History.

In a deed of Emperor Otto I dated 956 giving property to Quedlinburg Abbey is mentioned the cave church dedicated to Saint Michael, also known as the "Volkmarskeller" (as it is still called) near the Eggeröder spring. The same deed also mentions the cell of the revered anchorite Liutbirg, which traditionally was held to have been sited in or near the cave church. The holiness of the site proved attractive, and a religious community formed round it.  In 1139 Beatrix II, abbess of Quedlinburg, founded a Cistercian monastery here, which was settled in 1146 by monks from Kamp Abbey. A few years later the new monastery was transferred away from the cave church to form Michaelstein Abbey on the present site. The abbey's growing property brought it great wealth, but it never settled any daughter houses of its own.  The monastery was sacked in 1525 by rebellious mobs during the German Peasants' War. The church was ruined beyond repair, and was never rebuilt; religious services were held from then on in the former chapter house. In 1533 the remaining buildings were ransacked and devastated by Wilhelm von Haugwitz. In 1543 the last Roman Catholic abbot resigned, and the abbey and its assets passed into the hands of the Counts of Blankenburg, who acted as abbots. Under their rule the now Protestant community began a school in 1544.  After the death of the last count in 1599, Blankenburg and its possessions, including Michaelstein Abbey, came to the Duke of Brunswick, who appointed his brother Christian abbot of Michaelstein. He relinquished the position in 1624, after which the Dukes instead appointed Protestant theologians.  From 1629 to 1631 and from 1636 to 1640, during the Thirty Years' War, short-lived communities of Cistercian monks again occupied the monastery.  In 1690 Michaelstein passed into the possession of the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg. Under abbot Eberhard Finen a seminary for Protestant preachers was established in 1717, which operated alongside the school until 1721, when the school was closed, leaving the abbey as a seminary and a Protestant men's collegiate foundation. At this period substantial building works were carried out, including the conversion of part of the west wing as a Baroque church.  In 1808, under French occupation, the abbey was closed down. Thereafter the buildings were used only for farming purposes, largely the accommodation of farm workers, and so began many years of deterioration.

Stiftung Kloster Michaelstein.

In 1945, as part of the land reforms of the Communist government of East Germany, the abbey estates were split up and redistributed. Some Work on the abbeys buildings took place from 1956, but it was in 1968 that the main restoration scheme began, on the initiative of the Telemann Chamber Orchestra and its director Dr. Eitelfriedrich Thom. In 1977 was founded the culture and research facility that formed the basis of the later "Institut für Aufführungspraxis der Musik des 18ten Jahrhunderts" ("Institute for the Performance of the Music of the 18th Century").  In 1988 a museum was created, with a collection of predominantly historical musical instruments. In the same year a group was formed from among the musicians of the Telemann Chamber Orchestra who played on historical musical instruments as the "Barockensemble des Telemann-Kammerorchesters".  In 1995, for lack of funds, the full Telemann Chamber Orchestra was wound up, but the Baroque Ensemble continued, playing on historical instruments, and took over the name of the Telemann Chamber Orchestra. In 1997 the Institute was changed into the "Stiftung Kloster Michaelstein - Musikinstitut für Aufführungspraxis". From 2001 the "Landesmusikakademie" of Sachsen-Anhalt has also been based here.  From 2000 the orchestra was gradually separated from the Institute and urged towards independence. Some time afterwards there was a split between the musicians: one part continues to play on historical instruments as the "Telemannisches Collegium Musicum", while the other part, under the leadership of the widow of Dr. Eitelfriedrich Thom, continues under the old name as the "Telemann-Kammerorchester", but without any connection to Michaelstein Abbey.  The former monastic buildings, now accommodating both the Foundation ("Stiftung") and the Sachsen-Anhalt Music Academy ("Landesmusikakademie Sachsen-Anhalt"), host various musical events, particularly the series of concerts known as the "Michaelsteiner Klosterkonzerte", often featuring the Michaelstein Chamber Choir ("Kammerchor Michaelstein") and the Telemanisches Collegium Michaelstein Orchestra. Guided tours of the abbey complex, including the herb- and vegetable gardens, laid out according to historical sources, and of the musical instrument display, are conducted throughout the year. A music library is located in the west wing, and is often accessible to the public. A highlight of the year is the annual Michaelstein Abbey Festival ("Michaelsteiner Klosterfest").  In addition the Foundation organises conferences and seminars at a European level and supports ongoing research.

Other structures.

In the external wall of the Baroque church created in the west wing of the surviving monastery precinct, are immured the remains of Beatrice of Gandersheim (d. 1061), daughter of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, and abbess of Gandersheim and Quedlinburg. Formerly buried at Quedlinburg Abbey, Beatrice's remains were displaced after the church there burnt down in 1070, and were apparently finally laid to rest in Michaelstein in the 1160s.  The nearby "Mönchemühle" ("monks' mill") on the Goldbach brook was once the monastery's oil mill.

Michaelstein Abbey (Kloster Michaelstein) is a former Cistercian monastery, now the home of the "Stiftung Kloster Michaelstein - Musikinstitut für Aufführungspraxis" ("Michaelstein Abbey Foundation - Music Institute for Performance"), near the town of Blankenburg in the Harz in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany.


Nickname.

The orbiter's nickname, Kaguya, was selected by the general public. It comes from the name of a lunar princess in the ancient Japanese folktale "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter". After their successful release, its sub-satellites, Rstar and Vstar, were named Okina and Ouna, also derived from characters in the tale.

Mission objectives.

The main scientific objectives of the mission were to:

Launch.

SELENE launched on September 14, 2007 at 01:31:01 UTC on an H-IIA (Model H2A2022) carrier rocket from Tanegashima Space Center into a (perigee) / (apogee) geocentric parking orbit. The total launch mass was.  The SELENE mission was originally scheduled to launch in 2003, but rocket failures on another mission and technical difficulties delayed the launch until 2007. Launch was planned for August 16, 2007, but was postponed when some electronic components were found to be installed incorrectly.

Lunar operations.

On October 3, it entered an initial polar lunar orbit. On October 9, the relay satellite was released into a orbit, while on October 12 the VLBI satellite was released into a one. Finally, by October 19, the orbiter was in a circular orbit. The nominal mission duration was one year plus possible extensions.  On October 31, 2007, Kaguya deployed its Lunar Magnetometer, Lunar Radar Sounder, Earth-looking Upper Atmosphere and Plasma Imager. On December 21, 2007, Kaguya began regular operations after all fifteen observation experiments had been satisfactorily verified.  Kaguya completed the planned operation by the end of October 2008 and began extended operations planned to continue through March 2009. It would then be sent into a circular orbit, and finally to an elliptical one, with a controlled impact occurring by August 2009. Because of a degraded reaction wheel, the plan was changed so that on February 1, 2009, the orbit was lowered to ±, and impact occurred at 18:25 UTC on June 10, 2009.

Design.

The mission featured three separate spacecraft:

Okina (small relay satellite).

Okina (formerly Rstar) and Ouna (formerly Vstar) were octagonal prisms to support radio science. Okina relayed radio communications between the orbiter and the Earth when the orbiter was behind the Moon. This allowed, for the first time, the direct Doppler shift measurements needed to precisely map the gravitational field of the lunar farside; previously, the farside gravity field could only be inferred by nearside measurements. The relay satellite impacted the lunar farside near the Mineur D crater at 19:46 JST (10:46 UTC) on February 12, 2009.

Ouna (VLBI satellite).

Ouna used Very Long Baseline Interferometry as a second way to map the Moon's gravity field. It was especially useful at the lunar limb, where the gravitational acceleration is perpendicular to the line of sight to earth, making Doppler measurements unsuitable.

Payload.

SELENE carried 13 scientific instruments "to obtain scientific data of the lunar origin and evolution and to develop the technology for the future lunar exploration":  Two 2.2 megapixel CCD HDTV cameras, one wide-angle and one telephoto, were also on board, primarily for public relations purposes.  JAXA collected names and messages that were carried on SELENE through their "Wish Upon the Moon" campaign. 412,627 names and messages were printed on a sheet measuring 280 mm x 160 mm (11 x 6.3 in) at 70 μm (0.0003 in) per character. The sheet was installed under the photovoltaic modules and cooling panels beneath the multi-layered insulation.

Results.

Major results include:

Other lunar probes.

SELENE was part of a renewed global interest in lunar exploration; it was "the largest lunar mission since the Apollo program". It followed Japan's first lunar probe, Hagoromo, launched in 1990. China launched its Chang'e 1 lunar explorer on October 24, 2007, followed by India's October 22, 2008 launch of Chandrayaan-1 and the United States Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in June 2009. The United States, European countries (ESA), Russia, Japan, India and China are planning future manned lunar exploration missions or lunar outpost construction on the Moon between 2018 and 2025.

SELENE (; Selenological and Engineering Explorer), better known in Japan by its nickname, was the second Japanese lunar orbiter spacecraft following the Hiten probe. Produced by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) and the National Space Development Agency (NASDA), the spacecraft was launched on September 14, 2007. After successfully orbiting the Moon for a year and eight months, the main orbiter was instructed to impact on the lunar surface near the crater Gill on June 10, 2009.


Youth.

Patkul was born in prison at Stockholm, where his father had been imprisoned under suspicion of treason. He entered the Swedish Army at an early age and was subsequently promoted captain.

Dispute over reduction.

In 1689, at the head of a deputation of Livonian gentry, he went to Stockholm to protest against the rigour with which the land-recovery project of Charles XI of Sweden was being carried out in his native province. His eloquence impressed Charles XI, but his representations were disregarded. When he submitted another petition in more offensive language to the king three years later, his renewed complaints involved him in a government prosecution. To save himself from the penalties of high treason, Patkul fled from Stockholm to Switzerland, and was condemned "in absentia" to lose his right hand and his head. His estates were at the same time confiscated.

Role in planning the Great Northern War.

