The British War Medal was a medal given to people who had fought in the First World War. The medal was originally meant to be for people who had fought in the war between 5th August 1914 and 11th November 1918, but this was later changed to the years between 1914 and 1920. This was because a lot of people still lost their lives in the armed forces even after the war had ended, because they were clearing landmines or mines at sea.

The British War Medal (often shortened to BWM) was awarded to both officers and men of the Royal Marines, Royal Navy, the Army and also the Dominion and Colonial Forces. The Dominion and Colonial Forces were the armed forces for the rest of the British Empire. To qualify for (be allowed to have) the medal, a member of the fighting forces had to have left his native country in any part of the British Empire whilst on military duty.

There were over six and a half million British War Medals given out. Most of them are made of silver, but some rarer ones are made of bronze instead. They are all circular, and have different designs on each side. Each side of a medal is called a face. The face that usually has a picture of the side view of a person's head on it is called the obverse, and the other side of the medal is called the reverse. The picture of the person's head is more commonly known as a bust, which is a type of statue that only shows the head, neck and tops of the shoulders of the person it is meant to be.

The obverse side of the medal shows a bust of King George V (V is a Roman numeral. Here it means 'the fifth'). The picture shows him facing left. There is also lettering around the picture of the King, which reads 'GEORGIVS V BRITT : OMN : REX ET IND : IMP :'. The 'V' in 'GEORGIVS' is actually read as a 'U'. The whole message is abbreviated, or shortened, and is supposed to read 'Georgius V Britanniarum Omnium; Rex Et Indiae; Imperator'. The message is written in Latin, but in English it says 'George 5th of all the Britons (British people); King of India; Emperor'.

The reverse side of the medal shows a man riding on a rearing horse. The man shown is Saint George, the patron saint of England. He is shown naked, and is holding a short sword. This was supposed to symbolise the mental and physical strength that was needed to win the First World War. The horse is trampling a shield that showns the emblem of Prussia and the Central Powers, which were the enemies the British and other Allies were fighting during World War One (the First World War). The horse is also trampling on a skull and cross-bones, and the rising sun, known as the Victory Sun can be seen by St. George's head. The dates '1914' and '1918' are on the left and right sides of his head.

The name of the soldier whose medal it was had his name, regiment and armed forces identification number put around the rim (edge) of the medal. The medal also came with a ribbon made of silk. It had a thick line of golden-yellow down the middle of it, with stripes on either side of it that were white, then black, then Royal blue on the outside edges of the ribbon.

References
List of war medals and description
Meanings of what the Latin words on the medals are

Military of the United Kingdom
Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom

British War Medal


Danilo Kiš (; born Dániel Kiss; 22 February 1935 – 15 October 1989) was a Yugoslav novelist, short story writer, essayist and translator. His best known works include Hourglass, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich and The Encyclopedia of the Dead.

Life and work

Early life
Kiš was born in Subotica, Danube Banovina, Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now Serbia). Kiš was the son of Eduard Kiš (), a Hungarian-speaking Jewish railway inspector and Milica (née Dragićević), a Montenegrin from Cetinje. His father was born in Austria-Hungary with the surname Kohn, but changed it to Kis as part of Magyarization, a widely implemented practice at the time. Kiš's parents met in 1930 in Subotica and married the following year. Milica gave birth to a daughter, Danica, in Zagreb in 1932 before the family relocated to Subotica.

Kiš's father was an unsteady and often absent figure in Danilo's childhood. Eduard Kiš spent time in a psychiatric hospital in Belgrade in 1934 and again in 1939. Kiš visited his father in the hospital during one of his later stays. This visit, in which, Kiš recalled his father asking his mother for a pair of scissors with which to commit suicide, made a strong impression on young Danilo. For many years, Kiš believed that his father's psychological troubles stemmed from alcoholism. Only in the 1970s did Kiš learn that his father had suffered from anxiety neurosis. Between stays in the hospital, Eduard Kiš edited the 1938 edition of the Yugoslav National and International Travel Guide. Young Danilo saw his father as a traveller and a writer. Eduard Scham, the eccentric father of the protagonist of Early Sorrows, Garden, Ashes, and Hourglass is largely based on Kiš's own father.

