Life.

Drahomíra was born in the present-day Havelland region centered around the fortress of Brandenburg (Brennabor), the daughter of a Hevelli (Stodoran) prince. According to Cosmas of Prague, she married Duke Vratislav I of Bohemia about 906. Drahomíra gave birth to at least six children: her sons were Wenceslaus and Boleslaus, who both succeeded their father as Bohemian dukes. Among her four daughters were one Přibislava, who became a nun at the Prague St. George's Convent, and possibly Střezislava, the wife of the Bohemian nobleman Slavník, founder of the Slavník dynasty. The marriage led the Přemyslid dynasty to cooperation with the Polabian Slavs and brought Bohemia in conflict with the Saxon duke Henry the Fowler, who became German king in 919 and later waged war against the Hevelli tribes.  After her husband's untimely death in 921, the Bohemian nobles designated Drahomíra regent for her minor son Wenceslaus. However, she had to divide the government of Bohemia with her mother-in-law Ludmila, widow of Duke Bořivoj I, who took over the religious education of her sons. Popular history depicts Ludmila as a restrained and pious grandmother, but it is likely that the political demands of government called for more energy and worldliness than history records.  Wenceslaus was one of the main reasons for the eventually fatal discord between Drahomíra and Ludmila, who had exerted great influence over Drahomíra's eldest son, leaving Drahomíra to concentrate her efforts on her younger son, Boleslaus. Despite or perhaps as a result of her political and personal efforts, Ludmila attracted Drahomíra's bitter enmity. She alleged that her mother-in-law, with the help of Bavarian missionaries, educated Wenceslaus to become a monk rather than a prince. Moreover, the two women may have disagreed whether to recognise the East Frankish supremacy of Henry the Fowler. Ludmila fled from Prague to Tetín Castle on the road to Regensburg, where on 16 September 921 Drahomíra's henchmen, Tunna and Gommon, attacked and strangled her.  The next year the troops of Duke Arnulf of Bavaria raided the Bohemian duchy. When Drahomíra's son Wenceslaus came of age about 922, he sent his mother into exile, though he called her back in 925. She spent her later years in Prague, however, upon the murder of her son (in 929 or 935) she fled from the court.

In culture.

She is the subject of two operas, "Drahomíra" by František Škroup (1848), and "Drahomíra" by Karel Šebor (1867).

Drahomíra of Stodor (; – died after 934 or 936) was Duchess consort of Bohemia from 915 to 921, wife of the Přemyslid duke Vratislaus I. She also acted as regent of the Duchy of Bohemia from 921 to 924 during the minority of her son Wenceslaus. She is chiefly known for the murder of her mother-in-law Ludmila of Bohemia by hired assassins.


Early life.

Boleslaus was the son of Duke Vratislaus I of Bohemia (d. 921) by his marriage with Drahomíra (d. 934), probably a Hevellian princess. His father took over the rule in Prague during the time of his birth, he had to deal with both the exertion of influence by both the East Frankish dukes of Bavaria and Saxony and the Magyar incursions.  Boleslaus and his elder brother Wenceslaus were taught the Christian faith and reading the Psalms by their grandmother Ludmila. There is evidence that Boleslaus's pagan mother might [have] influenced him against his brother and Christianity, though he later repented. In no way did he impede the growth of Christianity during his reign in Bohemia, and in fact, he actually sent his daughter Mlada, a nun, to Pope John XIII in Rome to ask permission to make Prague a bishopric.  Upon his death, Vratislaus was succeeded by his eldest son Wenceslaus. While the external situation worsened with the alliance between Duke Arnulf of Bavaria and the Saxon duke Henry the Fowler, King of East Francia from 919, he could only maintain his independence by entering an agreement on an annual tribute payable to the East Frankish (German) ruler. Shortly afterwards, in 935 (or in 929, according to other sources), Wenceslaus was murdered at Stará Boleslav to where he was invited by Boleslaus. According to tradition, he was killed during the feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian (September 28), at precisely the time when a son of Boleslaus was born. The child was given a strange name: Strachkvas, which means "a dreadful feast". Remorseful for what he had done, Boleslaus promised to have his son educated as a clergyman and devoted his life to religion.

Reign.

Once having taking over the Prague throne, one of Boleslaus's major concerns was the tribute paid yearly to the East Frankish kings as stipulated in the peace treaty that Henry the Fowler had established with Boleslaus's brother Wenceslaus. He stopped the payment shortly after he ascended the throne, which led to a prolonged war with Henry's successor King Otto. In 935 Boleslaus attacked the Thuringian allies of the Saxons in the northwest and defeated two of Otto's armies (from Thuringia and Merseburg). The war then deteriorated to border raids (the general pattern of warfare in this region at the time) and reached its conclusion in 950, when King Otto besieged a castle owned by Boleslaus's son. This prompted Boleslaus to sign a peace treaty with Otto. Although he remained undefeated, he promised to resume the payment of tribute.  Five years later, the armies of Czechs and Germans allied against the Magyars in the victorious Battle of Lechfeld on 10 August 955. After the battle, the remainder of the huge Magyar army turned to Bohemia, where it was crushed by Boleslaus. Shortly afterwards, in October, he also helped Otto to crush an uprising of Slavic tribes led by the Obotrite princes Nakon and Stojgněv on the Lower Elbe river in the Battle on the Raxa.  The defeat of invading Hungarians brought the same benefits to both Germans and Czechs. Less obvious is what Boleslaus expected to gain from his participation in Otto's war against the Obotrite princes in far north. He probably wanted to ensure that his powerful German neighbors did not interfere with him in expanding the Bohemian territories to the east. As a result of the victory, Boleslaus freed the Moravian lands from Magyar raids and expanded his territory, which in turn was later conquered by Polish dukes and became known as Upper Silesia and Lesser Poland. By occupying the city of Kraków, he controlled important trade routes from Prague to Kiev and Lviv. To defuse the Bohemian-Polish conflict, Duke Boleslav married his daughter Dobrawa to the pagan Piast prince Mieszko I in 963/964, and helped bring Christianity to Poland. He even allied with Mieszko in the campaign against the Saxon count Wichmann the Younger.  According to the medieval chronicler Cosmas of Prague, Duke Boleslaus died on 15 July 967, a date questioned by recent research. He was succeeded by his eldest son Boleslaus the Pious.

Marriage and children.

Boleslav's wife may have been Biagota. It is unknown if she was the mother of all his four adult children:

Boleslaus I the Cruel, also called Boleslav I () ( – 15 July, 967 or 972), a member of the Přemyslid dynasty, was ruler ("kníže", "duke") of the Duchy of Bohemia from 935 to his death. He is notorious for the murder of his elder brother Wenceslaus, through which he became duke. Despite his complicity in this fratricide, Boleslaus is generally respected by Czech historians as an energetic ruler who significantly strengthened the Bohemian state and expanded its territory. His accomplishments include significant economic development due to an expansion in trade, the introduction of silver mining and the minting of the first local coinage, the Prague denarius.


Marriage.

Ludmila was married to Bořivoj I of Bohemia, the first Christian Duke of Bohemia, in 873. The couple was converted to Christianity through the efforts of Saint Methodius. Their efforts to convert Bohemia to Christianity were initially not well received, and they were driven from their country for a time by the pagans. Eventually the couple returned, and ruled for several years before retiring to Tetín, near Beroun.  The couple was succeeded by their son Spytihněv. Spytihněv was succeeded by his brother Vratislav. When Vratislav died in 921, his son Wenceslas became the next ruler of Bohemia. It had been mainly Ludmila who raised her grandson and she now acted as regent for him.

Ludmila and Drahomíra.

Wenceslaus' mother Drahomíra became jealous of Ludmila's influence over Wenceslaus. She had two noblemen Tunna and Gommon (probably of Frankish or Varangian descend) murder Ludmila at Tetín, and part of Ludmila's story says that she was strangled with her veil. Initially, Saint Ludmila was buried at St. Michael's at Tetín.  Saint Ludmila was canonized shortly after her death. As part of the process of canonization, in 925, Wenceslaus moved her remains to the St. George's Basilica, Prague. She is venerated as a patroness of Bohemia. She is considered to be a patron saint of Bohemia, converts, Czech Republic, duchesses, problems with in-laws, and widows. Her feast day is celebrated on September 16th.  Antonín Dvořák composed his oratorio "Svatá Ludmila" (Saint Ludmila) between September 1885 and May 1886. The work was commissioned by the publisher Littleton for the Leeds Festival.

Saint Ludmila (c. 860 – 15 September 921) is a Czech saint and martyr venerated by the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics. She was born in Mělník as the daughter of the Sorbian prince Slavibor. Saint Ludmila was the grandmother of Saint Wenceslaus, who is widely referred to as Good King Wenceslaus. Saint Ludmila was canonized shortly after her death. As part of the process of canonization, in 925, Wenceslaus moved her remains to the St. George's Basilica, Prague.


Life.

Rabanus was born of noble parents in Mainz. The date of his birth remains uncertain, but in 801 he was ordained a deacon at Benedictine Abbey of Fulda in Hesse, where he had been sent to school and had become a monk. At the insistence of Ratgar, his abbot, he went together with Haimo (later of Halberstadt) to complete his studies at Tours. There he studied under Alcuin, who in recognition of his diligence and purity gave him the surname of Maurus, after the favourite disciple of Benedict, Saint Maurus.  Returning to Fulda, in 803 he was entrusted with the principal charge of the abbey school, which under his direction became one of the most preeminent centers of scholarship and book production in Europe, and sent forth such pupils as Walafrid Strabo, Servatus Lupus of Ferrières, and Otfrid of Weissenburg. It was probably at this period that he compiled his excerpt from the grammar of Priscian, a popular textbook during the Middle Ages. According to Alban Butler's "Lives of the Saints," Rabanus ate no meat and drank no wine.  In 814 Rabanus was ordained a priest. Shortly afterwards, apparently on account of disagreement with Abbot Ratgar, he withdrew for a time from Fulda. This banishment has long been understood to have occasioned a pilgrimage to Palestine, based on an allusion in his commentary on Joshua. However, the passage in question is taken from Origen's "Homily" xiv "In Librum Jesu Nave". Hence, it was Origen, not Rabanus, who visited Palestine. Rabanus returned to Fulda in 817 on the election of a new abbot, Eigil, and at Eigil's death in 822, Rabanus himself became abbot. He handled this position efficiently and successfully, but in 842 he resigned so as to have greater leisure for study and prayer, retiring to the neighbouring monastery of St Petersberg.  In 847 Rabanus was constrained to return to public life when he was elected to succeed Otgar as Archbishop of Mainz. He died at Winkel on the Rhine in 856.

