Early life and career.

Born in Elverum, Norway, Dæhlie later moved to Nannestad, where he settled down. Dæhlie attributes much of his success in sports to his upbringing where he was active in hunting, fishing, hiking, kayaking, football and, of course, skiing from a very early age. For much of his childhood Dæhlie wanted to be a football player, but after being prompted by a coach, he tried Nordic skiing. Dæhlie did not have immediate success as a junior racer, but he consistently improved and eventually qualified for the FIS World Cup competitions.

Athletic career.

Dæhlie was first on the Norwegian skiing team for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada. However, he did not participate in any races and was there to learn from more senior skiers. He later claimed these Olympics were the turning point for Norwegian skiing before their following period of success. He made his debut in the world cup in January 1989, finishing 11th on 15 km freestyle in Kavgolovo. In December the same year, he won his first world cup race. He finished first on the 15 km freestyle, the first world cup race of the season.  In the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1991 in Val di Fiemme, Dæhlie won his first World Championship gold medal. He beat skiing legend Gunde Svan on the 15 km freestyle. The medal was unexpected, since Dæhlie was young and still unknown. It was Norway's first individual gold medal in the World Championships since Oddvar Brå won gold in the same race in Oslo in 1982. Dæhlie also skied the last leg on the winning 4 × 10 km relay team.  In 1992, Dæhlie's period of dominance started. He won the world cup overall for the first time, a feat he would accomplish five more times in the next seven years. In Albertville Dæhlie won his first Olympic medals. He won gold in 10/15 km freestyle pursuit, 50 km freestyle and was on the winning team for the 4 × 10 km relay. He won a silver in 30 km classical style. Dæhlie also finished fourth on the 10 km freestyle, where his teammate Vegard Ulvang won the gold. Dæhlie completed the fourth leg of the relay, and crossed the finishing line backwards, having won by a margin of over one and a half minutes. Dæhlie and Ulvang completed a clean sweep of the cross-country skiing gold medals, each winning three golds and a silver. Dæhlie was awarded Fearnley's Olympic Prize for his performance, a prize given to the best performing Norwegian athlete in the Olympics.  In the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, Dæhlie won gold in the 10 km classical style and the 15 km freestyle pursuit. He won silver in the 30 km freestyle, where he was beaten by Thomas Alsgaard. The 4 × 10 km relay was a very tight race between Norway and Italy. The Italians won the gold after Silvio Fauner beat Dæhlie on the sprint on the last leg. In later years, Thomas Alsgaard took over the fourth leg on the Norwegian relay team with Dæhlie skiing the third leg, since Alsgaard was the better sprinter.  The 1997 Skiing World Championships were Dæhlie's most successful World Championships. In front of the home crowd in Trondheim he won a medal in every race, taking gold in the 10 km classical race, the 10+15 km combined pursuit and the 4 × 10 km relay. In addition he won a silver in the 30 km freestyle and bronze in the 50 km classical. Dæhlie said the championships were like "Lillehammer all over again" and that "For me, it's very special to compete in Norway".  Dæhlie won three golds and one silver in his last Olympics in Nagano. He won the 10 km classical style, the 50 km freestyle and the 4 × 10 km skiing relay. In the 15 km freestyle pursuit, he got a silver medal having been beaten by Thomas Alsgaard on the sprint. Dæhlie won the 50 km freestyle ahead of Niklas Jonsson by only eight seconds. Both skiers collapsed on the finishing line, having given everything in pursuit of victory. Dæhlie described the race as his hardest race ever. Dæhlie also formed a lasting friendship with Phillip Boit, the Kenyan skier. Dæhlie waited for Boit on the finish line for 20 minutes following the 10 km race, saying Boit deserved encouragement. Philip went on to name one of his children Dæhlie Boit.  Dæhlie was planning to compete in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, but he was prevented from participating by a career-ending roller skiing accident in August 1999. The resulting back injury prevented Dæhlie from adding more medals to his collection. He retired from the sport in March 2001, having tried extensive rehabilitation and surgery to come back. His decision to retire shocked the nation of Norway, where Dæhlie was idolized for his great winning record.  Dæhlie's eight Olympic titles are a record for the Winter Olympics, as are his total of 12 Olympic medals (he also won four silver medals) which he amassed in three Olympics (Albertville, Lillehammer and Nagano). In addition to his achievements at the Olympics he had great success in the World Championships where he won 17 medals of which nine were gold medals. He was particularly successful in the Trondheim 1997 World Championships, where he earned medals in all five events. Despite his unanticipated early exit from the sport, Dæhlie is considered by many to be one of the greatest Winter Olympic athletes of all time. In his illustrious career, Dæhlie never won a race at the Holmenkollen ski festival, but he was still awarded the Holmenkollen medal in 1997 (shared with Bjarte Engen Vik and Stefania Belmondo).  He also supports non-profit organisations that work for causes such as multiple sclerosis. In 2009 Dæhlie raced in the American Birkebeiner as a fundraiser for multiple sclerosis. Dæhlie competed in the classic race, which is 54 km long, finishing second in a photo finish.  In 2011, Dæhlie won the downhill event in the Kicksled World Championships in Hurdal. Also in 2011, Dæhlie announced a comeback, stating his intention to participate in long distance races like Marcialonga and Vasaloppet  Dæhlie also participated in long-distance running in his youth, representing Ullensaker/Kisa IL. He participated in the Nordic junior match versus Denmark/Iceland, Finland and Sweden in 1987.

Cross-country skiing results.

All results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).  Note: Until the 1999 World Championships and the 1994 Olympics, World Championship and Olympic races were included in the World Cup scoring system.

Bjørn Erlend Dæhlie (born 19 June 1967) is a Norwegian businessman and retired cross-country skier. In the years from 1992 to 1999, Dæhlie won the Nordic World Cup six times, finishing second in 1994 and 1998. Dæhlie won a total of 29 medals in the Olympics and World Championships in the period between 1991 and 1999, making Dæhlie the most successful male cross-country skier in history.


Life.

He was born in Dresden, the son of the engraver Karl August Richter, from whom he received his training. The interest of his uneventful life centres within the circle of his art. As a painter Richter aimed at a thorough blending of the figure element with the landscape and may be judged by the following examples: "Harvest Procession in the Campagna" (1833) and three others in the Leipzig Museum: "Ferry at the Schreckenstein" (1836) and "Bridal Procession in Springtime" (1847), in the Dresden Gallery; "View of the Riesengebirge" (1839), in the National Gallery, Berlin. One of his most notable protégés was Hermann Lungkwitz.  Richter visited Italy from 1823–1826, and his "Thunderstorm in the Sabine Mountains" at the Staedel Museum in Frankfurt is one of the rare Italian subjects from his brush.  From 1828 he worked as designer for the Meissen factory, living in a house on Schlossbrucke, close to the castle and cathedral, from 1828 to 1836.  In 1841 he became professor and head of the landscape "atelier" at the Dresden Academy, (now Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden). The Dresden Gallery owns one of his best and most characteristic paintings: "Bridal Procession in a Spring Landscape". An eye disease put a stop to the practice of his art in 1874; he was pensioned in 1877, and died at Loschwitz, near Dresden.

Main Works.

Among his 240 etchings are about 140 views in Saxony, others of Salzburg, Rome, and the Campagna. His individuality is most completely revealed in his 3000 or more drawings. Of special charm are his illustrations for "The Vicar of Wakefield" (1841), for Musäus' "Volksmärchen" (1842) and for numerous other fairy tales, for the "Goethe Album" (1855), for Schiller's "Glocke" (1857), and those cyclical publications which reveal the most brilliant side of the artist's inexhaustible fancy, such as "Beschauliches und Erbauliches" (1851); "Kinderleben" (1852); "Fürs Haus" (1858–1861); "Der gute Hirt" (1860); "Unser täglich Brot" (1866); "Bilder und Vignetten" (1874).

Adrian Ludwig Richter (September 28, 1803June 19, 1884), a 19th-century German painter and etcher, who was strongly influenced by Erhard and Chodowiecki.


Key points.

The Outer Space Treaty represents the basic legal framework of international space law. Among its principles, it bars states party to the treaty from placing weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise stationing them in outer space. It exclusively limits the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for testing weapons of any kind, conducting military maneuvers, or establishing military bases, installations, and fortifications (Article IV). However, the treaty does not prohibit the placement of conventional weapons in orbit and thus some highly destructive attack strategies such as kinetic bombardment are still potentially allowable. The treaty also states that the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries and that space shall be free for exploration and use by all the states.  The treaty explicitly forbids any government to claim a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet. Article II of the treaty states that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means." However, the state that launches a space object retains jurisdiction and control over that object. The state is also liable for damages caused by its space object.  Being mostly an arms-control treaty for a peaceful outer space use, it offers insufficient and ambiguous regulations to newer space activities such as lunar and asteroid mining. It therefore remains under contention whether the extraction of resources falls within the prohibitive language of appropriation or whether the use encompasses the commercial use and exploitation. Seeking clearer guidelines, private companies in the US prompted the US government and legalized space mining in 2015 by introducing the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015. Similar national legislations legalizing extraterrestrial appropriation of resources are now being replicated by other nations, including Luxembourg, Japan, China, India and Russia. This has created a controversy on legal claims for mining for profit.

Responsibility for activities in space.

Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty deals with international responsibility, stating that "the activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty" and that States Parties shall bear international responsibility for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities.  As a result of discussions arising from Project West Ford in 1963, a consultation clause was included in Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty: "A State Party to the Treaty which has reason to believe that an activity or experiment planned by another State Party in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, would cause potentially harmful interference with activities in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, may request consultation concerning the activity or experiment."  The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) coordinates these treaties and other questions of space jurisdiction.

List of parties.

The Outer Space Treaty was opened for signature in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union on 27 January 1967, and entered into force on 10 October 1967. As of June 2019, 109 countries are parties to the treaty, while another 23 have signed the treaty but have not completed ratification.  Multiple dates indicate the different days in which states submitted their signature or deposition, which varied by location. This location is noted by: (L) for London, (M) for Moscow, and (W) for Washington, DC. Also indicated is whether the state became a party by way of signing the treaty and subsequent ratification, by accession to the treaty after it had closed for signature, or by succession of states after separation from some other party to the treaty.

