History.

China's first efforts at human spaceflight started in 1968 with a projected launch date of 1973. Although China successfully launched an uncrewed satellite in 1970, its crewed spacecraft program was cancelled in 1980 due to a lack of funds.  The Chinese crewed spacecraft program was relaunched in 1992 with Project 921. The Phase One spacecraft followed the general layout of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, with three modules that could separate for reentry. China signed a deal with Russia in 1995 for the transfer of Soyuz technology, including life support and docking systems. The Phase One spacecraft was then modified with the new Russian technology. The general designer of Shenzhou-1 through Shenzhou-5 was Qi Faren (戚发轫, 26 April 1933), and from Shenzhou-6 on, the general design was turned over to Zhang Bainan (张柏楠, 23 June 1962).  The first uncrewed flight of the spacecraft was launched on 19 November 1999, after which Project 921/1 was renamed Shenzhou, a name reportedly chosen by Jiang Zemin. A series of three additional uncrewed flights were carried out. The first crewed launch took place on 15 October 2003 with the Shenzhou 5 mission. The spacecraft has since become the mainstay of the Chinese crewed space program, being used for both crewed and uncrewed missions.

Design.

Shenzhou consists of three modules: a forward orbital module (轨道舱), a reentry module (返回舱) in the middle, and an aft service module (推进舱). This division is based on the principle of minimizing the amount of material to be returned to Earth. Anything placed in the orbital or service modules does not require heat shielding, increasing the space available in the spacecraft without increasing weight as much as it would if those modules were also able to withstand reentry.

Orbital module.

The orbital module (轨道舱) contains space for experiments, crew-serviced or crew-operated equipment, and in-orbit habitation. Without docking systems, Shenzhou 1–6 carried different kinds of payload on the top of their orbital modules for scientific experiments.  Up until Shenzhou 8, the orbital module of the Shenzhou was equipped with its own propulsion, solar power, and control systems, allowing autonomous flight. It is possible for Shenzhou to leave an orbital module in orbit for redocking with a later spacecraft, a capability which Soyuz does not possess, since the only hatch between the orbital and reentry modules is a part of the reentry module, and orbital module is depressurized after separation. For future missions, the orbital module(s) could also be left behind on the planned Chinese project 921/2 space station as additional station modules.  In the uncrewed test flights launched, the orbital module of each Shenzhou was left functioning on orbit for several days after the reentry modules return, and the Shenzhou 5 orbital module continued to operate for six months after launch.

Reentry module.

The reentry module (返回舱) is located in the middle section of the spacecraft and contains seating for the crew. It is the only portion of Shenzhou which returns to Earth's surface. Its shape is a compromise between maximizing living space and allowing for some aerodynamic control upon reentry.

Service module.

The aft service module (推进舱) contains life support and other equipment required for the functioning of Shenzhou. Two pairs of solar panels, one pair on the service module and the other pair on the orbital module, have a total area of over 40 m2 (430 ft2), indicating average electrical power over 1.5 kW ("Soyuz" have 1.0 kW).

Comparison with Soyuz.

Although the Shenzhou spacecraft follows the same layout as the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, it is substantially larger than Soyuz. There is enough room to carry an inflatable raft in case of a water landing, whereas Soyuz astronauts must jump into the water and swim. The commander sits in the center seat on both spacecraft. However, the copilot sits in the left seat on Shenzhou and the right seat on Soyuz.

Shenzhou (; ) is a spacecraft developed and operated by China using Soyuz technology to support its crewed spaceflight program. The name is variously translated as "Divine vessel", "Divine craft", or "Divine ship". Its design resembles the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but it is larger in size. The first launch was on 19 November 1999 and the first crewed launch was on 15 October 2003. In March 2005, an asteroid was named 8256 Shenzhou in honour of the spacecraft.


Plot summary.

In the year of 1204, Baudolino of Alessandria enters Constantinople, unaware of the Fourth Crusade that has thrown the city into chaos. In the confusion, he meets Niketas Choniates and saves his life. Niketas is amazed by his language genius, speaking many languages he has never heard, and on the question: if he is not part of the crusade, who is he? Baudolino begins to recount his life story to Niketas.  His story begins in 1155, when Baudolino – a highly talented Italian peasant boy – is sold to and adopted by the emperor Frederick I. At court and on the battlefield, he is educated in reading and writing Latin and learns about the power struggles and battles of northern Italy at the time. He is sent to Paris to become a scholar.  In Paris, he gains friends (such as the Archpoet, Abdul, Robert de Boron and Kyot, the purported source of Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival") and learns about the legendary kingdom of Prester John. From this event onward, Baudolino dreams of reaching this fabled land.  The earlier parts of the story follow the general historical and geographical outlines of 12th-century Europe, with special emphasis on the Emperor Frederick's futile efforts to subdue the increasingly independent and assertive city states of Northern Italy. Baudolino, being both a beloved adopted son to the Emperor and a loyal native of the newly founded and highly rebellious town of Alessandria, plays a key role in effecting reconciliation between the Emperor and the Alessandria townspeople, who are led by Baudolino's biological father; a way is found for the Emperor to recognize Alessandria's independence without losing face. (It is no accident that Alessandria is Umberto Eco's own hometown.) During the siege, Baudolino works on the side of Frederick Barbarossa, but concocts a plan to help win the Alessandrian townspeople some independence. He attempts to convince the emperor's forces that Alessandria is more prepared for a siege than them through stuffing a cow with the last of Alessandria's wheat and sends the cow out to the Emperor's forces. When the cow is cut open, it reveals a full belly of wheat. The emperor's forces are convinced that Alessandria is not worth besieging, and thus leave.  The incident of the death of Emperor Frederick, while on the Third Crusade, is a key element of the plot. This part involves an element of secret history – the book asserts that Emperor Frederick had not drowned in a river, as history records, but died mysteriously at night while hosted at the castle of a sinister Armenian noble. This part also constitutes a historical detective mystery – specifically, a historical locked room mystery – with various suspects suggested, each of whom had a clever means of killing the Emperor, and with Baudolino acting as the detective.  After the Emperor's death, Baudolino and his friends set off on a long journey, encompassing 15 years, to find the Kingdom of Prester John. From the moment when they depart eastwards, the book becomes pure fantasy – the lands which the band travels bearing no resemblance to the continent of Asia at that or any other historical time, being rather derived from the various myths which Europeans had about Asia – including the aforementioned Christian myth of the Kingdom of Prester John, as well as the Jewish myth of the Ten Lost Tribes and the River Sambation, and some earlier accounts provided by Herodotos. Baudolino meets eunuchs, unicorns, Blemmyes, skiapods and pygmies. At one point, he falls in love with a female satyr-like creature who recounts to him the full Gnostic creation myth; Gnosticism is a pervasive presence in another of Eco's novels, "Foucault's Pendulum". Philosophical debates are mixed with comedy, epic adventure and creatures drawn from the strangest medieval bestiaries.  After many disastrous adventures, the destruction of Prester John's Kingdom by the White Huns followed by a long stint of slavery at the hands of the Old Man of the Mountain, Baudolino and surviving members of his band of friends return to Constantinople undergoing the agony of the Fourth Crusade – the book's starting point. The wise and rather cynical Niketas Choniates helps Baudolino to at last discover the truth about how the Emperor Frederick died – with shattering results for Baudolino and his friends.

Baudolino is a 2000 novel by Umberto Eco about the adventures of a man named Baudolino in the known and mythical Christian world of the 12th century.


Biography.

Early life.

Ferdinand was the eldest son of Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor and Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily. Possibly as a result of his parents' genetic closeness (they were double first cousins), Ferdinand suffered from epilepsy, hydrocephalus, neurological problems, and a speech impediment. He was educated by Baron Josef Kalasanz von Erberg, and his wife Josephine, by birth a Countess von Attems.

Reign.

Ferdinand has been depicted as feeble-minded and incapable of ruling. Yet, although he had epilepsy, he kept a coherent and legible diary and has even been said to have had a sharp wit. However, suffering as many as twenty seizures per day severely restricted his ability to rule with any effectiveness. Though he was not declared incapacitated, a Regent's Council (Archduke Louis, Count Kolowrat, and Prince Metternich) steered the government.  When Ferdinand married Princess Maria Anna of Savoy, the court physician considered it unlikely that he would be able to consummate the marriage. When he tried to consummate the marriage, he had five seizures. He is best remembered for his command to his cook: when told he could not have apricot dumplings ("Marillenknödel") because apricots were out of season, he said "I am the Emperor, and I want dumplings!" (!).

1848 Revolution.

As the revolutionaries of 1848 were marching on the palace, he is supposed to have asked Metternich for an explanation. When Metternich answered that they were making a revolution, Ferdinand is supposed to have said "But are they allowed to do that?" (Viennese German: "Ja, dürfen's denn des?") He was convinced by Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg to abdicate in favour of his nephew, Franz Joseph (the next in line was Ferdinand's younger brother Franz Karl, but he was persuaded to waive his succession rights in favour of his son) who would occupy the Austrian throne for the next sixty-eight years.  Ferdinand recorded the events in his diary: ""The affair ended with the new Emperor kneeling before his old Emperor and Lord, that is to say, me, and asking for a blessing, which I gave him, laying both hands on his head and making the sign of the Holy Cross... then I embraced him and kissed our new master, and then we went to our room. Afterwards I and my dear wife heard Holy Mass... After that I and my dear wife packed our bags.""

In retirement (1848–1875).

