Elaterium.

Elaterium is the plant extract used as a purgative. It is extracted from the juice of the fruit of "Ecballium elaterium". It was discovered by Dr J. D. M. Stirling in 1835.  To prepare the extract, the fruit is sliced lengthwise and slightly pressed, the greenish and slightly turbid juice obtained is strained and set aside, and the deposit of elaterium formed after a few hours is collected on a linen filter, rapidly drained, and dried on porous tiles at a gentle heat. Elaterium has been produced in light, thin, friable, flat or slightly incurved opaque cakes, of a greyish-green color, bitter taste and tea-like smell. The extract is soluble in ethanol, but insoluble in water and diethyl ether. The official dose used to be grain, and the "British pharmacopeia" at the beginning of the 20th century directs that the drug is to contain from 20 to 25% of the active principle elaterinum or elaterin. A resin in the natural product aids its action.  Elaterin is extracted from elaterium by chloroform and then precipitated by ether. It has the formula CHO. It forms colorless scales which have a bitter taste, but it is highly inadvisable to taste either this substance or elaterium. The "British pharmacopeia" contained a useful preparation, the "Pulvis Elaterini Compositus", which contains one part of the active principle in 40.  According to the "Encyclopædia Britannica" Eleventh Edition, "[t]he action of this extract resembles that of the saline aperients, but is much more powerful. It is the most active hydragogue purgative known, 'causing also much depression and violent griping'. When injected subcutaneously it is inert, as its action is entirely dependent upon its admixture with the bile. The drug is undoubtedly valuable in cases of dropsy and Bright's disease, and also in cases of cerebral haemorrhage, threatened or present. It must not be used except in urgent cases, and must invariably be employed with the utmost care, especially if the state of the heart be unsatisfactory." Some of these contemporaneous statements are now outdated.

Ecballium is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cucurbitaceae containing a single species, Ecballium elaterium, also called the squirting cucumber or exploding cucumber (but not to be confused with "Cyclanthera brachystachya"). It gets its unusual name from the fact that, when ripe, it squirts a stream of mucilaginous liquid containing its seeds, which can be seen with the naked eye. It is thus considered to have rapid plant movement.


Background.

Born in Afagnan in Lacs Prefecture, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé is of Kabye descent and is one of Gnassingbé Eyadéma's many children; his mother is Séna Sabine Mensah. Gnassingbé received his secondary education in Lomé before studying in Paris at the Sorbonne, where he received a degree in financial business management; he subsequently obtained a Master of Business Administration degree from The George Washington University in the United States. He was elected to the National Assembly of Togo in the October 2002 parliamentary election as a Deputy for Blitta, and in the National Assembly he was coordinator of the commission in charge of privatization. On July 29, 2003 he was appointed as Minister of Equipment, Mines, Posts, and Telecommunications, serving in that position until becoming President in February 2005.  Some in the opposition claimed that the amendment of the Constitution in December 2002, lowering the minimum age for the President from 45 years to 35 years, was intended to benefit Gnassingbé. His appointment to the government in July 2003 came after he had already been appearing with his father at official functions and contributed to speculation that he was intended as his father's successor.

Politics.

Eyadéma died suddenly on February 5, 2005. According to the Togolese Constitution, after the President's death, the President of the National Assembly should become acting President. At the time of Eyadéma's death, National Assembly President Fambaré Ouattara Natchaba was out of the country, and Gnassingbé was sworn in as acting President to "ensure stability". Many believe that Natchaba did not want to come back to Togo due to fears of assassination by the Gnassingbé clan. The army wanted him to resign his position and allow Gnassingbé to legally take over. The African Union denounced Gnassingbé's assumption of power as a military coup.

Legitimacy.

A day after his father's death, the National Assembly received clear instructions to dismiss Natchaba and elect Gnassingbé in his place, which would legalize his succession, which took place on 6 February 2005. Gnassingbé's election was unanimously approved by the deputies (98% of them were members of the ruling party) who were present in the National Assembly at the time; the opposition was not represented in the National Assembly due to its boycott of the 2002 parliamentary election. The members of Gnassingbé's party did not want to challenge the army's choice. The parliament also eliminated a constitutional requirement that elections be held within 60 days of the president's death, enabling the younger Gnassingbé to rule until the expiration of his father's term in 2008.  Under pressure from others in the region, and particularly Nigeria, later in February 2005 Gnassingbé announced that new elections would be held within 60 days, but said that he would remain in office in the meantime. However, on February 21, the National Assembly reversed some of the constitutional changes that it had made so as to allow Gnassingbé to assume power, although it did not instruct him to resign. This was construed as a way of pressuring him to stand down with dignity. To change the constitution during a period of transition was itself an unconstitutional act, but this did not deter Gnassingbé's allies.  On February 25, Gnassingbé was nominated by delegates of the ruling party, the Rally for the Togolese People, as the party's presidential candidate. He was also chosen as head of the party. Shortly afterwards, he announced that he would step down as President during the interim period. Bonfoh Abass was appointed by the National Assembly to replace him until the election on April 24, 2005. Bonfoh was considered by some to be a puppet of the military elite and the Gnassingbé family. Gnassingbé competed with the main opposition candidate, Emmanuel Bob-Akitani, a retired engineer of the state-owned mining company and the second most important person in the opposition coalition after Gilchrist Olympio. Olympio could not take part in the election, since the constitution required that any candidate must have lived for at least 12 months in Togo, and Olympio had been in self-imposed exile for fear that he would be murdered by the Eyadema clan like his father.  In the election, Gnassingbé received slightly more than 60% of the votes, according to official results. The RPT refused to allow oversight during the counting of the ballots. The EU and the Carter Center deemed the elections to be fraudulent. Mass protests by the coalition of opposition parties led to the killing of over 1,000 citizens by security forces. 40,000 refugees fled to neighboring Benin and Ghana, most of whom have since been repatriated despite concerns.

Corruption.

The phosphates sector - accounting for 40% of export revenues - is managed at the office of the president, and it is alleged that contracts and permits to manage the sector are sold to profit the president.

Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé Eyadéma (; born 6 June 1966) is a Togolese politician and dictator who has been the President of Togo since 2005. Before assuming the presidency, he was appointed by his father, President Gnassingbé Eyadéma, as Minister of Equipment, Mines, Posts, and Telecommunications, serving from 2003 to 2005.


Early life.

Murray was born in Moffat, Scotland, and was educated at St. Andrews University, where he received with honours a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1953, he took his PhD there in 1956.

Research and career.

His first post was at the University of Durham, UK; later he has held positions at Harvard University, London and Oxford, becoming professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan in 1965, at the age of 34.  He later became professor of mathematical biology at the University of Oxford, a fellow and tutor in mathematics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and founder and director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology. He left Oxford in the late 1980s for the University of Washington in Seattle, where he spent the rest of his career as professor of mathematics and adjunct professor of zoology.  His research is characterised by its great range and depth: an early example is his fundamental contributions to understanding the biomechanics of the human body when launched from an aircraft in an ejection seat. He has made contributions to many other areas, ranging from understanding and preventing severe scarring; fingerprint formation; sex determination, modelling of animal coat and territory formation in wolf-deer interacting populations.

Awards and honours.

Murray was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1979 and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1985.  In 2008 Murray and Professor T. J. Pedley, FRS were jointly awarded the Gold Medal of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications in recognition of their "outstanding contributions to mathematics and its applications over a period of years".

James Dickson Murray FRSE FRS, (born 2 January 1931) is professor emeritus of applied mathematics at University of Washington and University of Oxford. He is best known for his authoritative and extensive work entitled "Mathematical Biology".


Legend of the Eleven Thousand Companions.

Lack of historical credibility.

The "Catholic Encyclopedia" (1912) article on Saint Ursula states that "this legend, with its countless variants and increasingly fabulous developments, would fill more than a hundred pages. Various characteristics of it were already regarded with suspicion by certain medieval writers, and since [Caesar] Baronius have been universally rejected". Neither Jerome nor Gregory of Tours refers to Ursula in his writings. Gregory of Tours mentions the legend of the Theban Legion, to whom a church that once stood in Cologne was dedicated. The most important hagiographers (Bede, Ado, Usuard, Notker the Stammerer, Hrabanus Maurus) of the early Middle Ages also do not enter Ursula under October 21, her feast day.

10th-century legend.

A legend resembling Ursula's appeared in the first half of the tenth century; it does not mention the name "Ursula", but rather gives the leader of the martyred group as "Pinnosa" or "Vinnosa". Pinnosa's relics were transferred about 947 from Cologne to Essen, and from this point forward Ursula's role was emphasised. In 970, for example, the first "Passio Ursulae" was written, naming Ursula rather than Pinnosa as the group's leader (although Pinnosa is mentioned as one of the group's members). This change might also be due in part to the discovery at this time of an epitaph speaking of Ursula, the "innocent virgin".

Misreading of Latin.

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, a 12th-century British cleric and writer, Ursula was the daughter of Dionotus, ruler of Cornwall. However, this may have been based on his misreading of the words "Deo notus" in the second "Passio Ursulae", written about 1105. The plot may have been influenced by a story told by the 6th-century writer Procopius about a British queen sailing with 100,000 soldiers to the mouth of the Rhine in order to compel her unwilling groom Radigis, king of the Varni, to marry her.  While there was a tradition of virgin martyrs in Cologne by the fifth century, their number may have been limited to between two and eleven, according to different sources. Yet the cleric Wandelbert of the Abbey of Prüm stated in his martyrology in 848 that the number of martyrs counted "thousands of saints" who were slaughtered on the boards of the River Rhine. The 11,000 were first mentioned in the late 9th century; suggestions as to where this number came from have included the reading of the name "Undecimillia" or "Ximillia" as a number, or reading the abbreviation "XI. M. V." as 'eleven thousand [in Roman numerals] virgins' rather than 'eleven martyred virgins'. One scholar has suggested that in the eighth or ninth century, when the relics of virgin martyrs were found, they included those of a girl named Ursula, who was eleven years old—in Latin, "undecimilia". This was subsequently misread or misinterpreted as "undicimila" ('eleven thousand'), thus producing the legend of the 11,000 virgins. In fact, the stone bearing the virgin Ursula's name states that she lived eight years and two months. Another theory is that there was only one virgin martyr, named Undecimilla, "which by some blundering monk was changed into eleven thousand". It has also been suggested that "cum [...] militibus", "with [...] soldiers", was misread as "cum [...] millibus", "with [...] thousands". Most contemporary sources, however, cling to the number 11,000. The "Passio" from the 970s tries to bridge conflicting traditions by stating that the eleven maidens each commanded a ship containing one thousand virgins. Implicitly, the legend also refers to the twelve heavenly legions, mentioned in Matthew 26:53.