Partially recognized state abiding by treaty.

The Republic of China (Taiwan), which is currently recognized by, ratified the treaty prior to the United Nations General Assembly's vote to transfer China's seat to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1971. When the PRC subsequently ratified the treaty, they described the Republic of China's (ROC) ratification as "illegal". The ROC has committed itself to continue to adhere to the requirements of the treaty, and the United States has declared that it still considers the ROC to be "bound by its obligations".

States that have signed but not ratified.

Twenty-three states have signed but not ratified the treaty.

References.

Shakouri Hassanabadi, Babak (30 July 2018). "Space Force and international space law". The Space Review. Retrieved 22 May 2019.

The Outer Space Treaty, formally the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, is a treaty that forms the basis of international space law. The treaty was opened for signature in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union on 27 January 1967, and entered into force on 10 October 1967. As of June 2019, 109 countries are parties to the treaty, while another 23 have signed the treaty but have not completed ratification. In addition, Taiwan, which is currently recognized by, ratified the treaty prior to the United Nations General Assembly's vote to transfer China's seat to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1971.


Description and ecology.

Stoneflies have a generalized anatomy, with few specialized features compared to other insects. They have simple mouthparts with chewing mandibles, long, multiple-segmented antennae, large compound eyes, and two or three ocelli. The legs are robust, with each ending in two claws. The abdomen is relatively soft, and may include remnants of the nymphal gills even in the adult. Both nymphs and adults have long, paired cerci projecting from the tip of their abdomens.  The name "Plecoptera" literally means "braided-wings", from the Ancient Greek "plekein" (πλέκειν, "to braid") and "pteryx" (πτέρυξ, "wing"). This refers to the complex venation of their two pairs of wings, which are membranous and fold flat over their backs. Stoneflies are generally not strong fliers, and some species are entirely wingless.  A few wingless species, such as the Lake Tahoe benthic stonefly (""Capnia" lacustra") or "Baikaloperla", are the only known insects, perhaps with the exception of "Halobates", that are exclusively aquatic from birth to death. Some true water bugs (Nepomorpha) may also be fully aquatic for their entire lives, but can leave the water to travel.  The nymphs (technically, "naiads") are aquatic and live in the benthic zone of well-oxygenated lakes and streams. A few species found in New Zealand and nearby islands have terrestrial nymphs, but even these inhabit only very moist environments. The nymphs physically resemble wingless adults, but often have external gills, which may be present on almost any part of the body. Nymphs can acquire oxygen via diffusing through the exoskeleton, or through gills located on behind the head, on the thorax, or around the anus. Due to their nymph's requirement for well oxygenated water, the species is very sensitive to water pollution. This makes them important indicators for water quality. Most species are herbivorous as nymphs, feeding on submerged leaves and benthic algae, but many are hunters of other aquatic arthropods.

Life cycle.

The female can lay up to one thousand eggs. It will fly over the water and drop the eggs in the water. It also may hang on a rock or branch. Eggs are covered in a sticky coating which allows them to adhere to rocks without being swept away by swift currents. The eggs typically take two to three weeks to hatch, but some species undergo diapause, with the eggs remaining dormant throughout a dry season, and hatching only when conditions are suitable.  The insects remain in the nymphal form for one to four years, depending on species, and undergo from 12 to 36 molts before emerging and becoming terrestrial as adults. Before becoming adults, nymphs will leave the water, attach to a fixed surface and molt one last time.  The adults generally only survive for a few weeks, and emerge only during specific times of the year when resources are optimal. Some do not feed at all, but those that do are herbivorous. Adults are not strong fliers and generally stay near the stream or lake they hatched from.

Systematics.

Traditionally, the stoneflies were divided into two suborders, the "Antarctoperlaria" (or "Archiperlaria") and the Arctoperlaria. However, the former simply consists of the two most basal superfamilies of stoneflies, which do not seem to be each other's closest relatives. Thus, the "Antarctoperlaria" are not considered a natural group (despite some claims to the contrary).  The Arctoperlaria, though, have been divided into two infraorders, the Euholognatha (or Filipalpia) and the Systellognatha (also called Setipalpia or Subulipalpia). This corresponds to the phylogeny with one exception: the Scopuridae must be considered a basal family in the Arctoperlaria, not assignable to any of the infraorders. Alternatively, the Scopuridae were placed in an unranked clade "Holognatha" together with the Euholognatha (meaning roughly "advanced Holognatha"), but the Scopuridae do not appear significantly closer to the Euholognatha than to the Systellognatha.  In addition, not adopting the clades Antarctoperlaria and Holognatha allows for a systematic layout of the Plecoptera that adequately reproduces phylogeny, while retaining the traditional ranked taxa. Basal lineages ("Antarctoperlaria")  Suborder Arctoperlaria

The Plecoptera are an order of insects, commonly known as stoneflies. Some 3,500 species are described worldwide, with new species still being discovered. Stoneflies are found worldwide, except Antarctica. Stoneflies are believed to be one of the most primitive groups of Neoptera, with close relatives identified from the Carboniferous and Lower Permian geological periods, while true stoneflies are known from fossils only a bit younger. Their modern diversity, however, apparently is of Mesozoic origin.


Background.

The scale was introduced in 1971 by Ted Fujita of the University of Chicago, in collaboration with Allen Pearson, head of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center/NSSFC (currently the Storm Prediction Center/SPC). The scale was updated in 1973, taking into account path length and width. In the United States, starting in 1973, tornadoes were rated soon after occurrence. The Fujita scale was applied retroactively to tornadoes reported between 1950 and 1972 in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Tornado Database. Fujita rated tornadoes from 1916–1992 and Tom Grazulis of The Tornado Project retroactively rated all known significant tornadoes (F2–F5 or causing a fatality) in the U.S. back to 1880. The Fujita scale was adopted in most areas outside of Great Britain.  On February 1, 2007, the Fujita scale was decommissioned, and the Enhanced Fujita Scale was introduced in the United States. The new scale more accurately matches wind speeds to the severity of damage caused by the tornado.  Though each damage level is associated with a wind speed, the Fujita scale is effectively a damage scale, and the wind speeds associated with the damage listed aren't rigorously verified. The Enhanced Fujita Scale was formulated due to research which suggested that the wind speeds required to inflict damage by intense tornadoes on the Fujita scale are greatly overestimated. A process of expert elicitation with top engineers and meteorologists resulted in the EF scale wind speeds, however, these are biased to United States construction practices. The EF scale also improved damage parameter descriptions.

Derivation.

The original scale as derived by Fujita was a theoretical 13-level scale (F0–F12) designed to smoothly connect the Beaufort scale and the Mach number scale. F1 corresponds to the twelfth level of the Beaufort scale, and F12 corresponds to Mach number 1.0. F0 was placed at a position specifying no damage (approximately the eighth level of the Beaufort scale), in analogy to how the Beaufort's zeroth level specifies little to no wind. From these wind speed numbers, qualitative descriptions of damage were made for each category of the Fujita scale, and then these descriptions were used to classify tornadoes. The diagram on the right illustrates the relationship between the Beaufort, Fujita, and Mach number scales.  At the time Fujita derived the scale, little information was available on damage caused by wind, so the original scale presented little more than educated guesses at wind speed ranges for specific tiers of damage. Fujita intended that only F0–F5 be used in practice, as this covered all possible levels of damage to frame homes as well as the expected estimated bounds of wind speeds. He did, however, add a description for F6, which he phrased as "inconceivable tornado", to allow for wind speeds exceeding F5 and for possible future advancements in damage analysis which might show it.  Furthermore, the original wind speed numbers have since been found to be higher than the actual wind speeds required to incur the damage described at each category. The error manifests itself to an increasing degree as the category increases, especially in the range of F3 through F5. NOAA notes that "... precise wind speed numbers are actually guesses and have never been scientifically verified. Different wind speeds may cause similar-looking damage from place to place—even from building to building. Without a thorough engineering analysis of tornado damage in any event, the actual wind speeds needed to cause that damage are unknown." Since then, the Enhanced Fujita Scale has been created using better wind estimates by engineers and meteorologists.

Parameters.

The six categories are listed here, in order of increasing intensity.

Rating classifications.

For purposes such as tornado climatology studies, Fujita scale ratings may be grouped into classes.

Decommission in the US.

The Fujita scale, introduced in 1971 as a means to differentiate tornado intensity and path area, assigned wind speeds to damage that were, at best, educated guesses. Fujita and others recognized this immediately and intensive engineering analysis was conducted through the rest of the 1970s. This research, as well as subsequent research, showed that tornado wind speeds required to inflict the described damage were actually much lower than the F-scale indicated, particularly for the upper categories. Also, although the scale gave general descriptions for the type of damage a tornado could cause, it gave little leeway for strength of construction and other factors that might cause a building to receive higher damage at lower wind speeds. Fujita tried to address these problems somewhat in 1992 with the Modified Fujita Scale, but by then he was semi-retired and the National Weather Service was not in a position for the undertaking of updating to an entirely new scale, so it went largely unenacted.  In the United States, on February 1, 2007, the Fujita scale was decommissioned in favor of what these scientists believe is a more accurate Enhanced Fujita Scale, which replaces it. The meteorologists and engineers who designed the EF Scale believe it an improvement on the F-scale on many counts—it accounts for different degrees of damage that occur with different types of structures, both man-made and natural. The expanded and refined damage indicators and degrees of damage standardize what was somewhat ambiguous. It also is thought to provide a much better estimate for wind speeds and sets no upper limit on the wind speeds for the strongest level, EF5. Several countries continue to use the original Fujita Scale. Environment Canada has begun using the Enhanced Fujita scale in Canada as of April 18, 2013.