Ferdinand was the last King of Bohemia to be crowned as such. Due to his sympathy with Bohemia (where he spent the rest of his life in Prague Castle) he was given the Czech nickname "Ferdinand V, the Good" ("Ferdinand Dobrotivý"). In Austria, Ferdinand was similarly nicknamed "Ferdinand der Gütige" (Ferdinand the Benign), but also ridiculed as "Gütinand der Fertige" (Goodinand the Finished).  He is interred in tomb number 62 in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna.

Titles and honours.

He used the titles:  His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty Ferdinand the First, By the Grace of God

Ancestry.

Ferdinand's parents were double first cousins as they shared all four grandparents (Francis' paternal grandparents were his wife's maternal grandparents and vice versa). Therefore, Ferdinand only had four great-grandparents, being descended from each of them twice. Further back in his ancestry there is more pedigree collapse due to the close intermarriage between the Houses of Austria and Spain and other Catholic monarchies.

Ferdinand I ( 19 April 1793 – 29 June 1875) was the Emperor of Austria from 1835 until his abdication in 1848. As ruler of Austria, he was also President of the German Confederation, King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia (as Ferdinand V), King of Lombardy–Venetia and holder of many other lesser titles (see grand title of the Emperor of Austria). Due to his rocky, passive but good-intended character, he gained the sobriquet The Benign () or The Good ().


History.

The territory of the medieval Patriarchate of Aquileia had gradually been conquered by the Republic of Venice ("Domini di Terraferma") until the early 15th century. In the east, the Habsburg archdukes of Austria, based on the March of Carniola they held from 1335, had gained suzerainty over Istrian Pazin in 1374 and the port of Trieste in 1382. They also purchased Duino and Rijeka (Fiume) on the northern Adriatic coast in 1474, and inherited more territory in Friuli when the line of the Counts of Görz died out in 1500. In 1511, Emperor Maximilian I annexed the city of Gradisca from Venice.  The Habsburgs did little initially to consolidate or develop their holdings in the Littoral. The supremacy of the Republic of Venice in the Adriatic, and the attention to the threat posed by an expanding Ottoman Empire, gave the Austrian archdukes little opportunity to enlarge their coastal possessions. Incorporated into the Austrian Circle of the Holy Roman Empire, Görz, Trieste and Istria remained separately administered and retained their autonomy until the 18th century.  Emperor Charles VI increased the sea power of the Habsburg Monarchy by making peace with the Ottomans and declaring free shipping in the Adriatic. In 1719, Trieste and Fiume were made free ports. In 1730, administration of the Littoral was unified under the Intendancy in Trieste. However, in 1775, Emperor Joseph II divided the administration of the two main ports, assigning Trieste as the port for the Austrian "hereditary lands" and Fiume for the Kingdom of Hungary. Shortly after, Trieste was merged with the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca in the north.  During the Napoleonic Wars, the Habsburg Monarchy gained Venetian lands in the Istrian Peninsula and the Quarnero (Kvarner) Islands as part of the Treaty of Campo Formio of 1797. However, these territories and all of the new Austrian Empire's Adriatic lands were soon lost to the French Empire's puppet state, the Kingdom of Italy by the Treaty of Pressburg of 1805. The 1809 Treaty of Schönbrunn then transferred the area to the Illyrian Provinces which were directly ruled by France.  With Napoleon's defeats, the Austrian Empire regained the region. In 1813, all of the Littoral including Trieste, Gorizia and Gradisca, all of Istria, the Quarnero Islands, Fiume, and the hinterland of Fiume, Civil Croatia, including Karlstadt (Karlovac), became one administrative unit. From 1816, the Littoral was a part of the Austrian Empire's Kingdom of Illyria. In 1822, Fiume and Civil Croatia were separated from the territory and ceded to the Kingdom of Hungary (and in 1849 to Croatia).  The Littoral was officially the Trieste ("Triest") Province, one of two provinces (or "gouvernements") of the Kingdom, the other being Laibach (Ljubljana). It was subdivided into four districts ("kreis"): Gorizia ("Görz"; including Gorizia and the Julian March), Istria ("Istrien"; Eastern Istria and the Quarnero Islands), Trieste ("Triest"; the Trieste hinterland and Western Istria), and Trieste city ("Triester Stadtgebiet").  Around 1825, the Littoral was reorganized into only two subdivisions: Istria with its capital at Mitterburg (Pisino/Pazin) and Gorizia with Trieste and its immediate surroundings under the direct control of the crown and separate from the local administrative structure.  In 1849, the Kingdom of Illyria was dissolved and the Littoral became a separate crown land with a governor in Trieste. It was formally divided into the Margravate of Istria and the Princely County ("Gefürstete Grafschaft") of Gorizia and Gradisca with Trieste remaining separate from both.  By the 1861 February Patent, Gorizia and Gradisca and Istria became administratively separate entities and, in 1867, Trieste received separate status as well, and the Littoral was divided into the three crown lands of the Imperial Free City of Trieste and its suburbs, the Margraviate of Istria, and the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca, which each had separate administrations and Landtag assemblies, but were all subject to a "k.k." statholder at Trieste.  Following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the Littoral fell within Italy's newly expanded borders as part of the Julian March. An area of similar extent under the name of Adriatic Littoral ("Adriatisches Küstenland") was one of the operational zones of German forces during World War II after the capitulation of Italy in September 1943 until the end of the war. After World War II, most of it was included in the Second Yugoslavia.  Today Croatia and Slovenia each hold portions of the territory, and the city of Trieste remains under Italian rule. The name of the region lives on in its Slovene version, "Primorska" (Slovenian Littoral), a region of Slovenia.

Area and population.

Area:  Population (1910 Census):

Linguistic composition.

According to the last Austrian census of 1910 (1911 in Trieste), the Austrian Littoral was composed of the following linguistic communities:  Total:  Gorizia and Gradisca:  Trieste:  Istria:  The Austrian censuses did not count ethnic groups, nor the mother tongue, but the "language of daily interaction" (""). Except for a small Serbian community in Trieste and the village of Peroj in Istria, the vast majority of Croatian speakers in the Austrian Littoral can be identified as Croats.  After 1880, Italian and Friulian languages were counted under one category, as Italian. The estimated number of Friulian speakers can be extrapolated from the Italian census of 1921, the only one in the 20th century when Friulian was counted as a distinct linguistic category. The Austrian Littoral had a large number of foreign nationals (around 71,000 or 7.9% of the overall population), which were not asked about their language of interaction. More than half of them resided in the city of Trieste. The majority were citizens of the Kingdom of Italy, followed by citizens of the Kingdom of Hungary (part of the Dual Monarchy) and the German Empire. It can be supposed that the majority of these foreign citizens were Italian speakers, followed by German, Croatian (from Rijeka and Croatia-Slavonia) and Slovene (from Venetian Slovenia), and Hungarian speakers.

The Austrian Littoral (,,,, ) was a crown land ("Kronland") of the Austrian Empire, established in 1849. It consisted of three regions: the Istria peninsula, Gorizia and Gradisca, and the Imperial Free City of Trieste. Throughout history, the region has been frequently contested, with parts of it controlled at various times by the Republic of Venice, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Yugoslavia among others.


Early life.

Francis was born in Nancy, Lorraine (now in France), the oldest surviving son of Leopold, Duke of Lorraine, and his wife Princess Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans. He was connected with the Habsburgs through his grandmother Eleonore, daughter of Emperor Ferdinand III. He was very close to his brother Charles and sister Anne Charlotte.  Emperor Charles VI favoured the family, who, besides being his cousins, had served the house of Austria with distinction. He had designed to marry his daughter Maria Theresa to Francis' older brother Leopold Clement. On Leopold Clement's death, Charles adopted the younger brother as his future son-in-law. Francis was brought up in Vienna with Maria Theresa with the understanding that they were to be married, and a real affection arose between them.  At the age of 15, when he was brought to Vienna, he was established in the Silesian Duchy of Teschen, which had been mediatised and granted to his father by the emperor in 1722. Francis succeeded his father as Duke of Lorraine in 1729. In 1731 he was initiated into freemasonry (Grand Lodge of England) by John Theophilus Desaguliers at a specially convened lodge in The Hague at the house of the British Ambassador, Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield. During a subsequent visit to England, Francis was made a Master Mason at another specially convened lodge at Houghton Hall, the Norfolk estate of British Prime Minister Robert Walpole.  Maria Theresa arranged for Francis to become "Lord Lieutenant" (locumtenens) of Hungary in 1732. He was not excited about this position, but Maria Theresa wanted him closer to her. In June 1732 he agreed to go to Pressburg.  When the War of the Polish Succession broke out in 1733, France used it as an opportunity to seize Lorraine, since France's prime minister, Cardinal Fleury, was concerned that, as a Habsburg possession, it would bring Austrian power too close to France.  A preliminary peace was concluded in October 1735 and ratified in the Treaty of Vienna in November 1738. Under its terms, Stanisław I, the father-in-law of King Louis XV and the losing claimant to the Polish throne, received Lorraine, while Francis, in compensation for his loss, was made heir to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which he would inherit in 1737.  Although fighting stopped after the preliminary peace, the final peace settlement had to wait until the death of the last Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany, Gian Gastone de' Medici in 1737, to allow the territorial exchanges provided for by the peace settlement to go into effect.  In March 1736 the Emperor persuaded Francis, his future son-in-law, to secretly exchange Lorraine for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. France had demanded that Maria Theresa's fiancé surrender his ancestral Duchy of Lorraine to accommodate the deposed King of Poland. The Emperor considered other possibilities (such as marrying her to the future Charles III of Spain) before announcing the engagement of the couple. If something were to go wrong, Francis would become governor of the Austrian Netherlands.  Elisabeth of Parma had also wanted the Grand Duchy of Tuscany for her son Charles III of Spain; Gian Gastone de' Medici was childless and was related to Elisabeth via her great-grandmother Margherita de' Medici. As a result, Elisabeth's sons could claim by right of being a descendant of Margherita.  On 31 January 1736 Francis agreed to marry Maria Theresa. He hesitated three times (and laid down the feather before signing). Especially his mother Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans and his brother Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine were against the loss of Lorraine. On 1 February, Maria Theresa sent Francis a letter: she would withdraw from her future reign, when a male successor for her father appeared.