Skeletal remains.

The Basilica of St. Ursula in Cologne holds the alleged relics of Ursula and her 11,000 companions. It contains what has been described as a "veritable tsunami of ribs, shoulder blades, and femurs... arranged in zigzags and swirls and even in the shapes of Latin words". The Goldene Kammer (Golden Chamber), a 17th-century chapel attached to the Basilica of St. Ursula, contains sculptures of their heads and torsos, "some of the heads encased in silver, others covered with stuff of gold and caps of cloth of gold and velvet; loose bones thickly texture the upper walls". The peculiarities of the relics themselves have thrown doubt upon the historicity of Ursula and her 11,000 maidens. When skeletons of little children ranging in age from two months to seven years were found buried with one of the sacred virgins in 1183, Hermann Joseph, a Praemonstratensian canon at Steinfeld, explained that they were distant relatives of the eleven thousand. A surgeon of eminence was once banished from Cologne for suggesting that, among the collection of bones which are said to pertain to the heads, there were several belonging to full-grown mastiffs. The relics may have come from a forgotten burial ground.

Pagan roots theories.

It has also been theorised that Ursula is a Christianised form of the goddess Freya, who welcomed the souls of dead maidens. Other 19th-century scholars have referred to the goddesses Nehalennia, Nerthus and Holda.

Catholic official stance.

Nothing reliable is known about the girls said to have been martyred at the spot. A commemoration of Saint Ursula and her companions in the Mass of Saint Hilarion, formerly in the General Roman Calendar on October 21, was removed in 1969, because "their "Passio" is entirely fabulous: nothing, not even their names, is known about the virgin saints who were killed at Cologne at some uncertain time". However, they are still mentioned in the Roman Martyrology, the official but professedly incomplete list of saints recognised by the Catholic Church, which speaks of them as follows: "At Cologne in Germany, commemoration of virgin saints who ended their life in martyrdom for Christ in the place where afterwards the city's basilica was built, dedicated in honour of the innocent young girl Ursula who is looked on as their leader".

Cordula, Ursula's companion.

Cordula was, according to a legend in an edition of the Roman Martyrology presented in an English translation on a traditionalist Catholic website, one of Ursula's companions: "Being terrified by the punishments and slaughter of the others, Cordula hid herself, but repenting her deed, on the next day she declared herself to the Huns of her own accord, and thus was the last of them all to receive the crown of martyrdom". In his "Albert the Great", Joachim Sighart recounts that, on February 14, 1277, while work was being done at the church of St John the Baptist ("Johanniterkirche") in Cologne, Cordula's body was discovered; it was fragrant and on her forehead was written: "Cordula, Queen and Virgin". When Albert the Great heard of the finding, he sang mass and transferred the relics. Later, Cordula's supposed remains were moved to Königswinter and Rimini. Cordula's head was claimed by the Cathedral of Palencia. She is listed in the Roman Martyrology on October 22.

Similarities with Sunniva.

There are striking parallels between the 11th-century legend of Ursula and the story of Sunniva of Selje. Their names were sometimes confused by contemporaries. Both saints were considered to be Christian princesses who fled their homeland by ship in order to postpone or avert an undesired marriage with a pagan king. Both were accompanied by a large group of associates, both became victims of hostile foes. The development of their legends may have been interdependent. The martyrdom of Sunniva, however, took place after the first draft of the "Passio Ursulae".

Saint Ursula (Latin for 'little female bear') is a legendary Romano-British Christian saint, died on October 21, 383. Her feast day in the pre-1970 General Roman Calendar is October 21. There is little definite information about her and the anonymous group of holy virgins who accompanied her and on some uncertain date were killed at Cologne. They remain in the Roman Martyrology, although their commemoration does not appear in the simplified Calendarium Romanum Generale (General Roman Calendar) of the 1970 Missale Romanum.


Biography.

Born in Salzburg, Virgil Widrich spent his childhood in a house that is over 500 years old and stands on the Mönchsberg. While there he became acquainted with artists such as Peter Handke, who was his neighbour, and Wim Wenders, a frequent visitor. He gained his first experience with film at a very young age and was given his first camera, a Super-8, at the age of 13. That same year (1980) he made three films, "My Homelife", "Gebratenes Fleisch" and "3 mal Ulf". He followed that with an animated cartoon titled "Auch Farbe kann träumen". At the age of 15 he made "Monster in Salzburg", on which he worked with actors for the first time. He created the rampaging monster using stop-motion photography. In 1983 he began work on "Vom Geist der Zeit" ("Spirit of Time"). Even bad grades at school were not enough to prevent him finishing his first feature-length movie, which took him 14 months. During this time he also took on a job as an extra and props manager at the Salzburg Festival to finance his films. In 1984 he began to take an interest in computers and programmed a number of simple games.  After passing his school-leaving exams at the "Akademisches Gymnasium" in Salzburg he entered the "Vienna Film Academy", only to leave again after a matter of weeks to work on the script for a science fiction film which, in the end, he never made. In 1987 he founded the film distributing company "Classic Films" with two partners with the aim of distributing mainly artistic films. Later on he became assistant to John Bailey, a camera man and director, and in 1990 he went to Hollywood to work with Bailey on the science fiction comedy "The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe". After selling "Classic Films" in 1991 Widrich again turned his attention to the computer and the possibilities it offered for creating art. His next major project, which saw him working as production manager, was a new festival for Austrian film, held for the first time in 1993 under the name Diagonale. In the second year he also compiled a film database. More databases relating to film followed, and he was also involved in the creation of an interactive CD-ROM.  In 1997 Widrich started concentrating more on making his own films again, producing the short film "tx-transform", which was a great success at the Ars Electronica festival. He also returned to his script for "Heller als der Mond" ("Brighter than the Moon"), which he filmed in 1999. The film premiered in 2000 in Rotterdam. "Copy Shop" was his next project, and one of his most successful to date. Following its premiere in 2001 the film won 35 awards, was nominated for the Oscar and was shown on television and at over 200 film festivals. His next short, "Fast Film", was likewise very successful, won 36 international awards and was shown on over 300 film festivals. A large number of multimedia projects for companies followed (in 2001 he founded the company, checkpointmedia AG, and is its CEO) and he continued producing films with his company Virgil Widrich Film- und Multimediaproduktionen G.m.b.H. Together with other filmmakers he also co-founded the production company Amour Fou Film in 2001, focusing on arthouse movies from young directors.  In 2004 Widrich was a member of the jury for Ars Electronica and became chairman of the Austrian Film Directors’ Association until 2007. He is also a member of the Academy of Austrian Film. From 2007 to 2010 Virgil Widrich taught as Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, teaching the class of “digital arts”. Since 2010 he is the leading Professor of the post-graduate Master Programme "Art & Science".

Filmography.

Since 2011 project development for a feature-length animated film titles "Micromeo", screenplay in collaboration with Jean-Claude Carrière).

Awards (selection).

In total, Virgil Widrich's work has been awarded more than 150 international awards.  for "Heller als der Mond (Brighter than the Moon)" (Europe 2000):  for "Copy Shop" (A 2001):  for "Fast Film" (A, LUX 2003):  for "Nena & Dave Stewart: Be my Rebel" (A 2018)  for checkpointmedia:

Virgil Widrich (* 16 May 1967 in Salzburg) is an Austrian director, screenwriter, filmmaker and multimedia artist. Widrich works on a large number of films and multimedia projects, sometimes as part of a creative team. He is known especially for his numerous short films and multimedia works.


Career.

He is known for his research on population and evolutionary genetics, and has been called the "Renaissance Man of Evolutionary Biology". His "discoveries have opened up new approaches to the prevention and treatment of diseases that affect hundreds of millions of individuals worldwide", including demonstrating the reproduction of "Trypanosoma cruzi", the agent of Chagas disease, is mostly the product of cloning, and that only a few clones account for most of this widespread, mostly untreatable South American disease that affects 16 million to 18 million people.  He served on the advisory board of the now defunct Campaign to Defend the Constitution, an organization that has lobbied in support the separation of church and state. He has been publicly critical of U.S. restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. He is also a critic of intelligent design theories, claiming that they are not only pseudoscience, but also misunderstood from a theological point of view. He suggests that the theory of evolution resolves the problem of evil, thus being a kind of theodicy. Although Ayala generally does not discuss his religious views, he has stated that "science is compatible with religious faith in a personal, omnipotent and benevolent God." He also briefly served, in 1960, as a Dominican priest. Ayala does not say whether he remains a religious believer, not wanting to be "tagged by one side or the other."  He attended the symposium on November 2006. Ayala debated Christian apologist William Lane Craig in November 2009 on the topic of intelligent design.  On October 18, 2011, the University of California, Irvine (UCI) announced that Professor Ayala would be donating $10 million to the university's School of Biological Sciences. The gift was to be "$1 million a year for the next decade."  Since 2013, Ayala has been listed on the Advisory Council of the National Center for Science Education.

Sexual harassment investigation and resignation.

In June 2018, UCI announced that it had investigated and confirmed the accusations of four women who claimed that Ayala had sexually harassed them. Ayala resigned, without becoming a professor emeritus, and the university removed his name from the School of Biological Sciences, Science Library, and endowed chairs that had been named after Ayala. The complete report of the investigation was made public (and then later removed at the request of people close to the case) on the website of the journal "Science", detailing multiple incidents of gender-biased and inappropriate comments and actions towards female faculty and students. The American Association for the Advancement of Science removed his fellowship status because of his actions.