The Fujita scale (F-Scale; ), or Fujita–Pearson scale (FPP scale), is a scale for rating tornado intensity, based primarily on the damage tornadoes inflict on human-built structures and vegetation. The official Fujita scale category is determined by meteorologists and engineers after a ground or aerial damage survey, or both; and depending on the circumstances, ground-swirl patterns (cycloidal marks), weather radar data, witness testimonies, media reports and damage imagery, as well as photogrammetry or videogrammetry if motion picture recording is available. The Fujita scale was replaced with the Enhanced Fujita scale (EF-Scale) in the United States in February 2007. In April 2013, Canada adopted the EF-Scale over the Fujita scale along with 31 "Specific Damage Indicators" used by Environment Canada (EC) in their ratings.


History.

Ancient Samarra.

The remains of prehistoric Samarra were first excavated between 1911 and 1914 by the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld. Samarra became the type site for the Samarra culture. Since 1946, the notebooks, letters, unpublished excavation reports and photographs have been in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.  The civilization flourished alongside the Ubaid period, as one of the first town states in the Near East. It lasted from 5,500 BCE and eventually collapsed in 3,900 BCE.  A city of Sur-marrati (refounded by Sennacherib in 690 BC according to a stele in the Walters Art Museum) is insecurely identified with a fortified Assyrian site of Assyrian at al-Huwaysh on the Tigris opposite modern Samarra. The State Archives of Assyria Online identifies "Surimarrat" as the modern site of Samarra.  Ancient place names for Samarra noted by the Samarra Archaeological Survey are Greek "Souma" (Ptolemy V.19, Zosimus III, 30), Latin "Sumere", a fort mentioned during the retreat of the army of Julian in 363 AD (Ammianus Marcellinus XXV, 6, 4), and Syriac "Sumra" (Hoffmann, "Auszüge", 188; Michael the Syrian, III, 88), described as a village.  The possibility of a larger population was offered by the opening of the Qatul al-Kisrawi, the northern extension of the Nahrawan Canal which drew water from the Tigris in the region of Samarra, attributed by Yaqut al-Hamawi ("Muʿjam", see under "Qatul") to Khosrau I (531–578). To celebrate the completion of this project, a commemorative tower (modern Burj al-Qa'im) was built at the southern inlet south of Samarra, and a palace with a "paradise" or walled hunting park was constructed at the northern inlet (modern Nahr ar-Rasasi) near ad-Dawr. A supplementary canal, the Qatul Abi al-Jund, excavated by the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid, was commemorated by a planned city laid out in the form of a regular octagon (modern Husn al-Qadisiyya), called al-Mubarak and abandoned unfinished in 796.

Abbasid capital.

In 836 CE, the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mu'tasim founded a new capital at the banks of the Tigris. Here he built extensive palace complexes surrounded by garrison settlements for his guards, mostly drawn from Central Asia and Iran (most famously the Turks, as well as the Khurasani "Ishtakhaniyya", "Faraghina" and "Ushrusaniyya" regiments) or North Africa (like the "Maghariba"). Although quite often called Mamluk slave soldiers, their status was quite elevated; some of their commanders bore Sogdian titles of nobility.  The city was further developed under Caliph al-Mutawakkil, who sponsored the construction of lavish palace complexes, such as al-Mutawakkiliyya, and the Great Mosque of Samarra with its famous spiral minaret or Malwiya, built in 847. For his son al-Mu'tazz he built the large palace Bulkuwara.  Samarra remained the residence of the caliph until 892, when al-Mu'tadid eventually returned to Baghdad. The city declined but maintained a mint until the early 10th century.  The Nestorian patriarch Sargis (860–72) moved the patriarchal seat of the Church of the East from Baghdad to Samarra, and one or two of his immediate successors may also have sat in Samarra so as to be close to the seat of power.  During the long decline of the Abbasid empire, 940 Samarra was largely abandoned starting in AD 940. Its population returned to Baghdad and the city rapidly declined. Its field of ruins is the only world metropolis of late antiquity which is available for serious archaeology.

Religious significance.

The city is also home to al-Askari Shrine, containing the mausolea of the Imams Ali al-Hadi and Hasan al-Askari, the tenth and eleventh Shiʿi Imams, respectively, as well as the place from where Muhammad al-Mahdi, known as the "Hidden Imam", reportedly went into The Occultation in the belief of the Twelver or Shias. This has made it an important pilgrimage centre for the Imami Shias. In addition, Hakimah and Narjis, female relatives of the Prophet Muhammad and the Imams, held in high esteem by Muslims, are buried there, making this mosque one of the most significant sites of worship.

Modern era.

In the eighteenth century, one of the most violent battles of the 1730–1735 Ottoman–Persian War, the Battle of Samarra, took place, where over 50,000 Turks and Persians became casualties. The engagement decided the fate of Ottoman Iraq and kept it under Istanbul's suzerainty until the First World War.  During the 20th century, Samarra gained new importance when a permanent lake, Lake Tharthar, was created through the construction of the Samarra Barrage, which was built in order to prevent the frequent flooding of Baghdad. Many local people were displaced by the dam, resulting in an increase in Samarra's population.  Samarra is a key city in Saladin Governorate, a major part of the so-called Sunni Triangle where insurgents were active during the Iraq War.  Though Samarra is famous for its Shi'i holy sites, including the tombs of several Shi'i Imams, the town was traditionally and until very recently, dominated by Sunni Arabs. Tensions arose between Sunnis and the Shi'a during the Iraq War. On February 22, 2006, the golden dome of the al-Askari Mosque was bombed, setting off a period of rioting and reprisal attacks across the country which claimed hundreds of lives. No organization claimed responsibility for the bombing. On June 13, 2007, insurgents attacked the mosque again and destroyed the two minarets that flanked the dome's ruins. On July 12, 2007, the clock tower was blown up. No fatalities were reported. Shiʿi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for peaceful demonstrations and three days of mourning. He stated that he believed no Sunni Arab could have been behind the attack, though according to the "New York Times" the attackers were likely Sunnis linked to Al-Qaeda. The mosque compound and minarets had been closed since the 2006 bombing. An indefinite curfew was placed on the city by the Iraqi police.  Ever since the end of Iraqi civil war in 2007, the Shia population of the holy city has increased exponentially. However, violence has continued, with bombings taking place in 2011 and 2013. In June 2014, the city was attacked by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as part of the Northern Iraq offensive. ISIL forces captured the municipality building and university, but were later repulsed.

Geography.

Climate.

Samarra has a hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification "BWh"). Most rain falls in the winter. The average annual temperature in Samarra is. About of precipitation falls annually.

In popular culture.

The metaphor of "Having an appointment in Samarra", signifying death, is a literary reference to an ancient Babylonian myth recorded in the Babylonian Talmud and transcribed by W. Somerset Maugham, in which Death narrates a man's futile attempt to escape him by fleeing from Baghdad to Samarra. The story "The Appointment in Samarra" subsequently formed the germ of a novel of the same name by John O'Hara. The story is told in "The Six Thatchers", a 2017 episode of "Sherlock".

Samarra (, "") is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Saladin Governorate, north of Baghdad. In 2003 the city had an estimated population of 348,700. During the sectarian violence in Iraq (2006–07), Samarra was in the "Sunni Triangle" of violence.


History.

According to romantic medieval legend, the Kinsky story began in Bohemia over 1,000 years ago, when a king's beautiful daughter went out hunting in the forest and was attacked by a pack of wolves. Her attendants all fled the terrible scene except for one young man, who saved the princess by killing some wolves and driving the rest away. In gratitude, the girl's father ennobled the young man, granting him a coat of arms featuring three wolves' teeth as an emblem of his bravery.

Rise.

The first factual mention of an ancestor of this clan dates back to 1237, during the reign of the Přemyslid king Wenceslaus I of Bohemia. Over the next three centuries they were only minor nobles with estates in northwestern Bohemia, around the village of Vchynice () near Litoměřice. Holding of Vchynice manor was confirmed by the Habsburg emperor Rudolf II in 1596 and in 1611 one of the family's members, Radslav Vchynský of Vchynice the Elder, ennobled as lord (), became a member of the Diet of Bohemia ("zemský sněm").  The rise of the family to prominence began in the turbulent era of religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants which finally led to the cataclysm for Bohemia in the Thirty Years' War: Radslav's nephew, the royal official Vilém Kinský, took part in the Protestant revolt against Emperor Ferdinand II, which culminated in the 1618 Defenestration of Prague. Vilém was among the nobles who, without success, offered the Bohemian crown to the Wettin elector John George I of Saxony. After the loss of Czech independence in 1620 (Battle of White Mountain), when the majority of local Protestant aristocracy was banished and their possessions expropriated in favour of nobility faithful to the Catholic House of Habsburg, he retained his possessions and was even elevated to the rank of a Count ("Graf") in 1628. Through his marriage with Alžběta (Elisabeth) Trčka of Lípa, he was a brother-in-law of the Imperial generalissimo Albrecht von Wallenstein, with whom he was assassinated at Cheb in 1634.  A branch of the family was elevated to Princes of the Holy Roman Empire by Empress Maria Theresa in 1747. Many members of the family served in high diplomatic or military positions in the Habsburg Monarchy and subsequently in the Austrian Empire.

Confiscation and restoration.

After World War II, estates of the princely (Choceň) branch of the family were confiscated under the Beneš decrees, as the late Prince Ulrich (1893–1938) was reproached for his declared German nationality and active collaboration with the Sudeten German Party. Estates of the other branches, Kostelec and Chlumec, which had been confiscated by the Nazis during the German occupation, were returned after 1945 but confiscated again, this time by the ruling Communist Party in 1948. After the Velvet Revolution and the fall of Communism, several possessions – for example, Karlova Koruna Chateau and Kost Castle – were returned to the family.  From 2003, the senior member of the princely branch, Prince Ulrich's son Franz Ulrich, sued the Czech Republic for return of the properties confiscated in 1945 under the Beneš decrees only because, he maintained, the confiscation implicitly labeled his family as historical traitors against Czechoslovakia and as willful collaborators during the Nazi occupation. The Kinsky family has denied such charges, arguing that Prince Franz Ulrich was just two years old at the time of his father's death and that he and his mother, Princess Kinsky ("née" Baroness Mathilde von dem Bussche-Haddenhausen — whose family reputedly plotted against Hitler), had left the occupied country and went into exile in Argentina shortly afterwards.  According to a 2005 judgement by the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, at least the expropriations enacted before the Communist coup d'état (1948) are valid. Prince Franz Ulrich died in 2009 in Buenos Aires after a brief illness and was survived by his widow, "née" Countess Lena Hutten-Czapska. He left as heir to his title, properties and pending claims against the Czech state, his son Karl ("Charlie") and three grandchildren.

