Israel and Judah were Iron Age kingdoms of the old Near East. The area of time covered in this page is from the first mention of the name Israel in the archaeological record (1200 BCE) to the end of a independent Judean kingdom near the time of Jesus Christ.

The two kingdoms arose on the most eastern coast of the Mediterranean, the most western part of the Fertile Crescent, between the old empires of Egypt to the south, Assyria, Babylonia, later Persia to the north and east, Greece and later Rome across the sea to the west. The area is small, maybe only 100 miles north to south and 40 or 50 miles east to west.

Israel and Judah were from the Canaanite culture of the late Bronze Age, and were based on villages that formed and grew in the southern Levant highlands (today for the region between the coastal plain and the Jordan Valley) between c. 1200-1000 BCE. Israel became an important local power in the 9th and 8th centuries BCE before falling to the Assyrians.  The southern kingdom, Judah, became rich inside the greater empires of the region before a revolt against Babylon led to it being destroyed early in the 6th century.

Judean exiles returned from Babylon early in the following Persian period, starting a Judahite presence in the province of Yehud, as Judah was now called. Yehud was absorbed into the subsequent Greek-ruled kingdoms which followed the conquests of Alexander the Great. In the 2nd century BC, the Jews went up against Greek rule and created the Hasmonean kingdom, which became first a Roman dependency and soon went under the rule of the Roman Empire.

Late Bronze Age background (1550-1200 BCE)

Geography and human settlement
The eastern Mediterranean seaboard - the Levant - goes 400 miles north to south from the Taurus Mountains to the Sinai desert, and 70 to 100 miles east to west between the sea and the Arabian desert. The coastal area of the southern Levant, large in the south and becoming short to the north, the southernmost part has a zone of foothills, the Shephalah; like the plain this area narrows as it goes northwards, ending at Mount Carmel. East of the plain and the Shephalah is a mountainous ridge, the "hill country of Judah" in the south, the "hill country of Ephraim" north of that, then Galilee and the Lebanon mountains. To the east again lie the steep-sided valley occupied by the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and the wadi of the Arabah, which continues down to the eastern arm of the Red Sea. Beyond the plateau is the Syrian Desert, separating the Levant from Mesopotamia. To the southwest is Egypt, to the northeast Mesopotamia. "The Levant thus constitutes a narrow corridor whose geographical setting made it a constant area of contention between more powerful entities".

The central and northern part of the Levantine coast was known in Classical times as Phoenicia; the southernmost portion was known to the Egyptians as Canaan, by which they seem to have meant all their Asian possessions. In the bible Canaan can mean all of the land west of the Jordan river, or, more narrowly, the coastal strip. By Classical times the name Canaan had been dropped in favour of "Philistia", "Land of the Philistines", despite the fact that the Philistines had long since disappeared. The modern name "Palestine" is derived from this. Northeast of Canaan/Palestine was Aram, later called Syria after the Assyrians, who had likewise long since vanished.

Settlement during the Late Bronze Age was concentrated in the coastal plain and along major communication routes, with the central hill-country only sparsely inhabited; each city had its own ruler, constantly at odds with his neighbours and appealing to the Egyptians to adjudicate his differences. One of these Canaanite states was Jerusalem: letters from the Egyptian archives indicate that it followed the usual Late Bronze pattern of a small city with surrounding farmlands and villages; unlike most other Late Bronze city-states, there is  no indication that it was destroyed at the end of the period.

Canaan and the Late Bronze collapse
Canaan in the 13th and early 12th centuries had people of various origins, united by a common socioeconomic system of city-states administered and controlled by Egypt. Egyptian power and the Canaanite city-state system collapsed. From the collapse two new communities emerged in the 12th century BCE, the Israelites in the hill country and the Philistines in the southern part of the coastal plain. The Philistines clearly represent the arrival of a considerable number of outsiders, probably from Cyprus, with their own non-indigenous culture.  The Israelites are just as clearly indigenous to Canaan:  to take linguistics as just one indicator, Judahite and Israelite Hebrew of the early 1st millennium BCE group with Phoenician, Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite; and within that grouping a "core Canaanite" of Israelite and Phoenician can be distinguished from a "fringe Canaanite" of Judahite, Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite.

The causes of the Bronze Age collapse - which extended throughout the eastern Mediterranean - are obscure.  Drought, famine and other stresses may be behind the widespread population movements of the time.  Whatever the cause, several important Canaanite cities were destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age (over a period of more than a century), and Canaanite culture was gradually absorbed into that of the Philistines, Phoenicians and Israelites.

Pre-Exilic period

Iron Age I (1200-1000 BCE)

The Merneptah stele, erected by an Egyptian pharaoh about 1200 BC, contains the first record of the name Israel: "Israel is laid waste and his seed is not." This Israel, identified as a people, were probably in the northern part of the central highlands. As chaos spread, people went to live in the previously unsettled highlands: surveys have identified more than 300 small settlements, most of them new and the largest with a population of no more than 300, in the Palestinian highlands during Iron Age I. The villages were bigger and more numerous  in the northern regions (biblical Manasseh and Ephraim), although no settlements can be described as urban. The total settled population at the beginning of the period was about 20,000, and double this number by the end. Nevertheless, while Iron Age I villages with features such as four-roomed houses, collar-rim store jars, and hewn water-cisterns are counted as Israelite when found in the highlands, it is in fact impossible to differentiate these from Canaanite sites of the same period; nor is it possible to distinguish between Hebrew and Canaanite inscriptions down to the 10th century.

In Iron Age I the highlands lack any sign of centralised authority, or of temples, shrines, or centralised worship in general (although cult-objects associated with the Canaanite god El have been found); almost the sole marker distinguishing the highland "Israelite" villages from Cannanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether this can be taken as an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute.

The same period saw the rise of the kingdoms of  the kingdoms of Aram Damascus and Ammon to the east of the northern hill country, Moab (east of the Dead Sea), and Edom (in the Arabah south of the Dead Sea), in that order.

Iron Age II (1000-586 BCE)
An inscription of the Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq I, probably identical with the biblical Shishak, record a series of  campaigns apparently directed at the area immediately north of Jerusalem in the second half of the 10th century BCE. About a hundred years later, in the 9th century BCE, the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III names Ahab of Israel among his enemies at the battle of Qarqar (853 BCE), while in the Mesha stele (c.830 BCE) a king of Moab celebrates his success in throwing off the oppression of the "House of Omri" (i.e. Israel). Similarly, the Tel Dan stele tells of the death of a king of Israel, probably Jehoram, at the hands of an Aramaen king about 841 BCE. Excavations at Samaria, the Israelite capital, further reinforce the impression of a powerful, centralised kingdom in the northern highlands during the 9th and 8th centuries. In the second half of the 8th century king Hoshea of Israel revolted against the Assyrians, and was crushed (c.722 BCE). Part of the population was deported, outside settlers were brought in to replace them, and Israel became an Assyrian province.

The first evidence for the existence of an organised kingdom in the southern region comes from the mid 9th century Tel Dan stele, which  mentions the death of a king of the "House of David" alongside the king of Israel; the contemporary Mesha stele may also mention the House of David, although the reconstruction which allows this reading is disputed. It is generally assumed that this "House of David" is identical with the biblical dynasty, but the archaeological evidence from surface surveys indicates that during the 10th and 9th centuries Jerusalem was only one of the four large villages in the area, with no sign of primacy over its neighbours. It was only in the last part of the 8th century that Jerusalem experienced a period of rapid growth, achieving a population far greater than at any time before and clear primacy over the surrounding towns. The older scholarly reconstruction  of events is that this was due to an influx of refugees from Israel following its conquest by the Assyrians (c.722 BC), but the newer view is that it reflects a cooperative effort between Assyria and the kings of Jerusalem to establish Judah as a pro-Assyrian vassal state exercising control over the valuable olive industry. The sudden collapse of the Assyrian power in the last half of the 7th century led to an unsuccessful bid for independence under king Josiah, followed by the destruction of Jerusalem by Assyria's successor, the neo-Babylonian empire (587/586 BCE).

Exilic and Post-Exilic period

Babylonian and Persian periods (586-333 BCE)
In 586 BCE, the Babylonians, under king Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple of Solomon, ended the Davidic kingship, and carried the people into captivity. Only the poorest were left behind in Judah, now the Babylonian province of Yehud with its capital at Mizpah in the former territory of Benjamin, north of Jerusalem. A few years later, again according to the bible, the governor of Yehud was murdered by rivals, triggering another exodus of refugees, this time to Egypt. Thus by about 580 the people of Judah were to be found in three separate locations, the elite in Babylon (where, incidentally, they appear to have been well treated), a large community in Egypt, and a remnant in Judah. The Exile ended when Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon (traditionally 538 BCE). The Persians reconstituted Judah/Yehud as a province ("Yehud medinata") within the satrapy "Beyond the River", and over the following century some of the exiles returned to Jerusalem. There they eventually rebuilt the Temple (traditionally 516/515 BCE), but for over a century the administrative capital remained at Mizpah. Samaria, meanwhile, continued as the province of Semarina within the same satrapy as Yehud.

The Persian Period
In 539 BCE the Persians conquered Babylon and in 537 BCE, inaugurated the Persian period of Jewish history.  In 520 BCE Cyrus the Great allowed Jews to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple (completed 515 BCE).  He appointed Zerubbabel (the grandson of the second to last Judean king, Jehoiachin) governor, but did not allow the restoration of the kingdom. The influence of Zoroastrianism on monotheism, Judaism, as well as Christianity are still the subject of academic debate.

Without a powerful king, the Temple became more powerful, and priests became the dominant authority.  However, the Second Temple had been constructed under a foreign power, and there were lingering questions about its legitimacy.  This provided the condition for various sects to develop within Judaism over the coming centuries, each of which claimed to represent "Judaism". Most of these typically discouraged social intercourse, especially marriage, with members of other sects.

The end of the Babylonian Exile saw not only the construction of the Second Temple, but, according to the Documentary Hypothesis, the final version ion of the Torah as well.  Although the priests controlled the monarchy and the Temple, scribes and sages (who later became the rabbis) monopolized the study of the Torah, which (starting from the time of Ezra) was read publicly on market-days. These sages developed and maintained an oral tradition alongside of the Holy Writ, and identified with the prophets.  According to Geza Vermes, such scribes were often addressed using a basic term of respect, "lord."