Awards and honors.

In 2001, Ayala was awarded the National Medal of Science. On April 13, 2007, he was awarded the first of 100 bicentennial medals at Mount Saint Mary's University for lecturing there as the first presenter for the Bicentennial Distinguished Lecture Series. His lecture was entitled "The Biological Foundations of Morality". Other awards he has received include the Gold Honorary Gregor Mendel Medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Gold Medal of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Gold Medal of the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, the President's Award of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award and 150th Anniversary Leadership Medal of the AAAS, the Medal of the College of France, the UCI Medal of the University of California, the 1998 Distinguished Scientist Award from the SACNAS, and Sigma Xi's William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement, 2000. In 2010, he was awarded the Templeton Prize. The science library at UCI was named after him from 2010 to 2018, when his name was removed after substantiated allegations of sexual harassment. Ayala delivered a lecture at the Trotter Prize ceremony in 2011 entitled "Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion." In 2014, UCI named its School of Biological Sciences the Francisco J. Ayala School of Biological Sciences after Ayala. UCI removed his name from the library and school in 2018, after finding that he sexually harassed at least four women.  Ayala was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is also a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome, the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences, the Mexican Academy of Sciences, and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He has honorary degrees from the University of Athens, the University of Bologna, the University of Barcelona, the University of the Balearic Islands, the University of León, the University of Madrid, the University of Salamanca, the University of Valencia, the University of Vigo, Far Eastern National University, Masaryk University and University of Warsaw.

Personal life.

Francisco Ayala was born to Francisco Ayala and Soledad Pereda. In the late 1960s he met Mary Henderson, they married on May 27, 1968. They had two sons: Francisco José (b. 1969) and Carlos Alberto (b. 1972). Their marriage ended in divorce, and in 1985 he married an ecologist named Hana Ayala (née Lostáková, born 1956). They live in Irvine, California.

Books.

Ayala has published 950 publications and 30 books. Recently published books include:

Francisco José Ayala Pereda (born March 12, 1934) is a Spanish-American evolutionary biologist and philosopher who was a longtime faculty member at the University of California, Irvine and University of California, Davis. He is a former Dominican priest, ordained in 1960, but left the priesthood that same year. After graduating from the University of Salamanca, he moved to the United States in 1961 to study for a PhD at Columbia University. There, he studied for his doctorate under Theodosius Dobzhansky, graduating in 1964. He became a US citizen in 1971.


Early life.

Doig was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is the younger child of Gloria B. Lecciones and David W. Doig. Her mother is a registered nurse who originally came from Dumaguete City, Philippines, and her father is a Canadian engineer of Scottish and Irish ancestry who was a petroleum executive officer in Toronto.  As a child, Doig studied rhythmic gymnastics and, as a teenager, she studied American Sign Language. She developed a strong interest in acting and was inspired to become an actor at age 9 after she watched a theatre production of "Porgy and Bess".

Career.

Early modeling.

While completing compulsory secondary education at Don Mills Collegiate Institute, she enrolled in a vocational modelling program. There, at age 16, she was immediately offered representation by a talent agent and booked in various modelling projects. She chose to drop out from her final year in high school to pursue an acting career.  The initial media exposure led to her co-hosting the Canadian game show "Video & Arcade Top 10" (1991–2006). While auditioning for television and film roles, she worked on theatre productions of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Arsenic and Old Lace".

Acting.

Her first television acting role was as "Second Girl" on "The Hidden Room" in 1993. Her first recurring role was in the TV series "TekWar" in 1994 where she portrayed the role of Cowgirl. Her first movie role was in "Jungleground" (1995). Doig got her first big break with a starring role in the movie "No Alibi" in 2000. She also landed the title role in Gene Roddenberry's sci-fi TV series "Andromeda" where, from 2000 to 2005, she portrayed the Andromeda Ascendant ship's computer in three personas — as the ship's powerful AI (artificial intelligence) on the ship's screen, as the AI's hologram, and as Rommie, the android avatar of the AI.  In 2001, she played the female lead role of "Dr. Rowan LaFontaine" in the horror film "Jason X", the tenth installment of the "Friday the 13th" film series. In a recurring role as Dr. Carolyn Lam, Doig appeared in 11 episodes of the ninth and tenth seasons of "Stargate SG-1" between 2005–2007. In 2010, Doig appeared in six episodes in the remake of "V" as the alien physician Dr. Leah Pearlman. In 2012, she began playing the role of Liber8 terrorist Sonya Valentine in the Canadian science fiction TV series "Continuum".  In 2017, Doig began playing the recurring role of Talia al Ghul in the fifth season of "Arrow". The same year she began portraying DeAnn Anderson, one of the main roles in the E! television series "The Arrangement".  In 2019, Doig joined the cast of the upcoming Netflix television series "Virgin River", based on the "Virgin River" series of novels by Robyn Carr, playing Paige Lassiter.

Personal life.

Doig dated actor Michael Shanks after they met on the set of "Andromeda", where the former starred and the latter guest-starred in the 2001 episode "Star Crossed." They married on August 2, 2003, and they worked together again in the 2003 episode "Day of Judgment, Day of Wrath" of the same TV series. The couple were castmates in the final two seasons of "Stargate SG-1". They worked together in the action thriller "Tactical Force" (2011), in which Doig portrayed an LAPD SWAT officer and Shanks played the role of a Russian mob leader. They have most recently worked together on the Netflix Original series "Virgin River (TV series)" (2019). They have two children, a son and a daughter, in addition to Shanks' child from a previous relationship.

Charity.

Doig and Shanks are actively involved as charity fundraising partners for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada.

Alexandra Lecciones Doig (born June 8, 1973) is a Canadian actress. She portrayed the title role in the 2000–2005 Canadian-American science fiction-adventure television series "Andromeda". She also portrayed the female lead role of Rowan in the science fiction-action horror film "Jason X" (2001), the tenth installment of the "Friday the 13th" film series and currently appears in the Aurora Teagarden mystery films on the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel.


History.

Elf Aquitaine's heritage is rooted among three French oil companies: Régie Autonome des Pétroles (RAP), Société Nationale des Pétroles d'Aquitaine (SNPA), and Bureau de Recherches de Pétroles (BRP). These companies were formed to exploit the discovery of a gas field in Saint-Marcet in the Aquitaine region of south-western France. In December 1965 RAP and BRP were merged to form Entreprise de Recherches et d'Activités Pétrolières (ERAP). ERAP had SNPA, Union Générale des Pétroles (UGP), and Union Industrielle des Pétroles (UIP) as subsidiaries. The resulting company achieved vertical integration, owning assets in all phases of the petrol business from exploration and production to the filling station.  On April 28, 1967, the company's disparate brands and products were unified under the Elf brand, Essence et Lubrifiants de France. Elf was the first company to pioneer a completely synthetic racing oil.  In 1973, the subsidiary SNPA set up a pharmaceuticals subsidiary called Sanofi and acquired the pharmaceutical groups Labaz, Castaigne, and Robilliart, and also bought interests in a cosmetics company.  In 1976 Elf-ERAP merged with Antar Pétroles de l'Atlantique and became Société Nationale Elf Aquitaine (SNEA), later Elf Aquitaine. Elf Aquitaine was listed on the NYSE in 1991. In 1993 Elf was awarded the exclusive contract to the Iraqi oil fields by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. In 1996 the French government sold its stake, retaining a golden share. In 2000 Elf Aquitaine merged with Total Fina to form TotalFinaElf, which changed its name to Total in 2003.

Hoax.

Elf Aquitaine spent millions of dollars in the 1979 Great Oil Sniffer Hoax to develop a new "gravity wave-based oil detection system", which was later revealed to be a scam, and lost over $150 million.

Fraud scandal.

The Elf scandal which came to light in 1994 in France was according to "The Guardian", 'the biggest fraud inquiry in Europe since the Second World War... Elf became a private bank for executives who spent £200 million on political favours, mistresses, jewellery, fine art, villas and apartments'. Iraqi-born Nadhmi Auchi, at that time rumoured to be among the ten richest men in Britain, received a 15-month suspended sentence and a £1.5m fine for his involvement taking illegal commissions. Auchi was also linked to the Clearstream scandal. He is BNP Paribas bank's main private share-holder; and until 2001, the money for the Oil-for-Food programme transited through the escrow account of BNP Paribas. Magistrate Eva Joly investigated the case. In the Leuna/Minol deal following German reunification, Elf Aquitaine took over circa 2,500 vacated gas station allottments in the former East Germany without paying the rightful owners.

Automobile and motorcycle partnerships.

Elf Aquitaine is an official recommended fuel and motor oil for Renault (shared with BP), Nissan, Dacia, Datsun, Honda (including Acura. shared with BP and ExxonMobil), Alpine, Renault Samsung Motors, Infiniti, Brough Superior and Acura for automobiles only as well as Kawasaki and Honda for motorcycles only.

Motorsport.

From its very beginnings Elf used motor racing as a means of promotion. It began with a four-year association with Matra in a French Formula Three program. This resulted in Henri Pescarolo winning the title. The European Formula Two Championship fell to Matra the following year with Jean-Pierre Beltoise. In 1969, the combination won the Formula One World Championship with Tyrrell and Jackie Stewart.  The goal of winning the Le Mans 24 Hours was not achieved until 1972, by which time Elf and Matra had gone their separate ways. Elf, at that time owned by France, then undertook a policy to rebuild and promote French motor racing. began a long-term relationship with Renault, which was also owned by the French government at the time. Renault promoted the use of Elf oils in its road cars, while its Formula One racing cars also carried Elf sponsorship. This changed in 2009, when the Renault Formula One cars replaced the Elf logos with Total logos.  The most famous of the schemes to promote young drivers dates back to the start of the 1970s, when Francois Guiter of Elf established what was known as the "Volant Elf". The fastest drivers on each course at the Winfield Racing Schools, Magny Cours and Paul Ricard, were asked to return to the school in the autumn to establish the fastest driver of the year. The two winners were each given a full budget to race the following year in Formula Renault. If they were fast enough they would be retained by Elf in Formula Three and then Formula Two (or later Formula 3000), and eventually they would get a drive in Formula One. The first two "Pilotes Elf" were Patrick Tambay and Didier Pironi. Both went on to win Grands Prix.  When Guiter retired Elf decided to change the policy and a revised program was implemented. This aimed to create a scheme for drivers, mechanics and engineers. Called "La Filière;" it funded as many as eight drivers each year in Formula Renault Elf Campus and four in Formula Three. Budget cuts between 2008–2012 reduced the number of French drivers moving on to Formula One positions.  Elf also supplying fuels and lubricants for two Formula One junior feeder open-wheel single-seater formula auto racing tournaments GP2 Series (later rebranded as FIA Formula 2 Championship in 2017) since 2005 and GP3 Series since 2010 (later rebranded as FIA Formula 3 Championship in 2019) respectively due to in fact Mecachrome has a long-term technical partnership with Elf since 1969.  Elf also supplying standard Ethanol E10 fuels for all SRO-owned GT championships.

