History.

The company was founded in 1945, just a few weeks after the end of World War II, by Fritz Sennheiser (1912–2010) and seven fellow engineers of the University of Hannover in a laboratory called Laboratorium Wennebostel (shortened, "Lab W"). The laboratory was named after the village of Wennebostel in the municipality of Wedemark to where it had been moved due to the war. Its first product was a voltmeter. Lab W began building microphones in 1946 with the DM1, and began developing them in 1947 with the DM2. By 1955, the company had 250 employees, and had begun production of many products including geophysical equipment, the Noise-Compensated microphone (DM4), microphone transformers, mixers, and miniature magnetic headphones. Labor W was renamed 'Sennheiser electronic' in 1958.  In the late 1950's/early 1960's, Professor Sennheiser met a gentleman in the hospital by the name of Thomas Schillinger. Mr. Schillinger was tasked with starting Sennheiser's presence in the United States. The culmination of this was a technical Oscar Award in 1987 at the 59th Academy Awards (see below).  Sennheiser was transformed into a limited partnership (KG) in 1973. In 1980, the company entered the aviation market, supplying Lufthansa with headsets.  The company began producing modern wireless microphones in 1982, the same year when founder Fritz Sennheiser handed the management of the company over to his son, Jörg Sennheiser. In 1987, Sennheiser was awarded at the 59th Academy Awards for its MKH 816 shotgun microphone.  Also in 1991, Georg Neumann GmbH, Berlin, which builds studio microphones, became a part of Sennheiser.  In 2003 Sennheiser entered into a joint venture with the Danish company, William-Demant-Holding, a specialist in hearing aids, diagnostic technology and personal communication. Sennheiser Communications A/S was founded.  2005: Sennheiser acquired the speaker manufacturer Klein + Hummel.  Daniel Sennheiser, grandson of the founder, joined the company in 2008. In 2010 his brother Dr. Andreas Sennheiser also did so. Both are shareholders of the company.  On July 1, 2013, Daniel Sennheiser and Andreas Sennheiser were promoted to the position of CEO responsible for Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG.  In 2014 Sennheiser founded the new subsidiary "Sennheiser Streaming Technology GmbH (SST)", which develops streaming solutions for software and hardware.  In 2019 Sennheiser acquired a majority stake in Dear Reality, a company that specializes in spatial audio algorithms and VR/AR audio software.

Locations.

Sennheiser is headquartered in the municipality of Wedemark, Germany (near Hannover). Its United States headquarters is located in Old Lyme, Connecticut. The company has factories in Wennebostel (Wedemark, near Hannover); Tullamore, Ireland (since 1990); Albuquerque, New Mexico (since 2000) and in Brasov, Romania (since 2019). Some consumer products are made in China. Sennheiser's R&D facilities are located in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Singapore, and San Francisco, California.  Sennheiser has a total of 21 sales subsidiaries and trading partners and is active in more than 50 countries. Besides, the company opened its first Sennheiser store in 2016 to make products accessible to customers. Sennheiser now has a total of seven stores in Berlin, San Francisco, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City and Sydney and at its headquarters in Wedemark. In 2016 there was a temporary store in New York.

Products.

Sennheiser is mainly known for its consumer headphones and professional microphones, such as the MKH 416 short shotgun, which came to be the Hollywood standard shotgun microphone; and the 816, similar in design with longer reach. It also makes the US$55,000 Orpheus headphone set; wireless microphones; aviation, multimedia and gaming headsets; micro-Hifi systems; conferencing systems; speakers; and amplifiers.  Sennheiser consists of two independent business units: its consumer division and the professional audio division. The consumer division offers customers a range of headphones and home entertainment speakers. Regarding professional audio Sennheiser provides audio solutions for live music, DJing, theater, studio, broadcast, film and video as well as 3D audio and AR/VR/XR. It also includes solutions for business communication like presentations, conferences, meetings, visitor guidance, hearing support and the education sector.  Sennheiser has collaborated with fashion companies, including with Swiss bag brand Freitag as well as Dior Homme.  In 2017, the Momentum M2 model in-ear headphones were voted Product of the Year by What Hi-Fi? magazine.

CEOs.

Andreas Sennheiser is a German business executive, known for serving as chief executive officer of Sennheiser. He took over as CEO along with his brother Daniel Sennheiser on July 1, 2013. Andreas was born in 1974 in Zurich, and earned a doctorate in Supply Chain Management from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 2004. Sennheiser Electronic was founded by his grandfather, Fritz Sennheiser, and he joined the family business with his brother Daniel. In 2013, both Daniel and Andreas were promoted to the position of CEO. Andreas focused on gaming handsets and affordable wireless headphones including Sennheiser PC350. Along with his brother Daniel, they entered the music business in 2014.

Research & development.

Overview.

Sennheiser has a total of four research and development sites in Germany, Switzerland, the USA and Singapore. In addition, the Innovation Campus in Wennebostel opened in 2015 with 7,000 square meters of space. According to Sennheiser, the company invested a total of 60.5 million euros in research and development in 2018.

AMBEO 3D Audio.

The AMBEO technology program is supposed to cover immersive audio products and activities from recording through processing and mixing to playback. According to the company, the technology is applicable in areas such as realistic live concert broadcasts, sports broadcasting, 3D recordings, exhibition installations, VR/AR/XR applications and 3D audio for the home.  Sennheiser has been recording 9.1 music since 2010 and has developed an upmix algorithm that generates 9.1 music from conventional stereo recordings. The AMBEO Music Blueprints provide information about the recording, mixing and playback of live music in 3D audio. The first AMBEO product to be introduced in 2016 was the AMBEO VR Mic for professional VR/AR/XR sound recording.

Awards & nominations.

In 2002, founder Fritz Sennheiser received with the Audio Engineering Society's gold medal.In 2004, Prof. Fritz Sennheiser was awarded the Diesel Medal of the German Institute for Inventions, the oldest innovation prize in Germany. In 2013, Sennheiser is honored with the Primetime Emmy Engineering Award, the Philo T. Farnsworth Award. The prize honors the companys's contribution to TV production technology.  In 2015, Prof. Dr. Jörg Sennheiser receives the German Founder's Prize in the Lifetime Achievement category.  In 2017, Dr. Andreas Sennheiser and Daniel Sennheiser are awarded the title Entrepreneur of The Year from Ernest and Young.

Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG (, ) is a German privately held audio company specializing in the design and production of a wide range of high fidelity products, including microphones, headphones, telephone accessories and aviation headsets for personal, professional and business applications. The company's head office is located in Wedemark, near Hanover, and the company is represented in more than 50 countries worldwide.


Names.

The mountain's official name in Kyrgyz is "Jengish Choqusu", which means "Victory Peak"; its Russian name is Pik Pobedy (or Peak Pobeda) meaning the same. In Uyghur, it is called Tömür, which is also the official name of the mountain in China. The Chinese name Tuōmù'ěr Fēng () is a combination of the Uighur "tomur", meaning 'iron' and Chinese "feng" meaning 'peak'.

Description.

Jengish Chokusu is a massif, with several summits along its lengthy ridge. Only its main summit breaks 7,000 m. It is located southwest of Khan Tengri (7,010 m / 22,998 ft), separated by the South Engilchek glacier, where base camps for both mountains are usually located.  The massif runs at right angles to the glaciers which flow from it into three alpine valleys in Kyrgyzstan on the north, all eventually running to the Engilchek Glacier, the largest in the Tian Shan. Its main summit is usually approached from the Zvozdochka (Russian for "little star") glacier, which is coloured red with rocks from Jengish Chokusu.  Administratively, the Kyrgyzstan side of the mountain is in the Ak-Suu District of Issyk-Kul Region and the Chinese side, in Wensu County of the Aksu Prefecture of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Records.

Jengish Chokusu is the highest mountain in Kyrgyzstan. Jengish Chokusu is considered the most northerly 7,000-metre mountain in the world by geologists; the actual rock summit of Khan Tengri, the Tian Shan's third highest peak, is 6,995m above sea level, though a thick layer of ice adds another 15m to its altitude, such that mountaineers classify it as 7,000m peak.  The South Engilchek Glacier and its side glaciers occupy the entire north side of Peak Jengish Chokusu. This glacier, currently at 60.5 km in length, is the sixth longest outside of the world's polar regions.

History.

Although Jengish Chokusu is over 400 metres higher, Khan Tengri was believed to be the highest peak in the range until Jengish Chokusu's survey in 1946.  A Soviet expedition mounted in 1938 to mark the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Youth movement Komsomol claimed to have climbed the highest peak in the area, the summit being reached on 19 September by L. Gutman, E. Ivanov and A. Sidorenko. They measured the altitude as 6,900 metres, and named the peak "Pik 20-ti letiya Komsomola" (Peak of the 20th Anniversary of Komsomol).  A survey by another team in 1943 found the peak to be 7,439 metres high. The peak was renamed as "Pik Pobedy" (Victory's Peak) in 1946 to commemorate the Soviet victory in World War II. The significant difference in altitude led to the 1938 ascent being called into question, although the official Soviet stand was to uphold the 1938 ascent.  A large-scale attempt on the peak in 1955 was disastrous, when 11 expedition members were killed in a blizzard. Jengish Chokusu's first indisputably verified ascent was in 1956 by Vitaly Abalakov's party.  A Chinese expedition climbed the peak from the Chinese side in 1977: the expedition book makes no mention of the Russian first ascent and gives the impression that the Chinese ascent was the first climb.  The first winter ascent of the peak was made by Valery Khrichtchatyi and Anatoli Boukreev in February 1990. The first solo speed ascent was made by Boukreev in August 1990.

Jengish Chokusu (,,, ; ;, "Pik Pobedy", ) is the highest mountain in the Tian Shan mountain system at. It lies on the Kyrgyzstan–China border between the raion of Ak-Suu, in the Issyk-Kul Region of far Eastern Kyrgyzstan and Wensu County, Xinjiang, China. It is part of the Kakshaal Too, the highest part of the Tian Shan and located southeast of lake Issyk Kul.


Biography.

Ficino was born at Figline Valdarno. His father Diotifeci d'Agnolo was a physician under the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, who took the young man into his household and became the lifelong patron of Marsilio, who was made tutor to his grandson, Lorenzo de' Medici. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the Italian humanist philosopher and scholar was another of his students.  During the sessions at Florence of the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1438–1445, during the failed attempts to heal the schism of the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) churches, Cosimo de' Medici and his intellectual circle had made acquaintance with the Neoplatonic philosopher George Gemistos Plethon, whose discourses upon Plato and the Alexandrian mystics so fascinated the learned society of Florence that they named him the second Plato. In 1459 John Argyropoulos was lecturing on Greek language and literature at Florence, and Ficino became his pupil.  When Cosimo decided to refound Plato's Academy at Florence he chose Ficino as its head. In 1462, Cosimo supplied Ficino with Greek manuscripts of Plato's work, whereupon Ficino started translating the entire corpus into Latin (draft translation of the dialogues finished 1468–9; published 1484). Ficino also produced a translation of a collection of Hellenistic Greek documents found by Leonardo da Pistoia later called Hermetica, and the writings of many of the Neoplatonists, including Porphyry, Iamblichus and Plotinus.  Among his many students was Francesco Cattani da Diacceto, who was considered by Ficino to be his successor as the head of the Florentine Platonic Academy. Diacceto's student, Giovanni di Bardo Corsi, produced a short biography of Ficino in 1506.  Though trained as a physician, Ficino became a priest in 1473.

Work.