Marriage.

They married on 12 February in the Augustinian Church, Vienna. The wedding was held on 14 February 1736. The (secret) treaty between the Emperor and Francis was signed on 4 May 1736. In January 1737, the Spanish troops withdrew from Tuscany, and were replaced by 6,000 Austrians. On 24 January 1737 Francis received Tuscany from his father-in-law. Until then, Maria Theresa was Duchess of Lorraine.  Gian Gastone de' Medici, who died on 9 July 1737, was the second cousin of Francis (Gian Gastone and Francis' father Leopold were both great-grandchildren of Francis II, Duke of Lorraine), who also had Medici blood through his maternal great-great-grandmother Marie de' Medici, Queen consort of France and Navarre. In June 1737 Francis went to Hungary again to fight against the Turks. In October 1738 he was back in Vienna. On 17 December 1738 the couple travelled south, accompanied by his brother Charles to visit Florence for three months. They arrived on 20 January 1739.  In 1744 Francis' brother Charles married a younger sister of Maria Theresa, Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria. In 1744 Charles became governor of the Austrian Netherlands, a post he held until his death in 1780.

Reign.

Maria Theresa secured in the Treaty of Füssen his election to the Empire on 13 September 1745, in succession to Charles VII, and she made him co-regent of her hereditary dominions.  Francis was well content to leave the wielding of power to his able wife. He had a natural fund of good sense and brilliant business capacity and was a useful assistant to Maria Theresa in the laborious task of governing the complicated Austrian dominions, but he was not active in politics or diplomacy. However, his wife left him in charge of the financial affairs, which he managed well until his death. Heavily indebted and on the verge of bankruptcy at the end of the Seven Years' War, the Austrian Empire was in a better financial condition than France or England in the 1780s. He also took a great interest in the natural sciences.  Francis was a serial adulterer, many of his affairs well-known and indiscreet, notably one with Maria Wilhelmina, Princess of Auersperg, who was thirty years his junior. This particular affair was remarked upon in the letters and journals of visitors to the court and in those of his children.  He died suddenly in his carriage while returning from the opera at Innsbruck on 18 August 1765. He is buried in tomb number 55 in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna.  Maria Theresa and Francis I had sixteen children, amongst them the last pre-revolutionary queen consort of France, their youngest daughter, Marie Antoinette (1755–1793). Francis was succeeded as Emperor by his eldest son, Joseph II, and as Grand Duke of Tuscany by his younger son, Peter Leopold (later Emperor Leopold II). Maria Theresa retained the government of her dominions until her own death in 1780.

Titles.

"Francis I, by the grace of God elected Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King in Germany and of Jerusalem, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Lorraine, Bar, and Grand Duke of Tuscany, Duke of Calabria, in Silesia of Teschen, Prince of Charleville, Margrave of Pont-à-Mousson and Nomeny, Count of Provence, Vaudémont, Blâmont, Zütphen, Saarwerden, Salm, Falkenstein, etc. etc."

Award.

The Francis Stephen Award pays homage to the interest that Francis I had in science, arts and culture of Austria. It honors works of excellence in the 18th century or the Habsburg monarchy. The award gives rise to the award of a diploma at a ceremony at the University of Vienna.

Francis I (Francis Stephen; ; ; 8 December 1708 – 18 August 1765) was Holy Roman Emperor and Grand Duke of Tuscany, though his wife, Maria Theresa, effectively executed the real powers of those positions. They were the founders of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty. From 1728 until 1737 he was Duke of Lorraine. Francis traded the duchy to the ex-Polish king Stanisław Leszczyński in exchange for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany as one of the terms ending the War of the Polish Succession in November 1738. The duchy and the ducal title to Lorraine and Bar passed to King Louis XV of France upon Leszczynski's death in 1766, though Francis and his successors retained the right to style themselves as dukes of Lorraine and Bar.


Early life.

Born in Vienna, Joseph was educated strictly by Prince Dietrich Otto von Salm and became a good linguist. Although he was the first son and child born of his parents' marriage, he was his father's third son and seventh child. Previously, Leopold had been married to Infanta Margaret Theresa of Spain, who had given him four children, one of whom survived infancy. He then married Claudia Felicitas of Austria, who gave him two short-lived daughters. Thus, Joseph had six half-siblings. In 1684, the six-year-old Archduke had his first portrait painted by Benjamin Block. At the age of nine, on 9 December 1687, he was crowned King of Hungary; and at the age of eleven, on 23 January 1690, King of the Romans. Although he never formally ceased to be a Roman Catholic, Joseph (unlike his parents and most of his other relatives) was not particularly devout by nature. He had two great enthusiasms: music and hunting.

Military service.

In 1702, at the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, Joseph saw his only military service. He joined the Imperial General, Louis William, Margrave of Baden-Baden, in the Siege of Landau.

Holy Roman Emperor.

Prior to his ascension, Joseph had surrounded himself with reform-hungry advisors and the young court of Vienna was ambitious in the elaboration of innovative plans. He was described as a "forward-looking ruler". The large number of privy councillors was reduced and attempts were made to make the bureaucracy more efficient. Measures were taken to modernize the central bodies and a certain success was achieved in stabilizing the chronic Habsburg finances. Joseph also endeavoured to strengthen his position in the Holy Roman Empire – as a means of strengthening Austria’s standing as a great power. When he sought to lay claim to imperial rights in Italy and gain territories for the Habsburgs, he even risked a military conflict with the Pope over the duchy of Mantua. Joseph I was threatened with excommunication by Pope Clement XI on 16 June 1708.  In Hungary, Joseph had inherited the kuruc rebellion from his father Leopold I: once again, nobles in Transylvania (Siebenbürgen) had risen against Habsburg rule, even advancing for a time as far as Vienna. Although Joseph was compelled to take military action, he refrained – unlike his predecessors – from seeking to teach his subjects a lesson by executing the leaders. Instead, he agreed to a compromise peace, which in the long term facilitated the integration of Hungary into the Habsburg domains. It was his good fortune to govern the Austrian dominions and to be head of the Empire, during the years in which his trusted general, Prince Eugene of Savoy, either acting alone in Italy or with the Duke of Marlborough in Germany and Flanders, was beating the armies of Louis XIV of France. During the whole of his reign, Hungary was disturbed by the conflict with Francis Rákóczi II, who eventually took refuge in the Ottoman Empire. The emperor reversed many of the authoritarian measures of his father, thus helping to placate opponents. He began the attempts to settle the question of the Austrian inheritance by a pragmatic sanction, which was continued by his brother Charles VI. In 1710, Joseph extended his father's edict of outlawry against the Romani (Gypsies) in the Habsburg lands. Per Leopold, any Romani who entered the kingdom was to be declared an outlaw by letters patent and if the same person returned to Bohemia a second time "treated with all possible severity". Joseph ordered that in the Kingdom of Bohemia they were to have their right ears cut off; in the March of Moravia, the left ear was to be cut off; in Austria, they would be branded on the back with a branding iron, representing the gallows. These mutilations were to enable the authorities to identify Romani who had been outlawed and returned. Joseph's edict specified "that all adult males were to be hanged without trial, whereas women and young males were to be flogged and banished forever." Officials who failed to enforce the edict could be fined 100 Reichsthaler. Helping Romani was punishable by a half-year's forced labor. "Mass killings" of Romani were reported as a result.

Death.

During the smallpox epidemic of 1711, which killed Louis, le Grand Dauphin and three siblings of the future Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, Joseph became infected. He died on 17 April in the Hofburg Palace. He had previously promised his wife to stop having affairs, should he survive.  The Emperor was buried in the Imperial Crypt, resting place of the majority of the Habsburgs. His funeral took place on 20 April, in tomb no. 35 in Karl's Vault. His tomb was designed by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt, decorated with pictures of various battles from the War of Spanish Succession. Josefstadt (the eighth district of Vienna) is named for Joseph.

Marriage and lack of heir(s).

On 24 February 1699, he married Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg in Vienna. They had three children and their only son died of hydrocephalus before his first birthday. Joseph had a passion for love affairs (none of which resulted in illegitimate children) and he caught a sexually transmittable disease, probably syphilis, which he passed on to his wife while they were trying to produce a new heir. This incident rendered her sterile. Their father, who was still alive during these events, made Joseph and his brother Charles sign the Mutual Pact of Succession, ensuring that Joseph's daughters would have absolute precedence over Charles's daughters, neither of whom was born at the time, and that Maria Josepha would inherit both the Austrian and Spanish realms.

Full title.

"Joseph I, by the grace of God elected Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King in Germany, King of Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Rama, Serbia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Cumania and Bulgaria, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Margrave of Moravia, Duke of Luxemburg, of the Higher and Lower Silesia, of Württemberg and Teck, Prince of Swabia, Count of Habsburg, Tyrol, Kyburg and Goritia, Marquess of the Holy Roman Empire, Burgovia, the Higher and Lower Lusace, Lord of the Marquisate of Slavonia, of Port Naon and Salines, etc."

Bibliography.