For the next four years, Patkul led a vagabond life, but in 1698, after vainly petitioning the new king, Charles XII of Sweden, for pardon, he entered the service of Augustus II the Strong of Saxony and Poland, with the deliberate intention of wresting Livonia from Sweden, to which he had now no hope of returning so long as that province belonged to the Swedish Crown. The aristocratic republic of Poland was obviously the most convenient suzerain for a Livonian nobleman; so in 1698, Patkul proceeded to the court of the king-elector at Dresden and bombarded Augustus with proposals for the partition of Sweden. His first plan was a combination against her of Saxony, Denmark and Brandenburg; but, Brandenburg failing him, he was obliged very unwillingly to admit Russia into the partnership.  The tsar was to be content with Ingria and Estonia while Augustus was to take Livonia, nominally as a fief of Poland, but really as a hereditary possession of the Saxon house. Military operations against Sweden's Baltic provinces were to be begun simultaneously by the Saxons and Russians. After thus forging the first link of the partition treaty, Patkul proceeded to Moscow, and, at a secret conference held at Preobrazhenskoye, easily persuaded Peter the Great to accede to the league on 18 November 1699.

In Saxon and Russian service.

Throughout the earlier, unluckier days of the Great Northern War, Patkul was the mainstay of the confederates. At Vienna, in 1702, he picked up the Scottish general George Benedict Ogilvie, and enlisted him in Peter's service.  The same year, recognizing the unprofitableness of serving such a master as Augustus, he exchanged the Saxon for the Russian service. Peter was glad enough to get a man so famous for his talents and energy, but Patkul speedily belied his reputation. His knowledge was too local and limited. On 19 August 1704, he succeeded, at last, in bringing about the alliance of Narva between Russia and the Polish republic to strengthen the hands of Augustus, but he failed to bring Prussia also into the anti-Swedish league because of Frederick I's fear of Charles and jealousy of Peter. From Berlin, Patkul went on to Dresden to conclude an agreement with the imperial commissioner Stratmann for renting a Russian auxiliary contingent in Saxon service to the Habsburgs.

Arrest and execution.

The Saxon ministers, after protesting against the new arrangement, arrested Patkul and shut him up in the fortress of Sonnenstein on 19 December 1705, altogether disregarding the remonstrances of Peter against such a gross violation of international law. After the Treaty of Altranstädt on 24 September 1707, he was delivered up to Charles, who ordered his execution through the breaking wheel. Charles rejected an appeal for mercy from his sister, the princess Ulrica, on the ground that Patkul, as a traitor, could not be pardoned for example's sake. In October 1707, Patkul was broken alive on the wheel at Kazimierz Biskupi (Casimir) in Poland.  The circumstances of Patkul's death were documented first by chaplain Loren(t)z Hagen, who accompanied Patkul in his last two days, in his 1707 book titled "Das schmertzliche doch seelige Ende, Des Welt-Bekandten Joh. Reinhold Patkuls" (English translation in 1761 under the title "Anecdotes concerning the famous John Reinhold Patkul"). Another account of Patkul's execution is a 1708 leaflet of unknown origin titled "Kurtze Beschreibung der merck- und denckwürdigen Execution Des tapffern und Welt-bekanten General Patkuls, Wie selbiger den 10. October. 1707. zu Casimir in Pohlen erbärmlich hingerichtet worden" [in English: "Short description of the notable and memorable execution of the brave and world-famous general Patkul, how the same on 10 October 1707 in Casimir in Poland was executed miserably"]. Differing slightly, the accounts agree that Patkul, after a prolonged process of breaking his bones with the wheel, begged for his decapitation (crying ""Kopf ab!"") and rolled to the block on his own; the following decapitation did however not succeed until after several strikes.

See also.

Otto Arnold von Paykull

Johann Reinhold Patkul (27 July 1660 – 10 October 1707) was a Livonian nobleman, politician and agitator of Baltic German extraction. Born as a subject to the Swedish Crown, he protested against the manner of King Charles XI of Sweden's reduction in Livonia, enraging the king, who had him arrested and sentenced to mutilation and death (1694). Patkul fled from the Swedish Empire to continental Europe, and played a key role in the secret diplomacy (1698-1699) allying Peter I of Russia, Augustus II the Strong of Saxony and the Poland–Lithuania - as well as Christian V and his successor Frederick IV of Denmark–Norway - against Charles XII of Sweden, triggering the Great Northern War of 1700-1721. During the first war years, Patkul retained a key role in the communication between the allies and other European courts, holding positions at king Augustus's court first in Augustus's interests (1698-1700), then in tsar Peter's service (1702- ). In late 1705 Patkul fell from Augustus's favor and was arrested and charged with high treason. Throughout the following year he was detained first in Sonnenstein, then in Königstein (both in Saxony), before Charles XII forced Augustus to extradite him by the Treaty of Altranstädt in late 1706. Patkul spent another year in Swedish detention before Charles XII had him broken on the wheel and decapitated.


Biography.

Shchedrin was born in Moscow into a musical family—his father was a composer and teacher of music theory. He studied at the Moscow Choral School and Moscow Conservatory (graduating in 1955) under Yuri Shaporin (composition) and Yakov Flier (piano). He was married to the well-known ballerina Maya Plisetskaya from 1958 until her death in 2015.  Shchedrin's early music is tonal and colourfully orchestrated and often includes snatches of folk music, while some later pieces use aleatoric and serial techniques. In the west the music of Shchedrin has won popularity mainly through the work of Mstislav Rostropovich who has made several successful recordings.  Among his works are the ballets "The Little Hump-backed Horse" (1955), "Carmen Suite" (1967), an arrangement by Tony Vernon, "Anna Karenina" (1971, on the novel by Leo Tolstoy), and "Lady with a Lapdog" (1985); the operas "Not Only Love" (1961), and "Dead Souls" (1976, after Nikolai Gogol's novel); piano concertos, symphonies, chamber and piano music and other works. He composed 24 Preludes and Fugues after he heard those of Shostakovich. Also remarkable is his "Polyphonic Notebook".  He has written five concertos for orchestra: the first, variously translated as "Naughty Limericks" or "Mischievous Folk Ditties" (neither of which completely get the gist of the Russian which refers to a chastushka (часту́шка), an irreverent, satirical kind of folk song) is by far the best known, and was the work which first established him on the international stage. The second of the Concertos for Orchestra was subtitled "Zvony" (The Chimes), and was premiered by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein as one of the many commissions in honor of the orchestra's 125th anniversary. The third Concerto for Orchestra is based on old music of Russian provincial circuses. Concerto 4, "Khorovody" (round dances), was written in 1989, and Concerto 5, "Four Russian Songs", was written in 1998.  As well as a distinguished composer (he was made a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts in 1989 and received the Russian State Prize from President Boris Yeltsin in 1992), Shchedrin is a virtuoso pianist and organist, playing solo piano in the premieres of the first three of his six piano concertos. At a remarkable concert on 5 May 1974 Shchedrin performed the feat of appearing as soloist in all three of his then-completed piano concertos, one after the other. The concert, with the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Yevgeny Svetlanov was recorded and released on LP, then CD. Following the collapse of the Soviet regime, Shchedrin has taken advantage of the new opportunities for international travel and musical collaboration, and now largely divides his time between Munich and Moscow.  On 11–14 June 2008 Shchedrin Days took place in Armenia with the participation of Shchedrin and Maya Plisetskaya as honorary guest.  Invited by Walter Fink, he was the 19th composer to be featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2009. He and his wife attended the concerts which included his Russian liturgy "The Sealed Angel" for choir and flute, performed in Eberbach Abbey. His chamber music included "Ancient Melodies of Russian Folk Songs" (2007) with the cellist Raphael Wallfisch and himself at the piano, and "Meine Zeit, mein Raubtier" with tenor Kenneth Tarver and pianist Roland Pontinen who performed it also at the Verbier Festival.  The premiere of a German version of his opera "Lolita" was performed as the opening night of the Internationale Maifestspiele Wiesbaden in a production of the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden in 2011.

Stage works.

Musical theatre.

"Nina and the Twelve Months" (1988). Musical in two acts on a libretto by T. Futjita after Samuil Marshak's story. First performance on 8 August 1988 in Tokyo.

Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin (, ; born 16 December 1932) is a Soviet and Russian composer and pianist, winner of USSR State Prize (1972), the Lenin Prize (1984), and the State Prize of the Russian Federation (1992), and is a former member of the Inter-regional Deputies Group (1989–1991). He is also a citizen of Lithuania and Spain.


History.