Residences.

Like many of the aristocratic families of the Habsburg monarchy, the Kinskys were great landowners and patrons of the arts. They employed (between 1713 and 1716) the celebrated architect Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt to build their residence Palais Kinsky in Vienna, which remained in the family's ownership until 1987. In addition to this home, from the 18th century the family also owned the vast baroque Kinsky Palace in Old Town Square, Prague. Another family home was Choceň Chateau, a medieval Bohemian fortress rebuilt in the neo-gothic style in the 19th century. All of these homes were filled with priceless treasures and artifacts. The family lost most of its property in 1945 by confiscation in Czechoslovakia, but after 1990, Karlova Koruna Chateau and Kost Castle were restituted to the family. The Kinskys also own Burg Heidenreichstein in Lower Austria, which they inherited.

Support of Beethoven.

As a patron of the arts, along with Archduke Rudolf and Prince Josef Lobkovic, Ferdinand, Prince Kinsky of Wchinitz and Tettau contributed 1.800 fl. to a yearly salary of 4.000 fl. (abbr. for florin, gulden, Austrian - Hungarian gold coin from 1754–1892) for Ludwig van Beethoven. Ferdinand arranged his share to be paid on as a pension until Beethoven died in March 1827.

Stud farms.

In 1723, Emperor Charles VI ordered the Kinsky family to develop their stud farms and breed horses of such quality as to provide superior mounts for the officers of the elite cavalry regiments of the empire. In 1776, the quality of the Kinsky horses was further improved by bloodstock from England.  In 1838, Count Oktavian Kinsky expanded still further the Kinsky studs, famous throughout Europe for their high equine quality, known as the Kinsky horse.

The House of Kinsky (formerly Vchynští, sg. "Vchynský" in Czech; later (in modern Czech) Kinští, sg. "Kinský"; ) is a prominent Czech noble family originating from the Kingdom of Bohemia. During the Thirty Years' War, the Kinsky family rose from minor nobles to comital (1628) and later princely status (1747) under the rule of the Habsburgs. The family, recorded in the "Almanach de Gotha", is considered to have been one of the most illustrious of Austria-Hungary.


Taxonomy.

"Felis aurata" was the scientific name used by Coenraad Jacob Temminck who described a reddish-brown coloured cat skin in 1827 that he had bought from a merchant in London. Temminck also described a grey coloured skin of a cat with chocolate brown spots that had lived in the menagerie in London. He named it "Felis celidogaster". "Felis neglecta" proposed by John Edward Gray in 1838 was a brownish grey cat skin from Sierra Leone. "Felis rutilus" proposed by George Robert Waterhouse in 1842 was a reddish cat skin from Sierra Leone. "Felis chrysothrix cottoni" proposed by Richard Lydekker in 1906 was a dark grey cat skin from the Ituri Rainforest. A black cat skin from eastern Congo was proposed as "Felis maka" in 1942.  In 1858, Nikolai Severtzov proposed the generic names "Profelis" with "F. celidogaster" as type species, and "Chrysailurus" with "F. neglecta" as type species. In 1917, Reginald Innes Pocock subordinated both the African golden cat and the Asian golden cat to "Profelis". This classification was followed by several subsequent authors.  Phylogenetic analysis of cat samples showed that the African golden cat is closely related with the caracal ("Caracal caracal"). These two species, together with the serval ("Leptailurus serval"), form the Caracal lineage, one of the eight lineages of Felidae. This lineage evolved nearly 8.5 million years ago. Because of this close relationship, the African golden cat has been placed into the genus "Caracal".  Two African golden cat subspecies are recognised as valid since 2017:

Phylogeny.

The following cladogram shows the phylogenetic relationships of the African golden cat:

Characteristics.

The African golden cat has a fur colour ranging from chestnut or reddish-brown, greyish brown to dark slaty. Some are spotted, with the spots ranging from faded tan to black in colour. In others the spotting pattern is limited to the belly and inner legs. Its undersides and areas around the eyes, cheeks, chin, and throat are lighter in colour to almost white. Its tail is darker on the top and either heavily banded, lightly banded or plain, ending in a black tip. Cats in the western parts of its range tend to have heavier spotting than those in the eastern region. Two color morphs, a red and a grey phase, were once thought to indicate separate species, rather than colour variations of the same species. Grey skins have hairs that are not pigmented in their middle zones, whereas hair of red skins is pigmented intensively red. Hair of melanistic skins is entirely black.  Skins of African golden cats can be identified by the presence of a distinctive whorled ridge of fur in front of the shoulders, where the hairs change direction. It is about twice the size of a domestic cat. Its rounded head is very small in relation to its body size. It is a heavily built cat, with stocky, long legs, a relatively short tail, and large paws. Body length usually varies within the range of. Tail length ranges from, and shoulder height is about. The cat weighs around, with males being larger than females.  Overall, the African golden cat resembles the caracal, but has shorter untufted ears, a longer tail, and a shorter, more rounded face. It has small, rounded ears. Its eye colour ranges from pale blue to brown.

Distribution and habitat.

The African golden cat inhabits tropical forests from sea level to. It prefers dense, moist forest with heavy undergrowth, and is often found close to rivers, but it may also be found in cloud forest, bamboo forests, and high moorland habitats. The cat is found from Senegal in the west to Kenya in the east, and ranges as far north as the Central African Republic and as far south as northern Angola.  In Guinea's National Park of Upper Niger, it was recorded during surveys conducted in 1996 to 1997.  In Uganda's Kibale National Park, an African golden cat was recorded in an old growth forest patch in 2008. In Gabon's Moukalaba-Doudou National Park, it was recorded in forested areas during surveys in 2012.

Ecology and behaviour.

Due to its extremely reclusive habits, little is known about the behaviour of African golden cats. They are solitary animals, and are normally crepuscular or nocturnal, although they have also been observed hunting during the day, depending on the availability of local prey.  African golden cats are able to climb, but hunt primarily on the ground. They mainly feed on tree hyrax, rodents, but also hunt birds, small monkeys, duikers, young of giant forest hog, and small antelope. They have also been known to take domestic poultry and livestock.

Reproduction.

Knowledge of the African golden cat's reproductive habits is based on captive individuals. The female gives birth to one or two kittens after a gestation period of around 75 days. The kittens weigh. Their eyes open within a week of birth, and they are weaned at 6–8 weeks. They grow and develop rapidly in comparison with other small cat species. One individual was reported to be scaling a 40-cm wall within 16 days of birth, reflecting a high degree of physical agility from an early age. Females reach sexual maturity at 11 months of age, and males at around 18 months. In captivity, they live up to 12 years. Their lifespan in the wild is unknown.

Threats.

The African golden cat is threatened by extensive deforestation of tropical rainforests, their conversion to oil palm plantations coupled with mining activities and road building, thus destroying its essential habitat. It is also threatened by bushmeat hunting, particularly in the Congo Basin.

Conservation.

The African golden cat is listed in CITES Appendix II. Hunting African golden cats is prohibited in Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. In Gabon, Liberia and Togo, hunting regulations are in place.

The African golden cat ("Caracal aurata") is a wild cat endemic to the rainforests of West and Central Africa. It is threatened due to deforestation and bushmeat hunting and listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. It is a close relative of both the caracal and the serval. Previously, it was placed in the genus "Profelis". Its body size ranges from with a long tail.


Early life.

Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, into an Italian family with roots in Cerreto Sannita, a small town northeast of Benevento, Di Meola grew up in Bergenfield, where he attended Bergenfield High School. He has been a resident of Old Tappan, New Jersey.  When he was eight years old, he was inspired by Elvis Presley and the Ventures to start playing guitar. His teacher directed him toward jazz standards. He cites as influences jazz guitarists George Benson and Kenny Burrell and bluegrass and country guitarists Clarence White and Doc Watson.

Career.

He attended Berklee College of Music in the early 1970s. At nineteen, he was hired by Chick Corea to replace Bill Connors in the pioneering jazz fusion band Return to Forever with Stanley Clarke and Lenny White. He recorded three albums with Return to Forever, helping the quartet earn its greatest commercial success as all three albums cracked the Top 40 on the U.S. "Billboard" pop albums chart. He could play so fast, that he was sometimes criticized for playing too many notes.  As Return to Forever was disbanding around 1976, Di Meola began recording solo albums on which he demonstrated mastery of jazz fusion, flamenco, and Mediterranean music. His album "Elegant Gypsy" (1977) received a gold certification. In 1980 he recorded the acoustic live album "Friday Night in San Francisco" with Paco de Lucía and John McLaughlin.  In the beginning of his career, as evidenced on his first solo album "Land of the Midnight Sun" (1976), Di Meola was noted for his technical mastery and extremely fast, complex guitar solos and compositions. But even on his early albums, he had begun to explore Mediterranean cultures and acoustic genres like flamenco. Notable examples are "Mediterranean Sundance" and "Lady of Rome, Sister of Brazil" from the "Elegant Gypsy" album (1977).  His early albums were influential among rock and jazz guitarists. Di Meola continued to explore Latin music within jazz fusion on "Casino" and "Splendido Hotel". He exhibited a more subtle touch on acoustic numbers "Fantasia Suite for Two Guitars" from the "Casino" album and on the best-selling live album with McLaughlin and de Lucia, "Friday Night in San Francisco". The latter album became one of the most popular live albums for acoustic guitar, selling more than two million copies worldwide.  With "Scenario", he explored the electronic side of jazz in a collaboration with Jan Hammer (keyboardist with Fusion pioneers "Mahavishnu Orchestra," on albums with Jeff Beck, and later, composed the "Miami Vice" theme). Beginning with this change, he further expanded his horizons with the acoustic album "Cielo e Terra". He began to incorporate the Synclavier guitar synthesizer on mid-1980s albums such as "Soaring Through a Dream". By the 1990s, Di Meola recorded albums closer to world music and modern Latin styles than jazz. A notable exception was the 1991 album "Kiss My Axe", which peaked at #2 on the US Contemporary Jazz Albums chart.  However, in 2006 he rediscovered his love of the electric guitar, and the DVD of his concert at the Leverkusen Jazz Festival 2006 is subtitled "Return to Electric Guitar". In 2018, Di Meola was awarded an honorary doctorate of music from his alma mater, Berklee College of Music.