Hellenistic and Roman periods (333 BCE-70 CE)

The Hellenistic period began in 332 BCE when Alexander the Great conquered Persia.  Upon his death in 323 BCE, his empire was divided among his generals.  At first, Judea was ruled by the Egyptian-Hellenic Ptolemies, but in 198 BCE, the Syrian-Hellenic Seleucid Empire, under Antiochus III, seized control over Judea.

The Hellenistic Period saw the canonization of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), according to one theory, and the emergence of extra-Biblical sacred traditions.  The earliest evidence of a Jewish mysticism tradition surrounds the book of Ezekiel, written during the Babylonian Exile.  Virtually all known mystical texts, however, were written at the end of the Second Temple period.  Some scholars think the esoteric traditions of the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), were influenced by  Persian beliefs, Platonic philosophy and Gnosticism.

2 Esdras 14:45-46, which was written in the second century CE, declares: "Make public the twenty-four books that you wrote first, and let the worthy and the unworthy read them; but keep the seventy that were written last, in order to give them to the wise among your people."  This is the first known reference to the canonized Hebrew Bible, and the seventy non-canonical texts may have been mystical; the Talmud suggests other mystical traditions which may have their roots in Second Temple Judaism.

The Near East was cosmopolitan, especially during the Hellenistic period.  Several languages were used, and the matter of the lingua franca is still subject of some debate. The Jews almost certainly spoke Aramaic among themselves. Greek was often used throughout the entire eastern portion of the Mediterranean.  Judaism was rapidly changing, reacting and adapting to a larger political, cultural, and intellectual world, and in turn drawing the interests of non-Jews.
Historian Shaye Cohen observed:
All the Judaisms of the Hellenistic period, of both the diaspora and the land of Israel, were Hellenized, that is, were integral parts of the culture of the ancient world. Some varieties of Judaism were more hellenized than others, but none was an island unto itself. It is a mistake to imagine that the land of Palestine preserved a "pure" form of Judaism and that the diaspora was the home of adulterated or diluted forms of Judaism. The term "Hellenistic Judaism" makes sense, then, only as a chronological indicator for the period from Alexander the Great to the Macabees or perhaps to the Roman conquests of the first century BCE. As a descriptive term for a certain type of Judaism, however, it is meaningless because all the Judaisms of the Hellenistic period were "Hellenistic." (Cohen 1987: 37)

Cultural Struggles with Hellenism
Many Jews lived in the Diaspora, and the Judean provinces of Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee were populated by many Gentiles (who often showed an interest in Judaism).  Jews had to live with the values of Hellenism and Hellenistic philosophy, which were often directly at odds with their own values and traditions.  Broadly, Hellenistic culture saw itself as a civilizor, bringing civilized values and ways to peoples they thought of as insular or either backwards or degenerate.

For example, Greek-style bath houses were built in sight of the Temple in Jerusalem, for instance, and even in that city the gymnasium became a center of social, athletic, and intellectual life. Many Jews, including some of the more aristocratic priests, embraced these institutions, although Jews who did so were often looked down upon due to their circumcision, which Jews saw as the mark of their covenant with God, but which Hellenistic culture viewed as an aesthetic defacement of the body.  Consequently, some Jews began to abandon the practice of circumcision (and thus their covenant with God), while others bridled at Greek domination.

At the same time that Jews were confronting the cultural differences at their door, they had to confront a paradox in their own tradition: their Torah laws applied only to them, and to proselytes, but their God, they believed, was the one and only God of all.  This situation led to new interpretations of the Torah, some of which were influenced by Hellenic thought and in response to Gentile interest in Judaism. It was in this period that many concepts from early Greek philosophy entered or influenced Judaism, as well as debates and sects within the religion and culture of the time.

In 331 BCE Alexander the Great took over the Persian Empire. Upon his death in 323 BCE his empire crumbled, and the province of Yehud became part of the kingdom of Egypt, ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty. Ptolemaic rule was mild: Alexandria became the largest Jewish city in the world, and Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt (281-246 BCE) promoted Jewish culture, sponsoring the Septuagint translation of the Torah. This period also saw the beginning of the Pharisees and other Jewish Second Temple parties such as the Sadducees and Essenes. But in the early 2nd century BCE Yehud fell to the Seleucid Syrian ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (174-163 BCE), who, in contrast to the tolerance shown by the Ptolemids, attempted complete Hellenization of the Jews. His desecration of the Temple sparked a national rebellion, which ended in the expulsion of the Syrians and the re-consecration of the Temple under the Maccabees

The kingdom established by the Maccabees was a conscious attempt to revive the Judah described in the bible: a Jewish monarchy ruled from Jerusalem and stretching over all the territories once ruled by David and Solomon. In order to carry out this project the Hasmonean kings conquered (and forcibly converted to Judaism) the one-time Moabites, Edomites and Ammonites, as well as the lost kingdom of Israel.

Generally, the Jews accepted foreign rule when they were only required to pay tribute, and otherwise allowed to govern themselves internally. Nevertheless, Jews were divided between those favoring hellenization and those opposing it, and were divided over allegiance to the Ptolemies or Seleucids.  When the High Priest Simon II died in 175 BCE, conflict broke out between supporters of his son Onias III (who opposed hellenization, and favored the Ptolemies) and his son Jason (who favored hellenization, and favored the Seleucids).  A period of political intrigue followed, with priests such as Menelaus bribing the king to win the High Priesthood, and accusations of murder of competing contenders for the title. The result was a brief civil war.

Huge numbers of Jews flocked to Jason's side, and in 167 BCE the Seleucid king Antiochus IV invaded Judea, entered the Temple, and stripped it of money and ceremonial objects.  Jason fled to Egypt, and Antiochus imposed a program of forced hellenization, requiring Jews to abandon their own laws and customs under threat of slaughter.  At this point Mattathias and his five sons, John, Eleazar, Simon, Jonathan, and Judah Maccabee, priests of the Hasmon family living in the rural village of Modein (pronounced "Mo-Ah-Dein"), assumed leadership of a bloody and ultimately successful revolt against the Seleucids.

Judah liberated Jerusalem in 165 BCE and restored the Temple.  Fighting continued, and Judah and his brother Jonathan were killed. In 141 BCE an assembly of priests and others affirmed Simon as high priest and leader, in effect establishing the Hasmonean dynasty.  When Simon was killed in 135 BCE, his son (and Judah's nephew) John Hyrcanus took his place as high priest and king.

The Hasmonean kingdom
After defeating the Seleucid forces, John Hyrcanus established a new monarchy in the form of the priestly Hasmonean dynasty in 152 BCE — thus making priests as political as well as religious authorities.  Although the Hasmoneans were popularly seen as heroes and leaders for resisting the Seleucids, some regarded their reign as lacking the religious legitimacy conferred by descent from the Davidic dynasty of the First Temple Era.

Sadducees, Essenes, and Pharisees
The rift between the priests and the sages grew during the Hellenistic period, when the Jews faced new political and cultural struggles.  Around this time the Sadducee party emerged as the party of the priests and allied elites (the name Sadducee comes from Zadok, the high priest of the first Temple).

The Essenes were another early mystical-religious movement, who are believed to have rejected either the Seleucid appointed high priests, or the Hasmonean high priests, as wrong.  But they soon rejected the Second Temple, arguing that the Essene community was itself the new Temple, and that obedience to the law represented a new form of sacrifice.

Although their lack of concern for the Second Temple alienated the Essenes from the great mass of Jews, their notion that the sacred could exist outside of the Temple was shared by another group, the Pharisees ("separatists"), based within the community of scribes and sages. The meaning of the name is unclear, though.

During the Hasmonean period, the Sadducees and Pharisees functioned primarily as political parties (the Essenes not being as politically oriented). The political differences between the Sadducees and Pharisees became evident when Pharisees demanded that the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannai choose between being king and being High Priest in the traditional manner.  This demand led to a brief civil war that ended with a bloody repression of the Pharisees, although at his deathbed the king called for a reconciliation between the two parties.  Alexander was succeeded by his widow, whose brother was a leading Pharisee.  Upon her death her elder son, Hyrcanus II, sought Pharisee support, and her younger son, Aristobulus, sought the support of the Sadducees.

In 64 BCE the Roman general Pompey took over Jerusalem and made the Jewish kingdom a client of Rome. In 57-55 BCE Aulus Gabinius, proconsul of Syria, split it into Galilee, Samaria & Judea, with 5 district Sanhedrin/Synedrion (councils of law). In 40-39 BCE Herod the Great was appointed King of the Jews by the Roman Senate, but in 6 CE his successor, Herod Archelaus, ethnarch of Judea, was deposed by the emperor Augustus and his territories annexed as Iudaea Province under direct Roman administration: this marked the end of Judah as an even theoretically independent kingdom.

Religion
Israel and Judah inherited the religion of late first-millennium Canaan, and Canaanite religion in turn had its roots in the religion of second-millennium Ugarit. In the 2nd millennium, polytheism was expressed through the concepts of the divine council and the divine family.

Related pages

References

History of ancient Israel and Judah


The Church of St Francis Xavier is a Roman Catholic parish of the Archdiocese of Singapore, established in 1959 to cater to the needs of the residents of Serangoon Gardens as well as the neighbourhoods of Braddell Heights and Serangoon.

Following Major renovations in the year 2000, the church now serves about 5,000 parishioners and is one of the larger Catholic churches in the Serangoon district.

History
In early 1957, Archbishop Olçomendy purchased a 5-acre plot of land in the Serangoon Garden Estate.

Originally planned to house British military forced based in Singapore, the area housed around 15,000 people back in the 1950s. This land would have the Church as well as a primary school managed by the Infant Jesus Sisters.

After the land in Serangoon Garden was purchased, Father Philippe Meisonnier was appointed to take charge of the church building efforts. Together with members of the Church building committee, Father Meisonnier wasted no time, visiting the people every evening with his trademark fabric bag slung on his shoulders, to make personal appeals for funds to build the church.

Finally on 11 January 1959, Archbishop Olçomendy officially blessed the new Church with Father Rene Challet appointed to be its first parish priest. By 1964, the first Parish Council was set up to act as an advisory body to the parish priest. The original parish boundary was centred around the Serangoon Garden Estate, and extended outwards to include Braddell Heights, St Helier's Avenue, Brighton Crescent and Plantation Avenue.