C. W. Ingrao, In Quest and Crisis: Emperor Joseph I and the Habsburg Monarchy (1979)

Joseph I (Joseph Jacob Ignaz Johann Anton Eustachius; 26 July 1678 – 17 April 1711) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1705 until his death in 1711. He was the eldest son of Emperor Leopold I from his third wife, Eleonor Magdalene of Neuburg. Joseph was crowned King of Hungary at the age of nine in 1687 and King in Germany at the age of eleven in 1690. He succeeded to the thrones of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire when his father died.


Etymology and use.

First attested in English in the late, 13th century, the word "parish" comes from the Old French "paroisse", in turn from, the latinisation of the, "sojourning in a foreign land", itself from ("paroikos"), "dwelling beside, stranger, sojourner", which is a compound of ("pará"), "beside, by, near" and οἶκος ("oîkos"), "house".  As an ancient concept, the term "parish" occurs in the long-established Christian denominations: Catholic, Anglican Communion, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Lutheran churches, and in some Methodist, Congregationalist and Presbyterian administrations.  The eighth Archbishop of Canterbury Theodore of Tarsus (c. 602–690) appended the parish structure to the Anglo-Saxon township unit, where it existed, and where minsters catered to the surrounding district.

Territorial structure.

Broadly speaking, the parish is the standard unit in episcopal polity of church administration, although parts of a parish may be subdivided as a "chapelry", with a chapel of ease or filial church serving as the local place of worship in cases of difficulty to access the main parish church.  In the wider picture of ecclesiastical polity, a "parish" comprises a division of a diocese or see. Parishes within a diocese may be grouped into a deanery or "vicariate forane" (or simply "vicariate"), overseen by a dean or "vicar forane", or in some cases by an archpriest. Some churches of the Anglican Communion have deaneries as units of an archdeaconry.

Church of England.

The Church of England geographical structure uses the local parish church as its basic unit. The parish system survived the Reformation with the Anglican Church's secession from Rome remaining largely untouched, thus it shares its roots with the Catholic Church's system described above. Parishes may extend into different counties or hundreds and historically many parishes comprised extra outlying portions in addition to its principal district, usually being described as 'detached' and intermixed with the lands of other parishes. Church of England parishes nowadays all lie within one of 44 dioceses divided between the provinces of Canterbury, 30 and York, 14.  Each parish normally has its own parish priest (either a vicar or rector, owing to the vagaries of the feudal tithe system: rectories usually having had greater income) and perhaps supported by one or more curates or deacons - although as a result of ecclesiastical pluralism some parish priests might have held more than one parish living, placing a curate in charge of those where they do not reside. Now, however, it is common for a number of neighbouring parishes to be placed under one benefice in the charge of a priest who conducts services by rotation, with additional services being provided by lay readers or other non-ordained members of the church community.  A chapelry was a subdivision of an ecclesiastical parish in England, and parts of Lowland Scotland up to the mid 19th century. It had a similar status to a township but was so named as it had a chapel which acted as a subsidiary place of worship to the main parish church.  In England civil parishes and their governing parish councils evolved in the 19th century as ecclesiastical parishes began to be relieved of what became considered to be civic responsibilities. Thus their boundaries began to diverge. The word "parish" acquired a secular usage. Since 1895, a parish council elected by public vote or a (civil) parish meeting administers a civil parish and is formally recognised as the level of local government below a district council.  The traditional structure of the Church of England with the parish as the basic unit has been exported to other countries and churches throughout the Anglican Communion and Commonwealth but does not necessarily continue to be administered in the same way.

Church of Scotland.

The parish is also the basic level of church administration in the Church of Scotland. Spiritual oversight of each parish church in Scotland is responsibility of the congregation's Kirk Session. Patronage was regulated in 1711 (Patronage Act) and abolished in 1874, with the result that ministers must be elected by members of the congregation. Many parish churches in Scotland today are "linked" with neighbouring parish churches served by a single minister. Since the abolition of parishes as a unit of civil government in Scotland in 1929, Scottish parishes have purely ecclesiastical significance and the boundaries may be adjusted by the local Presbytery.

Church in Wales.

The church in Wales was disestablished in 1920 and is made up of six dioceses. Parishes were also civil administration areas until communities were established in 1974.

Methodist Church.

Although they are more often simply called congregations and have no geographic boundaries, in the United Methodist Church congregations are called parishes. A prominent example of this usage comes in "The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church", in which the committee of every local congregation that handles staff support is referred to as the committee on Pastor-Parish Relations. This committee gives recommendations to the bishop on behalf of the parish/congregation since it is the United Methodist Bishop of the episcopal area who appoints a pastor to each congregation. The same is true in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.  In New Zealand, a local grouping of Methodist churches that share one or more ministers (which in the United Kingdom would be called a circuit) is referred to as a parish.

Catholic Church.

In the Catholic Church, each parish normally has its own parish priest (in some countries called pastor), who has responsibility and canonical authority over the parish.  What in most English-speaking countries is termed the "parish priest" is referred to as the "pastor" in the United States, where the term "parish priest" is used of any priest assigned to a parish even in a subordinate capacity. These are called "assistant priests", "parochial vicars", "curates", or, in the United States, "associate pastors" and "assistant pastors".  Each diocese (administrative region) is divided into parishes, each with their own central church called the parish church, where religious services take place. Some larger parishes or parishes that have been combined under one parish priest may have two or more such churches, or the parish may be responsible for chapels (or chapels of ease) located at some distance from the mother church for the convenience of distant parishioners.  Normally, a parish comprises all Catholics living within its geographically defined area, but non-territorial parishes can also be established within a defined area on a personal basis for Catholics belonging to a particular rite, language, nationality, or community. An example is that of personal parishes established in accordance with the 7 July 2007 "motu proprio" "Summorum Pontificum" for those attached to the pre-Vatican II liturgy.  Most Catholic parishes are part of Latin Rite dioceses, which together cover the whole territory of a country. There can also be overlapping parishes of eparchies of Eastern Catholic Churches, personal ordinariates or military ordinariates. Parishes are generally territorial, but may be personal.

A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or more curates, and who operates from a parish church. Historically, a parish often covered the same geographical area as a manor. Its association with the parish church remains paramount.


Description.

The Feldenkrais Method is a type of alternative exercise therapy that proponents claim can repair impaired connections between the motor cortex and the body, so benefiting the quality of body movement and improving wellbeing. The Feldenkrais Guild of North America claims that the Feldenkrais method allows people to "rediscover [their] innate capacity for graceful, efficient movement" and that "These improvements will often generalize to enhance functioning in other aspects of [their] life". Proponents claim that the Feldenkrais Method can benefit people with a number of medical conditions, including children with autism, and people with multiple sclerosis.  In a session, a Feldenkrais practitioner directs attention to habitual movement patterns that are thought to be inefficient or strained, and attempts to teach new patterns using gentle, slow, repeated movements. Slow repetition is believed to be necessary to impart a new habit and allow it to begin to feel normal. These movements may be passive (performed by the practitioner on the recipient's body) or active (performed by the recipient). The recipient is fully clothed.

Effectiveness and reception.

In 2015, the Australian Government's Department of Health published the results of a review of alternative therapies that sought to determine if any were suitable for being covered by health insurance; the Feldenkrais Method was one of 17 therapies evaluated for which no clear evidence of effectiveness was found. Accordingly in 2017 the Australian government identified the Feldenkrais Method as a practice that would not qualify for insurance subsidy, saying this step would "ensure taxpayer funds are expended appropriately and not directed to therapies lacking evidence".  There is limited evidence that workplace-based use of the Feldenkrais Method may help aid rehabilitation of people with upper limb complaints.  David Gorski has written that the Method bears similarities to faith healing, is like "glorified yoga", and that it "borders on quackery".

History.

Similar to some other somatic methods, such as those started by F. Matthias Alexander, Elsa Gindler, and Gerda Alexander, the Feldenkrais Method originated in the efforts of its founder to work with his own bodily problem. In the case of Moshé Feldenkrais, it was a chronically injured knee.  Feldenkrais first injured his knee while playing soccer in British-controlled Palestine in the 1920s. He reinjured it while negotiating the slippery decks of submarines while working as a scientist at the British Naval station at Fairlie, North Ayrshire, Scotland during the Second World War.  By that time Feldenkrais was a judo teacher and had mostly completed the work toward a D.Sc. under the guidance of Nobel laureate Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Facing the prospect of a surgery that could leave him with a life-long limp, Feldenkrais decided to apply the knowledge gained from his study of physics, engineering, and martial arts to an intensive self-study of his own movement habits. When his work provided him with relief, allowing him to avoid the knee surgery, he began exploring the methods he developed on himself with a small group of people at Fairlie, including scientific colleague John Desmond Bernal and John Boyd-Orr, Nobel laureate and first president of the World Academy of Art and Science.  After serving as head of electronic engineering for the Israeli Army in newly formed Israel from 1951 to 1953, Feldenkrais devoted the rest of his life, from age 50 onward, to developing and teaching self-awareness through movement lessons.  From the 1950s till his death in 1984, he taught continuously in his home city of Tel Aviv. Feldenkrais gained recognition in part through media accounts of his work with prominent individuals, including Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Beginning in the late 1950s, Feldenkrais made trips to teach in Europe and America. Several hundred people became certified Feldenkrais practitioners through trainings he held in San Francisco from 1975 to 1978 and in Amherst, Massachusetts from 1980 to 1984. Anticipating the need for an institutional structure to carry on his teaching, he helped found the Feldenkrais Guild of North America in 1977.  Feldenkrais developed the conceptual framework of his method in part through the publication of six books, beginning with "Body and Mature Behavior" (1949) and ending with the posthumously published "The Potent Self" (1985).  Since Feldenkrais' death, the international Feldenkrais community has used a guild structure to regulate its activity, with training accreditation boards in the Americas, Europe, and Australasia overseeing guilds and associations in eighteen member countries. "The Feldenkrais Journal", the annual publication of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America, serves as a forum for the Feldenkrais community to discuss the method and its applications.