Hymns.

Rabanus composed a number of hymns, the most famous of which is the "Veni Creator Spiritus". This is a hymn to the Holy Spirit often sung at Pentecost and at ordinations. It is known in English through many translations, including "Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire"; "Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest"; and "Creator Spirit, by whose aid." "Veni Creator Spiritus" was used by Gustav Mahler as the first chorale of his eighth symphony.  Another of Rabanus' hymns, "Christ, the fair glory of the holy angels" ("Christe, sanctorum decus Angelorum"), sung for the commemoration of Saint Michael and All Angels, and to include the archangels Gabriel and Raphael, is found in English translation in The Hymnal 1982 (of the Episcopal Church), and was harmonized by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Works.

Rabanus' works, many of which remained unpublished, comprise commentaries on scripture (Genesis to Judges, Ruth, Kings, Chronicles, Judith, Esther, Canticles, Proverbs, Wisdom, Sirach, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Maccabees, Matthew, the Epistles of St Paul, including Hebrews); and various treatises relating to doctrinal and practical subjects, including more than one series of homilies. In "De institutione clericorum" he brought into prominence the views of Augustine and Gregory the Great as to the training which was requisite for a right discharge of the clerical function. One of his most popular and enduring works is a spectacular collection of poems centered on the cross, called "De laudibus sanctae crucis" or "In honorem sanctae crucis," a set of highly sophisticated poems that present the cross (and, in the last poem, Rabanus himself kneeling before it) in word and image, even in numbers.  Among the others may be mentioned the "De universo libri xxii., sive etymologiarum opus", a kind of dictionary or encyclopedia, heavily dependent upon Isidore of Seville's "Etymologies", designed as a help towards the typological, historical and mystical interpretation of Scripture, the "De sacris ordinibus", the "De disciplina ecclesiastica" and the "Martyrologium". All of them are characterized by erudition (he knew even some Greek and Hebrew).  In the annals of German philology a special interest attaches to the "Glossaria Latino-Theodisca". A commentary, "Super Porphyrium", printed by Cousin in 1836 among the "Ouvrages inédits d'Abélard", and assigned both by that editor and by Haurau to Hrabantis Maurus, is now generally believed to have been the work of a disciple.  In 2006 Germans marked the 1150th anniversary of his death, especially in Mainz and in Fulda. Highlights of the celebrations included the display of Codex Vaticanus Reginensis latinus 124, an extremely rare loan by the Vatican to Mainz of a spectacular manuscript containing "De laudibus sanctae crucis". The anniversary also saw the publication of no fewer than three book-length studies of Maurus and his work.

Bibliography.

The first nominally complete edition of the works of Hrabanus Maurus was that of Georges Colvener (Cologne, 6 vols. fol., 1627). The "Opera omnia" form vols. cvii–cxii of Migne's "Patrologiae cursus completus". The "De universo" is the subject of "Compendium der Naturwissenschaften an der Schule zu Fulda im IX. Jahrhundert" (Berlin, 1880).  Recent critical editions are available of some of his works:  Publications on the occasion of the 1150th anniversary of his death:  "See also" (2012) "Verzeichnis der Handschriften mit den Werken des Hrabanus Maurus", Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover. (Translation: Index of Manuscripts with the Works of Hrabanus Maurus, compiled by Raymund Kottje, Professor Emeritus, University of Bonn, Germany.)

Rabanus Maurus Magnentius ( 780 – 4 February 856), also known as Hrabanus or Rhabanus, was a Frankish Benedictine monk, theologian, poet, encyclopedist and military writer who became archbishop of Mainz in East Francia. He was the author of the encyclopaedia "De rerum naturis" (""On the Natures of Things""). He also wrote treatises on education and grammar and commentaries on the Bible. He was one of the most prominent teachers and writers of the Carolingian age, and was called "Praeceptor Germaniae," or "the teacher of Germany." In the most recent edition of the Roman Martyrology ("Martyrologium Romanum", 2004, pp. 133), his feast is given as 4 February and he is qualified as a Saint ('sanctus').


Biology.

A member of the mallow family, "O. pyramidale" is native from southern Mexico to southern Brazil, but can now be found in many other countries (Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Thailand, Solomon Islands). It is a pioneer plant, which establishes itself in clearings in forests, either man-made or where trees have fallen, or in abandoned agricultural fields. It grows extremely rapidly, up to 27 m in 10–15 years. The speed of growth accounts for the lightness of the wood, which has a lower density than cork. Trees generally do not live beyond 30 to 40 years.  Flowers are produced from the third year onwards, typically at the end of the rainy season when few other trees are in flower. The large flowers open in the late afternoon and remain open overnight. Each may contain a pool of nectar up to 2.5 cm deep. Daytime pollinators include capuchin monkeys. However, most pollination occurs at night. The main pollinators were once thought to be bats, but recent evidence suggests that two nocturnal arboreal mammals, the kinkajou and the olingo, may be the primary pollinators.

Cultivation.

Ecuador supplies 95% or more of commercial balsa. In recent years, about 60% of the balsa has been plantation-grown in densely packed patches of around 1000 trees per hectare (compared to about two to three per hectare in nature). It is evergreen or dry-season deciduous, with large 30- to 40-cm, weakly palmately lobed leaves. Being a deciduous angiosperm, balsa is classified as a hardwood despite the wood itself being very soft. It is the softest commercial hardwood. The trees are harvested after six to 10 years of growth. The name balsa comes from the Spanish word for "raft".

Uses.

Balsa lumber is very soft and light, with a coarse, open grain. The density of dry balsa wood ranges from 40–340 kg/m, with a typical density around 160 kg/m. The wood of the living tree has large cells that are filled with water. This gives the wood a spongy texture. It also makes the wood of the living tree not much lighter than water and barely able to float. For commercial production, the wood is kiln-dried for about two weeks, leaving the cells hollow and empty. The large volume-to-surface ratio of the resulting thin-walled, empty cells gives the dried wood a large strength-to-weight ratio because the cells are mostly air. Unlike naturally rotted wood, which soon disintegrates in the rainforests where balsa trees grow, the cell walls of kiln-seasoned balsa wood retain their strong structure of cellulose and lignin. Because it is low in density but high in strength, balsa is a very popular material for light, stiff structures in model bridge tests, model buildings, and construction of model aircraft; all grades are usable for airworthy control line and radio-controlled aircraft varieties of the aeromodeling sports, with the lightest "contest grades" especially valuable for free-flight model aircraft. However, it also is valued as a component of full-sized light wooden aeroplanes, most notably the World War II de Havilland Mosquito.  Balsa is used to make wooden crankbaits for fishing, especially Rapala lures.  Sticks of dried balsa are useful as makeshift pens for calligraphy when commercial metal nibs of the desired width are not available.  Balsa wood is often used as a core material in composites; for example, the blades of many wind turbines are partly of balsa. In table tennis bats, a balsa layer is typically sandwiched between two pieces of thin plywood made from other species of wood. Balsa wood is also used in laminates together with glass-reinforced plastic (fiberglass) for making high-quality balsa surfboards and for the decks and topsides of many types of boats, especially pleasure craft less than 30 m in length. On a boat, the balsa core is usually end-grain balsa, which is much more resistant to compression than if the soft balsa wood were laid lengthwise.  Balsa is also used in the manufacture of "breakaway" wooden props such as tables and chairs that are designed to be broken as part of theatre, movie, and television productions.  The fifth and sixth generations of the Chevrolet Corvette had floor pans composed of balsa sandwiched between sheets of carbon fiber reinforced plastic.  Norwegian scientist and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, convinced that early contact between the peoples of South America and Polynesia was possible, built the raft "Kon Tiki" from balsa logs, and upon it his crew and he sailed the Pacific Ocean from Peru to the Polynesian Tuamotu Archipelago in 1947. However, the "Kon Tiki" logs were not seasoned and owed much of their (rather slight) buoyancy to the fact that their sap was of lower density than seawater. This serendipitously may have saved the expedition, because it prevented the seawater from the wood and sinking the raft.  Balsa wood is also a popular wood type used in the arts of whittling, and surfing. When picture frames still used wood, balsa was often used in a baroque style because of the ease of shaping the design.

Ochroma is a genus of flowering plants in the mallow family, Malvaceae, containing the sole species Ochroma pyramidale, commonly known as the balsa tree. It is a large, fast-growing tree that can grow up to 30 m tall. Balsa wood is a very lightweight material with many uses. Balsa trees are native to Mexico, Central America and South America.


The Kelly Kids.

The patriarch of the family, Daniel Kelly Sr., has been described as a "grizzled, ageing druid aesthetic", but according to his daughter Kathy he was in earlier days "a clean-cut, intense conservative Catholic" who studied for the priesthood. He married his first wife, Joanne, in 1957, and the couple left their native United States in 1965 with their children Daniel Jr., Caroline, Kathleen and Paul, and settled in Spain, where Daniel opened an antiques shop.  Daniel Kelly and Joanne separated, and Joanne returned to the US with Daniel Jr., who had a disability. In 1970, Kelly married Barbara Ann Suokko. Daniel and Barbara had eight children, with the eldest, John, born in 1967, and the youngest, Angelo in 1981. The children were homeschooled and given lessons in music and dance.  In 1974, the older children, Caroline, Daniel, Kathy and Paul, formed The Kelly Kids, at first busking, then performing at parties and local events. They became well-known enough that they appeared on Spanish television in 1975. The band was joined by the younger members of the family as they matured and learned to play musical instruments. The band's popularity increased in Spain, with several performances on television and in circuses. In 1976, they went on tour as The Kelly Family, in Italy, Germany and The Netherlands. Their money was stolen during the tour and, penniless, they had to busk on the streets to earn enough for the return trip home.  The family moved to Ireland, living at a campground and touring there in 1977. Then, in 1978, they toured again in their hallmark double-decker bus. (They later lived on a large houseboat.) Daniel and Barbara Kelly joined their children for performances, Barbara often performing with a baby in her arms.  In 1977, they landed a record contract in Germany. Their first major chart hit came in 1980, with the song "Who'll Come With Me (David's Song)", with John Kelly, aged 12, singing the solo. The song, with a Gaelic melody by Vladimir Cosma, was the theme to a German television production "The Adventures of David Balfour", based on "Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson. The song hit number 1 in the Netherlands and Belgium, and it reached the top 20 in Germany.  Barbara Kelly died of breast cancer in 1982, shortly after the birth of the youngest child, Angelo. Her last words to her family were "Keep on singing!" The band continued to record, Daniel Kelly having formed his own recording company in 1980. As the older members of the family reached adulthood, Caroline and Paul left the band, Caroline to study nursing and Paul to become a chef. In 1990, Daniel Kelly suffered a stroke, but he remained fairly active in the group through the 1990s.