World War II
Kiš's parents were concerned with the rising tide of anti-Semitism all around Europe in the late 1930s. In 1939, they oversaw three-year-old Danilo's baptism into the Eastern Orthodox Church in Novi Sad, where the Kiš family resided at the time. Kiš later acknowledged that this action likely saved his life, since as the son of a Jewish convert to Christianity, Danilo would probably have been subject to persecution without definitive proof of his Christian faith.

In April 1941, Hungarian troops, in alliance with Nazi Germany, invaded the northern Yugoslavian province of Vojvodina. After Hungary declared war on the Allied powers in 1941, territory was annexed and officials began to persecute Jews in the region. On 20 January 1942, gendarmes and troops invaded Novi Sad, and two days later, gendarmes massacred thousands of Serbs and Jews in their homes and around the city. Eduard Kiš was among a large group of people rounded up and taken by the gendarmes to the banks of the frozen Danube to be shot. Eduard managed to survive, only because the hole in the ice where the gendarmes were dumping the bodies of the dead became so clogged with bodies that the commanders called for the officers to stop the killing. Kiš later described the massacre as the start of his "conscious life".

Following the massacre, Eduard relocated his family to Kerkabarabás, a town in southwest Hungary. Danilo attended primary school in Kerkabarabás. Through 1944, Hungarian Jews were largely safe, as compared to Jews in other Axis-occupied countries since Hungarian officials were reluctant to hand over Jews to the Nazis. However, in mid 1944 authorities began to deport Jews en masse to concentration camps. Eduard Kiš was sent to a ghetto in Zalaegerszeg in April or May 1944, then was deported to Auschwitz on 5 July. Eduard, along with many of his relatives, was murdered in Auschwitz. Danilo, Danica, and Milica, perhaps owing to Danilo and Danica's baptism certificates, were saved from deportation.

Kiš's father's murder had a massive impact on his work. Kiš crafted his own father into Eduard Scham, the father of the protagonist of Early Sorrows, Garden, Ashes, and Hourglass. Kiš described his father as a "mythical figure," and would continually claim that his father had not been murdered in Auschwitz but had "disappeared."

Post-war life
After the end of the war, the family moved to Cetinje, Montenegro, Yugoslavia, where Kiš graduated from high school in 1954. Kiš studied literature at the University of Belgrade. He was an excellent student, receiving praise from students and faculty members alike. He graduated in 1958 as the first student at the University of Belgrade to be awarded a degree in comparative literature. After graduating, Kiš stayed on for two years of postgraduate research.

Career
While doing research at the University of Belgrade, Kiš was a prominent writer for Vidici magazine, where he worked until 1960. In 1962 he published his first two novels, Mansarda (translated as The Garret) and Psalm 44. He then took up a position as a lector at the University of Strasbourg. He held the position until 1973. In that period, he translated several French books into Serbo-Croatian. He also wrote and published Garden, Ashes (1965), Early Sorrows (1969), and Hourglass (1972). For his novel Peščanik (Hourglass), Kiš received the prestigious NIN Award, but returned it a few years later due to a political dispute.

Kiš was influenced by James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Bruno Schulz, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Boris Pilnyak, Ivo Andrić and Miroslav Krleža among other authors.

Plagiarism controversy
In 1976, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich was published. Kiš drew inspiration for the novel from his time as a lecturer at the University of Bordeaux.

Kiš returned to Belgrade that year only to be hit by claims that he plagiarized portions of the novel from any number of authors. Critics also attacked the novel for its alleged Marxist themes.

Kiš responded to the scandal by writing The Anatomy Lesson. In the book, he accused his critics of parroting nationalist opinions and of being anti-literary. Several of the people that Kiš criticized in The Anatomy Lesson sought retribution following its publication. In 1981, Dragan Jeremić, a professor of aesthetics at the University of Belgrade and opponent of Kiš, published Narcissus without a Face in which he reasserted his claim that Kiš had plagiarized A Tomb for Boris Davidovich. Dragoljub Golubović, the journalist who published the first story accusing Kiš of plagiarism, sued Kiš for defamation. The case was eventually dismissed in March 1979, but not after it drew substantial attention from the public.