The precursor to the popemobile was the "sedia gestatoria", which was a chair carried on the shoulders of papal attendants. This fell out of use after the incumbency of Pope Paul VI in 1978. Pope John Paul I succeeded Pope Paul VI and reigned for only 33 days before his death, and he was the last pope who used the "sedia gestatoria".  Since the beginning of the 20th century, many automotive manufacturers have produced specially designed vehicles for the Pope. The Ford Motor Company produced a series of cars based on its presidential limousines used in the United States. The custom-built 1964 Lehmann-Peterson was used by Pope Paul VI in his 1965 New York City visit and was reused in 1970 in Bogotá. Later, Paul VI used a Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman-Landaulet. However, the term "popemobile" did not come into common usage until the pontificate of Pope John Paul II.  The first time that Pope John Paul II travelled to his home country, the white vehicle was based on the Polish mark FSC Star, a small truck from a firm in Starachowice. A Ford D Series truck was built in 1979 by OBAM Vehicle Builders, for Pope John Paul II's first visit to Ireland; it was bigger than the later one used in Vatican City. Another popemobile was a modified Mercedes-Benz with a small windowed enclosure in the back where the Pope sits. A converted 230 G Mercedes-Benz G-Class was built for John Paul II's visit to Germany in 1980. A later model was presented to John Paul II in June 2002 based on a Mercedes-Benz M-Class sports-utility vehicle built in the United States. A Fiat Campagnola was used during transit within Vatican City and during masses at St. Peter's Square. But the popemobile was fitted with bulletproof glass on four sides following the 1981 Pope John Paul II assassination attempt. However, it was sometimes driven with open windows.  Leyland supplied a truck-based popemobile in 1982 during the pope's visit to Great Britain which gave audiences a better view of the pontiff. The vehicle was sold at auction in 2006 for £37,000 ($70,500). The pope used a popemobile derived from the SEAT Panda model during his visit to Spain in 1982. That specific car was open-air with a grab handle in front so that the pope could stand still and greet the crowds while moving. The pope entered the Camp Nou football stadium in Barcelona in it, driving through the assembled crowds celebrating mass for a congregation of over 121,000 on 17 November 1982.  During the pope's visit to Canada in 1984, a modified GMC Sierra was used as a base, rebuilt by the Thibault Fire Engines Company in Pierreville, Quebec. It was subsequently used for the 1998 papal visit to Cuba and was displayed at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa in 2005. The second truck built by the Thibault Fire Engines Company was sent back to the Vatican in 1984.  During the papal visit to the United States in September 1987, a pair of Mercedes-Benz 230 G popemobiles were flown to Washington, D.C. and modified by the United States Secret Service to provide access to the papal compartment from the driver's cabin, a design that continued to be used after the trip. One of these vehicles has been retired and is currently on display at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.  Philippine automobile manufacturer Francisco Motors produced the popemobile for John Paul II's visit to Manila for World Youth Day 1995. It was funded by voluntary contributions and had bulletproof windows and bombproof parts. For Pope John Paul II's visit to Portugal, UMM created a special popemobile based on a 1992 chassis from the Alter II. It featured a armored glass box on the rear with a chair for the pope. It also had air conditioning and outside loudspeakers connected to a microphone in the rear.  In 2002, Pope John Paul II requested that the media stop referring to the car as the popemobile, saying that the term was "undignified". In 2007, the popemobile became the first papal automobile to be fitted with a digital radio. The popemobile most often used by Pope Benedict XVI when travelling abroad was a modified Mercedes-Benz M-Class sport utility vehicle with a special glass-enclosed room with its own oxygen supply built into the back of the vehicle. The pope enters through a rear door and ascends several steps. He sits in a chair made from white leather with gold trim which is then elevated into the glass room by a hydraulic lift, allowing the pope to be more easily seen. In addition to the driver, there is room for one passenger (usually a security agent) in the front of the vehicle. The glass-enclosed rear of the vehicle also has room for two papal aides who can sit in the area in front of the pope's elevated chair. The vehicle's security features include bulletproof glass windows and roof, able to withstand explosions, and reinforced, armored side panels and undercarriage designed to resist bomb blasts. At 2011 prices, the popemobile cost approximately £345,000.  On June 6, 2007, a German man tried to jump into Pope Benedict XVI's uncovered popemobile as the pontiff began his general audience. The pope was not hurt and did not even appear to notice that the man had jumped over the protective barrier in the square and had grabbed onto the white Fiat popemobile as it drove by. At least eight security officers were trailing the vehicle as it moved slowly through the square; they grabbed the man and wrestled him to the ground, and he was interrogated by Vatican police.  In 2019 Pope Francis received a Dacia Duster 4x4 to be used as popemobile during his visit to Romania.

Current usage.

Pope Francis shows a preference for a simpler lifestyle and simpler cars. As a cardinal he often took public transport. On the night of his election he rode with the other cardinals in a minibus back to their hotel instead of using a papal limousine. For trips within the Vatican City he uses a small Ford Focus from the Vatican motor pool. He also drives himself around the city in a 30-year-old 1984 Renault 4 presented to him by Italian Fr. Renzo Zocca.  Italian automaker Fiat, traditional supplier of papal cars, supplied Pope Francis with the midsize Fiat 500L for his visit to the United States on 22–27 September 2015. Fiat also supplied the Jeep Wrangler he used in Ecuador in July 2015.

A popemobile is a specially designed motor vehicle used by the pope of the Catholic Church during public appearances. It is usually considered as the successor to the antiquated "sedia gestatoria" and was designed to allow the pope to be more visible when greeting large crowds.


Design and production.

Object 703 was developed in late 1944 by Factory No.100 Kirovskiy Works or ChTZ (in Chelyabinsk) and left the factory shop in May 1945. This tank had an improved armour layout, and a semi-hemispherical cast turret (resembling an upturned soup bowl), which became the hallmark of post-war Soviet tanks. While this low, hemispherical turret improved protection, it also significantly diminished crew headroom, especially for the loader. The low turret also limited the maximum depression of the main gun, since the gun breech had little room inside the turret to elevate, and this limited the extent to which the IS-3 could take advantage of hull-down positions. The IS-3's pointed prow earned it the nickname "Shchuka" (Pike) by its crews. It weighed slightly less and stood lower than previous versions. Wartime production resulted in many mechanical problems and a hull weldline that had a tendency to crack open. The IS-3 came too late to see action in World War II. The first public demonstration of the IS-3 came on 7 September 1945 during the Allied victory parade on Charlottenburger Straße in Berlin, with the heavily reinforced 71st Guards Heavy Tank Regiment of the 2nd Guards Tank Army. Starting in 1960, the IS-3 was slightly modernized as the IS-3M, in a manner similar to the IS-2M.  The production of the IS-3 later started in 1945 and were the heavy tanks that marched into Berlin and took control of Berlin. The IS-3 was a significant improvement to the IS-1 and IS-2 due to its pike nose frontal armor. Having frontal hull armor that was already pre-angled meant that less armor was needed to maintain the same effective armor thickness on the upper glacis. Due to this pike nose design, the only real weakspot of the IS-3 from the front was the lower glacis, which could be covered up if crews kept the IS-3 hulldown.

Combat history.

Three pre-series vehicles were assigned to an independent Guards Battalion but they arrived after peace broke out. There are unconfirmed reports of them fighting Jagdpanthers after the surrender. However, they were used against the Japanese at the Kuril Islands in World War II. Some IS-3's can still be found abandoned at the Kuril Islands to this day. They also took part in the September 7th, 1945 victory parade in Berlin under the 71st Guards Heavy Tank Regiment of the 2nd Guards Tank Army.  In response to border disputes between the Soviet Union and China, some Soviet IS-3s were dug in as fixed pillboxes along the Soviet-Chinese border. The IS-3 was used in the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Prague Spring in 1968.  During the early 1950s, all IS-3s were modernized as IS-3M models. The Egyptian Army acquired about 100 IS-3M tanks from the Soviet Union. During the Six-Day War, a single regiment of IS-3M tanks was stationed with the Egyptian 7th Infantry Division at Rafah and the 125th Tank Brigade of the 6th Mechanized Division at Kuntilla was also equipped with about 60 IS-3M tanks. Israeli infantry and paratrooper units had considerable difficulty with the IS-3M when it was encountered due to its thick armor, which shrugged off hits from normal infantry anti-tank weapons such as the bazooka. Even the 90 mm AP shell fired by the main gun of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) M48 Patton tanks could not penetrate the frontal armor of the IS-3s at normal battle ranges. There were a number of engagements between the M48A2 Pattons of the IDF 7th Armored Brigade and IS-3s supporting Egyptian positions at Rafah in which several M48A2s were knocked out in the fighting.  However, in one engagement between a battalion of IS-3s and 90 mm gun-armed M48A3's, seven IS-3s were destroyed. The slow rate of fire, poor engine performance (the engine was not well suited to hot-climate operations), and rudimentary fire control of the IS-3s proved to be a significant handicap, and about 73 IS-3s were lost in the 1967 war. Most Egyptian IS-3 tanks were withdrawn from service, though at least one regiment was retained in service as late as the 1973 October war. The IDF itself experimented with a few captured IS-3M tanks, but found them ill-suited to fast-moving desert tank warfare; those that were not scrapped were turned into stationary defensive pillbox emplacements in the Jordan River area.  After the Korean War, China attempted to reverse-engineer the IS-2/IS-3 as the Type 122 medium tank. The project was cancelled in favor of the Type 59, a copy of the Soviet T-54A.

The IS-3 (also known as Object 703) is a Soviet heavy tank developed in late 1944. Its semi-hemispherical cast turret (resembling an upturned soup bowl), became the hallmark of post-war Soviet tanks. Its pike nose design would also be mirrored by other tanks of the IS tank family such as the IS-7 and T-10. Too late to see combat in World War II, the IS-3 participated in the Berlin Victory Parade of 1945, in the border conflict during the Sino-Soviet split, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Prague Spring and on both sides of the Six-Day War.


History.

The glory of Ename.

The history of the current municipality of Oudenaarde starts in 974, when Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Germany, built one of its three fortifications on the Scheldt at Ename to protect his kingdom against possible attacks from Francia (next to the other frontier post at Valenciennes, later on also the Antwerp). Ename grew very fast. By 1005, the town already had a couple of churches and had become the largest town in the Duchy of Lotharingia. In 1034, Ename was destroyed by an irregular army that surrender the city to count Baldwin IV. In 1047, the son of Baldwin V (peacefully) received the imperial fief from the German emperor. The fief was confiscated however in 1047 when he Baldwins rebelled against the German empire. In 1062, Baldwin V founded together with his wife the Benedictine abbey of Saint Salvator. By that time, the former merchants and guild artisans of Ename easily got across the Scheldt to the recently founded city of Oudenaarde.

Oudenaarde’s golden age.

In the 11th century, Oudenaarde’s economy flourished, thanks to the proximity of the Scheldt and to the burgeoning, but vibrant cloth and tapestry industry. Churches, cloisters and hospitals were built. Throughout the Middle Ages, the city was one of the staunchest supporters of the counts of Flanders, defending them against insurrections from the South, and even from Ghent. The city became known as the "residence of the nobles". It built itself a flagship town hall (built 1526–1537), which we can still admire today, and the St-Walburga church. Charles V stayed here for a couple of months in 1522 and fathered an illegitimate daughter, Margaret of Parma, who was to become Regent of the Netherlands.

Decline.

During the Reformation, the people of Oudenaarde chose Protestantism and allied themselves with Ghent against Charles V. In 1582, after a prolonged siege by Margaret's son, Alexander Farnese, the city finally gave in, causing most merchants, workers, and even nobles to flee. Oudenaarde fell under the Counter-Reformation, which for a short while revived the commerce of tapestry. The glory days, however, never came back. The French attacked and took the city three times in less than a century. In 1708, one of the key battles in the War of the Spanish Succession, known as the Battle of Oudenaarde, was fought in the vicinity of the city. Oudenaarde slumbered as a provincial town under the Habsburg regime. Like its neighbours, in the 1790s it suffered religious curtailment imposed by the French Revolution.  The city later suffered damage during World War I, which is commemorated by several monuments scattered around town.  During World War II the town was occupied by Nazi military forces during Phony War. The town was liberated by British forces on the 5th of September in 1944.