Fame.

The Kelly Family covered famous songs such as "We are the World" and "The Rose", but wrote most of their own music based on family and personal experience, their Catholic faith, and their worldview. Songs include "Santa Maria"; "Why, Why, Why"; "An Angel", the video of which popularized a younger family member Paddy; "Break Free", sung by Barby; the haunting "Mama", in which Barbara Kelly is remembered by her children; and "The Pee Pee Song", in which the common childhood problem of bedwetting is portrayed by the raucous, flaxen haired baby-of-the-family Angelo.  In the 1990s, the group enjoyed their biggest success. Their 1994 album "Over the Hump" sold more than 2.25 million copies in Germany alone, and 4.5 million copies throughout Europe. In 1995, to promote the album, they played a concert to a Vienna audience of 250,000. In the same year they filled the Westfalenhalle, Dortmund, nine times in a row, a feat no other musician has since accomplished. In 1996 they headlined their first Stadium Tour, filling some of Europe's largest venues. They played in Beijing, China in front of 20,000 people. In 1998 they bought a castle, Schloss Gymnich, on the Erft near Cologne, Germany. About the same time, Adam Kelly, son of Papa Kelly’s younger brother Henry, started performing with his cousins in The Kelly Family. Success continued until they started to disagree on a professional basis at the beginning of the year 2000. In 2002 Papa Kelly died from yet another stroke. That same year the family competed in the German Eurovision Song Contest with the song of Maite Kelly "I wanna be loved" and placed fourth.  In 2002, Barby's ongoing illness forced her retirement from the band and, to the disappointment of his fans, Paddy cut his long hair and joined a religious order in France. Members of the family continued to perform as soloists or together, or in combination with their partners, as both Jimmy and John married singers. Fan interest prompted a comeback with gigs in Germany in 2007.  In 2011, the 12 Kelly siblings were reported as living in Ireland, Germany, the United States, Spain, and Belgium.

Controversies and problems.

Along with their fame and rabid followers came problems. The father, Daniel Kelly, was described, allegedly by his children, as having a "tyrannical, controlling streak". The most outspoken sibling, Jimmy, has criticized his father for not giving his children a formal education and imposing on them a "Huckleberry Finn" lifestyle. Moreover, he said that as The Kelly Family group began to dissolve, he had almost nothing left of the millions of dollars the family had earned. The oldest daughter, Kathy, who managed most of the finances of the family, said that Daniel was more "free spirit than tyrant" but that "we got too big too fast, we should have cut things down some or handed over to professional management."  Dan Kelly taught his children to "always keep independent of the structures of the modern entertainment industry." He formed his own record label and "the Kellys kept everything in the family, from copyright and bookings to promotion and money matters."  The Kellys ran into tax problems in Germany, the "Dan Kelly Foundation" was discovered not to be a registered charity, and they were criticized for their lack of transparency in accounting for money raised for an AIDS charity. Likewise, the group had little success in the English-speaking world and aroused the derision of critics. Der Spiegel called them a "singing second-hand clothes collection" and Die Zeit called them a cult.

Discography.

For the solo recordings of the individual members please see "Solo Recordings".

The Kelly Family is an Irish-American-European music group consisting of a multi-generational family, usually consisting of nine siblings joined occasionally on stage in their earlier years by their father and mother. They played a repertoire of rock, pop, and folk music. They had chart and concert success around the world, especially in Germany, the Benelux countries, Scandinavia, Poland, Spain and Portugal. They have sold over 20 million albums since the early 1980s. The Kelly Family was ranked as the 6th most popular music act in Germany in the 1990s. Despite its American origins, the group is virtually unknown in the United States. They sang in English, Spanish, German and Basque.


History.

Evidence of the existence of soup can be found as far back as about 20,000 BC. Boiling was not a common cooking technique until the invention of waterproof containers (which probably came in the form of clay vessels). Animal hides and watertight baskets of bark or reeds were used before this. To boil the water hot rocks were used. This method was also used to cook acorns and other plants.  The word "soup" comes from French "soupe" ("soup", "broth"), which comes through Vulgar Latin "suppa" ("bread soaked in broth") from a Germanic source, from which also comes the word "sop", a piece of bread used to soak up soup or a thick stew.  The word "restaurant" (meaning "[something] restoring") was first used in France in the 16th century, to refer to a highly concentrated, inexpensive soup, sold by street vendors, that was advertised as an antidote to physical exhaustion. In 1765, a Parisian entrepreneur opened a shop specializing in such soups. This prompted the use of the modern word "restaurant" for the eating establishments.  In the US, the first colonial cookbook was published by William Parks in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1742, based on Eliza Smith's "The Compleat Housewife; or Accomplished Gentlewoman's Companion", and it included several recipes for soups and bisques. A 1772 cookbook, "The Frugal Housewife", contained an entire chapter on the topic. English cooking dominated early colonial cooking; but as new immigrants arrived from other countries, other national soups gained popularity. In particular, German immigrants living in Pennsylvania were famous for their potato soups. In 1794, Jean Baptiste Gilbert Payplat dis Julien, a refugee from the French Revolution, opened an eating establishment in Boston called "The Restorator", and became known as the "Prince of Soups". The first American cooking pamphlet dedicated to soup recipes was written in 1882 by Emma Ewing: "Soups and Soup Making".  Portable soup was devised in the 18th century by boiling seasoned meat until a thick, resinous syrup was left that could be dried and stored for months at a time.

Commercial products.

Commercial soup became popular with the invention of canning in the 19th century, and today a great variety of canned and dried soups are on the market.

Canned.

Canned soup can be condensed, in which case it is prepared by adding water (or sometimes milk) or it can be "ready-to-eat", meaning that no additional liquid is needed before eating. Condensed soup (invented in 1897 by John T. Dorrance, a chemist with the Campbell Soup Company) allows soup to be packaged into a smaller can and sold at a lower price than other canned soups. The soup is usually doubled in volume by adding a "can full" of water or milk, about. The "ready-to-eat" variant can be prepared by simply heating the contents of the can on a kitchen stove or in a microwave oven, rather than actually cooking anything. Such soups can be used as a base for homemade soups, with the consumer adding anything from a few vegetables to eggs, meat, cream or pasta.  Since the 1990s, the canned soup market has burgeoned, with non-condensed soups marketed as "ready-to-eat", so they require no additional liquid to prepare. Microwaveable bowls have expanded the "ready-to-eat" canned soup market even more, offering convenience (especially in workplaces), and making for popular lunch items. In response to concerns over the negative health effects of excessive salt intake, some soup manufacturers have introduced reduced-salt versions of popular soups.  Today, Campbell's Tomato (introduced in 1897), Cream of Mushroom, and Chicken Noodle (introduced in 1934) are three of the most popular soups in America. Americans consume approximately 2.5 billion bowls of these three soups alone each year. Other popular brands of soup include Progresso.

Dried.

Dry soup mixes are sold by many manufacturers, and are reconstituted with hot water; other fresh ingredients may then be added.  The first dried soup was bouillon cubes; the earlier meat extract did not require refrigeration, but was a viscous liquid.  East Asian-style instant noodle soups include ramen and seasonings, and are marketed as a convenient and inexpensive instant meal, requiring only hot water for preparation.  Western-style dried soups include vegetable, chicken base, potato, pasta and cheese flavors.

Types.

In French cuisine, soup is often served before other dishes in a meal. In 1970, Richard Olney gave the place of the entrée in a French full menu: "A dinner that begins with a soup and runs through a fish course, an entrée, a sorbet, a roast, salad, cheese and dessert, and that may be accompanied by from three to six wines, presents a special problem of orchestration".

Fruit.

Fruit soups are prepared using fruit as a primary ingredient, and may be served warm or cold depending on the recipe. Many varieties of fruit soups exist, and they may be prepared based upon the availability of seasonal fruit.

Cold.

Cold soups are a particular variation on the traditional soup, wherein the temperature when served is kept at or below room temperature. They may be sweet or savory. In summer, sweet cold soups can form part of a dessert tray. An example of a savory chilled soup is "gazpacho", a chilled vegetable-based soup originating from Spain. Vichyssoise is a cold purée of potatoes, leeks, and cream.

Asian.

A feature of East Asian soups not normally found in Western cuisine is the use of tofu in soups. Many traditional East Asian soups are typically broths, "clear soups", or starch thickened soups.

As a figure of speech.

In the English language, the word "soup" has developed several uses in phrase.

Soup is a primarily liquid food, generally served warm or hot (but may be cool or cold), that is made by combining ingredients of meat or vegetables with stock, or water. Hot soups are additionally characterized by boiling solid ingredients in liquids in a pot until the flavors are extracted, forming a broth. Soups are similar to stews, and in some cases there may not be a clear distinction between the two; however, soups generally have more liquid (broth) than stews.


History.