Albert Laurence Di Meola (born July 22, 1954) is an American guitarist. Known for his works in jazz fusion and world music, he began his career as a guitarist of the group Return to Forever in 1974. Between the 1970s and 1980s, albums such as "Elegant Gypsy" and "Friday Night in San Francisco" earned him both critical and commercial success.


Composition.

The content of eucalyptol is 90% of eucalyptus oil, leading to its name. Wormwood, rosemary, common sage, "Cannabis sativa", and other aromatic plant foliage contain eucalyptol. Eucalyptol may be toxic if ingested.

Properties.

Eucalyptol has a fresh mint-like smell and a spicy, cooling taste. It is insoluble in water, but miscible with ether, ethanol, and chloroform. The boiling point is 176°C and the flash point is 49°C. Eucalyptol forms crystalline adducts with hydrohalic acids, "o"-cresol, resorcinol, and phosphoric acid. Formation of these adducts is useful for purification.

Uses.

Flavoring and fragrance.

Because of its pleasant, spicy aroma and taste, eucalyptol is used in flavorings, fragrances, and cosmetics. Cineole-based eucalyptus oil is used as a flavouring at low levels (0.002%) in various products, including baked goods, confectionery, meat products, and beverages. In a 1994 report released by five top cigarette companies, eucalyptol was listed as one of the 599 additives to cigarettes. It is claimed to be added to improve the flavor.  Eucalyptol is an ingredient in commercial mouthwashes, and has been used in traditional medicine as a cough suppressant.

Insecticide and repellent.

Eucalyptol is used as an insecticide and insect repellent.  In contrast, eucalyptol is one of many compounds that are attractive to males of various species of orchid bees, which gather the chemical to synthesize pheromones; it is commonly used as bait to attract and collect these bees for study. One such study with "Euglossa imperialis", a nonsocial orchid bee species, has shown that the presence of cineole (also eucalyptol) elevates territorial behavior and specifically attracts the male bees. It was even observed that these males would periodically leave their territories to forage for chemicals such as cineole, thought to be important for attracting and mating with females, to synthesize pheromones.

Toxicology.

In higher-than-normal doses, eucalyptol is hazardous via ingestion, skin contact, or inhalation. It can have acute health effects on behavior, the respiratory tract, and the nervous system. The acute oral is 2480 mg/kg (rat). It is classified as a reproductive toxin for females and a suspected reproductive toxin for males.

Pharmacodynamics.

It is known that eucalyptol has anti-inflammatory properties and researchers have suggested these, and other effects such as soothing sensations, may be mediated by the ion channel TRPM8. The same channel is also activated by menthol.

Compendial status.

N.B. Listed as "cineole" in some pharmacopoeias.

Eucalyptol is a natural organic compound that is a colorless liquid. It is a cyclic ether and a monoterpenoid. Eucalyptol is also known by a variety of synonyms: 1,8-cineol, 1,8-cineole, cajeputol, 1,8-epoxy-"p"-menthane, 1,8-oxido-"p"-menthane, eucalyptol, eucalyptole, 1,3,3-trimethyl-2-oxabicyclo[2.2.2]octane, cineol, and cineole.


Biography.

Pompidou was born in the commune of Montboudif, in the department of Cantal in central France. After his "khâgne" at Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he befriended future Senegalese poet and statesman Léopold Sédar Senghor, he attended the École Normale Supérieure, from which he graduated with a degree of "agrégation" in literature.  He first taught literature at the lycée Henri IV in Paris until hired in 1953 by Guy de Rothschild to work at Rothschild. In 1956, he was appointed the bank's general manager, a position he held until 1962. Later, he was hired by Charles de Gaulle to manage the Anne de Gaulle Foundation for Down syndrome (de Gaulle's daughter Anne had Down syndrome).

Prime Minister.

Jacques Chirac served as an aide to Prime Minister Pompidou and recalled:  He served as prime minister of France under de Gaulle after Michel Debré resigned, from 14 April 1962 to 10 July 1968, and to this day is the longest serving French prime minister under the Fifth Republic. His nomination was controversial because he was not a member of the National Assembly. In October 1962, he was defeated in a vote of no-confidence, but de Gaulle dissolved the National Assembly. The Gaullists won the legislative election and Pompidou was reappointed as Prime Minister. In 1964, he was faced with a miners' strike. He led the 1967 legislative campaign of the Union of Democrats for the Fifth Republic to a narrow victory. Pompidou was widely regarded as being responsible for the peaceful resolution of the student uprising of May 1968. His strategy was to break the coalition of students and workers by negotiating with the trade-unions and employers (Grenelle conference).  However, during the events of May 1968, disagreements arose between Pompidou and de Gaulle. Pompidou did not understand why the President did not inform him of his departure to Baden-Baden on May 29. Their relationship, until then very good, would be strained from then on. Pompidou led and won the 1968 legislative campaign, overseeing a tremendous victory of the Gaullist Party. He then resigned. Nevertheless, in part due to his actions during the May 1968 crisis, he appeared as the natural successor to de Gaulle. Pompidou announced his candidature for the Presidency in January 1969. Some weeks later, his wife's name was mentioned in the Markovic affair, thus appearing to confirm her husband's status as a cuckold. Pompidou was certain that de Gaulle's inner circle was responsible for this smear.  In social policy, Pompidou's tenure as prime minister witnessed the establishment of the National Employment Fund in 1963 to counter the negative effects on employment caused by industrial restructuring.

President.

After the failure of the 1969 constitutional referendum, de Gaulle resigned and Pompidou was elected president of France. In the general election of 15 June 1969, he defeated the centrist President of the Senate and Acting President Alain Poher by a wide margin (57%–42%). Though a Gaullist, Pompidou was more pragmatic than de Gaulle, notably facilitating the accession of the United Kingdom to the European Community on 1 January 1973. He embarked on an industrialisation plan and initiated the Arianespace project, as well as the TGV project, and furthered the French civilian nuclear programme. He was sceptical about the "New Society" programme of his prime minister, Jacques Chaban-Delmas. In 1972, he replaced Chaban-Delmas with Pierre Messmer, a more conservative Gaullist. While the left-wing opposition organised itself and proposed a "Common Programme" before the 1973 legislative election, Pompidou widened his presidential majority by including Centrist pro-European parties. In addition, he paid special attention to regional and local needs in order to strengthen his political party, the UDR (Union des Democrates pour la Ve République), which he made a central and lasting force in the Gaullist movement.

Foreign affairs.

The United States was eager to restore positive relations with France after de Gaulle's departure from office. New US President Richard Nixon and his top adviser Henry Kissinger admired Pompidou; the politicians were in agreement on most major policy issues. The United States offered to help the French nuclear programme. Economic difficulties, however, arose following the Nixon Shock and the 1973-75 recession, particularly over the role of the American dollar as the medium for world trade.  Pompidou sought to maintain good relations with the newly-independent former French colonies in Africa. In 1971, he visited Mauritania, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Gabon. He brought a message of cooperation and financial assistance, but without the traditional paternalism. More broadly, he made an effort to foster closer relations with North African and Middle Eastern countries in order to develop a hinterland including all nations bordering the Mediterranean.

Modernising Paris.

Pompidou's time in office was marked by constant efforts to modernise France's capital city. He spearheaded construction of a modern art museum, the Centre Beaubourg (renamed Centre Pompidou after his death), on the edge of the Marais area of Paris. Other attempts at modernisation included tearing down the open air markets at Les Halles and replacing them with the shopping mall of the same name, building the Montparnasse Tower, and constructing an expressway on the right bank of the Seine.

Death in office.

While still in office, Pompidou died on 2 April 1974, at 9 PM, while in his apartment, from Waldenström's macroglobulinemia. His body was buried on the 4th of April, in the churchyard of Orvilliers, where he had bought an old baker's house and turned it into a weekend home.. The official memorial service for him was held at Notre-Dame de Paris with 3000 Dignitaries in attendance (including 28 heads of state and representatives from 82 countries).  Attendees included :  Pompidou's wife Claude Pompidou would outlive him by more than thirty years. The couple had one (adopted) son, Alain Pompidou, who went on to serve as president of the European Patent Office.  France withdrew from the Eurovision Song Contest 1974, which took place just four days after Pompidou's death, as a mark of respect.

Ministries.

Second ministry, 28 November 1962 – 8 January 1966.

Changes

Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou (, ; 5 July 19112 April 1974) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1969 until his death in 1974. He previously was Prime Minister of France from 1962 to 1968—the longest tenure in the position's history. He had long been a top aide to President Charles de Gaulle; as head of state, he was a moderate conservative who repaired France's relationship with the United States and maintained positive relations with the newly independent former colonies in Africa.


Subdivisions and their distribution.

The Caelifera include some 2,400 valid genera and about 12,000 known species. Many undescribed species probably exist, especially in tropical forests. The Caelifera have a predominantly tropical distribution (as with most Orthoptera) with fewer species known from temperate climate zones. Caelifera are divided into two infraorders: the more basal Tridactylidea and the Acrididea or grasshopper-like species. This latter name is derived from older sources, such as Imms, which placed the "short-horned grasshoppers" and locusts at the family level (Acrididae).

Affiliations.