In 1474 Ficino completed his treatise on the immortality of the soul, "Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae" (Platonic Theology). In the rush of enthusiasm for every rediscovery from Antiquity, he exhibited a great interest in the arts of astrology, which landed him in trouble with the Catholic Church. In 1489 he was accused of heresy before Pope Innocent VIII and needed strong defense to preserve him from condemnation.  Writing in 1492 Ficino proclaimed: "This century, like a golden age, has restored to light the liberal arts, which were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture, music... this century appears to have perfected astrology."  Ficino's letters, extending over the years 1474–1494, survive and have been published. He wrote "De amore" (1484). "De vita libri tres" (Three books on life), or "De triplici vita", published in 1489, provides a great deal of medical and astrological advice for maintaining health and vigor, as well as espousing the Neoplatonist view of the world's ensoulment and its integration with the human soul: One metaphor for this integrated "aliveness" is Ficino's astrology. In the "Book of Life", he details the interlinks between behavior and consequence. It talks about a list of things that hold sway over a man's destiny.  Probably due to early influences from his father Diotifeci, who was a doctor to Cosimo de' Medici, Ficino published Latin and Italian treatises on medical subjects such as "Consiglio contro la pestilenza" (Recommendations for the treatment of the plague) and "De vita libri tres" (Three books on life). His medical works exerted considerable influence on Renaissance physicians such as Paracelsus, with whom he shared the perception on the unity of the micro- and macrocosmos, and their interactions, through somatic and psychological manifestations, with the aim to investigate their signatures to cure diseases. Those works, which were very popular at the time, dealt with astrological and alchemical concepts. Thus Ficino came under the suspicion of heresy; especially after the publication of the third book in 1489, which contained specific instructions on healthful living.  Notably, Ficino coined the term Platonic love, which first appeared in his letter to Alamanno Donati in 1476. In 1492, Ficino published "Epistulae" (Epistles), which contained Platonic love letters, written in Latin, to his academic colleague and life-long friend Giovanni Cavalcanti concerning the nature of Platonic love. Importantly, Ficino's letters to Cavalcanti resulted in the popularization of the term Platonic love in Western Europe. Clement Salaman, a modern translator of Ficino’s letters, notes that, “Platonic Love has passed into common parlance as a love independent of physical attraction, a love central to Ficino’s concept of friendship.” Salaman also remarks that the love to which Finico referred in his letters is "purely spiritual; it was not a polite form of words, still less a reference to homosexual love. It was a love that was all-embracing." Despite the claims of modern revisionist historians, there is no evidence that Ficino was erotically attracted to men. Consistent with his life's task of reconciling Platonism with Catholicism, Ficino rejected physical expressions of love between two men as a “wicked crime.” “Love and the desire for physical union,” Ficino wrote, are “not identical impulses, but...opposite ones.” Further, Ficino condemned sodomy in "Convivium" and faithfully adhered to the precepts of Catholic moral teaching regarding sexuality.

Death.

Ficino died on 1 October 1499 at Careggi. In 1521 his memory was honored with a bust sculpted by Andrea Ferrucci, which is located in the south side of the nave in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

Marsilio Ficino (; Latin name: "Marsilius Ficinus"; 19 October 1433 – 1 October 1499) was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. He was an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism in touch with the major academics of his day and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin. His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's Academy, influenced the direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European philosophy.


Origins.

According to Edward Gibbon, the family originated from the Roman Attii family, which migrated from Rome to Este to defend Italy against the Ostrogoths. However, there is little evidence to support this hypothesis. The names of the early members of the family indicate that a Frankish origin is much more likely. The first known member of the house was Margrave Adalbert of Mainz, known only as the father of Oberto I, Count palatine of Italy, who died around 975. Oberto's grandson, Albert Azzo II, Margrave of Milan (996–1097) built a castle at Este, near Padua, and named himself after the location. He had three sons from two marriages, two of whom became the ancestors of the two branches of the family:  The two surviving branches, with Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony and Bavaria on the German (Welf dynasty) side, concluded an agreement in 1154 which allocated the family's Italian possessions to the younger line, the Fulc-Este, who in the course of time acquired Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. Este itself was taken over in 1275 by Padua, and in 1405 (together with Padua) by Venice.

Elder branch, Guelph, Electors of Hanover.

The elder branch of the House of Este, the House of Welf, historically rendered as "Guelf" or "Guelph" in English, produced dukes of Bavaria (1070–1139, 1156–1180), dukes of Saxony (1138–1139, 1142–1180), a German King (1198–1218), the dukes of Brunswick and Lüneburg (1208–1918) (later styled the "Electors of Hanover") when the two branches of the family recombined in 1705. The senior branch of the House of Welf continued to be ruled by the princes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, as undisputed until the death of the ruling duke of Brunswick Prince William VIII, in 1884. Prior to his death, his brother Karl II from Geneva Switzerland, as exiled de jure ruler of the house, had declared the Prussian annexation of the crown and the earlier Hanoverian usurpation absolutely illegal acts of usurpation inside of the German House. At his death, his grandson continued internationally recognized appeals. Hanover formed the Guelph Party (or German Party) to continue political appeals against the Prussian and German annexations of the crown.  After the peace ending the Napoleonic wars reshaped Europe, ushering in the Modern era, the Electorate of Hanover (duchy of Brunswick and Lüneburg, held in personal union by the king of Great Britain, George III) was dissolved by treaty. Its lands were enlarged and the state was promoted to a kingdom. The new kingdom existed from 1815 to 1866, but upon the accession of Queen Victoria (who could not inherit Hanover under Salic law) in 1837, it passed to her uncle, Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover, and thus ceased to be in personal union with the British Crown.  The House of Este gave Great Britain and the United Kingdom the "Hanoverian monarchs" (1714–1901).

Younger branch, the Margraves of Este.

All later generations of the Italian branch are descendants of Fulco d'Este. From 1171 on, his descendants were titled Margraves of Este.  Obizzo I (d. 1193), the first margrave, battled against Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. His nephew Azzo d'Este VI (1170–1212) became podestà of Mantua and Verona. As the dowry of his niece "the Marchesella", Ferrara passed to Azzo VI d'Este In 1146, with the last of the Adelardi. In 1242 Azzo VII "Novello" was nominated podestà for his lifetime.  The lordship of Ferrara was made hereditary by Obizzo II (d. 1293), who was proclaimed Lord of Ferrara in 1264, Lord of Modena in 1288, and Lord of Reggio in 1289. Ferrara was a papal fief and the Este family were given the position of hereditary papal vicars in 1332.  Ferrara became a significant center of culture under Niccolò d'Este III (1384–1441), who received several popes with great magnificence, especially Eugene IV. He held a Council in Ferrara in 1438, later known as the Council of Florence.  His successors were his illegitimate sons Leonello (1407–1450) and Borso (1413–1471), who was elevated to Duke of Modena and Reggio by Emperor Frederick III in 1452, receiving these duchies as imperial fiefs. In 1471, he received the duchy of Ferrara as papal fief from Pope Paul II, for which occasion splendid frescoes were executed at Palazzo Schifanoia.  Borso was succeeded by a half-brother, Ercole (1431–1505), who was one of the most significant patrons of the arts in late 15th and early 16th century Italy. Ferrara grew into a cultural center renowned especially for music; Josquin des Prez worked for Duke Ercole, Jacob Obrecht came to Ferrara twice, and Antoine Brumel served as principal musician from 1505. Ercole's daughter Beatrice (1475–1497) married Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan; another daughter, Isabella (1474–1539), married Francesco Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua.  Ercole I's successor was his son Alfonso I (1476–1534), third husband of Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI, sister to Cesare Borgia. Alfonso I was a patron of Ariosto.  The son of Alfonso and Lucrezia Borgia, Ercole d'Este II (1508–1559), married Renée of France, daughter of Louis XII of France. His son Alfonso II first married Lucrezia, daughter of grand-duke Cosimo I of Tuscany. After she died, he married Barbara, the sister of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor (1527–1576). His third wife, Margherita Gonzaga, was daughter of the duke of Mantua.  Ercole raised the glory of Ferrara to its highest point, continuing the patron of Torquato Tasso and Giovanni Battista Guarini and in general favoring the arts and sciences, as the princes of his house had always done. The legitimate line ended in 1597 with him; as his heir, Emperor Rudolph II recognized his first cousin Cesare d'Este (1533–1628), member of a cadet branch born out of wedlock, who continued to rule in the imperial duchies and carried on the family name. Ferrara, on the other hand, was annexed by force of arms in 1598 by Pope Clement VIII on grounds of the heir's illegitimacy and incorporated into the Papal States.  The last duke, Ercole III, was deposed in 1796 by the French. His two duchies became the Cispadane Republic which one year later was merged into the Cisalpine Republic and then into the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. Ercole was compensated in 1801 with the small principality of Breisgau in southwestern Germany, whose previous rulers, the Habsburgs, ceded it to him in anticipation of its eventual return to the Habsburgs, since Ercole's daughter Maria Beatrice Ricciarda d'Este was married to a cadet Habsburg, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este. Ercole died in 1803 and Breisgau passed to his daughter and her husband, who in 1806 lost it during the Napoleonic reorganization of the western territories of the defunct Holy Roman Empire to the enlarged and elevated Grand Duchy of Baden.

The House of Este (,, ) was an Italian princely family, linked with several contemporary royal dynasties, including the House of Habsburg and the British royal family.


History.

Background.

Access to Pripyat, unlike cities of military importance, was not restricted before the disaster, as the Soviet Union deemed nuclear power stations safer than other types of power plants. Nuclear power stations were presented as achievements of Soviet engineering, harnessing nuclear power for peaceful projects. The slogan "peaceful atom" () was popular during those times. The original plan had been to build the plant only from Kiev, but the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, among other bodies, expressed concern that would be too close to the city. As a result, the power station and Pripyat were built at their current locations, about from Kiev. After the disaster, the city of Pripyat was evacuated in two days.

Post-Chernobyl years.

In 1986, the city of Slavutych was constructed to replace Pripyat. After the city of Chernobyl, this was the second-largest city for accommodating power plant workers and scientists in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).  One notable landmark often featured in photographs of the city and visible from aerial-imaging websites is the long-abandoned Ferris wheel located in the Pripyat amusement park, which had been scheduled to have its official opening five days after the disaster, in time for May Day celebrations. The Azure Swimming Pool and Avanhard Stadium are two other popular tourist sites.

Infrastructure and statistics.

The following statistics are from January 1, 1986.

Safety.

A natural concern is whether it is safe to visit Pripyat and the surroundings. The Zone of Alienation is considered relatively safe to visit, and several Ukrainian companies offer guided tours around the area. In most places within the city, the level of radiation does not exceed an equivalent dose of 1 μSv (one microsievert) per hour.

Climate.

The climate of Pripyat is designated as Dfb (Warm-summer humid continental climate) on the Köppen Climate Classification System.

Transport.

The city was served by Yaniv station on the Chernihiv–Ovruch railway. It was an important passenger hub of the line and was located between the southern suburb of Pripyat and the village of Yaniv. An electric train terminus of Semikhody, built in 1988 and located in front of the nuclear plant, is currently the only operating station near Pripyat connecting it to Slavutych.

Pripyat or Prypiat ( ;, ; ) is a ghost city in northern Ukraine, near the Ukraine–Belarus border. Named after the nearby river Pripyat, the city was founded on February 4, 1970, as the ninth nuclear city (a type of closed city) in the Soviet Union, to serve the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It was officially proclaimed a city in 1979 and had grown to a population of 49,360 by the time it was evacuated on the afternoon of April 27, 1986, the day after the Chernobyl disaster.


Structure.