Influences.

The development of the Feldenkrais Method was influenced by Moshe Feldenkrais's involvement in the martial arts. After meeting Kano Jigoro, the founder of Judo, while living in Paris in the 1930s, Feldenkrais transitioned to that practice. One of the main influences of judo on the Feldenkrais Method is the differentiation between rote exercise and attentive movement: "the methods of physical exercise in vogue... exert only the muscles without any other goal, and one needs much will to bind oneself unfailingly to one of these methods", wrote Feldenkrais in 1952. "Judo is very different, each movement has a specific goal which is reached after a precise and supple execution." Before he focused on the creation of his own method, Feldenkrais influenced the teaching of martial arts in Western Europe through the publication of five books on jiujitsu and judo, as well as teaching at practice centers in France and Great Britain.  Feldenkrais was born into an Hasidic family and community, and he acknowledged the influence of Hasidic Judaism on his method. In David Kaetz's biography, "Making Connections: Roots and Resonance in the Life of Moshe Feldenkrais" (2007), he argues many lines of influence can be found between the Judaism of Feldenkrais's upbringing and the Feldenkrais Method – for instance, the use of paradox as a pedagogical tool. Feldenkrais also acknowledged the influence of the Russian spiritualist George Gurdjieff on his work, in particular Gurdjieff's teachings on automatism and freedom in embodiment.  Feldenkrais earned his doctorate in a program at the Sorbonne intended to bridge theoretical physics and industrial engineering. Mark Reese, another biographer of the teacher, says that Feldenkrais brought this emphasis on practical scientific inquiry to the understanding of embodiment expressed through his method:  "Feldenkrais was critical of the appropriation of the term 'energy' to express immeasurable phenomena or to label experiences that people had trouble describing," notes Reese. "He was impatient when someone invoked energy in pseudoscientific 'explanations' that masked a lack of understanding. In such cases he urged skepticism and scientific discourse. He encouraged empirical and phenomenological narratives that could lead to insights."  Feldenkrais incorporated the views of other scientists into his teaching; for instance, he asked questions of both the neurosurgeon Karl H. Pribram and the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster at trainings in San Francisco in the mid-1970s. Cybernetics, also known as dynamic systems theory, continued to influence the Feldenkrais Method in the 1990s through the work of human development researcher Esther Thelen.

The Feldenkrais Method is a type of exercise therapy devised by Israeli Moshé Feldenkrais (1904–1984) during the mid-20th century. The method is claimed to reorganize connections between the brain and body and so improve body movement and psychological state.


Biography.

Wolf was born the daughter of Otto and Herta Ihlenfeld, in Landsberg an der Warthe, then in the Province of Brandenburg; the city is now Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland. After World War II, her family, being Germans, were expelled from their home on what had become Polish territory. They crossed the new Oder-Neisse border in 1945 and settled in Mecklenburg, in what would become the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. She studied literature at the University of Jena and the University of Leipzig. After her graduation, she worked for the German Writers' Union and became an editor for a publishing company. While working as an editor for publishing companies "Verlag Neues Leben" and "Mitteldeutscher Verlag" and as a literary critic for the journal "Neue deutsche Literatur", Wolf was provided contact with antifascists and Communists, many of whom had either returned from exile or from imprisonment in concentration camps. Her writings discuss political, economic, and scientific power, making her an influential spokesperson in East and West Germany during post-World War II for the empowerment of individuals to be active within the industrialized and patriarchal society.  She joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1949 and left it in June 1989, six months before the Communist regime collapsed. She was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the SED from 1963 to 1967. Stasi records found in 1993 showed that she worked as an informant ("Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter") during the years 1959–61. The Stasi officers criticized what they called her "reticence", and they lost interest in her cooperation. She was herself then closely watched for nearly 30 years. During the Cold War, Wolf was openly critical of the leadership of the GDR, but she maintained a loyalty to the values of socialism and opposed German reunification.  In 1961, she published "Moskauer Novelle" ("Moscow Novella"). However, Wolf's breakthrough as a writer came in 1963 with the publication of "Der geteilte Himmel" ("Divided Heaven", "They Divided the Sky"). Her subsequent works included "Nachdenken über Christa T." ("The Quest for Christa T.") (1968), "Kindheitsmuster" ("Patterns of Childhood") (1976), "Kein Ort. Nirgends" ("No Place On Earth") (1979), "Kassandra" ("Cassandra") (1983), "Störfall" ("Accident") (1987), "Medea" (1996), "Auf dem Weg nach Tabou" ("On the Way to Taboo") (1994), and "Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud" (2010) ("City of Angels or The Overcoat of Dr. Freud"). "Christa T" was a work that—while briefly touching on a disconnection from one's family's ancestral home—was concerned with a woman's experiencing overwhelming societal pressure to conform.  "Kassandra" is perhaps Wolf's most important book, re-interpreting the battle of Troy as a war for economic power and a shift from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society. "Was bleibt" ("What Remains"), described her life under Stasi surveillance, was written in 1979, but not published until 1990. "Auf dem Weg nach Tabou" (1995; translated as "Parting from Phantoms") gathered essays, speeches, and letters written during the four years following the reunification of Germany. "Leibhaftig" (2002) describes a woman struggling with life and death in 1980s East-German hospital, while awaiting medicine from the West. Central themes in her work are German fascism, humanity, feminism, and self-discovery. In many of her works, Wolf uses illness as a metaphor. In a speech addressed to the "Deutsche Krebsgesellschaft" (German Cancer Society) she says, "How we choose to speak or not to speak about illnesses such as cancer mirrors our misgivings about society." In "Nachdenken über Christa T." (The Quest for Christa T). the protagonist dies of leukemia. This work demonstrates the dangers and consequences that happen to an individual when they internalize society's contradictions. In "Accident", the narrator's brother is undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumor a few days after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster had occurred. In 2004 she edited and published her correspondence with her UK-based near namesake Charlotte Wolff over the years 1983–1986 (Wolf, Christa and Wolff, Charlotte (2004) "Ja, unsere Kreise berühren sich: Briefe", Luchterhand Munich). Wolf died 1 December 2011 in Berlin, where she had lived with her husband,. She was buried on 13 December 2011 in Berlin's Dorotheenstadt cemetery. In 2018, the city of Berlin designated her grave as an "Ehrengrab".

Reception.

Although Wolf's works were widely praised in both Germanys in the 1970s and 1980s, they have sometimes been seen as controversial since German reunification. William Dalrymple wrote that in East Germany "writers such as Christa Wolf became irrelevant overnight once the Berlin Wall was broached". Upon publication of "Was bleibt", West German critics such as Frank Schirrmacher argued that Wolf failed to criticize the authoritarianism of the East German Communist regime, whilst others called her works "moralistic". Defenders have recognized Wolf's role in establishing a distinctly East German literary voice. Fausto Cercignani's study of Wolf's earlier novels and essays on her later works have helped promote awareness of her narrative gifts, irrespective of her political and personal ups and downs. The emphasis placed by Cercignani on Christa Wolf's heroism has opened the way to subsequent studies in this direction.  Wolf received the Heinrich Mann Prize in 1963, the Georg Büchner Prize in 1980, and the Schiller Memorial Prize in 1983, the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in 1987, as well as other national and international awards. After the German reunification, Wolf received further awards: in 1999 she was awarded the Elisabeth Langgässer Prize and the Nelly Sachs Literature Prize, and Wolf became the first recipient of the Deutscher Bücherpreis (German Book Prize) in 2002 for her lifetime achievement. In 2010, Wolf was awarded the Großer Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste.

Christa Wolf (; née Ihlenfeld; 18 March 1929 – 1 December 2011) was a German literary critic, novelist, and essayist. She was one of the best-known writers to emerge from the former East Germany.


Virus species definition.

Species form the basis for any biological classification system. Before 1982, it was thought that viruses could not be made to fit Ernst Mayr's reproductive concept of species, and so were not amenable to such treatment. In 1982, the ICTV started to define a species as "a cluster of strains" with unique identifying qualities. In 1991, the more specific principle that a virus species is a polythetic class of viruses that constitutes a replicating lineage and occupies a particular ecological niche was adopted.  In July 2013, the ICTV definition of species changed to state: "A species is a monophyletic group of viruses whose properties can be distinguished from those of other species by multiple criteria." Viruses are real physical entities produced by biological evolution and genetics, whereas virus species and higher taxa are abstract concepts produced by rational thought and logic. The virus/species relationship thus represents the front line of the interface between biology and logic.  The actual criteria used vary by the taxon, and can be inconsistent (arbitrary similarity thresholds) or unrelated to lineage (geography) at times. The matter is, for many, not yet settled.

ICTV classification.

The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses began to devise and implement rules for the naming and classification of viruses early in the 1970s, an effort that continues to the present. The ICTV is the only body charged by the International Union of Microbiological Societies with the task of developing, refining, and maintaining a universal virus taxonomy. The system shares many features with the classification system of cellular organisms, such as taxon structure. However, some differences exist, such as the universal use of italics for all taxonomic names, unlike in the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants and International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.  Viral classification starts at the level of realm and continues as follows, with the taxonomic suffixes in parentheses:  Species names often take the form of "[Disease] virus", particularly for higher plants and animals.  As of 2019, all levels of taxa except subrealm, subkingdom, and subclass are used. Four realms, one "incertae sedis" order, 24 "incertae sedis" families, and three "incertae sedis" genera are recognized:  Realms: "Duplodnaviria", "Monodnaviria", "Riboviria", and "Varidnaviria"  "incertae sedis" order: "Ligamenvirales"  "incertae sedis" families:  "incertae sedis" genera: "Deltavirus", "Dinodnavirus", "Rhizidiovirus"

Structure-based virus classification.