Beer.

Oudenaarde is known for the brewing of Oud bruin beer, which is sometimes termed Oudenaarde Oud bruin, especially that of Liefmans Brewery in the town.  Oud Bruin (Old Brown), also known as Flanders Brown, is a style of beer originating from the Flemish region of Belgium. The Dutch name refers to the long aging process, up to a year. It undergoes a secondary fermentation, which takes several weeks to a month, and is followed by bottle ageing for several more months. The extended ageing allows residual yeast and bacteria to develop a sour flavour characteristic for this style. Usually, cultured yeast and bacterias are used, as stainless does not harbour wild organisms as wood does.

Sports.

The main football club in Oudenaarde is K.S.V. Oudenaarde.  The celebrated "Tour of Flanders voor Vrouwen", the women's Tour of Flanders cycle race, starts in Oudenaarde every spring. The men's Tour of Flanders has passed through Oudenaarde on several occasions, finishing in the town since 2012, and it regularly ascends the Koppenberg hill in the municipality. The Koppenbergcross cyclo-cross race, which takes place on the Koppenberg hillside, is part of the BPost Bank Trophy.

Oudenaarde (, French "Audenarde", English sometimes "Oudenarde") is a Belgian municipality in the Flemish province of East Flanders. The municipality comprises the city of Oudenaarde proper and the towns of Bevere, Edelare, Eine, Ename, Heurne, Leupegem, Mater, Melden, Mullem, Nederename, Volkegem, Welden and a part of Ooike.


Description.

The distinctive feature of the genus is the possession of an areole split into two clearly separated parts, one occurring at the apex of the tubercle, the other at its base. The apex part is spine bearing, and the base part is always spineless, but usually bears some bristles or wool. The base part of the areole bears the flowers and fruits, and is a branching point. The apex part of the areole does not carry flowers, but in certain conditions can function as a branching point as well.  The plants are usually small, globose to elongated, the stems from 1 cm to 20 cm in diameter and from 1 cm to 40 cm tall, clearly tuberculate, solitary to clumping forming mounds of up to 100 heads and with radial symmetry. Tubercles can be conical, cylindrical, pyramidal or round. The roots are fibrous, fleshy or tuberous. The flowers are funnel-shaped and range from 7 mm to 40 mm and more in length and in diameter, from white and greenish to yellow, pink and red in colour, often with a darker mid-stripe; the reddish hues are due to betalain pigments as usual for Caryophyllales. The fruit is berry-like, club-shaped or elongated, usually red but sometimes white, magenta, yellow or green. Some species have the fruit embedded into the plant body. The seeds are black or brown, from 1 to 3 mm in size.

Systematics.

The genus "Mammillaria" in the family Cactaceae was proposed by Adrian Hardy Haworth in 1812 and officially recognized by the International Botanical Congress of 1930. Initial spellings varied by authors but "Mammillaria" is now recognized as the accepted spelling.  "Mammillaria" is a large and diverse genus with many species often exhibiting variations due to the nature of terrain, weather, soil and other ecological factors. As a result, subdivisions within the species has been rather inconsistent over time. Initially, some investigators were more inclined to consider each variation as a unique species, although as time went on, creating confusion and long synonymy-lists for some of the species. Over time, new investigators began grouping closely related forms under the same name to attempt to more accurately define the species.  Several systems for classification began to emerged. The first of note, created by Schumann and modified by Berger, divided the species into ten named groups. However, the criteria for these divisions was somewhat indefinite and flexible. In the early 1923, cactologists Nathaniel Lord Britton and Joseph Nelson Rose developed the Britton & Rose system which arranged the classification characteristics in a system of keys with tangible separation factors, resulting in a much more workable system of identification.  Later classification was performed by the cactus specialists Hunt, Reppenhagen and Luthy, with much work focusing on researching the meanings and value of the original plant descriptions, synchronizing them with modern taxonomic requirements and studying the morphology of plants and seeds, as well as ecological aspects of the genus. These works helped to expand the understanding of "Mammillaria" taxa.  Currently the classification of "Mammillaria" is in a state where few newly discovered species are likely, though some new species may yet be found when the chaos of names created earlier by commercial plant collectors is sorted out. Many names that were introduced for plants barely differentiated by a shade of flower colour or variation in spination were eliminated in attempt to make the use of names consistent with the rest of the botanical world. The number of taxa, which at one time numbered above 500, is now below 200. Some genera ("Dolichothele, Mammillopsis, Krainzia" and others) have been merged back into "Mammillaria", and others like "Coryphantha", "Escobaria" and "Mammilloydia" were confirmed as separate.  Intense studies of DNA of the genus are being conducted, with preliminary results published for over a hundred taxa, and this promising approach might soon end the arguments. Based on DNA research results, the genus does not seem to be monophyletic and is likely to be split into two large genera, one of them possibly including certain species of other closely related genera like "Coryphantha, Ortegocactus" and "Neolloydia".

Selected species.

As noted above, some might not belong in this genus.

Distribution.

Mammillarias is predominantly found in Mexico but also have a wide range of distribution in neighboring regions north of the equator including the southwest United States, the Caribbean, Guatemala and Honduras. The southernmost limits of its range appears to be Colombia, and Venezuela, where only two known species are found. Within this wide distribution, some species will exhibit large variations depending on the locality, sometimes even within just a few hundred feet. Some of these variations are so extreme that they have resulted in classifications of new species, many of which are so limited to one locality that they are considered critically endangered.

Cultivation.

Mammillarias have extremely variable spination from species to species, and attractive flowers, making them attractive for cactus hobbyists. Most mammillarias are considered easy to cultivate, though some species are among the hardest cacti to grow. Several taxa are threatened with extinction at least in the wild, due to habitat destruction and especially overcollecting for the pot plant trade. Cactus fanciers can assist conservation of these rare plants by choosing nursery-bred specimens (wild-collected ones are illegal to possess for the rarest species). Several mammillarias are relatively easy (for cacti) to grow from seeds. One such species, popular and widely available from nursery stock but endangered in the wild, is "Mammillaria zeilmanniana".

Mammillaria is one of the largest genera in the cactus family (Cactaceae), with currently 200 known species and varieties recognized. Most of the mammillarias are native to Mexico, but some come from the southwest United States, the Caribbean, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala and Honduras. The common name "pincushion cactus" refers to this and the closely related genus "Escobaria".


Features.

Features of the glottal stop:

Writing.

In the traditional Romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with an apostrophe,, which is the source of the IPA character. In many Polynesian languages that use the Latin alphabet, however, the glottal stop is written with a reversed apostrophe, (called "‘okina" in Hawaiian and Samoan), which is used to transcribe the Arabic ayin as well and is the source of the IPA character for the voiced pharyngeal fricative. In Malay the glottal stop is represented by the letter, in Võro and Maltese by.  Other scripts also have letters used for representing the glottal stop, such as the Hebrew letter aleph and the Cyrillic letter palochka, used in several Caucasian languages. Modern Latin alphabets for various Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus use the letter heng ('Ꜧ ꜧ'). In Tundra Nenets, it is represented by the letters apostrophe and double apostrophe. In Japanese, glottal stops occur at the end of interjections of surprise or anger and are represented by the character.  In the graphic representation of most Philippine languages, the glottal stop has no consistent symbolization. In most cases, however, a word that begins with a vowel-letter (e.g. Tagalog "aso", "dog") is always pronounced with an unrepresented glottal stop before that vowel (as in Modern German and Hausa). Some orthographies use a hyphen instead of the reverse apostrophe if the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word (e.g. Tagalog "pag-ibig", "love"; or Visayan "gabi-i", "night"). If it occurs in the end of a word, the last vowel is written with a circumflex accent (known as the "pakupyâ") if both a stress and a glottal stop occur in the final vowel (e.g. "basâ", "wet") or a grave accent (known as the "paiwà") if the glottal stop occurs at the final vowel, but the stress occurs at the penultimate syllable (e.g. "batà", "child").  Some Canadian indigenous languages, especially some of the Salishan languages, have adopted the phonetic symbol ʔ itself as part of their orthographies. In some of them, it occurs as a pair of uppercase and lowercase characters, Ɂ and ɂ. The numeral 7 or question mark is sometimes substituted for ʔ and is preferred in some languages such as Squamish.  In 2015, two women in the Northwest Territories challenged the territorial government over its refusal to permit them to use the ʔ character in their daughters' names: Sahaiʔa, a Chipewyan name, and Sakaeʔah, a Slavey name (the two names are actually cognates). The territory argued that territorial and federal identity documents were unable to accommodate the character. The women registered the names with hyphens instead of the ʔ, while continuing to challenge the policy.  Use of the glottal stop is a distinct characteristic of the Southern Mainland Argyll dialects of Scottish Gaelic. In such a dialect, the standard Gaelic phrase "Tha Gàidhlig agam" ("I speak Gaelic"), would be rendered "Tha Gàidhlig a'am".

Occurrence.

In English, the glottal stop occurs as an open juncture (for example, between the vowel sounds in "uh-oh!",) and allophonically in t-glottalization. In British English, the glottal stop is most familiar in the Cockney pronunciation of "butter" as "bu'er". Additionally, there is the glottal stop as a null onset for English, in other words, it is the non-phonemic glottal stop occurring before isolated or initial vowels (for example, representing "uh-oh!", and are phonemically identical to ).  Often a glottal stop happens at the beginning of vowel phonation after a silence.  Although this segment is not a phoneme in English, it occurs phonetically in nearly all dialects of English, as an allophone of in the syllable coda. Speakers of Cockney, Scottish English and several other British dialects also pronounce an intervocalic between vowels as in "city". In Received Pronunciation, a glottal stop is inserted before a tautosyllabic voiceless stop: sto’p, tha’t, kno’ck, wa’tch, also lea’p, soa’k, hel’p, pin’ch.  In many languages that do not allow a sequence of vowels, such as Persian, the glottal stop may be used to break up such a hiatus. There are intricate interactions between falling tone and the glottal stop in the histories of such languages as Danish (see stød), Chinese and Thai.  In many languages, the unstressed intervocalic allophone of the glottal stop is a creaky-voiced glottal approximant. It is known to be contrastive in only one language, Gimi, in which it is the voiced equivalent of the stop.  The table below demonstrates how widely the sound of glottal stop is found among the world's spoken languages. It is not intended to be a complete list. Any of these languages may have varieties not represented in the table.