Ancient understandings of authority trace back to Rome and draw later from Catholic (Thomistic) thought and other traditional understandings. In more modern terms, forms of authority include transitional authority exhibited in for example Cambodia, public authority in the form of popular power, and, in more administrative terms, bureaucratic or managerial techniques. In terms of bureaucratic governance, one limitation of the governmental agents of the executive branch, as outlined by George A. Krause, is that they are not as close to the popular will as elected representatives are. The claims of authority can extend to national or individual sovereignty, which is broadly or provisionally understood as a claim to political authority that is legitimated.  Historical applications of authority in political terms include the formation of the city-state of Geneva, and experimental treatises involving the topic of authority in relation to education include "Emile" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As David Laitin defines, authority is a key concept to be defined in determining the range and role of political theory, science and inquiry. The relevance of a grounded understanding of authority includes the basic foundation and formation of political, civil and/or ecclesiastical institutions or representatives. In recent years, however, authority in political contexts has been challenged or questioned.

Political philosophy.

There have been several contributions to the debate of political authority. Among others, Hannah Arendt, Carl Joachim Friedrich, Thomas Hobbes, Alexandre Kojève and Carl Schmitt have provided some of the most remarkable texts.  In political philosophy, the jurisdiction of political authority, the location of sovereignty, the balancing of freedom and authority, and the requirements of political obligations have been core questions from the time of Plato and Aristotle to the present. Most democratic societies are engaged in an ongoing discussion regarding the legitimate extent of the exercise of governmental authority. In the United States, for instance, there is a prevailing belief that the political system as instituted by the Founding Fathers should accord the populace as much freedom as reasonable, and that government should limit its authority accordingly, known as limited government.  In the discussion regarding the legitimacy of political authority, there are two beliefs at the respective ends of the spectrum. The first is the belief in the absolute freedom of the individual, otherwise known as political anarchism. The second is the belief that there must be a central authority in the form of a sovereign that claims ownership and control over the masses. This belief is known as statism. Sovereignty, in modern terms, can refer either to the adherence to a form of sovereign rule or the individual sovereignty, or autonomy, of a nation-state. The argument for political anarchy and anti-statism is made by Michael Huemer in his book "The Problem of Political Authority". On the other side, one of the main arguments for the legitimacy of the state is some form of the “social contract theory” developed by Thomas Hobbes in his 1668 book, "Leviathan", or by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his political writings on the social contract.

Sociology.

Since the emergence of the social sciences, authority has become a subject of research in a variety of empirical settings: the family (parental authority), small groups (informal authority of leadership), intermediate organizations such as schools, churches, armies, industries and bureaucracies (organizational and bureaucratic authority), and society-wide or inclusive organizations, ranging from the most primitive tribal society to the modern nation-state and intermediate organization (political authority).  The definition of authority in contemporary social science remains a matter of debate. Max Weber in his essay "Politics as a Vocation" (1919) divided legitimate authority into three types. Others, like Howard Bloom, suggest a parallel between authority and respect/reverence for ancestors.

The United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms.

The political authority in the British context can be traced to James VI and I of Scotland who wrote two political treatise called "Basilikon Doron" and "" which advocated his right to rule on the basis of the concept of the divine right of kings, a theological concept that has basis in multiple religions, but in this case, Christianity, tracing this right to the apostolic succession. The King in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth states are considered the foundations of judicial, legislative and executive authority.

The United States.

The understanding of political authority and the exercise of political powers in the American context traces back to the writings of the Founding Fathers, including the arguments put forward in "The Federalist Papers" by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and the First Chief Justice of the United States John Jay, and later speeches by the 16th President of the United States Abraham Lincoln. "Our government rests in public opinion," President Abraham Lincoln said in 1856. In his 1854 Speech at Peoria, Illinois, Lincoln espoused "the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own," a principle existing "at the foundation of the sense of justice." This sense of personal ownership and stewardship was integral to the practice of self-government as Abraham Lincoln saw it by a Republican nation and its people. This was because, as Abraham Lincoln also declared, "No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent."

Authority is the legitimate power which one person or group possesses and practices over another. A civil state usually makes this formal by way of a judicial branch and an executive branch of government. In the exercise of governance, the terms "authority" and "power" sometimes are inaccurately used as synonyms. The term "authority" identifies political legitimacy, which grants and justifies the right to exercise power of government; and the term "power" identifies the ability to accomplish an authorized goal, by way either of compliance or of obedience; hence, authority is the power to make decisions and the legitimacy to make such legal decisions and order their execution.


Agriculture.

The term is used in agriculture and describes the practice of planting one species in a field. Examples of monoculture include lawns and most fields of wheat or corn. The term is also used where a single breed of farm animal is raised in large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Benefits.

In crop monocultures, each plant in a field has the same standardized planting, maintenance and harvesting requirements resulting in greater yields and lower costs. When a crop is matched to its well-managed environment, a monoculture can produce higher yields than a polyculture. In the last 40 years, modern practices such as monoculture planting and the use of synthesized fertilizers have reduced the amount of additional land needed to produce food.

Risks.

Annually planting the same crop in the same area depletes the nutrients from the earth that the plant relies on and leaves soil weak and unable to support healthy growth. Because soil structure and quality is so poor, farmers are forced to use chemical fertilizers to encourage plant growth and fruit production. These fertilizers, in turn, disrupt the natural makeup of the soil and contribute further to nutrient depletion. Polyculture, the mixing of different crops, increases the likelihood that one or more of the crops will be resistant to any particular pathogen. Studies have shown that planting a mixture of crop strains in the same field can combat disease effectively. Switching to polyculture in areas with disease conditions can greatly increased yields. In one study in China, the planting of several varieties of rice in the same field increased yields of non-resistant strains by 89% compared to non-resistant strains grown in monoculture, largely because of a dramatic (94%) decrease in the incidence of disease, making pesticides less necessary.  Humans rely heavily on a relatively small number of food crops and farm animals for food. If disease hits a major food crop - as happened during the 19th-century Irish potato famine - food supplies for large populations could come under threat. Maintaining and increasing biodiversity in agriculture could help safeguard world food-supplies.

Forestry.

In forestry, monoculture refers to the planting of one species of tree. Monoculture plantings provide greater yields and more efficient harvesting than natural stands of trees. Single-species stands of trees are often the natural way trees grow, but the stands show a diversity in tree sizes, with dead trees mixed with mature and young trees. In forestry, monoculture stands that are planted and harvested as a unit provide limited resources for wildlife that depend on dead trees and openings, since all the trees are the same size; they are most often harvested by clearcutting, which drastically alters the habitat. The mechanical harvesting of trees can compact soils, which can adversely affect understory growth. Single-species planting also causes trees to be more vulnerable when they are infected with a pathogen, or attacked by insects, or affected by adverse environmental conditions.

Genetic monocultures.

While often referring to the mass production of the same species of crop, it can also refer to planting of a single cultivar which has same identical genetic makeups to the plants around them. When all plants in a monoculture are genetically similar, a disease, to which they have no resistance, can destroy entire populations of crops. the wheat leaf-rust fungus occasioned a great deal of worry internationally, having already decimated wheat crops in Uganda and Kenya, and having started to make inroads into Asia as well. Given the very genetically similar strains of much of the world's wheat crops following the Green Revolution, the impacts of such diseases threaten agricultural production worldwide.

Historic examples of monocultures.

Great Famine of Ireland.

In Ireland, exclusive use of one variety of potato, the "lumper", led to the Great Famine of 1845–1849. Lumpers provided inexpensive food to feed the Irish masses. Potatoes were propagated vegetatively with little to no genetic variation. When "Phytophthora infestans" arrived in Ireland from the Americas in 1845, the lumper had no resistance to the disease, leading to the nearly complete failure of the potato crop across Ireland.

Bananas.

Until the 1950s, the Gros Michel cultivar of banana represented almost all bananas consumed in the United States because of their taste, small seeds, and efficiency to produce. Their small seeds, while more appealing than the large ones in other Asian cultivars, were not suitable for planting. This meant that all new banana plants had to be grown from the cut suckers of another plant. As a result of this asexual form of planting, all bananas grown had identical genetic makeups which gave them no traits for resistance to "Fusarium wilt", a fungal disease that spread quickly throughout the Caribbean where they were being grown. By the beginning of the 1960s, growers had to switch to growing the Cavendish banana, a cultivar grown in a similar way. This cultivar is under similar disease stress since all the bananas are clones of each other and could easily succumb as the Gros Michel did.

Cattle.

Many of today's livestock production systems rely on just a handful of highly specialized breeds. Focusing heavily on a single trait (output) may come at the expense of other desirable traits - such as fertility, resistance to disease, vigor, and mothering instincts. In the early 1990s a few Holstein calves were observed to grow poorly and died in the first 6 months of life. They were all found to be homozygous for a mutation in the gene that caused bovine leukocyte adhesion deficiency. This mutation was found at a high frequency in Holstein populations worldwide. (15% among bulls in the US, 10% in Germany, and 16% in Japan.) Researchers studying the pedigrees of affected and carrier animals tracked the source of the mutation to a single bull that was widely used in the industry. Note that in 1990 there were approximately 4 million Holstein cattle in the US, making the affected population around 600,000 animals.

Benefits of genetic diversity.

While having little to no variety in the genetics of an agricultural system can have drawbacks, increasing genetic diversity by introducing organisms with varying genes can divert them and make the system more sustainable. For example, by having crops with varying genetic traits for disease and pest resistance, there is a much lower chance of having those pests or diseases spread throughout the area. This is because if one crop becomes infected with a particular strain of disease or species of pest, there is a chance that the other plants around it will have genes that protect them from that strain/species. This can help increase crop productivity while simultaneously lowering pesticide usage and risk of exposure.

Polyculture.

The environmental movement seeks to change popular culture by redefining the "perfect lawn" to be something other than a turf monoculture, and seeks agricultural policy that provides greater encouragement for more diverse cropping systems. Local food systems may also encourage growing multiple species and a wide variety of crops at the same time and same place. Heirloom gardening and raising heritage livestock breeds have come about largely as a reaction against monocultures in agriculture.

Monoculture is the agricultural practice of producing or growing a single crop, plant, or livestock species, variety, or breed in a field or farming system at a time. Polyculture, where more than one crop is grown in the same space at the same time, is the alternative to monoculture. Monoculture, widely used both in industrial farming and in organic farming, has allowed increased efficiency in planting and harvesting while simultaneously increasing the risk of exposure to diseases or pests. This is a cheap way of duplicating produce.


Design.

Magnetic tape drives with capacities less than one megabyte were first used for data storage on mainframe computers in the 1950s., capacities of 10 terabytes or higher of uncompressed data per cartridge were available.  In early computer systems, magnetic tape served as the main storage medium because although the drives were expensive, the tapes were inexpensive. Some computer systems ran the operating system on tape drives such as DECtape. DECtape had fixed-size indexed blocks that could be rewritten without disturbing other blocks, so DECtape could be used like a slow disk drive.  Data tape drives may use advanced data integrity techniques such as multilevel forward error correction, shingling, and linear serpentine layout for writing data to tape.  Tape drives can be connected to a computer with SCSI, Fibre Channel, SATA, USB, FireWire, FICON, or other interfaces. Tape drives are used with autoloaders and tape libraries which automatically load, unload, and store multiple tapes, increasing the volume of data which can be stored without manual intervention.  In the early days of home computing, floppy and hard disk drives were very expensive. Many computers had an interface to store data via an audio tape recorder, typically on Compact Cassettes. Simple dedicated tape drives, such as the professional DECtape and the home ZX Microdrive and Rotronics Wafadrive, were also designed for inexpensive data storage. However, the drop in disk drive prices made such alternatives obsolete.

Data compression.

As some data can be compressed to a smaller size than the original files, it has become commonplace when marketing tape drives to state the capacity with the assumption of a 2:1 compression ratio; thus a tape with a capacity of 80 GB would be sold as "80/160". The true storage capacity is also known as the native capacity or the raw capacity. The compression ratio actually achievable depends on the data being compressed. Some data has little redundancy; large video files, for example, already use compression and cannot be compressed further. A database with repetitive entries, on the other hand, may allow compression ratios better than 10:1.

Technical limitations.

A disadvantageous effect termed occurs during read/write if the data transfer rate falls below the minimum threshold at which the tape drive heads were designed to transfer data to or from a continuously running tape. In this situation, the modern fast-running tape drive is unable to stop the tape instantly. Instead, the drive must decelerate and stop the tape, rewind it a short distance, restart it, position back to the point at which streaming stopped and then resume the operation. If the condition repeats, the resulting back-and-forth tape motion resembles that of shining shoes with a cloth. Shoe-shining decreases the attainable data transfer rate, drive and tape life, and tape capacity.  In early tape drives, non-continuous data transfer was normal and unavoidable. Computer processing power and available memory were usually insufficient to provide a constant stream, so tape drives were typically designed for "start-stop" operation. Early drives used very large spools, which necessarily had high inertia and did not start and stop moving easily. To provide high start, stop and seek performance, several feet of loose tape was played out and pulled by a suction fan down into two deep open channels on either side of the tape head and capstans. The long thin loops of tape hanging in these "vacuum columns" had far less inertia than the two reels and could be rapidly started, stopped and repositioned. The large reels would move as required to keep the slack tape in the vacuum columns.  Later, most tape drives of the 1980s introduced the use of an internal data buffer to somewhat reduce start-stop situations. These drives are often referred to as "tape streamers". The tape was stopped only when the buffer contained no data to be written, or when it was full of data during reading. As faster tape drives became available, despite being buffered, the drives started to suffer from the shoe-shining sequence of stop, rewind, start.  Most recently, drives no longer operate at a single fixed linear speed, but have several speeds. Internally, they implement algorithms that dynamically match the tape speed level to the computer's data rate. Example speed levels could be 50 percent, 75 percent and 100 percent of full speed. A computer that streams data slower than the lowest speed level (e.g. at 49 percent) will still cause shoe-shining.

Media.

Magnetic tape is commonly housed in a casing known as a cassette or cartridge—for example, the 4-track cartridge and the Compact Cassette. The cassette contains magnetic tape to provide different audio content using the same player. The outer shell, made of plastic, sometimes with metal plates and parts, permits ease of handling of the fragile tape, making it far more convenient and robust than having spools of exposed tape. Simple analog cassette audio tape recorders were commonly used for data storage and distribution on home computers at a time when floppy disk drives were very expensive. The Commodore Datasette was a dedicated data version using the same media.

Capacity.

Manufacturers often specify the capacity of tapes using data compression techniques; compressibility varies for different data (commonly 2:1 to 8:1), and the specified capacity may not be attained for some types of real data., tape drives capable of higher capacity were still being developed.  In 2011, Fujifilm and IBM announced that they had been able to record 29.5 billion bits per square inch with magnetic tape media developed using the BaFe particles and nanotechnologies, allowing drives with true (uncompressed) tape capacity of 35 TB. The technology was not expected to be commercially available for at least a decade.  In 2014, Sony and IBM announced that they had been able to record 148 gigabits per square inch with magnetic tape media developed using a new vacuum thin-film forming technology able to form extremely fine crystal particles, allowing true tape capacity of 185 TB.

A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and a long archival stability.


Geography.

Galatia was bounded on the north by Bithynia and Paphlagonia, on the east by Pontus and Cappadocia, on the south by Cilicia and Lycaonia, and on the west by Phrygia. Its capital was Ancyra (i.e. Ankara, today the capital of modern Turkey).

Celtic Galatia.

The terms "Galatians" came to be used by the Greeks for the three Celtic peoples of Anatolia: the Tectosages, the Trocmii, and the Tolistobogii. By the 1st century BC the Celts had become so Hellenized that some Greek writers called them "Hellenogalatai" (Ἑλληνογαλάται). The Romans called them "Gallograeci". Though the Celts had, to a large extent, integrated into Hellenistic Asia Minor, they preserved their linguistic and ethnic identity.  By the 4th century BC the Celts had penetrated into the Balkans, coming into contact with the Thracians and Greeks. In 380 BC they fought in the southern regions of Dalmatia (present day Croatia), and rumors circulated around the ancient world that Alexander the Greats father, Philip II of Macedonia had been assassinated by a dagger of Celtic origins. Arrian writes that "Celts established on the Ionic coast" were among those who came to meet Alexander the Great during a campaign against the Getae in 335 BC. Several ancient accounts mention that the Celts formed an alliance with Dionysius I of Syracuse who sent them to fight alongside the Macedonians against the Thebans. In 279 BC two Celtic factions united under the leadership of Brennus and began to push southwards from southern Bulgaria towards the Greek states. According to Livy, a sizable force split off from this main group and head toward Asia Minor.  For several years a federation of Hellespontine cities, including Byzantion and Chalkedon prevented the Celts from entering Asia Minor but this changed when Nikomedes I of Bithynia allied with some of the Celtic leaders in a war against his brother Zipoetes and the Seleucid king Antiochus I. When the Celts finally entered Asia Minor chaos ensued until the Celts were briefly routed by Antiochus' army in the Battle of Elephants. In the aftermath of the battle the Celts withdrew to Phrygia, eventually settling in Galatia. The territory of Celtic Galatia included the cities of Ancyra (present day Ankara), Pessinus, Tavium, and Gordion.

Roman Galatia.

Upon the death of Deiotarus, the Kingdom of Galatia was given to Amyntas, an auxiliary commander in the Roman army of Brutus and Cassius who gained the favor of Mark Antony. After his death in 25 BC, Galatia was incorporated by Augustus into the Roman Empire, becoming a Roman province. Near his capital Ancyra (modern Ankara), Pylamenes, the king's heir, rebuilt a temple of the Phrygian god Men to venerate Augustus (the Monumentum Ancyranum), as a sign of fidelity. It was on the walls of this temple in Galatia that the major source for the "Res Gestae" of Augustus were preserved for modernity. Few of the provinces proved more enthusiastically loyal to Rome.  Josephus related the Biblical figure Gomer to Galatia (or perhaps to Gaul in general): "For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, [Galls], but were then called Gomerites." Others have related Gomer to Cimmerians.  Paul the Apostle visited Galatia in his missionary journeys, and wrote to the Christians there in the Epistle to the Galatians.  Although originally possessing a strong cultural identity, by the 2nd century AD, the Galatians had become assimilated (Hellenization) into the Hellenistic civilization of Anatolia. The Galatians were still speaking the Galatian language in the time of St. Jerome (347–420 AD), who wrote that the Galatians of Ancyra and the Treveri of Trier (in what is now the Rhineland) spoke the same language ("Comentarii in Epistolam ad Galatos", 2.3, composed c. 387).  In an administrative reorganisation ("c." 386–395), two new provinces succeeded it, "Galatia Prima" and "Galatia Secunda" or "Salutaris", which included part of Phrygia. The fate of the Galatian people is a subject of some uncertainty, but they seem ultimately to have been absorbed into the Greek-speaking populations of Anatolia.

Galatia (;, "Galatía", "Gaul") was an ancient area in the highlands of central Anatolia, roughly corresponding to the provinces of Ankara and Eskişehir, in modern Turkey. Galatia was named after the Gauls from Thrace (cf. Tylis), who settled here and became its ruling caste in the 3rd century BC, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC. It has been called the "Gallia" of the East, Roman writers calling its inhabitants "Galli" ("Gauls" or "Celts").


Life and career.

Born in Goddelau (now part of Riedstadt) in the Grand Duchy of Hesse as the son of a physician, Büchner attended the Darmstadt gymnasium, a humanistic secondary school.  In 1828, he became interested in politics and joined a circle of William Shakespeare aficionados, which later on probably became the Gießen and Darmstadt section of the Society for Human Rights ().  In 1831, at age 18, he began to study medicine in Strasbourg. In Strasbourg, he immersed himself in French literature and political thought. He was influenced by the utopian communist theories of François-Noël Babeuf and Claude Henri de Saint-Simon. In 1833 he moved to Gießen and continued his studies at the University of Giessen.  While Büchner continued his studies in Gießen, he established a secret society dedicated to the revolutionary cause. In July 1834, with the help of evangelical theologian Friedrich Ludwig Weidig, he published the leaflet "Der Hessische Landbote", a revolutionary pamphlet critical of social injustice in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. The authorities charged them with treason and issued a warrant for their arrest. Weidig was arrested, tortured and later died in prison in Darmstadt; Büchner managed to flee across the border to Strasbourg where he wrote most of his literary work and translated two French plays by Victor Hugo, "Lucrèce Borgia" and "Marie Tudor". Two years later, his medical dissertation, "Mémoire sur le Système Nerveux du Barbeaux (Cyprinus barbus L.)" was published in Paris and Strasbourg. In October 1836, after receiving his M.D. and being appointed by the University of Zürich as a lecturer in anatomy, Büchner relocated to Zürich where he spent his final months writing and teaching until his death from typhus at the age of twenty-three. His first play, "Dantons Tod" ("Danton's Death"), about the French revolution, was published in 1835, followed by "Lenz" (first partly published in Karl Gutzkow's and Wienberg's "Deutsche Revue", which was quickly banned). "Lenz" is a novella based on the life of the Sturm und Drang poet Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. In 1836 his second play, "Leonce and Lena", satirized the nobility. His unfinished and most famous play, "Woyzeck", was notable because its main characters were all from the working class. It exists only in fragments and was published posthumously.

Legacy.

By the 1870s, Büchner was nearly forgotten in Germany when Karl Emil Franzos edited his works; these later became a major influence on the naturalist and expressionist movements. Arnold Zweig described "Lenz", Büchner's only work of prose fiction, as "the beginning of modern European prose".  The play "Woyzeck" became the basis for many adaptations including Alban Berg's landmark atonal opera "Wozzeck" which premiered in 1925, and Werner Herzog's 1979 film "Woyzeck" (see main article, "Woyzeck", for a full list).  A literary prize in Germany, the Georg Büchner Prize, is awarded annually. It was created in 1923.

Karl Georg Büchner (17 October 1813 – 19 February 1837) was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose, considered part of the Young Germany movement. He was also a revolutionary and the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner. His literary achievements, though few in number, are generally held in great esteem in Germany and it is widely believed that, had it not been for his early death, he might have joined such central German literary figures as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller at the summit of their profession.


Etymology.

From the Old French ""torche"" meaning "twisted thing", hence "torch formed of twisted tow dipped in wax", probably from Vulgar Latin *"torca", alteration of Late Latin "torqua", variant of classical Latin "torques" "collar of twisted metal", from "torquere" "to twist".

Torch construction.

Torch construction has varied through history depending on the torch's purpose. Torches were usually constructed of a wooden stave with one end wrapped in a material which was soaked in a flammable substance. In ancient Rome some torches were made of sulfur mixed with lime. This meant that the fire would not diminish after being plunged into water. Modern procession torches are made from coarse hessian rolled into a tube and soaked in wax. A wooden handle is usually used, and a cardboard collar is attached to deflect any wax droplets. They are an easy, safe and relatively cheap way to hold a flame aloft in a parade or to provide illumination in any after-dark celebration.  Modern torches suitable for juggling are made of a wooden-and-metal or metal-only stave with one end wrapped in a Kevlar wick. This wick is soaked in a flammable liquid, usually paraffin (kerosene).

Symbolism.

The torch is a common emblem of both enlightenment and hope. Thus the Statue of Liberty, actually "Liberty Enlightening the World", lifts her torch. Crossed reversed torches were signs of mourning that appear on Greek and Roman funerary monuments—a torch pointed downwards symbolizes death, while a torch held up symbolizes life, truth and the regenerative power of flame. The torch is also a symbol used by political parties, for instance by both Labour (from 1918 to 1980) and the Conservatives (from 1983 to 2006) in the UK, and the Malta Labour Party. In the seals of schools in the Philippines, the torch symbolizes the vision of education to provide enlightenment to all the students.

Uses.

Olympics.

A torch carried in relay by runners is used to light the Olympic flame which burns without interruption until the end of the Games. These torches and the relay tradition were introduced in the 1936 Summer Olympics by Carl Diem, the chairman of the event because during the duration of the Ancient Olympic Games in Olympia, a sacred flame burnt inside of the temple of Hera, kept in custody by her priestess.

Juggling.

Juggling torches are often used as a prop in toss juggling: they can be flipped into the air in an end-over-end motion while being juggled, in the same manner as juggling clubs or juggling knives, but because of their sound and 'trail of flame', they can appear much more impressive to audiences. To a skilled juggler, there is only a slight chance of being burned, but they are still dangerous.

In Roman Catholic liturgy.

In former times, liturgical torches were carried in Eucharistic processions simply to give light. The Church eventually adopted their use for Solemn High Masses.  According to Adrian Fortescue, the more correct form of liturgical torches are non-freestanding (i.e. cannot stand up on their own). However, today, even in the Vatican, freestanding, tall candles in ornate candle-stick holders have replaced the former type. The torches are carried by torchbearers, who enter at the Sanctus and leave after Communion.  Anglicans of the High Church and some Lutherans use torches in some of their liturgical celebrations as well.

Torchlight march.

Torchlight march is a type of illuminated procession which is held after dark so that torches carried by the participants form a spectacle (other types of an illuminated procession involve candles, lanterns etc).

Associations.

Love.

The association of a torch with love may date to the Greek and Roman tradition of a wedding torch, lit in the bride's hearth on her wedding night, then used to light the hearth in her new home. Such a torch is associated with the Greek god of marriage Hymen.  The idiom to carry a torch (for someone) means to love or to be romantically infatuated with someone, especially when such feelings are not reciprocated. It is often used to characterize a situation in which a romantic relationship has ended, but where one partner still loves the other. It is considered by some to be dated, but still in wide usage. A torch song is typically a sentimental love song in which a singer laments an unrequited love.

A torch is a stick with combustible material at one end, which is ignited and used as a light source. Torches have been used throughout history, and are still used in processions, symbolic and religious events, and in juggling entertainment. In some countries "torch" in modern usage is the term for a battery-operated portable light.


History.

BMX began during the early 1970s in the United States when children began racing their bicycles on dirt tracks in southern California, inspired by the motocross stars of the time. The size and availability of the Schwinn Sting-Ray and other wheelie bikes made them the natural bike of choice for these races, since they were easily customized for better handling and performance. BMX racing was a phenomenon by the mid-1970s. Children were racing standard road bikes off-road, around purpose-built tracks in California. The 1972 motorcycle racing documentary "On Any Sunday" is generally credited with inspiring the movement nationally in the United States; its opening scene shows kids riding their Sting-Rays off-road. By the middle of that decade, the sport achieved critical mass, and manufacturers began creating bicycles designed especially for the sport.

US timeline.

George E. Esser founded the National Bicycle League as a non-profit bicycle motocross sanctioning organization in 1974. Before they set up the NBL, Esser and his wife, Mary, sanctioned motorcycle races with the American Motocross Association (AMA). Their two sons, Greg and Brian, raced motorcycles, but also enjoyed riding and racing BMX with their friends. It was their sons’ interest, and the lack of BMX organizations in the East, which prompted Esser to start the NBL in Florida.  By 1977, the American Bicycle Association (ABA) was organized as a national sanctioning body for the growing sport.  Freestyle BMX is now one of the staple events at the annual Summer X Games Extreme Sports competition and the Etnies Backyard Jam, held primarily on the East and West coasts of the United States. The popularity of the sport has increased due to its relative ease and availability of places to ride and do tricks.

UK BMX explosion.

In the UK, BMX was a craze which took off in the early 1980s, specifically 1982/3, when it became the "must have" bicycle for children and teenagers. Previously a small niche area, BMX exploded at this time into the dominant bicycle for the younger rider, with older teenagers and even adults becoming known names through publications like BMX Bi weekly, featuring big names like Tim March and Andy Ruffell. The shift to freestyle from racing came in 1985 with popular styling moving from chrome frames and contrasting components in black blue or red being the norm, to brightly coloured bikes in one colour only, including their mag wheels and even matching tyres. Because BMX exploded into Britain's streets so suddenly, it was perhaps inevitable that it would implode with similar speed, when the children who rode the bikes left school and went to work. This was indeed the case, as by 1986/7 sales in the UK had dropped off dramatically, with the new ATB or "mountain bike" taking off and soon to become the generic adult bicycle, again from California where it had begun in the mid 1970s. Nevertheless, the first BMX track in the UK was founded in Landseer Park, Ipswich in 1980 by the Ipswich BMX Club which still provides coaching and races on a regular basis.

International development.

In April 1981, the International BMX Federation was founded, and the first world championships were held in 1982. Since January 1993, BMX has been integrated into the Union Cycliste Internationale.  In 2003, the International Olympic Committee made BMX a full medal Olympic sport for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China, and Māris Štrombergs (male, for Latvia) and Anne-Caroline Chausson (female, for France) became the first Olympic champions.  Many talented BMX riders go on to other cycling sports like downhill, including Australian Olympian Jared Graves, Eric Carter and youth BMX racer Aaron Gwin. Multiple world and Olympic champion track sprinter Chris Hoy also began as a BMX rider.

BMX, an abbreviation for bicycle motocross or bike motocross, is a cycle sport performed on BMX bikes, either in competitive BMX racing or freestyle BMX, or else in general on- or off-road recreation. BMX began when young cyclists appropriated motocross tracks for fun, racing and stunts, eventually evolving specialized BMX bikes and competitions.


Etymology.

In Greek mythology, the name of Illyria is aetiologically traced to Illyrius, the son of Cadmus and Harmonia, who eventually ruled Illyria and became the eponymous ancestor of the Illyrians. A later version of the myth identifies Polyphemus and Galatea as parents of Celtus, Galas, and Illyrius.  Ancient Greek writers used the name "Illyrian" to describe peoples between the Liburnians and Epirus. Fourth-century BC Greek writers clearly separated the people along the Adriatic coast from the Illyrians, and only in the 1st century AD was "Illyrian" used as a general term for all the peoples across the Adriatic. Writers also spoke of "Illyrians in the strict sense of the word"; Pomponius Mela (43 AD) the "stricto sensu" Illyrians lived north of the Taulantii and Enchele, on the Adriatic shore; Pliny the Elder used "properly named Illyrians" ("Illyrii proprii/proprie dicti") for a small people south of Epidaurum, or between Epidaurum (now Cavtat) and Lissus (now Lezhë). In the Roman period, "Illyricum" was used for the area between the Adriatic and Danube.

History.

The prehistory of Illyria and the Illyrians is known from archaeological evidence. The Romans conquered the region in 168 BC in the aftermath of the Illyrian Wars.

Kingdoms.

The earliest recorded Illyrian kingdom was that of the Enchele in the 8th century BC. The era in which we observe other Illyrian kingdoms begins approximately at 400 BC and ends at 167 BC. The Autariatae under Pleurias (337 BC) were considered to have been a kingdom. The Kingdom of the Ardiaei began at 230 BC and ended at 167 BC. The most notable Illyrian kingdoms and dynasties were those of Bardyllis of the Dardani and of Agron of the Ardiaei who created the last and best-known Illyrian kingdom. Agron ruled over the Ardiaei and had extended his rule to other tribes as well. As for the Dardanians, they always had separate domains from the rest of the Illyrians.  The Illyrian kingdoms were composed of small areas within the region of Illyria. Only the Romans ruled the entire region. The internal organization of the south Illyrian kingdoms points to imitation of their neighbouring Greek kingdoms and influence from the Greek and Hellenistic world in the growth of their urban centres. Polybius gives as an image of society within an Illyrian kingdom as peasant infantry fought under aristocrats which he calls in Greek "Polydynastae" (Greek: Πολυδυνάστες) where each one controlled a town within the kingdom. The monarchy was established on hereditary lines and Illyrian rulers used marriages as a means of alliance with other powers. Pliny (23–79 AD) writes that the people that formed the nucleus of the Illyrian kingdom were 'Illyrians proper' or Illyrii Proprie Dicti. They were the Taulantii, the Pleraei, the Endirudini, Sasaei, Grabaei and the Labeatae. These later joined to form the Docleatae.

Roman and Byzantine rule.

The Romans defeated Gentius, the last king of Illyria, at Scodra (in present-day Albania) in 168 BC and captured him, bringing him to Rome in 165 BC. Four client-republics were set up, which were in fact ruled by Rome. Later, the region was directly governed by Rome and organized as a province, with Scodra as its capital.  The Roman province of "Illyricum" replaced the formerly independent kingdom of Illyria. It stretched from the Drilon river in modern Albania to Istria (Croatia) in the west and to the Sava river (Bosnia and Herzegovina) in the north. Salona (near modern Split in Croatia) functioned as its capital.  After crushing a revolt of Pannonians and Daesitiates, Roman administrators dissolved the province of Illyricum and divided its lands between the new provinces of Pannonia in the north and Dalmatia in the south. Although this division occurred in 10 AD, the term "Illyria" remained in use in Late Latin and throughout the medieval period. After the division of the Roman Empire, the bishops of Thessalonica appointed papal vicars for Illyricum. The first of these vicars is said to have been Bishop Acholius or Ascholius (died 383 or 384), the friend of St. Basil. In the 5th century, the bishops of Illyria withdrew from communion with Rome, without attaching themselves to Constantinople, and remained for a time independent, but in 515, forty Illyrian bishops renewed their loyalty to Rome by declaring allegiance to Pope Hormisdas. The patriarchs of Constantinople succeeded in bringing Illyria under their jurisdiction in the 8th century.

Legacy.

The name "Illyria" only disappears from the historical record after the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans in the 15th century, and re-emerges in the 17th century, acquiring a new significance in the Ottoman–Habsburg Wars, as Leopold I designated as the "Illyrian nation" the South Slavs in Hungarian territory. Several armorials of the Early modern period, popularly called the "Illyrian Armorials", depicted fictional coats of arms of Illyria.  The name "Illyria" was revived by Napoleon for the Illyrian Provinces that were incorporated into the French Empire from 1809 to 1813, and the Kingdom of Illyria (1816–1849) was part of Austria until 1849, after which time it was not used in the reorganised Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The Illyrian movement was a pan-South Slavist (Yugoslavism) cultural and political campaign by a group of young Croatian and Serbian intellectuals during the first half of the 19th century.

In culture.

William Shakespeare chose a fictionalized Illyria as the setting for his play "Twelfth Night". (In the modernised film spoof "She's the Man", this function is served by "Illyria High School" in California.) An extensive history of Illyria by Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange, was published by Joseph Keglevich in 1746. Shakespeare also mentioned the region in the Part 2 of the play "Henry VI".  The land of Illyria is the setting for Jean-Paul Sartre's "Les Mains Sales" and in Lloyd Alexander's "The Illyrian Adventure".  John Hawkes' 1970 novel "The Blood Oranges" is set in a fictionalized Illyria.

In classical antiquity, Illyria (;, "Illyría" or, "Illyrís";, see also: "Illyricum") was a region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula inhabited by numerous tribes of people collectively known as the Illyrians. Besides them, this region was also settled, in various times, by some tribes of Celts, Goths and Thracians. Illyrians spoke Illyrian languages, a group of Indo-European languages, which in ancient times perhaps had speakers in some parts in Southern Italy. The geographical term Illyris (distinct from "Illyria") was used to define approximately the area of northern and central Albania down to the Aoös valley, including in most periods much of the lakeland area.


Life.

Krusenstern was born in Hagudi, Harrien, Governorate of Estonia, Russian Empire into a Baltic German family descended from the Swedish aristocratic family von Krusenstjerna, who remained in the province after the country was ceded to Russia. In 1787, he joined the Russian Imperial Navy, and served in the war against Sweden. Subsequently, he served in the Royal Navy between 1793 and 1799, visiting America, India and China.  After publishing a paper pointing out the advantages of direct communication by sea between Russia and China by passing Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America and the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of South Africa, he was appointed by Tsar Alexander I to make a voyage to the Far East coast of Asia to endeavour to carry out the project. Under the patronage of Alexander, Count Nikolay Petrovich Rumyantsev and the Russian-American Company, Krusenstern led the first Russian circumnavigation of the world. The chief object of this undertaking was the development of the fur trade with Russian America (Alaska). Other goals of the two-ship expedition were to establish trade with China and Japan, facilitate trade in South America, and examine the coast of California in western North America for a possible colony.  The two ships, "Nadezhda" (Hope, formerly the British merchant "Leander") under the command of Krusenstern, and "Neva" (formerly the British merchant "Thames") under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Yuri F. Lisianski, set sail from Kronstadt in August 1803, rounded Cape Horn of South America, reached the northern Pacific Ocean, and returned via the Cape of Good Hope at South Africa. Krusenstern arrived back at Kronstadt in August 1806. Both seafarers made maps and detailed recordings of their voyages.  Upon his return, Krusenstern wrote a detailed report, ""Reise um die Welt in den Jahren 1803, 1804, 1805 und 1806 auf Befehl Seiner Kaiserlichen Majestät Alexanders des Ersten auf den Schiffen Nadeschda und Newa"" ("Journey around the World in the Years 1803, 1804, 1805, and 1806 at the Command of his Imperial Majesty Alexander I in the Ships Nadezhda and Neva") published in Saint Petersburg in 1810. It was published in 1811–1812 in Berlin; this was followed by an English translation, published in London in 1813 and subsequently by French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Italian translations. His scientific work, which includes an atlas of the Pacific, was published in 1827 in Saint Petersburg.  The geographical discoveries of Krusenstern made his voyage very important for the progress of geographical science. His work won him an honorary membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1816, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.  As director of the Russian naval school Krusenstern did much useful work. He was also a member of the scientific committee of the marine department, and his contrivance for counteracting the influence of the iron in vessels on the compass was adopted in the navy. Krusenstern became an admiral in 1841 and he was awarded the Pour le Mérite (civil class) in 1842. He died in 1846 in Kiltsi manor, an Estonian manor he had purchased in 1816, and was buried in the Tallinn Cathedral.

Legacy.

The Russian training tall ship "Kruzenshtern" is named after him. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of Krusenstern's circumnavigation, the ship retraced his route around the globe in 2005–2006.  Another ship named after him is the Russian icebreaker "Ivan Kruzenshtern". Also, an Aeroflot Airbus 320 VP-BKC is named after him.  The crater Krusenstern on the Moon is named after him. There is Krusenstern Island in the Bering Strait, as well as a small group of islands in the Kara Sea, southwest of the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, called Krusenstern Islands. Cape Krusenstern in Northwest Alaska is the site of Cape Krusenstern National Monument (1978), one of the most important archaeological sites in the state.  In Russia (as well as in other Russophone places), a fictional steamship "Admiral Ivan Fyodorovich Kruzenshtern" from the popular "Prostokvashino" animated film series is well-known, often as part of a catchphrase "Admiral I.F. Kruzenshtern, a man and a steamship", "pirated" from the title of a requiem poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, "To Comrade Nette, a Man and a Steamship". As a third-level linguistic derivation, there is a Russophone Israel klezmer-rock band, Kruzenshtern & Parohod ("Krusenstern and Steamship").  Another legacy is that the Cook Islands in the South Pacific bear that name thanks to von Krusenstern. Previously known as the Hervey (or Harvey) Islands (or Group), he changed their name in 1835 to honour Captain Cook. More accurately, he changed the name of those which comprised the Southern Group and it was subsequently applied to all 15 islands when the New Zealand Parliament passed "The Cook Islands and other Islands Government Act" in 1901. He recorded the new name in his "Atlas de l'Océan Pacifique" published at St. Petersburg between 1824 and 1835.

Adam Johann von Krusenstern (also Krusenstjerna in Swedish;, tr. ; 10 October 177012 August 1846) was a Baltic German admiral and explorer, who led the first Russian circumnavigation of the globe.


As a pigment.

This xanthophyll, like its sister compound zeaxanthin, has primarily been used in food and supplement manufacturing as a colorant due to its yellow-red color. Lutein absorbs blue light and therefore appears yellow at low concentrations and orange-red at high concentrations.  Many songbirds (like golden oriole, evening grosbeak, yellow warbler, common yellowthroat and Javan green magpie, but not American goldfinch or yellow canaries) deposit lutein obtained from the diet into growing tissues to color their feathers.

Role in human eyes.

Although lutein is concentrated in the macula – a small area of the retina responsible for three-color vision – the precise functional role of retinal lutein has not been determined.

Macular degeneration.