It has been suggested that similarity in virion assembly and structure observed for certain viral groups infecting hosts from different domains of life (e.g., bacterial tectiviruses and eukaryotic adenoviruses or prokaryotic Caudovirales and eukaryotic herpesviruses) reflects an evolutionary relationship between these viruses. Therefore, structural relationship between viruses has been suggested to be used as a basis for defining higher-level taxa – structure-based viral lineages – that could complement the existing ICTV classification scheme.

Baltimore classification.

Baltimore classification (first defined in 1971) is a classification system that places viruses into one of seven groups depending on a combination of their nucleic acid (DNA or RNA), strandedness (single-stranded or double-stranded), sense, and method of replication. Named after David Baltimore, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist, these groups are designated by Roman numerals. Other classifications are determined by the disease caused by the virus or its morphology, neither of which are satisfactory due to different viruses either causing the same disease or looking very similar. In addition, viral structures are often difficult to determine under the microscope. Classifying viruses according to their genome means that those in a given category will all behave in a similar fashion, offering some indication of how to proceed with further research. Viruses can be placed in one of the seven following groups:

Holmes classification.

Holmes (1948) used Carl Linnaeus's system of binomial nomenclature to classify viruses into 3 groups under one order, Virales. They are placed as follows:

LHT System of Virus Classification.

The LHT System of Virus Classification is based on chemical and physical characters like nucleic acid (DNA or RNA), symmetry (helical or icosahedral or complex), presence of envelope, diameter of capsid, number of capsomers. This classification was approved by the Provisional Committee on Nomenclature of Virus (PNVC) of the International Association of Microbiological Societies (1962). It is as follows:

Subviral agents.

The following infectious agents are smaller than viruses and have only some of their properties.

Viroids and virus-dependent agents.

Satellites.

Satellites depend on co-infection of a host cell with a helper virus for productive multiplication. Their nucleic acids have substantially distinct nucleotide sequences from either their helper virus or host. When a satellite subviral agent encodes the coat protein in which it is encapsulated, it is then called a satellite virus.  Satellite-like nucleic acids resemble satellite nucleic acids, in that they replicate with the aid of helper viruses. However they differ in that they can encode functions that can contribute to the success of their helper viruses; while they are sometimes considered to be genomic elements of their helper viruses, they are not always found within their helper viruses.

Defective interfering particles.

Defective interfering particles are defective viruses that have lost their ability to replicate except in the presence of a helper virus, which is normally the parental virus. They can also interfere with the helper virus.

Prions.

Prions, named for their description as "proteinaceous infectious particles", do not have nucleic acids or virus-like particles. They resist inactivation procedures that normally affect nucleic acids.

Virus classification is the process of naming viruses and placing them into a taxonomic system. Similar to the classification systems used for cellular organisms, virus classification is the subject of ongoing debate and proposals. This is mainly due to the pseudo-living nature of viruses, which is to say they are non-living particles with some chemical characteristics similar to those of life, or non-cellular life. As such, they do not fit neatly into the established biological classification system in place for cellular organisms.


Definition.

The arithmetic mean (or mean or average), formula_1 (read formula_2 "bar"), is the mean of the formula_3 values formula_4.  The arithmetic mean is the most commonly used and readily understood measure of central tendency in a data set. In statistics, the term average refers to any of the measures of central tendency. The arithmetic mean of a set of observed data is defined as being equal to the sum of the numerical values of each and every observation divided by the total number of observations. Symbolically, if we have a data set consisting of the values formula_5, then the arithmetic mean formula_6 is defined by the formula:  (See summation for an explanation of the summation operator).  For example, consider the monthly salary of 10 employees of a firm: 2500, 2700, 2400, 2300, 2550, 2650, 2750, 2450, 2600, 2400. The arithmetic mean is  If the data set is a statistical population (i.e., consists of every possible observation and not just a subset of them), then the mean of that population is called the population mean. If the data set is a statistical sample (a subset of the population), we call the statistic resulting from this calculation a sample mean.  The arithmetic mean can be similarly defined for vectors in multiple dimension, not only scalar values; this is often referred to as a centroid. More generally, because the arithmetic mean is a convex combination (coefficients sum to 1), it can be defined on a convex space, not only a vector space.

Motivating properties.

The arithmetic mean has several properties that make it useful, especially as a measure of central tendency. These include:

Contrast with median.

The arithmetic mean may be contrasted with the median. The median is defined such that no more than half the values are larger than, and no more than half are smaller than, the median. If elements in the data increase arithmetically, when placed in some order, then the median and arithmetic average are equal. For example, consider the data sample formula_15. The average is formula_16, as is the median. However, when we consider a sample that cannot be arranged so as to increase arithmetically, such as formula_17, the median and arithmetic average can differ significantly. In this case, the arithmetic average is 6.2 and the median is 4. In general, the average value can vary significantly from most values in the sample, and can be larger or smaller than most of them.  There are applications of this phenomenon in many fields. For example, since the 1980s, the median income in the United States has increased more slowly than the arithmetic average of income.

Generalizations.

Weighted average.

A weighted average, or weighted mean, is an average in which some data points count more heavily than others, in that they are given more weight in the calculation. For example, the arithmetic mean of formula_18 and formula_19 is formula_20, or equivalently formula_21. In contrast, a "weighted" mean in which the first number receives, for example, twice as much weight as the second (perhaps because it is assumed to appear twice as often in the general population from which these numbers were sampled) would be calculated as formula_22. Here the weights, which necessarily sum to the value one, are formula_23 and formula_24, the former being twice the latter. The arithmetic mean (sometimes called the "unweighted average" or "equally weighted average") can be interpreted as a special case of a weighted average in which all the weights are equal to each other (equal to formula_25 in the above example, and equal to formula_26 in a situation with formula_3 numbers being averaged).

Continuous probability distributions.

If a numerical property, and any sample of data from it, could take on any value from a continuous range, instead of, for example, just integers, then the probability of a number falling into some range of possible values can be described by integrating a continuous probability distribution across this range, even when the naive probability for a sample number taking one certain value from infinitely many is zero. The analog of a weighted average in this context, in which there are an infinite number of possibilities for the precise value of the variable in each range, is called the "mean of the probability distribution". A most widely encountered probability distribution is called the normal distribution; it has the property that all measures of its central tendency, including not just the mean but also the aforementioned median and the mode (the three M's), are equal to each other. This equality does not hold for other probability distributions, as illustrated for the lognormal distribution here.

Angles.

Particular care must be taken when using cyclic data, such as phases or angles. Naïvely taking the arithmetic mean of 1° and 359° yields a result of 180°. This is incorrect for two reasons:  In general application, such an oversight will lead to the average value artificially moving towards the middle of the numerical range. A solution to this problem is to use the optimization formulation (viz., define the mean as the central point: the point about which one has the lowest dispersion), and redefine the difference as a modular distance (i.e., the distance on the circle: so the modular distance between 1° and 359° is 2°, not 358°).

Symbols and encoding.

The arithmetic mean is often denoted by a bar, for example as in formula_1 (read formula_2 "bar").  Some software (text processors, web browsers) may not display the x̄ symbol properly. For example, the x̄ symbol in HTML is actually a combination of two codes - the base letter x plus a code for the line above (̄ or ̄).  In some texts, such as pdfs, the x̄ symbol may be replaced by a cent (¢) symbol (Unicode &#162) when copied to text processor such as Microsoft Word.

In mathematics and statistics, the arithmetic mean (, stress on first and third syllables of "arithmetic"), or simply the mean or average when the context is clear, is the sum of a collection of numbers divided by the count of numbers in the collection. The collection is often a set of results of an experiment or an observational study, or frequently a set of results from a survey. The term "arithmetic mean" is preferred in some contexts in mathematics and statistics because it helps distinguish it from other means, such as the geometric mean and the harmonic mean.


Overview.

Documents are notarized to deter fraud and to ensure they are properly executed. An impartial witness (the notary) identifies signers to screen out impostors and to make sure they have entered into agreements knowingly and willingly. Loan documents including deeds, affidavits, contracts, powers of attorney are very common documents needing notarization.  To "notarize" a document or event is not a term of art, and its definition varies from place to place; but it generally means the performance by a notary of a series of possible steps, which may include the following (not an exhaustive list):

Common law vs. Civil law notaries.

Most common law systems have what is called in the United States a notary public, a public official who notarizes legal documents and who can also administer and take oaths and affirmations, among other tasks. Although notaries public are public officials, they are not paid by the government; they may obtain income by charging fees, provide free services in connection with other employment (for example, bank employees), or provide free services for the public good. In the US (except Puerto Rico), any person – lawyer or otherwise – may be commissioned as a notary.  Most civil law-based systems (including Puerto Rico and Quebec) have the civil law notary, a legal professional performing many more functions than a common-law notary public. They are qualified lawyers who provide many of the same services as common-law attorneys/solicitors (negotiation and drafting of contracts, legal advice, settlement of estates, creation of a company and its status, writing of wills and power of attorney, interpretation of the law, mediation, etc...) except any involvement in disputes to be presented before a court.  In the United States, a signing agent, also known as a loan signing agent, is a notary public who specializes in notarizing mortgage and real estate documents.  Notaries in civil law jurisdictions are specialized in all matters relating to real estate, completing title exams in order to confirm the ownership of the property, the existence of any encumbrances such as easements or mortgages and hypothecs.  Often, in the case of lawyer notaries, the certificate to be provided will not require the person appearing to sign. Examples are: certificates authenticating copies (which are mostly not within the permissible functions of U.S. notaries) and certificates as to law, such as certificates as to the capacity of a company to perform certain acts, or explaining probate law in the place.