Elf Aquitaine was a French oil company which merged with TotalFina to form TotalFinaElf. The new company changed its name to Total in 2003. Elf has been maintained as a major brand of Total.


Goals.

Financial analysts often assess the following elements of a firm:  1. Profitability - its ability to earn income and sustain growth in both the short- and long-term. A company's degree of profitability is usually based on the income statement, which reports on the company's results of operations;  2. Solvency - its ability to pay its obligation to creditors and other third parties in the long-term; <br> 3. Liquidity - its ability to maintain positive cash flow, while satisfying immediate obligations;  "Both 2 and 3 are based on the company's balance sheet, which indicates the financial condition of a business as of a given point in time."  4. Stability - the firm's ability to remain in business in the long run, without having to sustain significant losses in the conduct of its business. Assessing a company's stability requires the use of both the income statement and the balance sheet, as well as other financial and non-financial indicators. etc.

Method.

Financial analysts often compare financial ratios (of solvency, profitability, growth, etc.):  These ratios are calculated by dividing a (group of) account balance(s), taken from the balance sheet and/or the income statement, by another, for example :  Comparing financial ratios is merely one way of conducting financial analysis. Financial ratios face several theoretical challenges:  Financial analysts can also use percentage analysis which involves reducing a series of figures as a percentage of some base amount. For example, a group of items can be expressed as a percentage of net income. When proportionate changes in the same figure over a given time period expressed as a percentage is known as horizontal analysis. Vertical or common-size analysis reduces all items on a statement to a "common size" as a percentage of some base value which assists in comparability with other companies of different sizes. As a result, all Income Statement items are divided by Sales, and all Balance Sheet items are divided by Total Assets.  Another method is comparative analysis. This provides a better way to determine trends. Comparative analysis presents the same information for two or more time periods and is presented side-by-side to allow for easy analysis.

Financial analysis (also referred to as financial statement analysis or accounting analysis or Analysis of finance) refers to an assessment of the viability, stability, and profitability of a business, sub-business or project.


Mission.

IRAS was the first observatory to perform an all-sky survey at infrared wavelengths. It mapped 96% of the sky four times, at 12, 25, 60 and 100 micrometers, with resolutions ranging from 30 arcseconds at 12 micrometers to 2 arcminutes at 100 micrometers. It discovered about 350,000 sources, many of which are still awaiting identification. About 75,000 of those are believed to be starburst galaxies, still enduring their star-formation stage. Many other sources are normal stars with disks of dust around them, possibly the early stage of planetary system formation. New discoveries included a dust disk around Vega and the first images of the Milky Way core.  IRAS's life, like that of most infrared satellites that followed, was limited by its cooling system. To effectively work in the infrared domain, a telescope must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures. In IRAS's case, of superfluid helium kept the telescope at a temperature of, keeping the satellite cool by evaporation. The on-board supply of liquid helium was depleted after 10 months on 21 November 1983, causing the telescope temperature to rise, preventing further observations. The spacecraft continues to orbit the Earth.  IRAS was designed to catalog fixed sources, so it scanned the same region of sky several times. Jack Meadows led a team at Leicester University, including John K. Davies and Simon F. Green, which searched the rejected sources for moving objects. This led to the discovery of three asteroids, including 3200 Phaethon (an Apollo asteroid and the parent body of the Geminid meteor shower), six comets, and a huge dust trail associated with comet 10P/Tempel. The comets included 126P/IRAS, 161P/Hartley–IRAS, and comet IRAS–Araki–Alcock (C/1983 H1), which made a close approach to the Earth in 1983. Out of the six comets IRAS found, four were long period and two were short period comets.

Discoveries.

Overall, over a quarter million discrete targets were observed during its operations, both inside and beyond Earth's solar system. In addition, new objects were discovered including asteroids and comets. The observatory made headlines briefly with the announcement on 10 December 1983 of the discovery of an "unknown object" at first described as "possibly as large as the giant planet Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this solar system". Further analysis revealed that, of several unidentified objects, nine were distant galaxies and the tenth was "intergalactic cirrus". None were found to be Solar System bodies.  During its mission, IRAS (and later the Spitzer Space Telescope) detected odd infrared signatures around several stars. This led to the systems being targeted by the Hubble Space Telescope's NICMOS instrument between 1999 and 2006, but nothing was detected. In 2014, using new image processing techniques on the Hubble data, researchers discovered planetary disks around these stars.  IRAS discovered six comets, out of total of 22 discoveries and recoveries of all comets that year. This was a lot for this period, before the launch of SOHO in 1995, which would allow the discovery of many more comets in the next decade (it would detect 1000 comets in ten years).

Later surveys.

Several infrared space telescopes have continued and greatly expanded the study of the infrared Universe, such as the Infrared Space Observatory launched in 1995, the Spitzer Space Telescope launched in 2003, and the Akari Space Telescope launched in 2006.  A next generation of infrared space telescopes began when NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer launched on 14 December 2009 aboard a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Known as WISE, the telescope provided results hundreds of times more sensitive than IRAS at the shorter wavelengths; it also had an extended mission dubbed NEOWISE beginning in October 2010 after its coolant supply ran out.  A planned mission is NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission (NEOSM), which is a successor to the NEOWISE mission.

2020 near-miss.

On, IRAS was expected to pass as closely as 12 meters from the U.S. Air Force's Gravity Gradient Stabilization Experiment (GGSE-4) of 1967, another un-deorbited satellite left aloft; the 14.7-kilometer per second pass had an estimated risk of collision of 5%. Further complications arose from the fact that GGSE-4 was outfitted with an 18 meter long stabilization boom that was in an unknown orientation and may have struck the satellite even if the spacecraft's main body did not. Initial observations from amateur astronomers seemed to indicate that both satellites had survived the pass, with the California-based debris tracking organization LeoLabs later confirming that they had detected no new tracked debris following the incident.

The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) was the first-ever space telescope to perform a survey of the entire night sky at infrared wavelengths. Following the end of its mission, the 1.1 metric-ton satellite was not deorbited and constitutes a space hazard.


Changes since "Rerum novarum".

Pope Pius XI issued his encyclical exactly forty years after "Rerum novarum". In the interim there were other papal statements from Leo XIII, and also the encyclical "Singulari Quadam" of Pope Pius X. Pius XI subtitled his encyclical "Reconstruction of the Social Order". In the first part he reviews and applauds the encyclical of his predecessor. The Church can be credited with participating in the progress made and contributing to it. It developed a new social conscience.

Private property.

The Church has a role in discussing these issues. Social and economic issues are vital to her not from a technical point of view but in terms of moral and ethical issues involved. Ethical considerations include the nature of private property concerning which, within the Catholic Church, several conflicting views had developed. Pius XI proclaims private property to be essential for the development and freedom of the individual. Those who deny private property deny personal freedom and development. But, says Pius, private property has a social function as well. Private property loses its morality if it is not subordinated to the common good. Therefore, governments have a right to pursue redistribution policies. In extreme cases, the Pope recognizes that the State has a right to expropriate private property.

Capital and labour.

A related issue, says Pius, is the relation between capital and labour and the determination of fair wages. Pius develops the following ethical mandate: The Church considers it a perversion of industrial society, to have developed sharp opposite camps based on income. He welcomes all attempts to alleviate these cross differences. Three elements determine a fair wage: The worker's family responsibilities, the economic condition of the enterprise and the economy as a whole. The family has an innate right to development, but this is only possible within the framework of a functioning economy and sound enterprises. For this, Pius XI concludes that solidarity, not conflict, is a necessary condition given the mutual interdependence of the parties involved.

Social order.

Industrialization, says Pius XI, resulted in less freedom at the individual and communal level, because numerous free social entities got absorbed by larger ones. A society of individuals became a mass and class society. Today people are much less interdependent than in ancient times and become egoistic or class-conscious in order to recover some freedom for themselves. The pope demands more solidarity, especially between employers and employees through new forms of cooperation and communication. Pius draws a negative view of capitalism, especially of the anonymous international finance markets. He identifies here problems: dangers for small and medium-size enterprises who have insufficient access to capital markets and are squeezed or destroyed by the larger ones. He warns that capital interests can become a danger for states, who would be reduced to be "chained slaves of individual interests". The encyclical has been an important inspiration to modern distributist thought on seeking greater solidarity and subsidiarity than present capitalism.

Communism and socialism.

Regarding communism and socialism, Pius XI notes increasing differences. He condemns communism but also the social conditions which nourish it. He wants moderate socialism to distance itself from totalitarian communism as a practical matter and also on principle, in light of the dignity of the human person. Dignity and human freedom are ethical considerations, which cannot be solved by a hostile class confrontation. Ethics are based on religion and this is the realm where the Church meets industrial society.  117 "Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth."  118 "Socialism, on the other hand, wholly ignoring and indifferent to this sublime end of both man and society, affirms that human association has been instituted for the sake of material advantage alone."

Reception.

Ramsay MacDonald, the head of the British affiliate of the Socialist International, inquired to Cardinal Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster, on how the encyclical's statements on socialism applied to Catholics voting for or participating in socialist parties. The Cardinal stated "There is nothing in the encyclical which should deter Catholics from becoming members of the British Labour Party..."  Franklin D. Roosevelt had high praise for the encyclical and quoted it extensively on the evils of concentrated economic power.

Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. (born January 19, 1937) is an American political scientist. He is the co-founder, along with Robert Keohane, of the international relations theory of neoliberalism, developed in their 1977 book "Power and Interdependence". Together with Keohane, he developed the concepts of asymmetrical and complex interdependence. They also explored transnational relations and world politics in an edited volume in the 1970s. More recently, he explained the distinction between hard power and soft power, and pioneered the theory of soft power. His notion of "smart power" ("the ability to combine hard and soft power into a successful strategy") became popular with the use of this phrase by members of the Clinton Administration, and more recently the Obama Administration. He is the former Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he currently holds the position of University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus. In October 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Nye to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He is also a member of the Defense Policy Board.


Biography.

Casaroli was born in Castel San Giovanni in the province of Piacenza, Italy, to a family of humble roots. His father was a tailor in Piacenza. He was educated at the Collegio Alberoni in Piacenza the Episcopal Seminary of Bedonia, Piacenza, the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome where he earned a doctorate in canon law, and at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy.

Early career.

He was ordained to the priesthood on 27 May 1937 in Piacenza. He studied in Rome from 1937 to 1939. Beginning in 1940 he served in the Vatican Secretariat of State while also participating in pastoral ministry in the diocese of Rome from 1943. He was named Privy Chamberlain of His Holiness on 4 January 1945. He served as chaplain of Villa Agnese from 1950 to 1998. He was raised to the rank of Domestic prelate of His Holiness on 22 December 1954.  He served as an assistant to Cardinal Adeodato Giovanni Piazza at the First General Conference of the Latin American Bishops in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1955. He served as a faculty member of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy from 1958 to 1961. On 24 February 1961, he was appointed Undersecretary of the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, effectively deputy foreign minister. In 1964, he represented the Holy See at the exchange of instruments in ratification of the "modus vivendi" with Tunisia, concerning the situation of the Catholic Church. He was a signatory of the partial agreement between the Holy See and Hungary in Budapest on 15 September 1964. He negotiated with the Communist Czechoslovak government over the appointment of František Tomášek as apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Prague in February 1965. He was appointed secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs on 29 June 1967.  During the period following Vatican II, Casaroli gained a reputation as a highly skilled diplomat who was able to negotiate with regimes hostile to the Church. He headed the CSCE conference in Helsinki from 30 July to 1 August 1975.

Cardinal.

Casaroli was made a Cardinal-Priest of Ss. XII Apostoli in John Paul II's first consistory in 1979, and at the same time he became Secretary of State. Although he was seen as less hardline than any other close associate of John Paul, Casaroli's skillful diplomacy was seen by Wojtyła as an irreplaceable asset in the struggle against the Soviet Union. In 1985 he became Cardinal Bishop of the suburbicarian diocese of Porto-Santa-Rufina, and in 1990 he retired as Secretary of State, being succeeded by Angelo Sodano. He was Vice-Dean of the College of Cardinals from 1993 until his 1998 death of cardiorespiratory disease.  In November 2010, Mehmet Ali Ağca, who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981, alleged that Cardinal Casaroli was behind that assassination attempt.

Views.

Relations with Communism.

Casaroli's signing of treaties with Hungary in 1964 and Yugoslavia in 1966 was the first time the Holy See had opened itself in this way to Communist regimes, which had killed a great many Catholics since coming to power. Although his 2000 memoirs revealed a man hostile to Communism, his remarkable diplomatic skill made this hostility appear non-existent.  According to John O. Koehler, the KGB and its "brother organs" in Eastern Europe were well aware of Cardinal Casaroli's real opinions and influence. Therefore, his personal office was one of the primary espionage targets inside the Vatican.  The KGB was assisted in this by the Cardinal's own nephew, Marco Torreta, and Torreta's Czechoslovakian wife Irene Trollerova. According to Italian intelligence officials, Torreta had been a KGB informant since 1950.  According to Koehler: Irene returned from Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s, with a ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary, about 10 inches high, a beautiful work of renowned Czech ceramic art. The couple presented the statue to Cardinal Casaroli, who accepted gratefully. What a betrayal by his own nephew! Inside the revered religious icon was a "bug", a tiny but powerful transmitter, which was monitored from outside the building by the couple's handlers from the Soviet Embassy in Rome. The statue had been placed in an armoire in the dining room close to Cardinal Casaroli's office. Another eavesdropping device inside a rectangular piece of wood was hidden in the same armoire. Both were not discovered til 1990 during a massive probe initiated by Magistrate Rosario Priore in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. The bugs had been transmitting until that time."

Teilhard de Chardin.

On 10 June 1981, on the 100th anniversary of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's birth, "L'Osservatore Romano", the official Vatican newspaper, published a letter by Casaroli that praised the "astonishing resonance of his research, as well as the brilliance of his personality and richness of his thinking." Casaroli wrote that Teilhard had anticipated John Paul II's call to "be not afraid", embracing "culture, civilization and progress". The letter was antedated 12 May 1981, the day prior to the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, but was published during his convalescence. On 20 July 1981, a communiqué of the Press Office of the Holy See stated that the letter did not change the position of the warning issued by the Holy Office on 30 June 1962, which pointed out that Chardin's work contained ambiguities and grave doctrinal errors.

In popular culture.

Cardinal Casaroli was portrayed by veteran character actor Ben Gazzara in the 2005 miniseries, "Pope John Paul II".

Agostino Casaroli (24 November 1914 – 9 June 1998) was an Italian Catholic priest and diplomat for the Holy See, who became Cardinal Secretary of State. He was the most important figure behind the Vatican's efforts to deal with the persecution of the Church in the nations of the Soviet bloc after the Second Vatican Council.


Description.

Appearance.

The Lagotto Romagnolo is a curly coated dog with an appearance of being robust and hardy. All colors are allowed except black, the coat is dense and wooly in texture. The body is square and classified as medium in size.

Temperament.

The Lagotto is a Sporting breed. They generally have sharp senses, although their eyesight is more sensitive to motion than to detail. The breed is very loyal and loving, making them the perfect family companion. Some are easy to train, and many get along with other animals quite easily if they are socialized as puppies. Lagotti vary in their need for exercise, but should always be given stimulation to keep their minds occupied. In 1996 the first pair (Reno and Rosetta) in the UK, came from the Mandriole kennels near Comacchio where the dogs were still worked from traditional flat-bottomed punts as duck retrievers. These Lagotti, through subsequent exports from the UK which provided the foundation stock for Canada, USA and Australia, can be found behind many Lagotti worldwide. Visitors to the Lagotto Romagnolo Club of Great Britain breed, which stand at the world-famous Crufts Dog Show in the UK, will have seen photographs of British Lagotti (including Rosetta) retrieving hare, rabbit and various types of wildfowl. It is also worth noting that the photograph on the back of the first official video produced in Italy circa 1996, showed a group of Lagotti working - not truffling, but duck-shooting from a punt. In that punt were the parents and grandparents of Rosetta and Reno. The instinct to hunt, swim and retrieve is inborn and does not have to be encouraged. Lagotti have to be trained from an early age to look for truffles.  In modern times, the Lagotto has been bred primarily as a truffle-searching dog, and not as a retriever or hunting dog. Its highly developed nose makes it a prime search dog.  Some Lagotti are excellent swimmers, while some will only paddle. Some will retrieve from lakes, streams and other bodies of water without hesitation. They are lovable family pets and tend to like attention. Lagotti love to dig. Many owners give them a sandbox, or have a designated place to allow them to satisfy their digging urges. They also love to play seeking games and have very active and clever minds.

Grooming.

There are conflicting ideas on how to groom this breed. Some say they should be brushed regularly and others believe their coat should be allowed to grow to a naturally fluffy coat. The Lagotto coat gets matted easily, and the mats should be carefully pulled apart without tearing the coat. The Lagotto has a thick, waterproof double coat of hair rather than fur and should be groomed on a regular basis. It is recommended that the coat be cut down at least once every year.  If the coat is kept trimmed to approximately 1.5 inches all over the body and slightly longer on the head, it will be easier to maintain. Hair on the ears should be trimmed around the edges to the leather. If the ears show irritation or buildup of dirt and earwax, the hairs from the ear canal should be gently plucked out regularly. Some coats matt more easily than others. If left untended, Lagotti hair will grow to cover the eyes. The hair around their eyes should be clipped periodically to ensure that they can see.

Show grooming.

In the United States, the coat should be shown in a rustic style with no fluffing or blowing out. The coat should match the lines of the dog and the curls should be evident. The dog should have the appearance of the working dog that it is. If clipped down, the coat will need about 3 months of growth to be ready to show. Otherwise, shaping can be performed before a competition.

Health.

Lagotto live roughly 15–17 years. Some health issues, especially neurological disorders are associated with this breed; however, these are mostly attributable to poor breeding. Genetically testing prior to breeding is necessary to avoid the most common diseases in the breed. Issues include:  A new neurodegenerative disorder, called "Neuroaxonal Dystrophy", that was originally identified in Spanish Water Dogs has been identified in the breed in 2016. It is not known yet whether it is related to the disorders already associated with the Lagotto Romagnolo. https://os.genoscoper.com/crm/disorders/323_TECPR2_SWD/os/323_TECPR2_SWD.pdf  Lagotto puppies are crucial in research regarding epilepsy. In July 2011, researchers in Finland reported the discovery of a mutation in a gene called Lgi2 that may be a new candidate gene for human benign childhood epilepsy. Lgi2 is the first gene that can be linked directly to the remission that carriers experience after the age of ten. Lagotto breeders are now using genetic tests to screen for the mutation.

History.

The Lagotto is a breed of water retriever from the lowlands of Comacchio and marshlands of Ravenna, Italy. Modern water retrieving dog breeds are believed to have descended in part from the Lagotto Romagnolo.  Andrea Mantegna in the 1474 work titled "The Meeting" depicts a small dog in the lower left corner that resembles a Lagotto.

