Megiddo () is a hill in Israel. It is near the modern settlement of Megiddo, and is known for theological, historical and geographical reasons.

In ancient times, Megiddo was an important city-state. It is also known alternatively as Tel Megiddo (Hebrew) and Tell al-Mutesellim (Arabic). According to some interpretations of the Christian Bible, this will be the place for Armageddon (that derives from the name's place in Hebrew) or the final battle between the forces of light led by Jesus Christ and the forces of darkness led by Satan or the Anti-Christ after the "End of Days".

Megiddo is a tel (hill or mound) made of 26 layers of the ruins of ancient cities in a strategic location at the head of a pass through the Carmel Ridge, which overlooks the Valley of Jezreel from the west.

References

Northern District (Israel)
World Heritage Sites in Asia
Hills of Asia

Tel Megiddo


Heilika of Pettendorf-Lengenfeld (also known as Eilika;  – 14 September 1170; buried in Ensdorf Abbey) was by marriage Countess Palatine of Bavaria.

She was one of the two daughters of the edelfrei Lord Frederick III of Pettendorf-Lengenfeld-Hopfenohe, who died between 1112 and 1119 without a male heir. Her mother was a Heilika of Swabia the daughter of Duke Frederick I of Swabia and his wife, Agnes of Germany.  As such, she was a granddaughter of Emperor Henry IV.

She married Count Otto IV of Wittelsbach (d. 1156), the Count Palatine of Bavaria.  In 1124, he moved his residence from Scheyern Castle to Wittelsbach Castle in Aichach.  He donated Scheyern Castle to the Benedictine Order, who turned it into a monastery.

Otto and Heilika had eight children:
 Herman
 Otto, nicknamed "the Redhead" (–1183), succeeded his father as Count Otto VIII of Scheyern, Count Otto V of Wittelsbach and Count Palatine Otto VI of Bavaria.  In 1180, after the fall of Henry the Lion, Emperor Frederick I "Barbarossa" enfeoffed Otto the Redhead with the Duchy of Bavaria.  From then on, he called himself Otto I of Bavaria.  The Wittelsbach dynasty would retain the duchy from 1180 until 1918.
 Conrad, Archbishop of Mainz as Conrad III and Archbishop of Salzburg as Conrad I
 Frederick II, (d. 1198 or 1199), married in 1184 to a daughter of Count Mangold of Donauwörth
 Udalrich (d. 29 May 1179)
 Otto VII (d. 1189), married Benedicta, also a daughter of Count Mangold of Donauwörth
 Hedwig ( – 16 July 1174), married in 1135 to Count Berthold ( – 14 December 1188), who in 1151 became Duke Berthold III of Merania, Margrave Berthold I of Istria and  Count Berthold III of Andechs.  In 1157, he also became Count of Dießen-Wolfratshausen.
 Adelaide, married Otto II of Stefling

Heilika's sister Heilwig was married to Count Gebhard I of Leuchtenberg and brought the Lordship of Waldeck  into the marriage.

Heilika died on 14 September 1170 and was buried in Ensdorf Abbey.

External links
Heilika of Lengenfeld at genealogie-mittelalter.de

Footnotes

Countesses in Germany
House of Wittelsbach
1100s births
1170 deaths
12th-century German nobility
12th-century German women

Heilika of Lengenfeld


M-theory is a new idea in small-particle physics that is part of superstring theory that was initially proposed by Edward Witten.  The idea, or theory, often causes arguments among scientists, because there is no way to test it to see if it is true. If ever proven true, M-theory and string theory would mean big progress for science.

String theory
To understand M-theory one must first have some knowledge of string theory. For hundreds of years, scientists have thought that the simplest objects in the universe are points, like dots. String theory says that this is wrong and that the simplest objects in the universe are shaped like pieces of string. These strings are so small that even when looked at very closely they look like points. Each basic particle is created by the strings vibrating in different patterns. The reason scientists had not thought of this idea for so long is that strings are much harder to work with than points. They seem to break such rules as causality and special relativity, which says that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

String theory has been developed because of a very important problem that has existed for almost 100 years. Albert Einstein's theory that describes the universe on very large scales (it is called general relativity), and it disagrees with two theories that describe things on very small scales (they are called quantum mechanics and the standard model). There are also problems with the Standard Model: it includes about 20 numbers that seem to have no explanation; it has too many basic particles - some scientists think it needs to have fewer; and it does not include gravity, which is needed to explain weight.

Many of these problems can be solved by thinking of basic particles as strings. Now there is only one number with no explanation, which gives the size of the strings. String theory includes particles that cause gravity, called gravitons; finding this out delighted the scientists who work on string theory. So, string theory successfully brings General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics together.

But there are some problems with string theory. Normally, we think of the universe as having 4 dimensions, or basic directions. 3 of these basic directions can be thought of as "up/down", "forward/backward" and "left/right". The other direction is time. String theory needs 10 basic directions.

These six other directions can be explained if they are "curled up", so they are much too small to see. For example, by following the path of a spiral, it is possible to go a great distance along it without moving very far. The 6 other directions can be thought of as tiny spirals - strings can move along them a great distance but not seem to move. This can be looked at as a mathematical trick—a trick that has little to do with the real world that can  be seen and touched. Such tricks are allowed if they give a theory that can better tell us how things work.

Another problem with string theory is that there are 5 different versions of it. Each version allows different kinds of strings and says they work in different ways. String theory is supposed to be a theory of everything so there should be only one version, not 5. M-theory solves this problem.

M-theory
In 1995 Edward Witten started what has been called the Second Superstring Revolution by introducing M-theory to the world. This theory combines the 5 different string theories (along with a previously abandoned attempt to unify General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics called 11D-Supergravity) into one theory. What Witten actually did was to predict that the fact that all these different theories were connected was a result of there being some underlying theory of  which they were all approximations. This theory is somewhat vague in nature and has not yet been pinned down.

Additionally, it was found that the equations that required string theory to exist in 10 dimensions were actually approximations as well. The proposed M-theory would need one extra dimension and instead be a theory that takes place in 11 dimensions. Witten has himself compared this idea in simple terms to a general who takes up a position on a hilltop, the extra space-coordinate, to get a better view of the battlefield's two other dimensions.

The combination is accomplished by knitting together a web of relationships between each of the string theories called dualities (specifically, S-duality, T-duality, and U-duality). Each of these dualities provides a way of converting one of the string theories into another. T-duality is probably the most easily explained of the dualities. It has to do with the size, written as R, of the curled up dimensions of the string theories. It was discovered that by taking a Type IIA string theory that has a size R and changing the radius to 1/R the result will end up being what is equivalent to a Type IIB theory of size R. This duality, along with the others, creates connections between all 5 (or 6, if supergravity is counted) theories. The fact that these dualities existed had been known before Witten came up with the idea of M-theory.

Additional amusement has come for many in guessing what the M might stand for (possibilities include Matrix, Magic, Muffin, Mystery, Mother and Membrane). Regardless of what the M might possibly mean, M-theory has become one of the most interesting and active areas of research in theoretical physics today.

For a more technical explanation, see w:M-theory (simplified explanation).

Books and Links
Brian Greene has written a book that explains string theory and M-theory for the layman called The Elegant Universe
The Official String Theory Website has excellent references on string theory for the layman and expert

String theory

M-theory


The House of the Seven Gables (also known as the Turner House or Turner-Ingersoll Mansion) is a historic house in Salem, Massachusetts. It was built for Captain John Turner. It remained in the Turner family for three generations. The earliest section of the house was built in 1668. It faced south towards Salem Harbor. It was a two-room, 2 1⁄2-story house. It had cross-gables and a huge central chimney. This portion now forms the middle of the house. The house was remodelled over the years. It was eventually acquired by the Ingersoll family. Nathaniel Hawthorne often visited his cousin Susannah at the house. He wrote a novel called The House of the Seven Gables. The book uses the house as background. The house was restored between 1908 and 1910. A "cent-shop" and a secret staircase were added. This was done to please visitors who expected the house to resemble the one in Hawthorne's book.  The House of the Seven Gables is the oldest surviving mansion house in continental North America. It has 17 rooms and over 8,000 square feet. The house is now a non-profit museum.

Other websites
 House of the Seven Gables
 Listing and photographs at the Historic American Buildings Survey

Buildings and structures in Massachusetts
1668 establishments
1660s establishments in Massachusetts
17th-century buildings and structures

House of the Seven Gables


Elisabeth Marbury (June 19, 1856 – January 22, 1933) was a pioneering American theatrical and literary agent and producer who helped shape business methods of the modern commercial theater, and encouraged women to enter that industry. Since 1892, Marbury had been living openly in a lesbian relationship with of Elsie de Wolfe (later known as Lady Mendl), a prominent socialite and famous interior decorator.

Personal life

Bessie Marbury was born and raised in the affluent and cultured home of one of 19th-century New York's oldest and most prominent "society" families. She was reputedly a descendant of Calvinist Anne Hutchinson (née Marbury), who co-founded Rhode Island after her banishment from Massachusetts Bay Colony. Bessie Marbury both used and defied these connections during the Victorian era to establish herself as an important literary and theatrical talent agent and theatrical producer, helping to define and create these very professions as they emerged in the new world of mass production, advertising and popular culture in post-Civil War American society.

For many, Marbury remains a contradictory figure. Although she was the embodiment of female independence in almost every way, she initially opposed suffrage. She made a bold reversal once women in the United States did receive the right to vote, and in 1918, she became active in the Democratic Party, serving as a delegate. She was also a passionate convert to Roman Catholicism. She was likewise very active in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization. In 1923, she published an autobiography, My Crystal Ball: Reminiscences (NY: Boni and Liveright, [1923]). She had earlier published Manners: A Handbook of Social Customs in 1888.

Marbury never married, but lived openly for more than 20 years with Elsie de Wolfe in what many observers accepted as a lesbian relationship, first at Irving House and then at 13 Sutton Place.

Marbury had a long lasting friendship with Elizabeth Arden (1878-1966), a Canadian-born American businesswoman who founded what is now Elizabeth Arden, Inc. They spent many weekends at Marbury's Maine home, Lakeside Farm. After Marbury's death in 1933, Arden bought the property with the intention of fulfilling Marbury's wish that it be turned into a home for working women—though it eventually became part of a luxury resort (the original Maine Chance Farm) instead.

Marbury died in 1933. Her funeral at St. Patrick's Cathedral was attended by an impressive array of the most important American leaders and dignitaries of the day. De Wolfe was noticeably absent from the funeral, despite the fact that she was the prime beneficiary of Marbury's will.

Bessie Marbury is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

Professional life
Marbury's clients ranged from the French Academy of Letters to playwrights Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw; to the dance team of Vernon and Irene Castle. She was an early promoter of African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance. She also played an instrumental role in developing the modern "Book Musical" that audiences came to know as defining "Broadway" in the 20th century, notably of Cole Porter's first musical, See America First, and Jerome Kern (Nobody Home (1915), Very Good, Eddie (1915), and Love O' Mike (1917))through her American Play company.

Marbury and de Wolfe discovered their careers amid the amateur theatrical performances in high society in late Victorian New York. Both would end up defying this world's rules and expectations for women by making their interest in theater professional, and in no small way helped pave the way for many other "respectable ladies" that followed, both in the previously frowned upon world of the professional theater as well as independent careers and financial autonomy for women in general. Thus it was at an 1885 successful benefit theatrical performance that she had organized that Marbury was inspired to try her hand at theater management. In 1888 she persuaded Frances Hodgson Burnett, who had written a dramatic version of her best-selling Little Lord Fauntleroy, to hire her as business manager and agent. The association quickly proved highly profitable to both women.

In 1891, Marbury traveled to France, and for 15 years she was the representative in the English-speaking market for playwright Victorien Sardou and the other members of the Société des Gens de Lettres, including Georges Feydeau, Edmond Rostand, Ludovic Halévy, and Jean Richepin. Her work on their behalf included securing suitable translations, sound productions with leading actors, and full royalties. She also represented George Bernard Shaw, James M. Barrie (whom she prevailed upon to rewrite The Little Minister for Maude Adams), Hall Caine, and Jerome K. Jerome, among British authors, and Rachel Crothers and Clyde Fitch among Americans.

Her office thus became a center of the New York theatrical business, and for many years Marbury worked closely with Charles Frohman and his Theatrical Syndicate in bringing order to a rapidly expanding field of enterprise. She later worked with the rival Shubert Brothers' organization. In both cases this drew criticism from those who fought the de facto monopoly held by these "Theater Trusts," particularly from the noted American actress Minnie Maddern Fiske, who unsuccessfully struggled in the 1890s to form an actors union to fight the numerous fees and censorship imposed on actors and theater professionals by the Theater Trust.

In 1914, Marbury joined several other agents in forming the American Play Company, and she then turned to producing and helped stage Nobody Home (1915), Very Good, Eddie (1915), and Love O' Mike (1917), all with music by Jerome Kern, and See America First (1916) with music by Cole Porter. These works contributed significantly to the development of the characteristically American form of musical comedy. Marbury's other successes include bringing Vernon and Irene Castle, whom she had seen on one of her innumerable trips to Paris, to New York in 1913 and setting them up in a fashionable dancing school that was the springboard for their brief but spectacularly popular career.

Marbury put her life story into a book My Crystal Ball, published in 1923. She had been told frequently that Hollywood would be interested – this during the Silent Film Era – in the story of her travels with her companions Anne Tracy Morgan (daughter of Jon Pierpont Morgan, the financier) and America's first interior designer, Elsie de Wolfe. Elizabeth convinced Miss Morgan to purchase the Villa Trianon in the town of Versailles, where the trio held court with Europe's elite and entertained with George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, two clients she represented theatrically in New York and London. After the German invasion of 1914, Anne, Elsie and Bess Marbury escaped in their Rolls-Royce convertible after packing hastily. In 1920, Marbury and De Wolfe hired architect Mott B. Schmidt to remodel and update their recently purchased Italianate style brownstone that had been built by Effingham Sutton in the 1870s on what was then known as Avenue A.   Schmidt created a simple, elegant home with a French flair.   In 1921 Marbury and de Wolfe's friends, Anne Morgan and Anne Vanderbilt also purchased brownstones on the same block, recently renamed Sutton Place, and once again Mott Schmidt  was hired to transform the old Italianate houses into an elegant colonial and federal style home, respectively.    Sutton Place quickly became a fashionable enclave.   It was from their new residence at Sutton Place that Marbury began to work with the greatest musical talents of the time to dominate Broadway.

Before her death, Marbury chose her nephew John Marbury to produce a picture based on My Crystal Ball. The rights passed through John's estate to his son, the late New York sculptor Peter Marbury. The rights are held currently by Peter Marbury's widow, Diana Marbury, a New York theatrical producer, director and actress.

Social life

On the domestic front, Marbury was instrumental in assisting her romantic partner, Elsie de Wolfe, in creating a career in interior decoration and in 1903 restoring Villa Trianon in Versailles, France, where she, de Wolfe, and Anne Tracy Morgan (youngest child of the powerful financier, J.P. Morgan) held court and became noted hostesses, affectionately referred to as "The Versailles Triumvirate". In 1903, along with Morgan and Anne Harriman Vanderbilt, Marbury helped organize the Colony Club, the first women's social club in New York. This also served as de Wolfe's professional debut as interior decorator. This same coterie would go on to create the exclusive neighborhood of Sutton Place, along Manhattan's East River, which prompted gossip papers of the 1920s to loudly whisper of an "Amazon Enclave".

During World War I, Marbury devoted much time to relief work for French and later American soldiers, and spent several months in France working in military hospitals and giving talks to the troops. She translated Maurice Barrès's The Faith of France (1918) and was decorated by the French and Belgian governments, although she was notably disappointed to not be awarded by the French Legion of Honor, an honor given to de Wolfe for her work in the pioneering Ambrine Mission for Burn Victims. De Wolfe announced her wedding to Sir Charles Mendl, a British diplomat in 1926, after at least thirty years of living with Marbury.  According to biographies of de Wolfe, the Mendl-de Wolfe marriage was platonic, with the couple keeping separate apartments in Paris and usually only appearing together at social functions. Both de Wolfe and Mendel assured an understandably enraged Marbury that the marriage was purely one of convenience. Weeks after the marriage, de Wolfe traveled to New York to reconcile with Marbury. Their relationship lasted another seven years until Marbury's death in 1933.

Political life
Marbury was an active Democrat and served as Democratic National Committeewomen from New York during the 1924 presidential election. She was also mentioned as a potential candidate for vice president on the 1924 Democratic ticket.

Catalog

Books

Productions under aegis of Elisabeth Marbury
 Electra, revival, produced with Elisabeth Marbury, December 26, 1930, to January 1931
 Say When, original musical-comedy, produced by Elisabeth Marbury, June 26, 1928, to July 1928
 Revue Russe, original musical revue, produced by Elisabeth Marbury, October 5, 1922, to October 22, 1922
 Girl o' Mine, original musical-comedy, produced by Elisabeth Marbury, January 28, 1918, to March 9, 1918
 Love O' Mike, original musical-comedy, produced by Elisabeth Marbury, January 15, 1917, to September 29, 1917
 See America First, original musical, produced by Elisabeth Marbury, March 28, 1916, to April 8, 1916
 Very Good Eddie, original musical, produced by Marbury-Comstock Co., December 23, 1915 to October 14, 1916
 Our Children, original play, produced with Elisabeth Marbury, September 10, 1915, to September 1915
 Nobody Home, original play with music, produced by Elisabeth Marbury, April 20, 1915, to August 7, 1915
 Merry Gotham, original play, written by Elisabeth Marbury, March 14, 1892, to April 1892

References
Notes

Further reading
Marbury, Elisabeth. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2 Feb. 2007
Sparke, Penny. Elsie de Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration. NY: Acanthus Press, 2005
 Lewis, Alfred Allan. Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women: Elisabeth Marbury, Anne Morgan, Elsie de Wolfe, Anne Vanderbilt, and Their Times. Penguin, 2001.

Literary agents
Talent managers
American theatre managers and producers
1856 births
1933 deaths
Lesbian businesswomen
American LGBT businesspeople
LGBT people from New York (state)
People from Manhattan
French–English translators
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Calvinism
Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York)
New York (state) Democrats
19th-century American LGBT people
19th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American businesspeople
19th-century American businesswomen
20th-century American businesswomen
Catholics from New York (state)
19th-century theatre managers
20th-century theatre managers
20th-century American LGBT people

Elisabeth Marbury


The Reconstruction Amendments are the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution, adopted between 1865 and 1870, the five years immediately following the Civil War. The amendments were important in carrying out the reconstruction of the southern states after the war. Many northern politicians saw them as changing the United States from a country that was (in Abraham Lincoln's words) "half slave and half free" to one in which the constitutionally guaranteed "blessings of liberty" would be extended to all the people, including the former slaves and their descendants.

The Thirteenth Amendment (proposed and ratified in 1865) abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment (proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868) created the privileges and immunities clause, applicable to all citizens; and made the due process and equal protection clauses applicable to all persons. The Fifteenth Amendment, (proposed in 1869 and ratified in 1870) prohibits discrimination in voting rights of citizens on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Thirteenth Amendment

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the U.S. Senate on April 8, 1864. The U.S. House of Representatives passed it on January 31, 1865. The measure was swiftly ratified by all but three Union states (the exceptions were Delaware, New Jersey, and Kentucky), and by a sufficient number of border and "reconstructed" Southern states. It was ratified by December 6, 1865. On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed it to have been incorporated into the federal Constitution. It became part of the Constitution 61 years after the Twelfth Amendment. This is the longest interval between constitutional amendments to date.

Fourteenth Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was proposed by Congress on June 13, 1866. By July 9, 1868, it had received ratifications by the legislatures of the required number of states in order to officially become the Fourteenth Amendment. On July 20, 1868, Secretary of State William Seward certified that it had been ratified and added to the federal Constitution. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws. It was proposed in response to issues related to treatment of freedmen following the war. The amendment was bitterly opposed, particularly by Southern states, which were forced to ratify it in order for their delegations to be able to return to Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution. It formed the basis for landmark decisions such as Roe v. Wade (1973), regarding abortion, and Bush v. Gore (2000), regarding the 2000 presidential election.

Fifteenth Amendment

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.

By 1869, amendments had been passed to abolish slavery and provide citizenship and equal protection under the laws. But the narrow election of Ulysses S. Grant to the presidency in 1868 convinced a majority of Republicans that black voters would be important for the party's future. After rejecting more sweeping versions of a suffrage amendment, Congress proposed a compromise amendment banning restrictions on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude on February 26, 1869. The amendment survived a difficult ratification fight and was adopted on March 30, 1870. After blacks gained the vote, the Ku Klux Klan directed some of their attacks to disrupt their political meetings and intimidate them at the polls, to suppress black participation. In the mid-1870s, there was a rise in new insurgent groups, such as the Red Shirts and White League, who acted on behalf of the Democratic Party to violently suppress black voting. While white Democrats regained power in southern state legislatures, through the 1880s and early 1890s, numerous blacks continued to be elected to local offices in many states, as well as to Congress as late as 1894.

Effects
From 1890 to 1910, all the states of the former Confederacy passed new constitutions and other laws that found new methods to get around the Fifteenth Amendment, such as poll taxes, residency rules, and literacy tests administered by white staff, sometimes with exemptions for whites via grandfather clauses. When challenges reached the Supreme Court, it interpreted the amendment narrowly, ruling based on the stated intent of the laws rather than their practical effect. The results in voter suppression were dramatic, as voter rolls fell: nearly all blacks, as well as tens of thousands of poor whites in Alabama and other states, were forced off the voter registration rolls and out of the political system, effectively excluding millions of people from representation. Democratic state legislatures passed racial segregation laws for public facilities and other types of Jim Crow restrictions. During this period of political struggle, the rate of lynchings in the South reached an all-time high.

In the twentieth century, the Court interpreted the amendment more broadly, striking down grandfather clauses in Guinn v. United States (1915). It took a quarter century to finally dismantle the white primary system in the "Texas primary cases" (1927–1953). With the South having become a one-party region after the disfranchisement of blacks, Democratic Party primaries were the only competitive contests in the states. But Southern states reacted rapidly to Supreme Court decisions, often devising new ways to continue to exclude blacks from voter rolls and voting; most blacks in the South did not gain the ability to vote until after passage of the mid-1960s federal civil rights legislation and beginning of federal oversight of voter registration and district boundaries. The Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964) forbade the requirement for poll taxes in federal elections; by this time five of the eleven southern states continued to require such taxes. Together with the US Supreme Court ruling in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966), which forbade requiring poll taxes in state elections, blacks regained the opportunity to participate in the American political system.

These amendments were intended to guarantee freedom to former slaves and to prevent discrimination in civil rights to former slaves and all citizens of the United States. The promise of these amendments was lessened by state laws and federal court decisions over the course of the 19th century. In 1876 and later, some states passed Jim Crow laws that limited the rights of African-Americans. Important Supreme Court decisions that undermined these amendments were the Slaughter-House Cases in 1873, which prevented rights guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges or immunities clause from being extended to rights under state law; and Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 which originated the phrase "separate but equal" and gave federal approval to Jim Crow laws. The full benefits of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments were not realized until the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

References

Amendments to the United States Constitution
American Civil War

Reconstruction Amendments


Light pollution is a type of pollution. It is defined as "any adverse (or bad) effect as a result of man-made lights." Usually, this means too much light. Several species, including plants and humans, are badly affected by light pollution. Most people have never heard of light pollution, and those who have usually don't care, or do anything about it. Light pollution costs Americans billions of dollars every year.

Types of light pollution
There are five kinds of light pollution:
 Light trespass
 Over-illumination
 Clutter
 Glare
 Sky glow

Sky glow usually has more of an effect on the environment than light trespass and glare, but all of them are a major problem to people today.

Sky glow is the kind of light pollution that prevents people from seeing stars and other deep-space objects. This causes birds to not be able to migrate to the right place because they can not follow the moon and stars. Sky glow also prevents astronomers from seeing dim objects.

Light trespass is when light being used by a person goes into the property of another. Although light trespass is not an environmental issue, it is still light pollution.

The third kind of light pollution, glare, has different kinds. The first, disability glare, is the loss of visibility because of too many lights. Discomfort glare is when the lights cause pain.

Effects

Effects on animals
Light pollution stops migrating birds from having any way of seeing the moon and stars that they need to use to navigate the direction of their migration, therefore not being able to migrate to the correct place. Also, sea turtles do not come to shore and nest as often, because they are afraid of the lights. It also affects animals eyes as a flash of camera weakens the eyesight of animals.

Effects on humans
Glare causes sleep problems in humans. For example, too much light in an apartment shining in from a nearby billboard will disturb their sleep. Science, too, is being affected by light pollution. Astronomers have no way of observing or making discoveries with too much light to block the night sky.
Light pollution also causes headaches when light directly falls into our eyes and affects the sensory nerves.

The solution

Group solution
There are now several groups that are trying to prevent light pollution. Light pollution first made news in 1964, when an observatory was specially placed just to avoid light pollution. However, it wasn't brought to the attention of most people until June 6, 2002, when the Czech Republic passed the world's first light pollution law. Since then, light pollution is slowly being recognized by the general public as a major problem.

Also government should pay attention for advertisements, which produce the greatest amount of light.

Individual solution
You can lower the amount of light pollution by having lights off when they are not needed. You can also shield yourself from this pollution by putting curtains on a window facing the street or any other disturbing light source.
We can also use automatic lights. If we come in range of it, it will turn on, otherwise it stays off. This way we can save electricity and reduce light pollution.

Light
Pollution

Light pollution


Analytical psychology is the school of psychology that came from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. Analytical psychology has two main parts:

 The first part is clinical and related to the care of any particular person (child or adult), who suffers from mental health issues such as addictions, anxiety, depression, panic attacks and fears, using talking and sometimes drawing, painting, music or sand-play.

 The second part is about research into all kinds of repeating patterns in the human mind and in human behaviour. They include the contents of dreams, personality types like introversion and extraversion, being shy or a show off, feeling abilities and sensations. The research is guided by clinical theories, observations and experiments like active imagination, free-association of ideas and word association tests. It also includes looking into the meaning of fairy tales, myths and legends as well as paranormal events and coincidences.

Branches of psychology

Analytical psychology


A background actor or extra is a performer in a film, television show, stage, musical, opera, or ballet production who appears in a nonspeaking or nonsinging (silent) capacity, usually in the background (for example, in an audience or busy street scene). War films and epic films often employ background actors in large numbers: some films have featured hundreds or even thousands of paid background actors as cast members (hence the term "cast of thousands"). Likewise, grand opera can involve many background actors appearing in spectacular productions.

On a film or TV set, background actors are usually referred to as "supporting artists", "junior artists", "atmosphere", "background talent", "background performers", "background artists", "background cast members", "talent", "background friends",  or simply "background", while the term "extra" is rarely used and is often considered derogatory. In a stage production, background actors are commonly referred to as "supernumeraries".  A more archaic theatre term is "sword carriers". In opera and ballet, they are called either "extras" or "supers".

Casting

Casting criteria for background actors depend on the production. It is not entirely true that background cast members require little or no acting experience, as any type of unrealistic portrayal must include some form of imagination and acting. Punctuality, reliability and the ability to take direction also figure prominently for these cast members. Background actors are generally selected on short notice, after all other preparations for the shoot have been finalized.

Several casting agencies specialize only in background work, whilst in the UK the directory Contacts published annually by Spotlight lists all accredited agencies and productions. Some agencies charge a registration fee, and some (mostly commercial background casting) will take between 10% and 15% commission from any booked work. Artists may be required to provide a basic one-page A4 sized CV/resume, that states basic personal details and dimensions, any significant skills (e.g. stage combat), and includes two 8×10-inch photographs on the rear: one head shot; one full body shot.

When hiring background actors, casting directors generally seek those with a specific "look", such as "high school students" or "affluent senior citizens", consistent with the context of the film. Casting directors may also look for background actors with a special skill for the scene, such as rollerblading, bike riding, skiing or dancing. A background actor is often expected to bring his or her own wardrobe to the set, although there are also "fittings" for a specific scene or period. A casting director may favor the one who already has the required costume or prop, such as a police uniform, or a musical instrument. On other occasions, where a costume has already been prepared (for example, to fit another actor who is now unavailable), a background actor may be selected as a "costume double" simply because they are the right size to fit it. On smaller productions or student films, background actors may be hired en masse with little formality.

The length of a background actor's employment on a production largely depends on the needs of the director and the scenes being filmed. Some background actors are needed on the set only for a day or two and  are paid on a daily basis, while others may remain with the film for an extended period. For instance, on James Cameron's film Titanic, a group of 150 "core background actors" was hired to play the ship's passengers, and employed throughout the filming.

Salary and working conditions

United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, the distinction between an actor and an extra is defined by agreements between the actors trade unions Broadcasting Entertainment Cinematograph and Theatre Union (BECTU) and Equity, and the various commercial trade and production bodies. These state that once a performer says 13 or more words in any scene, they must become a contracted actor in that production. Minimum pay rates are defined by UK Government minimum wage regulations, and both BECTU and Equity have agreed rates with each body. However, even on non-union productions an extra's pay is an agreed day-rate for ten hours of production time. Actors who are recognisable or 'featured' in a commercial under agreement with BECTU/Equity are paid on-going royalties. Hence on many advertisements, which are often shown multiple times and distributed internationally, whilst the extra is paid a contracted day-rate, the largest payment is from ongoing royalties. Due to the resultant complex calculations from multiple international showings, performers under a are often bought-out of their advertisement royalties with a one-off payment called a 'buyout'.

United States
Since 2012, in the US, most major film and television productions fall under the jurisdiction of the SAG-AFTRA union, previously before SAG-AFTRA was AFL–CIO's affiliate, the two unions were separately named as: Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA).

SAG-AFTRA signatory AMPTP producers are allowed to hire non-union background actors after a certain number of SAG performers have been cast; non-union background actors are usually paid the minimum wage. On productions outside of union jurisdiction, payment for background actors is at the discretion of the producers, and ranges from union-scale rates to "copy and credit" (i.e., no pay). Those producers who do not pay their actors may be in violation of state and federal laws about minimum wage for a job.

From 1946 until 1992, background actors (in film and television) were largely represented by the Screen Extras Guild. The Screen Extras Guild was dissolved in 1992 (legally dissolved in 1994) and its portrayal was transferred back to SAG as "West Coast extras".

Notable extras during the Studio Era include Bess Flowers, Ellinor Vanderveer, Symona Boniface, Minta Durfee, Florence Wix, Maurice Costello, Lester Dorr, Philo McCullough, Barry Norton, Larry Steers, and Shep Houghton. Notable American extras of the modern era include Emmy Collins and Jesse Heiman.

Cultural references
Charles Chaplin tackled the subject of film extra work in three of his early short comedies:  The Masquerader (1914), His New Job (1915), and Behind the Screen (1916).

The 1922 novel  Merton of the Movies by Harry Leon Wilson depicts the tribulations of a male extra.

The silent film The Extra Girl (1923) portrays a small-town girl who comes to Hollywood and becomes a background actor in her attempt to achieve stardom. Souls for Sale (also 1923) depicts a young woman's career trajectory from extra to leading lady, though her progress is more haphazard.

The novels Extra-Girl by Stella G.S. Perry (1929) and I Should Have Stayed Home by Horace McCoy (1938) depict the working lives of Hollywood extras during the Great Depression.

The feature film Movie Crazy depicts a would-be actor (Harold Lloyd) working as an extra.

The quasi-documentary Hollywood Extra Girl, directed by Herbert Moulton, depicts the experience of a young female extra working on The Crusades (1935).

In his novel Infinite Jest (1996), David Foster Wallace refers to silent extras in sitcoms as "figurants", commenting that the need to include them is a concession to reality, even while their complete silence is unrealistic.

The British television sitcom Extras (2005–07) follows the exploits of two professional background actors, Andy and Maggie. They spend most of their time on set looking for a speaking role and a boyfriend, respectively.

In the Hindi black comedy film Mithya (2008), the protagonist is a background actor whose facial similarity to an underworld crime boss lands him in trouble.

The Filipino comedy-drama film Ekstra (The Bit Player) (2013) centers around the life of a divorcee named Loida Malabanan, whose odd job as a bit player for various acting roles enabled her to send her daughter to college. The movie is a social commentary on the exploitation and mistreatment of the marginalized sector in the television production industry in the Philippines.

The Chinese-Hong Kong film I Am Somebody (2015) is about extras working at the Hengdian World Studios.

See also
 Background dancer
 Bit part
 Cameo appearance
 Central Casting
 Character actor
 Supporting actor
 Under-Five

References

External links
 "Extra helping", Sam Delaney, The Guardian, 2 April 2005

Stage terminology
Acting
Filmmaking occupations
Television terminology

Extra (acting)


Joseph Perez (born 1969 in Moses Lake, Washington) is an American writer in the fields of spirituality and Integral theory.

Life
Born as Joseph Perez in 1969 in Moses Lake Washington, Perez attended public schools until beginning his academic career at Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in The Comparative Study of Religion with Philosophy as Allied Field in 1991. Subsequently, he attended The Divinity School at The University of Chicago. Perez is an openly gay man, having come out during his senior year at Harvard.

Perez wrote a bi-weekly newspaper column called Soulfully Gay, which was distributed by the Contax Guide and The Weekly News in Florida, among other publications.
  He is the founder and manager for four years of the Gay Spirituality & Culture Weblog that originated around the time of the 2004 Gay Spirit Summit (the blog is still published today as the MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog). The Gay Spirit Summit was a gathering of gay men identified as leaders or change agents seeking to shift consciousness in the gay community and raise visibility of transformational experiences in order to change the conversation about what it means to be gay.

Works

Perez is author of two books on spiritual development: Soulfully Gay: How Harvard, Sex, Drugs, and Integral Philosophy Drove Me Crazy and Brought Me Back to God, a book combining a variety of short writings including memoir, journal entries, reviews, and interviews, about his discovering of an Integral approach to understanding the spiritual significance of homosexuality; Rising Up: Reflections on Gay Culture, Politics, Spirit which advances an agenda for gay activism informed by an evolutionary psychological model.

Soulfully Gay is a memoir developed from a blog, and chronicles his efforts to come to grips with illness and spirituality. It is a chronologically organized diary through which Perez describes the events that led him from being a Catholic youth from a working-class background to a Harvard student, and then on to sexual rebellion, drug abuse, living with HIV/AIDS, and ultimately discovering himself as a mystic and philosopher. The philosopher and psychologist Ken Wilber wrote a column for BeliefNet over a year before the book's publication, in which he compared Perez to the French dramatist Antonin Artaud, in that he "rescued his life from disaster by turning it into art."

Perez's primary insight, according to Toby Johnson, is defining what he calls "The Importance of Being Gay." In a series of short essays he argues that there are four major patterns, archetypal and universal: masculine, feminine, other-directed, and same-directed. In Perez's philosophy, Love is said to be a manifestation of the soul's desire to be reunited with God both as love for others (heterophilia) and love for the self or similar (homophilia). Perez himself, in a dialogue with Ken Wilber published by Integral Naked, said that he views the autobiographical climax of his book to be a reflection of homophilia in its positive and negative forms, Love (Agape) and Fear (Thanatos).

He lives in Seattle, Washington.

As author
Soulfully Gay: How Harvard, Sex, Drugs, and Integral Philosophy Drove Me Crazy and Brought Me Back to God
Rising Up: Reflections on Gay Culture, Politics, Spirit

References

External links
 Official Website of Joe Perez

American gay writers
1969 births
Living people
American writers of Mexican descent
Harvard University alumni
University of Chicago Divinity School alumni

Joe Perez (writer)


Archaeognatha is an order of wingless insects, also known as jumping bristletails. They are among those insects which changed least during evolution. They first appear in the Devonian period along with the arachnids (Spiders). The name Archaeognatha is derived from Greek Archaeos meaning "ancient" and gnatha meaning "jaw". This refers to the articulation of the mandibles, which has a single condyle, where all higher insects have two. An alternate name, Microcoryphia comes from the Greek micro meaning "small" and coryphia meaning head.

The Order Archaeognatha has previously been combined with the Order Thysanura, or bristletails. Both groups have three-pronged tails with two cerci and an epiproct. Archaeognatha differ from Thysanura in that they are able to use their tail to spring up to 30 cm into the air.  Like Thysanura, the body is covered with scales, with a thin exoskeleton that is susceptible to dehydration.

There are approximately 350 species in the two families. They are distributed worldwide, and unusual in the insect world in that they can even be found in the Arctic where they live in leaf litter and rock crevices. They feed primarily on algae, but also lichens, mosses, or decaying organic materials.

There are no species at current conservation risk, though the order is one of the most poorly-studied among insects, and therefore it may simply be that no one has yet recognized that any species are at risk.

Sources

Other websites

Archaeognatha  - Tree of Life Web Project
Microcoryphia  Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State College Department of Entomology

Insects

Archaeognatha


Stone tools are tools made of stone. They are the reason the stone age was given its name. They were the first known tools used by mankind, and were used by all human species, such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus. Recently it was learned that stone tools were used before the genus Homo evolved. These oldest tools come from the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years ago.
They are 700,000 years older than any tools found before.

Volcanic ash and minerals around the tools allow them to be dated. The tools look like those described as Oldowan. They might have been made by members of species such as Australopithecus afarensis or Kenyanthropus platyops. The research team has proposed the term "Lomekwian" for these tools, and say they mark the start of archaeology. The palaeoenvironment was wooded.

Related pages
Palaeolithic
Hand axe

References

Stone Age
Tools

Stone tool


Port Dover is a small fishing town in Ontario, Canada. During Friday the 13th, motorcycle fans dominate the town. There is also the famous Arbor Restaurant stand in the southern part of town where Cherry Glows are served instead of soft drinks and the bees frequent the outdoor place as much as the local customers and tourists do.

There was a public high school in the town where students aged 14 to 21 years of age study to earn their Ontario High School Diploma; it closed at the end of the 2013-14 school year. Port Dover is also the home to Ms. Carrie Sinkowski, a leader for rural equality, and a former candidate for the Canadian House of Commons. Live theatre is also done here as well as a miniature golf course, a beach, and a thriving seaport just to name a few attractions that Port Dover has to offer.

The town is dominated with little shops, with very few franchised businesses in the town; which sells irregular consumer items like British merchandise, local souvenirs and T-shirts that appeal to young tourists. Notable exceptions include Tim Hortons and Giant Tiger department store. On Friday the 13th, motorcycle people come to town in order to drink beer. However, they must be at least 19 years of age to perform this activity. While some violence has resulted in previous years, the 2007 running of the PD13 event was peaceful.

Cities in Ontario

Port Dover, Ontario


XPRIZE foundation is a non-profit organization that designs and hosts public competitions intended to encourage technological development to benefit humanity. The XPRIZE mission is to bring about "radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity" through incentivized competition. It fosters high-profile competitions to motivate individuals, companies, and organizations across all disciplines to develop innovative ideas and technologies that help solve the world's challenges.

The Ansari X Prize relating to spacecraft development was awarded in 2004, intended to inspire research and development into technology for space exploration.

Background

The first XPRIZE, the Ansari XPRIZE, was inspired by the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 prize offered in 1919 by French hotelier Raymond Orteig for the first nonstop flight between New York City and Paris. In 1927, underdog Charles Lindbergh won the prize in a modified single-engine Ryan aircraft called the Spirit of St. Louis. In total, nine teams spent $400,000 in pursuit of the Orteig Prize.

In 1996, entrepreneur Peter Diamandis offered a $10-million prize to the first privately financed team that could build and fly a three-passenger vehicle 100 kilometers into space twice within two weeks. The contest, later titled the Ansari XPRIZE for Suborbital Spaceflight, motivated 26 teams from seven nations to invest more than $100 million in pursuit of the $10 million purse. On October 4, 2004, the Ansari XPRIZE was won by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, who successfully completed the contest in their spacecraft SpaceShipOne. The prize was awarded in a ceremony at the Saint Louis Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri. As of 2011, the Science Center maintains numerous exhibits about the XPRIZE.

The foundation has also created the XPRIZE Cup rocket challenge competition.

XPRIZE unifying principles
XPRIZES are monetary rewards to incentivize three primary goals:

Attract investment from outside the sector that take new approaches to difficult problems.
Create significant results that are real and meaningful. Competitions have measurable goals, and are created to promote adoption of the innovation.
Cross national and disciplinary boundaries to encourage teams around the world to invest the intellectual and financial capital required to solve difficult challenges.

Other organizations such as the Nobel Prize committee award prizes and financial rewards to individuals or organizations that produce novel advances in science, medicine and technology. One difference between the XPRIZES and other similar organizations is awarding prizes based on the first to achieve objective 'finish line' requirements rather than a selection committee discussing the relative merits of different endeavors. For instance, the Archon Genomics XPRIZE target was to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days or less, with less than one error per 100,000 DNA base pairs, covering 98% of the genome and costing less than $10,000 per genome (this prize was canceled because it was outpaced by innovation).

The prize can increase attention to endeavors that otherwise might not receive much publicity. With the Ansari XPRIZE, XPRIZE established a model in which offering a prize for achieving a specific goal can stimulate entrepreneurial investment. Since then, new challenges have expanded into a range of other fields. XPRIZE is developing new prizes in Exploration (Space and Oceans), Life Sciences, Energy & Environment, Education and Global Development. Some hope the prizes will help improve lives, create equity of opportunity and stimulate new, important discoveries.

Prizes and events overseen

Past contests

1996–2004 Ansari XPRIZE for Suborbital Spaceflight

The Ansari XPRIZE for Suborbital Spaceflight was the first prize from the foundation. It successfully challenged teams to build private spaceships capable of carrying three people and fly two times within two weeks to open the space frontier. The first part of the Ansari XPRIZE requirements was fulfilled by Mike Melvill on September 29, 2004, On SpaceShipOne, a spacecraft designed by Burt Rutan and financed by Paul Allen, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft. On that ship, Melvill broke the 100-kilometer (62.5 mi) mark, internationally recognized as the boundary of outer space. Brian Binnie completed the second part of the requirements on October 4, 2004, winning the prize. As a result, US$10 million was awarded to the winner, but more than $100 million was invested in new technologies in pursuit of the prize.

Awarding this first prize gave XPRIZE as much publicity as the winners themselves. After the 2004 success there was ample media coverage to afford both Scaled Composites and XPRIZE additional support for them to expand and continue to pursue their aims. Following this early success several other XPRIZES were announced.

The Ansari XPRIZE won the Space Foundation's Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award in 2005. The award is given annually to an individual or organization that has made significant contributions to public awareness of space programs.

2007–2010 Progressive Insurance Automotive XPRIZE

The goal of the Progressive Insurance Automotive XPRIZE was to design, build and race super-efficient vehicles that achieve 100 MPGe (2.35 liter/100 kilometer) efficiency, produce less than 200 grams/mile well-to-wheel CO2 equivalent emissions, and could be manufactured for the mass market.

The winners of the competition were announced on September 16, 2010.
 Team Edison2 won the $5 million Mainstream competition with its four-passenger Very Light Car, obtaining 102.5 MPGe running on E85 fuel.
 Team Li-Ion Motors won the $2.5 million Alternative Side-by-Side competition with their aerodynamic Wave-II electric vehicle achieving 187 MPGe.
 Team X-Tracer Switzerland won the $2.5 million Alternative Tandem competition with their 205.3 MPGe faired electric motorcycle.

2010–2011 Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup XCHALLENGE

The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup XCHALLENGE was introduced on July 29, 2010. The $1 million prize had a goal to inspire a new generation of innovative solutions that will speed the pace of cleaning up seawater surface oil resulting from spillage from ocean platforms, tankers, and other sources. The team of Elastec/American Marine won the challenge by developing a device that skims oil off water three times faster than previously existing technology.

2006–2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander XCHALLENGE

The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander XCHALLENGE (NGLLXPC) was a competition (co-hosted by NASA) to build precise, efficient small rocket systems. It was introduced in 2006 and the US$1 million top prize was awarded on November 5, 2009 to Masten Space Systems, led by David Masten; while Armadillo Aerospace, led by id Software founder John Carmack took home the second place prize of US$500,000, plus an additional $500,000 in 2008.

2012–2014 The Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE
The Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE goal is accelerating the use of sensors and sensing technology to tackle health care problems and find ways for people to monitor and maintain their personal well-being. It was composed of two distinct Challenges held in 2013 and 2014. It was announced in 2012 and 12 finalists announced in 2013. On November 11, 2014, the winner was named to be team DMI, led by Eugene Y. Chan, MD, whose entry was the rHEALTH technology which used lasers and nanostrips to perform vast multiplexing on samples.  In this competition, prize purses totaling $2.25 million were awarded.

2013–2015 The Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE
The Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE is a $2 million competition to improve our understanding of ocean acidification. On July 20, 2015, the winners of the challenge were announced.

2011–2017 Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE

The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE was announced on May 10, 2011, and is sponsored by Qualcomm Foundation. It was officially launched on January 10, 2012. The $10 million prize is awarded for creating a mobile device that can "diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians". The name is taken from the tricorder device in Star Trek which can be used to instantly diagnose ailments. No team met all the requirements needed to win the full prize purse. Reduced prizes were made to the strongest performers (US$2.6 million for Final Frontier Medical Devices, US$1 million for Dynamical Biomarkers, and $100,000 for Cloud DX, named "Bold Epic Innovator"). For the first time at any XPRIZE, the leftover funds from the main prize purse were diverted for consumer testing for commercialization ($3.8 million) and for adapting tricorders for use in hospitals in developing countries ($1.6 million).

2007–2018 Google Lunar XPRIZE

The Google Lunar XPRIZE was introduced on September 13, 2007. The goal of the prize was similar to that of the Ansari XPRIZE, to inspire a new generation of private investment in space exploration and technology. The challenge called for teams to compete in successfully launching, landing, and operating a rover on the lunar surface. The prize would award $20 million to the first team to land a rover on the moon that successfully roved more than 500 meters and transmitted back high-definition images and video. There was a $5 million second prize, as well as $5 million in potential bonus prizes for extra features such as roving long distances (greater than 5,000 meters), capturing images of man-made objects on the moon, or surviving a lunar night.

On January 23, 2018, the prize ended when no team could schedule, confirm, and pay for a launch attempt. The XPRIZE Foundation announced that "no team would be able to make a launch attempt to reach the Moon by the March 31, 2018 deadline... and the US $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE will go unclaimed."

2016–2018 Anu & Naveen Jain Women's Safety XPRIZE
The Anu & Naveen Jain Women's Safety XPRIZE was launched on October 24, 2016, and has a $1 million purse. The goal for competing teams is to develop a safety device for women that can autonomously and inconspicuously trigger an emergency alert while transmitting information to a network of community responders. On June 7, 2018, Leaf Wearables received the grand prize winner of the $1M.

2016–2018 Water Abundance XPRIZE
On October 20, 2018, the XPRIZE Foundation awarded The Water Abundance XPRIZE, which launched on October 24, 2016, with a purse of $1.75 million provided by the Tata Group and Australian Aid, to the Skysource/Skywater Alliance based in Venice, California, who received a grand prize of $1.5 million. An additional award of $150,000 went to the second place team, JMCC WING, based in South Point, Hawaii, to acknowledge the team's ingenuity in developing a unique technological approach. Over a 24-hour period, the Skysource/Skywater Alliance successfully extracted over 2,000 liters of water using only renewable energy, at a cost of US$0.02 per liter. The team, led by architect David Hertz, intends to use the award to productize the system to address water scarcity in the developing world.

2014–2019 The Global Learning XPRIZE
The Global Learning XPRIZE, launched in September 2014, is a $15-million prize to create mobile apps to improve reading, writing, and arithmetic in developing nations. Each application will be developed during an 18-month period and the top five teams will receive $1 million each, with each of the winning apps being made available under an open-source license. The finalist of the group, that then develops an app producing the highest performance gains, will win an additional $10 million top prize. On May 15, 2019, the grand prize winners were announced; there was a tie between Kitkit School from South Korea and the United States, and one billion from Kenya and the United Kingdom.

2015–2019 Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE
On December 14, 2015, XPRIZE Founder Peter Diamandis announced the launch of a new $7 million prize that will be a three-year global competition that challenges researchers to build better technologies for mapping Earth's seafloor. On May 31, 2019, the grand prize winner, receiving a total of $4M, was GEBCO-NF Alumni, an international team based in the United States, while KUROSHIO, from Japan, claimed $1M as the runner-up.  GEBCO-NF Alumni used the unmanned boat Maxlimer to autonomously map  of seafloor.

2015–2019 Adult Literacy XPRIZE
The challenge set was to find or create solutions for improving the literacy proficiency of adults in reading within a 12-month period. The challenge was announced on June 8, 2015, and awarded $7 million by Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. The winners, Learning Upgrade and People ForWords were announced February 7, 2019.

2020 Next-Gen Mask Challenge

The $1 million Next-Gen Mask Prize is open to only 16–24 year olds and was sponsored by Marc Benioff and Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money on CNBC. On December 23, 2020, The Luminosity Lab was named the winning team with their anti-fog mask design, taking home $500,000.

2020–2021 Pandemic Response XPRIZE

This was a four-month challenge focused on the development of AI-driven systems to predict COVID-19 infection rates and to prescribe intervention plans. The $500,000 award was funded by Cognizant. The winners, VALENCIA IA4COVID19 from Spain and JSI vs COVID from Slovenia were announced on March 9, 2021.

2018–2022 ANA Avatar XPRIZE

The $10M ANA Avatar XPRIZE aimed to create avatar systems that can transport human presence to remote locations in real time. The participants of this competition developed robotic systems that allow operators to see, hear, and interact with a remote environment in a way that feels as if they are truly there. On the other hand, people in the remote environment were given the impression that the operator was present inside the avatar robot. At the competition finals, held in November 2022 in Long Beach, CA, USA, the avatar systems were evaluated on their support for remotely interacting with humans, exploring new environments, and employing specialized skills.
The winners of the competition were:
 Team NimbRo, University of Bonn, Germany won the grand prize of $5,000,000
 Pollen Robotics, France won $2,000,000
 Team Northeastern, Northeastern University, USA won $1,000,000

Canceled contests

2006–2013 Archon Genomics XPRIZE

The Archon Genomics XPRIZE, the second XPRIZE to be offered by the foundation, was announced on October 4, 2006. The goal of the Archon Genomics XPRIZE was to greatly reduce the cost and increase the speed of human genome sequencing to create a new era of personalized, predictive, and preventive medicine, eventually transforming medical care from reactive to proactive. The $10 million prize purse was promised to the first team that can build a device and use it to sequence 100 human genomes within 10 days or less, with an accuracy of no more than one error in every 100,000 bases sequenced, with sequences accurately covering at least 98% of the genome, and at a recurring cost of no more than $1,000 per genome.

If more than one team attempted the competition at the same time, and more than one team fulfilled all the criteria, then teams would have been ranked according to the time of completion. No more than three teams would have been ranked and would have shared the purse in the following manner: $7.5 million to the winner and $2.5 million to the second place team if two teams were successful, or $7 million, $2 million and $1 million if three teams are successful.

Actual competition events were originally scheduled to occur twice a year, with all eligible teams given the opportunity to attempt, starting at precisely the same time as the other teams. This was changed to a single competition scheduled for September 5, 2013, to October 1, 2013, which was canceled on August 22, 2013. The CEO articulated the rationale for the change, "companies can do this for less than $5,000 per genome, in a few days or less – and are moving quickly towards the goals we set for the prize. For this reason, we have decided to cancel an XPRIZE for the first time ever." A public debate concerning the validity and potential implications of the cancellation was published March 27, 2014.

Active contests

2014 IBM Watson A.I. XPRIZE
The A.I. XPRIZE was announced as having the aim to use an artificial intelligence system to deliver a compelling TED talk. Diamandis hopes to contrast the benevolent value of AI against the dystopian point of view that sometimes enter AI conversations. The winning team of the contest, which is scheduled for 2020, will be determined by the audience.

2015 NRG Cosia Carbon XPRIZE
On September 29, 2015, Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of X Prize, announced the launch of a $20 million prize for a 4.5-year competition on testing technologies that converts CO2 into products with the highest net value to reduce carbon dioxide emissions of either coal or a natural gas power plant. Round three began in April 2018 as the 27 semifinalists were cut down to ten finalists; each is receiving an equal share of $5 million milestone prize money. Five teams will compete at a coal-fired power plant in Gillette, Wyoming. The remaining five teams will compete at a natural gas-fired power plant in Alberta, Canada. In February 2020 this operational round will conclude and winners will be announced the following month.

A delay occurred, and in April 2021, the winners were announced: CarbonCure Technologies (Canada) and CarbonBuilt (United States).

2019 Rainforest XPRIZE
On November 19, 2019, the $10 million Rainforest XPrize was announced. Registration opened in February 2020 and the first round will begin in September 2020.

2020 Rapid Covid Testing
XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing is a $6 million, six-month competition to develop faster, cheaper, and easier to use COVID-19 testing methods at scale.

2021 Gigaton Scale Carbon Removal
Funded by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation, the $100 million carbon removal competition is the so far largest incentive prize in history. It is aimed "to inspire and help scale efficient solutions to collectively achieve the 10 gigaton per year carbon removal target by 2050, to help fight climate change and restore the Earth's carbon balance".

In April 2022, XPRIZE and the Musk Foundation announced that in celebration of Earth Day, 15 teams had been designated as milestone winners in the $100 million XPRIZE carbon removal competition. The milestone winners have received $1 million each, with the overall winners to be awarded $80 million in 2025.

See also

 DARPA Grand Challenge
 Elevator:2010
 Global Security Challenge
 H-Prize
 Hutter Prize
 Inducement prize contest
 L Prize
 Methuselah prize
 Orteig Prize

References

External links

Non-profit organizations based in California
Scientific research foundations in the United States
Challenge awards

Transhumanism
1995 establishments in California
Organizations based in Culver City, California

Xprize Foundation


Dirham is a unit of currency in several Arabic-speaking nations, including:

 The Moroccan dirham
 The United Arab Emirates dirham
 1/1000 of the Libyan dinar
 1/100 of the Qatari riyal
 1/10 of the Jordanian dinar
 The dirham, spelt 'diram,' is 1/100 of the Tajikistani somoni.

Historically, the word "dirham" is comes from 'dirhem' which comes from the name of a Greek coin, the Drachm; the Byzantine Empire controlled the Levant and traded with Arabia, circulating the coin there in pre-Islamic times and afterward. It was this currency which was first used as an Arab word. Near the end of the 7th century, the coin became an Islamic currency. It had the name of the sovereign and a religious verse on it. The dirham was used by many Mediterranean countries, including Spain. It could be used as currency in Europe between the 10th and 12 centuries.

Similar currencies
The Armenian dram is a currency whose name bears a similar origin. The dinar is a currency used in the Muslim world but originating with the Romans.

Currency of Africa
Currency of Asia
Currency of Europe

Dirham


The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content or open content without compensation to, or the consent of, the work's original creators, by using the Internet and other forms of media.

The movement objects to what it considers over-restrictive copyright laws. Many members of the movement argue that such laws hinder creativity. They call this system "permission culture".

The free-culture movement, with its ethos of free exchange of ideas, is aligned with the free and open-source-software movement, as well as other movements and philosophies such as open access (OA), the remix culture, the hacker culture, the access to knowledge movement, the copyleft movement and the public domain movement.

History

Precursors
In the late 1960s, Stewart Brand founded the Whole Earth Catalog and argued that technology could be liberating rather than oppressing. He coined the slogan "Information wants to be free" in 1984 against limiting access to information by governmental control, preventing a public domain of information.

Background of the formation of the free-culture movement
In 1998, the United States Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which President Clinton signed into law. The legislation extended copyright protections for twenty additional years, resulting in a total guaranteed copyright term of seventy years after a creator's death. The bill was heavily lobbied by music and film corporations like Disney, and dubbed as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Lawrence Lessig claims copyright is an obstacle to cultural production, knowledge sharing and technological innovation, and that private interests – as opposed to public good – determine law. He travelled the country in 1998, giving as many as a hundred speeches a year at college campuses, and sparked the movement. It led to the foundation of the first chapter of the Students for Free Culture at Swarthmore College.

In 1999, Lessig challenged the Bono Act, taking the case to the US Supreme Court. Despite his firm belief in victory, citing the Constitution's plain language about "limited" copyright terms, Lessig only gained two dissenting votes: from Justices Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens.

Foundation of the Creative Commons
In 2001, Lessig initiated Creative Commons, an alternative "some rights reserved" licensing system to the default "all rights reserved" copyright system. Lessig focuses on a fair balance between the interest of the public to use and participate into released creative works and the need of protection for a creator's work, which still enables a "read-write" remix culture.

The term "free culture" was originally used since 2003 during the World Summit on Information Society to present the first free license for artistic creation at large, initiated by the Copyleft attitude team in France since 2001 (named free art license). It was then developed in Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture in 2004.

In August 2003 the Open Content Project, a 1998 Creative Commons precursor by David A. Wiley, announced the Creative Commons as successor project and Wiley joined as director.

"Definition of Free Cultural Works"
In 2005/2006 within the free-culture movement, Creative Commons was criticized by Erik Möller and Benjamin Mako Hill for lacking minimum standards for freedom. Following this, the "Definition of Free Cultural Works" was created as collaborative work of many, including Erik Möller, Lawrence Lessig, Benjamin Mako Hill and Richard Stallman. In February 2008, several Creative Commons licenses were "approved for free cultural works", namely the CC BY and CC BY-SA (later also the CC0). Creative Commons licenses with restrictions on commercial use or derivative works were not approved.

In October 2014 the Open Knowledge Foundation described their definition of "open", for open content and open knowledge, as synonymous to the definition of "free" in the "Definition of Free Cultural Works", noting that both are rooted in the Open Source Definition and Free Software Definition. Therefore, the same three creative commons licenses are recommended for open content and free content, CC BY, CC BY-SA, and CC0. The Open Knowledge foundation additionally defined three specialized licenses for data and databases, previously unavailable: the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL), the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY) and the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).

Organizations

The organization commonly associated with free culture is Creative Commons (CC), founded by Lawrence Lessig. CC promotes sharing creative works and diffusing ideas to produce cultural vibrance, scientific progress and business innovation.

QuestionCopyright.org is another organization whose stated mission is "to highlight the economic, artistic, and social harm caused by distribution monopolies, and to demonstrate how freedom-based distribution is better for artists and audiences." QuestionCopyright may be best known for its association with artist Nina Paley, whose multi-award-winning feature length animation Sita Sings The Blues has been held up as an extraordinarily successful example of free distribution under the aegis of the "Sita Distribution Project". The web site of the organization has a number of resources, publications, and other references related to various copyright, patent, and trademark issues.

The student organization Students for Free Culture is sometimes confusingly called "the Free Culture Movement", but that is not its official name. The organization is a subset of the greater movement. The first chapter was founded in 1998 at Swarthmore College, and by 2008, the organization had 26 chapters.

The free-culture movement takes the ideals of the free and open-source software movement and extends them from the field of software to all cultural and creative works. Early in Creative Commons' life, Richard Stallman (the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the free software movement) supported the organization. He withdrew his support due to the introduction of several licenses including the developing nations (retired in 2007) and sampling licenses. Stallman later restored some support when Creative Commons retired those licenses.

The free music movement, a subset of the free-culture movement, started out just as the Web rose in popularity with the Free Music Philosophy by Ram Samudrala in early 1994. It was also based on the idea of free software by Richard Stallman and coincided with nascent open art and open information movements (referred to here as collectively as the "free-culture movement"). The Free Music Philosophy used a three-pronged approach to voluntarily encourage the spread of unrestricted copying, based on the fact that copies of recordings and compositions could be made and distributed with complete accuracy and ease via the Internet.  The subsequent free music movement was reported on by diverse media outlets including Billboard, Forbes, Levi's Original Music Magazine, The Free Radical, Wired and The New York Times. Along with the explosion of the Web driven by open source software and Linux, the rise of P2P and lossy compression, and despite the efforts of the music industry, free music became largely a reality in the early 21st century. Organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Creative Commons with free information champions like Lawrence Lessig were devising numerous licenses that offered different flavors of copyright and copyleft. The question was no longer why and how music should be free, but rather how creativity would flourish while musicians developed models to generate revenue in the Internet era.

Reception

Skepticism from Richard Stallman
Initially, Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman did not see the importance of free works beyond software. For instance for manuals and books Stallman stated in the 1990s:  Similarly, in 1999 Stallman said that he sees "no social imperative for free hardware designs like the imperative for free software". Other authors, such as Joshua Pearce, have argued that there is an ethical imperative for open-source hardware, specifically with respect to open-source-appropriate technology for sustainable development.

Later, Stallman changed his position slightly and advocated for free sharing of information in 2009. But, in 2011 Stallman commented on the Megaupload founder's arrest, "I think all works meant for practical uses must be free, but that does not apply to music, since music is meant for appreciation, not for practical use." In a follow-up Stallman differentiated three classes: works of practical use should be free, works representing points of view should be shareable but not changeable and works of art or entertainment should be copyrighted (but only for 10 years). In an essay in 2012 Stallman argued that video games as software should be free but not their artwork. In 2015 Stallman advocated for free hardware designs.

Copyright proponents
Vocal criticism against the free-culture movement comes from copyright proponents.

Prominent technologist and musician Jaron Lanier discusses this perspective of free culture in his 2010 book You Are Not a Gadget. Lanier's concerns include the depersonalization of crowd-sourced anonymous media (such as Wikipedia) and the economic dignity of middle-class creative artists.

Andrew Keen, a critic of Web 2.0, criticizes some of the free culture ideas in his book, Cult of the Amateur, describing Lessig as an "intellectual property communist".

The decline of the news media industry's market share is blamed on free culture but scholars like Clay Shirky claim that the market itself, not free culture, is what is killing the journalism industry.

The free art movement is distinct from the free culture movement as the artist retains full copyright for the work. The free art movement is the practice of artists leaving art in public places for the public to remove and keep. The artwork is usually tagged with a notice stating it is free art, and either with the artist's name or left anonymously. The movement was reinvigorated by British street art practitioner My Dog Sighs coining the term "Free Art Fridays". Clues to the location of artworks are sometimes left on social media to combine treasure hunting with art.

See also

 2600: The Hacker Quarterly
 Access to knowledge movement
 Anti-copyright notice
 Commodification
 Commons-based peer production
 Copyleft
 Copyright abolition
 Criticism of copyright
 Criticism of intellectual property
 Culture vs. Copyright
 Cypherpunk
 Free content
 Free education
 Freedom of information
 Free software
 Information wants to be free
 Internet freedom
 Open content
 Open-design movement
 Open educational resources
 Open-source architecture
 Open-source model
 Open-source movement
 Patentleft
 Pirate Party
 Remix culture
 Science 2.0
 Sharing economy
 The Virtual Revolution

References

External links

 Resources
 Berry, David M. and Giles Moss. 2006. The Politics of the Libre Commons. First Monday. Volume 11 (September)
 Pasquinelli, Matteo. "The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage"; now in Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008.
 Videoblog: Free Culture, Free Software, Free Infrastructures! Openness and Freedom in every Layer of the Network (Interviews with Kloschi (Freifunk), Kurt Jansson (Wikimedia), Jürgen Neumann (Freifunk), Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (United Nations University), Lawrence Lessig (Creative Commons) and Allison and Benoit (Montréal Wireless))

Digital rights
Free goods and services

Intellectual property activism
Criticism of intellectual property
Social movements

Free-culture movement


In computer science, a high-level programming language is a programming language that does not require knowledge of computer hardware. The advantage with high-level programming languages is that programmers only need to understand the syntax (i.e. the type of structure of the code) of the programming language and don't have to understand computer hardware to program well. Low-level programming languages require knowledge of both the syntax and the hardware they are programming for.

Features of high-level programming languages
What determines a programming language as "high-level" depends on how much the programming language relies on hardware knowledge. Programming languages that require less knowledge about computer hardware are called "high-level" programming languages. It doesn't matter whether a programming language is considered easy to learn or not.

Rather than dealing with functions of computer hardware, high-level programming languages deal with more abstract concepts. High-level programming languages focus more on what the program will output. An interpreter is required to translate high-level programming language for low-level programming languages to tell the hardware what to do.

High-level programming languages can use variables, arrays, conditional statements, subroutines, loops, and among other functions to help produce the output. High-level programming languages are generally easier to do than low-level programming languages. The syntax used to make a program generally has clearer language than lower-level programming languages.

Examples of high-level programming languages
Python
Perl
C#
C and C++
JavaScript
Java

High-level programming language


The State of Kharan was an autonomous princely state in British India (later Pakistan), in the southwest of modern Pakistan. It was established about the year 1697 CE. In 1948, the state was integrated into Pakistan's West Pakistan. In 1971, East Pakistan became Bangladesh, and West Pakistan was renamed to Pakistan. Since then, the state is organised as the Kharan District of Balochistan.

Former subdivisions of Pakistan
Pakistani princely states
Kharan District

Kharan (princely state)


The Junkers Ju 288, originally known within the Junkers firm as the EF 074, was a German bomber project designed during World War II, which only ever flew in prototype form. The first aircraft flew on 29 November 1940; 22 development aircraft were eventually produced.

The Ju 288 was the winner of the Bomber B contest, although the contest was started by the Junkers firm's submission of the EF 074 and their selection was never really in doubt. The Bomber B concept of a Schnellbomber was originally intended to replace the Junkers Ju 88. The Ju 288 offered a design that was larger, offered cabin pressurization for high altitude missions, had longer range, a much greater bomb payload, was even faster, and had improved defensive firepower. The design was intended to replace all the bombers then in Luftwaffe service.

Delivering all of these requirements in a single airframe demanded much more powerful engines; all of the Bomber B concepts, at one time or another, relied on the Junkers Jumo 222 engine to deliver this power. Ultimately, the Jumo 222 was a failure in spite of massive effort and several redesigns over a period of several years, with nearly 300 development prototypes produced. No suitable replacement was ever forthcoming, dooming the Ju 288 program, and leaving the Luftwaffe with older bomber designs during the second half of World War II.

Design and development

Prior to the opening of World War II, the Luftwaffe bomber force included three major types, the Dornier Do 17 and Ju 88, both classed as schnellbomber, and the slower but somewhat larger Heinkel He 111. Although the Ju 88 outperformed the other designs in service, it however possessed adverse characteristics, including its very small internal bomb bay that forced it to carry some of its load externally, degrading performance.

Junkers had been outlining a variety of improved models of the Ju 88 since 1937, powered by the planned Jumo 222 multibank engine, or Jumo 223 inline multibank diesel of greatly increased power meant to achieve a  output level, a serious challenge for Germany's aviation engine industry of the time. The EF 074 was essentially a scaled-up Ju 88, sharing its general layout and most of its fuselage and wings with extensions in various places. The nose was redesigned with a more streamlined "stepless cockpit", having no separate windscreen panels for the pilot and co-pilot. This layout allowed cabin pressurization to be more easily implemented. This design approach had been growing in favour, subsequently appearing in various German types, notably the He 111P and -H's.

All of the defensive armament was meant to be remotely controlled – in one proposal , comprising a remotely operated rear-facing dorsal turret at the rearmost end of the cockpit glazing, and two remotely operated "flank" turrets on the rearwards sides of the fuselage just forward of the empennage, otherwise each resembling the FDSL 131 units of the Me 210. The exclusive use of remotely operated turrets for the Ju 288's defensive firepower allowed them to be positioned more efficiently, as well as eliminating "breaks" in the fuselage pressurization.

The fuselage was expanded along its length to allow for a much longer bomb bay – somewhat as had been done with the Dornier Do 217 then in development itself – that would allow for a 3,630 kg (8,000 lb) payload to be carried internally, eliminating the need to carry ordnance on outside hardpoints.

Bomber B Competition

No serious work was undertaken on these versions, but after Heinrich Hertel left Heinkel and joined Junkers in 1939, the EF 074 design was submitted to the RLM in May 1939. Accordingly, the RLM sent out the specifications for the Bomber B design competition in July, the Ju 88 retroactively becoming the second aircraft to be designated Bomber A, as the 3 June 1936 specification for the He 177 also had that name. The Bomber B program aimed at replacing all of the medium bombers in the Luftwaffe inventory with a new design based on the EF.74 or something with equal performance. Bomber B was intended to have even better speed than the Ju 88, high-altitude cruising with a pressurized cockpit, heavier defensive armament, range allowing it to cover any point in the British Isles, and a 4,000 kg (8,820 lb) warload, double that of the earlier generation bombers. A number of companies returned proposals, but these were to some extent a formality, the EF.74 had already been selected as the winner, and of the rest of the designs submitted, only the Focke-Wulf Fw 191 and Dornier Do 317 progressed even as far as prototypes, and the Henschel Hs 130 coming under consideration as a late entrant.

Work began on building prototypes soon after, and the first example was completed by mid-1940. Power was supposed to be supplied by two 24-cylinder Jumo 222 six-bank, four cylinders per bank, over-1,500 kW output class powerplants, but problems with the Jumo 222's development – as with almost every new concept for over-1,500 kW output, reciprocating aircraft engines then underway in the Third Reich – meant the first prototypes flew with BMW 801 radial engines, instead. The first flight-quality 222s did not arrive until October 1941, and even then it was clear they were nowhere near ready for full-scale production. When it became apparent the 222 was not likely to become a viable powerplant, in May 1942, Junkers proposed replacing them, for their projected Ju 288C version, with the much heavier Daimler Benz DB 606s instead; the same 1.5 tonne, twin-crankcase "welded-together engines" that Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring complained about some three months later, regarding the He 177's own endless powerplant troubles.

Undercarriage difficulties

The Ju 288's intricate main landing gear system's design proved to be troublesome, possessing twin vertical members comprising the main "Y-shaped" retraction strut unit, directly behind a single oleo strut, for each pair of twinned wheels mounted through a forward-projecting lever-action arm, to the lower end of the uniquely attached main oleo strut unit. This single-tube oleo strut was pivoted off the lower end of the twin-member, "Y-shaped" retraction strut unit, and was rotated in the vertical plane about this single attachment in a rearwards direction during retraction of the main-gear unit, separate from the twin-member unit to help "shorten" its stowed length within the engine nacelle. This distinctive type of design required the oleo strut's freely moving top end to physically rotate downwards and aftwards during the rear-swinging retraction of the main "Y-shaped" member, operated by a lever and gear-sector system mounted on the portside of each main gear assembly, operated with a long lever that had its upper end pivoted from a fixed bracket, anchored to the firewall's rear surface. The lever/sector gear system swiveled the oleo strut about its attachment point during the retract cycle, through an arc of roughly 180º from its position when the main gear was fully extended. The stowed position of the oleo strut ended up orienting it aftwards within the rear of the engine nacelle, and placing the wheels' axle location just ahead of and above the oleo strut's pivot point when fully retracted. Such a complex main gear design, with only the single pivoting retraction point for its oleo struts taking the primary stress of touchdown, was likely only one of the many potential sources of trouble causing the Ju 288's main gear units to repeatedly collapse on touchdown.

Operational history

Although the 288 never even reached production status, let alone official operational service, the aircraft did see limited combat duty. In 1944, following the cancellation of the 288 program, the surviving A and C series prototypes were hurriedly fitted with defensive armament and equipment and deployed as reconnaissance bombers on the Western Front. Very few missions were flown, owing to the scarcity of aviation fuel, spare parts and the unresolved problems with the aircraft's powerplant and undercarriage. It is believed that the 288s were attached to the same unit operating the small number of Ju 388 reconnaissance planes that saw service.

Variants
 Ju 288A – first seven prototypes with BMW engines
 Ju 288B – seven prototypes with slightly enlarged airframes and better defensive armament
 Ju 288C – final eight prototypes (of which only four were completed) with two Daimler-Benz DB 606 or 610 "power system" engines. This version was selected for serial production in 1944, but the program was abandoned before this could take place.
 Ju 288D – mock-up of a Ju-288C with improved tail armament
 Ju 288G – design for an anti-ship version armed with a 355.6 mm (14 in) recoilless cannon

Specifications (Ju 288C-1)

See also

References

Sources

 Hitchcock, Thomas H. Junkers 288 (Monogram Close-Up 2). Acton, MA: Monogram Aviation Publications, 1974. .

External links

 "Flugzeug Lorenz" Ju 288 page
 YouTube photo montage of Ju 288 prototypes and production details

Abandoned military aircraft projects of Germany
1940s German bomber aircraft
Ju 288
High-wing aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1940
Twin piston-engined tractor aircraft
Twin-tail aircraft

Junkers Ju 288


Hendrick Jacobszoon Lucifer (1583–1627) was a Dutch-born pirate.

Hendrick's last name, Lucifer, referred to a lighting stick, not to the fallen angel Lucifer, and was most likely used as a nickname due to his use of fire and smoke to surprise enemies.

Greatest success and death

In 1627, Hendrick was in charge of 3 ships transporting colonists to Guyana for the Dutch West India Company, accompanied by two other pirate captains.  One encounter off the coast of Cuba caused by a near collision with a two-ship Honduran treasure fleet allowed Hendrick's fleet to capture a ship and contents worth 1.2 million guilders. Hendrick fought as brave as a lion, (according to surviving crewmen), and personally killed around ten enemy soldiers in close combat, before being hit by a bullet. He still continued his plundering, but another bullet hit him in the chest and he had to quit fighting. He made it back safely to his ship, and his crew finished up the last of the treasure fleet's sailors.
Lucifer, by then mortally wounded,  gave the order to transfer the loot (1404 chests of Indigo, 4280 animal skins, 32 jars of balsam ointment and several other items) to his ship. He then walked to his cabin. He slowly lay down to bed, saying he would go to rest, and then died as a result of wounds received during the encounter.

References

1583 births
1627 deaths
Dutch privateers
16th-century Dutch people
17th-century Dutch people
17th-century pirates
Pirates from the Dutch Republic
Deaths by firearm in international waters
17th-century Dutch criminals

Hendrick Lucifer


The Parser Grammar Engine (PGE, originally the Parrot Grammar Engine) is a compiler and runtime for Raku rules for the Parrot virtual machine. PGE uses these rules to convert a parsing expression grammar into Parrot bytecode. It is therefore compiling rules into a program, unlike most virtual machines and runtimes, which store regular expressions in a secondary internal format that is then interpreted at runtime by a regular expression engine.  The rules format used by PGE can express any regular expression and most formal grammars, and as such it forms the first link in the compiler chain for all of Parrot's front-end languages.

When executed, the bytecode generated by PGE will parse text as described in the input rules, generating a parse tree. The parse tree can be manipulated directly, or fed into the next stage of the Parrot compiler toolchain in order to generate an AST from which code generation can occur (if the grammar describes a programming language).

History
Originally named P6GE and written in C, PGE was translated to native Parrot and renamed not long after its initial release in November 2004. Its author is Patrick R. Michaud. PGE was written in order to reduce the amount of work required to implement a compiler on top of Parrot. It was also written to allow Perl 6 to easily self-host, though current Pugs development no longer uses PGE as its primary rules back-end in favor of a native engine called PCR.

Internals
PGE combines three styles of parsing:
 Raku rules
 an operator precedence parser
 custom parse subroutines
The primary form is Raku rules, so a PGE rule might look like this for an addition-only grammar:
 rule term   { <number> | \( <expr> \) }
 rule number { \d+ }
 rule expr   { <term> ( '+' <term> )* }
The operator precedence parser allows an operator table to be built and used directly in a Perl 6 rule style parser like so:
 rule expr is optable { ... }
 rule term   { <number> | \( <expr> \) }
 rule number { \d+ }
 proto term: is precedence('=')
             is parsed(&term) {...}
 proto infix:+ is looser('term:') {...}
This accomplishes the same goal of defining a simple, addition-only grammar, but does so using a combination of a Raku style regex/rules for term and number and a shift-reduce optable for everything else.

Code generation
Though PGE outputs code which will parse the grammar described by a rule, and can be used at run time to handle simple grammars and regular expressions found in code, its primary purpose is for the parsing of high level languages.

The Parrot compiler toolchain is broken into several parts, of which PGE is the first. PGE converts source code to parse trees. The Tree Grammar Engine (TGE) then converts these into Parrot Abstract Syntax Trees (PAST). A second TGE pass then converts a PAST into Parrot Opcode Syntax Trees (POST) which can be directly transformed into executable bytecode.

References

External links

Perl
Formal languages
Pattern matching
Beta software
Compilers
Interpreters (computing)

Parser Grammar Engine