Online systems.

In the United States, the states of Virginia, Texas, and Nevada have all passed laws allowing for online witness by notaries, using screen sharing or webcam as well as identity verification processes. Virginia was the first state to pass legislation allowing online notarization in 2012. Texas and Nevada passed similar laws in 2017 that went into effect in July, 2018. Some sites and apps include Notarize, DocVerify, NotaryCam, Safedocs, and SIGNiX. Notarize is also the first company to offer fully online mortgage closings, executing the first in August 2017 with United Wholesale Mortgage and Stewart Title. In the United States as of 2017 there are estimated to be over 4 million notaries employed.

A notary is a person authorised to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents. The form that the notarial profession takes varies with local legal systems.


Early life.

Diesel was born Mark Sinclair on July 18, 1967, in Alameda County, California, with his fraternal twin brother, Paul. His mother, Delora Sherleen Vincent (née Sinclair), is an astrologer. Diesel has stated that he is "of ambiguous ethnicity". His mother has English, German, and Scottish roots. He has never met his biological father, and has stated that "all I know from my mother is that I have connections to many different cultures". Diesel has self-identified as "definitely a person of color", and has stated that his parents' relationship would have been illegal in parts of the United States due to anti-miscegenation laws. He was raised in New York City by his white American mother and African-American stepfather, Irving H. Vincent, an acting instructor and theater manager.  Diesel made his stage debut at age seven when he appeared in the children's play "Dinosaur Door", written by Barbara Garson. The play was produced at Theater for the New City in New York's Greenwich Village. His involvement in the play came about when he, his brother and some friends had broken into the Theater for the New City space on Jane Street with the intent to vandalize it. They were confronted by the theater's artistic director, Crystal Field, who offered them roles in the upcoming show instead of calling the police. Diesel remained involved with the theater throughout adolescence, going on to attend NYC's Hunter College, where studies in creative writing led him to begin screenwriting. He has identified himself as a "multi-faceted" actor.

Career.

Diesel's first film role was a brief uncredited appearance in the drama film "Awakenings" (1990). In 1994, he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in the short drama film "Multi-Facial", a semi-autobiographical film which follows a struggling multiracial actor stuck in the audition process. The film was selected for screening at the 1995 Cannes Festival.  In 1997, Diesel made his first feature-length film, "Strays", an urban drama in which he played a gang leader whose love for a woman inspires him to try to change his ways. Written, directed, and produced by Diesel, the film was selected for competition at the 1997 Sundance Festival, leading to an MTV deal to turn it into a series. Director Steven Spielberg took notice of Diesel after seeing him in "Multi-Facial" and cast him in a small role as a soldier in his 1998 Oscar-winning war film "Saving Private Ryan". In 1999, he provided the voice of the title character in the animated film "The Iron Giant".  In 2000, Diesel had a supporting role in the drama thriller "Boiler Room", where he appeared alongside Giovanni Ribisi and Ben Affleck. He got his breakthrough leading role as the anti-hero Riddick in the science-fiction film "Pitch Black" later that year. Diesel attained action hero stardom with two box office hits: the street racing action film "The Fast and the Furious" (2001), and the action thriller "XXX" (2002). He turned down the chance to reprise his roles in the sequels "2 Fast 2 Furious" (2003) and "" (2005). Instead he chose to reprise his role as Riddick in "The Chronicles of Riddick", which was a box office failure considering the large budget. He also voiced the character in two spin-off video games and the anime film "". In a change from his previous action hero roles, in 2005, he played a lighthearted role in the comedy film "The Pacifier", which was a box office success. In 2006, he chose a dramatic role playing real-life mobster Jack DiNorscio in "Find Me Guilty". Although he received critical acclaim for his performance, the film did poorly at the box office grossing only $2 million against a budget of $13 million. Later that year, Diesel made a cameo appearance in "", reprising his role from "The Fast and the Furious". In 2007, Diesel was set to produce and star as Agent 47 in the film adaptation of the video game "", but eventually pulled back and served as executive producer on the film instead. In 2008, he starred in the science-fiction action thriller "Babylon A.D." which was a critical and box office failure. Diesel returned to "The Fast and the Furious" series, alongside most of the principal cast from the original 2001 film, in "Fast & Furious", which was released in April 2009.  Diesel reprised his role as Dominic Toretto in installments five through eight of the "Fast & Furious" franchise, "Fast Five" (2011), "Fast & Furious 6" (2013), "Furious 7" (2015), and "The Fate of the Furious" (2017). He reprised his role as Riddick in the third film of "The Chronicles of Riddick" series, simply titled "Riddick" (2013). In August 2013, Diesel received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He voiced Groot in the 2014 Marvel Cinematic Universe film "Guardians of the Galaxy". He starred in the supernatural action film "The Last Witch Hunter" (2015). In 2016, Diesel appeared as a supporting character in Ang Lee's war drama "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk".  In 2017, Diesel also reprised his roles as Xander Cage in "", and Groot in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2". Over the course of several years, Diesel has discussed playing two separate roles within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In November 2016 director of "Guardians of the Galaxy", James Gunn, confirmed that Diesel had been in talks to play Blackagar Boltagon / Black Bolt for the planned "Inhumans" film, but it was turned into a television series instead without Diesel involved.  Diesel reprised his role of Groot once again in the crossover films "" (2018) and "" (2019) which combined the superhero teams of Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers. He has said, "[I] think there's gonna be a moment that we're all waiting for, and whether you know it or not, you are waiting to see [Groot] and [the Hulk] get down."  Diesel portrayed Valiant Comics character "Bloodshot" in the film of the same name which released in March 2020. He is also joining the cast of James Cameron's "Avatar 2".

Personal life.

Diesel said in 2006 that he prefers to maintain his privacy regarding his personal life: "I'm not gonna put it out there on a magazine cover like some other actors. I come from the Harrison Ford, Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino code of silence."  Sometime around 2001, Diesel dated his "Fast and the Furious" co-star, Michelle Rodriguez. He began dating Mexican model Paloma Jimenez in 2007, and they have three children: daughter Hania Riley (born April 2008), son Vincent Sinclair (born 2010), and daughter Pauline (born March 2015). The latter is named in honor of his friend and co-star, Paul Walker, who died in November 2013. He is also the godfather of Walker's daughter, Meadow.  Diesel is noted for his recognizably deep voice; he has said that his voice broke around age 15, giving him a mature-sounding voice on the telephone. He has played "Dungeons & Dragons" for over 20 years, and wrote the foreword for the commemorative book "". Canadian video game designer and developer Merritt k created the 2015 ASMR game "Vin Diesel DMing a Game of D&D Just For You" based on his "D&D" fandom. He has expressed his love for the Dominican Republic and how he relates to its multicultural facets. He is acquainted with its former president, Leonel Fernández, and appeared in one of Fernández's earlier campaign ads. "Los Bandoleros", a short film directed by Diesel, was filmed in the Dominican Republic.

Mark Sinclair (born July 18, 1967), known professionally as Vin Diesel, is an American actor, producer, director, and screenwriter. He is best known for playing Dominic Toretto in the "Fast & Furious" franchise, and is one of the highest-grossing actors of all time.


Name.

First mentioned in 1408 as "Tyagyanyakyacha" (Тягянякяча) in a document in Old Slavonic (the term has Cuman origins), the town was known in the Middle Ages as Tighina in Romanian from Moldavian sources and later as "Bender" in Ottoman sources. The fortress and the city were called "Bender" for most of the time they were a rayah of the Ottomans (1538–1812), and during most of the time they belonged to the Russian Empire (1828–1917). They were known as "Tighina" (Тигина, ) in the Principality of Moldavia, in the early part of the Russian Empire period (1812–1828), and during the time the city belonged to Romania (1918–1940; 1941–1944).  The city is part of the historical region of Bessarabia and of Bessarabia Governorate within the Russian Empire. During the Soviet period the city was known in the Moldavian SSR as "Bender" in Romanian, written "Бендер" with the Cyrillic alphabet, as "Bendery" () in Russian and "Bendery" (Бенде́ри) in Ukrainian. Today the city is officially named "Bender", but both "Bender" and "Tighina" are in use.

History.