The Lagotto Romagnolo (plural Lagotti) is a breed of dog that comes from the Romagna sub-region of Italy. The name derives from Romagnol "can lagòt", meaning "water dog". Its traditional function is a gundog, specifically a water retriever; however, it is often used to hunt for truffles.


Design and development.

In 1972, the Yakovlev design bureau started work on a short- to medium-range airliner capable of carrying 100–120 passengers. It was intended to be a replacement for the Tupolev Tu-134 jet as well as the Ilyushin Il-18, Antonov An-24 and An-26 turboprop airliners. While the new airliner was required to operate out of relatively small airfields while maintaining good economy, as many Soviet airports had been upgraded to accommodate more advanced aircraft, it did not have to have the same ability to operate from grass strips as Yakovlev's smaller Yak-40. The requirement resulted in the largest, heaviest and most powerful aircraft designed by Yakovlev, until the even larger MC-21 took flight in 2017.  Initial design proposals included a straight-wing airliner powered by two Soloviev D-30 turbofans and resembling an enlarged Yak-40, but this was rejected as it was considered uncompetitive compared to Western airliners powered by high bypass ratio turbofans. Yakovlev settled on a design powered by three of the new Lotarev D-36 three-shaft high-bypass turbofans, which were to provide 63.90 kN (14,330 lbf) of thrust. Unlike the Yak-40, the new airliner would have swept wings.  The Yak-42 is a low-winged monoplane of all-metal construction, with a design lifespan of 30,000 one-hour flights. It has a pressurised fuselage of circular section, with the cabin designed to carry 120 passengers in six-abreast layout (or 100 passengers for local services with greater space allocated to carry-on luggage and coat stowage). The aircraft is flown by a flight crew of two pilots sitting side by side in a flight deck forward of the cabin. Access is via two airstairs, one in the underside of the rear fuselage, like that of the Yak-40, and one forward of the cabin on the port side. Two holds are located under the cabin, carrying baggage, cargo and mail.  All of the prototypes had main landing gear with two wheels each, with the first serial production aircraft, four main wheels were introduced. The wing layout underwent considerable revision during the design process, with the first prototype being built with a wing sweep of 11 degrees and the second prototype with a sweep of 23 degrees. After evaluation, the greater sweep of the second prototype was chosen for production. Early aircraft had a clean wing leading edge with no control surfaces, and plain trailing edge flaps. This changed in later aircraft, which were fitted with leading edge slats, with the trailing edge flaps slotted. Two engines were mounted in pods on either side of the rear fuselage, with the third embedded inside the rear fuselage, fed with air via an "S-duct" air inlet. An auxiliary power unit (APU) is also fitted in the rear fuselage. No thrust reversers are fitted. The aircraft has a T-tail, with both the vertical fin and the horizontal surfaces swept.

Operational history.

Testing.

The first of three prototypes, which was fitted with an 11-degree wing and registered "SSSR-1974", made its maiden flight on 7 March 1975. It was followed by the second prototype, ("SSSR-1975") with the 23-degree wing and a cabin with 20 rows of windows instead of 17 in the first prototype, and a third prototype ("SSSR-1976") fitted with improved de-icing gear.

In service.

The first production aircraft was completed on 28 April 1978, with the first scheduled passenger flight, on the Aeroflot Moscow-Krasnodar route taking place on 22 December 1980. Production was at first slow, with only 10 flown by mid-1981. Initial aircraft were fitted for 120 seats in a three-plus-three arrangement. This was soon changed to a first class section with two-plus-two seating, and a main cabin with 96 seats, giving a total of 104 seats.  In its first year of operation Aeroflot's Yak-42s carried about 200,000 passengers, mainly on routes from Moscow, but also on international services from Leningrad to Helsinki and from Donetsk to Prague, with the type being planned to enter wider service throughout the Aeroflot fleet. On 28 June 1982, however, the tailplane detached from an Aeroflot Yak-42 in flight owing to a failure of the actuator screw jack, causing the aircraft to crash fatally near Mazyr. The type was grounded as a result, not returning to service until October 1984.  An export order for seven aircraft was announced in 1982 by Aviogenex of Yugoslavia, but the contract lapsed. The availability of the longer-range Yak-42D variant from 1991 onwards gave rise to a few more export sales, to Bosnia, China, Cuba, and Iran. As of 1 January 1995 a total of 185 Yak-42 had been produced, including 105 Yak-42Ds.  Original production version. Max. takeoff weight 54,000 kg (119,050 lb). Version with modified avionics for use on international use ("mezhdunarodnyye linii" – international services). Entered service in July 1981 on the Leningrad-Helsinki route. Long-range version ("Dahl'niy" – long range) increased fuel. Replaced standard Yak-42 in production.  Derivative of Yak-42D with updated, western AlliedSignal avionics, spoilers to allow faster descent and enlarged cabin door to accommodate jet bridge. Also designated Yak-42A, Yak-42-100 and Yak-42D-100. Yak-42 used as testbed for radar for Yakovlev Yak-141 fighter. Conversion of a Yak-42 for geophysical survey and environmental monitoring. Fitted with large underwing pods containing electro-optical sensors. Conversion as testbed for Progress D-236 propfan engine. Single D-236 (rated at 8,090 kW (10,850shp)) mounted in place of starboard engine, on special pylon to give sufficient clearance for 4.2 m (13 ft 93⁄4 in) propellers. First flew 15 March 1991. A projected but unbuilt stretched airliner. Planned to be powered by three Progress D-436 turbofans, a stretched fuselage and new wings. Design developed into Yak-242. Further developed Yak-42M, with two underwing Aviadvigatel PS-90 turbofans. Design evolved into Irkut MC-21.

Operators.

As of July 2019, 22 Yak-42s remained in commercial airline service. Operators are Izhavia (8), KrasAvia (10) and Turuhan Aviacompany (4).

Accidents and incidents.

As of 15 February 2018, nine fatal Yak-42 accidents have occurred with a total of 570 casualties.

The Yakovlev Yak-42 (; NATO reporting name: "Clobber") is a 100/120-seat three-engined mid-range passenger jet. It was the first airliner produced in the Soviet Union to be powered by modern high-bypass turbofan engines.


History.

"Tabiteuea" is Gilbertese for "no chief allowed"; the island is traditionally egalitarian. In the late 1800s, the two islands were the site of a religious war when the populace of Tabiteuea North converted to Christianity and, led by a Hawaiian pastor called Kapu who had assembled a "hymn-singing army on a crusade", invaded and conquered Tabiteuea South, which had maintained traditional religious practice.  The Battle of Drummond's Island occurred during the United States Exploring Expedition in April 1841 at Tabiteuea, then known as Drummond's Island. After one sailor from sloop USS "Peacock", was captured by the islanders, the US party decided on exacting redress for the incident. Twelve islanders were killed in the fighting and others were wounded.  During the US Civil War, the Confederate States Navy steamer CSS Shenandoah visited the island on March 23, 1865 in search of United States whalers, but the whalers had fled the area. Captain James Waddell described the islanders as "of copper colour, short of statue, athletic in form, intelligent and docile" and were "without a stitch of clothing".  Tabiteuea Post Office opened around 1911 and was renamed Tabiteuea North around 1972. Tabiteuea South Post Office opened on 13 September 1965.

Education.

There is a government high school, Tabiteuea North Senior Secondary School, also known as Teabike College. Located in Eita, it serves the entire island.  There is also a government junior high school, Takoronga School in Terikiai, serving all of Tab North.  The elementary schools on Tab North are all government schools. They include:  Students from Bangai may attend either Nukantewaa School or Ueen Maungan te Raoi School; Bangai does not have enough residents, so the Kiribati authorities do not operate a school there.

References.

Exhibit: The Alfred Agate Collection: The United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 from the Navy Art Gallery

Ismail I (, ; July 17, 1487 – May 23, 1524), also known as Shah Ismail I (), was the founder of the Safavid dynasty, ruling from 1501 to 23 May 1524 as Shah of Iran (Persia).


Early life.

Sanjurjo was born in Pamplona. His father, Captain Justo Sanjurjo Bonrostra, was a Carlist. His mother was Carlota Sacanell Desojo.

Military career.

Early career.

He served in Cuba in 1896, in the Rif War (1909) in Morocco, and in the Rif War (1920), including the regaining of the territory in Melilla lost after the Battle of Annual in 1921. In 1922, he was assigned to investigate corruption in the army command of Larache. He was High Commissioner of Spain in Morocco and reached the rank of lieutenant general. In 1925 he participated in the amphibious landing at Alhucemas. With the completion of the 1920 Rif War, King Alfonso XIII awarded him the "Gran Cruz de Carlos III" on 28 March 1931. In 1928 he was made chief of a main directorate of the Civil Guard.

During the Second Republic.

In 1923, Miguel Primo de Rivera came to power in a military coup, ruling Spain as dictator. Gradually, Primo de Rivera's support faded, and he resigned in January 1930. General Dámaso Berenguer was ordered by the king to form a replacement government, which annoyed Sanjurjo, who considered himself far better qualified. Berenguer's dictablanda dictatorship failed to provide a viable alternative to Primo de Rivera. In the municipal elections of 12 April 1931, little support was shown for pro-monarchy parties in the major cities, and large numbers of people gathered in the streets of Madrid. Asked if the government could count on the support of Sanjurjo's Civil Guard, he rejected the suggestion. King Alfonso XIII abdicated, and the Second Spanish Republic was formed.  Despite Azaña's military reforms of 1931, Sanjurjo retained his post as the commander of the Civil Guard; under his command they continued to use their traditionally brutal tactics such as the "ley de fugas", the excuse of shooting prisoners and later claiming that they were attempting to escape during an incident of unrest in Seville.  Sanjurjo became one of the first generals appointed to the command of the Spanish Republican Army. His sympathies, however, remained with the monarchist cause. When he clashed with Prime Minister Manuel Azaña over the military reforms, he was replaced by General Miguel Cabanellas. He was demoted to chief of the customs officers in 1932 as a result of the events of Castilblanco and Arnedo involving the Civil Guard. His confrontation with the ministry, Azaña's military reforms, and the grants of regional autonomy to Catalonia and the Basque Country, led Sanjurjo to plot a rebellion with some Carlists under Manuel Fal Conde, Tomás Domínguez Arévalo, and other military officers. This rebellion, which was known as the Sanjurjada, was proclaimed in Seville on 10 August 1932. Sanjurjo asserted that the rebellion was only against the current ministry and not against the Republic. It achieved initial success in Seville but absolute failure in Madrid. Sanjurjo attempted to flee to Portugal, but in Huelva he decided to give himself up.  He was condemned to death, a sentence which was later commuted to life imprisonment in the penitentiary of the Dueso. In March 1934 he was granted amnesty by the Lerroux government and went into exile in Estoril, Portugal.