In 2013, findings of the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS) showed that a dietary supplement formulation containing lutein reduced progression of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) by 25 percent. However, lutein and zeaxanthin had no overall effect on preventing AMD, but rather "the participants with low dietary intake of lutein and zeaxanthin at the start of the study, but who took an AREDS formulation with lutein and zeaxanthin during the study, were about 25 percent less likely to develop advanced AMD compared with participants with similar dietary intake who did not take lutein and zeaxanthin."  In AREDS2, participants took one of four AREDS formulations: the original AREDS formulation, AREDS formulation with no beta-carotene, AREDS with low zinc, AREDS with no beta-carotene and low zinc. In addition, they took one of four additional supplement or combinations including lutein and zeaxanthin (10 mg and 2 mg), omega-3 fatty acids (1,000 mg), lutein/zeaxanthin and omega-3 fatty acids, or placebo. The study reported that there was no overall additional benefit from adding omega-3 fatty acids or lutein and zeaxanthin to the formulation. However, the study did find benefits in two subgroups of participants: those not given beta-carotene, and those who had little lutein and zeaxanthin in their diets. Removing beta-carotene did not curb the formulation's protective effect against developing advanced AMD, which was important given that high doses of beta-carotene had been linked to higher risk of lung cancers in smokers. It was recommended to replace beta-carotene with lutein and zeaxanthin in future formulations for these reasons.  A more recent study investigated the effects of lutein and zeaxanthin on macular pigment and visual function in patients with early AMD. Daily intake of either 20 mg lutein alone or 10 mg lutein and 10 mg zeaxanthin was found to significantly increase the macular pigment content in comparison with the placebo group; the authors also reported a significant improvement in contrast sensitivity and a trend toward improvement in best-corrected visual acuity after 48 weeks of carotenoid supplementation. Furthermore, they found a significant correlation between these two parameters of visual function and the macular pigment content, suggesting that the increase in the latter underlies the improvement of visual function.

Cataract research.

There is preliminary epidemiological evidence that increasing lutein and zeaxanthin intake lowers the risk of cataract development. Consumption of more than 2.4 mg of lutein/zeaxanthin daily from foods and supplements was significantly correlated with reduced incidence of nuclear lens opacities, as revealed from data collected during a 13- to 15-year period in one study.  Two meta-analyses confirm a correlation between high diet content or high serum concentrations of lutein and zeaxanthin and a decrease in the risk of cataract. There is only one published clinical intervention trial testing for an effect of lutein and zeaxanthin supplementation on cataracts. The AREDS2 trial enrolled subjects at risk for progression to advanced age-related macular degeneration. Overall, the group getting lutein (10 mg) and zeaxanthin (2 mg) were NOT less likely to progress to needing cataract surgery. The authors speculated that there may be a cataract prevention benefit for people with low dietary intake of lutein and zeaxanthin, but recommended more research.

In diet.

Lutein is a natural part of a human diet found in orange-yellow fruits and flowers, and in leafy vegetables. According to the NHANES 2013-2014 survey, adults in the United States consume on average 1.7 mg/day of lutein and zeaxanthin combined. No recommended dietary allowance currently exists for lutein. Some positive health effects have been seen at dietary intake levels of 6–10 mg/day. The only definitive side effect of excess lutein consumption is bronzing of the skin (carotenodermia).  As a food additive, lutein has the E number E161b (INS number 161b) and is extracted from the petals of African marigold ("Tagetes erecta"). It is approved for use in the EU and Australia and New Zealand In the United States lutein may not be used as a food coloring for foods intended for human consumption, but can be added to animal feed and is allowed as a human dietary supplement often in combination with Zeaxanthin. Example: lutein fed to chickens will show up in skin color and egg yolk color.  Some foods contain relatively high amounts of lutein:

Safety.

In humans, the Observed Safe Level (OSL) for lutein, based on a non-government organization evaluation, is 20 mg/day. Although much higher levels have been tested without adverse effects and may also be safe, the data for intakes above the OSL are not sufficient for a confident conclusion of long-term safety. Neither the U.S. Food and Drug Administration nor the European Food Safety Authority considers lutein an essential nutrient or has acted to set a tolerable upper intake level.

Commercial value.

The lutein market is segmented into pharmaceutical, dietary supplement, food, pet food, and animal and fish feed. The pharmaceutical market for lutein is estimated to be about US$190 million, and the nutraceutical and food categories are estimated to be about US$110 million. Pet food and other animal applications for lutein are estimated at US$175 million annually. This includes chickens (usually in combination with other carotenoids), to get color in egg yolks, and fish farms to color the flesh closer to wild-caught color. In the dietary supplement industry, the major market for lutein is for products with claims of helping maintain eye health. Newer applications are emerging in oral and topical products for skin health. Skin health via orally consumed supplements is one of the fastest growing areas of the US$2 billion carotenoid market.

Lutein (; from Latin "luteus" meaning "yellow") is a xanthophyll and one of 600 known naturally occurring carotenoids. Lutein is synthesized only by plants, and like other xanthophylls is found in high quantities in green leafy vegetables such as spinach, kale and yellow carrots. In green plants, xanthophylls act to modulate light energy and serve as non-photochemical quenching agents to deal with triplet chlorophyll (an excited form of chlorophyll), which is overproduced at very high light levels, during photosynthesis. See xanthophyll cycle for this topic.


Types of current clamp.

Current transformer.

A common form of current clamp comprises a split ring made of ferrite or soft iron. A wire coil is wound round one or both halves, forming one winding of a current transformer. The conductor it is clamped around forms the other winding. Like any transformer this type works only with AC or pulse waveforms, with some examples extending into the megahertz range.  When measuring current, the subject conductor forms the primary winding and the coil forms the secondary.  This type may also be used in reverse, to inject current into the conductor, for example in electromagnetic compatibility susceptibility testing to induce an interference current. Usually, the injection probe is specifically designed for this purpose. In this mode, the coil forms the primary and the test conductor the secondary.

Iron vane.

In the iron vane type, the magnetic flux in the core directly affects a moving iron vane, allowing both AC and DC to be measured, and gives a true root mean square (RMS) value for non-sinusoidal AC waveforms. Due to its physical size it is generally limited to power transmission frequencies up to around 100 Hz.  The vane is usually fixed directly to the display mechanism of an analogue (moving pointer) clamp meter. The calibration of the instrument is clearly non-linear.

Hall effect.

The Hall effect type is more sensitive and is able to measure both DC and AC, in some examples up to the kilohertz (thousands of hertz) range. This type was often used with oscilloscopes, and with high-end computerized digital multimeters, however, they are becoming common place for more general use.

Rogowski coil.

Resembling a current clamp in appearance and function is the Rogowski coil current sensor. This coreless transformer is used in clamp meters and power monitoring loggers. It has the advantage of better linearity, having no core to saturate, it can be made flexible, and does not require any magnetic or electrical contact at the opening end. The Rogowski coil gives a voltage proportional to the rate of change of current in the primary cable, so more signal processing is needed before the sensed values can be displayed.

Clamp meter.

An electrical meter with integral AC current clamp is known as a clamp meter, clamp-on ammeter, tong tester, or colloquially as an amp clamp.  A clamp meter measures the vector sum of the currents flowing in all the conductors passing through the probe, which depends on the phase relationship of the currents. Only one conductor is normally passed through the probe. In particular if the clamp is closed around a two-conductor cable carrying power to equipment, the same current flows down one conductor and up the other; the meter correctly reads a net current of zero. As electrical cables for equipment have both insulated conductors (and possibly an earth wire) bonded together, clamp meters are often used with what is essentially a short extension cord with the two conductors separated, so that the clamp can be placed around only one conductor of this extension.  A relatively recent development is a multi-conductor clamp meter with several sensor coils around the jaws of the clamp. This could be clamped around standard two- or three-conductor single-phase cables to provide a readout of the current flowing through the load, with no need to separate the conductors.  The reading produced by a conductor carrying a very low current can be increased by winding the conductor around the clamp several times; the meter reading divided by the number of turns is the current, with some loss of accuracy due to inductive effects.  Clamp meters are used by electricians, sometimes with the clamp incorporated into a general purpose multimeter.  It is simple to measure very high currents (hundreds of amperes) with the appropriate current transformer. Accurate measurement of low currents (a few milliamperes) with a current transformer clamp is more difficult. The range of any given meter can be extended by passing the conductor through the jaw multiple times. For example a 0–200 A meter can be turned into a 0–20 A meter by winding the conductor 10 times around the jaw's core. Less-expensive clamp meters use a rectifier circuit which actually reads mean current, but is calibrated to display the RMS current corresponding to the measured mean, giving a correct RMS reading only if the current is a sine wave. For other waveforms readings will be incorrect; when these simpler meters are used with non-sinusoidal loads such as the ballasts used with fluorescent lamps or high-intensity discharge lamps or most modern computer and electronic equipment, readings can be quite inaccurate. Meters which respond to true RMS rather than mean current are described as "true RMS".  Typical hand-held Hall effect units can read currents as low as 200 mA, and units that can read down to 1 mA are available.  The Columbia tong test ammeter (illustrated) is an example of the iron vane type, used for measuring large AC currents up to 1000 amperes. The iron jaws of the meter direct the magnetic field surrounding the conductor to an iron vane that is attached to the needle of the meter. The iron vane moves in proportion to the strength of the magnetic field, and thus produces a meter indication proportional to the current. This type of ammeter can measure both AC and DC currents and provides a true RMS current measurement of non-sinusoidal or distorted AC waveforms. Interchangeable meter movements can be installed in the clamping assembly to provide various full-scale current values up to 1000 amperes. The iron vane is in a small cylinder that is inserted in a space at the hinged end of the clamp-on jaws. Several jaw sizes are available for clamping around large conductors and bus bars up to wide. As the illustration shows, the scale is very non-linear and unsuitable for measuring low currents, with currents of less than half the full-scale deflection crammed into a short section of the dial.

Power meter, energy analyzer.

Clamp probes are used with some meters to measure electrical power and energy. The clamp measures the current and other circuitry the voltage; the true power is the product of the instantaneous voltage and current integrated over a cycle. Comprehensive meters designed to measure many parameters of electrical energy (power factor, distortion, instantaneous power as a function of time, phase relationships, etc.), use this principle. A single clamp is used for single-phase measurements; with an appropriate instrument with three clamps, measurements may be made on three-phase power systems.

In electrical and electronic engineering, a current clamp, also known as current probe, is an electrical device with jaws which open to allow clamping around an electrical conductor. This allows measurement of the current in a conductor without the need to make physical contact with it, or to disconnect it for insertion through the probe.