Stainless Steel Rat" is nickname of the (human) protagonist of a series of humorous science fiction novels written by Harry Harrison.
Wererats, therianthropic creatures able to take the shape of a rat, have appeared in the fantasy or horror genre since the 1970s. The term is a neologism coined in analogy to werewolf. The concept has since become common in role playing games like "Dungeons & Dragons" and fantasy fiction like the "" series..
One of the oldest and most historic stories about rats is "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", in which a rat-catcher leads away an infestation with enchanted music. The piper is later refused payment, so he in turn leads away the town's children. This tale, traced to Germany around the late 13th century, has inspired adaptations in film, theatre, literature, and even opera. The subject of much research, some theories have intertwined the tale with events related to the Black Plague, in which black rats played an important role. Fictional works based on the tale that focus heavily on the rat aspect include Pratchett's "The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents", and Belgian graphic novel "" ("The Ball of the Dead Rat"). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26471 |
Adobe RoboHelp
Adobe RoboHelp is a help authoring tool (HAT) developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows. RoboHelp was created by Gen Kiyooka, and Blue Sky Software released version 1.0 in January 1992.
Blue Sky Software was founded in 1990 and changed its name to eHelp Corporation on 4 April 2000. Macromedia acquired eHelp Corporation on 24 October 2003. Macromedia was, in turn, acquired by Adobe Systems on 3 December 2005. Adobe Systems has developed and released nine successive versions of RoboHelp since 2007.
Adobe RoboHelp can generate help files in the following file formats:
The version numbering systems used by Blue Sky Software/eHelp Corporation, Macromedia, and Adobe Systems induced some head-scratching, especially among longtime RoboHelp users. For example, the first version of RoboHelp released by Adobe Systems in January 2007 was the 14th version of the software, but Adobe Systems decided to continue the numbering convention from Macromedia and thus gave this version the number 6...and dropped the X used in the previous version, RoboHelp X5. This decision caused confusion because Blue Sky Software released RoboHelp 6.0 in 1998. Adobe Systems continued with that numbering system and used versions 7 through 11 for successive versions of RoboHelp released from September 2007 to January 2014. With the introduction of Adobe RoboHelp 2015 in June 2015, Adobe Systems used a new numbering system with the release year instead of a version number and continues to use this convention with successive versions. This new version numbering system has removed any uncertainty about which version is the most recent. The current version, Adobe RoboHelp 2019, is the 22nd version of the software released in RoboHelp's 26-year history.
The network-specific version of Adobe RoboHelp, Adobe RoboHelp Server, is released on a separate schedule. Adobe RoboHelp Server, formerly RoboSource Control, provides version control for and deployment of online help systems on a network. The current version of Adobe RoboHelp Server, version 10, was released on 12 April 2016. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26472 |
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