The town was first mentioned as an important customs post in a commerce grant issued by the Moldavian voivode Alexander the Good to the merchants of Lviv on October 8, 1408. The name "Tighina" is found in documents from the second half of the 15th century. The town was the main Moldavian customs point on the commercial road linking the country to Tatar Crimea. During his reign of Moldavia, Stephen III had a small wooden fort built in the town to defend the settlement from Tatar raids.  In 1538, the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent conquered the town from Moldavia, and renamed it "Bender". Its fortifications were developed into a full fortress under the same name under the supervision of the Turkish architect Koji Mimar Sinan. The Ottomans used it to keep the pressure on Moldavia. At the end of the 16th century several unsuccessful attempts to retake the fortress were made: in the summer of 1574 Prince John III the Terrible led a siege on the fortress, as did Michael the Brave in 1595 and 1600. About the same time the fortress was attacked by Zaporozhian Cossacks.  In the 18th century, the fort's area was expanded and modernized by the prince of Moldavia Antioh Cantemir, who carried out these works under Ottoman supervision.  In 1713, the fortress, the town, and the neighboring village Varnița were the site of skirmishes ("kalabalik") between Charles XII of Sweden, who had taken refuge there with the Cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa after his defeat in the Battle of Poltava, and Turks who wished to enforce the departure of the Swedish king.  During the second half of the 18th century, the fortress fell three times to the Russians during the Russo-Turkish Wars (in 1770, 1789, and in 1806 without a fight).  Along with Bessarabia, the city was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1812, and remained part of the Russian Governorate of Bessarabia until 1917. Many Ukrainians, Russians and Jews settled in or around Bender, and the town quickly became predominantly Russian-speaking. By 1897, speakers of Romanian and Moldovan made up only around 7% of Bender's population, while 33.4% were Jews.  Tighina was part of the Moldavian Democratic Republic in 1917–1918, and after 1918, as part of Bessarabia, the city belonged to Romania, where it was the seat of Tighina County. In 1918, it was shortly controlled by the Odessa Soviet Republic which was driven out by the Romanian army. The local population was critical of Romanian authorities; pro-Soviet separatism remained popular. On Easter Day, 1919, the bridge over the Dniester River was blown up by the French Army in order to block the Bolsheviks from coming to the city. In the same year, there was a pro-Soviet uprising in Bender, attempting to attach the city to the newly founded Soviet Union. Several hundred communist workers and Red Army members from Bessarabia, headed by Grigori Stary, seized control in Bender on May 27. However, the uprising was crushed on the same day by the Romanian army.  Romania launched a policy of Romanianization and the use of Russian was now discouraged and in certain cases restricted. In Bender, however, Russian continued to be the city's most widely spoken language, being native to 53% of its residents in 1930. Although their share had doubled, Romanian-speakers made up only 15%.  Along with Bessarabia, the city was occupied by the Soviet Union on June 28, 1940, following an ultimatum. In the course of World War II, it was retaken by Romania in July 1941, and again by the USSR in August 1944. Most of the city's Jews were killed during the Holocaust, although Bender continued to have a significant Jewish community well until the 1990s.  From 1940–41, and 1944–1991 it was one of the four "republican cities", not subordinated to a district, of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union. Since 1991, the city has been disputed between the Republic of Moldova and Transnistria. Due to the city's key strategic location on the right bank of the Dniester river, from left-bank Tiraspol, Bender saw the heaviest fighting of the 1992 War of Transnistria. Since then, it is controlled by Transnistrian authorities, although it has been formally in the demilitarized zone established at the end of the conflict. Most of the city's remaining Jews emigrated after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  Moldovan authorities control the commune of Varnița, a suburb fringing the city to the north. Transnistrian authorities control the suburban communes of Proteagailovca, which borders the city to the west and Gîsca, which borders the city to the south-west. They also control Chițcani and Cremenciug, further to the south-east, while Moldovans are in control of Copanca, further to the south-east.

Administration.

Nikolai Gliga is the head of the state administration of Bender.

People and culture.

Demographics.

In 1920, the population of Bender was approximately 26,000. At that time, one third of the population was Jewish. One third of the population was Romanian. Germans, Russians, and Bulgarians were also mixed into the population during that time.  At the 2004 Census, the city had a population of 100,169, of which the city itself 97,027, and the commune of Proteagailovca, 3,142.  Population dynamics by years:

Sport.

FC Dinamo Bender is the city's professional football club, formerly playing in the top Moldovan football league, the Divizia Naţională, before being relegated.

International relations.

Twin towns – Sister cities.

Bender is twinned with:

Bender (; or Tighina (Romanian) "de facto" official name Bendery (, ); also known by other alternative names) is a city within the internationally recognized borders of Moldova under "de facto" control of the unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Transnistria) (PMR) since 1992. It is located on the western bank of the river Dniester in the Romanian historical region of Bessarabia.


Biography.

Early years.

Le Verrier was born at Saint-Lô, Manche, France, in a modest bourgeois family, being his parents, Louis-Baptiste Le Verrier and Marie-Jeanne-Josephine-Pauline de Baudre, and studied at École Polytechnique. He briefly studied chemistry under Gay-Lussac, writing papers on the combinations of phosphorus and hydrogen, and phosphorus and oxygen. He then switched to astronomy, particularly celestial mechanics, and accepted a job at the Paris Observatory. He spent most of his professional life there, and eventually became that institution's Director, from 1854 to 1870 and again from 1873 to 1877.  In 1846, Le Verrier became a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and in 1855, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Le Verrier's name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.

Career.

Early work.

Le Verrier's first work in astronomy was presented to the "Académie des Sciences" in September 1839, entitled "Sur les variations séculaires des orbites des planètes" ("On the Secular Variations of the Orbits of the Planets"). This work addressed the then most-important question in astronomy: the stability of the Solar System, first investigated by Laplace. He was able to derive some important limits on the motions of the system, but due to the inaccurately-known masses of the planets, his results were tentative.  From 1844 to 1847, Le Verrier published a series of works on periodic comets, in particular those of Lexell, Faye and DeVico. He was able to show some interesting interactions with the planet Jupiter, proving that certain comets were actually the reappearance of previously-known comets flung into different orbits.

Discovery of Neptune.

Le Verrier's most famous achievement is his prediction of the existence of the then unknown planet Neptune, using only mathematics and astronomical observations of the known planet Uranus. Encouraged by physicist Arago, Director of the Paris Observatory, Le Verrier was intensely engaged for months in complex calculations to explain small but systematic discrepancies between Uranus's observed orbit and the one predicted from the laws of gravity of Newton. At the same time, but unknown to Le Verrier, similar calculations were made by John Couch Adams in England. Le Verrier announced his final predicted position for Uranus's unseen perturbing planet publicly to the French Academy on 31 August 1846, two days before Adams's final solution was privately mailed to the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Le Verrier transmitted his own prediction by 18 September in a letter to Johann Galle of the Berlin Observatory. The letter arrived five days later, and the planet was found with the Berlin Fraunhofer refractor that same evening, 23 September 1846, by Galle and Heinrich d'Arrest within 1° of the predicted location near the boundary between Capricorn and Aquarius.  There was, and to an extent still is, controversy over the apportionment of credit for the discovery. There is no ambiguity to the discovery claims of Le Verrier, Galle, and d'Arrest. Adams's work was begun earlier than Le Verrier's but was finished later and was unrelated to the actual discovery. Not even the briefest account of Adams's predicted orbital elements was published until more than a month after Berlin's visual confirmation. Adams made full public acknowledgement of Le Verrier's priority and credit (not forgetting to mention the role of Galle) when he gave his paper to the Royal Astronomical Society in November 1846:

Tables of the planets.

Early in the 19th century, the methods of predicting the motions of the planets were somewhat scattered, having been developed over decades by many different researchers. In 1847, Le Verrier took on the task to "... embrace in a single work the entire planetary system, put everything in harmony if possible, otherwise, declare with certainty that there are as yet unknown causes of perturbations...", a work which would occupy him for the rest of his life.  Le Verrier began by re-evaluating, to the 7th order, the technique of calculating the planetary perturbations known as the perturbing function. This derivation, which resulted in 469 mathematical terms, was complete by 1849. He next collected observations of the positions of the planets as far back as 1750. Examining these and correcting for inconsistencies with the most recent data occupied him until 1852.  Le Verrier published, in the "Annales de l'Observatoire de Paris", tables of the motions of all of the known planets, releasing them as he completed them, starting in 1858. The tables formed the fundamental ephemeris of the "Connaissance des Temps", the astronomical almanac of the "Bureau des Longitudes", until about 1912. About that time, Le Verrier's work on the outer planets was revised and expanded by Gaillot.

Precession of Mercury.

Le Verrier began studying the motion of Mercury as early as 1843, with a report entitled "Détermination nouvelle de l ’orbite de Mercure et de ses perturbations" ("A New Determination of the Orbit of Mercury and its Perturbations"). In 1859, Le Verrier was the first to report that the slow precession of Mercury’s orbit around the Sun could not be completely explained by Newtonian mechanics and perturbations by the known planets. He suggested, among possible explanations, that another planet (or perhaps, instead, a series of smaller 'corpuscules') might exist in an orbit even farther to the Sun than that of Mercury, to account for this perturbation. (Other explanations considered included a slight oblateness of the Sun.) The success of the search for Neptune based on its perturbations of the orbit of Uranus led astronomers to place some faith in this possible explanation, and the hypothetical planet was even named Vulcan. However, no such planet was ever found, and the anomalous precession was eventually explained by general relativity theory.

Later life.

Le Verrier's methods of management were disliked by the staff of the "Observatoire", and the disputes became so great that he was driven out in 1870. He was succeeded by Delaunay, but was reinstated in 1873 after Delaunay accidentally drowned. Le Verrier held the position until his death in 1877.  Le Verrier married Lucille Clotilde Choquet in 1837 and had 3 children. He died in Paris, France and was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery. A large stone celestial globe sits over his grave. He will be remembered by the phrase attributed to Arago: "the man who discovered a planet with the point of his pen."

Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier FRS (FOR) HFRSE (; 11 March 1811 – 23 September 1877) was a French astronomer and mathematician who specialized in celestial mechanics and is best known for predicting the existence and position of Neptune using only mathematics. The calculations were made to explain discrepancies with Uranus's orbit and the laws of Kepler and Newton. Le Verrier sent the coordinates to Johann Gottfried Galle in Berlin, asking him to verify. Galle found Neptune in the same night he received Le Verrier's letter, within 1° of the predicted position. The discovery of Neptune is widely regarded as a dramatic validation of celestial mechanics, and is one of the most remarkable moments of 19th-century science.