The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is.


Life.

Bulat Okudzhava was born in Moscow on May 9, 1924 into a family of communists who had come from Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, to study and to work for the Communist Party. The son of a Georgian father, Shalva Okudzhava, and an Armenian mother, Ashkhen Nalbandyan, Bulat Okudzhava spoke and wrote only in Russian.  Okudzava's mother was the niece of a well-known Armenian poet, Vahan Terian. His father served as a political commissar during the Civil War and as a high-ranking Communist Party member thereafter, under the protection of Sergo Ordzhonikidze (1886-1937). His uncle Vladimir Okudzhava was an anarchist and terrorist who left the Russian Empire after a failed attempt to assassinate the Kutaisi governor. Vladimir was listed among the passengers of the infamous sealed train that delivered Vladimir Lenin, Grigory Zinoviev and other revolutionary leaders from Switzerland to Russia in 1917.

Terror and war.

was arrested in February 1937 during the Great Purge, accused of Trotskyism and wrecking. He was shot on 4 August, along with his two brothers. His wife was arrested in 1939 "for anti-Soviet deeds" and sent to the Gulag. Bulat returned to Tbilisi to live with his relatives. His mother was released in 1946, but arrested for the second time in 1949, spending another 5 years in labor camps. She was fully released in 1954 and rehabilitated in 1956, along with her husband.  In 1941, at the age of 17, one year before his scheduled school graduation, Bulat Okudzhava volunteered for the Red Army infantry, and from 1942 he participated in the war against Nazi Germany. After his discharge from the service in 1944, he returned to Tbilisi where he passed his high school graduation exams and enrolled at Tbilisi State University, graduating in 1950. After graduating, he worked as a teacher, first in a rural school in the village of Shamordino in the Kaluga Region, and later in the city of Kaluga itself.

Return to Moscow.

In 1956, three years after the death of Joseph Stalin, Okudzhava returned to Moscow. Following his parents' rehabilitation and the 20th Party Congress at which Khrushchev denounced Stalin, Bulat Okudzhava was able to join the Communist Party, of which he remained a member until 1990. In the Soviet capital he worked first as an editor in the publishing house Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard), and later as the head of the poetry division at the most prominent national literary weekly in the former USSR, Literaturnaya Gazeta ("Literary Newspaper"). It was then, in the middle of the 1950s, that he began to compose songs and to perform them, accompanying himself on a Russian guitar.  Soon he was giving concerts. He only employed a few chords and had no formal training in music, but he possessed an exceptional melodic gift, and the intelligent lyrics of his songs blended perfectly with his music and his voice. His songs were praised by his friends, and amateur recordings were made. These unofficial recordings were widely copied as magnitizdat, and spread across the USSR and Poland, where other young people picked up guitars and started singing the songs for themselves. In 1969, his lyrics appeared in the classic Soviet film "White Sun of the Desert".

Songwriter, poet and novelist.

Though Okudzhava's songs were not published by any official media organization until the late 1970s, they quickly achieved enormous popularity, especially among the intelligentsia – mainly in the USSR at first, but soon among Russian-speakers in other countries as well. Vladimir Nabokov, for example, cited his "Sentimental March" in the novel "".  Okudzhava, however, regarded himself primarily as a poet and claimed that his musical recordings were insignificant. During the 1980s, he also published a great deal of prose (his novel "The Show is Over" won him the Russian Booker Prize in 1994). By the 1980s, recordings of Okudzhava performing his songs finally began to be officially released in the Soviet Union, and many volumes of his poetry were also published. In 1991, he was awarded the USSR State Prize. He supported the reform movement in the USSR and in October 1993, signed the Letter of Forty-Two.  Okudzhava died in Paris on June 12, 1997, and is buried in the Vagankovo Cemetery in Moscow. A monument marks the building at 43 Arbat Street where he lived. His dacha in Peredelkino is now a museum that is open to the public.  A minor planet, 3149 Okudzhava, discovered by Czech astronomer Zdeňka Vávrová in 1981 is named after him. His songs remain very popular and frequently performed. They are also used for teaching Russian.

Music.

Okudzhava, like most bards, did not come from a musical background. He learned basic guitar skills with the help of some friends. He also knew how to play basic chords on a piano.  Okudzhava tuned his Russian guitar to the "Russian tuning" of D'-G'-C-D-g-b-d' (thickest to thinnest string), and often lowered it by one or two tones to better accommodate his voice. He played in a classical manner, usually finger picking the strings in an ascending/descending arpeggio or waltz pattern, with an alternating bass line picked by the thumb.  Initially Okudzhava was taught three basic chords, and towards the end of his life he claimed to know a total of seven.  Many of Okudzhava's songs are in the key of C minor (with downtuning B flat or A minor), centering on the C minor chord (X00X011, thickest to thinnest string), then progressing to a D 7 (00X0433), then either an E-flat minor (X55X566) or C major (55X5555). In addition to the aforementioned chords, the E-flat major chord (X55X567) was often featured in songs in a major key, usually C major (with downtuning B-flat or A major).  By the nineties, Okudzhava adopted the increasingly popular six string guitar but retained the Russian tuning, subtracting the fourth string, which was convenient to his style of playing.

Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava (; ; ; May 9, 1924 – June 12, 1997) was a Soviet and Russian poet, writer, musician, novelist, and singer-songwriter of Georgian-Armenian ancestry. He was one of the founders of the Soviet genre called "author song" ("авторская песня", "avtorskaya pesnya"), or "guitar song", and the author of about 200 songs, set to his own poetry. His songs are a mixture of Russian poetic and folksong traditions and the French "chansonnier" style represented by such contemporaries of Okudzhava as Georges Brassens. Though his songs were never overtly political (in contrast to those of some of his fellow Soviet bards), the freshness and independence of Okudzhava's artistic voice presented a subtle challenge to Soviet cultural authorities, who were thus hesitant for many years to give him official recognition.


Geology.

The uppermost section of the volcano is occupied by the Enclos Fouqué, a caldera wide. High cliffs, known as "remparts" in French, form the caldera's rim. The caldera is breached to the southeast towards the sea. The eastern flank of the volcano is unstable and is in the initial stages of failure. It will eventually collapse into the Indian Ocean, but whether or not it will generate a "megatsunami" is controversial. There is evidence of earlier failures on the submerged flanks and surrounding abyssal plain. The lower slopes are known as the "Grand Brûlé" ("Great Burn"). Most volcanic eruptions are confined to the caldera.  Inside the caldera is a high lava shield named Dolomieu. At the top of this lava shield are Bory Crater ("Cratère Bory") and Dolomieu Crater ("Cratère Dolomieu"), which is by far the wider of the two and named for French geologist Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu.  Many craters and spatter cones can be found inside the caldera and on the higher flanks of the volcano. Lavas with high concentrations of iridium are routinely ejected through these vents. By the trailhead of the summit path there lies a small noteworthy crater called Formica Leo, named for its resemblance to the sand pit trap of an antlion.  Located outside of the main caldera is Commerson Crater, an extinct caldera notable for receiving intense rainfall, particularly during tropical storms. During Cyclone Hyacinthe in January 1980, it received of rainfall in 15 days, the most precipitation produced by a tropical cyclone in a single location.  Some beaches in the proximity of the volcano are greenish in color, due to olivine sand derived from picrite basalt lavas. The "Grand Brûlé" is formed from solidified lava flows accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years; the most recent ones are often the darkest and most vegetation-free, while older ones can be covered by dense natural vegetation.  This volcano is over 530,000 years old, and for most of its history, its flows have intermingled with those from Piton des Neiges, a larger, older and heavily eroded extinct volcano which forms the northwest two-thirds of Réunion Island. There were three episodes of caldera collapses 250,000, 65,000 and 5,000 years ago. The volcano was formed by the Réunion hotspot, which is believed to have been active for the past 66 million years. There is evidence for explosive eruptions in the past. One explosive eruption about 4,700 years ago may have had a VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) of 5, which is the same as the 18 May 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

Eruptions.

Most eruptions of Piton de la Fournaise are of the Hawaiian style: fluid basaltic lava flowing out with fire fountaining at the vent. Occasionally, phreatic eruptions (groundwater steam-generated eruptions) occur. Lava flows crossing the "Grand Brûlé" occasionally reach the sea. Piton de la Fournaise is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, with more than 150 recorded eruptions since the 17th century.  Eruptions within the caldera do not cause much devastation, because the caldera is uninhabited, but little infrastructure exists apart from the highway. Lava flows are generally confined to the caldera. However, lava flows have been known to cross the N2 highway; areas where the road was destroyed by the eruption are signposted with the year of eruption after the road is rebuilt. In the early 2000s, the highway was destroyed one or more times a year; road engineering services then wait for the lava to cool off and build another stretch of road. For months after an eruption, the core of the lava flows can still be hot enough to steam in rainy weather.  Eruptions outside of the caldera can pose serious hazards to the population, but are rare. Only six eruptions outside of the caldera have been recorded, most recently in 1986. The village of Piton-Sainte-Rose was evacuated in 1977 before it was inundated by a lava flow which destroyed several buildings. The lava flow crossed the highway and surrounded the local church, entered the front door, then stopped without destroying the building. The front entrance was later cleared out, and the church was brought back into service under the name of "Notre-Dame des Laves" ("Our Lady of the Lavas").  In April 2007 the volcano erupted and produced an estimated 3,000,000 cubic metres per day. During this eruption of 2007 an incremental caldera collapse of Dolomieu occurred at the volcano over more than nine days. The collapse displacing 0.8 x 1.1 km floor downward by 330 m, with a volume of 120 million cubic metres. The caldera collapse accompanied one of the largest eruptions of lava at the volcano in the past 100 years.

Monitoring.