The phylogeny of the Caelifera, is described in detail for grasshoppers, with 6 out of 8 extant superfamilies shown here as a cladogram. Like the Ensifera, Caelifera and all of its superfamilies appear to be monophyletic. The phylogeny of the Caelifera, based on mitochondrial ribosomal RNA of thirty-two taxa in six out of seven superfamilies, is shown as a cladogram. The Ensifera, Caelifera and all the superfamilies of grasshoppers except Pamphagoidea appear to be monophyletic.  In evolutionary terms, the split between the Caelifera and the Ensifera is no more recent than the Permo-Triassic boundary; the earliest insects that are certainly Caeliferans are in the extinct families Locustopseidae and Locustavidae from the early Triassic, roughly 250 million years ago. The group diversified during the Triassic and have remained important plant-eaters from that time to now. The first modern families such as the Eumastacidae, Tetrigidae and Tridactylidae appeared in the Cretaceous, though some insects that might belong to the last two of these groups are found in the early Jurassic. Morphological classification is difficult because many taxa have converged towards a common habitat type; recent taxonomists have concentrated on the internal genitalia, especially those of the male. This information is not available from fossil specimens, and the palaentological taxonomy is founded principally on the venation of the hindwings.  The Caelifera includes some 2,400 valid genera and about 11,000 known species. Many undescribed species probably exist, especially in tropical wet forests. The Caelifera have a predominantly tropical distribution with fewer species known from temperate zones, but most of the superfamilies have representatives worldwide. They are almost exclusively herbivorous and are probably the oldest living group of chewing herbivorous insects.  The most diverse superfamily is the Acridoidea, with around 8,000 species. The two main families in this are the Acrididae (grasshoppers and locusts) with a worldwide distribution, and the Romaleidae (lubber grasshoppers), found chiefly in the New World. The Ommexechidae and Tristiridae are South American, and the Lentulidae, Lithidiidae and Pamphagidae are mainly African. The Pauliniids are nocturnal and can swim or skate on water, and the Lentulids are wingless. Pneumoridae are native to Africa, particularly southern Africa, and are distinguished by the inflated abdomens of the males.

Economic significance and terminology.

A number of species, especially in the Acridoidea, are significant agricultural pests, but not all of them are locusts: a non-taxonomic term referring to species whose populations which may change morphologically when crowded and show swarming behaviour. Examples of agricultural grasshopper pests that are not called locusts include the Senegalese grasshopper and certain species in the Pyrgomorphidae, notably the variegated grasshopper ("").

The Caelifera are a suborder of orthopteran insects. They include the grasshoppers and grasshopper-like insects, as well as other superfamilies classified with them: the ground-hoppers (Tetrigoidea) and pygmy mole crickets (Tridactyloidea). The latter should not be confused with the mole crickets (Gryllotalpidae), which belong to the other Orthopteran sub-order Ensifera.


History.

The first man made nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945 at 5:50 am on the Trinity Test Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico in the United States, an area now known as the White Sands Missile Range. The event involved the full-scale testing of an implosion-type fission atomic bomb. In a memorandum to the U.S. Secretary of War, General Leslie Groves describes the yield as equivalent to 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. Following this test, a uranium-gun type nuclear bomb (Little Boy) was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, with a blast yield of 15 kilotons; and a plutonium implosion-type bomb (Fat Man) on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, with a blast yield of 21 kilotons. In the years following World War II, eight countries have conducted nuclear tests with 2475 devices fired in 2120 tests.  In 1963, the United States, Soviet Union, and United Kingdom signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, pledging to refrain from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. The treaty permitted underground tests. Many other non-nuclear nations acceded to the Treaty following its entry into force; however, two nuclear weapons states have not acceded: France, China  The primary application to date has been military (i.e. nuclear weapons), and the remainder of explosions include the following:

Nuclear weapons.

Only two nuclear weapons have been deployed in combat—both by the United States against Japan in World War II. The first event occurred on the morning of 6 August 1945, when the United States Army Air Forces dropped a uranium gun-type device, code-named "Little Boy", on the city of Hiroshima, killing 70,000 people, including 20,000 Japanese combatants and 20,000 Korean slave laborers. The second event occurred three days later when the United States Army Air Forces dropped a plutonium implosion-type device, code-named "Fat Man", on the city of Nagasaki. It killed 39,000 people, including 27,778 Japanese munitions employees, 2,000 Korean slave laborers, and 150 Japanese combatants. In total, around 109,000 people were killed in these bombings. (See "Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" for a full discussion). Nuclear weapons are largely seen as a 'deterrent' by most governments; the sheer scale of the destruction caused by a nuclear weapon has prevented serious consideration of their use in warfare.

Nuclear testing.

Since the Trinity test and excluding the combat use of nuclear weapons, mankind (those few nations with capability) has detonated roughly 1,700 nuclear explosions, all but 6 as tests. Of these, six were peaceful nuclear explosions. Nuclear tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Throughout the 20th century, most nations that have developed nuclear weapons had a staged test of them. Testing nuclear weapons can yield information about how the weapons work, as well as how the weapons behave under various conditions and how structures behave when subjected to a nuclear explosion. Additionally, nuclear testing has often been used as an indicator of scientific and military strength, and many tests have been overtly political in their intention; most nuclear weapons states publicly declared their nuclear status by means of a nuclear test.

Effects of nuclear explosions.

The dominant effects of a nuclear weapon (the blast and thermal radiation) are the same physical damage mechanisms as conventional explosives, but the energy produced by a nuclear explosive is millions of times more per gram and the temperatures reached are in the tens of megakelvin. Nuclear weapons are quite different from conventional weapons because of the huge amount of explosive energy they can put out and the different kinds of effects they make, like high temperatures and nuclear radiation.  The devastating impact of the explosion does not stop after the initial blast, as with conventional explosives. A cloud of nuclear radiation travels from the hypocenter of the explosion, causing an impact to life forms even after the heat waves have ceased.  Any nuclear explosion (or nuclear war) would have wide-ranging, long-term, catastrophic effects. Radioactive contamination would cause genetic mutations and cancer across many generations.

A nuclear explosion is an explosion that occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from a high-speed nuclear reaction. The driving reaction may be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or a multi-stage cascading combination of the two, though to date all fusion-based weapons have used a fission device to initiate fusion, and a pure fusion weapon remains a hypothetical device.


Life.

Broch was born in Vienna to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately. As the oldest son, he was expected to take over his father’s textile factory in Teesdorf; therefore, he attended a technical college for textile manufacture and a spinning and weaving college.  In 1909 he converted to Roman Catholicism and married Franziska von Rothermann, the daughter of a knighted manufacturer. The following year, their son Hermann Friedrich Maria was born. His marriage ended in divorce in 1923. In 1927 he sold the textile factory and decided to study mathematics, philosophy and psychology at the University of Vienna. He embarked on a full-time literary career only around the age of 40. At the age of 45, his first major literary work, the trilogy "The Sleepwalkers", was published by Daniel Brody, for the Rhein Verlag in 1931/1932 in Munich.  He was acquainted with many of the now well-known writers, intellectuals, and artists of his time, including Robert Musil, Rainer Maria Rilke, Elias Canetti, Leo Perutz, Franz Blei and writer and former nude model Ea von Allesch.  With the annexation of Austria by the Nazis (1938), Broch was arrested in the small Alpine town of Bad Aussee for possession of a socialist magazine but was soon released. Shortly thereafter, a movement organized by friends – including James Joyce, Thornton Wilder, and his translators Edwin and Willa Muir – managed to help him emigrate; first to Britain and then to the United States, where he published his novel "The Death of Virgil" and his collection of short stories "The Guiltless". While in exile, he also continued to write on politics and work on mass psychology, similar to Elias Canetti and Hannah Arendt. His essay on mass behaviour remained unfinished.  From the 15th of August to the 15th of September 1939, Hermann Broch lived at the Albert Einstein House at 112 Mercer Street Princeton, New Jersey when the Einsteins were on vacation. From 1942 to 1948 Broch lived in an attic apartment in Eric and Lili Kahler's house at One Evelyn Place in Princeton, New Jersey. Broch died in 1951 in New Haven, Connecticut. He is buried in Killingworth, Connecticut, in the cemetery on Roast Meat Hill Road. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950.

Work.

One of his foremost works, "The Death of Virgil" ("") was first published in 1945 simultaneously in its original German and in English translation. Having begun the text as a short radio lecture in 1937, Broch expanded and redeveloped the text over the next eight years of his life, which witnessed a short incarceration in an Austrian prison after the Austrian Anschluss, his flight to Scotland via England, and his eventual exile in the United States. This extensive, difficult novel interweaves reality, hallucination, poetry and prose, and reenacts the last 18 hours of the Roman poet Virgil's life in the port of Brundisium (Brindisi). Here, shocked by the balefulness ("Unheil") of the society he glorifies in his "Aeneid", the feverish Virgil resolves to burn his epic, but is thwarted by his close friend and emperor Augustus before he succumbs to his fatal ailment. The final chapter exhibits the final hallucinations of the poet, where Virgil voyages to a distant land at which he witnesses roughly the biblical creation story in reverse.  The French composer Jean Barraqué composed a number of works inspired by "The Death of Virgil".  Erich Heller observed that if ""The Death of Virgil" is his masterpiece... it is a very problematical one, for it attempts to give literary shape to the author's growing aversion to literature. In the very year the novel appeared, Broch confessed to 'a deep revulsion' from literature as such – 'the domain of vanity and mendacity'. Written with a paradoxical, lyrical exuberance, it is the imaginary record of the poet’s last day and his renunciation of poetry. He commands the manuscript of the "Aeneid" to be destroyed, not because it is incomplete or imperfect but because it is poetry and not 'knowledge'. He even says his "Georgics" are useless, inferior to any expert treatise on agriculture. His friend the Emperor Augustus undoes his design and his works are saved." (Erich Heller, "Hitler in a very Small Town", "The New York Times", January 25, 1987.)  Other important works by Broch are "The Sleepwalkers" ("", 1932) and "The Guiltless" ("Die Schuldlosen", 1950). "The Sleepwalkers" is a trilogy, where Broch takes "the degeneration of values" as his theme. The trilogy has been praised by Milan Kundera, whose writing has been greatly influenced by Broch. Broch demonstrates mastery of a wide range of styles, from the gentle parody of Theodor Fontane in the first volume of "The Sleepwalkers" through the essayistic segments of the third volume to the dithyrambic phantasmagoria of "The Death of Virgil."