Move to Paris
Rattled by the plagiarism controversy and subsequent defamation lawsuit, Kiš left Belgrade for Paris in the summer of 1979. In 1983 he published The Encyclopedia of the Dead. During this period in his life, Kiš achieved greater global recognition as his works were translated into several languages.

Death and Funeral
After feeling weak for several months, Kiš was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer in September 1989. He died a month later, on 15 October 1989. Kiš was 54 at the time of his death, the same age that his father had been when he was sent to Auschwitz. As per his request, he was buried in Belgrade with the Serbian Orthodox Church rite.

Personal life
Kiš was married to Mirjana Miočinović from 1962 to 1981. At the time of his death, he was living with Pascale Delpech, his former student from the University of Bordeaux.

Kiš was a close friend of writer Susan Sontag. After his death, Sontag edited and published Homo Poeticus, a compilation of Kiš's essays and interviews.

Style and themes

Kiš was influenced especially by Jorge Luis Borges: he had been accused of plagiarizing, among others, Borges in A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, which prompted a "scathing response" in The Anatomy Lesson (1978), and the influence of Borges is recognized in The Encyclopedia of the Dead. From Bruno Schulz, the Polish writer and prose stylist, Kiš picked up "mythic elements" for The Encyclopedia of the Dead, and he reportedly told John Updike that "Schulz is my God".

Branko Gorjup sees two distinct periods in Kiš's career as a novelist. The first, which includes Psalm 44, Garden, Ashes, and Early Sorrows, is marked by realism: Kiš creates characters whose psychology "reflect[s] the external world of the writer's memories, dreams, and nightmares, or his experiences of the time and space in which he lives". The worlds he constructed in his narratives, while he distanced himself from pure mimesis, were still constructed to be believable. The separation from mimesis he sought to achieve by a kind of deception through language, a process intended to instil "'doubts' and 'trepidations' associated with a child's growing pains and early sorrows. The success of this 'deception' depended upon the effect of 'recognition' on the part of the reader". The point, for Kiš, was to make the reader accept "the illusion of a created reality".

In those early novels, Kiš still employed traditional narrators and his plots unfolded chronologically, but in later novels, beginning with Hourglass (the third volume of the "Family Cycle", after Garden, Ashes and Early Sorrows), his narrative techniques changed considerably and traditional plotlines were no longer followed. The role of the narrator was strongly reduced, and perspective and plot were fragmented: in Hourglass, which in Eduard Scham portrayed a father figure resembling the author's, "at least four different Schams with four separate personalities" were presented, each based on documentary evidence. This focus on the manipulation and selection of supposed documentary evidence is a hallmark of Kiš's later period, and underlies the method of A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, according to Branko Gorjup:First, most of the plots in the work are derived or borrowed from already-existing sources of varied literary significance, some easily recognizable—for example, those extracted from Roy Medvedev and Karl Steiner—while others are more obscure. Second, Kiš employs the technique of textual transposition, whereby entire sections or series of fragments, often in their unaltered state, are taken from other texts and freely integrated into the fabric of his work.

This documentary style places Kiš's later work in what he himself called a post-Borges period, but unlike Borges, the documentation comes from "historically and politically relevant material", which in A Tomb for Boris Davidovich is used to denounce Stalinism. Unlike Borges, Kiš is not interested in metaphysics, but in "more ordinary phenomena"; in the title story of The Encyclopedia of the Dead, this means building an encyclopedia "containing the biography of every ordinary life lived since 1789".

Adaptations and translations of Kiš's work
A film based on Peščanik (Fövenyóra), directed by Hungarian director Szabolcs Tolnai, was finished in 2008. In May 1989, with his friend, director Aleksandar Mandić, Kiš made the four-episode TV series Goli Život about the lives of two Jewish women. The shooting took place in Israel. The programme was broadcast after his death, in the spring of 1990, and was his last work.

Kiš's work was translated into English only in a piecemeal fashion, and many of his important books weren't available in English until the 2010s, when Dalkey Archive began releasing a selection of titles, including A Tomb for Boris Davidovich and Garden, Ashes; in 2012, Dalkey released The Attic, Psalm 44, and the posthumous collection of stories The Lute and the Scars, capably translated by John K. Cox. These publications completed the process of "the Englishing of Kiš's fiction", allowing the possibility of what Pete Mitchell of Booktrust called a resurrection of Kiš.