Volcanic activity is constantly monitored by geophysical sensors (tiltmeters, extensometers, differential GPS receivers, etc.). The data from those various sensors is sent to the Piton de la Fournaise Volcano Observatory, located in Bourg-Murat, northwest of the volcano. The observatory, founded in 1978 following the Piton-Sainte-Rose flow, is operated by the "Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris" (Global Geophysics Institute of Paris), in association with CNRS and the University of Réunion. The OVPF often publishes reports on Piton de la Fournaise's current activity via their website in French. RIGIC (the Réunion Island Geological Information Center) takes this information and translates it into English for distribution to the English-speaking scientific community.  Procedures specify several levels of alert, which are decided by the prefect of Réunion on the basis of scientific reports:

Visit.

A forestry road followed by a track connects the highway of the plains in Bourg-Murat to the Pas de Bellecombe (Bellecombe Pass), where a parking lot and a snack bar are located. The Pas de Bellecombe is situated over the caldera rim cliffs and offers a view over the northeast part of the caldera. A stairway path descends from the pass to the caldera floor. This path is closed for safety reasons during seismic events that may precede eruptions and during eruptions. White paint marks over rocks delimit a number of footpaths ascending the lava shield inside the caldera.  The lower parts of the "Grand Brûlé" can be visited from the N2 highway. Lava flows that have crossed the road are indicated by signs. Completely free access during eruptions was permitted until 1998; access has been limited since that date, being virtually banned at present.

Piton de la Fournaise (French for "Peak of the Furnace") is a shield volcano on the eastern side of Réunion island (a French department) in the Indian Ocean. It is currently one of the most active volcanoes in the world, along with Kīlauea in the Hawaiian Islands, Stromboli and Etna in Italy and Mount Erebus in Antarctica. A previous eruption began in August 2006 and ended in January 2007. The volcano erupted again in February 2007, on 21 September 2008, on 9 December 2010, which lasted for two days, and on 1 August 2015. The most recent eruption began on 25 October 2019. The volcano is located within Réunion National Park, a World Heritage site.


Design.

The design of the bridge was the subject of a competition organised in 1996 by Southwark council and RIBA Competitions. The winning entry was an innovative "blade of light" effort from Arup Group, Foster and Partners, and Sir Anthony Caro. Due to height restrictions, and to improve the view, the bridge's suspension design had the supporting cables below the deck level, giving a very shallow profile. The bridge has two river piers and is made of three main sections of,, and (north to south) with a total structure length of ; the aluminium deck is wide. The eight suspension cables are tensioned to pull with a force of 2,000 tons against the piers set into each bank—enough to support a working load of 5,000 people on the bridge at one time.

Construction.

Ordinarily, bridges across the River Thames require an Act of Parliament. For this bridge, that was avoided by the Port of London Authority granting a licence for the structure, and the City of London and London Borough of Southwark granting planning permission. Construction began in late 1998 and the main works were started on 28 April 1999 by Monberg & Thorsen and Sir Robert McAlpine. The eventual cost was £18.2 million (£2.2m over budget), primarily paid for by the Millennium Commission and the London Bridge Trust.

Opening.

The bridge opened on 10 June 2000, two months late.  Unexpected lateral vibration due to resonant structural response caused the bridge to be closed on 12 June for modifications. Attempts had been made to limit the number of people crossing the bridge, which led to long queues but were ineffective to dampen the vibrations. Closure of the bridge only two days after opening attracted public criticism as another high-profile British Millennium project that suffered an embarrassing setback, akin to how many saw the Millennium Dome.  Vibration was attributed to an under-researched phenomenon whereby pedestrians crossing a bridge that has a lateral sway have an unconscious tendency to match their footsteps to the sway, exacerbating it. The tendency of a suspension bridge to sway vertically when troops march over it in step was well known, which is why troops are required to break step when crossing such a bridge. An example is London's Albert Bridge, which has a sign dating from 1873 warning marching ranks of soldiers to break step while crossing.

Resonance.

The bridge's movements were caused by a 'positive feedback' phenomenon, known as synchronous lateral excitation. The natural sway motion of people walking caused small sideways oscillations in the bridge, which in turn caused people on the bridge to sway in step, increasing the amplitude of the bridge oscillations and continually reinforcing the effect; the maximum sway was around 70mm. On the day of opening, the bridge was crossed by 90,000 people, with up to 2,000 on the bridge at any one time.  Resonant vibrational modes due to vertical loads (such as trains, traffic or pedestrians) and wind loads are well understood in bridge design. In the case of the Millennium Bridge, because the lateral motion caused pedestrians to directly participate with the bridge, the vibrational modes had not been anticipated by the designers. When the bridge lurches to one side, the pedestrians must adjust to keep from falling over, and they all do this at the same time. The effect is similar to soldiers marching in lockstep, but horizontal instead of vertical.  The risks of lateral vibration in lightweight bridges are well known. Any bridge with lateral frequency modes of less than 1.3 Hz, and sufficiently low mass, could witness the same phenomenon with sufficient pedestrian loading. The greater the number of people, the greater the amplitude of the vibrations. Other bridges which have seen similar problems are:

Mitigation.

Engineers at Arup, the company that designed the bridge, conducted research into the unexpected oscillation which they called'synchronous lateral excitation'. The first laboratory studies used pedestrians on moving platforms at the University of Southampton and Imperial College London. Later in 2000, one span of the bridge was instrumented and tested with crowds of up to 275 people.  They concluded that making the bridge stiffer, to move its resonant frequency out of the excitation range, was not feasible as it would greatly change its appearance. Instead, the resonance was controlled by retrofitting 37 viscous fluid dampers to dissipate energy. These include 17 chevron dampers – long V-shaped braces under the deck panels – to control lateral movement, 4 vertical to ground dampers to control lateral and vertical movements, and 16 pier dampers to control lateral and torsional movements. Additionally, 52 tuned mass dampers add inertia to control vertical movement. The work took from May 2001 to January 2002 and cost £5M. After a period of testing, the bridge was reopened on 22 February 2002 and has not been subject to significant vibration since. In spite of the successful cure, the affectionate "wobbly bridge" (sometimes "wibbly-wobbly") epithet remains in common usage among Londoners.

Cable resonance.

An artistic expression of the higher-frequency resonances within the cables of the bridge were explored by Bill Fontana's 'Harmonic Bridge' exhibition at the Tate Modern museum in mid-2006. This used acoustic transducers placed at strategic locations on the cabling of the Millennium Bridge and the signals from those transducers were amplified and dynamically distributed throughout the Turbine Hall of the Tate by a programme which Fontana entered into the sound diffusion engine of the Richmond Sound Design AudioBox.

The Millennium Bridge, officially known as the London Millennium Footbridge, is a steel suspension bridge for pedestrians crossing the River Thames in London, linking Bankside with the City of London. It is owned and maintained by Bridge House Estates, a charitable trust overseen by the City of London Corporation. Construction began in 1998, and it initially opened in June 2000.


Description.

It is a small- to medium-sized tree tall with smooth grey bark even in old age, its life span being a maximum of 60 to 100 years. The leaves are matte green, ovoid, long and broad. The flowers are catkins, appearing early in spring before the leaves emerge, the male catkins pendulous and long, the female catkins long and one cm broad when mature in late autumn. The seeds are small, long, and light brown with a narrow encircling wing. The grey alder has a shallow root system, and is marked not only by vigorous production of stump suckers, but also by root suckers, especially in the northern parts of its range. The wood resembles that of the black alder, but is somewhat paler and of little economic value.

Subspecies.

There are four to six subspecies, some treated as separate species by some authors:

Ecology.

"Alnus incana" is a light-demanding, fast-growing tree that grows well on poorer soils. In central Europe, it is a colonist of alluvial land alongside mountain brooks and streams, occurring at elevations up to. However, it does not require moist soil, and will also colonize screes and shallow stony slopes. In the northern part of its range, it is a common tree species at sea level in forests, abandoned fields and on lakeshores. Several species of Lepidoptera use grey alder as a food plant for their caterpillars. See List of Lepidoptera that feed on alders. In the boreal forest area of Canada, "A. incana" is often associated with black spruce in the forest type termed black spruce–speckled alder. The larvae of the alder woolly sawfly sometimes cause considerable defoliation to the grey alder.  "A. rugosa" provides cover for wildlife, is browsed by deer and moose, and the seeds are eaten by birds.

Chemistry.

Pedunculagin is an ellagitannin found in the Manchurian alder ("A. hirsuta var. microphylla").

Uses.

The tree is cultivated in parks and gardens. The cultivar 'Aurea', with green-gold leaves, has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.  It is sometimes used for afforestation on non-fertile soils which it enriches by means of nitrogen fixing bacteria in its root nodules.  The Zuni people use the bark of the "tenuifolia" subspecies to dye deerskin reddish brown.  The Ho-Chunk people eat the bark of the "rugosa" subspecies when the stomach is sour and out of whack.

Alnus incana, the grey alder or speckled alder, is a species of tree in the birch family, with a wide range across the cooler parts of the Northern Hemisphere.


Vehicles.

Minotaur-C (Taurus).

The Taurus launch vehicle, later renamed Minotaur-C (for "Minotaur-Commercial"), was the first of the Minotaur vehicle family, and the first ground-launched orbital booster developed by Orbital, derived by adding a solid booster stage to the air-launched Pegasus rocket. The first flight, sponsored by ARPA, was in 1994. After a series of failures in 2011, the rocket was rebranded as Minotaur-C in 2014. Due to laws against selling government equipment, the Minotaur-C is the only available Minotaur rocket for commercial launches.

Minotaur I.

The original Minotaur launch vehicle, consisting of an M55A1 first stage, SR19 second stage, Orion 50XL third stage, Orion 38 fourth stage, and optional HAPS fifth stage for velocity trim and multiple payload deployment. Payload 580 kg to a 185 km, 28.5 degree orbit from Cape Canaveral; or 310 kg to a 740 km sun-synchronous orbit from Vandenberg.

Minotaur II.

A suborbital target vehicle, essentially consisting of a Minuteman II with Orbital guidance and control systems. Consists of M55A1 first stage, SR19 second stage, and M57 third stage. Payload 460 kg on 6700 km suborbital trajectory.

Minotaur III.

A suborbital target vehicle, consisting of an SR118 first stage, SR119 second stage, SR120 third stage, and Super HAPS fourth stage. Payload 3060 kg on a 6700 km suborbital trajectory.

Minotaur IV.