Coup.

When Niceto Alcalá-Zamora was replaced as President of the Republic by Azaña on 10 May 1936, Sanjurjo joined with Generals Emilio Mola, Francisco Franco and Gonzalo Queipo de Llano in a plot to overthrow the republican government. This led to the Nationalist uprising on 17 July 1936, which started the Spanish Civil War.  Determined to annihilate the Spanish Republic, when he was asked to become the leader of the rebellion by envoy Luis Bolín on 12 July 1936, Sanjurjo declared:

Death.

On 20 July 1936, Sanjurjo was killed in Estoril in a plane crash, when he tried to fly back to Spain. He chose to fly in a small biplane aircraft piloted by Juan Antonio Ansaldo. One of the main reasons for the crash was the heavy luggage that Sanjurjo insisted on bringing. Ansaldo had warned him that the load was too heavy, but Sanjurjo answered back: "I need to wear proper clothes as the new caudillo of Spain."  Unaccountably, Sanjurjo chose to fly in Ansaldo's plane rather than a much larger and more suitable airplane that was available. The larger plane was an 8-passenger de Havilland Dragon Rapide, the same one which had transported Franco from the Canary Islands to Morocco. Sanjurjo, however, apparently preferred the drama of flying with a "daring aviator" such as Ansaldo (who himself survived the crash).  When Mola also died in an aircraft accident, Franco was left as the sole effective leader of the Nationalist cause. This led to rumors that Franco had arranged the deaths of his two rivals, but no evidence has ever been produced to support that allegation.  In 2017 the Historical Memory Law was applied by the authorities of Navarre and required that the general's remains be disinterred, over the objections of surviving family, and reburied in the military section of a municipal cemetery in the Spanish city of Melilla—an enclave on the coast of Morocco where the general had once been in command. Further controversy ensued when the general was buried with military honors in a military Pantheon of Heroes, as confirmed by the army. The government of Navarre received assurances from the Ministry of Defense that special "honors were not offered" and that the remains were received as "just one more soldier".

In fiction.

The opening of the alternate history fiction writer Harry Turtledove's novel "Hitler's War", in his series "The War That Came Early", begins with Sanjurjo's flight from Portugal. The point of divergence is that he accepts the pilot's advice and abandons the luggage, the flight no longer being overloaded and thus arriving safely. His behaviour from that point on is described as if he diverged from that of the actual Franco, with Spain taking a less isolated role in World War II, joining the Axis Powers.

General José Sanjurjo y Sacanell, 1st Marquess of the Rif (; 28 March 1872 – 20 July 1936), was the senior of the three leaders of the Nationalist coup of July 1936, which started the Spanish Civil War.


Union of the Churches.

Wishing to end the Great Schism that divided the Catholic Church from Eastern Orthodoxy, Pope Gregory X sent an embassy to Michael VIII, who had reconquered Constantinople, putting an end to the remnants of the Latin Empire in the East, and he asked Latin despots in the East to curb their ambitions. Eastern dignitaries arrived at Lyon on 24 June 1274 presenting a letter from the Emperor. On 29 June 1274 (the Feast of Peter and Paul, patronal feast of the popes), Gregory celebrated Mass in St John's Church where both sides took part. The Greeks read the Nicene Creed, with the Western addition of the Filioque clause sung three times. The council was seemingly a success, but did not provide a lasting solution to the schism; the Emperor was anxious to heal the schism, but the Eastern clergy opposed the decisions of the Council. Patriarch Joseph of Constantinople abdicated, and was replaced by John Bekkos, a convert to the cause of union. In spite of a sustained campaign by Bekkos to defend the union intellectually, and vigorous and brutal repression of opponents by Michael, the vast majority of Byzantine Christians remained implacably opposed to union with the Latin "heretics". Michael's death in December 1282 put an end to the union of Lyons. His son and successor Andronicus II repudiated the union in the Council of Blachernae (1285), and Bekkos was forced to abdicate, being eventually exiled and imprisoned under house arrest until his death in 1297.

Plans for a Crusade.

The council drew up plans for a crusade to recover the Holy Land, which was to be financed by a tithe imposed for 6 years on all the benefices of Christendom. The plans were approved but nothing concrete was done. James I of Aragon wished to organize the expedition at once, but this was opposed by the Knights Templar.  Ambassadors of the Khan of the Tatars negotiated with the Pope, who asked them to leave Christians in peace during their war against Islam. The Mongol leader Abaqa Khan sent a delegation of 13-16 Mongols to the Council, which created a great stir, particularly when their leader underwent a public baptism. Among the embassy were David of Ashby, and the clerk Rychaldus. According to one chronicler, "The Mongols came, not because of the Faith, but to conclude an alliance with the Christians".  Abaqa's Latin secretary Rychaldus delivered a report to the Council, which outlined previous European-Ilkhanid relations under Abaqa's father, Hulagu, where after welcoming the Christian ambassadors to his court, Hulagu had agreed to exempt Latin Christians from taxes and charges, in exchange for their prayers for the Qaghan. According to Richardus, Hulagu had also prohibited the molestation of Frank establishments, and had committed to return Jerusalem to the Franks. Richardus told the assembly that even after Hulagu's death, Abaqa was still determined to drive the Mamluks from Syria.  At the Council, Pope Gregory promulgated a new Crusade to start in 1278 in liaison with the Mongols. The Pope put in place a vast program to launch the Crusade, which was written down in his “Constitutions for the zeal of the faith”. This text puts forward four main decisions to accomplish the Crusade: the imposition of a new tax during three years, the interdiction of any kind of trade with the Saracens, the supply of ships by the Italian maritime Republics, and the alliance of the West with Byzantium and the Il-Khan Abagha. However, despite papal plans, there was little support from European monarchs, who at this point were more likely to give lip service to the idea of a Crusade than to commit actual troops. The Pope's death in 1276 put an end to any such plans, and the money that had been gathered was instead distributed in Italy.

Other topics debated.

The council dealt with the reform of the Church, regarding which Gregory had sent out inquiries. Several bishops and abbots were deposed for unworthiness, and some mendicant orders were suppressed. On the other hand, the two new orders of Dominicans and Franciscans were approved.  There had been several lengthy vacancies of the Holy See, most recently the "sede vacante" that had lasted from the death of Clement IV, 29 November 1268, until Gregory's election, 1 September 1271. The council decided that in future the cardinals should not leave the conclave until they had elected a pope. This decision was suspended in 1276 by Pope Adrian V, and then revoked by Pope John XXI. It has since been re-established, and is the basis of present legislation on papal elections.  Lyon II was the first council to define the doctrine of Purgatory.  Finally, the council dealt with the Imperial throne, which Alfonso X of Castile claimed. His claim was disallowed by the Pope, and Rudolph I was proclaimed King of the Romans and future emperor on 6 June 1274.

The Second Council of Lyon was the fourteenth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, convoked on 31 March 1272 and convened in Lyon, Kingdom of Arles (in modern France), in 1274. Pope Gregory X presided over the council, called to act on a pledge by Byzantine emperor Michael VIII to reunite the Eastern church with the West. The council was attended by about 300 bishops, 60 abbots and more than a thousand prelates or their procurators, among whom were the representatives of the universities. Due to the great number of attendees, those who had come to Lyon without being specifically summoned were given "leave to depart with the blessing of God" and of the Pope. Among others who attended the council were James I of Aragon, the ambassador of the Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos with members of the Greek clergy and the ambassadors of Abaqa Khan of the Ilkhanate. Thomas Aquinas had been summoned to the council, but died en route at Fossanova Abbey. Bonaventure was present at the first four sessions, but died at Lyon on 15 July 1274. As at the First Council of Lyon, Thomas Cantilupe was an English attender and a papal chaplain.


Biography.

During the Nazi occupation of Voronezh, at the age of just 16, Feoktistov fought with the Soviet Army against the German troops, carrying out reconnaissance missions for the Voronezh Front. After being captured by a Waffen-SS Army patrol, Feoktistov was shot by a German officer. However, the bullet went right through his chin and neck and did not kill him. Feoktistov was able to crawl out later and then make his way to the Soviet lines.  After the war was over, Feoktistov enrolled in the Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School as an engineering student and he graduated in 1949. Feoktistov also later earned a doctorate in physics. He joined Mikhail Tikhonravov's OKB (design bureau), and in 1955, Feoktistov formed part of the team that went on to design the Sputnik satellites, the Vostok space capsule, the Voskhod space capsule, and the Soyuz space capsule under the leadership of the Soviet Chief Designer Sergey Korolev. During this time, Feoktistov also worked on a design for an ion-propelled spacecraft to be capable of taking humans to Mars.  In 1964, Feoktistov was selected as part of a group of engineers for cosmonaut training, and in October of that very same year, he was hastily assigned to the multi-disciplinary Voskhod 1 crew. He was the first civilian to make a space flight, and the only cosmonaut in the Soviet Union who was not a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. During his space flight, he spent just over 24 hours and 17 minutes in space.  After the flight of Voskhod 1, Feoktistov's training for any further space mission was discontinued for medical reasons. However, Feoktistov continued his outer space engineering work, and he later became the head of the Soviet space design bureau that designed the Salyut and Mir space stations.  In October 1969, Konstantin Feoktistov and Georgi Beregovoi traveled as guests of NASA throughout the US, visiting any city they chose and Disneyland in California – they were joined on the trip by US astronauts as hosts, including Eugene Cernan, Neil Armstrong and others. Kirk Douglas and others hosted receptions for them in Hollywood – they were protected by special agents of the US State Department on request of NASA. Almost every place they went when accompanied by Eugene Cernan, if a band was present the song "Fly Me to the Moon" was played – when they visited Disneyland they enjoyed the ride Trip To The Moon, then joked with the US astronauts that they went to Disneyland and not the moon. It was a trip that all enjoyed and international friendships were made. Feoktistov resigned from his engineering position with Energia and then returned to Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School as a professor in 1990.

Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov (; 7 February 1926 – 21 November 2009) was a Soviet cosmonaut and an eminent space engineer. As a cosmonaut Feoktistov flew on Voskhod 1, the first spacecraft to carry three crew members. Feoktistov also wrote several books on space technology and exploration. The Feoktistov crater on the far side of the Moon is named in his honor.


Early life.

He was born Laurent Gouvion in Toul, Three Bishoprics (now Meurthe-et-Moselle), the eldest child of Jean-Baptiste Gouvion, a tanner, and his wife Anne-Marie Mercier. He adopted the name Saint-Cyr after his mother, who had abandoned him at an early age.  He went to Rome when he was eighteen in order to study painting, but, although he continued his artistic studies after his return to Paris in 1784, he never adopted the profession of a painter.  He married Anne Gouvion (Toul, 2 November 1775 - Paris, 18 June 1844) and had issue, including Laurent François, Marquis de Gouvion Saint-Cyr (30 December 1815 - 30 January 1904), married in Saint-Bouize on 17 August 1847 to Marie Adélaïde Bachasson de Montalivet (5 November 1828 - 14 April 1880), daughter of Marthe Camille Bachasson, Count of Montalivet, and had issue.

Revolutionary Wars.

In 1792 he was chosen a captain in a volunteer battalion, and served on the staff of General Custine. Promotion rapidly followed, and in the course of two years he rose to "chef de brigade", "général de brigade" and "général de division". He commanded the centre division of Jean Victor Marie Moreau's army in the Rhine Campaign of 1796, aiding in the celebrated retreat from Bavaria to the Rhine.  In 1798 he succeeded André Masséna in the command of the army of Italy. In the following year he commanded the left wing of Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's army fighting in Germany; when Jourdan was succeeded by Masséna, he joined the army of Moreau in Italy, where he distinguished himself in face of the great difficulties that followed the defeat of Novi. Moreau disliked Saint-Cyr for his sense of righteousness and incorruptibility. Rumours were soon spreading that Saint-Cyr was a "bad bed fellow". Moreau also accused him of not supporting his brother generals though General Ney and Davout often thanked him for support after battles. When Moreau, in 1800, was appointed to the command of the army of the Rhine, Gouvion Saint-Cyr was named his principal lieutenant, and on 9 May gained a victory over General Kray at Biberach. He was not, however, on good terms with his commander and retired to France after the first operations of the campaign.  In 1801 he was sent to Spain to command the army intended for the invasion of Portugal ("see War of the Oranges"), and was named grand officer of the Legion of Honour. When a treaty of peace was shortly afterwards concluded with Portugal, he succeeded Lucien Bonaparte as ambassador at Madrid.

Napoleonic Wars.

Saint-Cyr was a stoic in an age of pragmatism and glory. His refusal to sign the proclamation of congratulation for declaring the birth of the empire resulted in his name not being included in the first list of Napoleonic Marshals, while commanders such as Lannes, Bessières and Soult who had not had independent command experience were included. For the whole of his life Saint-Cyr believed that Napoleon deliberately refused him troops just to disgrace him. In 1803 he was appointed to the command of an army corps in Italy, in 1805 he served with distinction under Masséna, and in 1806 he was engaged in the campaign in southern Italy. When he returned to Paris to protest his treatment in Naples, Napoleon sent him back to his post on pain of death. He took part in the 1807 campaigns in Prussia and Poland, and in 1808, in which year he was made a count, he commanded an army corps in Catalonia; but, not wishing to comply with certain orders he received from Paris, he resigned his command and remained in disgrace till 1811.  He was still a "général de division", having been excluded from the first list of marshals. On the opening of the Russian campaign, Saint-Cyr received command of the VI Corps, and on 18 August 1812 won a victory over the Russians at Polotsk, in recognition of which he was made a marshal. The Russians, under Barclay de Tolly, were burning everything as they retreated back towards Moscow, and had just burned nearby Smolensk. It was just prior to the victory at Polotsk on the banks of the Daugava river, however, that Oudinot was wounded, and thus Saint-Cyr assumed his command.  In October 1812 Saint-Cyr was driven out of Polotsk. He received a severe wound in one of the battles during the general retreat. Saint-Cyr distinguished himself at the battle of Dresden (26–27 August 1813) and in the defence of that place against the Allies after the battle of Leipzig, capitulating only on 11 November, when Napoleon had retreated to the Rhine. In this year, Saint Cyr's relation with the Emperor warmed as Napoleon commented that Saint Cyr had no match in all of the marshalate and was the equal of Napoleon himself in defence. On the day he received his long overdue baton he wrote a lengthy letter to his wife and true to his character he devoted only one line to his promotion.

Last years.

On the Bourbon Restoration he was created a Peer of France, and in July 1815 was appointed War Minister, but resigned his office in the following November. During this appointment he tried to assist long-time friend and fellow marshal Michel Ney by providing him a jury of four other Napoleonic Marshals, but was disgraced when Marshal Moncey refused to even sit in it. In June 1817 he was appointed Marine Minister a pretext for him to resume the place of War Minister, which he did in September and continued to discharge till November 1819. During this time he initiated many reforms, particularly in respect of measures tending to make the army a national rather than a dynastic force. He made efforts to safeguard the rights of veteran soldiers of the Empire, organized the General Staff, and revised the code of military law and the pension regulations. He was made a marquess in 1817. Laurent de Gouvion-Saint-Cyr died on 17 March 1830 in Hyères, a town in the southeast of France.

In literature.

Marshal Saint-Cyr is mentioned in Joseph Conrad's short story "The Duel" (as well as Ridley Scott's film adaptation The Duellists) as the commander of Armand d'Hubert after the second and final restoration of Louis XVIII as King of France.

Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr, 1st Marquis of Gouvion-Saint-Cyr (13 April 1764 – 17 March 1830) was a French commander in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars who rose to Marshal of the Empire and Marquis.


Biography.

Hubbert was born in San Saba, Texas. He attended the University of Chicago, where he received his B.S. in 1926, his M.S. in 1928, and his Ph.D in 1937, studying geology, mathematics, and physics. He worked as an assistant geologist for the Amerada Petroleum Company for two years while pursuing his Ph.D., additionally teaching geophysics at Columbia University. He also served as a senior analyst at the Board of Economic Warfare. He joined the Shell Oil Company in 1943, retiring from that firm in 1964. After he retired from Shell, he became a senior research geophysicist for the United States Geological Survey until his retirement in 1976. He also held positions as a professor of geology and geophysics at Stanford University from 1963 to 1968, and as a professor at UC Berkeley from 1973 to 1976.  Hubbert was an avid technocrat. He co-founded Technocracy Incorporated with Howard Scott. Hubbert wrote a study course that was published without attribution called the Technocracy Study Course, which advocates a non-market economics form of energy accounting, in contrast to the current price system method. Hubbert was a member of the board of governors, and served as secretary of education in that organization.

Research.

Hubbert made several contributions to geophysics, including a mathematical demonstration that rock in the earth's crust, because it is under immense pressure in large areas, should exhibit plasticity, similar to clay. This demonstration explained the observed results that the earth's crust deforms over time. He also studied the flow of underground fluids.  Based on theoretical arguments, Hubbert (1940) proposed a constitutive equation formula_1 for absolute permeability formula_2 of an underground water or oil reservoir where formula_3 is the average grain diameter and formula_4 is a dimensionless proportionality constant. However, Kozeny (1927) proposed a constitutive equation for absolute permeability which contains Hubbert's proposal as a factor. Hubbert (1940, 1956) also presented a force potential, denoted formula_5 or formula_6, that bears his name:  Some years later Hubbert (1956) showed that Darcy's law can be derived from the Navier-Stokes equation of motion of a viscous fluid.  Hubbert is best known for his studies on the size of oil fields and natural gas reserves, and the limits these impose on rates of oil and gas production. He predicted that, for an oil-producing area, from an oil-producing province, a nation, or the planet as a whole, the rate of petroleum production of the reserve over time would resemble a bell curve. Based on his theory, he presented a paper to the 1956 meeting of the American Petroleum Institute in San Antonio, Texas, which predicted that overall petroleum production would peak in the United States between 1965, which he considered most likely, and 1970, which he considered an upper-bound. At first his prediction received much criticism, for the most part because many other predictions of oil capacity had been made over the preceding half century, but these had usually been based on the reserves-to-production ratio, had not taken into account future discoveries, and had proven false. Hubbert became famous when U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and began to decline, as he had predicted.  In 1974, Hubbert projected that global oil production would peak in 1995 "if current trends continue". Various subsequent predictions have been made by others as trends have fluctuated in the intervening years.  Hubbert believed that solar power would be a practical renewable energy replacement for fossil fuels, and that nuclear energy in breeder reactors would be able to sustain us for centuries. He also states that "provided world population can somehow be brought under control, we may at last have found an energy supply (uranium) adequate for our needs for at least the next few centuries of the 'foreseeable future'."

Contributions.

Hubbert's contributions to science have been summarized as follows:

Accolades.

Hubbert was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was long affiliated with the Geological Society of America, receiving their Arthur L. Day Medal in 1954, being elected President of the Society in 1962, and receiving the Society's Penrose Medal in 1973. He received the Vetlesen Prize from the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation and Columbia University in 1981. He also received the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1981.

Marion King Hubbert (October 5, 1903 – October 11, 1989) was an American geologist and geophysicist. He worked at the Shell research lab in Houston, Texas. He made several important contributions to geology, geophysics, and petroleum geology, most notably the Hubbert curve and Hubbert peak theory (a basic component of peak oil), with important political ramifications. He was often referred to as "M. King Hubbert" or "King Hubbert".