Subsequently, in the 1970s, the area bounded by the Johor Straits, the Ponggol River, the Seletar River and Yio Chu Kang Road was carved out to be under the Church of St Vincent de Paul in 1970. The areas under Ang Mo Kio New Town were also divided between the Church of the Holy Spirit and St Francis Xavier Church to manage.

With a growing Catholic community in the parish, a Parish Social Centre was built in 1977 to be a place where the youth of the parish could receive religious education, and adults could use to meet, bond and help each other. A Play School was added on within the Parish Social Centre and kindergarten classes began to run in 1978.

Extending its reach to the community within the area, Church members began making regular visits to the Cheshire Home in 1979, and bringing members of the Cheshire Home for mass on Sundays. Under Father John Sim's leadership, several renovation projects were undertaken from 1993 to 2004 to provide for a new canteen, a parsonage, an expanded Church and a new parish centre.

As part of the Great Jubilee year of celebrations in 1999 to 2000, St Francis Xavier Church was one of the five churches designated to be pilgrimage Churches.

Today, the Church of St Francis Xavier proudly serves a population of 5,000 Catholics living in the Serangoon area.

References

External links
Church of Saint Francis Xavier

Roman Catholic churches completed in 1958
1958 establishments in Singapore
20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Singapore

Church of Saint Francis Xavier, Singapore


A compactor is a machine or mechanism used to reduce the size of material such as waste material or bio mass through compaction. A trash compactor is often used by business and public places like hospitals (And in the United States also by homes) to reduce the volume of trash they produce. A baler-wrapper compactor is often used for making compact and wrapped bales in order to improve logistics.

Normally powered by hydraulics, compactors take many shapes and sizes. In landfill sites for example, a large tractor (typically a converted front end loader with some variant of a bulldozer blade attached) with spiked steel wheels called a landfill compactor is used to drive over waste deposited by waste collection vehicles (WCVs).

WCVs themselves incorporate a compacting mechanism which is used to increase the payload of the vehicle and reduce the number of times it has to empty. This usually takes the form of hydraulically powered sliding plates which sweep out the collection hopper and compress the material into what has already been loaded.

Different compactors are used in scrap metal processing, the most familiar being the car crusher. Such devices can be of either the "pancake" type, where a scrap automobile is flattened by a huge descending hydraulically powered plate, or the baling press, where the automobile is compressed from several directions until it resembles a large cube

Commercial use

Many retail and service businesses, such as fast food, restaurants, and hotels, use compactors to reduce the volume of non-recyclable waste as well as curb nuisance such as rodents and smell. In the hospitality industry tolerance for such nuisances is particularly low. These compactors typically come in electric and hydraulic operation, with quite a few loading configurations. Most popular loading configurations fall under the following:

 Ground-access;
 Walk-on;
 Secured indoor chute.

These compactors are almost exclusively of welded steel construction for two reasons: durability under pressure and exposure to the elements, as compactors are installed either completely outdoors or sometimes under a covered loading dock.

Agricultural use

As a means to preserve and store forage, baler-wrapper compactors are used to exclude oxygen from the forage and wrap it in air tight film. Without access to air the forage is preserved fresh for longer periods of time.

Residential use

In the United States, there are also trash compactors, hydraulic or manual, designed for residential use. Likewise, they reduce the volume of garbage. For example, some compactors reduce the volume of polystyrene to 1/30.

Municipal use
In the United States, in addition to the waste vehicle and landfill use, there are solar-powered trash compactors that can hold the equivalent of 200 gallons of trash before they need to be emptied.

The large compactors in garbage trucks can be dangerous for workers, and played a role in the US Civil Rights Movement. The 1968 Memphis sanitation strike took place when two sanitation workers were crushed to death in garbage compactors, after which 700 of their 1300 black coworkers decided to strike.

Recycling and energy
Baler-wrapper compactors are used for efficient storage and transport of materials like RDF (refuse-derived fuel) and bin waste, as well as compost and saw dust, enabling higher rates of recycling.

Construction industry
In construction, there are three main types of compactor: the plate, the rammer, and the road roller. The roller type compactors are used for compacting crushed rock as the base layer underneath concrete or stone foundations or slabs. The plate compactor, vibrating plate, or tamper, has a large vibrating baseplate and is suited for creating a level grade, while the rammer compactor has a smaller foot. The rammer, or trench rammer, is mainly used to compact the backfill in narrow trenches for water or gas supply pipes etc. Road rollers may also have vibrating rollers.

In plates and rollers, the vibration is provided by rapidly rotating eccentric masses. In smaller plates, the vibration causes a tendency to move forwards, while some larger plates are provided with a directional control. In the rammer the foot is mounted on a sleeve that slides vertically in the leg. Inside the sleeve, a piston is driven up and down by the engine through a reduction gear, crank and connecting rod. Substantial coil springs above and below the piston connect it to the sliding sleeve. The connection between the sleeve and foot is at a small angle so that the whole rammer leans away from the operator. The vibrating motion is therefore slightly off the vertical, and this gives the rammer a tendency to 'walk' forwards. The sliding joint in the leg is protected by a flexible bellows.

In England the name "wacker plate" or just "wacker" is commonly used to refer to plate compactors, derived from the name of Wacker Neuson, a well-known manufacturer of such devices. The name is pronounced in the English style as whacker, as opposed to the correct German vacker. A rammer is colloquially referred to as "Paddy's Motorbike", due to the traditional resource of Irish construction labourers, and the way that the operator appears to "ride" the hammer holding the handles like a motorcycle.

Patents
  — Can crusher and baler — 1941
  — Compactor Service & Monitoring System — 2006

See also
Road roller
Shredding (disambiguation)
Soil compaction
Tamp
Waste compaction

References

External links

Preventing Injuries When Working With Ride-On Roller/Compactors, a publication from the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Tools
Engineering vehicles
Waste collection

Compactor


Astronomer Royal is a senior post in the Royal Household of the  Sovereign of the United Kingdom. There are two officers, the senior being the Astronomer Royal dating from 22 June 22 1675, and the second the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, which dates from 1834. No Catholic or Jew has ever held the position.

King Charles II, who founded the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in 1675 instructed the first Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed, "to apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying of the tables of the motions of the heavens, and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting of the art of navigation".

From that time until 1972 the Astronomer Royal was Director of the Royal Observatory Greenwich. As Astronomer Royal he receives a stipend of £100 a year and is a member of the Royal Household, under the general authority of the Lord Chamberlain. After the separation of the two offices the position of Astronomer Royal has been largely honorary, though he remains available to advise the Sovereign on astronomical and related scientific matters, and the office is of great prestige.

List of Astronomers Royal

British astronomers
British monarchy

Astronomer Royal


Jean Paul Jacob was a Brazilian electronic engineer, researcher and professor.

He received his electronic engineering degree from the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, in Brazil, and his MS and PhD degrees in Mathematics and Engineering from the University of California, at Berkeley, in 1966.

After working in France in industrial and academic research laboratories in Systems and Control, and then at the IBM Nordic Laboratory, in Stockholm, he migrated in 1963 to the United States where he was assigned to the San José IBM Research Laboratory in California, now the Almaden IBM Research Laboratory. He was then involved in developing high level simulations of a space laboratory for NASA. After receiving his PhD at Berkeley, he resumed his academic career when he returned to Brazil in 1969, where he worked for the University of São Paulo (USP), the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA) and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) where he created the Systems Department. Most of his publications were in mathematical journals, with some in Systems Theory. He was the co-author of a book on System and Control Theory published in Japan.

In 1980 he returned again to his native Brazil to create the first IBM Scientific Center of South America, as well as an Institute for Software Engineering.

For many years he was the IBM research manager at the IBM Almaden Research Center, in California, while also a visiting scholar at Stanford and Berkeley, having taken one year sabbaticals from IBM Research at Stanford and twice at Berkeley.

He retired from IBM in October 2002, but returned as a researcher Emeritus.

Jean Paul received over 50 awards during his career, two of which from UC Berkeley, the 1992 Distinguished Alumnus Award in Computer Science and Engineering and the University of California Research Leadership Award in 2003. Dr. Jacob was an elected member of the IBM Academy of Technology, whose membership consists of the top technical leaders from around the world who are working in research, hardware and software development, manufacturing, applications, and services. He was featured in over 200 articles published by the written media in 12 countries, as well as featured on at least 30 TV programs on science and technology, 2 of which on CNN.

Dr. Jacob was heavily involved in the creation of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at the University of California, as representative of the first Founding Member of CITRIS, namely IBM, in 2000. He also organized yearly workshops in different areas, including nanotechnology, energy and services, between UC Berkeley, CITRIS, and IBM. He was also an annual speaker for the Management of Technology (MOT) interdisciplinary program at UC Berkeley.

He was proud of having worked with and for many diversity groups at UC Berkeley, both as a student and as a faculty.

Jean Paul Jacob died on April 7, 2019.

See also
 List of University of California, Berkeley alumni

References

External links
 Jean Paul Jacobs. Informatics - The future is not what it used to be.
 Rodolfo Lucena, Entrevista: Jean Paul Jacob - "Para cientista, reconhecimento de voz avança, mas ainda é insuficiente", Folha de S.Paulo, Março, 2008.
 Sidney Lage Nogueira, "Jean Paul Jacob é o DESTAQUE ITEANO", AEITA Online, Agosto, 2006.
 José Edward, Entrevista: Jean Paul Jacob - "O celular será um supercomputador", Revista VEJA, Ed. Especial, Novembro, 2005.
 Biografia: Jean Paul Jacob, ITA, 2003.
 Cora Rónai, Entrevista: "Jean Paul Jacob e suas idéias a respeito do futuro", O Globo, Agosto 2000.
 Elisa Andries, Entrevista: "Jean Paul Jacob fala do futuro da Internet", Internet World, Junho, 1998.
 Marcelo Min, Entrevista: Jean Paul Jacob - "A privacidade acabou", Revista ISTOÉ, Junho, 1998.

1937 births
2019 deaths
Brazilian computer scientists
UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni
Brazilian engineers
People from Berkeley, California
IBM employees

Jean Paul Jacob


Târgu Mureș (, ;  ; German: Neumarkt am Mieresch) is the seat of Mureș County in the historical region of Transylvania, Romania. It is the 16th largest Romanian city, with 116,033 inhabitants as of the 2021 census. It lies on the Mureș River, the second longest river in Romania (after the Danube).

Names and etymology

The current Romanian name of the city, Târgu Mureș, is the equivalent of the Hungarian Marosvásárhely, both meaning "market on the Mureș (Maros) [River]". Târg means "market" in Romanian and vásárhely means "marketplace" in Hungarian. Local Hungarians often shorten Marosvásárhely to Vásárhely in speech.

The Jesuit priest Martin Szentiványi provides the first known written reference naming the city; in his work Dissertatio Paralipomenonica Rerum Memorabilium Hungariae (written in 1699) he records the name as Asserculis by stating, in Latin, Asserculis, hoc est Szekely Vasarhely, meaning, Asserculis, here is Szekely Vasarhely.  He provides the year 1230 for the reference. A second work of his, Curiosiora Et Selectiora Variarum Scientiarum Miscellanea (dated 1702) also mentions this name.

Another written reference of the city was in the Papal registry in Latin as Novum Forum Siculorum in 1332, and later as Sekulvasarhel (modern Hungarian: Székelyvásárhely), meaning "market of the Székelys", in 1349. Greek traders called it "Agropolis". Another name for it was "Areopolis".

In 1616, Gabriel Bethlen gave the name Marosvásárhely to the newly upgraded royal free city. The Romanian name for the city, Oșorhei was a phonetic derivation from Vásárhely while the German name for the town, Neumarkt am Mieresch (also shortened to Neumarkt or Marktstadt; in Transylvanian Saxon, Nai Mark or Nai Muark), can be translated as New Market.

Other historical Romanian names for the town besides Oșorhei were Mureș-Oșorhei and Târgul-Mureșului; other historical Hungarian names in addition to Székelyvásárhely included Újszékelyvásár and Újvásár.

After World War I, Marosvásárhely became part of Romania and was renamed Oșorheiu. The name Târgu Mureș became common in the interwar period. After World War II, the spelling of the city's name was changed to Tîrgu Mureș, following a 1953 spelling reform that replaced the letter â with î in all words. Another spelling reform in 1993 replaced the letter î with â in many words and the city's name has since been officially spelled "Târgu Mureș".

History

The first known recorded documentation of the city dates to 1332. It is mentioned in the papal registry under the Latin name Novum Forum Siculorum meaning New Szekler Marketplace, and under the Hungarian name Sekulvasarhel (Székelyvásárhely) meaning Szekler Marketplace in 1349.

Prior to 1332 a Dominican church stood where the Fortress' Church is now sited, up until the Mongol invasion, when it was destroyed. The current Fortress' Church was built by the Franciscans in a new Gothic-style around 1332.

In 1405, the King of Hungary Sigismund of Luxembourg granted the city the right to organize fairs. Since 1439 the town was the scene of the sessions of the Transylvanian parliament (diet) 36 times. In 1470 King Matthias Corvinus granted the first judicial privilege to the city, and in 1482 declared the city a royal settlement. In 1492, wayvoda (prince) István Báthory strengthened a monastery with fortifications.

In 1506, the troops of Pál Tomori were beaten by the Székelys who were rising against the payment of an extraordinary Ox tax imposed on them on occasion of the birth of Louis II of Hungary. In 1557, the Reformed Church College (i.e., Presbyterians) was established as the oldest Hungarian school of Transylvania. In 1571, the session of the Transylvanian parliament under prince John II Sigismund Zápolya accepted the free preaching of the word of God, including by the Unitarian Church. In 1600–1601, as a result of the siege of Giorgio Basta under the direction of Emperor Rudolf II, the fortress crumbled to ruins. In 1602, the troops of Gergely Németh put on fire the remaining houses of the town, therefore, in 1602 the reconstruction of the fortress was started on the advice of mayor Tamás Borsos, but it was actually built between 1614 and 1653. Mózes Székely the only prince of Szekler origin visited the city in 1603 when he liberated Transylvania from foreign domination. In 1616, Târgu Mureș was granted the status of a free royal city under the name of Maros-Vásárhely by fejedelem (prince) Gábor Bethlen.

In 1658 Ottoman and Tartar troops invaded the city and burned it, where 3,000 people were taken into captivity. In 1661, as no one showed willingness to accept the duty of prince, under Turkish pressure Mihály Apafi was elected prince of Transylvania here. In 1662, resulting from the negligence of the Turkish military residing here, the city almost completely burnt down. In 1687 it was devastated by German imperial troops. In 1704, the kuruc troops of Pál Kaszás occupied the fortress, which was re-occupied by Austrian troops led by Lőrinc Pekry in 1706. On 5 April 1707 Francis II Rákóczi was raised to the chair of princes here. In 1707 the city was struck by the plague with more than 3,500 deaths. The plague renewed in 1709, 1719 and in 1738–39.

The city received a major boost to its social and economic life when it became home to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Principality of Transylvania in 1754. In 1802, the Teleki Library founded by count Sámuel Teleki opened to the public with 40,000 volumes.

Avram Iancu, the leader of the 1848 Romanian revolution in Transylvania, was a young lawyer in the city of Marosvásárhely before engaging in the fight for the rights of the Romanians living in Transylvania. On 4 November 1848, the Szekler troops were beaten by the Austrian imperial troops under its walls, and the city was also captured. On 13 January 1849 the troops of major Tolnay recaptured it. On 30 July 1849, Sándor Petőfi and Józef Bem set out from here for the Battle of Segesvár.

In 1854, Szekler martyrs Károly Horváth, János Török, and Mihály Gálfi were executed on the Postarét for plotting against Austrian rule. Since 1874 a monument marks the place. In 1861, Marosvásárhely became the seat of Marosszék, in 1876 that of Maros-Torda County. In 1880 the statue of Bem was inaugurated in Roses Square, in downtown area; in 1893 the statue of Kossuth was as well. The statue of Rákóczi was also inaugurated in 1907. All three statues were demolished between 1919 in 1923, after Transylvania became part of Romania.

The provincial appearance of the city changed greatly in the late 19th century and early 20th century. In 1913, the Hungarian Art-Nouveau style city hall complex and Palace of Culture was inaugurated, as part of mayor Bernády György's urban renewal. After World War I, together with the rest of Transylvania, Marosvásáshely became part of Romania and became known as Târgu Mureș. From having been an 89% Hungarian-populated city (in 1910), the Romanian population increased throughout the second half of the 20th century.

From 1940 to 1944, as a consequence of the Second Vienna Award, the city was ceded back to the Kingdom of Hungary. After Hungary was occupied by Germany in 1944, a Jewish ghetto was established in the city. Târgu Mureș re-entered the Romanian administration in October 1944. However, on 12 November 1944 General Vladislav Petrovich Vinogradov of the Soviet Red Army expelled the returning Romanian authorities from Northern Transylvania with reference to the massacres committed by members of the so-called Maniu Guard, and the Romanian authorities were not allowed to return until the government of Petru Groza was formed on 6 March 1945.

After World War II, the communist administration of Romania conducted a policy of massive industrialization that completely re-shaped the community. Between 1950 and 1968, Târgu Mureș was the center of the Magyar Autonomous Region, later renamed as Mureș-Magyar Autonomous Region. On 7 September 1959, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Secretary-General of the Romanian Workers Party, and Prime Minister Chivu Stoica visited the city. It was decided at the time where to build the fertilizer production plant, and the new residential quarters of the city. It was decided that the residential quarters would not be built in the Mureș valley, but on the surrounding hills.

In March 1990, shortly after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 overthrew the communist regime, the city was the scene of violent ethnic clashes between ethnic Hungarians and ethnic Romanians.

In the 21st century, the local economy started to get stronger after various investors settled in the area. In 2020, the city elected an independent candidate as mayor, Zoltán Soós, the first ethnic Hungarian to win in twenty years.

Geography
The city is located in the Mureș River valley. The city spreads out from Fortress Church in the center of the town, built in the 14th century, to form an area of . The city is located at the centre of the historical region of Transylvania and covers an area of . It lies at the junction of three geographical regions of Transylvania (Transylvanian Plain, Mureș Valley and Niraj Valley) at  above sea level. The city extends onto both banks of the Mureș river, however, the downtown area and the greater part of the districts are located on the left bank. The Cornești plateau () is the city's highest point ( above sea level, co-ordinates: ).

Târgu Mureș is  from Bucharest,  from Chișinău,  from Belgrade,  from Budapest,  from Sofia and  from Kyiv. It is surrounded by the following communes: Sângeorgiu de Mureș, Livezeni, Sântana de Mureș, Sâncraiu de Mureș, Corunca, Cristești and Ceuașu de Câmpie. Two villages, Mureșeni (Meggyesfalva) and Remetea (Remeteszeg), are administered by the city.

Distances between the city and some of the major cities in Romania:

Bucharest: by rail , by road
Brașov by rail , by road
Constanța by rail , by road
Cluj-Napoca  by rail, by road
Iași by rail , by road
Sibiu by rail , by road
Timișoara by rail , by road

Climate
Târgu Mureș has a continental climate characterised by warm dry summers and relatively cold winters. Winter temperatures are often below . Throughout the year there are 38 days with snow, and more than 60 days when the snow covers the ground. In summer, the average temperature is between  and  (the average for June, July and August), even though temperatures sometimes reach  during this period. On average, there are 143 days with precipitation over the course of the year, most frequently in December with 16 days and the least in August, September and October with 8 rainy days. The average annual temperature for Târgu Mureș is . The lowest temperature registered in the city is , recorded in 1942 and 1963. The highest temperature, , was recorded in 1936.

Demographics

According to the 2021 census, Târgu Mureș had a population of 116,033, a decrease from the figure recorded at the 2011 census. The city is home to the largest urban Hungarian community in Transylvania, surpassing those of Sfântu Gheorghe, Cluj-Napoca and Oradea. The 2002 census was the first to show the Hungarians as a local minority. The city is officially bilingual and both Romanian and Hungarian languages are recognised as official and used in public signage, education, justice and access to public administration; however, in case of commercial signage and advertisements, the bilingual signage is usually used only by Hungarian-owned companies. Roma people make up 2.97% of the city's population, which is considerably lower than their proportion of 9.68% in Mureș County.

Ethnic communities
Ethnic structure evolution from 1850 until 2021:

Economy

At present in Târgu Mureș there are over 8,500 private companies and several state-owned companies.

The various industrial sectors are:
 Chemical industry (Azomureș)
 Pharmaceutical industry
 Food industry:
 Bread industry (Mopan)
 Dairy industry
 Wood industry
 Textile industry

Districts of the city

Personalities
Many personalities have been born or lived in the city and helped shape it in different fields:

Main sights

Places of worship

The Reformed Fortress Church is the oldest church in the town. According to historical evidence, less than a century had passed after the first appearance of the Franciscan order in Transylvania, Hungarian Kingdom, that the Franciscan friars arrived at Vásárhely. The building of the church took an entire century, from the middle of the 14th century until the middle of the 15th and it consisted of a monastery building, an older chapel, the church and the steeple. The church was finalized between 1400 and 1450. The church may have been originally decorated with frescos, as traces of mural paintings were found inside. The almost complete disappearance of these paintings is due to the fact that the church became the property of Protestant believers in 1557. The religious reform required for churches to have no paintings, statues or religious frescos.

The existence of the Franciscan order in Vásárhely was directly affected by the religious reform which was largely spread in Transylvania during the 16th century. In 1557, the influence of the Reformed Church over the Hungarians in the town was so strong that it eventually led to the confiscation of the properties of Catholic monastic orders. Franciscan friars, who until that time had been attending the church in the fortress, were forced to leave town. They returned after nearly two centuries when the political climate had become favorable to Catholicism due to the instauration of the Habsburgs in Transylvania. They bought the land in the center of the town where they built a new church and monastery by 1777. The tower, the only part that is still standing, was added to the church's façade in 1802 by architect János Topler. In 1971 the municipality decided to demolish the monastery to create the necessary space for the construction of the National Theater and the square in front of it. A new church was built in 1972 for the Franciscans on Libertății street.

At the beginning of the 18th century, one of the most representative Baroque churches of Transylvania was built in the town. St John the Baptist Church was erected in the North-Eastern part of the city center and belongs to the Roman Catholic parish. The inside of the church is luxurious, with liturgical objects that are true works of art. The main altar, made in 1755 by Anton Schuchbauer and Johannes Nachtigal is of monumental dimensions and has a pseudo-architectural structure. The paintings of the altars in the lateral chapels: Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary, Saint Joseph, Saint John of Nepomuc, Holy Cross belong to the same Michael Angelo Unterberger. The stained glass windows made by the Türke Company of Grottau were installed in 1898.

The Great Synagogue (also known as the Big Synagogue) was built between 1899 and 1900 at the initiative of the Jewish community "Status Quo". The design of the building was drawn up by Gartner Jacob from Vienna and the construction works were coordinated by the Hungarian Pál Soós. The entire edifice is dominated by the central cupola. Each side of the central spire is decorated with a floral rosette similar to the ones on the façade. This type of window is also used several times on the lateral façades. The vast interior is richly decorated, both with shapes and color. The synagogue has 314 seats on the ground floor and 238 on the top floor. The most recent large scale remodeling of the building took place in 2000 when the walls were reinforced and the interior decoration was re-done.

The existence of the Unitarian faith in the town is linked to the name of Ferenc Dávid, founder of Unitarianism and the first Unitarian bishop. The political circumstances in Transylvania became favourable for Ferenc Dávid's activity as the Diet of Torda held between 1557 and 1568 granted freedom of faith to all religions in Transylvania. The Unitarianism became religio-recepta together with all the other Protestant faiths. The king of the state himself, John II Sigismund Zápolya became Unitarian. The Unitarian Church was built between 1929 and 1930 next to the old Unitarian prayer house dating from 1869.

Other sights

The first fortress in the town was erected in 1492 upon order of voivode Stephen Báthory, and was accomplished somewhere between 1602 and 1652 under judge Tamás Borsos. Having a pentagon plan, surrounded by a defense wall, the Citadel has seven forts, five of them bearing the names of the guild which – according to tradition – supported its maintenance: the leather dressers', the tailors', the butchers', the ironmongers', the coopers'. After the Citadel was taken over by the Austrian troops, it became the headquarters of the military garrison based in the town. In the meantime the Baroque style building was built (on the left hand side of the road in front of the entrance gate) and in the second half of the 18th century the construction works of the "barkey" were started, an addition finished in the 19th century. On the occasion of the Târgu Mureș days – which have as central point of performance the Citadel – a museum center was opened in the gate fort (erected in 1613) presenting the history of the town and of the Citadel.

The Teleki-Bolyai Library is a historic public library and current museum in the town. One of the richest Transylvanian collections of cultural artefacts, it was founded by the Hungarian Count Sámuel Teleki in 1802, at the time when Transylvania was part of the Habsburg monarchy, and has been open to the reading public ever since. It was among the first institutions of its kind inside the Habsburg-ruled Kingdom of Hungary. It houses over 200,000 volumes, of which many are rarities, constituting a comprehensive scientific database. The book collection is divided into several smaller libraries, of which the two main donations are the original 40,000-volume Teleki Library and the 80,000-volume Bolyai Library; the rest, grouped as the Miscellaneous Collection, is made up of several private libraries, volumes previously held by religious schools and those of a Franciscan friary. Overall, the library constitutes a collection of most traditional types of Transylvanian book.

The old City Hall was built in 1906–1907 after the construction plans of Márcell Komor and Dezső Jakab. The entrance area, including the corridor and the staircase leading to the first floor, is the most representative in this regard. The ribbed stellar vaults that cover this area were inspired by Gothic architecture. The vaults are supported by columns with composite caps, and the keystone is a large floral shape which includes the lighting appliance. The vaults are painted with spiraling vegetal motifs. Elements of the front hall include the stone bench with its legs shaped as those of an animal and with wing-shaped handles. Its shell-shaped, golden back has a shield flanked by two volutes on its upper side. Features of the monumental staircase leading to the first floor include the upper side of the banister resembling a slithering animal or a wave. The exterior decoration is simpler and is based on Hungarian-Székely folk motives made of polychromatic ceramics. The ground floor is marked by a solid, embossed pedestal. Windows with large openings tend to be predominant in the façade. The three semicircular windows in the middle area of the façade are those of the honor hall that has a double elevation with respect to the other rooms. The glass paintings which illustrated Gábor Bethlen, Francis II Rákóczi, Lajos Kossuth, Ferenc Deák and Franz Joseph I of Austria are missing from the halls.

The Palace of Culture is a remarkable construction in the city center. It was built upon initiative of the mayor of the town, György Bernády. Building works started in the spring of 1911. They contributed to the establishment of the distinctively flavored Hungarian Art Nouveau school in Transylvania by their works in Deva and Oradea. The plan is an irregular rectangle, with protuberances on the sides and at the extremities. The building has five floors: a tall ground floor, a mezzanine and three floors differentiated by the use of various construction materials. The façades are characterized by bi-dimensionality and by a liniar-rectangular style, with only a few curvilinear elements: the six bow-windows covered by semi-caps above the main portal and the circular balconies on the edges. The main entrance is in the middle of the façade on Enescu street and is made up of four massive doors, protected by an architectural element made of glass and with an iron framing. This element, as well as the doors decorated with iron floral motifs are typical for the early 20th century style. The exterior is richly decorated, with colored mosaic panels, with relieved scenes and busts of Hungarians. The mosaic on the main façade is an allegorical scene inspired by the Hungarian folklore. The cardboards were made by Nagy Sándor, a Hungarian artist, who founded with Körösföy Kriesch Aladár the School of Gödöllő. The art is characterized by bi-dimensionality and vertical rhythmicalness. Most of the mosaics and stained glass windows were authored by Róth Miksa, particularly those on the side facing Square.

The city skyline can be seen from Cornești Heights [in Hungarian: Somostető].

Culture

Târgu Mures is home to the Palace of Culture concert hall which is situated in the heart of the city. Weekly classical concerts are performed here by the Târgu Mureș State Philharmonic Orchestra.

On the other side of the city center is the Târgu Mureș National Theater with two companies, Tompa Miklós (performances in Hungarian language) and Liviu Rebreanu (performances in Romanian language). Beside the main companies, there are also alternative underground theater companies called Yorick Studio and Teatru 74.

The city was home to the Peninsula / Félsziget Festival, Romania's former biggest music festival.

Politics

Mayor

Dorin Florea had three investigations from National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) and did not run for another term in 2020.

In 2016, Dorin Florea obtained 42.95% of votes and won against Soós Zoltán (40.23%).

In 2020, Zoltán Soós obtained 50.53% of the vote (considerably more than supported UDMR for the local council: 44.57%). The runner-up obtained 17.06%.

Local Council

The local Municipal Assembly has 23 members:

Turnout at the 2016 elections was 50.87% and in 2020 was 45.92% of the total registered voters.

Education

Târgu Mureș is an important centre for general and higher education. The most important high schools are the Alexandru Papiu Ilarian National College, Unirea National College and the Hungarian-speaking Bolyai Farkas Elméleti Líceum. The latter is a continuator of the traditions of the Schola Particula, established in Târgu Mureș in 1557, and of the Reformed College banished from Sárospatak at the beginning of the 18th century. The establishment was one of the first schools of the Reformed Church in Transylvania, was first working in the old building of the Franciscan friary in the fortress, and had Baranyai Decsi Czimor János, Tordai Ádám, Laskói Csókás Péter as teachers, as well as others. After being sacked in 1601 and 1602, the Schola was moved into another building, on the place of the present high school. For centuries it had accommodated the Reformed College and the present high school. The present aspect was acquired at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The main statue, facing Bolyai square was erected following the design of architect Baumgarten Sándor in 1908–1909, in Hungarian Secession style. Târgu Mureș also has a "School of Arts"  (in Romanian Liceul de Artă; in Hungarian Művészeti Líceum) which was set up in 1949. The school offers young musicians and children interested in graphic arts the best education in the county. Along the book-learning, the children attend music theory classes, musical instruments (violin, piano, violoncello, viola, double bass, flute, harp, trumpet, tube, trombone, bassoon, clarinet, oboe, horn, percussion instruments etc.) and graphic arts classes.

Renowned public universities like the University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science and Technology (UMFST) (founded in 1945) and University of Arts (1946) account for more than 10,000 students. Other universities are the Sapientia University (2001), a private institution of Hungarian higher education in Transylvania, and Dimitrie Cantemir University (1991).

Health care

Târgu Mureș has a well-developed healthcare system. It consists of:
3 hospitals
Târgu Mureș Emergency Clinical County Hospital (the biggest in the county) with 11 specialized units
Târgu Mureș Emergency Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases and Transplant
Mureș County Clinical Hospital with 7 specialized units
36 medical offices
9 clinics
Over 80 pharmacies
Ambulance service and SMURD

In medicine, units in the city are equipped with efficient equipment and highly specialized medical staff, among which stand out: the County Hospital, Emergency County Hospital (which is a regional unit), Institute of Prehospital Emergency Medical Care, Mobile Service Emergency Resuscitation and Extrication (SMURD), who at the time of its appearance was a national pilot project, and the Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases and Transplantation units under the direct authority of the Ministry of Health.

The city's medical services are exerted beyond city and county, with more than 30% of hospital patients in the Târgu Mureș Emergency County Hospital coming from other counties.

Târgu Mureș is a major academic center in medicine. The Faculties of Medicine and Pharmacy of the UMFST offers a wide range of fields, such as medical and military medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, dental technology, surgical and emergency care. It has a multicultural and multilingual status, national education law. Education is available both in Romanian and Hungarian, and also in English. Research programs are carried out both within the institution and in the hospital, there are several research projects conducted with partner institutions abroad.

Transport

Road

The Transylvania Motorway (also known as A3), which is under construction, will pass near Târgu Mureș. Another future highway that will be connected with the city is the East-West Motorway, that will start in the eastern part of the country near Iași, Moldavia and will connect itself with A3. The construction is proposed to begin in the 2020s.

Rail

Romanian main-line railways are operated mainly by Căile Ferate Române (CFR). There are three railway termini in Târgu Mureș, South (southbound), Central, and North (northbound), operating both domestic and international rail services. The town is one of the main stops of the routes of MÁV: Mureș InterCity, Hargita InterCity. A tourist narrow gauge line (which formed part of an extensive narrow gauge system closed in the 1990s) to Band is operated at certain times of the year.

Air
The city is served by Târgu Mureș Transilvania Airport, which provides both domestic and international flights. The airport was renovated in October 2005. It is the second busiest airport in Transylvania after the Cluj International Airport.

Public transport
The city transport operators are Transport Local, Siletina-Impex and TudorTrans.

Sports

Târgu Mureș is represented in many sports, including: football, handball, basketball, futsal and volleyball.

Two football teams are based in the city: CSM Târgu Mureș and ACS MSE Târgu Mureș. Historically, the city's most successful clubs are ASA Târgu Mureș and ASA 2013 Târgu Mureș. The former was dissolved in 2007, its biggest achievement being its participation in three editions of the UEFA Cup during the '70s. The latter, founded in 2008, had a relatively short existence, being dissolved in 2017, but managed to win the 2015 Romanian Super Cup.

BC Mureș is the city's basketball team. It plays in the First Romanian League. In the 2012–13 season, the club reached its highest achievement yet. It was the first time in club history when BC Mureș won the regular season. Eventually they finished second after losing in the final 4–2 to CSU Asesoft Ploiești.

CSU Medicina represents Târgu Mureș in the women's volleyball league. The team has been a constant presence in the top flight of Romanian volleyball in the last 15 years.

Târgu Mureș is also known for its bowling team, Electromureș.

The city has the 3 times national champion futsal team City'us Târgu Mureș, team who also competed in the UEFA Futsal Champions League.

Romania's largest racetrack, Transilvania Motor Ring, is located near the city.

Military
The Romanian Special Operations Forces Command is headquartered in Târgu-Mureș.

Local media

Printed media
 Cuvântul liber
 Zi de zi
 24 de ore mureșene
 Vásárhelyi Hírlap
 Népújság
 Ziarul de Mureș (weekly paper)
 Infomația de Mureș (weekly paper)
 Flash (weekly advertisement)
 Piața Mureșeană (weekly advertisement)
 Központ (weekly paper)
 Ziarul de Mureș (weekly paper)
 Infomația de Mureș (weekly paper)
 Flash (weekly advertisement)
 Piața Mureșeană (weekly advertisement)
 Mediatica.ro
 EuroMaros.ro
 kakukk.ro

Radio
 Radio Tîrgu Mureș/Marosvásárhelyi Rádió
 Rock FM
 Kiss FM
 Radio GaGa
 Radio 21
 Magic FM
 Europa FM
 Erdély FM

Television
 TTM – Televiziunea Tîrgu Mureș
 TVR Târgu Mureș
 Știi TV
 Mureș/Maros TV
 ProTV Tîrgu Mureș
 Prima TV Tîrgu Mureș
 Antena 1 Tîrgu Mureș
 Erdélyi Magyar Televízió
 Realitatea TV Tîrgu Mureș
 Duna TV Marosvásárhely

Twin towns – sister cities

Târgu Mureș is twinned with:

See also
 List of Hungarian exonyms (Mureș County)

Notes

References

External links

 Municipal website
 City guide
 BC Mureș Official Website
 Interactive 360° panoramas of Târgu Mureș and its surroundings
 Târgu Mureș photo gallery
 Photo gallery and collection of links
 Photos taken at the Palace of Culture in Târgu Mureș
 Images taken at the Week-End Holiday Complex in Târgu Mureș by photographer Zsolt Suto
 Local news on Mureș/Maros TV
 Local news provided by Erdélyi Magyar Televízió

Cities in Romania
Capitals of Romanian counties
Populated places in Mureș County
Localities in Transylvania

Târgu Mureș


Loukas Kanakaris-Roufos (, 23 August 1878 – 11 November 1949) was a Greek politician.

He was the son of Athanasios Kanakaris-Roufos and a member of the Rouphos family. In the 1905 elections he became a member of the Greek Parliament but failed to be re-elected in 1906. In 1908 however, he succeeded his brother Ioannis Roufos in his parliament seat after his death. In 1913, he resigned his seat and became Governor-General of Crete, a post he held during the island's official union with Greece in December 1913 and until April 1915. Soon after he was re-elected into Parliament, and in September 1916 he became Minister for the Interior. Despite his friendship with Eleftherios Venizelos, he sided with King Constantine I during the National Schism. Following Venizelos' victory in 1917, he was imprisoned until 1920. In the 1920 elections he was again elected to Parliament. In 1922 he served twice briefly as Minister for National Economy, in March–April and from May until the outbreak of the 1922 Revolution in September. In between, he headed the Greek delegation to the talks at Genoa aimed at resolving the ongoing Greco-Turkish War.

On 20 September 1925, he was appointed Minister for National Education and Religious Affairs in the dictatorial government of Theodoros Pangalos, and on 6 November he became Foreign Minister. He failed to be elected in the 1932 elections, but succeeded again in the 1936 elections, the last before the Metaxas dictatorship and World War II. He died at Athens on 11 November 1949.

He was married to Eleni Papageorgakopoulou and had a son, the diplomat and writer Rodis Kanakaris-Roufos.

References

The first version of the article was translated from the subject's article on Greek Wikipedia .

1878 births
1949 deaths
MPs of Patras
Foreign ministers of Greece
Governors-General of Crete
Roufos family
Greek MPs 1905–1906
Greek MPs 1910–1912
Politicians from Patras

Loukas Kanakaris-Roufos


Aeneas () is a character in the New Testament. According to Acts 9:32-33, he lived in Lydda, and had been a cripple for eight years. When Peter said to him, "Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and roll up your mat," he was healed and got up.

F. F. Bruce suggests that Aeneas was "one of the local Christian group, though this is not expressly stated." According to David J. Williams, there is some ambiguity in the Greek text of verse 34, which contains the phrase στρῶσον σεαυτῷ (strōson seautō) normally translated as "make thy bed". The text would literally be rendered as Peter telling Aeneas to "spread for himself", which might not refer to his bedding, but something else he had been unable to do. Williams suggests it could, for example, mean "Get yourself something to eat".

The account of Aeneas being healed is followed by an account of the raising of Dorcas.

See also
 Acts 9

References

People in Acts of the Apostles
New Testament miracles
People from Lod

Aeneas (biblical figure)


Clarence Joseph Kummer (August 8, 1899 – December 18, 1930) was a U.S. Racing Hall of Fame jockey who won four American Classic Races.

In early 1920, Kummer rode the 1919 Triple Crown Champion Sir Barton to a new Saratoga track record in winning the Saratoga Handicap. In May 1920 he was given the opportunity to ride Man o' War. He rode the horse to nine wins in nine starts. Kummer's successes in 1920 made him that year's top money-winning jockey in the United States.

Clarence Kummer won the Preakness and Belmont Stakes twice each and had four mounts in the Kentucky Derby with his best result a second-place finish in 1923. In a relatively short career he won numerous important races, including the 1925 edition of the prestigious Travers Stakes, but by the end of the latter part of the 1920s constantly battled weight gains and was forced to retire after the 1928 racing season in which he had won his second Belmont Stakes. He then worked as an exercise rider for trainer Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons but was attempting a comeback in 1930 when he died from pneumonia believed to have been as a result of his weakened physical condition brought on by a harsh dieting regimen.

On December 1, 1921, Clarence Kummer married Marion Gascoyne. They had one daughter, Jacqueline (died 2007) In 1932, his widow  married another future Hall of Fame jockey, Earl Sande.

Clarence Kummer was inducted in the United States' Racing Hall of Fame in 1972.

References

Time magazine obituary for Clarence Kummer
National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame profile for inductee, Clarence Kummer

1899 births
1930 deaths
American jockeys
American Champion jockeys
United States Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame inductees
Sportspeople from New York City
Deaths from pneumonia in New York City

Clarence Kummer


is a park in Nagasaki, Japan, built for Thomas Blake Glover, a Scottish merchant who contributed to the modernization of Japan in shipbuilding, coal mining, and other fields. In it stands the Glover Residence, the oldest Western-style house surviving in Japan and Nagasaki's foremost tourist attraction.

It is located on the Minamiyamate hillside overlooking Nagasaki harbor. It was built by Hidenoshin Koyama of Amakusa island and completed in 1863. It has been designated as an Important Cultural Asset. As the house and its surroundings are reminiscent of Puccini's opera, it is also known as the "Madame Butterfly House." Statues of Puccini and diva Miura Tamaki, famed for her role as Cio-Cio-san, stand in the park near the house. This house was also the venue of Glover's meetings with rebel samurai, particularly from the Chōshū and Satsuma domains.

Glover Residence

The Glover Residence is noted for its blend of Western and Japanese elements and is an example of treaty port building. This type of architecture closely resembles one-story bungalows used by foreigners in Hong Kong or Shanghai and imported to Japan by British traders. Rather than following contemporary Victorian styles, this type of building more closely reflects the Georgian aesthetic popular in Britain during the previous generation.

The stone-floored verandas, latticed arches, and French windows are several of the distinctive foreign elements included in the residence, while Japanese influence can be seen in the tile roof with its demon-headed tiles intended to ward off evil. The roof was modified by adding unmistakably British chimneys.

The house was built by a Japanese carpenter, Koyama Hidenoshin. The plan for the house, which is still preserved, is unsigned. The plan uses feet instead of Japanese measurements. The basic construction of the house is Japanese, despite its foreign elements. It consists of traditional Japanese roof supports and post-and-beam frames set down on boulders.

Other buildings

The park also includes Ringer House (built 1865 for Frederick Ringer) and Alt House (built for William Alt). The correct treatment of the Tuscan pillars and pediment at the Alt House suggest that this building was designed by a Western architect. The pediment is often conspicuously incorporated into Masonic temples, and might have been employed here in the same manner as a Masonic symbol.

Furthermore, the stone gate of the Nagasaki Masonic Lodge is preserved in Glover Garden:

The Nagasaki Masonic Lodge was inaugurated at No. 50 Oura on October 5, 1885. The  founding members were all British, but during the following years, men of various  nationalities and religions became members and participated in regular meetings and social  events. The lodge moved to a new building at No. 47 Oura in June 1887. The Freemasons  contributed to the Nagasaki community until disbanding in the early Showa Period due to a  lack of members. Today, the graves of several former Freemasons can be found in Nagasaki' s international cemeteries, and the stone gate of the former lodge is preserved in Glover  Garden.

Tourism

The park is open to the public and attracts nearly two million visitors a year.

References

Finn, Dallas. (1995). Meiji Revisited: The Sites of Victorian Japan Weatherhill.

Monuments and memorials in Japan
Parks and gardens in Nagasaki
Museums in Nagasaki
Historic house museums in Japan
Gardens in Nagasaki Prefecture

Glover Garden


Mineralogy is the study of minerals. Minerals are things that make rocks. There are many different types of minerals. Some are hard, like diamonds. Some are soft, like talc. Some are metal, like gold or silver. Minerals are put into special groups of minerals made of similar chemicals, or that have similar structures inside. For example, the chemicals that make up some minerals line up in chains, while in other minerals, they make bow-tie shapes.

Studying minerals can be useful for figuring out certain things about a rock. Sometimes the shape or size of the mineral can tell something about the rock as well. For example, minerals in igneous rocks can help figure out how long the rock took to cool down (turn from lava into a rock). Larger minerals mean the rock cooled slowly (probably underground). Smaller minerals mean the rock cooled down quickly (probably above ground, like from a volcano). The type of mineral in a rock can also tell what kind of a rock it is, or what has happened to the rock since it formed. Many rocks are named based on what kinds of minerals they have.

Mineralogists (people who study minerals) study minerals in rocks with hand lenses (a magnifying glass), and in thin section (thin slices of rock) with microscopes. They record things about the minerals like how big they are, what shape they are, what color they are, and if the mineral changes colors when you turn it. Mineralogists also record what color minerals turn in a special light. These details can help mineralogists figure out what minerals they are looking at.

Minerals can be used in a lot of different things, like mining, jewelry, farming, pottery, making metals, and more . Mineralogists can help find important minerals in the Earth using what they know and learn.

Other websites
International Mineralogical Association
Mineralogical Association of Canada
Virtual Museum of the History of Mineralogy
The Giant Crystal Project
The Geological Society of America

subfields of geology

Mineralogy


The Olota of Ota is the traditional, yet ceremonial, sovereign of Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria. He is also called an Oba.

Historically, the Olota of Ota was a crowned ruler whose power came from the traditional homeland of the Yoruba, Ile-Ife. Since the first local elections in 1955, he has had no political power, but is sought as a counsel or sponsor by Nigerian politicians who seek support from the residents of Ota. The official residence of the Oba is a palace within the town.

Selection of an Olota
When a reigning Olota dies, the Ota Council of Chiefs receives an official report of his death. Burial rites are performed, and last for three months.

Following the end of the three-month mourning period, the selection and enthronement procedures for a new Olota begin. Candidates come from one of the three ruling houses: Ikowogbe, Ijemo-Isolosi, and Ileshi. Ruling houses are rotated so that each has an opportunity to produce an Oba. Proposed candidates must be members of the ruling house whose turn it is to produce candidates and male, though exceptions can be made if there are no qualified male candidates. The competition can be fierce, and sometimes pits family members against one another. Courts are sometimes involved in settling disputes within a ruling house. Eventually, the ruling family meets and presents one or more candidates to a group of Kingmakers. There are twelve Kingmakers: the Balogun of Ota, the Ajana of Ijana Quarter, the Onikotun of Otun Quarter, the Onikosi of Osi Quarter, the Akogun of Oruba Quarter, Seriki of Ota, the Ekerin of Ota, the Odota of Ota, the Lisa of Ota, the Aro of Ota, and the Oluwo of Ota. The Kingmakers then make the final determination of who becomes the Olota.

See Ota Traditional Chiefs for more information about the Kingmakers and other major and minor chiefs of Ota.

Prior to the installation of a new Oba, members of the Ogboni secret society perform a procession around Ota to perform pre-installation rites. Additionally, other chiefs play important roles in the installation of a new Olota, such as the Odota and the Aro, who perform the installation rites, and the Oluwo, who performs rituals at predetermined dates following the crowning of a new Olota.

List of Olotas of Ota
 Oba Akinsewa Ogbolu (1621-1680)
 Oba Morolugbe (Oba Moro) (1701-1725)
 Oba Oromolu (1725-1768)
 Oba Olagoroye (1768-1786)
 Oba Adelu (1794-1821)
 Oba Olukori (1821-1853)
 Oba Oyede I (1853-1882)
 Oba Isiyemi (1882-1901)
 Oba Aina Ako (1902-1927)
 Oba Salami Oyelusi Oyede (1927-1947)
 Oba Timothy Fadina (1949-1954)
 Oba Timothy Talabi Dada (1954-1992)
 Oba Moshood Adetoro Alani Oyede (1997–2016)
 Oba Adeyemi Abdulkabir Obalanlege[Lanlege Ekun II, Arole Iganmode] (2018 - To Date)

References

Nigerian traditional rulers
Yoruba royal titles
Yoruba history

Olota of Ota


Mandatory labelling or labeling (see spelling differences) is the requirement of consumer products to state their ingredients or components. This is done to protect people with allergies, and so that people can practice moral purchasing. Mandatory labelling is mandated in most developed nations and increasingly also in developing nations, especially for food products, e.g. "Grade A" meats. With regard to food and drugs, mandatory labelling has been a major battleground between consumer advocates and corporations since the late 19th century.

Because of past scandals involving deceptive labelling, countries like the United States and Canada require most processed foods to have a nutrition facts label on the label, and the table's formatting and content must conform to strict guidelines. The European Union equivalent is the slightly different nutrition information table, which may also be supplemented with standardized icons indicating the presence of allergens. In China, all clothing is labelled with the factory of origin, including telephone and fax numbers, although this information is not available to buyers outside China, who see only a generic Made in China tag. In Brazil, food containing more than one percent of GM ingredients must be labelled as such.

The development of genetically modified food has led to one of the most persistent and divisive debates about mandatory labelling, which is one of the central topics in genetically modified food controversies. Advocates of such labelling claim that the consumer should make the choice whether to expose themselves to any possible health risk from consuming such foods. Detractors point to studies that conclude genetically modified food is safe, and point out that for many commodity products, the identity of the grower and the custody chain are not known.

Voluntary labelling and co-marketing of products deemed desirable is another matter usually carried out by entirely different means, e.g. Slow Food. There has been increased regulatory interest in substantiating these claims, and in some jurisdictions, food labels require regulatory approval before use. An interesting halfway is those labels that are considered mandatory by one buying population and effectively preclude purchase if they are not there, e.g. kosher, vegan, and the aforementioned GMO-free label now seen on many organic products.

Areas in which mandatory labelling is being discussed include:

 genetically modified food—see genetically modified food controversies
 spraying of meat with bacteriophages
 in the United States, fresh meat was added to the list of products which require mandatory country of origin labels (mCOOL) in 2002, however this was the subject of a challenge in the World Trade Organization by Canada, which Canada won in 2011

See also
 Ecolabel
 Label
 List of food labeling regulations
 Packaging and labeling

References

Brand management
Business law
Ecolabelling
Packaging
Product management
Food packaging
Consumer protection

Mandatory labelling


A press release, news release, media release, or press statement is a written or recorded communication for news reporters. Its purpose is to let them know about something that is news. These are mailed, faxed, or e-mailed to editors at newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television stations, and television networks. There are companies whose job is to send out this information.

The use of a press release is common in public relations. People use this to get the media to take notice of them, or get publicity for a product, or event that they might be holding. A press release gives reporters the basic information they need to write a news story. Press releases can announce a range of news items such as: events, promotions, awards, new products and services, sales and other financial data, accomplishments, etc.

A press statement is information given to reporters. This is an official statement or account of a news story that is specially written for newspapers and other news media for them to make known to the public.

Mass media

News release


Telesto is a tiny moon of Saturn. It was discovered by a number of astronomers in 1980, based from some observations from the Earth. It was named after Telesto in Greek mythology. Telesto orbits around Saturn together with much larger moon Tethys. Thus, Telesto is also known as a Trojan moon. The moon leads at a point 60 degrees in front of Tethys in its orbit. Another small moon, Calypso, orbits with Telesto.

Saturn's moons

Telesto (moon)


In macroeconomics, a multiplier is a factor of proportionality that measures how much an endogenous variable changes in response to a change in some exogenous variable.

For example, suppose variable x
changes by k units, which causes another variable y to change by M × k units. Then the multiplier is M.

Common uses

Two multipliers are commonly discussed in introductory macroeconomics.

Commercial banks create money, especially under the fractional-reserve banking system used throughout the world. In this system, money is created whenever a bank gives out a new loan. This is because the loan, when drawn on and spent, mostly finishes up as a deposit back in the banking system and is counted as part of money supply. After putting aside a part of these deposits as mandated bank reserves, the balance is available for the making of further loans by the bank. This process continues multiple times, and is called the multiplier effect.

The multiplier may vary across countries, and will also vary depending on what measures of money are being considered. For example, consider M2 as a measure of the U.S. money supply, and M0 as a measure of the U.S. monetary base. If a $1 increase in M0 by the Federal Reserve causes M2 to increase by $10, then the money multiplier is 10.

Fiscal multipliers

Multipliers can be calculated to analyze the effects of fiscal policy, or other exogenous changes in spending, on aggregate output.

For example, if an increase in German government spending by €100, with no change in tax rates, causes German GDP to increase by €150, then the spending multiplier is 1.5. Other types of fiscal multipliers can also be calculated, like multipliers that describe the effects of changing taxes (such as lump-sum taxes or proportional taxes).

Keynesian and Hansen–Samuelson multipliers

Keynesian economists often calculate multipliers that measure the effect on aggregate demand only. (To be precise, the usual Keynesian multiplier formulas measure how much the IS curve shifts left or right in response to an exogenous change in spending.)

American Economist Paul Samuelson credited Alvin Hansen for the inspiration behind his seminal 1939 contribution. The original Samuelson multiplier-accelerator model (or, as he belatedly baptised it, the "Hansen-Samuelson" model) relies on a multiplier mechanism that is based on a simple Keynesian consumption function with a Robertsonian lag:

so present consumption is a function of past income (with c as the marginal propensity to consume). Here, t is the tax rate and m is the ratio of imports to GDP.  Investment, in turn, is assumed to be composed of three parts:

The first part is autonomous investment, the second is investment induced by interest rates and the final part is investment induced by changes in consumption demand (the "acceleration" principle). It is assumed that b > 0. As we are concentrating on the income-expenditure side, let us assume I(r) = 0 (or alternatively, constant interest), so that:

Now, assuming away government and foreign sector, aggregate demand at time t is:

assuming goods market equilibrium (so ), then in equilibrium:

But we know the values of  and  are merely  and  respectively, then substituting these in:

or, rearranging and rewriting as a second order linear difference equation:

The solution to this system then becomes elementary. The equilibrium level of Y (call it , the particular solution) is easily solved by letting , or:

so:

The complementary function,  is also easy to determine. Namely, we know that it will have the form  where  and  are arbitrary constants to be defined and where  and  are the two eigenvalues (characteristic roots) of the following characteristic equation:

Thus, the entire solution is written as

Opponents of Keynesianism have sometimes argued that Keynesian multiplier calculations are misleading; for example, according to the theory of Ricardian equivalence, it is impossible to calculate the effect of deficit-financed government spending on demand without specifying how people expect the deficit to be paid off in the future.

General method
The general method for calculating short-run multipliers is called comparative statics. That is, comparative statics calculates how much one or more endogenous variables change in the short run, given a  change in one or more exogenous variables. The comparative statics method is an application of the implicit function theorem.

Dynamic multipliers can also be calculated. That is, one can ask how a change in some exogenous variable in year t affects endogenous variables in year t, in year t+1, in year t+2, and so forth. A graph showing the impact on some endogenous variable, over time (that is, the multipliers for times t, t+1, t+2, etc.), is called an impulse-response function. The general method for calculating impulse response functions is sometimes called comparative dynamics.

History

The Tableau économique (Economic Table) of François Quesnay (1758), which laid the foundation of the Physiocrat school of economics is credited as the "first precise formulation" of interdependent systems in economics and the origin of multiplier theory. In the tableau économique, one sees variables in one period (time t) feeding into variables in the next period (time t+1), and a constant rate of flow yields geometric series, which computes a multiplier.

The modern theory of the multiplier was developed in the 1930s, by Kahn, Keynes, Giblin, and others, following earlier work in the 1890s by the Australian economist Alfred De Lissa, the Danish economist Julius Wulff, and the German-American economist N. A. J. L. Johannsen.

See also
Complex multiplier
Local multiplier effect
Multiplier uncertainty
Social Multiplier Effect

References

Keynesian economics

Multiplier (economics)


In Norse mythology, Gram (Old Norse Gramr, meaning "Wrath"), also known as Balmung or Nothung, is the sword that Sigurd used to kill the dragon Fafnir. It is primarily used by the Völsungs in the Volsunga Saga. However, it is also seen in other legends, such as the Thidrekssaga in
which it is wielded by Hildebrand.

Depending on the story and source material, Gram may have other names. In The Nibelungenlied it is named Balmung. In Richard Wagner's work, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), it is referred to as Nothung.

Description
Nowhere in the Volsunga Saga is a clear description of Gram given, but there is enough scattered throughout the story to draw a picture of the sword. Sigurd's weapons, Gram included, are described as being "all decked with gold and gleaming bright". Depending on how the text is read, the sword may or may not have a dragon emblazoned on it and/or depending on the translation have been "brown of hue".

History

Gram is primarily seen in the Volsunga Saga used by men in the Völsung line after Sigmund. Sigmund receives it during the wedding feast for his sister, Signy. Part of the way through the feast a strange man appears carrying a sword. Although unknown to Sigmund, this is the god Odin. He thrusts the sword into the Barnstokkr tree that grew in the middle of the hall and said, "The man to pull out this sword from the trunk shall receive it from me as a gift and he will find out for himself that he never bore in hand a better sword than this." Soon after he departed every man made his attempt to pull the sword out of the wood. All fail except Sigmund, who easily extracts it. The sword is a fine sword, and King Siggeir is covetous of it, offering Sigmund three times its weight in gold. When he refuses, King Siggeir grows angry and secretly begins plotting to steal it from Sigmund, eventually killing his father and capturing him and all of his brothers. After this, the sword disappears from the narrative until Signy secretly gives it back to Sigmund as he is buried alive with Sinfjotli. After Sigmund avenges his family, he uses the sword in several battles before it is eventually broken by Odin during Sigmund's final battle with King Lyngvi. Hjördis, Sigmund's wife, takes up the two halves of the blade and keeps them for Sigurd, their son.

After Gram was broken by Odin, Hjördis took the two halves and kept them for her future son. Soon after the dwarven smith, Regin, comes and begins teaching Sigurd. After a period of time, he tells Sigurd of the mighty dragon, Fafnir, and the treasure which it guards, asking Sigurd to slay it for him. Sigurd agrees on one condition: that Regin makes him a mighty sword capable of slaying such a monster.

Regin confidently makes Sigurd an admirable sword, but when Sigurd sees it, he is disappointed and breaks it over the anvil. On his second attempt, Regin makes him a sword superior to the last, but it also breaks. On his third attempt, Sigurd brings Regin the two halves of Gram, his father's sword, and when he strikes the anvil with Gram, it is cloven in two. Once he tested the strength of the sword, he left the workshop and went to a nearby stream to check its edge. Throwing a piece of wool upstream, he lets it press against Gram, causing it to be sliced through. After testing the blade's sharpness, he uses it to avenge his father, Sigmund, slaying King Lyngvi. Of the many feats done by Gram, by far the most well-known and important is the slaying of Fafnir the dragon. This deed is accomplished by Sigurd with a single, mighty thrust to the left shoulder where he drives the sword so deep he gets his arms bloodied up to the shoulder. Eventually, Gram is used as a sign of chastity when it is placed between Sigurd and Brynhild on their funeral pyre after Brynhild arranged Sigurd's death before killing herself in turn. After this, the sword is no longer found in the manuscript.

In Der Ring des Nibelungen
In Siegfried, the third of the four operas in the Ring des Nibelungen cycle, Mime, who essentially takes Regin's part, is unable to reforge Nothung (as Gram is called in the Ring). Siegfried, however, manages. Apart from this, the story of Regin and Sigurd is more or less identical to that of Mime and Siegfried.

References

European swords
European weapons
Medieval European swords
Mythological Norse weapons
Mythological swords
Viking swords
Völsung cycle

Gram (mythology)


Jeneba Sylvia Tarmoh (born September 27, 1989) is an American track and field sprinter who specializes in the 100 metres and 200 metres. She is of Sierra Leonean descent.

Prep
Tarmoh lives in San Jose, California, where she attended Mt. Pleasant High School. Her parents, both nurses, immigrated to San Jose from Sierra Leone shortly before she was born. While at Mt. Pleasant, she won both the 100 meters and 200 meters at the CIF California State Meet both her 2006 junior and 2007 senior years. She was also part of the 2007 CIF State Championship team from Mt.Pleasant High School.

College career
Tarmoh was an All-American for Texas A&M University, helping them with back to back to back wins in the NCAA Track & Field Outdoor Championships 2009–2011 seasons. She gave up her final year of eligibility to compete in the NCAA after she went professional, signing with Nike. She came in third at the 2011 USA National Outdoor Championships in the 200m behind Shalonda Solomon and Carmelita Jeter, earning her a place on the 2011 IAAF World Championships team.

Olympic career
On June 23, 2012, Tarmoh finished in a tie with Allyson Felix for third place in the 100m finals at the US Track and Field Olympic Trials. Tarmoh had initially been declared the third-place finisher immediately after the race but was dropped into a tie with Felix after officials reviewed images of the photo finish. The top three places qualified for the 2012 USA Olympic team for the 2012 Summer Olympics; however, USATF had no tiebreaker procedures in place at the time in the event of a tie for the final spot. After discussion, USATF officials decided that a runoff between the two sprinters would take place in the event that neither ceded her spot to the other. Tarmoh initially agreed to the runoff but later pulled out, ceding the spot to Felix. The event generated substantial criticism toward USATF officials for having insufficient procedures in place for breaking ties, as well as for forcing the runners to decide whether to participate in the eventual runoff.

Tarmoh traveled to London as a reserve on the US team. She ran the second leg of the women's 4 × 100 metres relay in the qualifying round. Although she did not compete in the finals, she received a gold medal as the USA set a world record in winning the finals.

Personal Information

Tarmoh has also appeared in an episode of California On, where she was interviewed by comedian Kassem G.

Personal bests

References

External links

 Texas A&M profile

1989 births
Living people
American female sprinters
Texas A&M Aggies men's track and field athletes
Athletes (track and field) at the 2012 Summer Olympics
American people of Sierra Leonean descent
Olympic gold medalists for the United States in track and field
Medalists at the 2012 Summer Olympics
Track and field athletes from San Jose, California
World Athletics Championships athletes for the United States
World Athletics Championships medalists
USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships winners
Olympic female sprinters
21st-century American women

Jeneba Tarmoh