The pons is in the brainstem situated between the midbrain and the medulla oblongata, and in front of the cerebellum. A separating groove between the pons and the medulla is the inferior pontine sulcus. The superior pontine sulcus separates the pons from the midbrain. The pons can be broadly divided into two parts: the basilar part of the pons (ventral pons), and the pontine tegmentum (dorsal pons). Running down the midline of the ventral surface is the basilar sulcus, a groove for the basilar artery. Most of the pons is supplied by the pontine arteries, which arise from the basilar artery. A smaller portion of the pons is supplied by the anterior and posterior inferior cerebellar arteries.  The pons in humans measures about in length. Most of it appears as a broad anterior bulge above the medulla. Posteriorly, it consists mainly of two pairs of thick stalks called cerebellar peduncles. They connect the cerebellum to the pons (middle cerebellar peduncle) and midbrain (superior cerebellar peduncle).

Development.

During embryonic development, the metencephalon develops from the rhombencephalon and gives rise to two structures: the pons and the cerebellum. The alar plate produces sensory neuroblasts, which will give rise to the solitary nucleus and its special visceral afferent (SVA) column; the cochlear and vestibular nuclei, which form the special somatic afferent (SSA) fibers of the vestibulocochlear nerve, the spinal and principal trigeminal nerve nuclei, which form the general somatic afferent column (GSA) of the trigeminal nerve, and the pontine nuclei which relays to the cerebellum.  Basal plate neuroblasts give rise to the abducens nucleus, which forms the general somatic efferent fibers (GSE); the facial and motor trigeminal nuclei, which form the special visceral efferent (SVE) column, and the superior salivatory nucleus, which forms the general visceral efferent fibers (GVE) of the facial nerve.

Nuclei.

A number of cranial nerve nuclei are present in the pons:

Function.

The functions of these four cranial nerves (V-VIII) include regulation of respiration, controls involuntary actions, sensory roles in hearing, equilibrium, and taste, and in facial sensations such as touch and pain, as well as motor roles in eye movement, facial expressions, chewing, swallowing, and the secretion of saliva and tears.  The pons contains nuclei that relay signals from the forebrain to the cerebellum, along with nuclei that deal primarily with sleep, respiration, swallowing, bladder control, hearing, equilibrium, taste, eye movement, facial expressions, facial sensation, and posture.  Within the pons is the pneumotaxic center consisting of the subparabrachial and the medial parabrachial nuclei. This center regulates the change from inhalation to exhalation.  The pons is implicated in sleep paralysis, and may also play a role in generating dreams.

Other animals.

Evolution.

The pons first evolved as an offshoot of the medullary reticular formation. Since lampreys possess a pons, it has been argued that it must have evolved as a region distinct from the medulla by the time the first agnathans appeared, 505 million years ago.

The pons (Latin for "bridge") is part of the brainstem, and in humans and other bipeds lies inferior to the midbrain, superior to the medulla oblongata and anterior to the cerebellum.


Wearing a blazer.

Blazers are worn with a wide variety of other clothes, ranging from a dress shirt and necktie to an open-necked polo shirt, or even just a plain T-shirt. They are seen with trousers of all colours and fabrics, from the classic white cotton or linen, to grey flannel, to brown or beige chinos, and also jeans.  A fitted, classically cut, double-breasted navy blue blazer with navy-style buttons is a popular design and sometimes referred to as a "reefer" blazer. Particularly in North America and the United Kingdom, it is now frequently used in business casual attire. Blazers, in a wide range of colours, are worn as part of school uniforms by many schools across the Commonwealth, and are still daily wear for most uniformed pupils in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. These are blazers in the traditional sense: single-breasted, and often of bright colours or with piping. This style is also worn by some boat clubs, such as those in Cambridge or Oxford, with the piped version used only on special occasions such as a boat club dinner. In this case, the piping is in college colours, and college buttons are worn. This traditional style can be seen in many films set in the Edwardian era, such as "Kind Hearts and Coronets".  Where the blazer is part of the dress of a school, college, sports club, or armed service regimental association (veterans' organization), it is normal for a badge to be sewn to the breast pocket. In schools, this badge may vary according to the pupil's standing in the school: being a member of the junior or senior school, being a prefect, or having been awarded colours in recognition of particular achievement in some academic or sporting field. In the British Commonwealth, many regimental associations wear "regimental blazers" which also sport a similar badge on the breast pocket, usually in the form of a wire badge, and sometimes also regimental blazer buttons.  In the British army, officers do not normally wear badges on their blazers (or boating jackets). Two regimental blazers will rarely be the same, as they are sourced from different civilian suppliers and are not issued by any authority. This results from the fact that the members of the association are no longer serving personnel, but civilians, though still retaining the bond that the badge represents. The standard colour is navy blue, although in some associations different colours are worn, such as rifle green for the associations of rifle regiments.  Blazers, once commonly worn playing or attending traditional "gentlemen's sports", persist in only some games now, such as occasional use by tennis players, or in cricket, where in professional matches, such as international test matches, it is considered customary for the captain to wear a blazer with the team's logo or national coat of arms on the breast pocket – at least during the coin toss at the beginning of the match.  Two sporting events where blazers signify victory are the Congressional Cup Regatta at the Long Beach Yacht Club, and the Masters golf tournament, held in Augusta, Georgia. The former event awards a crimson blazer to the winner of several flights of match race sailing of the highest international calibre, while the latter awards a green blazer to the top Masters golfer in the USA.

History.

The sartorial term "blazer" originated with the red "blazers" of the Lady Margaret Boat Club (1825), the rowing club of St. John's College, Cambridge. The Lady Margaret club jackets were termed "blazers" because of the bright red cloth, and the term survived the original red coat. A writer to the London "Daily News" (22 August 1889) commented that "In your article of to-day... you speak of 'a striped red and black blazer', 'the blazer', also of 'the pale toned' ones... A blazer is the red flannel boating jacket worn by the Lady Margaret, St. John's College, Cambridge, Boat Club. When I was at Cambridge it meant that and nothing else. It seems from your article that a blazer now means a coloured flannel jacket, whether for cricket, tennis, boating, or seaside wear." These early blazers were like later sports jackets, but this term has never referred to blazers, instead describing jackets derived from the later innovation of wearing odd jackets for land-based sports. Assertions that the name is derived from HMS "Blazer" are not borne out by contemporary sources, although it is reported that before the standardization of uniform in the Royal Navy, the crew of HMS "Blazer" wore "striped blue and white jackets", apparently in response to the sailors of HMS "Harlequin" being turned out in harlequin suits. As late as 1837 the gig's crew of HMS "Blazer" were dressed by their Captain in jackets of blue and white stripes and it is from this that the word "blazer", meaning a striped jacket, has entered the language.  The reefer jacket was of naval origin, and described the short double-breasted jacket worn by sailors in harsh weather, when they performed duties such as reefing the sails. It is descendants of this which are now commonly described by the term "blazer". Originally with black horn buttons, these jackets evolved to the modern dark blazer, now single as well as double breasted, and with metallic buttons.  Striped blazers became popular among British Mods in the early 1960s, and again during the Mod revival of the late 1970s – particularly in three-colour thick/thin stripe combinations, with three-button single-breasted front, five- or six-inch side or centre vents, and cuffs with multiple buttons. Various photos from 1964 and 1965 show London mods in boating blazers. Photos of mod icons The Who from 1964 (as the High Numbers) variously show Pete Townshend, Keith Moon and John Entwistle wearing boating blazers. Another mod band, Small Faces, and other bands liked by mods – such as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Kinks, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Moody Blues and The Troggs – had band members wearing striped blazers/boating jackets, or later, brightly coloured blazers with wide white or other light edging. These later blazers often had non-metal buttons, sometimes in the same colour as the edging. The earlier style of striped blazers can be seen in the film "Quadrophenia". The later, bright, style of blazer was affectionately adopted by Austin Powers as part of his Swinging-London look. By the late 2000s the blazer had been adopted as a popular fashion trend amongst women, often having shorter lengths, rolled-up sleeves, various lapels and bright colours.

A blazer is a type of jacket resembling a suit jacket, but cut more casually. A blazer is generally distinguished from a sport coat as a more formal garment and tailored from solid colour fabrics. Blazers often have naval-style metal buttons to reflect their origins as jackets worn by boating club members.


Complete list of municipalities.

Bakov nad Jizerou - Bělá pod Bezdězem - Benátky nad Jizerou - Bezno - Bílá Hlína - Bítouchov - Boreč - Boseň - Bradlec - Branžež - Březina - Březno - Březovice - Brodce - Bukovno - Čachovice - Charvatce - Chocnějovice - "Chotětov" - Chudíř - Čistá - Ctiměřice - Dalovice - Dlouhá Lhota - Dobrovice - Dobšín - Dolní Bousov - Dolní Krupá - Dolní Slivno - Dolní Stakory - Domousnice - Doubravička - Horky nad Jizerou - Horní Bukovina - Horní Slivno - Hrdlořezy - Hrušov - Husí Lhota - Jabkenice - Jivina - Jizerní Vtelno - Josefův Důl - Katusice - Klášter Hradiště nad Jizerou - Kluky - Kněžmost - Kobylnice - Kochánky - Kolomuty - Koryta - Košátky - Kosmonosy - Kosořice - Kováň - Kovanec - Krásná Ves - Krnsko - Kropáčova Vrutice - Ledce - Lhotky - Lipník - Loukov - Loukovec - Luštěnice - Mečeříž - Mladá Boleslav - Mnichovo Hradiště - Mohelnice nad Jizerou - Mukařov - Němčice - Nemyslovice - Nepřevázka - Neveklovice - Niměřice - Nová Telib - Nová Ves u Bakova - Obrubce - Obruby - Pěčice - Pětikozly - Petkovy - Písková Lhota - Plazy - Plužná - Předměřice nad Jizerou - Přepeře - Prodašice - Ptýrov - Rabakov - Rohatsko - Rokytá - Rokytovec - Řepov - Řitonice - Sedlec - Semčice - Sezemice - Skalsko - Skorkov - Smilovice - Sojovice - "Sovínky" - Strašnov - Strážiště - Strenice - Sudoměř - Sukorady - Tuřice - Ujkovice - Velké Všelisy - Veselice - Vinařice - Vinec - Vlkava - Vrátno - Všejany - Žďár - Zdětín - Žerčice - Židněves

Mladá Boleslav District () is a district ("okres") within Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. Its capital is the city of Mladá Boleslav.


Extent.

From the Pamirs of Tajikistan, the Kunlun Mountains run east along the border between Xinjiang and Tibet autonomous regions to the Sino-Tibetan ranges in Qinghai province. They stretch along the southern edge of what is now called the Tarim Basin, the infamous Takla Makan or "sand-buried houses" desert, and the Gobi Desert. A number of important rivers flow from the range including the Karakash River ('Black Jade River') and the Yurungkash River ('White Jade River'), which flow through the Khotan Oasis into the Taklamakan Desert.  Altyn-Tagh or Altun Range is one of the chief northern ranges of the Kunlun. Its northeastern extension Qilian Shan is another main northern range of the Kunlun. In the south main extension is the Min Shan. Bayan Har Mountains, a southern branch of the Kunlun Mountains, forms the watershed between the catchment basins of China's two longest rivers, the Yangtze River and the Yellow River.  The highest mountain of the Kunlun Shan is the Kunlun Goddess (7,167 m) in the Keriya area in western Kunlun Shan. Some authorities claim that the Kunlun extends further northwest-wards as far as Kongur Tagh (7,649 m) and the famous Muztagh Ata (7,546 m). But these mountains are physically much more closely linked to the Pamir group (ancient Mount Imeon). The Arka Tagh (Arch Mountain) is in the center of the Kunlun Shan; its highest points are Ulugh Muztagh (6,973 m) and Bukadaban Feng (6,860 m). In the eastern Kunlun Shan the highest peaks are Yuzhu Peak (6,224 m) and Amne Machin [also Dradullungshong] (6,282 m); the latter is the eastern major peak in Kunlun Shan range and is thus considered as the eastern edge of Kunlun Shan range.  The mountain range formed at the northern edges of the Cimmerian Plate during its collision, in the Late Triassic, with Siberia, which resulted in the closing of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean.  The range has very few roads and in its 3,000 km length is crossed by only two. In the west, Highway 219 traverses the range en route from Yecheng, Xinjiang to Lhatse, Tibet. Further east, Highway 109 crosses between Lhasa and Golmud.