Bibliography
 Mansarda: satirična poema, 1962 (novel); translated as The Attic by John K. Cox (2008)
 Psalm 44, 1962 (novel); translated as Psalm 44 by John K. Cox (2012)
 Bašta, pepeo, 1965 (novel); translated as Garden, Ashes by William J. Hannaher (1975)
 Rani jadi: za decu i osetljive, 1970 (short stories); translated as Early Sorrows: For Children and Sensitive Readers by Michael Henry Heim (1998)
 Peščanik, 1972 (novel); translated as Hourglass by Ralph Manheim (1990)
 Po-etika, 1972 (essay)
 Po-etika, knjiga druga, 1974 (interviews)
 Grobnica za Borisa Davidoviča: sedam poglavlja jedne zajedničke povesti, 1976 (short stories); translated as A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Duška Mikić-Mitchell (1978)
 Čas anatomije, 1978 (book-essay about writing and politics in the Balkans)
 Noć i magla, 1983 (drama) translated as Night and Fog: The Collected Dramas and Screenplays of Danilo Kiš by John K. Cox (2014)
 Homo poeticus, 1983 (essays and interviews); translated as Homo Poeticus: Essays and Interviews by Ralph Manheim, Michael Henry Heim, and Francis Jones (1995)
 Enciklopedija mrtvih, 1983 (short stories); translated as The Encyclopedia of the Dead by Michael Henry Heim (1989)
 Gorki talog iskustva, 1990 (interviews)
 Život, literatura, 1990 (interviews and essays)
 Pesme i prepevi, 1992 (poetry)
 Lauta i ožiljci, 1994 (short stories); translated as The Lute and the Scars by John K. Cox (2012)
 Skladište, 1995 (texts)
 Varia, 1995 (essays, articles and short stories)
 Pesme, Elektra, 1995 (poetry and an adaptation from the drama Elektra)

References

Sources

External links

 A dedicated website (in Serbian)
 Translated works by Danilo Kiš
 An essay by Aleksandar Hemon
 An interview
 Danilo Kiš' personal library on LibraryThing
 "A Conversation with Danilo Kis" by Brendan Lemon, a 1984 interview
 www.danilokis.org
 Danilo Kiš, "Censorship/Self Censorship" article in _Index on Censorship_ 15.1 (1986), 43–45. Open access.

1935 births
1989 deaths
Serbian novelists
Serbian short story writers
20th-century Serbian novelists
20th-century Serbian poets
Burials at Belgrade New Cemetery
Deaths from lung cancer in France
Male novelists
Serbian male poets
Male short story writers
Writers from Subotica
Postmodern writers
University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology alumni
Serbian male writers
Serbian people of Jewish descent
Yugoslav Jews
Yugoslav writers
20th-century male writers
20th-century short story writers
Serbian people of Montenegrin descent
Members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Danilo Kiš


The Assam State Zoo cum Botanical Garden (popularly known as Guwahati Zoo) is the largest of its kind in the North East region and it is spread across 432 acre (175 hectare). The zoo is located within the Hengrabari Reserved Forest at Guwahati, India. The zoo is home to about 895 animals, birds and reptiles representing almost 113 species of animals and birds from around the world.

The Divisional officer of Assam State Zoo is Mr Tejas Mariswamy from Mysore, Karnataka.

History
The 64th session of Indian National Congress was held in Guwahati, in 1957. The Organising committee of INC organised an exhibit with included few animals and birds, of which a female leopard cub named Spotty was the favourite. After the meeting came to an end, it was felt to necessity of a zoo to house these animals.

These animals were shifted to Japorigog in the Hengrabari Reserve forest, with an area of 130 Hectare, suitable to create facilities and house these animals, thus, The Assam State Zoo was established in the year 1957 and was open to public viewing in the year 1958.

The total number of animals and birds, at the time of its inception was 42 (22 species) and 236 (31 species) respectively.

Over the years, the zoo grew and expanded to accommodate eye-catching exotic ones like chimpanzees, white rhinos & black rhinos, zebras, ostriches and giraffes from Africa; puma, jaguar and llama from South America and kangaroos from Australia. To get these exotic animals the zoo used to send indigenous animals like one horned Indian rhinoceros and others, to many countries. Through later the importance was shifted to indigenous species and several captive breeding programs also started which were successful. In the year 1959 a forest division was created as Assam State Zoo Division and the zoo was put under this division.

The Assam State Zoo also added a museum and in the year 1982 a botanical garden and so Assam State Zoo became The Assam State Zoo cum Botanical Garden.

In 2002 another 45 hectare area of the Hengrabari Reserve Forests were added to the zoo and thus, the total area of the zoo became 175 hectare and in August, 2005 the Animal Adoption Scheme launched.

See also

 List of Botanical Gardens in India and the "Indian portion" of the international List of botanical gardens

Notes

Zoos in India
Tourist attractions in Guwahati
1958 establishments in Assam
Zoos established in 1958

Assam State Zoo cum Botanical Garden


Initiation is a rite of passage marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components. In an extended sense, it can also signify a transformation in which the initiate is 'reborn' into a new role. Examples of initiation ceremonies might include Christian baptism or confirmation, Jewish bar or bat mitzvah, acceptance into a fraternal organization, secret society or religious order, or graduation from school or recruit training. A person taking the initiation ceremony in traditional rites, such as those depicted in these pictures, is called an initiate.

Characteristics
William Ian Miller notes the role of ritual humiliation in comic ordering and testing.

Mircea Eliade discussed initiation as a principal religious act by classical or traditional societies. He defined initiation as "a basic change in existential condition", which liberates man from profane time and history.  "Initiation recapitulates the sacred history of the world.  And through this recapitulation, the whole world is sanctified anew... [the initiand] can perceive the world as a sacred work, a creation of the Gods."

Eliade differentiates between types of initiations in two ways: types and functions.

Reasons for and functions
 "this real valuation of ritual death finally led to conquest of the fear of real death."
 "[initiation's] function is to reveal the deep meaning of existence to the new generations and to help them assume the responsibility of being truly men and hence of participating in culture."
 "it reveals a world open to the trans-human, a world that, in our philosophical terminology, we should call transcendental."
 "to make [the initiand] open to spiritual values."

Types

 Puberty rites: "collective rituals whose function is to effect the transition from childhood or adolescence to adulthood."  They represent "above all the revelation of the sacred."
 Entering into a Secret Society
 Mystical vocation: "the vocation of a medicine man or a shaman." This is limited to the few who are "destined to participate in a more intense religious experience than is accessible to the rest of the community."
These can be broken into two types:
 puberty rites, "by virtue of which adolescents gain access to the sacred, to knowledge, and to sexuality-- by which, in short, they become human beings."
 specialized initiations, which certain individuals undergo in order to transcend their human condition and become protégés of the Supernatural Beings or even their equals."

Psychological
In the study of certain social forms of initiation, such as hazing in college fraternities and sororities, laboratory experiments in psychology suggest that severe initiations produce cognitive dissonance. Dissonance is then thought to produce feelings of strong group attraction among initiates after the experience, because they want to justify the effort used.

Rewards during initiations have important consequences in that initiates who feel more rewarded express stronger group identity. As well as group attraction, initiations can also produce conformity among new members. Psychology experiments have also shown that initiations increase feelings of affiliation.

Examples

Religious and spiritual

A spiritual initiation rite normally implies a shepherding process where those who are at a higher level guide the initiate through a process of greater exposure of knowledge. This may include the revelation of secrets, hence the term secret society for such organizations, usually reserved for those at the higher level of understanding. One famous historical example is the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece, thought to go back to at least the Mycenaean period or "Bronze Age".

In the context of ritual magic and esotericism, an initiation is considered to cause a fundamental process of change to begin within the person being initiated and its "evolution operates within both the material world and the spiritual world". The person conducting the initiation (the initiator), being in possession of a certain power or state of being, transfers this power or state to the person being initiated. Thus the concept of initiation is similar to that of apostolic succession. The initiation process is often likened to a simultaneous death and rebirth, because as well as being a beginning it also implies an ending as existence on one level drops away in an ascension to the next.
Initiation is a key component of Judaism, Sufism and Shiism, Vaishnavism, