Edith Wilson ( Bolling, formerly Galt; October 15, 1872 – December 28, 1961) was the first lady of the United States from 1915 to 1921 and the second wife of President Woodrow Wilson. She married the widower Wilson in December 1915, during his first term as president. Edith Wilson played an influential role in President Wilson's administration following the severe stroke he suffered in October 1919. For the remainder of her husband's presidency, she managed the office of the president, a role she later described as a "stewardship", and determined which communications and matters of state were important enough to bring to the attention of the bedridden president.

Early life
Edith Bolling was born October 15, 1872, in Wytheville, Virginia, to circuit court judge William Holcombe Bolling and his wife Sarah "Sallie" Spears (née White). Her birthplace, the Bolling Home, is now a museum located in Wytheville's Historic District.

Bolling was a descendant of the first settlers to arrive at the Virginia Colony. Through her father, she was also a descendant of Mataoka, better known as Pocahontas, the daughter of Wahunsenacawh, the paramount weroance of the Powhatan Confederacy. On April 5, 1614, Mataoka (then renamed as "Rebecca" following her conversion to Christianity the previous year) married John Rolfe, the first English settler in Virginia to cultivate tobacco as an export commodity. Their granddaughter, Jane Rolfe, married Robert Bolling, a wealthy slave-owning planter and merchant. John Bolling, the son of Jane Rolfe and Robert Bolling, had six surviving children with his wife, Mary Kennon; each of those children married and had surviving children. Additionally, she was related, either by blood or through marriage, to Thomas Jefferson, Martha Washington, Letitia Tyler and the Harrison family.

Edith was the seventh of eleven children, two of whom died in infancy. The Bollings were some of the oldest members of Virginia's slave-owning, planter elite prior to the American Civil War. After the war ended and slavery abolished, Edith's father turned to the practice of law to support his family. Unable to pay taxes on his extensive properties, and forced to give up the family's plantation seat, William Holcombe Bolling moved to Wytheville, where most of his children were born.

The Bolling household was a large one, and Edith grew up within the confines of a sprawling, extended family. In addition to eight surviving siblings, Edith's grandmothers, aunts and cousins also lived in the Bolling household. Many of the women in Edith's family lost husbands during the war. The Bollings had been staunch supporters of the Confederate States of America, were proud of their Southern planter heritage, and in early childhood, taught Edith in the postCivil War South's narrative of the Lost Cause. As was often the case among the planter elite, the Bollings justified slave ownership, saying that the persons that they owned had been content with their lives as chattel and had little desire for freedom.

Education

Edith had little formal education. While her sisters were enrolled in local schools, Edith was taught how to read and write at home. Her paternal grandmother, Anne Wiggington Bolling, played a large role in her education. Crippled by a spinal cord injury, Grandmother Bolling was confined to bed. Edith had the responsibility to wash her clothing, turn her in bed at night, and look after her 26 canaries.

In turn, Grandmother Bolling oversaw Edith's education, teaching her how to read, write, basic math skills, speak a hybrid language of French and English, make dresses, and instilled in her a tendency to make quick judgments and hold strong opinions, personality traits Edith would exhibit her entire life. William Bolling read classic English literature aloud to his family at night, hired a tutor to teach Edith, and sometimes took her on his travels. The Bolling family attended church regularly, and Edith became a lifelong, practicing Episcopalian.

When Edith was 15, her father enrolled her at Martha Washington College (a precursor of Emory and Henry College), a finishing school for girls in Abingdon, Virginia. William Holcombe Bolling chose it for its excellent music program. Edith proved to be an undisciplined, ill-prepared student. She was miserable there, complaining of the school's austerity: the food was poorly prepared, the rooms too cold, and the daily curriculum excessively rigorous, intimidating, and too strictly regimented. Edith left after only one semester. Two years later, Edith's father enrolled her in Powell's School for Girls in Richmond, Virginia. Years later, Edith noted that her time at Powell's was the happiest time of her life. Unfortunately for Edith, the school closed at the end of the year after the headmaster suffered an accident that cost him his leg. Concerned about the cost of Edith's education, William Bolling refused to pay for any additional schooling, choosing instead to focus on educating her three brothers.

First marriage
While visiting her married sister in Washington, D.C., Edith met Norman Galt (1864–1908), a prominent jeweler of Galt & Bro. The couple married on April 30, 1896, and lived in the capital for the next 12 years. In 1903, she bore a son who lived only for a few days. The difficult birth left her unable to have more children. In January 1908, Norman Galt died unexpectedly at the age of 43. Edith hired a manager to oversee his business, paid off his debts, and with the income left to her by her late husband, toured Europe.

First Lady of the United States

Marriage to Woodrow Wilson

In March 1915, the widow Galt was introduced to recently widowed U.S. President Woodrow Wilson at the White House by Helen Woodrow Bones (1874–1951). Bones was the president's first cousin and served as the official White House hostess after the death of Wilson's wife, Ellen Wilson. Wilson took an instant liking to Galt and proposed soon after meeting her. However, rumors that Wilson had cheated on his wife with Galt threatened the burgeoning relationship.

Lurid gossip that Wilson and Galt had murdered the First Lady further troubled the couple. Distressed at the effect such wild speculation could have on the authenticity of the presidency and respectability of his personal reputation, Wilson suggested that Edith Bolling Galt back out of their engagement. Instead, she insisted on postponing the wedding until the end of the official year of mourning for Ellen Axson Wilson. Wilson married Galt on December 18, 1915, at her home in Washington, D.C. Attended by 40 guests, the groom's pastor, Reverend Dr. James H. Taylor of Central Presbyterian Church, and the bride's, Reverend Dr. Herbert Scott Smith of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C., performed the wedding jointly.

Early role as First Lady
As First Lady during World War I, Edith Bolling Wilson observed gasless Sundays, meatless Mondays, and wheatless Wednesdays to set an example for the federal rationing effort. Similarly, she set sheep to graze on the White House lawn rather than use manpower to mow it, and had their wool auctioned off for the benefit of the American Red Cross. Additionally, Edith Wilson became the first First Lady to travel to Europe during her term. She visited Europe with her husband on two separate occasions, in 1918 and 1919, to visit troops and to sign the Treaty of Versailles. During this time, her presence amongst the female royalty of Europe helped to cement America's status as a world power and propelled the position of First Lady to an equivalent standing in international politics.

Though the new First Lady had sound qualifications for the role of hostess, the social aspect of the administration was overshadowed by war in Europe and abandoned after the United States formally entered the conflict in 1917. Edith Wilson submerged her own life in her husband's, trying to keep him fit under tremendous strain, and accompanied him to Europe when the Allies conferred on terms of peace.

Increased role after husband's stroke

Following his attendance at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Woodrow Wilson returned to the United States to campaign for Senate approval of the peace treaty and the League of Nations Covenant. However, the president suffered a stroke that October which left him bedridden and partially paralyzed. The United States never did ratify the Treaty of Versailles nor join the League of Nations, which had initially been Wilson's concept. At the time, non-interventionist sentiment was strong.

Edith Wilson and others in the President's inner circle (including his physician and a few close friends) hid the true extent of the president's illness and disability from the American public. Edith also took over a number of routine duties and details of the executive branch of the government from the onset of Wilson's illness until he left office almost a year and a half later. From October 1919 to the end of Wilson's term on March 4, 1921, Edith, acting in the role of First Lady and shadow steward, decided who and which communications and matters of state were important enough to bring to the bedridden president. Edith Wilson later wrote: "I studied every paper sent from the different Secretaries or Senators and tried to digest and present in tabloid form the things that, despite my vigilance, had to go to the President. I, myself, never made a single decision regarding the disposition of public affairs. The only decision that was mine was what was important and what was not, and the very important decision of when to present matters to my husband." Edith became the sole communication link between the President and his Cabinet. She required they send her all pressing matters, memos, correspondence, questions, and requests.

Edith took her role very seriously, even successfully pushing for the removal of Secretary of State Robert Lansing after he conducted a series of Cabinet meetings without the President (or Edith herself) present. She also refused to allow the British ambassador, Edward Grey, an opportunity to present his credentials to the president unless Grey dismissed an aide who was known to have made demeaning comments about her. She assisted President Wilson in filling out paperwork, and would often add new notes or suggestions. She was made privy to classified information, and was entrusted with the responsibility of encoding and decoding encrypted messages.

Controversy
In My Memoir, published in 1939, Edith Wilson justified her self-proclaimed role of presidential "steward", arguing that her actions on behalf of Woodrow Wilson's presidency were sanctioned by Wilson's doctors; that they told her to do so for her husband's mental health. Edith Wilson maintained that she was simply a vessel of information for President Wilson; however, others in the White House did not trust her. Some believed that the marriage between Edith and Woodrow was hasty and controversial. Others did not approve of the marriage because they believed that Woodrow and Edith had begun communicating with each other while Woodrow was still married to Ellen Wilson.

In 1921, Joe Tumulty (Wilson's chief of staff) wrote: "No public man ever had a more devoted helpmate, and no wife a husband more dependent upon her sympathetic understanding of his problems ... Mrs. Wilson's strong physical constitution, combined with strength of character and purpose, has sustained her under a strain which must have wrecked most women". In subsequent decades, however, scholars were far more critical in their assessment of Edith Wilson's tenure as First Lady. Phyllis Lee Levin concluded that the effectiveness of Woodrow Wilson's policies was unnecessarily hampered by his wife, "a woman of narrow views and formidable determination". Judith Weaver opined that Edith Wilson underestimated her own role in Wilson's presidency. While she may not have made critical decisions, she did influence both domestic and international policy given her role as presidential gatekeeper. Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian, has taken issue with Edith Wilson's claim of a benign "stewardship". Markel has opined that Edith Wilson "was, essentially, the nation's chief executive until her husband's second term concluded in March of 1921". While a widow of moderate education for her time, she nevertheless attempted to protect her husband and his legacy, if not the presidency, even if it meant exceeding her role as First Lady. This period of her life was dramatized in the 2021 historical fiction podcast Edith! starring Rosamund Pike.

Later years
Upon leaving the White House in March 1921, Edith and Woodrow Wilson moved into a home on S Street NW in Washington, D.C. There she cared for the former president until his death on February 3, 1924. In subsequent years, she headed the Woman's National Democratic Club's board of governors when the club opened formally in 1924 and published her memoir in 1939.

On December 8, 1941, the day after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war, taking pains to draw a link with Wilson's April 1917 declaration of war. Edith Wilson was present during Roosevelt's address to Congress. On April 14, 1945, she attended Roosevelt's funeral at the White House. She later attended the January 20, 1961, inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.

Edith Wilson died of congestive heart failure on December 28, 1961, at age 89. She was to have been the guest of honor that day at the dedication ceremony for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge across the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia, on what would have been her husband's 105th birthday. She was buried next to her husband at the Washington National Cathedral.

Legacy
Wilson left her home to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, with a condition that it be made into a museum honoring her husband. The Woodrow Wilson House opened as a museum in 1964. To the Library of Congress, Mrs. Wilson donated first President Wilson's presidential papers in 1939, then his personal library in 1946.

The Edith Bolling Wilson Birthplace Foundation & Museum in Wytheville, Virginia was established in 2008. The foundation has stabilized the first lady's birthplace and childhood home; it had been identified in May 2013 by Preservation Virginia as an Endangered Historic Site. The foundation's programs and exhibits aspire to build public awareness "honoring Mrs. Wilson's name, the contributions she made to this country, the institution of the presidency, and for the example she sets for women." The Foundation shares First Lady Mrs. Wilson's journey "From Wytheville to The White House".

In 2015, a former historic bank building in Wytheville, located on Main Street, was dedicated to the First Lady and bears her name. Adapted as the Bolling Wilson Hotel, it serves Wytheville residents and travelers alike.

References

Bibliography
Caroli, Betty Boyd. First Ladies: From Martha Washington to Michelle Obama. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Foster, Gaines. Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865 to 1913. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Gould, Lewis L. American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacy. Florence, Ky.: Taylor and Francis, 2001.
Hagood, Wesley O. Presidential Sex: From the Founding Fathers to Bill Clinton. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Pub., 1998.
Hatch, Alden. Edith Bolling Wilson. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1961.
Hazelgrove, William Elliott. Madam President : The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson. Washington, D.C.: Regency Publishing, 2016.
Klapthor, Margaret Brown and Black, Allida M. The First Ladies. Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2001.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Indians & English: Facing Off in Early America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Settling with the Indians: the Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in America, 1580–1640. New York, NY: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. The Atlantic in World History. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. The Jamestown Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Markel, Howard. "When a secret president ran the country," PBS News Hour (October 2, 2015)
Miller, Kristie. Ellen and Edith: Woodrow Wilson's First Ladies. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010.
Lamb, Brian. Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?: A Tour of Presidential Gravesites. New York: Public Affairs, 2010.
Levin, Phyllis Lee. Edith and Woodrow: The Wilson White House. New York: Scribner, 2001.
Maynard, W. Barksdale. Woodrow Wilson: Princeton to the Presidency. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008.
Mayo, Edith. The Smithsonian Book of the First Ladies: Their Lives, Times, and Issues. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1994.
McCallops, James S. Edith Bolling Galt Wilson: The Unintended President. New York: Nova History Publications, 2003.
Nordhult, J.W. Schulte. Woodrow Wilson: A Life for World Peace. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1991.
Phifer, Gregg. Speech Monographs, Vol. 38 Issue 4 (Nov 1971).

 Roberts, Rebecca Boggs. Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson (2023), scholarly biography excerpt
Robertson, Wyndham. Pocahontas: Alias Matoaka, and Her Descendants through Her Marriage at Jamestown, Virginia, in April 1614, with John Rolph, Gentleman. Richmond, VA: J W Randolph & English, 1887.
Schneider, Dorothy and Schneider, Carl J. First Ladies: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Facts On File, 2010.
Townshend, Camilla. Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2004.
Waldrup, Carole Chandler. Wives of the American Presidents. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006.
Weaver, Judith L. "Edith Bolling, Wilson as First Lady: A Study in the Power of Personality, 1919–1920," Presidential Studies Quarterly 15, No. 1 (Winter, 1985), pp. 51–76
Wertheimer, Molly Meijer. Inventing a Voice: The Rhetoric of American First Ladies of the Twentieth Century. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.

Primary sources
Tribble, Edwin. ed. A President in Love : The Courtship Letters of Woodrow Wilson and Edith Bolling Galt. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.
Tumulty, Joseph Patrick. Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him. New York, NY:, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921.
Wilson, Edith Bolling Galt. My Memoir. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1939.
Young, Dwight and Johnson, Margaret. Dear First Lady: Letters to the White House: From the Collections of the Library of Congress & National Archives. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2008.

External links

Edith Bolling Wilson Birthplace

Edith Wilson at C-SPAN's First Ladies: Influence & Image

1872 births
1961 deaths
19th-century American women
20th-century American women
American people of English descent
American people of Powhatan descent
Bolling family of Virginia
Burials at Washington National Cathedral
First ladies of the United States
People from Wytheville, Virginia
Woodrow Wilson family
Washington, D.C., Democrats
Virginia Democrats
Writers from Virginia
Rolfe family of Virginia

Edith Wilson


Symmetric-key algorithms is a method in cryptography. It is when the keys for decryption and encryption are exactly the same shared secret. You can generate the secret randomly, or from a password, or through a secret key-exchange procedure like Diffie-Hellman.

Symmetric-key algorithms are very important because they are faster on computers than the other kind:public-key algorithms. In public-key cryptography (asymmetric-key cryptography) the key for encryption can be given to the public with no problem, and everyone can send you secret messages. The key for encryption is "open" because, in practice, it cannot be used to get the key for decryption. This is very useful, but public-key cryptography algorithms are very slow on computers, so they are only used to send a secret key. Then symmetric-key algorithms are used for everything else because they are faster.

There are two kinds of symmetric-key algorithms, called stream ciphers and block ciphers. Stream ciphers encrypt a message as a stream of bits one at a time. Block ciphers take blocks of bits, encrypt them as a single unit, and sometimes use the answer later too. Blocks of 64 bits have been commonly used; though modern ciphers like the Advanced Encryption Standard use 128-bit blocks.

Examples of popular symmetric cyphers include Twofish, Serpent, AES (aka Rijndael), Blowfish, CAST5, RC4, TDES, and IDEA.

In history, some cryptanalysis methods exploited symmetry, so symmetric systems were less secure. Some attacks are called known-plaintext attacks, chosen plaintext attacks, differential cryptanalysis and linear cryptanalysis.

Other terms for symmetric-key encryption are secret-key, single-key, shared-key, one-key and eventually private-key encryption. This last term does not have the same meaning that the term private key has in public-key cryptography.

Symmetric vs. asymmetric algorithms
Unlike symmetric algorithms, asymmetric key algorithms use a different key for encryption than for decryption. Meaning, a user knowing the encryption key of an asymmetric algorithm can encrypt messages, but cannot calculate the decryption key and cannot decrypt messages encrypted with that key. A short comparison of these two types of algorithms is given below:

Speed
Symmetric-key algorithms are generally much less computationally intensive than asymmetric key algorithms. In practice, asymmetric key algorithms are typically hundreds to thousands times slower than symmetric key algorithms.

Key management
One disadvantage of symmetric-key algorithms is the requirement of a shared secret key, with both parties holding the same copy at each end.
In order to ensure secure communications between everyone in a group of n people a total of n(n - 1)/2 keys are needed, which is the total number of possible communication channels.
To limit the impact of a potential discovery by a cryptographic attacker, they should be changed regularly and kept secure during distribution and in service. The process of selecting, distributing and storing keys is known as key management, and is difficult to achieve reliably and securely.

Hybrid cryptosystem
In modern cryptosystems designs, both asymmetric (public key) and symmetric algorithms are used to take advantage of the best of both.
Asymmetric algorithms are used to distribute symmetric-keys at the start of a session. Once a symmetric key is known to all parties of the session, faster symmetric-key algorithms using that key can be used to encrypt the remainder of the session. This simplifies the key distribution problem, because asymmetric keys only have to be distributed authentically, while symmetric keys need to be distributed in both an authentic and confidential manner.

Systems that use such a hybrid approach include SSL, PGP and GPG, etc.

Related pages
Asymmetric key algorithms

References

Cryptography

Symmetric-key algorithm


Picosecond ultrasonics is a type of ultrasonics that uses ultra-high frequency ultrasound generated by ultrashort light pulses. It is a non-destructive technique in which picosecond acoustic pulses penetrate into thin films or nanostructures to reveal internal features such as film thickness as well as cracks, delaminations and voids. It can also be used to probe liquids.  The technique is also referred to as picosecond laser ultrasonics or laser picosecond acoustics.

Introduction

When an ultrashort light pulse, known as the pump pulse, is focused onto a thin opaque film on a substrate, the optical absorption results in a thermal expansion that launches an elastic strain pulse. This strain pulse mainly consists of longitudinal acoustic phonons that propagate directly into the film as a coherent pulse.

After acoustic reflection from the film-substrate interface, the strain pulse returns to the film surface, where it can be detected by a delayed optical probe pulse through optical reflectance or (for films that are thin enough) transmittance changes. This time-resolved method for generation and photoelastic detection of coherent picosecond acoustic phonon pulses was proposed by Christian Thomsen and coworkers in a collaboration between Brown University and Bell Laboratories in 1984.

Initial development took place in Humphrey Maris's group at Brown University and elsewhere in the late 1980s.
In the early 1990s the method was extended in scope at Nippon Steel Corp. by direct sensing of the picosecond surface vibrations of the film caused by the returning strain pulses, resulting in improved detection sensitivity in many cases. Advances after the year 2000 include the generation of picosecond acoustic solitons by the use of millimeter propagation distances and the generation of picosecond shear waves by the use of anisotropic materials or small (~1 μm) optical spot sizes. Acoustic frequencies up to the terahertz range in solids and up to ~ 10 GHz in liquids have been reported.

Apart from thermal expansion, generation through the deformation potential or through  piezoelectricity is possible.  Picosecond ultrasonics is currently used as a thin film metrology technique for probing films of sub-micrometer thicknesses with nanometer resolution in-depth, that sees widespread use in the semiconductor processing industry. The picosecond ultrasonics has also been applied to measure the acoustic velocity inside nanomaterials or to study phonon physics.

Generation and detection

Generation

The absorption of an incident optical pump pulse sets up a local thermal stress near the surface of the sample. This stress launches an elastic strain pulse that propagates into the sample. The exact depth for the  stress generation depends, in particular, on the material involved and the optical pump wavelength. In metals and semiconductors, for example, ultrashort-timescale thermal and carrier diffusion tends to increase the depth that is initially heated within the first ~1 ps.

Acoustic pulses are generated with a temporal duration approximately equal to the acoustic transit time across this initially heated depth, in general greater than the optical absorption depth. For example, the optical absorption depths in Al and GaAs are ~10 nm for blue light, but the electron diffusion depths are ~50 and 100 nm, respectively. The diffusion depth determines the spatial extent of the strain pulse in the through-thickness direction.

The main generation mechanism for metals is thermal expansion, whereas for semiconductors it is often the deformation potential mechanism. In piezoelectric materials the inverse piezoelectric effect, arising from the production of internal electric fields induced by charge separation, may dominate.

When the optical spot diameter D, for example D~10 µm, at the surface of an elastically  isotropic and flat sample is much greater than the initially heated depth, one can approximate the acoustic field propagating into the solid by a one-dimensional problem, provided that one does not work with strain propagation depths that are too large (~D²/Λ=Rayleigh length, where Λ is the acoustic wavelength). In this configuration—the one originally proposed for picosecond ultrasonics—only longitudinal acoustic strain pulses need to be considered. The strain pulse forms a pancake-like region of longitudinal strain that propagates directly into the solid away from the surface.

For small spot sizes approaching the optical diffraction limit, for example D~1 µm, it may be necessary to consider the three-dimensional nature of the problem. In this case acoustic mode-conversion at surfaces and interfaces and acoustic diffraction play an important role, resulting in the involvement of both shear and longitudinal polarizations. The strain pulse separates into different polarization components and spreads out laterally (for distances >D²/Λ) as it propagates down into the sample, resulting in a more complicated, three-dimensional strain distribution.

The use of both shear and longitudinal pulses is advantageous for measuring elastic constants or sound velocities. Shear waves may also be generated by the use of elastically anisotropic solids cut at oblique angles to the crystal axes. This allows shear or quasi-shear waves to be generated with a large amplitude in the through-thickness direction.

It is also possible to generate strain pulses whose shape does not vary on propagation. These so-called acoustic solitons have been demonstrated at low temperatures over propagation distances of a few millimeters. They result from a delicate balance between acoustic dispersion and nonlinear  effects.

Detection

Strain pulses returning to the surface from buried interfaces or other sub-surface acoustically inhomogeneous regions are detected as a series of echoes. For example, strain pulses propagating back and forth through a thin film produce a decaying series of echoes, from which one may derive, in particular, the film thickness, the ultrasonic attenuation or the ultrasonic dispersion.

The original detection mechanism used in picosecond ultrasonics is based on the photoelastic effect. The refractive index and extinction coefficient near the surface of the solid are perturbed by the returning strain pulses (within the optical absorption depth of the probe light), resulting in changes in the optical reflectance or transmission. The measured temporal echo shape results from a spatial integral involving both the probe light optical absorption profile and the strain pulse spatial profile (see below).

Detection involving the surface displacement is also possible if the optical phase is variation is recorded. In this case the echo shape when measured through the optical phase variation is proportional to a spatial integral of the strain distribution (see below). Surface displacement detection has been demonstrated with ultrafast optical beam deflection and with interferometry.

For a homogeneous isotropic sample in vacuum with normal optical incidence, the optical amplitude reflectance (r) modulation can be expressed as

where   (n the refractive index and κ the extinction coefficient) is the complex refractive index for the probe light in the sample, k is the wave number of the probe light in vacuum, η(z, t) is the spatiotemporal longitudinal strain variation,  is the photoelastic constant, z is the depth in the sample, t is the time and u is the surface displacement of the sample (in the +z direction):

To obtain the variation in optical reflectivity for intensity R one uses , whereas to obtain the variation in optical phase one uses .

The theory of optical detection in multilayer samples, including both interface motion and the photoelastic effect, is now well-developed. The control of the polarization state and angle of incidence of the probe light has been shown to be useful for detecting shear acoustic waves.

Applications and future challenges

Picosecond ultrasonics has been applied successfully to analyze a variety of materials, both solid and liquid. It is increasingly being applied to  nanostructures, including sub-micrometre films, multilayers, quantum wells, semiconductor heterostructures and nano-cavities. It is also applied to probe the mechanical properties of a single biological cell.

See also
Acoustics
Ultrasound
Phonons
Soliton
Waves
Light
Time-resolved spectroscopy
Stress
Strain
Photoelasticity
Anisotropy

References

External links

Ultrasound

Picosecond ultrasonics


George Franklin Tucker (born December 15, 1947 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican physicist and former Olympic luger.

He represented Puerto Rico in the luge event at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, and was the only Puerto Rican representative at the Games. He was also the country's flagbearer. Tucker was, at the time, a doctoral student at Wesleyan University in the United States. He was later described by Sports Illustrated as "overweight but quick-witted" and as "the press's favorite loser". He finished last in his event, and reportedly "got a lot more press in the States than Paul Hildgartner, the Italian who won the gold medal". He described himself as "the luger who dripped blood", and Time reported that he "shed alarming amounts of skin bouncing off the wall".

Tucker represented Puerto Rico again at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, but was, this time, one of nine Puerto Rican competitors. Tucker competed in the luge with teammate Raúl Muñiz. This time, he did not finish last.

According to Puerto Rican bobsled coach Rich Kolko, Tucker in 1984 "set the standard for Caribbean nations competing" in Winter sports – such as the Jamaican bobsled team.

References

1947 births
Living people
Wesleyan University alumni
Puerto Rican scientists
Sportspeople from San Juan, Puerto Rico
Puerto Rican male lugers
Lugers at the 1984 Winter Olympics
Lugers at the 1988 Winter Olympics
Olympic lugers for Puerto Rico

George Tucker (luger)


Indravarman I () was a ruler of Khmer Empire who reigned from Hariharalaya between 877/78 and 889/890 CE.

Indravarman's ancestors
According to the inscriptions of the Práḥ Kô temple, consecrated on Monday, 25 January 880 AD (Foundation stele K. 713 a) three pairs of temple towers for three deceased kings and their queens were built by him as a kind of "memorial temple", as can be seen by the inscriptions on the door frames of the towers: The central towers were dedicated to Jayavarman II under his posthumous name Parameśvara and his queen Dharaṇīndradevī (K. 320a), the northern ones for Rudravarman (consecrated as Rudreśvara) and Rajendradevī (K. 318a), his mother's parents, and the southern towers for Pṛthivīndravarman (desecrated as Pṛthivīndreśvara) and Pṛthivīndradevī (K. 315 a) and K. 713 b).

Indravarman I's wife, Indradevi I, was a descendant of the royal families of Sambhupura, Vyadhapura, and Aninditapura (Funan).

Pṛthivīndravarman and Rudravarman
Actually the classical succession of kings in the 9th century was disputed by some epigraphists such as Kamaleswar Bhattacharya and Karl-Heinz Golzio. Since the poor activity and records of Jayavarman III, and the presence of the dedicated towers of Preah Ko, they had interpreted some Sanskrit inscriptions at Roluos as proof of existence of two kings between him and Indravarman: Rudravarman and Pṛthivīndravarman.

According to the Lolei inscription K. 324 of Indravarman's successor Yaśovarman I, dated 8 July 893 AD, Rudravarman was the younger brother of the mother of 'Dharaṇīndradevī, the queen consort of Jayavarman II and mother of Jayavarman III (whom Indravarman mentioned under his posthumous name Viṣṇuloka in his Bakong inscription K. 826 stanza XXX, dated 881/82 AD.

Although Michael Vickery, has pointed out that they are not mentioned in later times and that these "-varman" ancestors of Indravarman may easily be explained as posthumous upgrading of the king's parents, which perhaps already occurred within their lifetimes, the following facts should be taken into account: 1) The inscriptions of the 9th century gave an account of events, i.e. genealogies and relative chronologies, referring to that century itself; 2) One should have great doubts concerning the reliability of later inscriptions that record wrong reign dates and stories about family connections never heard of before, which was pointed out especially by Vickery; 3) later inscriptions omitted very often not only these two kings, but also other important kings (Jayavarman IV mentioned only his three predecessors; Rājendravarman II, the founder of a new dynasty, has omitted in his Bàksĕi Čaṃkrŏṅ inscription K. 286, dated 23 February 948, all his predecessors with the exception of Jayavarman II and Jayavarman III); 4) In the 9th century the "-varman"-title was exclusively reserved for kings (by the way, Rudravarman was no father of a king); 5) It is surprising that later inscriptions were considered more trustworthy than contemporary ones, thus twisting things instead of following a historio-critical method.

Indravarman's monuments and public buildings
While Jayavarman II was credited for the founding of the Khmer Empire ca. 800 AD, Indravarman I was credited for an extensive building program. He set the foundations for the future Angkorian kings to follow. The king's  first act was to perform a public service for his subjects by building an irrigation network for the rice fields. The goal was usually achieved by constructing a large reservoir to retain water during the monsoon season and then release it during the dry season through a network of canals and channels. And in Hindu mythology the reservoir also represents an ocean and the temple-mountain represents Mount Meru, the home of the gods. The king and his Brahman advisors performed many rituals throughout the year to reinforce this belief; for example, the ritual of rain-making performed before the rice planting season. Immediately, after Indravarman I acceded, he declared in his Práḥ Kô inscription: "In five days from today I shall begin digging, etc." Dig he did with a reservoir of an immense size: the Indratāṭaka was the biggest reservoir ever built before his time being  long by  wide. However, later rulers out-built him and made his reservoir look small. Now dry, it could have held about 7.5 million cubic metres of water during the monsoon season.

The king's second act was - as mentioned above - to build shrines and dedicate them to his god, ancestors, and parents. At his capital city Hariharālaya, Roluos at present, Indravarman I built Práḥ Kô (Preah Ko), which he dedicated to his maternal father and grandfather, and the dynasty founder Jayavarman II.  His palace was located at Prei Monti.

The king's third act was to build a temple-mountain (or complete a construction begun by Jayavarman III) which he dedicated to a liṅga dedicated to his patron Hindu deity Shiva called after himself. Cœdès identified thirteen Angkorian kings after Indravarman built such shrines for these dual purposes (state and memorial shrine). The shrines were built with stepped pyramids surrounded by lakes. In the centre of the capital of Hariharālaya, Indravarman I built Bakong surrounded by double-walled moats. The Bakong was his state shrine, therefore, it also housed the official [Shiva|Śiva]'s liṅga. Although his shrines are bigger than his predecessors, they are modest compared to the later shrines. It was also the first time in Khmer architecture that nāgas were employed as guardians for the bridge between the human world and the temple, house of gods.

Succession
Indravarman I died in 889, receiving the posthumous name Isvaraloka, and was succeeded by his son Yaśovarman I.

Notes

References

9th-century Cambodian monarchs
9th-century Hindus
Hindu monarchs
Khmer kings
Cambodian Hindus
9th-century deaths
Year of birth unknown

Indravarman I


A piggy bank is used to collect coins. It is shaped like pig and comes in various colors and sizes. It is often used by parents to teach their children how to save money. It is not certain about why it is a called piggy bank and how it was started.

Some people say that "Piggy" was "Pygg" at first. Pygg is a clay that was used to make a bowl or vase to store salt or money.

Containers
Banks
Toys

Piggy bank


Werner Karl Heisenberg (5 December 1901  1 February 1976) was a German physicist. He won the  Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of quantum mechanics. He discovered the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which shows there is a limit on how well position and velocity of a particle can be measured.

Early life
Heisenberg was born in Wuerzburg, Germany, the son of a professor of Byzantine history. He went to university to study physics in Munich. Arnold Sommerfeld was one of his teachers.

Heisenberg was a very good student and needed only three years to finish his studies. He then wrote a doctoral thesis about movements in the flows of liquids ("Über Stabilität und Turbulenz von Flüssigkeitsströmen"—"On the stability and turbulence of liquid streams"). In 1924 he became assistant to Max Born at the University of Göttingen. In June 1925 he was recovering from hay fever on the island Helgoland, and while working alone made the decisive breakthrough to Quantum mechanics. Back in Göttingen, together with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, they wrote the basic paper which founded Quantum

mechanics.

In 1926/ 1927 Heisenberg worked with Niels Bohr at the University of Copenhagen. In February 1927, while Bohr was on extended skiing holidays, he invented the uncertainty principle and published the paper "Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik"—"On the Visualizable Contents of the Quantum-theoretical Kinematics and Mechanics".

At the age of 26 Heisenberg became professor of theoretical physics at the University of Leipzig.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize when he was 31 years old.

In 1937 he married Elisabeth Schumacher. They had seven children, one of their sons is well known as a neurobiologist and geneticist, Martin Heisenberg.

War and later
During the Second World War, from 1939 to 1945 Werner Heisenberg was drafted to work on the German Uranium Project .  This was aiming at a nuclear reactor, and did not result in any nuclear weapons, possibly because Heisenberg did not want it to.  Some historians assume that there was a race between the tiny German Uranium project and the huge American Manhattan project.  Hans A. Bethe, the director of the theory division of the Manhattan project at Los Alamos, said this was not true.  Edward Teller, the father of the American hydrogen bomb, said that Heisenberg sabotaged the German project.

After the war, he was held as a prisoner at Farm Hall in England from May 1945 to January, 1946, where the British and Americans kept ten German nuclear scientists.

Later he worked in elementary particle physics, mainly in West Germany and he helped the foundation of the European Laboratory for Elementary Particle Physics CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. In April 1957, he signed a declaration , together with 17 German physicists, that they would never participate in the construction of nuclear weapons. In 1958, his Max-Planck-Institut für Physik was transferred from Göttingen to München.

He died in Munich Germany, in 1976 at the age of 74.

1901 births
1976 deaths
German academics
German Nobel Prize winners
People from Würzburg
German theoretical physicists

Werner Heisenberg


The name "John Doe" is used as a name in a legal action, case or discussion for a male person, whose true identity is unknown, anonymous or must be withheld for legal reasons. Male corpses or hospital patients whose identities are unknown may also be called "John Doe".  The name "Jane Doe" is used for females.

John or Jane Doe is also use an example when a name is needed, for instance when showing how a form should be completed.  "Joe Bloggs" is sometimes used in such a case.

Legal terms

John Doe


Hampshire College is a private college in Amherst, Massachusetts. The current president of the college is Edward Wingenbach. The motto of the college is Non Satis Scire, which is Latin for "to know is not enough".

History
Hampshire was created in 1965 by four other colleges as an experiment in higher education. The campus opened and the first class of students arrived in 1970. The Presidents of Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts got together in the 1950s and early 1960s and realized that there were things their own schools did not do very well. They also thought that the world was changing a lot and needed a college where students would have a lot of responsibility for their own education to be successful in the future.

Franklin Patterson and Charles Longsworth were chosen by these schools and wrote a book called The Making of a College that said how Hampshire was to be run and what kind of programs it would offer. Today, this book is considered an inspirational document by Hampshire students and faculty who try to live up to its ideals.

Program
Hampshire College describes itself as an experimenting college because it is always changing and improving how it does things, rather than doing the same thing as other colleges. Students usually do individual projects in order to move towards graduation.  There is some required coursework, but it is not the main point of the school.  Students also do not receive grades for completing their work.  Instead, they get something called a narrative evaluation, which is a long written explanation of what they did right and what they did wrong. There are also no specific required classes for graduation, but students must take classes in different areas depending on where they are in their studies.

The program is divided into three "Divisions" rather than four years, and students complete each Division as they show that they are capable of harder work.  Most students graduate in four years, but not everyone takes the same amount of time for each Division.

Division I, requires students to complete one course in each of the five "Schools of Thought" (see below) and three other courses, either on or off campus. Students are allowed to take classes at any of the other four founding schools.
Division II, the concentration or "major," requires students to learn about a single subject in detail. Each student is responsible for designing their own Division II. They work with a committee of at least two faculty members. Many students choose a faculty committee whose members have the same interests as they do. Division II also has a community service project and a multicultural perspectives requirement (all students must show some study in a culture different then their own).
Division III, the advanced project, requires students to complete a complex project in their field of choice. Division III usually lasts one year and is completed while taking few or no classes. A Division III topic can be a long written paper (it is something like a traditional college's "bachelor's" or "honors" thesis, or, for the very best students, a Master's or other graduate thesis), but it can also be a collection of creative work (writing, painting, photography, and movie are popular choices) or a hands-on engineering project, or invention.

The Hampshire College faculty are not organized in traditional departments but in loosely collected Schools. The Schools' names and subjects have changed over the years, but there have always been between three and five of them. Since 2005, the Schools are:

Cognitive Science (CS): includes linguistics, most psychology, some philosophy, neuroscience, and computer science.
Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (HACU): includes film, some studio arts, literature, media studies, and most philosophy.
Social Science (SS): includes most sociology and anthropology, economics, history, politics, and some psychology.
Natural Science (NS): includes most traditional science and mathematics
Interdisciplinary Arts (IA): includes performing arts, some studio arts, and creative writing.

Alumni and faculty

Notable Hampshire College alumni
Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker, The Civil War, Baseball and Jazz
Chuck Collins, political activist, co-founder of United For a Fair Economy
John Dwork, famously received a bachelor's degree in Frisbee (technically, "Flying Disc Entertainment and Education") from Hampshire in January 1984
John Falsey, television writer and producer, co-creator of St. Elsewhere and Northern Exposure
Daniel Horowitz, noted criminal-defense attorney.
Emily Hubley, award-winning animator, Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Will Killingsworth, musician, Orchid (band), Bucket Full of Teeth and Ampere (band) recording engineer, Dead Air Studios
Toby Driver, musician and artist, Kayo Dot and maudlin of the Well
Jon Krakauer, mountain climber and author, Into Thin Air and Into the Wild
Josiah Litant, Hampshire Assistant Dean of Student Services
Jeff Maguire, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, In the Line of Fire
Eugene Mirman, comedian
Liev Schreiber, stage and screen actor, The Manchurian Candidate, director, Everything is Illuminated
Elliott Smith, singer and songwriter
Lee Smolin, theoretical physicist at the Perimeter Institute
Danny Tamberelli, actor, The Mighty Ducks and television series All That and The Adventures of Pete and Pete
Barry Sonnenfeld, director, Men in Black
Naomi Wallace, playwright, One Flea Spare, Slaugher City
Mike Ladd, Hip Hop MC and member of the Anti-Pop Consortium
Gary Hirshberg, Founder of Stonyfield Farm Yogurt
Joshua Wesson, Founder of Best Cellars, a national chain of affordable wine shops
Evan B. Brandes, Attorney / Author
Thanu Yakupitiyage, activist and DJ

Notable past and present faculty
Eqbal Ahmad, post-colonial political scholar
Leonard Baskin, artist
James Baldwin, writer
Herbert J. Bernstein, theoretical physicist, philosopher and educator
Bill Brand, experimental filmmaker
Susan Douglas, sociologist, writer
Mark Dresser, jazz musician, contrabass virtuoso
Marty Ehrlich, jazz musician
Lynne Hanley, literary critic
Norton Juster, architect and writer
Michael Klare, expert on U.S. defense policy
Yusef Lateef, musician
Michael Lesy, writer
Jerome Liebling, filmmaker and photographer
Lester Mazor, legal scholar, former law clerk to former Chief Justice Warren E. Burger
Abraham Ravett, filmmaker
Eric Schocket, American studies scholar
Frank Holmquist, political scientist focusing on Africa and Kenya specifically
Vivek Bhandari, subaltern studies political scholar
Laurie Nisonoff, feminist economist
Annie G. Rogers, clinical psychologist, writer, poet
Andrew Salkey, writer

Other websites
Hampshire College
Hampshire College Archives, featuring PDF text of The Making of a College and documents from Hampshire College history
The Re-Radicalization of Hampshire College
The Hampshire College Daily Jolt
The Princeton Review: Hampshire College

Colleges and universities in Massachusetts
Five Colleges, Incorporated
1965 establishments in the United States
1960s establishments in Massachusetts

Hampshire College


A carp (plural: carp or carps) is a fish that lives in fresh water, such as rivers and lakes. In Europe and Asia carp are loved as a fishing and eating fish. However, carp are a really big problem in countries such as the U.S. and Australia. They make the water dirty by causing the mud at the bottom to move and in these countries people hate them.

Some popular ornamental fishes like the koi and goldfish are also carp.

Types of carp

 Genus Abramis
 Carp bream (Abramis brama)
 Genus Barbodes:
 Carnatic carp (Barbodes carnaticus)
 Genus Carassius:
 Crucian carp (Carassius carassius )
 Prussian carp (Carassius gibelio)
 Goldfish (Carassius auratus)
 Genus Cirrhinus:
 Chinese mud carp (Cirrhinus chinensis)
 Deccan white carp (Cirrhinus fulungee)
 Hora white carp (Cirrhinus macrops)
 Small scale mud carp (Cirrhinus microlepis)
 Mud carp (Cirrhinus molitorella)
 Man carp (Cirrhinus saprian)
 Genus Ctenopharyngodon:
 Grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idellus)
 Genus Culter:
 Predatory carp (Culter erythropterus)
 Genus Cyprinus:
 Common carp, Koi (Cyprinus carpio)
 Genus Epalzeorhynchos:
 Red-tailed black shark (Epalzeorhynchos bicolor)
 Red-finned black shark or Rainbow shark (Epalzeorhynchos frenatus)
 Genus Henicorhynchus:
 Siamese mud carp (Henicorhynchus siamensis)
 Genus Hypophthalmichthys:
 Bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis)
 Silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix)
 Genus Labeo:
 African carp (Labeo coubie)
 Fringed-lipped peninsula carp (Labeo fimbriatus)
 Bigmouth carp (Labeo kontius)
 Genus Mylopharyngodon:
 Black carp (Mylopharyngodon piceus)
 Genus Tinca:
 Tench (Tinca tinca)

Other websites

 Fishing Website on Carp
 Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission

Cypriniformes

Carp


A sequestrum (plural: sequestra) is a piece of dead bone that has become separated during the process of necrosis from normal or sound bone.

It is a complication (sequela) of osteomyelitis. The pathological process is as follows:
 infection in the bone leads to an increase in intramedullary pressure due to inflammatory exudates
 the periosteum becomes stripped from the ostium, leading to vascular thrombosis
 bone necrosis follows due to lack of blood supply
 sequestra are formed

The sequestra are surrounded by sclerotic bone which is relatively avascular (without a blood supply). Within the bone itself, the haversian canals become blocked with scar tissue, and the bone becomes surrounded by thickened periosteum.

Due to the avascular nature of this bone, antibiotics which travel to sites of infection via the bloodstream poorly penetrate these tissues, hence the difficulty in treating chronic osteomyelitis.

At the same time as this, new bone is forming (known as involucrum). Openings in this involucrum allow debris and exudates (including pus) to pass from the sequestrum via sinus tracts to the skin.

Rarely, a sequestrum may turn out to be an osteoid osteoma, a rare tumor of the bone.

References

Bone fractures
Gross pathology

Sequestrum


In computing, an office suite, sometimes called an office software suite or productivity suite is a software suite for use by workers. The parts of an office suite are usually come together, have a standard user interface and usually can interact with each other, sometimes in ways operating systems would not normally allow.

20th century office suites operated offline, not using the Internet. Examples that are still widely used include Microsoft Office and LibreOffice. Some can operate online, including Microsoft Office Online, Google Docs, and LibreOffice Online.

Usual parts
 Word processor
 Spreadsheet
 Presentation program
 Database
 Graphic design suite
 Communication
 E-mail client
 Personal information manager
 Groupware

Current suites

The most used office suite is Microsoft Office, which is available for Microsoft Windows and the Apple Macintosh. It has become a proprietary standard in office software.

Another office suite is any of the OpenDocument suites, which use the free OpenDocument file format. The most used one was OpenOffice.org , open-source software that can be used in Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and has created several other office suites similar to it, such as the Mac-native NeoOffice. Other free or less expensive office suites include LibreOffice, StarOffice, SoftMaker Office, KOffice and WPS Office. These programs support many of the features of Microsoft Office, and can open the files it creates and save new documents in those formats.

Apple computers have iWork, which is a office suite created specially for Mac OS X. It includes Pages, for word-processing, Numbers for spreadsheets, and Keynote, for presentations. They can also use  Microsoft Office for Mac, or StarOffice, KOffice, NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org, which all can be used on Apple computers.

Related pages
Web operating system
Web desktop

References

 Free Web-based Office alternatives
 A good article on free office suites
 DMOZ Office Suites

Other websites
  DMOZ  / Office_Suites

Office suite


The As Syakirin Mosque (), also known as KLCC Mosque, is a mosque located in the Kuala Lumpur City Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The mosque is situated near the Suria KLCC shopping centre and the Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest twin towers in the world.

In 2009, the mosque went through a major renovation to increase the capacity from 6000 people to 12,000 people.

Mosque initially registered as a prayer on 12 July 1999 for Petronas staff, and status as a mosque before being administered by the Federal Territory Islamic Religious Council (religious council).

This two-storey mosque area of 21 hectares. It is regarded as the jewel in the park because of its strategic location and facing KLCC Park also provides a hall that can accommodate up to 500 people with audio system complete with meeting rooms and room remains.

Ash-Syakirin name means' the people of the grateful chosen as the official name for this mosque. The mosque is an architectural landmark of Islam in a rapidly developing area in the capital city, Kuala Lumpur.

See also
 Islam in Malaysia

References

Mosques in Kuala Lumpur
Mosques completed in 1996
1996 establishments in Malaysia
Modernist architecture in Malaysia
Mosque buildings with domes

As Syakirin Mosque


Alpha may mean:

The Greek letter alpha
Alpha, a letter in the Greek alphabet. α may be used as the symbol for:
Angle of attack in aerodynamics
Common-base current gain of a transistor in electronics
In physics:
Fine-structure constant, a fundamental physical constant
Alpha particle, form of particle radiation
H-alpha, or H-α, an emission line created by hydrogen atoms
The alpha carbon in organic chemistry
In Bayer designation, the typically brightest star in a constellation
The significance level in statistical hypothesis testing
Alpha channel, describing transparency and opacity in computer graphics
The alpha coefficient in evaluating financial returns
Thermal diffusivity

Place names
Alpha, Michigan
Alpha, Minnesota
Alpha, New Jersey
Alpha, Queensland

Media, literature and fiction
Alpha (band), a British electronic music group
Alpha Magazine, Australian men's sport magazine
Alpha (search engine), a search engine by Yahoo!
Alpha TV, a Greek terrestrial channel
Alpha the Ultimate Mutant, a character featured in Marvel Comics

Science and mathematics
 The Bayer designation of the brightest star in a constellation, for example
 Alpha Centauri, the brightest star system in the southern constellation of Centaurus
Alpha (biology), "alpha male" and "alpha female", the highest ranking individuals in a community of social animals
Alpha (investment), a measurement of risk-adjusted performance
Alpha waves, recorded by electroencephalography
Cronbach's alpha, a statistical measure of reliability
ALPHA, the Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus, an experiment at CERN.

Computing
Alpha (machine learning), the degree to which a learning agent takes into account new information
ALPHA refers to the set of ASCII characters A-Z and a-z, as defined in RFC 4234
The ALPHA programming language
Alpha, a development stage of software release
DEC Alpha, a microprocessor/central processing unit (CPU)
AlphaServer - DEC now HP machine successor to the VAX
AlphaStation - DEC now HP workstation successor to the VAX

Other
Latin alpha, an open back unrounded vowel
Space Station Alpha, the original name and unofficial call sign for the International Space Station
The first letter in the NATO phonetic alphabet
Alpha (radio navigation), a Russian radio navigation system similar to the former Omega Navigation System
Alpha 2000, a light aircraft built in New Zealand
Alpha Group, a dedicated counter-terrorism unit that belonged to OSNAZ
Alpha class submarine, a Russian fast attack nuclear submarine
Sony α or Sony Alpha, a digital SLR series by Sony
Minolta α or Minolta Alpha, the Japanese name for a series of SLR cameras known as Maxxum or Dynax elsewhere, and predecessor to Sony's brand of the same name
Tropical Storm Alpha (2005)
Alpha Industries, clothing company

Related pages
Beta

Alpha (disambiguation)


The strength of materials is the ability of materials to resist force. That ability is an important topic in mechanical engineering. It describes the mechanical behaviors of materials in response to forces that act on objects (such as stress, deformation, strain and stress-strain relations). Usually, the strength of a material is described with units of pressure, because then the value can be applied to many different shapes. For example, a wire and a rod made out of the same steel may have the same tensile strength but the thicker rod will require more force to break.

Strength is considered in terms of compressive strength, tensile strength, and shear strength, but other properties are often considered, like impact strength and fracture toughness. The strength of materials will also change depending on the environment, such as when it is hot or cold, or humid or dry. Sometimes, the environment, or use over time will change the strength of materials over many hours, days, months, or even years. For example, some metals and metal alloys can become stronger or weaker after being used for many years, especially at high temperatures, because their microstructure, or structure on a very small scale, will change. In almost all materials, the microstructure is what is studied to understand and guess what the strength of a material will be, and it is also what scientists and engineers can modify to change a material (especially a metal). For plastics, many conditions can affect them by causing chemical changes: for example, water will make many plastics softer and weaker, and UV radiation from the Sun can damage many plastics and make them brittle and weak, including Kevlar.

Other websites
Failure theories

Materials science

Strength of materials


KNIME (), the Konstanz Information Miner, is a free and open-source data analytics, reporting and integration platform. KNIME integrates various components for machine learning and data mining through its modular data pipelining "Building Blocks of Analytics" concept. A graphical user interface and use of JDBC allows assembly of nodes blending different data sources, including preprocessing (ETL: Extraction, Transformation, Loading), for modeling, data analysis and visualization without, or with only minimal, programming.

Since 2006, KNIME has been used in pharmaceutical research, it also used in other areas such as CRM customer data analysis, business intelligence, text mining and financial data analysis. Recently attempts were made to use KNIME as robotic process automation (RPA) tool.

KNIME's headquarters are based in Zurich, with additional offices in Konstanz, Berlin, and Austin (USA).

History
The Development of KNIME was started January 2004 by a team of software engineers at University of Konstanz as a proprietary product. The original developer team headed by Michael Berthold came from a company in Silicon Valley providing software for the pharmaceutical industry. The initial goal was to create a modular, highly scalable and open data processing platform that allowed for the easy integration of different data loading, processing, transformation, analysis and visual exploration modules without the focus on any particular application area. The platform was intended to be a collaboration and research platform and also serve as an integration platform for various other data analysis projects.

In 2006 the first version of KNIME was released and several pharmaceutical companies started using KNIME and a number of life science software vendors began integrating their tools into KNIME. Later that year, after an article in the German magazine c't, users from a number of other areas joined ship. As of 2012, KNIME is in use by over 15,000 actual users (i.e. not counting downloads but users regularly retrieving updates when they become available) not only in the life sciences and also at banks, publishers, car manufacturer, telcos, consulting firms, and various other industries as well as at a large number of research groups worldwide. Latest updates to KNIME Server and KNIME Big Data Extensions, provide support for Apache Spark 2.3, Parquet and HDFS-type storage.

For the sixth year in a row, KNIME has been placed as a leader for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms in Gartner's Magic Quadrant.

Internals
KNIME allows users to visually create data flows (or pipelines), selectively execute some or all analysis steps, and later inspect the results, models, using interactive widgets and views. KNIME is written in Java and based on Eclipse. It makes use of extension mechanism to add plugins providing additional functionality. The core version already includes hundreds of modules for data integration (file I/O, database nodes supporting all common database management systems through JDBC or native connectors: SQLite, MS-Access, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Vertica and H2), data transformation (filter, converter, splitter, combiner, joiner) as well as the commonly used methods of statistics, data mining, analysis and text analytics. Visualization supports with the free Report Designer extension. KNIME workflows can be used as data sets to create report templates that can be exported to document formats such as doc, ppt, xls, pdf and others. Other capabilities of KNIME are:
 KNIMEs core-architecture allows processing of large data volumes that are only limited by the available hard disk space (not limited to the available RAM). E.g. KNIME allows analysis of 300 million customer addresses, 20 million cell images and 10 million molecular structures.
 Additional plugins allows the integration of methods for text mining, Image mining, as well as time series analysis and network.
 KNIME integrates various other open-source projects, e.g. machine learning algorithms from Weka, H2O.ai, Keras, Spark, the R project and LIBSVM; as well as plotly, JFreeChart, ImageJ, and the Chemistry Development Kit.

KNIME is implemented in Java nevertheless it allows for wrappers calling other code in addition to providing nodes that allow to run Java, Python, R, Ruby and other code fragments.

License
As of version 2.1, KNIME is released under GPLv3 with an exception that allows others to use the well defined node API to add proprietary extensions. This allows also commercial SW vendors to add wrappers calling their tools from KNIME.

KNIME Courses
Even though Data Science assumes programming skills, KNIME allows Data Analysts practice Data Science without one.
For study KNIME provides two lines of online courses based on Data Wrangling and Data Science lines.

See also
 Weka – machine-learning algorithms that can be integrated in KNIME
 ELKI – data mining framework with many clustering algorithms
 Keras - neural network library
 Orange - an open-source data visualization, machine learning and data mining toolkit with a similar visual programming front-end
 List of free and open-source software packages

References

External links
 KNIME Homepage
KNIME Hub - Official community platform to search and find nodes, components, workflows and collaborate on new solutions
 Nodepit - KNIME node collection supporting versioning and node installation

Data mining and machine learning software
Extract, transform, load tools
Free bioinformatics software
Free software programmed in Java (programming language)
Free software projects
Image processing software

KNIME


The Sulaiman Mountains (; Balochi/Urdu/), or the Kesai Mountains are a major feature of southeastern Afghanistan (Zabul, most of Loya Paktia and northeastern Kandahar province), South Waziristan, and most of northern Balochistan province of Pakistan.  They are one of the bordering ranges between the Iranian Plateau and the South Asia. Bordering the Sulaiman Range to the north are the arid highlands of the Hindu Kush Range, with more than 50 percent of the lands there lying above 2,000 m (6,500 feet). The Sulaiman Range, and the high plateau to the west and southwest of it, helps form a natural barrier against the humid winds that blow from the Indian Ocean, creating arid conditions across Southern Afghanistan to the north. In contrast, the relatively flat and low-lying Indus River Delta is situated due east and south of the Sulaiman Mountains. This lush delta is prone to heavy flooding and is mostly uncultivated wilderness.

Rivers that flow from the Sulaiman mountain system include the Dori River and the Gomal River.

There are very few plants on the southern slope.  In the central part, there are wild olives, pistachios and orchards of apples and cherries, as well as wild almonds and junipers. There are junipers and alpines.  Ziarat District is a tourist attraction, famous for its large juniper forests.

Mountain ranges of Afghanistan
Mountain ranges of Pakistan
Ziarat District

Sulaiman Mountains


The strong interaction or strong nuclear force is one of the four fundamental forces in physics.

The other fundamental forces are electromagnetism, the weak interaction, and gravitation. They are called fundamental because there is no simpler way for physicists to understand what the forces do or how they do it.

The strong nuclear force is what holds most ordinary matter together. It does this in two ways: it holds subatomic particles, like neutrons and protons, together, and then it holds the atomic nucleus together.

It is the strongest fundamental force—many times stronger than gravity (1038 times stronger: that's 1 followed by 38 zeros). But it works only over very short distances of a few femtometres (fm). A femtometre is 10−15 (0.00000 00000 00001) metres.

Scientists often think about the two ways the strong interaction works as separate forces: the color force and the nuclear force. At distances of 0.8 fm and less, the color force holds subatomic particles like protons and neutrons together. At distances of 1 to 3 fm, the residual (leftover) strong force is what keeps protons and neutrons together in the atomic nucleus, so it is called the nuclear force. (This is like thinking of electricity and magnetism as separate forces, when the fundamental force is electromagnetism.)

The strong interaction is often thought to be the action of gluons, which 'glue' quarks together. Gluons can be exchanged (moved) between quarks, antiquarks and other gluons. All of those particles are said to carry a color charge, something that some elementary particles have which is like electric charge. Particles with color charge exchange gluons, like particles with electric charge exchange photons.

The theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) says that the strong force acts between quarks and gluons. Quantum chromodynamics is the theory that explains different colors . The strong force is the basic force controlled by gluons: affecting quarks, antiquarks, and the gluons themselves.

The strong force affects only quarks directly (as the color force). Between hadrons (like protons and neutrons), made up of quarks, the effect of the strong force is known as the nuclear force (which is not fundamental).

The strength of the strong force is the reason why we cannot detect free quarks (that is, quarks that are by themselves). The theory is that so much energy would be needed (to separate a quark) that new hadrons would be created instead. This is called color confinement and it is seen to happen in particle accelerators.

Color strong force
The color strong force is the strong interaction between the three quarks that a proton or neutron is made of. It is called the color strong force because, like the electromagnetic force, the strong force has charges. The electromagnetic force has only one type of charge, which can be either positive or negative (magnetic charges are just slow-moving electric charges), but the strong force has three types. These three types of charges are named after colors: red, green, and blue. They also have anti-colors: anti-red, anti-green and anti-blue. Like the electromagnetic force's positive and negative charges, different colors attract, and the same colors repel. Some particles that have color charge are quarks and antiquarks. The type of quark is not related to that quark's color charge at all. Quarks are one of the smallest particles currently known. They take up no space because they are points, and they are the only particles that we have not been able to break apart from other particles yet. This is because the nature of the strong force between particles is that it becomes stronger the further away the particles are. The force carrier of the strong force is called the gluon. Gluons also have color charge. Both quarks and gluons have properties that make them unique from other particles, as described in the Standard Model.

Nuclear force
The nuclear force, or residual strong force (the force left over after holding the quarks together to make hadrons) is the (leftover) strong force acting between hadrons (particles made of quarks, like protons and neutrons). It is what holds the nucleus of an atom together.

Related pages
Standard Model
Particle physics
Nuclear physics
Isotope

References
David J. Griffiths, 1987. Introduction to Elementary Particles. John Wiley & Sons.

Richard Morris, 2003. The Last Sorcerers: The Path from Alchemy to the Periodic Table. Washington DC: Joseph Henry Press.

Other websites
MISN-0-280: The Strong Interaction (PDF file) by J.R. Christman for Project PHYSNET.
The theory of longitudinal and transversal rotational momentum A mathematical theory that unifies all physical forces and eliminates the wave/particle duality.

Force
Nuclear physics
Basic physics ideas

Strong interaction


Snuff is a kind of tobacco which is sniffed instead of smoked.  People take a bit of snuff between their fingers and put it in their nostrils to smell it.  Not many people use snuff now, but a century or more ago it was very common.  In the novels of 19th century authors like Charles Dickens we often read about people taking snuff.  They kept it in a "snuffbox".

Related pages
Tobacco

Tobacco

Snuff


Georg Rafael Donner (24 May 1693 – 15 February 1741) was one of the most prolific Austrian sculptors of the 18th century. His style was baroque with some pseudo-ancient additions.  He educated many German sculptors of his era, including his son Matthäus Donner.

Donner was born in Essling, Vienna.  His work was inspired by nature and by antique sculpture which was deposited in the Vienna's academy. One of Donner's most famous works is Donnersteig in Mirabel Castle, Salzburg (1725–1727), for which he sculpted life-size marble figures.  From 1728 he worked in Pozsony at the court of count-bishop Emeric (or Imre) Esterházy, where he sculpted a gravestone for Bishop Esterházy and a horse monument of St. Martin. For almost 10 years he had his studio in the garden of the Summer Archbishop's Palace, at that time just outside Pozsony. In Vienna he created two fountains: Fountain of Austria's rivers (1737–1739) and the source with the sculptures of Perzei and Andromeda in front of the City Hall (1739). One of his last works is the Pieta at the cathedral in Gurk (1741).  He died in Vienna.

Georg Rafael Donner was recently selected as the main motif of the Austrian gold euro commemorative coin: The sculpture coin was issued on 13 November 2002. The obverse has a portrait of Donner, with the Palace of the Lower Belvedere in the background. This palace is currently the museum of baroque art in Vienna, and contains much of Donner's work.

References

External links

18th-century Austrian sculptors
18th-century Austrian male artists
Austrian Baroque sculptors
Austrian male sculptors
People from Donaustadt
1693 births
1741 deaths

Georg Rafael Donner


Pornography (aften cried porn an aw) is the performance o sexual subject maiter fir the ettle o sexual pleisur. Pornography mey be kythed in aw teeps o media, includin leeteratur, postcarids, photaes, sculptur, drawin, pentin, animation, soond recordin, phone caws, scrievin, film, video, an video gemms. The term applees tae a performance o the act raither than the act hitsel, an sae daes no include live exheebeetions like sex shaws an striptease. The foremaist subjects o praisent-dey pornographic performances are pornographic models, that pose fir still photaes, an pornographic actors ir porn starns, that perform in pornographic films. Gin that dramatic skeels are no insnorlt, a performer in a porn film micht be cried a model an aw.

References

Sexuality an society

Pornography


Southbridge is also known as Input/Output Controller Hub. The microchip realizes lower functions of the motherboard in computer architecture with northbridge and southbridge. It's easy to distinguish southbridge and northbridge: the southbridge is not directly connected to the processor. Northbridge realizes connection between southbridge and processor.

Related pages
 Northbridge

Motherboard

Southbridge (computing)


Bartolomeo Tromboncino (born Verona around 1470; died in or near Venice in 1535 or later) was an Italian composer.  He lived in the Renaissance period.  He is famous as a composer of songs called frottole.  He is also remembered because he murdered his wife.

We know very little about his life.  He probably grew up in Mantua.  In a letter he says that he came from Verona. Until around 1500 he lived and worked in Mantua, but sometimes he went to other towns when he was in trouble. In 1499 he found his wife with another man, so he murdered her.  He may also have murdered the other man.  We cannot be sure about this.
He does not seem to have been punished.  This may be because a rich lady called Isabella d'Este liked him.

From 1502 Tromboncino was employed by a rich lady called Lucrezia Borgia.  She is remembered today because she was a very bad woman.  He  wrote music for the court and for her wedding to Alfonso d'Este. Sometime before 1521 he moved to Venice, where he probably spent the rest of his life.

His frottole are very lively and full of fun.  He played the trombone.  This is how he got his name.  He also wrote some serious sacred music.

1470s births
16th-century deaths
17th-century Italian composers
People from Verona

Bartolomeo Tromboncino


Judith of Hungary (; , Esztergom – , Kraków?) was a Hungarian princess and member of the Árpád dynasty. She was briefly married to the Piast duke of Poland, Bolesław the Brave.

According to some sources, she was the eldest child of Géza of Hungary by his first wife Sarolt, a daughter of Gyula of Transylvania.

However, modern historians have now discarded her parentage, and state that she was an unknown Hungarian princess. Though opinions vary about the identity of Bolesław I's second wife, there are a number of researchers who still support the hypothesis of her being the daughter of Géza.

Life
At the end of 985, Judith became in the second wife of Bolesław, heir of the Polish throne, after he repudiated his first wife Hunilda, daughter of Rikdag, Margrave of Meissen. The union (probably instigated by Duke Boleslav II of Bohemia, maternal uncle of the Polish prince) produced a son, Bezprym.

Perhaps because of the deterioration in political relations between Poland and Hungary, around 987 Judith was repudiated and sent away. She probably remained in Poland and died shortly after her divorce; she never became Duchess of Poland because her father-in-law was still alive at the time of her dismissal.

Bolesław soon re-married, this time with Emnilda, a Slavic princess, who bore him five children, including the future Mieszko II Lambert. Despite Bezprym being the first-born son, he was deprived of the throne of Poland by his father, who largely favored the children born from his union with Emnilda. Around 1003 Bolesław I sent Bezprym to Italy, where he became a monk in one of Saint Romuald's hermitages. In 1031, in alliance with Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor and the Grand Prince Yaroslav I the Wise, he finally gained the throne to his half-brother Mieszko II. His reign didn't last long and was murdered one year later.

Judith was survived by her father, and when he died in 997, one of his distant cousins Koppány, declared his claim to the leadership of the Magyars against Judith's brother, Vajk. Koppány wanted to marry Judith's stepmother, referring to the Hungarian tradition. Koppány, nevertheless, was defeated, and shortly afterwards Vajk was crowned as the first King of Hungary as Stephen I.

See also
 History of Poland (966–1385)

References

10th-century Hungarian women
10th-century Polish women
10th-century Polish people
10th-century Hungarian people
Polish people of Hungarian descent
House of Árpád
960s births
980s deaths
Year of birth uncertain
Year of death uncertain
People from Esztergom

Judith of Hungary


Kunlun is a mountain range in China. Lots of people argue how big the mountain range is. The tallest mountain is called Kunlun Goddess and is 7,167 metres tall. There are also lots of volcanoes, one of them is the tallest in Asia. The volcano is 5,808 metres tall and last erupted in 1951.

Mountains of China

Kunlun Mountains


Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch Martínez (6 September 1806 – 2 August 1880) was a Spanish dramatist. He was the Director of the National Library of Spain until he retired in 1875.

Biography
Hartzenbusch was born in Madrid, Spain. His father was a German furniture carpenter and his mother a Spanish woman with the name María Josefa Martínez Calleja. Hartzenbusch's childhood was spent as an apprentice in his father's shop in order to become a cabinet-maker. He studied French 1815-1818 and then took a four-year course in the Jesuit College of San Isidro el Real in Madrid where he studied principally rhetoric, Latin, and philosophy. He followed his father's trade till 1830, when he learned shorthand and joined the staff of the Gaceta. He married Doña María Bernardina Morgue in 1830. She died in 1836. His earliest dramatic essays were translations from Molière, Voltaire and Alexandre Dumas, père; he then turned to adapting old Spanish plays, and in 1837 produced his first original play, Los amantes de Teruel, the subject of which had previously been used by Andrés Rey de Artieda, Tirso de Molina and Juan Pérez de Montalbán. Los amantes de Teruel at once made the author's reputation, but Doña Mencía (1840) and Alfonso el Casto (1841) were disappointments; it was not till 1845 that he repeated his former success with La jura en Santa Gadea.

In 1900, Don Eugenio Hartzenbusch, Juan's son, published Bibliografía in Madrid which presents in succinct form as complete a list of his father's writings. It remains a testimonial to the lifelong indefatigable industry of this prolific writer. Summarized, the record there given comprises about 15 collections, including various editions of his works, 94 dramatic works, 236 poems 231 fables in verse, 19 addresses, 8 biographical articles, 15 stories, 14 articles depicting manners and customs, 9 literary criticism, 3 dramatic criticism, 33 prologues, 22 notes and articles referring to "Don Quixote" 22 miscellaneous articles, and 9 works of different authors collected and annotated. Such a record of literary activity tells its own story. It is the life of an author and a scholar, who through hard work and conscientious effort, secured for himself an honorable place among Spain's men of letters.

Hartzenbusch was the chief librarian at the Biblioteca Nacional, National Library, from 1862 to 1875, and was an indefatigable editor of many national classics. Inferior in inspiration to other contemporary Spanish dramatists, Hartzenbusch excelled his rivals in versatility and in conscientious workmanship.

As a member of the Real Academia Española, he edited works from Tirso de Molina (12 vols., Madrid, 1839–42), Calderón de la Barca (4 vols., 1849–51), Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (1852), and Lope de Vega (4 vols., 1853), among others.

After retiring from the National Library in 1875, his strength of body and mind began to give way, and after losing his second wife, Salvadora Hiriart, he failed rapidly and died at his home in Madrid on 2 August 1880. The Real Academia Española, the Spanish Academy, did him the honor of accompanying his body to its last resting place, the Cementerio de la Sacramental de San Ginés y San Luis.

References

Further reading
 Chevalier, Maxime. "Pour les sources des fables d'Hartzenbusch". In: Bulletin Hispanique, tome 81, n°3-4, 1979. pp. 303–310. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/hispa.1979.4399; www.persee.fr/doc/hispa_0007-4640_1979_num_81_3_4399

External links

1806 births
1880 deaths
Members of the Royal Spanish Academy
Spanish male dramatists and playwrights
Spanish people of German descent
19th-century Spanish dramatists and playwrights
19th-century male writers

Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch


A Nithing pole, according to ancient Scandinavian and Germanic pagan beliefs, was a kind of pole used for cursing enemies.

The way of cursing was supposed to be, to cut a horse's head from its body, and put it on top of the pole. Cursing words were carved into the wood, too. This was done to stop the soul of a cowardly person, or "Nithing".  Also, the terrible shame of the coward was called "Nith".

Magic (paranormal)

Nithing pole


The musical movie is a movie genre in which several songs sung by the characters are linked into the story line. The songs are used to advance the plot or develop the movie's characters.

The musical movie was a natural development of the stage musical. Typically, the biggest difference between movie and stage musicals is the use of expensive and impressive background scenery which would not be in a theater. Musical movies usually contain elements similar of theater; performers often treat their song and dance numbers as if there is a live audience watching.

Movie genres

Musical movie


Wladimir Rudolfowitsch Vogel (17 February/29 February 1896 – 19 June 1984) was a Swiss composer of German and Russian descent.

Life
Born in Moscow, Vogel first studied composition in Moscow with Alexander Scriabin, then between 1918 and 1924 with Heinz Tiessen and Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin, where he subsequently taught (1929–33) at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory. He was close to the expressionist circle around Herwarth Walden and was active (together with George Antheil, Hanns Eisler, Philipp Jarnach, Stefan Wolpe, and Kurt Weill) in the music section of the November Group of Max Butting and Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt.

In 1933, branded a "degenerate artist" by the Nazi regime, he left Germany and went to Strasbourg, Brussels, Paris, and London. He first turned to twelve-tone technique with his Violin Concerto in 1937. From 1939 he lived in Switzerland, at first in Ascona and from 1964 in Zürich. Until he became a Swiss citizen in 1954, he was not allowed to work in Switzerland, and relied on the support of wealthy patrons and his wife, the writer Aline Valangin. During this time, he taught composition privately, was active in the ISCM, participated in Hermann Scherchen's 'Sessions d'études musicales et dramatiques' in Strasbourg, and organized the International Twelve-Tone Music pre-conference in Osilina in 1949. His students include Erik Bergman, Tauno Marttinen, Maurice Karkoff, Rodolfo Holzmann, Robert Suter, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Rolf Liebermann and Hermann Meier.

He died in Zurich.

Compositions (selective list)
Vogel composed a symphony, pieces for orchestra, string orchestra, wind ensemble, a concerto for violin and another for cello, works for choir, soloists and orchestra—the most important of which, called "drama-oratorios", are based on a synthesis of speech and song—and chamber-music works.

 Drei Sprechlieder nach August Stramm for baritone and piano (1922)
 Sinfonischer Vorgang for large orchestra (1922–23)
 Wagadus Untergang durch die Eitelkeit, drama-oratorio (1930)
 Sinfonia fugata for large orchestra (1930–1932)
 Vier Etüden for large orchestra (1930–1932)
 Variétude for piano (1931)
 Rallye for orchestra (1932)
 Violin Concerto (1937)
 Thyl Claes, Parts I and II, drama-oratorio (1941–42 and 1943–45)
 In memoriam, Two Sonnets by Roger Vuataz for contralto, viola, harp and timpani, VWV 42 (1947)
 Jona ging doch nach Ninive, drama-oratorio (1957–58)
 Meditazione sulla maschera di Modigliani, drama-oratorio (1960)
 An die akademische Jugend (Notker Balbulus) for mixed choir a cappella (1962)
 Worte (Hans Arp) for 2 speaking voices and strings (1962)
 Flucht, drama-oratorio (1963–64)
 Mondträume (Hans Arp), permutations and paraphrases after verses from Mondsand by Hans Arp for speaking choir a cappella (1965)
 Hörformen I for orchestra (1967)
 Hörformen II for orchestra (1967–69)
 Gli spaziali drama-oratorio (1970–71)
 Abschied for string orchestra (1973)
 Vier Versionen einer Zwölftonfolge for piano (1973)
 Meloformen for string orchestra (1974)
 Hommage nach einer 6-Tonfolge von Hermann Jöhr for strings in variable scoring (1975)
 Composition for chamber orchestra (1976)
 In Signum IM for large orchestra (1976)
 Verstrebungen for chamber orchestra (1977)
 Kleine Hörformen for viola and piano, VWV 51 (1979)
 Reigen for chamber orchestra (1981)
 Humoreske, Paraphrasen über 2 Themen von Gottschalk and Tschaikowsky for large orchestra (1981)
 Trio for three clarinets (1982)
 Klangexpressionen (Bulgakov), string quartet (1983)
 Colori e movimenti for orchestra (1983)

References

External links
 Sound recordings of works of the composer from the archives of SRG SSR on Neo.Mx3

1896 births
1984 deaths
20th-century classical composers
Emigrants from Nazi Germany to Switzerland
Composers from Moscow
Pupils of Ferruccio Busoni
Russian classical composers
Russian male classical composers
Russian people of German descent
Swiss classical composers
20th-century Russian male musicians
20th-century Swiss composers

Wladimir Vogel


The recorder is a musical instrument that is a type of flute. It is shaped like a tube with one end bigger than the other end. A recorder player puts the bigger end in their mouth and blows into it.

In Europe, people started to play the recorder in medieval times. The recorder was often used by musicians to sound like bird songs. Purcell, Bach, Telemann and Vivaldi all wrote music for the recorder. By the 1900s very few people played the recorder. They liked the flute and other instruments better than the recorder. These instruments are louder than the recorder and are better for playing difficult music.

In the 1900s more people started to learn the recorder again. One reason was that people wanted to play old music on old kinds of instruments. A second reason was that the recorder is a good instrument for children to learn about music.

History

Whistles are very old instruments. People have found some whistles that were made in the Iron Age. A recorder is a type of whistle. It has holes for seven fingers and one thumb. It also has one end bigger than the other. The first recorders were made in the 1500s. Some remains of these have been found in Germany, the Netherlands and Greece.

Many people played the recorder in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s. King Henry VIII of England had 76 recorders. William Shakespeare talks about recorders in his play Hamlet and John Milton talks about them in his poem Paradise Lost. Recorders from that time are now called Renaissance recorders.

In the 1600s, the people who made recorders tried new ways to make them sound better. They also wanted them to play more difficult music. Recorders from this time are called Baroque recorders. They were thinner than Renaissance recorders. They were also made in several parts that fitted together. In the picture at the top of the page, one of the recorders is in three parts.

From the second half of the 1700s, people preferred to play the flute and clarinet instead of the recorder. Flutes are good for playing music which has a large range of notes. Flutes are also better for playing music which needs many chromatic notes.

Modern period
In the 1900s people wanted to play old music with old kinds of instrument. In England, Arnold Dolmetsch was one of the people who was famous for this. Other musicians also began to play the recorder at serious music concerts. Some of these people were Frans Brüggen, Hans-Martin Linde, Bernard Kranis and David Munrow. In modern times, people have written new music for the recorder. Some of these people are Paul Hindemith, Luciano Berio, John Tavener, Michael Tippett, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, Gordon Jacob and Edmund Rubbra.

The recorder is sometimes used in popular music. The Beatles played the recorder in their song Fool on the Hill and the Rolling Stones used a recorder in Ruby Tuesday (song).
Plastic recorders were invented in the 20th century. They are cheap and vary greatly in quality (that is often not related to the price) depending on the manufacturer. They are easy instruments to play simple music. Many elementary schools use plastic recorders to teach music to children.

The head joint of the recorder is used as a noise, rhythm and effect instrument, and as a toy musical instrument with children. Because the recorder head works like a whistle, it can be used as such. With a bit practice, it is easy to play all kind of rhythms. Effects are made by opening and covering the lower end of the head joint with the hand while blowing. Many players blow harder like "normal" recorder playing (like with a pea whistle), to get a very shrill and loud sound. Professor Agnes Dorwarth of the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg argues this is an attractive way to get children to play with part of the instrument, which can make playing the entire instrument more inviting.

Kinds of recorder

Recorders are made in different sizes. The lowest note of most recorders is either C or F. This is the note that is heard when the player covers all the finger holes and the thumb hole. The soprano recorder is the size of recorder which is usually played in schools, also known as a Descant. The lowest note of the soprano recorder is C. Some recorders are smaller than the soprano recorder but are not common. The alto recorder is bigger than the soprano recorder. Its lowest is F. The other main sizes are the tenor recorder (with lowest note C) and the bass (with lowest note F). Instruments larger than the bass are made but are not common. These include the Great Bass, Contrabass, Subgreatbass and Subcontrabass. Recorders higher than a soprano recorder include the Sopranino and Garklein recorders.

Recorder groups

The recorder is a very social instrument. Many people enjoy playing in small or large groups. Groups often play music that is written for several different sizes of recorder together. Often there is a separate musical part for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass recorders. This covers a wider range of notes, from high sounds to low, than any single instrument could play. Some music is written for a recorder duet (two instruments), trio (three), or quartet (four). These groups are called ensembles, from the French word for "together." Some people play in recorder orchestras. These sometimes have 50 or 60 players with nine sizes of instrument.

References

Flutes

Recorder


A diploma is a certificate you receive when you have studied a subject with good results. For many jobs a diploma is needed, because it proves that you are good at the subject you studied. A diploma is usually a basic degree that is lower than a Bachelor's degree.

Academia
Qualifications

Diploma