Kunlun Volcanic Group.

Over 70 volcanic cones form the Kunlun Volcanic Group. They are not volcanic mountains, but cones. As such, they are not counted among the world volcanic mountain peaks. The group, however, musters the heights of above sea level (). If they were considered volcanic mountains, they would constitute the highest volcano in Asia and China and second highest in the Eastern Hemisphere (after Mount Kilimanjaro) and one of Volcanic Seven Summits by elevation. (Mount Damavand is the highest volcano in Asia, not the Kunlun cones.) The last known eruption in the volcanic group was on May 27, 1951.

Mythology.

Kunlun is originally the name of a mythical mountain believed to be a Taoist paradise. The first to visit this paradise was, according to the legends, King Mu (976-922 BCE) of the Zhou Dynasty. He supposedly discovered there the Jade Palace of the Yellow Emperor, the mythical originator of Chinese culture, and met Hsi Wang Mu (Xi Wang Mu), the 'Spirit Mother of the West' usually called the 'Queen Mother of the West', who was the object of an ancient religious cult which reached its peak in the Han Dynasty, and also had her mythical abode in these mountains. <br>

In popular culture.

The Kunlun mountains (spelled "Kuen-Lun" in the book) are described as the location of the Shangri-La monastery in the 1933 novel "Lost Horizon" by English writer James Hilton.  The mountains are the site of the fictional city of K'un Lun in the Marvel Comics Iron Fist series and the TV show of the same name.  The Kunlun mountain range serves as the setting for a mission in the 2013 video game "Battlefield 4" in which a Chinese high-security prison is located within the mountains. The multiplayer map "Operation Locker" features the location as well.

The Kunlun Mountains (, ;, "Khöndlön Uuls"; ) constitute one of the longest mountain chains in Asia, extending for more than. In the broadest sense, the chain forms the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau south of the Tarim Basin.


Names.

The name "Khan Tengri" literally means "King Heaven" in Kazakh and possibly references the deity Tengri. In some other local languages, it is known as "Khan Tangiri Shyngy", "Kan-Too Chokusu", "Pik Khan-Tengry", and "Hantengri Feng". (,, Han Táńiri, حان تأڭئرئ;, حان-تەڭىرى; ;, Xiao'erjing: هًا تٍْ قْ لِ فعْ). Local residents named the mountain Khan-Tengri for the unique beauty of snow giants.

Features.

Khan Tengri is a massive marble pyramid, covered in snow and ice. At sunset the marble glows red, giving it the name "blood mountain" in Kazakh and Kyrgyz (; ). Located just across the South Engilchek (or Inylchek) glacier, 16 km north of Jengish Chokusu, Khan Tengri was originally thought to be the highest peak in the Tian Shan because of its dramatic, steep shape, compared to the massive bulk of Jengish Chokusu. This perception was probably also due to Khan Tengri's visibility across the plains of southern Kazakhstan while Jengish Chokusu remains out of view of civilization. Khan Tengri is the highest peak in the rugged Tengri Tag subrange, also known as the Mustag, that also contains Chapaev Peak () and Gorky Peak (). Anatoli Boukreev considered Khan Tengri perhaps the world's most beautiful peak because of its geometric ridges and its symmetry.

History.

Although it is almost 430 m (1,500 ft) lower than its neighbor, Khan Tengri was believed to be the highest peak in the range until Jengish Chokusu was surveyed in 1943 and determined to be higher.  Peter Semenov was the first European to see the Tengri Tag and its peak, the colossal Khan Tengri (in 1857).  The first ascent of the peak was made in 1931 by Mikhail Pogrebetsky's Ukrainian team by a route from the south (Kyrgyzstan side), then along the west ridge. M. Kuzmin's team made the first ascent from the north (Kazakhstan side) in 1964. Khan Tengri is one of five peaks that a Soviet mountaineer needed to scale to earn the prestigious Snow Leopard award  To conquer the peak, you need serious physical and high- altitude training, since the mountain is technically difficult.  1990 — Anatoli Boukreev achieved the first solo speed ascent.  Austrian mountaineer and expedition leader Toni Dürnberger died while descending after having climbed Khan Tengri on 17 August 1992.  The peak appears on the Kyrgyz 100 som bill. In 2004, more than a dozen mountaineers were killed in a large avalanche on the Pogrebetsky route, the most popular route on the mountain.

Khan Tengri is a mountain of the Tian Shan mountain range. It is located on the China—Kyrgyzstan—Kazakhstan tripoint, east of lake Issyk Kul. Its geologic elevation is, but its glacial cap rises to. For this reason, in mountaineering circles, including for the Soviet Snow Leopard award criteria, it is considered a 7,000-metre peak.


Synthesis.

The classic 1964 synthesis starts with the conversion of 2-cyclopentenone to 2-bromocyclopentadienone:  Allylic bromination with "N"-bromosuccinimide in carbon tetrachloride followed by addition of molecular bromine to the alkene gives a 2,3,4-tribromocyclopentanone. Treating this compound with diethylamine in diethyl ether causes elimination of two equivalents of hydrogen bromide to give the diene product.  The construction of the eight-carbon cubane framework begins when 2-bromocyclopentadienone undergoes a spontaneous Diels-Alder dimerization, analogous to the dimerization of cyclopentadiene to dicyclopentadiene—two molecules of 1 react to form 2. For the subsequent steps to succeed, only the "endo" isomer is useful, and this is the predominant isomer formed in this reaction. This is the most likely product as a result of minimized steric interactions between the bromine of each molecule with the bromine and carbonyl of the other when the reactants approach each other and minimized like-dipole interactions in the transition state of the reaction itself. Both carbonyl groups are protected as acetals with ethylene glycol and "p"-toluenesulfonic acid in benzene; one acetal is then selectively deprotected with aqueous hydrochloric acid to 3.  In the next step, the "endo" isomer 3 (with both alkene groups in close proximity) forms the cage-like isomer 4 in a photochemical [2+2] cycloaddition. The bromoketone group is converted to ring-contracted carboxylic acid 5 in a Favorskii rearrangement with potassium hydroxide. Next, the thermal decarboxylation takes place through the acid chloride (with thionyl chloride) and the "tert"-butyl perester 6 (with "tert"-butyl hydroperoxide and pyridine) to 7; afterward, the acetal is once more removed in 8. A second Favorskii rearrangement gives 9, and finally another decarboxylation gives, via 10, cubane (11).

Derivatives.

The synthesis of the octaphenyl derivative from tetraphenylcyclobutadiene nickel bromide by Freedman in 1962 pre-dates that of the parent compound. It is a sparingly soluble colourless compound that melts at 425–427 °C. A hypercubane, with a hypercube-like structure, was predicted to exist in a 2014 publication. Two different isomers of cubene have been synthesized, and a third analyzed computationally. The alkene in "ortho"-cubene is exceptionally reactive due to its pyramidalized geometry. At the time of its synthesis, this was the most pyramidalized alkene to have been successfully made. The "meta"-cubene isomer is even less stable, and the "para"-cubene isomer probably only exists as a diradical rather than an actual diagonal bond.

Cubylcubanes and Oligocubanes.

Cubane (1,2-dehydrocubane) and 1,4-cubanediyl(1,4-dehydrocubane) are enormously strained compounds which both undergo nucleophilic addition very rapidly, and this has enabled chemists to synthesize cubylcubane. X-ray diffraction structure solution has shown that the central cubylcubane bond is exceedingly short (1.458 Angstrom), much shorter than the typical C-C single bond (1.578 Angstrom). This is attributed to the fact that the exocyclic orbitals of cubane are s-rich and close to the nucleus. Chemists at the University of Chicago extended and modified the sequence in a way that permits the preparation of a host of [n]cubylcubane oligomers. The [n]cubylcubanes are rigid molecular rods with the particular promise at the time of making liquid crystals with exceptional UV transparency. As the number of linked cubane units increases, the solubility of [n]cubylcubane plunges; as a result, only limited chain length (up to 40 units) have been successfully synthesized in solutions. The skeleton of [n]cubylcubanes is still composed of enormously strained carbon cubes, which therefore limit its stability. In contrast, researchers at Penn State University showed that poly-cubane synthesized by solid-state reaction is 100% sp3 carbon bonded with a tetrahedral angle (109.5 degree) and exhibits exceptional optical properties (high refractive index).

Reactions.

Cuneane may be produced from cubane by a metal-ion-catalyzed σ-bond rearrangement.

Cubane (CH) is a synthetic hydrocarbon molecule that consists of eight carbon atoms arranged at the corners of a cube, with one hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom. A solid crystalline substance, cubane is one of the Platonic hydrocarbons and a member of the prismanes. It was first synthesized in 1964 by Philip Eaton and Thomas Cole. Before this work, researchers believed that cubic carbon-based molecules would be too unstable to exist. The cubic shape requires the carbon atoms to adopt an unusually sharp 90° bonding angle, which would be highly strained as compared to the 109.45° angle of a tetrahedral carbon. Once formed, cubane is quite kinetically stable, due to a lack of readily available decomposition paths. It is the simplest hydrocarbon with octahedral symmetry.


Complete list of municipalities.

Bezděkov pod Třemšínem - Bohostice - Bohutín - Borotice - Bratkovice - Březnice - Buková u Příbramě - Bukovany - Čenkov - Cetyně - Chotilsko - Chrást - Chraštice - Čím - Daleké Dušníky - Dlouhá Lhota - Dobříš - Dolní Hbity - Drahenice - Drahlín - Drásov - Drevníky - Drhovy - Dubenec - Dubno - Dublovice - Háje - Hluboš - Hlubyně - Horčápsko - Hudčice - Hřiměždice - Hvožďany - Jablonná - Jesenice - "Jince" - Kamýk nad Vltavou - Klučenice - Kňovice - Korkyně - Kosova Hora - Kotenčice - Koupě - Kozárovice - Krásná Hora nad Vltavou - Křepenice - Křešín - Láz - Lazsko - Lešetice - Lhota u Příbramě - Malá Hraštice - Milešov - Milín - Modřovice - Mokrovraty - Nalžovice - Narysov - Nečín - Nedrahovice - Nechvalice - Nepomuk - Nestrašovice - Nová Ves pod Pleší - Nové Dvory - Nový Knín - Občov - Obecnice - Obory - Obořiště - Ohrazenice - Osečany - Ostrov - Ouběnice - Pečice - Petrovice - Pičín - Počaply - Počepice - Podlesí - Prosenická Lhota - Příbram - Příčovy - Radětice - Radíč - Rosovice - Rožmitál pod Třemšínem - Rybníky - Sádek - Sedlčany - Sedlec-Prčice - Sedlice - Smolotely - Solenice - Stará Huť - Starosedlský Hrádek - Štětkovice - Suchodol - Svaté Pole - Svatý Jan - Svojšice - Těchařovice - Tochovice - Třebsko - Trhové Dušníky - Tušovice - Velká Lečice - Věšín - Višňová - Volenice - Voznice - Vrančice - Vranovice - Vševily - Vysoká u Příbramě - "Vysoký Chlumec" - Zalužany - Zbenice - Zduchovice - Županovice

Příbram District () is a district ("okres") within the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. Its capital is the town of Příbram and the towns of Dobříš and Sedlčany are larger centres.


Geography.

With a total area of 1,379 km2 it is the largest district of the Pardubice Region. From the total area of the district, agricultural land occupies 835.1 km2 (arable land 628,8 km2, permanent pastures 171.3 km2 and water bodies 10.8 km2). Forests cover 31.3% of the district's area.  The district is divided into drainage basins of the Elbe and the Danube. The main rivers in the district are Svitava (central part of the district), Svratka (south-eastern part), Třebůvka (eastern part), Třebovka and Loučná (both in the north-western part). The former three rivers comprise part of the Danube basin, while the latter two comprise part of the Elbe basin. The largest water body in Svitavy District is the pond Hvězda, with an area of 82 ha.

Demography.

As of 31 December 2012, the district had 104,971 inhabitants from which 53,120 were women and 51,851 were men. The average age was 40.9 years; 15.3% of the inhabitants were 14 years or younger, while 16.5% were 65 years or older. The district's workforce counted 53,955 people.

Climate.

The district has a continental climate which is characterised by significant variations in temperature in the course of the year. There are slight variations between the climate in various parts of the district. The northwestern and southeastern part of the district have an average temperature of 7 °C and precipitation up to 600 mm in one year. The central part of the district is slightly cooler and more humid, with an average temperature of 6 °C and precipitation of 700 mm. The southeastern part of the district is even cooler and even more humid.

Economy.

The district has been suffering from the highest unemployment rate in the Pardubice region, reaching 8.6% at the end of 2012.  The economy of the district is oriented towards agriculture and manufacturing. The share of the district's employment accounted for by agriculture has been steadily decreasing, yet it is still higher than in other districts of the Pardubice Region. The agricultural sector mainly produces cereals and rapeseed.  There is a relatively varied structure of manufacturing in the Svitavy district. Food and textile production comprise the main volume of manufacturing. However, the long-term importance of textile manufacturing is decreasing. Glass fibre production, metalworking and mechanical engineering are other important branches of manufacturing in the district.

Svitavy District () is a district ("okres") within Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic. Its capital is the town of Svitavy. As a part of Pardubice Region the district has borders with Ústí nad Orlicí District to the north and Chrudim District to the west. The district was administratively formed in 1960, when the former districts of Litomyšl, Moravská Třebová, Polička and Svitavy were merged.


Complete list of municipalities.

Bačalky - Bašnice - Běchary - Bílsko u Hořic - Boháňka - Borek - Brada-Rybníček - Březina - Bříšťany - Budčeves - Bukvice - Butoves - Bystřice - Cerekvice nad Bystřicí - Červená Třemešná - Češov - Cholenice - Chomutice - Choteč - Chyjice - Dětenice - Dílce - Dobrá Voda u Hořic - Dolní Lochov - Dřevěnice - Holín - Holovousy - Hořice - Jeřice - Jičín - Jičíněves - Jinolice - Kacákova Lhota - Kbelnice - Kněžnice - Konecchlumí - Kopidlno - Kostelec - Kovač - Kozojedy - Kyje - Lázně Bělohrad - Libáň - Libošovice - Libuň - Lískovice - Lukavec u Hořic - Lužany - Markvartice - Miletín - Milovice u Hořic - Mladějov - Mlázovice - Nemyčeves - Nevratice - Nová Paka - Ohařice - Ohaveč - Osek - Ostroměř - Ostružno - Pecka - Petrovičky - Podhorní Újezd a Vojice - Podhradí - Podůlší - Radim - Rašín - Rohoznice - Rokytňany - Samšina - Sběř - Sedliště - Sekeřice - Slatiny - Slavhostice - Sobčice - Soběraz - Sobotka - Stará Paka - Staré Hrady - Staré Místo - Staré Smrkovice - Střevač - Sukorady - Svatojanský Újezd - Šárovcova Lhota - Tetín - Třebnouševes - Třtěnice - Tuř - Úbislavice - Údrnice - Úhlejov - Újezd pod Troskami - Úlibice - Valdice - Veliš - Vidochov - Vitiněves - Volanice - Vrbice - Vršce - Vřesník - Vysoké Veselí - Zámostí-Blata - Zelenecká Lhota - Železnice - Žeretice - Židovice - Žlunice

Tourism.

The district includes a number of natural reserves. The best known of these is the Bohemian Paradise Landscape Park, which includes the Prachov Rocks range of sandstone formations.  The Kost Castle is the most important cultural sight in the district.

Economy.

The district is home to the largest deposit of high-quality glass sand within the Czech Republic.

Jičín District () is a district ("okres") within the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic. Its capital is the town of Jičín.


Overview.

Pardubice District is the smallest district of the region but has the highest population density. Its terrain is mostly flat, dominated by Kunětice Mountain. Agriculture specialises on grain, cattle feed and vegetables. Chemical, engineering and electrotechnical industries are the most important. The city of Pardubice is one of the main focuses of cultural life. Among the city's tourist attractions are the historical center of Pardubice, Kunětice Mountain Castle, the baroque castle in Choltice, the African museum dedicated to Emil Holub in Holice and the recreational area around the river Elbe.

Transport.

Pardubice has an international airport and is a busy railway center. The once important Elbe River transport is in depression. A new highway (in the direction to Olomouc) is planned to relieve congestion on the roads.

Complete list of municipalities.

Barchov - Bezděkov - Borek - Brloh - Břehy - Bukovina nad Labem - Bukovina u Přelouče - Bukovka - Býšť - Časy - Čeperka - Čepí - Černá u Bohdanče - Choltice - Choteč - Chrtníky - Chvaletice - Chvojenec - Chýšť - Dašice - Dolany - Dolní Roveň - Dolní Ředice - Dříteč - Dubany - Hlavečník - Holice - Holotín - Horní Jelení - Horní Ředice - Hrobice - Jankovice - Jaroslav - Jedousov - Jeníkovice - Jezbořice - Kasalice - Kladruby nad Labem - Kojice - Kostěnice - Křičeň - Kunětice - Labské Chrčice - Lány u Dašic - Lázně Bohdaneč - Libišany - Lipoltice - Litošice - Malé Výkleky - Mikulovice - Mokošín - Morašice - Moravany - Němčice - Neratov - Opatovice nad Labem - Ostřešany - Ostřetín - Pardubice - Plch - Poběžovice u Holic - Poběžovice u Přelouče - Podůlšany - Pravy - Přelouč - Přelovice - Přepychy - Ráby - Rohovládova Bělá - Rohoznice - Rokytno - Rybitví - Řečany nad Labem - Selmice - Semín - Sezemice - Slepotice - Sopřeč - Sovolusky - Spojil - Srch - Srnojedy - Staré Hradiště - Staré Jesenčany - Staré Ždánice - Starý Mateřov - Stéblová - Stojice - Strašov - Svinčany - Svojšice - Tetov - Trnávka - Trusnov - Třebosice - Turkovice - Uhersko - Úhřetická Lhota - Újezd u Přelouče - Újezd u Sezemic - Urbanice - Valy - Vápno - Veliny - Veselí - Vlčí Habřina - Voleč - Vysoké Chvojno - Vyšehněvice - Zdechovice - Žáravice - Živanice

Pardubice District () is a district ("okres") within the Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic. Its capital is the city of Pardubice.


Complete list of municipalities.

Adamov - Bečice - Borek - Borovany - Borovnice - Boršov nad Vltavou - Bošilec - Branišov - Břehov - Čakov - Čejkovice - Čenkov u Bechyně - České Budějovice - Čížkrajice - Chotýčany - Chrášťany - Dasný - Dívčice - Dobrá Voda u Českých Budějovic - Dobšice - "Dolní Bukovsko" - Doubravice - Doudleby - Drahotěšice - Dražíč - Dříteň - Dubičné - Dubné - Dynín - Habří - Hartmanice - Heřmaň - Hlavatce - Hlincová Hora - Hluboká nad Vltavou - Homole - Horní Kněžeklady - Horní Stropnice - Hosín - Hosty - Hradce - Hranice - Hrdějovice - Hůry - Hvozdec - Jankov - Jílovice - Jivno - Kamenná - Kamenný Újezd - Komařice - Kvítkovice - "Ledenice" - Libín - Libníč - Lipí - Lišov - Litvínovice - Ločenice - Mazelov - Mladošovice - Modrá Hůrka - Mokrý Lom - Mydlovary - Nákří - Nedabyle - Neplachov - Nová Ves - Nové Hrady - Olešnice - Olešník - Ostrolovský Újezd - Petříkov - Pištín - Planá - Plav - Radošovice - Římov - Roudné - Rudolfov - Sedlec - "Ševětín" - Slavče - Srubec - Staré Hodějovice - Štěpánovice - Strážkovice - Strýčice - Střížov - Svatý Jan nad Malší - Temelín - Trhové Sviny - Týn nad Vltavou - Úsilné - Včelná - Vidov - Vitín - Vlkov - Vrábče - Vráto - Všemyslice - Záboří - Žabovřesky - Zahájí - Žár - Závraty - Žimutice - Zliv - Zvíkov

České Budějovice District () is a district ("okres") within the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. Its capital is České Budějovice.


Complete list of municipalities.

Bačkov - Bartoušov - Bělá - Bezděkov - Bojiště - Boňkov - Borek - Břevnice - Čachotín - Čečkovice - "Česká Bělá" - Chotěboř - Chrtníč - Chřenovice - Číhošť - Dlouhá Ves - Dolní Krupá - Dolní Město - Dolní Sokolovec - Druhanov - Golčův Jeníkov - Habry - "Havlíčkova Borová" - Havlíčkův Brod - Herálec - Heřmanice - Hněvkovice - Horní Krupá - Horní Paseka - Hradec - Hurtova Lhota - Jedlá - Jeřišno - Jilem - Jitkov - Kámen - Kamenná Lhota - Klokočov - Knyk - Kochánov - Kojetín - Kouty - Kozlov - Kožlí - Kraborovice - Krásná Hora - Krátká Ves - "Krucemburk" - Kunemil - Květinov - Kyjov - Kynice - Lány - Ledeč nad Sázavou - Leškovice - Leština u Světlé - "Libice nad Doubravou" - Lípa - Lipnice nad Sázavou - Lučice - Malčín - Maleč - Michalovice - Modlíkov - Nejepín - Nová Ves u Chotěboře - Nová Ves u Leštiny - Nová Ves u Světlé - Okrouhlice - Okrouhlička - Olešenka - Olešná - Ostrov - Oudoleň - Ovesná Lhota - Pavlov - Podmoklany - Podmoky - Pohled - Přibyslav - Příseka - Prosíčka - Radostín - Rozsochatec - Rušinov - Rybníček - Sázavka - Sedletín - Skorkov - Šlapanov - Skryje - Skuhrov - Slavětín - Slavíkov - Slavníč - Sloupno - Služátky - Sobíňov - "Štoky" - Stříbrné Hory - Světlá nad Sázavou - Tis - Trpišovice - "Uhelná Příbram" - Úhořilka - "Úsobí" - Vepříkov - Veselý Žďár - Věž - Věžnice - "Vilémov" - Vilémovice - Víska - Vlkanov - Vysoká - Ždírec - Ždírec nad Doubravou - Žižkovo Pole - Zvěstovice

Havlíčkův Brod District () is a district ("okres") within Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. Its capital is the town of Havlíčkův Brod.


Overview.

The district has mostly flat terrain with slopes of Iron Mountains appearing on the south. Seč Dam is the largest water surface in the district (2.2 km), Chrudimka is the longest river in the district (104 km). Industrial centres are Chrudim (mechanical engineering, textile, food industry), Hlinsko (electrotechnical, textile) and Skuteč (textile). Climatic conditions and terrain make the area convenient for agriculture.  Tourism is concentrated on Seč Dam and historical architecture. Of note is historical centre of Chrudim, hippology museum in Slatiňany, castles Košumberk, Lichnice, Rychmburk and Oheb, war memorial in Ležáky and Veselý Kopec Skansen.  Among notable persons associated with the district are inventor Josef Ressel, composers Zdeněk Fibich and Vítězslav Novák, writers Karel Václav Rais and Jaroslav Vrchlický, painters Antonín Slavíček, Antonin Chittussi and Adolf Kosárek.

Complete list of municipalities.

Chrudim - Běstvina - Biskupice - Bítovany - Bojanov - Bor u Skutče - Bořice - Bousov - Bylany - Ctětín - Čankovice - České Lhotice - Dědová - Dolní Bezděkov - Dřenice - Dvakačovice - Hamry - Heřmanův Městec - Hlinsko - Hluboká - Hodonín - Holetín - Honbice - Horka - Horní Bradlo - Hošťalovice - Hrochův Týnec - Hroubovice - Chrast - Chroustovice - Jeníkov - Jenišovice - Kameničky - Kladno - Klešice - Kněžice - Kočí - Kostelec u Heřmanova Městce - Krásné - Krouna - Křižanovice - Lány - Leštinka - Libkov - Liboměřice - Licibořice - Lipovec - Lozice - Lukavice - Luže - Míčov-Sušice - Miřetice - Mladoňovice - Morašice - Mrákotín - Nabočany - Načešice - Nasavrky - Orel - Ostrov - Otradov - Perálec - Podhořany u Ronova - Pokřikov - Prachovice - Proseč - Prosetín - Předhradí - Přestavlky - Raná - Rabštejnská Lhota - Ronov nad Doubravou - Rosice - Rozhovice - Řestoky - Seč - Skuteč - Slatiňany - Smrček - Sobětuchy - Stolany - Střemošice - Studnice - Svídnice - Svratouch - Tisovec - Trhová Kamenice - Trojovice - Třemošnice - Třibřichy - Tuněchody - Úherčice - Úhřetice - Vápenný Podol - Včelákov - Vejvanovice - Vítanov - Vojtěchov - Vortová - Vrbatův Kostelec - Všeradov - Vysočina - Vyžice - Zaječice - Zájezdec - Zderaz - Žlebské Chvalovice - Žumberk

Chrudim District () is a district ("okres") within Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic. Its capital is the town of Chrudim.


Complete list of municipalities.

Babice – Bačice – Bačkovice – Benetice – Biskupice-Pulkov – Blatnice – Bochovice – Bohušice – Bransouze – Březník – "Budišov" – Budkov – Čáslavice – Častohostice – Čechočovice – Čechtín – Červená Lhota – Chlístov – Chlum – Chotěbudice – Číchov – Cidlina – Číhalín – Čikov – Číměř – "Dalešice" – Dědice – Dešov – Dolní Lažany – Dolní Vilémovice – Domamil – Dukovany – Hartvíkovice – "Heraltice" – Hluboké – Hodov – Horní Heřmanice – Horní Smrčné – Horní Újezd – Horní Vilémovice – Hornice – Hrotovice – Hroznatín – Hvězdoňovice – Jakubov u Moravských Budějovic – Jaroměřice nad Rokytnou – Jasenice – Jemnice – Jinošov – Jiratice – Kamenná – Kdousov – Kladeruby nad Oslavou – Klučov – Kojatice – Kojatín – Kojetice – Komárovice – Koněšín – Kostníky – Kouty – Kozlany – Kožichovice – Krahulov – Kralice nad Oslavou – Kramolín – Krhov – Krokočín – Kuroslepy – Láz – Lesná – Lesní Jakubov – Lesonice – Lesůňky – Lhánice – Lhotice – Lipník – Litohoř – Litovany – Lomy – Loukovice – Lovčovice – Lukov – Markvartice – Martínkov – Mastník – Menhartice – Meziříčko – Mikulovice – Mladoňovice – "Mohelno" – Moravské Budějovice – Myslibořice – Naloučany – Náměšť nad Oslavou – Nárameč – Nimpšov – Nová Ves – Nové Syrovice – Nový Telečkov – Ocmanice – Odunec – Okarec – Okřešice – "Okříšky" – "Opatov" – Oponešice – Ostašov – Pálovice – Petrovice – Petrůvky – Pokojovice – Police – Popůvky – Pozďatín – Přeckov – Předín – Přešovice – Přibyslavice – Příštpo – Pucov – Pyšel – Račice – Rácovice – Radkovice u Budče – Radkovice u Hrotovic – Radonín – Radošov – Radotice – Rapotice – Římov – Rohy – "Rokytnice nad Rokytnou" – Rouchovany – Rudíkov – Šebkovice – Sedlec – Slavětice – Slavičky – Slavíkovice – Smrk – "Stařeč" – Štěměchy – Štěpkov – Stropešín – Střítež – Studenec – Studnice – Sudice – Svatoslav – Třebelovice – Třebenice – Třebíč – Třesov – Trnava – Valdíkov – Valeč – Vícenice – Vícenice u Náměště nad Oslavou – "Vladislav" – Vlčatín – Výčapy – Zahrádka – Zárubice – Zašovice – "Želetava" – Zvěrkovice  Village of Senorady is (since January 1, 2005) part of Brno-Country District.

Třebíč District () is a district ("okres") within the Moravian part of the Vysočina Region in the Czech Republic. Its capital is the town of Třebíč, the second largest town in the Vysočina Region.


Complete list of municipalities.

Adamov - Bedřichov - Benešov - Blansko - Borotín - Bořitov - Boskovice - Brťov-Jeneč - Bukovina - Bukovinka - Býkovice - "Černá Hora" - Černovice - Cetkovice - Chrudichromy - Crhov - Deštná - Dlouhá Lhota - "Doubravice nad Svitavou" - Drnovice - Habrůvka - Hodonín - Holštejn - Horní Poříčí - Horní Smržov - Jabloňany - "Jedovnice" - Kněževes - Knínice u Boskovic - Kořenec - Kotvrdovice - Kozárov - Krasová - Křetín - Krhov - Křtěnov - "Křtiny" - Kulířov - Kunčina Ves - Kunice - Kuničky - Kunštát - Lazinov - Lažany - Letovice - Lhota Rapotina - Lhota u Lysic - Lhota u Olešnice - Lipovec - Lipůvka - Louka - Lubě - Ludíkov - Lysice - Makov - Malá Lhota - Malá Roudka - Míchov - Milonice - Němčice - Nýrov - Obora - Okrouhlá - Olešnice - Olomučany - "Ostrov u Macochy" - Pamětice - Petrov - Petrovice - Prostřední Poříčí - Rájec-Jestřebí - Ráječko - Roubanina - Rozseč nad Kunštátem - Rozsíčka - Rudice - Šebetov - Sebranice - Šebrov-Kateřina - Senetářov - Skalice nad Svitavou - Skrchov - "Sloup" - Šošůvka - Spešov - Štěchov - Stvolová - Sudice - Suchý - Sulíkov - Světlá - Svinošice - "Svitávka" - Tasovice - Uhřice - Újezd u Boskovic - Újezd u Černé Hory - Úsobrno - Ústup - Valchov - Vanovice - Vavřinec - Vážany - Velenov - Velké Opatovice - Vilémovice - Vísky - Voděrady - Vranová - Vysočany - Závist - Zbraslavec - Žďár - Žďárná - Žernovník - Žerůtky

Blansko District () is one of seven districts ("okres") within South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Its capital is the town of Blansko.


Landscape.

The district's landscape is very picturesque, consisting of a highland of rolling hills around the rivers Sázava, Oslava, Svratka and Chrudimka, covered by deep forests, lakes and fields.

Economy.

37% of the active population works in industry. Agriculture is also an important economic activity, especially wheat, potatoes, fruit, timber, and livestock. The contribution of industry and agriculture to the local economy has decreased markedly since 1991. The remaining industrial activity is concentrated in the larger towns and includes mechanic, electric, and steel factories. Furniture and other small manufacturing industries have been installed after the fall of Communism.

Tourism.

The area, relatively untouched by pollution, attracts summer and winter tourism. Highlights include:

Complete list of municipalities.

Baliny - Blažkov - Blízkov - "Bobrová" - Bobrůvka - Bohdalec - "Bohdalov" - Bohuňov - Borovnice - Bory - Březejc - Březí nad Oslavou - Březí - Březské - Budeč - Bukov - Býšovec - Bystřice nad Pernštejnem - Černá - Chlumek - Chlumětín - Chlum-Korouhvice - Cikháj - Dalečín - Daňkovice - Dlouhé - Dobrá Voda - Dolní Heřmanice - Dolní Libochová - Dolní Rožínka - Fryšava pod Žákovou horou - Hamry nad Sázavou - Herálec - Heřmanov - Hodíškov - Horní Libochová - Horní Radslavice - Horní Rožínka - Jabloňov - Jámy - Javorek - "Jimramov" - Jívoví - Kadolec - Kadov - Karlov - Kněževes - Koroužné - Kotlasy - Kozlov - Krásné - Krásněves - Křídla - Křižánky - "Křižanov" - Křoví - Kuklík - Kundratice - Kyjov - Lavičky - Lhotka - Lísek - Líšná - Malá Losenice - Martinice - Matějov - "Měřín" - Meziříčko - Milasín - Milešín - Mirošov - Moravec - Moravecké Pavlovice - Netín - Nížkov - Nová Ves - Nová Ves u Nového Města na Moravě - Nové Dvory - Nové Město na Moravě - Nové Sady - "Nové Veselí" - Nový Jimramov - Nyklovice - Obyčtov - Ořechov - Oslavice - Osová Bítýška - Osové - "Ostrov nad Oslavou" - Otín - Pavlínov - Pavlov - Petráveč - Pikárec - Písečné - Počítky - Poděšín - Podolí - Pokojov - Polnička - Prosetín - Račice - Račín - Radenice - Radešín - Radešínská Svratka - Radkov - Radňoves - Radňovice - "Radostín nad Oslavou" - Radostín - Řečice - Rodkov - Rosička - Rousměrov - Rovečné - Rožná - Rozseč - Rozsochy - Ruda - Rudolec - Sázava - Sazomín - Sejřek - Sirákov - Sklené - Sklené nad Oslavou - Skorotice - Škrdlovice - Skřinářov - "Sněžné" - Spělkov - "Štěpánov nad Svratkou" - Strachujov - Stránecká Zhoř - "Strážek" - Střítež - Sulkovec - Světnov - Sviny - Svratka - Tasov - Tři Studně - Ubušínek - Uhřínov - Ujčov - Újezd - Unčín - Vatín - Věchnov - Věcov - Velká Bíteš - Velká Losenice - Velké Janovice - Velké Meziříčí - Velké Tresné - Vepřová - Věstín - Věžná - Vídeň - Vidonín - Vír - Vlachovice - Vlkov - "Vojnův Městec" - Vysoké - Záblatí - Zadní Zhořec - Ždánice - Žďár nad Sázavou - Znětínek - Zubří - Zvole  25 villages has been moved from administration of Žďár nad Sázavou District to administration of Brno-Country District, effective from January 1, 2005.

Žďár nad Sázavou District () is a district ("okres") within the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. Its administrative center is the town of Žďár nad Sázavou.


History.

On the first day of school in September 1898, the pupils of Collège Saint-Servais in Liège started a football club, which they called Standard of Liège in reference to Standard Athletic Club of Paris. Standard, whose official name is Royal Standard Club of Liège, was based in Cointe and Grivegnée before settling permanently in 1909 in Sclessin, an industrial neighbourhood in Liège. Standard initially joined the Belgian First League in 1909 before returning to the lower leagues a few years later. The club then gained promotion back to the top division in 1921 and has never been relegated since.  Shortly after World War II, Roger Petit, a former player and team captain, became general secretary of the club. Petit worked alongside President Henrard Paul to establish Standard among the elite of Belgian football. In 1954, Standard won their first club trophy, the Belgian Cup, which was soon followed by a first national title in 1957–58.  At European level, in the 1960s, the club reached the semi-finals of the European Cup in 1961–62, falling to beaten finalists Real Madrid 0–6 on aggregate, and the same stage of the Cup Winners' Cup in the year 1966–67, losing to eventual champions Bayern Munich. The 1960s and early 1970s brought much success to the club, as Standard won six Belgian First Division titles, two Belgian Cups and a League Cup.  Driven by the Austrian Ernst Happel, Standard won the Belgian Cup again in 1981. The following year, Raymond Goethals took control of the team. Playing by the "Raymond Science" philosophy of football, the club was twice the champions of Belgium, twice winners of the Belgian Supercup (in three appearances) and reached the final of the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1982. Standard played against Barcelona in the final at the Camp Nou on 12 May 1982, losing the match 1–2 to the Spaniards.  In 1984, these exploits were tainted by the revelation of the Standard-Waterschei Affair. Just days before the match against Barcelona, to secure the championship of Belgium and guard against injuries last minute, Standard had approached Roland Janssen, the captain of Thor Waterschei, to ensure that Thor players' threw the final game of the season. This scandal involved several players, including Eric Gerets, and coach Raymond Goethals, who fled to Portugal to escape suspension. In compensation the Standard players gave their game bonuses to the Waterschei players. Following the scandal, Standard was deprived of many of its playing staff due to long-term suspensions and it took the club several years to recover from the incident.  On 6 June 1993, Standard won the Belgian Cup for the fifth time in its history, defeating Robert Waseige's Charleroi at the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium in Brussels. This led to another appearance in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, ending in a record 10–0 aggregate defeat to Arsenal— having lost 3–0 at Highbury in London, Standard were humiliated 0–7 in the second leg at home.  Following the scandal of 1982, it took 25 years before Standard won the Belgium Championship again, lifting the title on 20 April 2008. The club won the Belgian league again the following year, securing the club's tenth league title on 24 May 2009 after a home-and-away game against rivals Anderlecht. Standard won the national cup once more in 2011, defeating Westerlo 2–0 in the final at the King Baudouin Stadium on 21 May 2011. The club was bought by businessman Roland Duchatelet on 23 June 2011, who then took over English club Charlton in December 2013, creating an affiliation between the two clubs.  On 20 October 2014, Guy Luzon resigned as manager of Standard with the club sitting in 12th position in the Pro League standings and having taken only two points from three UEFA Europa League matches. Luzon later became head coach of Charlton. Assistant and former midfielder Ivan Vukomanović took over as caretaker-manager.  In April 2020, the Belgian Football Association announced that they had revoked Standard Liège's professional football licence, due to "poor financial management".

Golden Shoe.

On nine occasions, Standard players have won the Belgian Golden Shoe as the best player in the domestic league. Jean Nicolay won the award in 1963, Wilfried Van Moer in 1969 and 1970, Christian Piot in 1972, Eric Gerets in 1982, Sérgio Conceição in 2005, Steven Defour in 2007, Axel Witsel in 2008 and Milan Jovanović in 2009.

Rivalries.

Standard Liège supporters share a fierce rivalry with RSC Anderlecht, dubbed the Belgian "Clasico" The rivalry not only reflects the traditional geographical one between the two cities of Liège and Brussels, but also a class divide, with Anderlecht being perceived as the team of the bourgeois elite and Standard, based in an industrial district, as the workers club. The two teams were also the two most successful teams in Belgium for long periods until the emergence of FC Bruges. Many players have played for both clubs, most notably Standard title winning captain Steven Defour, who when returning to Sclessin under Anderlecht's purple colours was greeted with a large "tifo" with his head decapitated.  Standard have also a traditional city derby with RFC Liège. In recent years, they have also developed a rivalry with fellow Walloon club Sporting Charleroi, with several matches having been stopped due to crowd disturbances between the two sets of supporters.

European record.

A = appearances, GP = games played, W = won, D = drawn, L = lost, GF = goals for, GA = goals against.

Summary of best results.

From the quarter-finals upwards:

UEFA club coefficient ranking.

"(As of 22 November 2012), Source: uefa.com website"

Notable players.

Captains.

Player's name in bold when Standard won the title  </div>

Cultural references.

Standard Liège are mentioned in the song "This One's for Now" by the band Half Man Half Biscuit on the album "Urge for Offal".

Royal Standard de Liège, commonly referred to as Standard Liège (; ; ), is a Belgian professional football club based in the city of Liège. They are one of the most successful clubs in Belgium, having won the Belgian league on ten occasions, most recently in 2007–08 and 2008–09. They have been in the top flight without interruption since 1921, longer than any other Belgian side. They have also won eight Belgian Cups, and in 1981–82 they reached the final of the European Cup Winners' Cup, which they lost 2–1 against Barcelona.


History.

This type of headgear was known in the 19th century as an Uhlan cap or a Templar cap.  The name comes from their use at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War of 1854, referring to the town near Sevastopol in the Crimea, where British troops there wore knitted headgear to keep warm. Handmade balaclavas were sent over to the British troops to help protect them from the bitter cold weather. British troops required this aid, as their own supplies (warm clothing, weatherproof quarters, and food) never arrived in time. According to Richard Rutt in his "History of Handknitting", the name "balaclava helmet" was not used during the war but appears much later, in 1881.

Uses.

Safety.

Race drivers In Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile sanctioned events must wear balaclavas made of fire-retardant material underneath their crash helmets. In racing events, hill-climbs, special stages of rallies and selective sections of cross-country events entered on the International Sporting Calendar, all drivers and co-drivers must wear overalls as well as gloves (optional for co-drivers), long underwear, a balaclava, and shoes homologated to the FIA 8856-2000 standard.

Military and police.

In the Indian subcontinent, balaclavas are commonly referred to as monkey caps because of their typical earth tone colours, and the fact that they blot out most human facial features. Monkey caps sometimes have a small, decorative, woollen pom-pom on top. They are commonly worn by troops on Himalayan duty for protection from the cold.  The United States Marine Corps has recently begun issuing balaclavas with hinged face guards as part of the Flame Resistant Organizational Gear program.  In the Soviet Union, the balaclava became a part of standard OMON (special police task force) uniform as early as the Perestroyka years of the late 1980s. The original intent was to protect the identity of the officers to avoid intimidation from organized crime. Because of increased problems with organized crime of the 90s, TV shots of armed men in black balaclavas became common. Armed Russian police commonly conduct raids and searches of white-collar premises (typically in Moscow) while wearing balaclavas. Such raids have therefore come to be known in Russia as "maski shows", an allusion to a popular comic TV show of the 1990s.

Concealment.

British Police in Kent confiscated a single copy of the "War on Terror" board game partly because of the inclusion of a balaclava. Police said it "could be used to conceal someone's identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act."  Balaclavas are often used by police battling drug cartels and gangs in Latin America to conceal their identity and protect their families.

A balaclava, also known as a balaclava helmet or Bally (UK slang) or ski mask (US slang), is a form of cloth headgear designed to expose only part of the face, usually the eyes and mouth. Depending on style and how it is worn, only the eyes, mouth and nose, or just the front of the face are unprotected. Versions with a full face opening may be rolled into a hat to cover the crown of the head or folded down as a collar around the neck.


Description.

They are biennial or perennial plants, rarely annuals or subshrubs, growing to tall. The plants first form a dense rosette of leaves at ground level, subsequently sending up a tall flowering stem. Biennial plants form the rosette the first year and the stem the following season. The leaves are spirally arranged, often densely hairy, though glabrous (hairless) in some species. The flowers have five symmetrical petals; petal colours in different species include yellow (most common), orange, red-brown, purple, blue, or white. The fruit is a capsule containing numerous minute seeds.

Cultivation.

In gardening and landscaping, the mulleins are valued for their tall narrow stature and for flowering over a long period of time, even in dry soils. Many cultivars are available, of which 'Gainsborough','Letitia', 'Pink Domino' and ‘Tropic Sun’ have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.  Since the year 2000, a number of new hybrid cultivars have come out that have increased flower size, shorter heights, and a tendency to be longer-lived plants. A number have new colors for this genus. Many mulleins are raised from seed, including both the short-lived perennial and biennial types.

Other uses.

The plant has a long history of use as a herbal remedy. Although this plant is a recent arrival to North America, Native Americans used the ground seeds of this plant as a paralytic fish poison due to their high levels of rotenone. "Verbascum" flowers have been used in traditional Austrian medicine internally (as tea) or externally (as ointment, tea, baths or compresses) for treatment of disorders of the respiratory tract, skin, veins, gastrointestinal tract, and the locomotor system.  The plant's stem, when dried, can be used in the hand drill method of friction fire lighting.

Species.

The following species are accepted by "The Plant List":

Verbascum (), common name mullein (sg. ), is a genus of about 360 species of flowering plants in the figwort family Scrophulariaceae. They are native to Europe and Asia, with the highest species diversity in the Mediterranean.


Biography.

Early life.

Fast was born in New York City. His mother, Ida (née Miller), was a British Jewish immigrant, and his father, Barney Fast, was a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant who shortened his name from Fastovsky upon arrival in America. When his mother died in 1923 and his father became unemployed, Howard's youngest brother, Julius, went to live with relatives, while he and his older brother, Jerome, sold newspapers. Howard credited his early voracious reading to a part-time job in the New York Public Library.  Fast began writing at an early age. While hitchhiking and riding railroads around the country to find odd jobs, he wrote his first novel, "Two Valleys", published in 1933 when he was 18. His first popular work was "Citizen Tom Paine", a fictional account of the life of Thomas Paine. Always interested in American history, Fast also wrote "The Last Frontier" (about the Cheyenne Indians' attempt to return to their native land, and which inspired the 1964 movie "Cheyenne Autumn") and "Freedom Road" (about the lives of former slaves during Reconstruction).  The novel "Freedom Road" is based on a true story and was made into a miniseries of the same name starring Muhammad Ali, who, in a rare acting role, played Gideon Jackson, an ex-slave in 1870s South Carolina who is elected to the U.S. House and battles the Ku Klux Klan and other racist organizations to keep the land that they had tended all their lives.

Contribution to constitutionalism.

Fast is the author of the prominent "Why the Fifth Amendment?" essay. This essay explains in detail the purpose of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Fast effectively uses the context of the Red Scare to illustrate the purpose of the "Fifth."

Career.

Fast spent World War II working with the United States Office of War Information, writing for Voice of America. In 1943, he joined the Communist Party USA and in 1950, he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities; in his testimony, he refused to disclose the names of contributors to a fund for a home for orphans of American veterans of the Spanish Civil War (one of the contributors was Eleanor Roosevelt), and he was given a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress.  While he was at Mill Point Federal Prison, Fast began writing his most famous work, "Spartacus", a novel about an uprising among Roman slaves. Blacklisted by major publishing houses following his release from prison, Fast was forced to publish the novel himself. It was a success, going through seven printings in the first four months of publication. (According to Fast in his memoir, 50,000 copies were printed, of which 48,000 were sold.)  He subsequently established the Blue Heron Press, which allowed him to continue publishing under his own name throughout the period of his blacklisting. Just as the production of the film version of "Spartacus" (released in 1960) is considered a milestone in the breaking of the Hollywood blacklist, the reissue of Fast's novel by Crown Publishers in 1958 effectively ended his own blacklisting within the American publishing industry.  In 1952, Fast ran for Congress on the American Labor Party ticket. During the 1950s he also worked for the Communist newspaper, the "Daily Worker". In 1953, he was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. Later that decade, Fast broke with the Party over issues of conditions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, particularly after Nikita Khrushchev's report "On the Personality Cult and its Consequences" at a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956, denouncing the personality cult and dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, and the Soviet military intervention to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 in November. In his autobiographical work titled "The Naked God: The Writer and the Communist Party" published in 1957, he wrote: "There was the evil in what we dreamed of as Communists: we took the noblest dreams and hopes of mankind as our credo; the evil we did was to accept the degradation of our own souls—and because we surrendered in ourselves, in our own party existence, all the best and most precious gains and liberties of mankind—because we did this, we betrayed mankind, and the Communist party became a thing of destruction."  In the mid-1950s, Fast moved with his family to Teaneck, New Jersey. In 1974, Fast and his family moved to California, where he wrote television scripts, including such television programs as "How the West Was Won". In 1977, he published "The Immigrants", the first of a six-part series of novels.

Personal life and death.

Fast married his first wife, Bette Cohen, on June 6, 1937. Their children were Jonathan and Rachel. Bette died in 1994. In 1999, he married Mercedes O'Connor, who already had three sons. Fast's son Jonathan Fast, himself a novelist, was married to novelist Erica Jong; their daughter is the novelist Molly Jong-Fast. The writer Julius Fast was his younger brother.  Fast died in Old Greenwich, Connecticut.

Works.

Short stories.

Uncollected short stories.

Howard Melvin Fast (November 11, 1914 – March 12, 2003) was an American novelist and television writer. Fast also wrote under the pen names E. V. Cunningham and Walter Ericson.


Biography.

Polikarpov was born in the village of Georgievskoye near Livny in Oryol Governorate. He was the son of a village priest in the Russian Orthodox Church. He initially also trained for the priesthood and studied at the Oryol Seminary before moving to Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University in 1911, where he became fascinated with the fledgling aviation work being carried out under the shipbuilding department. Polikarpov graduated in 1916 and went to work for Igor Sikorski, the head of production at the Russian Baltic Carriage Factory. While working for Sikorski, Polikarpov helped design the massive Ilya Muromets four-engine bomber for the Imperial Russian Air Force.

Soviet career.

Polikarpov stayed in Russia after the Russian Revolution and rose to become head of the technical department Dux Aircraft factory in 1923. Polikarpov was responsible for some of the first indigenous aircraft designs in the Soviet Union during the 1920s, including the I-1 fighter (1923), R-1 reconnaissance plane (1927), U-2 utility biplane (1927–1928), I-3 fighter (1928), R-5 reconnaissance bomber (1928). Notably, the U-2, Russian nickname "Kukuruznik, loosely translated: crop-duster", (post 1944 designation Po-2), remained in mainstream production until 1952 and over 30,000 examples were produced.  In 1928, under provisions of the Five-Year Plan for experimental aircraft design, Polikarpov was assigned to develop the primarily wooden I-6 fighter for delivery by mid-1930. The plan was unrealistic and failed. As such, in October 1929, Polikarpov and around other 450 aircraft designers and engineers were arrested on fabricated charges of sabotage and counter-revolutionary activities, after which he was sentenced to death. In December, after two months of waiting for execution, he was transferred to a Special Design Bureau of OGPU set at Butyrka prison and had the sentence changed to 10 years of forced labor. Polikarpov and the others were moved to Central Design Bureau 39 (TsKB-39) to complete the I-5 project. After a successful demonstration of the new design, the sentence was changed to a conditional one, and in July 1931 he was granted amnesty together with a group of other convicts. It was not until de-Stalinization in 1956 that the criminal charges were officially dropped posthumously.  After the release he initially worked with Pavel Sukhoi since 1931, developing the I-16 in 1933 and I-15 in 1934. Then he worked under Ilyushin in 1937. In 1938, he established an independent design bureau. In 1939, he completed work on the I-153. In 1939, he was ordered to make a trip to Nazi Germany. In his absence, his plant director and chief engineer, along with design engineer Mikhail Gurevich put forth a proposal for a new fighter, the I-200, and received approval to create a new Design Bureau under the leadership of Artem Mikoyan, whose brother Anastas Mikoyan was a senior politician under Joseph Stalin. On his return, Polikarpov found that his Bureau no longer existed, with his engineers at the new MiG bureau. Nine years after his death, in 1953, his plant was given over to the Sukhoi bureau.  Polikarpov was subsequently appointed professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1943. He died on 30 July 1944 from stomach cancer. He is buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.  Polikarpov was a recipient of numerous awards, including the Stalin Prize (1941, 1943) and Hero of Socialist Labor (1940). "Polikarpov Peak" in the Pamir Mountains was named after him.

Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov (; – 30 July 1944) was a Soviet aeronautical engineer and aircraft designer, known as the "King of Fighters". He designed the I-15 series of fighters, and the I-16 Ishak ( phonetically close to its or designation) "Little Donkey" fighter.


Paleobiology.

They sported a very small brain size in proportion to their body, second only to the Saurischian sauropods. They were also rather slow moving, largely because of the shortness of the limbs combined with being incapable of running. Their top speed was likely less than 10 km/hour.

Armor.

All ankylosaurians had armor over much of their bodies, mostly scutes and nodules, with large spines in some cases. The scutes, or plates, are rectangular to oval objects organized in transverse (side to side) rows, often with keels on the upper surface. Smaller nodules and plates filled in the open spaces between large plates. In all three groups, the first two rows of plates tend to form a sort of half-ring around the neck; in nodosaurids, this comes from adjacent plates fusing with each other (and there is a third row as well), while ankylosaurids usually have the plates fused to the top of another band of bone. The skull has armor plastered on to it, including a distinctive piece on the outside-rear of the lower jaw.

Diet and feeding.

Ankylosaurs were built low to the ground, typically one foot off the ground surface. They had small, triangular teeth that were loosely packed, similar to stegosaurs. The large hyoid bones left in skeletons indicates that they had long, flexible tongues. They also had a large, side secondary palate. This means that they could breathe while chewing, unlike crocodiles. Their expanded gut region suggests the use of fermentation to digest their food, using symbiotic bacteria and gut flora. Their diet likely consisted of ferns, cycads, and angiosperms. Mallon et al. (2013) examined herbivore coexistence on the island continent of Laramidia during the Late Cretaceous. It was concluded that ankylosaurs were generally restricted to feeding on vegetation at, or below, the height of 1 meter.

Reproduction.

Possible neonate-sized ankylosaur fossils have been documented in the scientific literature.

Classification.

Ankylosauria is usually split into two families: Nodosauridae (the nodosaurids) and Ankylosauridae (the ankylosaurids). A third family, the Polacanthidae, is sometimes used, but is more often found to be a sub-group of one of the primary families.  The first formal definition of Ankylosauria as a clade, a group containing all species of a certain evolutionary branch, was given in 1997 by Carpenter. He defined the group as all dinosaurs (more precisely: all thyreophoran Ornithischia) closer to "Ankylosaurus" than to "Stegosaurus". This definition is essentially followed by most paleontologists today. This "stem-based" definition means that the primitive armored dinosaur "Scelidosaurus", which is slightly closer to ankylosaurids than to stegosaurids, is technically a member of Ankylosauria. Upon the discovery of "Bienosaurus", Dong Zhiming (2001) erected the family Scelidosauridae for both of these primitive ankylosaurs. In 2001, Carpenter proposed a new group uniting "Scelidosaurus", Ankylosauridae, Nodosauridae, and Polacanthidae, with "Minmi" (thought to be a primitive ankylosaurian), to the exclusion of "Stegosaurus". However, many taxonomists find that Ankylosauromorpha is an invalid group.

Nodosauridae.

This group traditionally includes "Nodosaurus", "Edmontonia", and "Sauropelta". The nodosauridae had longer snouts than their ankylosaurid cousins. They did not sport the archetypal 'clubs' at the ends of their tails; but, rather, their most pronounced physical features were their spikes.  Nodosaurids had very muscular shoulders and a specialized knob of bone on each shoulder blade called the acromial process. It served as an attachment site for the muscles that held up their large parascapular spines. These spines would be used for self-defense against predators. They also had wide, flaring hips and thick limbs. They had smaller, narrow beaks than the ankylosaurids, which likely allowed them to be very selective over what plant matter they grazed on.  Most nodosaurid finds are from North America.

Ankylosauridae.

Major differences distinguishing the ankylosaurids from the nodosaurids is that the ankylosaurids had bony clubs at the end of their tails, domed snouts in front of the eyes, and large squamosal plates projecting from the top and bottom of each side of the skull, all of which nodosaurids lacked. The traditional ankylosaurids are from later in the Cretaceous. They had much wider bodies and have even been discovered with bony eyelids. The large clubs at the end of their tails may have been used in self-defense (swung at predators) or in sexual selection. This family included "Ankylosaurus", "Euoplocephalus", and "Pinacosaurus". The clubs were made of several plates of bone that were permeated by soft tissue, allowing them to absorb thousands of pounds of force. Their beaks were larger and broader than the nodosaurids, indicating that these ankylosaurs were generalists in their diet.

Polacanthidae.

The family Polacanthidae was named by George Reber Wieland in 1911 to refer to a group of ankylosaurs that seemed to him to be intermediate between the ankylosaurids and nodosaurids. This grouping was ignored by most researchers until the late 1990s, when it was used as a subfamily (Polacanthinae) by Kirkland for a natural group recovered by his 1998 analysis suggesting that "Polacanthus", "Gastonia", and "Mymoorapelta" were closely related within the family Ankylosauridae. Kenneth Carpenter resurrected the name Polacanthidae for a similar group that he also found to be closer to ankylosaurids than to nodosaurids. Carpenter became the first to define Polacanthidae as all dinosaurs closer to "Gastonia" than to either "Edmontonia" or "Euoplocephalus". Most subsequent researchers placed polacanthines as primitive ankylosaurids, though mostly without any rigorous study to demonstrate this idea. The first comprehensive study of 'polacanthid' relationships, published in 2012, found that they are either an unnatural grouping of primitive nodosaurids, or a valid subfamily at the base of Nodosauridae.

Taxonomy.

While ranked taxonomy has largely fallen out of favor among dinosaur paleontologists, a few 21st-century publications have retained the use of ranks, though sources have differed on what its rank should be. Most have listed Thyreophora as an unranked taxon containing the traditional suborders Stegosauria and Ankylosauria, though Thyreophora is also sometimes classified as a suborder, with Ankylosauria and Stegosauria as infraorders. A simplified version of one possible classification follows:

Ankylosauria is a group of herbivorous dinosaurs of the order Ornithischia. It includes the great majority of dinosaurs with armor in the form of bony osteoderms, and which it similars to turtles. Ankylosaurs were bulky quadrupeds, with short, powerful limbs. They are known to have first appeared in the early Jurassic Period, and persisted until the end of the Cretaceous Period. They have been found on every continent. The first dinosaur discovered in Antarctica was the ankylosaurian "Antarctopelta", fossils of which were recovered from Ross Island in 1986.