Selected Bibliography.

Works translated into English:  Complete works in German:

Hermann Broch (; November 1, 1886 – May 30, 1951) was a 20th-century Austrian writer, considered one of the major Modernists.


Botany.

Peppermint was first described in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus from specimens that had been collected in England; he treated it as a species, but it is now universally agreed to be a hybrid. It is a herbaceous rhizomatous perennial plant that grows to be tall, with smooth stems, square in cross section. The rhizomes are wide-spreading, fleshy, and bear fibrous roots. The leaves can be long and broad. They are dark green with reddish veins, and they have an acute apex and coarsely toothed margins. The leaves and stems are usually slightly fuzzy. The flowers are purple, long, with a four-lobed corolla about diameter; they are produced in whorls (verticillasters) around the stem, forming thick, blunt spikes. Flowering season lasts from mid- to late summer. The chromosome number is variable, with 2n counts of 66, 72, 84, and 120 recorded. Peppermint is a fast-growing plant; once it sprouts, it spreads very quickly.

Ecology.

Peppermint typically occurs in moist habitats, including stream sides and drainage ditches. Being a hybrid, it is usually sterile, producing no seeds and reproducing only vegetatively, spreading by its runners. If placed, it can grow almost anywhere.  Outside of its native range, areas where peppermint was formerly grown for oil often have an abundance of feral plants, and it is considered invasive in Australia, the Galápagos Islands, New Zealand, and the United States in the Great Lakes region, noted since 1843.

Cultivation.

Peppermint generally grows best in moist, shaded locations, and expands by underground rhizomes. Young shoots are taken from old stocks and dibbled into the ground about 1.5 feet apart. They grow quickly and cover the ground with runners if it is permanently moist. For the home gardener, it is often grown in containers to restrict rapid spreading. It grows best with a good supply of water, without being water-logged, and planted in areas with part-sun to shade.  The leaves and flowering tops are used; they are collected as soon as the flowers begin to open and can be dried. The wild form of the plant is less suitable for this purpose, with cultivated plants having been selected for more and better oil content. They may be allowed to lie and wilt a little before distillation, or they may be taken directly to the still.

Cultivars.

A number of cultivars have been selected for garden use:  Commercial cultivars may include

Production.

In 2014, world production of peppermint was 92,296 tonnes, led by Morocco with 92% of the world total reported by FAOSTAT of the United Nations. Argentina accounted for 8% of the world total.  In the United States, Oregon and Washington produce most of the country's peppermint, the leaves of which are processed for the essential oil to produce flavorings mainly for chewing gum and toothpaste.

Chemical constituents.

Peppermint has a high menthol content. The oil also contains menthone and carboxyl esters, particularly menthyl acetate. Dried peppermint typically has 0.3–0.4% of volatile oil containing menthol (7–48%), menthone (20–46%), menthyl acetate (3–10%), menthofuran (1–17%) and 1,8-cineol (3–6%). Peppermint oil also contains small amounts of many additional compounds including limonene, pulegone, caryophyllene and pinene.  Peppermint contains terpenoids and flavonoids such as eriocitrin, hesperidin, and kaempferol 7-O-rutinoside.

Oil.

Peppermint oil has a high concentration of natural pesticides, mainly pulegone (found mainly in "Mentha arvensis" var. "piperascens" cornmint, field mint, Japanese mint, and to a lesser extent (6,530 ppm) in "Mentha" × "piperita" subsp. "notho") and menthone. It is known to repel some pest insects, including mosquitos, and has uses in organic gardening. It is also widely used to repel rodents.  The chemical composition of the essential oil from peppermint ("Mentha" × "piperita" L.) was analyzed by GC/FID and GC-MS. The main constituents were menthol (40.7%) and menthone (23.4%). Further components were (±)-menthyl acetate, 1,8-cineole, limonene, beta-pinene and beta-caryophyllene.

Research and health effects.

Peppermint oil is under preliminary research for its potential as a short-term treatment for irritable bowel syndrome, and has supposed uses in traditional medicine for minor ailments. Peppermint oil and leaves have a cooling effect when used topically for muscle pain, nerve pain, relief from itching, or as a fragrance. High oral doses of peppermint oil (500 mg) can cause mucosal irritation and mimic heartburn.

Culinary and other uses.

Fresh or dried peppermint leaves are often used alone in peppermint tea or with other herbs in herbal teas (tisanes, infusions). Peppermint is used for flavouring ice cream, candy, fruit preserves, alcoholic beverages, chewing gum, toothpaste, and some shampoos, soaps and skin care products.  Menthol activates cold-sensitive TRPM8 receptors in the skin and mucosal tissues, and is the primary source of the cooling sensation that follows the topical application of peppermint oil.  Peppermint oil is also used in construction and plumbing to test for the tightness of pipes and disclose leaks by its odor.

Safety.

Medicinal uses of peppermint have not been approved as effective or safe by the US Food and Drug Administration. With caution that the concentration of the peppermint constituent pulegone should not exceed 1% (140 mg), peppermint preparations are considered safe by the European Medicines Agency when used in topical formulations for adult subjects. Diluted peppermint essential oil is safe for oral intake when only a few drops are used.  Although peppermint is commonly available as a herbal supplement, there are no established, consistent manufacturing standards for it, and some peppermint products may be contaminated with toxic metals or other substituted compounds. Skin rashes, irritation, or an allergic reaction may result from applying peppermint oil to the skin, and its use on the face or chest of young children may cause side effects if the oil menthol is inhaled. A common side effect from oral intake of peppermint oil or capsules is heartburn. Oral use of peppermint products may have adverse effects when used with iron supplements, cyclosporine, medicines for heart conditions or high blood pressure, or medicines to decrease stomach acid.

Peppermint (Mentha" × "piperita, also known as "Mentha balsamea" Wild.) is a hybrid mint, a cross between watermint and spearmint. Indigenous to Europe and the Middle East, the plant is now widely spread and cultivated in many regions of the world. It is occasionally found in the wild with its parent species.


Killing and cannibalism.

Looking for a willing volunteer, Meiwes posted an advertisement on the website "The Cannibal Cric" (a defunct forum for people with a cannibalism fetish). Meiwes's post stated that he was "looking for a well-built 18- to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed." Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes, an engineer from Berlin, answered the advertisement in March 2001. Many other people responded to the advertisement but backed out; Meiwes did not attempt to force them to do anything against their will.  The two made a videotape when they met on 9 March 2001 in Meiwes's home, in the small town of Wüstefeld, west of Rotenburg an der Fulda, showcasing Meiwes amputating Brandes's penis (with his agreement) and the two men attempting to eat it together. Before doing so, Brandes swallowed twenty sleeping pills, and a bottle of cough syrup, likely causing an effect of slowed breathing and extreme tiredness. Brandes initially insisted that Meiwes attempt to bite his penis off. This did not work, and ultimately, Meiwes used a knife to remove Brandes's appendage. Brandes apparently tried to eat some of his own penis raw but could not, because it was too tough and, as he put it, "chewy". Meiwes then fried the penis in a pan with salt, pepper, wine, and garlic; he then fried it with some of Brandes's fat, but by then it was too burnt to be consumed. He then chopped the penis up into chunks and fed it to his dog. According to court officials who saw the video (which has not been made public), Brandes may already have been too weakened from blood loss to eat any of his penis.  Meiwes then ran Brandes a bath, before going to read a "Star Trek" book, while checking back on Brandes every fifteen minutes, during which time Brandes lay bleeding in the bath. Brandes continued to drift in and out of consciousness before finally collapsing again. After long hesitation and prayer, Meiwes killed Brandes by stabbing him in the throat, after which he hung the body on a meat hook. The incident was recorded on a four-hour videotape. Meiwes dismembered and ate the corpse over the next ten months, storing body parts in his freezer under pizza boxes and consuming up to of the flesh. According to prosecutors, Meiwes committed the act for sexual pleasure.

Arrest, trial, and manslaughter conviction.

Meiwes was arrested in December 2002, when a college student alerted authorities to new advertisements for victims online. Investigators searched his home and found body parts and the videotape of the killing.  On 30 January 2004, Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years and six months in prison. The case attracted considerable media attention.  When speaking to a German newspaper, Meiwes admitted cannibalising Brandes and expressed regret for his actions. He added he wants to write a biography with the aim of deterring anyone wanting to follow in his footsteps. Websites dedicated to Meiwes started appearing after his 2002 arrest, with people advertising for willing victims. "They should go for treatment, so it doesn't escalate like it did with me," said Meiwes. While in prison, Meiwes has since become a vegetarian. He believes there are about 800 cannibals in Germany.

Retrial and murder conviction.

In April 2005, a German court ordered a retrial after prosecutors appealed Meiwes's sentence, arguing that he should have been convicted of murder because he killed for sexual gratification, a motive proved by his having videotaped the crime. The court ruled that the original trial had ignored the significance of the video in disproving the argument that Meiwes only killed because he had been asked to kill.  At his retrial, a psychologist stated that Meiwes could reoffend, as he "still had fantasies about devouring the flesh of young people." On 10 May 2006, a court in Frankfurt convicted Meiwes of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Cultural impact.

Films.

Other films based on the case include: Rosa von Praunheim's "Dein Herz in Meinem Hirn" (Your Heart in My Brain) and Ulli Lommel's "Diary of a Cannibal".  The plot of Australian thriller "Feed" (2006) bears many similarities to the case.

Armin Meiwes (; born 1 December 1961) is a German former computer repair technician who achieved international notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim in 2001, whom he had found via the Internet. After Meiwes and the victim jointly attempted to eat the victim's severed penis, Meiwes killed his victim and proceeded to eat a large amount of his flesh. He was arrested in December 2002. In January 2004, Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years and six months in prison. In a retrial May 2006, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Because of his acts, Meiwes is also known as the Rotenburg Cannibal or (The Master Butcher).


DVD-RAM Format.

DVD-RAM works by means of phase change technology which was chosen instead of magneto-optical technology (an already existing rewritable solution at the time) because it doesn't require a magnetic head and therefore it represented reduced complexity and costs. Phase change technology uses laser light to heat the surface of a phase changing alloy and allows it to go from a crystalline to an amorphous state and vice versa, therefore altering its optical reflectivity index. To change the recording material from a crystalline to an amorphous state, and back again a high or medium power laser light is used to control the rate of cooling of the phase changing alloy therefore establishing the final state. Encoding is done by means of difference in reflectivity of the alloy, a laser is pointed at the surface and the returned intensity signifies either a 1 or a 0.  DVD-RAM uses concentric tracks each divided into hard (factory originated) sectors, in contrast to traditional spiral recording found in other DVD and CD formats which makes its data structuring very similar to that of hard drives and floppy disks. This means that usually DVD-RAMs are suitable to be accessed by the OS without any special software

Specification.

Since the Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin 2003 the specification is being marketed by the "RAM Promotion Group" (RAMPRG), built by Hitachi, Toshiba, Maxell, LG Electronics, Matsushita/Panasonic, Samsung, Lite-On and Teac. The specification distinguishes between:  Speeds more than 2x are defined by Optional Specifications (Nx-speed DVD-RAM):  Physically smaller, 80 mm in diameter, DVD-RAM discs also exist with a capacity of 1.46 GB for a single-sided disc and 2.8 GB for a double-sided disc, but they are uncommon. DVD-RAMs were originally solely sold in cartridges; recent DVD recorders can work with discs either with or without a cartridge, and many devices do not work with cartridges. Discs can be removed from cartridges for use with these drives (except with type 1 media, see table above).

Compatibility.

Many operating systems like the classic Mac OS (from Mac OS 8.6 up), macOS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows XP can use DVD-RAM directly, while earlier versions of Windows require separate device drivers or the program InCD.  Windows XP Home and Professional can only write directly to FAT32 formatted DVD-RAM discs. For UDF formatted discs, which are considered faster, a third-party UDF file system driver capable of writing or software such as InCD or DLA are required. Windows Vista and later can natively access and write to both FAT32 and UDF formatted DVD-RAM discs using mastered burning method or packet writing. Even though it is possible to use any file system one likes, very few perform well on DVD-RAM. This is because some file systems frequently overwrite data on the disc and the table of contents is contained at the start of the disc. Windows Vista (and later) implement the CPRM data protection and thus discs formatted under Windows XP (or earlier) have compatibility issues with Vista onwards (and vice versa).  The classic Mac OS up to 9.2 can read and write HFS, HFS+, FAT, and UDF formatted DVD-RAM discs directly. In Mac OS X (versions 10.0.x through 10.4.x) UDF-formatting of DVD-RAM is no longer supported, instead formatting and writing DVD-RAM is done in HFS+ format. (UDF support was re-implemented in 10.5 Leopard) (HFS and UFS should also be supported on older versions of Mac OS X that retain support for these file systems.)  Many DVD standalone players and recorders do not work with DVD-RAM. However, within "RAMPRG" (the DVD-RAM Promotion Group consisting of Hitachi, Toshiba, Maxell, LG Electronics, Matsushita/Panasonic, Samsung, Lite-On, Teac) there are a number of well-known manufacturers of standalone players, recorders, and camcorders that "can" use DVD-RAM. Panasonic, for instance, has a range of players and recorders which make full use of the advantages of DVD-RAM.  The newest DVD-RAM Specification, DVD-RAM2 (also called RAM2), is not compatible with DVD drives that do not specifically allow reading DVD-RAM2 discs. DVD-RAM2 medium was brought to the market in Japan, but was not launched worldwide.  Some high end products such as IBM System p mainframes require DVD-RAM instead of DVD-RW.

DVD-RAM (DVD Random Access Memory) is a disc specification presented in 1996 by the DVD Forum, which specifies rewritable DVD-RAM media and the appropriate DVD writers. DVD-RAM media have been used in computers as well as camcorders and personal video recorders since 1998.


A simple example.

If we assemble a deck of 52 playing cards with no jokers, and draw a single card from the deck, then the sample space is a 52-element set, as each card is a possible outcome. An event, however, is any subset of the sample space, including any singleton set (an elementary event), the empty set (an impossible event, with probability zero) and the sample space itself (a certain event, with probability one). Other events are proper subsets of the sample space that contain multiple elements. So, for example, potential events include: Since all events are sets, they are usually written as sets (e.g. {1, 2, 3}), and represented graphically using Venn diagrams. In the situation where each outcome in the sample space Ω is equally likely, the probability formula_1 of an event "A" is the following : This rule can readily be applied to each of the example events above.

Events in probability spaces.

Defining all subsets of the sample space as events works well when there are only finitely many outcomes, but gives rise to problems when the sample space is infinite. For many standard probability distributions, such as the normal distribution, the sample space is the set of real numbers or some subset of the real numbers. Attempts to define probabilities for all subsets of the real numbers run into difficulties when one considers 'badly behaved' sets, such as those that are nonmeasurable. Hence, it is necessary to restrict attention to a more limited family of subsets. For the standard tools of probability theory, such as joint and conditional probabilities, to work, it is necessary to use a σ-algebra, that is, a family closed under complementation and countable unions of its members. The most natural choice of σ-algebra is the Borel measurable set derived from unions and intersections of intervals. However, the larger class of Lebesgue measurable sets proves more useful in practice.  In the general measure-theoretic description of probability spaces, an event may be defined as an element of a selected σ-algebra of subsets of the sample space. Under this definition, any subset of the sample space that is not an element of the σ-algebra is not an event, and does not have a probability. With a reasonable specification of the probability space, however, all "events of interest" are elements of the σ-algebra.

A note on notation.

Even though events are subsets of some sample space Ω, they are often written as predicates or indicators involving random variables. For example, if "X" is a real-valued random variable defined on the sample space Ω, the event can be written more conveniently as, simply, This is especially common in formulas for a probability, such as The set "u" < "X" ≤ "v" is an example of an inverse image under the mapping "X" because formula_6 if and only if formula_7.

In probability theory, an event is a set of outcomes of an experiment (a subset of the sample space) to which a probability is assigned. A single outcome may be an element of many different events, and different events in an experiment are usually not equally likely, since they may include very different groups of outcomes. An event defines a complementary event, namely the complementary set (the event "not" occurring), and together these define a Bernoulli trial: did the event occur or not?


Types.

Compound eyes are typically classified as either apposition eyes, which form multiple inverted images, or superposition eyes, which form a single erect image.

Apposition eyes.

Apposition eyes can be divided into two groups. The typical apposition eye has a lens focusing light from one direction on the rhabdom, while light from other directions is absorbed by the dark wall of the ommatidium. The mantis shrimp is the most advanced example of an animal with this type of eye. In the other kind of apposition eye, found in the Strepsiptera, each lens forms an image, and the images are combined in the brain. This is called the schizochroal compound eye or the neural superposition eye (which, despite its name, is a form of the apposition eye).

Superposition eyes.

The second type is named the superposition eye. The superposition eye is divided into three types; the refracting, the reflecting and the parabolic superposition eye. The refracting superposition eye has a gap between the lens and the rhabdom, and no side wall. Each lens takes light at an angle to its axis and reflects it to the same angle on the other side. The result is an image at half the radius of the eye, which is where the tips of the rhabdoms are. This kind is used mostly by nocturnal insects. In the parabolic superposition compound eye type, seen in arthropods such as mayflies, the parabolic surfaces of the inside of each facet focus light from a reflector to a sensor array. Long-bodied decapod crustaceans such as shrimp, prawns, crayfish and lobsters are alone in having reflecting superposition eyes, which also have a transparent gap but use corner mirrors instead of lenses.

Other.

Good fliers like flies or honey bees, or prey-catching insects like praying mantis or dragonflies, have specialized zones of ommatidia organized into a fovea area which gives acute vision. In the acute zone the eye is flattened and the facets larger. The flattening allows more ommatidia to receive light from a spot and therefore higher resolution.  There are some exceptions from the types mentioned above. Some insects have a so-called single lens compound eye, a transitional type which is something between a superposition type of the multi-lens compound eye and the single lens eye found in animals with simple eyes. Then there is the mysid shrimp, "Dioptromysis paucispinosa". The shrimp has an eye of the refracting superposition type, in the rear behind this in each eye there is a single large facet that is three times in diameter the others in the eye and behind this is an enlarged crystalline cone. This projects an upright image on a specialized retina. The resulting eye is a mixture of a simple eye within a compound eye.  Another version is the pseudofaceted eye, as seen in Scutigera. This type of eye consists of a cluster of numerous ocelli on each side of the head, organized in a way that resembles a true compound eye.  The body of "Ophiocoma wendtii", a type of brittle star, was previously thought to be covered with ommatidia, turning its whole skin into a compound eye.  Asymmetries in compound eyes may be associated with asymmetries in behaviour. For example, "Temnothorax albipennis" ant scouts show behavioural lateralization when exploring unknown nest sites, showing a population-level bias to prefer left turns. One possible reason for this is that its environment is partly maze-like and consistently turning in one direction is a good way to search and exit mazes without getting lost. This turning bias is correlated with slight asymmetries in the ants' compound eyes (differential ommatidia count).

A compound eye is a visual organ found in arthropods such as insects and crustaceans. It may consist of thousands of ommatidia, which are tiny independent photoreception units that consist of a cornea, lens, and photoreceptor cells which distinguish brightness and color. The image perceived by this arthropod eye is a combination of inputs from the numerous ommatidia, which are oriented to point in slightly different directions. Compared with single-aperture eyes, compound eyes have poor image resolution; however, they possess a very large view angle and the ability to detect fast movement and, in some cases, the polarization of light.