The Minotaur IV combines U.S Government-furnished solid rocket motors from decommissioned Peacekeeper ICBMs with technologies from other Orbital-built launch vehicles, including the Minotaur I, Pegasus, and Taurus. The Minotaur IV launch vehicle consists of an SR118 first stage, SR119 second stage, SR120 third stage, and Orion 38 fourth stage. Payload 1735 kg to a 185 km, 28.5 degree orbit from Cape Canaveral. The first Minotaur IV was launched April 22, 2010 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. This vehicle is also being developed to accommodate the Conventional Prompt Global Strike mission for the Air Force. (CPGS)

Minotaur V.

The Minotaur V is a five-stage version based on the Minotaur IV+. It has an additional upper stage for small GTO, lunar, and interplanetary missions. NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) Mission was launched on the first Minotaur V, from the Wallops Island, Virginia launch site at 03:27 UTC on September 7, 2013. The Minotaur launched the LADEE spacecraft into a highly elliptic orbit where it can phase and time its trajectory burn to the moon.

Minotaur VI.

A Minotaur VI five-stage version has also been conceptualized. It is also based on the Minotaur IV+, adding a second SR-118 first stage.

The Minotaur is a family of American solid fuel rockets derived from converted Minuteman and Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles. They are built by Northrop Grumman via contract with the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center's Space Development and Test Directorate (SMC/SD) as part of the Air Force's Rocket Systems Launch Program which converts retired Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) into space and test launch systems for US government agencies.


Identification.

The length of the body is less than (excluding the tail). The tail is up to twice as long as the body, although it is often partially or wholly lost. The limbs are short, and the head is rather round. Males have more slender bodies than females. The neck and the tail are thick. The collar and other scales seem jagged.  The colour and patterning of this species is variable. The main colour is typically medium brown, but it can be also grey, olive brown or black. Females may have dark stripes on their flanks and down the middle of their backs. Sometimes females also have light-coloured stripes, or dark and light spots along the sides of their backs. Most males and some females have dark spots in their undersides. Males have brightly coloured undersides – typically yellow or orange, but more rarely red. Females have paler, whitish underparts. The throat is white, sometimes blue.

Range.

The viviparous lizard is widely distributed throughout Europe and Asia. Its range extends to the north of the Arctic Circle. It ranges from Ireland to Hokkaido and Sakhalin. It is absent from most of the Mediterranean area, although it occurs in northern Spain, Northern Italy, Serbia, North Macedonia and Bulgaria. It is also absent from the area surrounding the Black Sea.  In the southern parts of its distribution range, the species lives at high elevations, occurring as high as above sea level in the Alps. In these areas, the viviparous lizard lives in damp locations, often near water, including meadows, swamps, rice fields, by brooks and in damp forests. In the northern part of the range, the species is also found in lowlands, where it occurs in drier environments, including open woodland, meadows, moorland, heathland, fens, dunes, rocks, roadsides, hedgerows and gardens. It lives mainly on the ground, although it may climb onto rocks, logs and low-growing vegetation.It is also the only reptile native to the island of Ireland.

Behaviour.

The viviparous lizard feeds on invertebrates, mostly small insects and spiders. It shakes larger prey in its jaws before chewing it and swallowing it whole. In early spring, late autumn, and cool summer days, it basks in the sun to reach its optimum body temperature, which is about.  These lizards mate in April or May. Males take females in their jaws before mating – if the female is not interested, she will bite the male fiercely. The offspring develops inside the female for about three months.  The name of the species is derived from its ability to give birth to live young, an adaptation to a cool climate, but some southern populations are oviparous (egg-laying). The three to ten young (or eggs) are usually produced in July. The blackish young measure about, and when first born are surrounded by egg membrane, from which they break free after about a day. Males reach sexual maturity at the age of two years, females at the age of three years. Individuals from viviparous and oviparous populations may be hybridised, but with significant embryonic malformation. Viviparous "Z. vivipara" do develop placentae to facilitate pregnancy but there is no substantial transport of nutrients as seen in some other species of viviparous reptiles (e.g. Pseudemoia entrecasteauxii).  Due to the cool climate, in northern regions, viviparous lizards begin hibernation in September or October, underground or in log piles. Hibernation ends about mid-February. Further south, the species is active throughout the year.

Colour polymorphism.

The colour polymorphism of female "Zootoca vivipara" has not been thoroughly studied in past years, regardless of the extensive research done on the species itself. Female lizards exhibit three types of body colouration within a population: yellow, orange, and mixture of the two. These discrete traits are inherited maternally and exist throughout the individual's lifetime. The organism's colour morphs are determined by their genotype as well as their environment.  The frequency of multiple morphs occurring in a population varies with the level of population density and frequency-dependent environments. These factors cause the lizards to vary in terms of their fitness (clutch size, sex ratio, hatching success). In lower density populations, colour polymorphism is more prevalent. This is because viviparous lizards thrive in environments where intraspecific competition is low. Increased competition among individuals results in lower survival rates of lizards. Additionally, female lizards disperse through habitats based on the frequency of colour types that are already present in the population. Their reproductive abilities vary according to this frequency-dependent environment. The number of offspring that they produce correlates with the colour morph: yellow females produce the fewest offspring, while orange females produce more than yellow, but fewer than mixed females, which produce the most offspring. The amount of offspring produced varies in regards to colour frequencies in the population; for example, if yellow females have higher density within the population, the clutch size for orange lizards is usually lower.  Orange females are more sensitive to intraspecific and colour-specific competition. They have smaller clutch sizes when the density of the population is high, or when the number of yellow females in the population is high. This could be due to their need to conserve energy for survival and reproductive events. Their colour morph remains in the population due to the trade-off between the size of offspring and the clutch size. Offspring born in smaller clutches are often larger and thus have a higher survival likelihood. Natural selection will favor individuals with larger size because of their advantage in physical competition with others. Yellow females have larger clutch sizes early in their life, but their hatch success decreases as the female ages. Their reproductive viability decreases, resulting in fewer offspring throughout their lifetime. Yellow morphs remain in the population due to their large clutch size, which causes an increased frequency of those females. Selection favors the yellow morph because of the ability to produce large clutch sizes, which increases the female's fitness. In mixed-coloured females, reproductive success is less sensitive to competition and frequency-dependent environments. Since these lizards show a mixture of yellow and orange colouration, they adopt benefits from both of the morphs. As a result, they can maintain high reproductive success and hatching success with large clutch sizes. Their colour morph remains in the population due to its high fitness, which selection will favor.  All three colours have evolutionary advantages in different ways. While yellow females have higher fitness due to their large clutch sizes, orange females enjoy high fitness due to their large body size and increased competitive advantages. Mixed females exhibit both of these advantages.

The viviparous lizard, Zootoca vivipara (formerly "Lacerta vivipara"), is a Eurasian lizard. It lives farther north than any other species of non-marine reptile, and most populations are viviparous (giving birth to live young), rather than laying eggs as most other lizards do. It is the only species in the monotypic genus Zootoca. Both ""Zootoca"" and ""vivipara"" mean "live birth," in Greek and Latin respectively. It was called "Lacerta vivipara" until the genus "Lacerta" was split into nine genera in 2007 by, Arribas & Carranza.


Taxonomy.

The species name, "artemisiifolia", is given because the leaves were thought to bear a resemblance to the leaves of Artemisia, the true wormwoods.  It has also been called the common names: American wormwood, bitterweed, blackweed, carrot weed, hay fever weed, Roman wormwood, short ragweed, stammerwort, stickweed, tassel weed.

Distribution.

The plant is native to: North America across Canada, the eastern and central United States, the Great Plains, and in Alaska; the Caribbean on Cuba, Hispaniola, and Jamaica; and South America in the southern bioregion (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay), the western bioregion (Bolivia, Peru), and Brazil. The distribution of common ragweed in Europe is expected to expand northwards in the future.  It is the most widespread species of the genus in North America, which most of the other species of "Ambrosia" are endemic to. Ambrosia is also widely distributed in Ukraine, specifically in the central and south regions. During the summer it often causes the allergy reaction from some people. The highest risk time is in August (7–13).

Description.

"Ambrosia artemisiifolia" is an annual plant that emerges in late spring. It propagates mainly by rhizomes, but also by seed.  It is much-branched, and grows up to in height. The pinnately divided soft and hairy leaves are long.  Its bloom period is July to October in North America. Its pollen is wind-dispersed, and can be a strong allergen to people with hay fever.  It produces 2–4 mm obconic green to brown fruit. It sets seed in later summer or autumn. Since the seeds persist into winter and are numerous and rich in oil, they are relished by songbirds and upland game birds.

Invasive species.

Common ragweed, "Ambrosia artemisiifolia", is a widespread invasive species, and can become a noxious weed, that has naturalized in: Europe; temperate Asia and the Indian subcontinent; temperate northern and southern Africa and Macaronesia; Oceania in Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii; and Southwestern North America in California and the Southwestern United States.  Common ragweed is a very competitive weed and can produce yield losses in soybeans as high as 30 percent. Control with night tillage reduces emergence by around 45 percent. Small grains in rotation will also suppress common ragweed if they are overseeded with clover. Otherwise, the ragweed will grow and mature and produce seeds in the small grain stubble.  Its wind-blown pollen is highly allergenic.

Ragweed control.

several herbicides were effective against common ragweed, although resistant populations were known to exist. In 2007 several "Ambrosia artemisiifolia" populations were glyphosate resistant, exclusively in the USA.  SMARTER is a European interdisciplinary network of experts involved in the control of ragweed, health care professionals, aerobiologists, ecologists, economists, and atmospheric and agricultural modellers.

Chemical composition, and uses.

Sesquiterpene lactones and molluscicide.

Three sesquiterpene lactones isolated from the aerial parts of "Ambrosia artemisiifolia" were identified as psilostachyin A, psilostachyin B and psilostachyin C. All of them have some molluscicidal activity against the small tropical freshwater snail "Oncomelania hupensis".

Medicinal.

"Ambrosia artemisiifolia" was a traditional medicinal plant for Native American tribes, including the Cherokee, Lakota, Iroquois, Dakota, and Delaware.

Phytoremediation.

"Ambrosia artemisiifolia" is used in phytoremediation projects remediating soil pollution, for removing heavy metals such as lead from contaminated soil.

Ambrosia artemisiifolia, with the common names common ragweed, annual ragweed, and low ragweed, is a species of the genus "Ambrosia" native to regions of the Americas.


Early life.

Bertrand Delanoë was born 30 May 1950 in Tunis, at that time a protectorate of the French colonial empire, to a French mother and a French-Tunisian father. His father, a land surveyor, was atheist while his mother, a nurse, was Roman Catholic.  At 6 years old, Delanoë became a member of the "Petits Chanteurs des Sables", a Christian choral group associated with the Petits Chanteurs à la Croix de Bois.  At the age of 11, Delanoë witnessed the Crisis of Bizerte between France and newly independent Tunisia. Bertrand Delanoë moved back to France with his family at the beginning of the Tunisian independence.  After the military base was closed in 1963, Delanoë's family broke up. His mother came to live in Rodez (Aveyron) with her son. After leaving school, Delanoë is said to have started studies in law at the University of Toulouse. According to "Who's Who in France" he possesses a diploma in economics.

Career.

Early political career.

Delanoë has been involved in politics since the age of twenty-three as the secretary of the Socialist federation in Aveyron.  He was first elected to the Paris city council in 1977. In 1993, he became the head of the city's Socialist Party.  In 1995, he was elected to the French Senate, where he was secretary of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense.

Mayor of Paris.

Delanoë became mayor of Paris on 18 March 2001, when control of the city council was won by a left-wing alliance for the first time since 1977 (election of the city council with universal suffrage). His predecessors were Jean Tiberi (1995–2001), and Jacques Chirac (1977–95), who resigned after 18 years as mayor when he was elected president of the French Republic.  Delanoë won the mayorship of Paris, at the head of a coalition of Socialists, Greens and Communists, over the conservative candidates Jean Tiberi and Philippe Séguin, who were unable to resolve their differences and thereby split the conservative vote. This success in a city which has traditionally been a stronghold of the right was made all the more striking by setbacks to the Left in the 2001 elections that occurred more generally – has been partially attributed with the weariness of the Parisian public with respect to various scandals of corruption and graft in the preceding administrations (see corruption scandals in the Paris region).  Delanoë was virtually unknown before the election of 2001, but soon gained fame for organising new and unusual events in Paris, such as the "Paris Beach" ("Paris-Plages") on the banks of the Seine every summer in order to give Parisians who could not take a regular vacation a chance to relax, sunbathe and build sandcastles in the center of Paris. The program, especially popular with families with children, has been in place since 2002, and has since been copied by many other international cities.  As mayor, Delanoë's goals were to improve the quality of life, reduce pollution, and cut down on vehicle traffic within the city (including a plan for a non-polluting tramway to ease Parisian traffic) and pedestrian malls. He helped introduce a program called Vélib' (a portmanteau of "vélo" and "libre" meaning "free bicycles") which gave Parisians access to inexpensive rental bicycles available in stations all around Paris. The program has been enormously successful despite the fact that it still has a few logistical problems to be worked out. He has outlined a plan for an autolib, whereby small cars would be shared. He was reelected in 2008 (57.7%) for a new six-year-term (2008–2014).  In 2009, he criticized statements by Pope Benedict XVI, which were of the effect that condom use was unhelpful or even counter-productive in the fight against AIDS.

Assassination attempt.

Delanoë was stabbed on 5 October 2002 during the "Nuit Blanche", a night of festivities in Paris, while mingling with the public. His assailant was a Muslim immigrant, Azedine Berkane, who reportedly told police that "he hated politicians, the Socialist Party, and homosexuals." Speaking to "Le Monde", one of his neighbors said, "He was a bit like us. We're all homophobic here because it's not natural." Before being taken to hospital, Delanoë ordered that the festivities continue. Delanoë's wound was not life-threatening and he left the hospital after about two weeks.  Azedine Berkane was eventually permitted to leave the psychiatric hospital where he had been a patient after his doctors no longer considered him a threat. However, in early April, 2007, he failed to keep a scheduled appointment with his doctors, and has not been seen since.

Olympic bid.

The failure to secure the 2012 Summer Olympics for Paris on 6 July 2005 was Delanoë's first major setback as mayor. In the aftermath of the defeat in his Olympic bid, he accused British prime minister Tony Blair of unduly influencing the result in order to secure the games in London. However, Delanoë's popularity in fact rose during July 2005. The French public appeared to have laid more of the blame on President Jacques Chirac, who allegedly said that "the only worse food than British food is Finnish" which is widely believed to have offended two Finnish members of the International Olympic Committee.

Potential presidential bid.

Delanoë was said to be considering challenging then-current president Sarkozy in the Presidential election in 2012. However, this plan suffered a setback in November 2008 when he lost the race for the party leadership to Lille mayor Martine Aubry.

Fake "New York Times" letter.

On 22 December 2008, "The New York Times" published a letter attributed to Delanoë criticizing Caroline Kennedy's candidacy for the United States Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton. The newspaper later admitted that the letter, which had been sent by email, had not been properly verified, and was a fake.

Personal life.

Delanoë was one of the first major French politicians to announce that he was gay, during a 1998 television interview (before being elected mayor). Although a long-time politician, Delanoë is visible at cultural affairs. He attends film festivals, and he is sometimes quoted in the media or appears on television to speak about his friendship with the late French superstar entertainer, Dalida.

Political career.

Electoral mandates  National Assembly of France  Member of the National Assembly of France for Paris (26th constituency): 1981–1986. Elected in 1981.  Senate of France  Senator of Paris: 1995–2001 (resignation).  Municipal Council  Mayor of Paris: Elected in 2001. Reelected in 2008.  Councillor of Paris: Elected in 1977. Reelected in 1983, 1989, 1995, 2001, 2008.

Bertrand Delanoë (; born 30 May 1950) is a retired French politician who was Mayor of Paris from 25 March 2001 to 5 April 2014. He is a member of the Socialist Party.


Description.

Common hazel is typically a shrub reaching 3–8 m tall, but can reach 15 m. The leaves are deciduous, rounded, 6–12 cm long and across, softly hairy on both surfaces, and with a double-serrate margin. The flowers are produced very early in spring, before the leaves, and are monoecious with single-sex wind-pollinated catkins. Male catkins are pale yellow and 5–12 cm long, while female flowers are very small and largely concealed in the buds with only the bright red 1–3 mm long styles visible. The fruit is a nut, produced in clusters of one to five together, each nut held in a short leafy involucre ("husk") which encloses about three quarters of the nut. The nut is roughly spherical to oval, 15–20 mm long and 12–20 mm broad (larger, up to 25 mm long, in some cultivated selections), yellow-brown with a pale scar at the base. The nut falls out of the involucre when ripe, about 7–8 months after pollination.  It is readily distinguished from the closely related filbert ("Corylus maxima") by the short involucre; in the filbert the nut is fully enclosed by a beak-like involucre longer than the nut.

Taxonomy.

The scientific name "avellana" derives from the town of Avella in Italy, and was selected by Linnaeus from Leonhart Fuchs's "De historia stirpium commentarii insignes" (1542), where the species was described as ""Avellana nux sylvestris"" ("wild nut of Avella"). That name was taken in turn from Pliny the Elder's first century A.D. encyclopedia Naturalis Historia.

Ecology.

The leaves provide food for many animals, including Lepidoptera such as the case-bearer moth, "Coleophora anatipennella". Caterpillars of the concealer moth, "Alabonia geoffrella," have been found feeding inside dead common hazel twigs. See also "List of Lepidoptera that feed on hazels."  The fruit are possibly even more important animal food, both for invertebrates adapted to circumvent the shell (usually by ovipositing in the female flowers, which also gives protection to the offspring) and for vertebrates which manage to crack them open (such as squirrels and corvids). Both are considered pests by hazelnut growers.

Cultivation and uses.

According to the New Sunset Western Garden Book, the European hazelnut is among the most widely grown hazelnut plants for commercial nut production.  This shrub is common in many European woodlands. It is an important component of the hedgerows that were the traditional field boundaries in lowland England. The wood was traditionally grown as coppice, the poles cut being used for wattle-and-daub building and agricultural fencing. A selection with twisted branches has been propagated horticulturally as "Corylus avellana" 'Contorta'.

Hazelnuts.

The hazelnut, also known as the cobnut, is the nut of the hazel. It is roughly spherical to oval in shape, about 15–25 mm long and 10–15 mm in diameter, with an outer fibrous husk surrounding a smooth shell. The nut falls out of the husk when ripe, about seven to eight months after pollination.  Hazelnuts are rich in protein and unsaturated fat. They also contain significant amounts of manganese, copper, vitamin E, thiamine, and magnesium.  There are many cultivars of the hazel, including Barcelona, Butler, Casina, Clark Cosford, Daviana, Delle Langhe, England, Ennis, Fillbert, Halls Giant, Jemtegaard, Kent Cob, Lewis, Tokolyi, Tonda Gentile, Tonda di Giffoni, Tonda Romana, Wanliss Pride, and Willamette. Some of these are grown for specific qualities of the nut including large nut size, and early and late fruiting cultivars, whereas other are grown as pollinators. The majority of commercial hazelnuts are propagated from root sprouts. Some cultivars are of hybrid origin between common hazel and filbert.  Common hazel is cultivated for its nuts in commercial orchards in Europe, Turkey, Iran and Caucasus. The name "hazelnut" applies to the nuts of any of the species of the genus "Corylus". This hazelnut or cobnut, the kernel of the seed, is edible and used raw or roasted, or ground into a paste. The seed has a thin, dark brown skin which has a bitter flavour and is sometimes removed before cooking. The top producer of hazelnuts, by a large margin, is Turkey, specifically the Giresun Province. Turkish hazelnut production of 625,000 tonnes accounts for approximately 75% of worldwide production.

Corylus avellana, the common hazel, is a species of hazel native to Europe and western Asia, from the British Isles south to Iberia, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, north to central Scandinavia, and east to the central Ural Mountains, the Caucasus, and northwestern Iran. It is an important component of the hedgerows that were the traditional field boundaries in lowland England. The wood was traditionally grown as coppice, the poles cut being used for wattle-and-daub building and agricultural fencing.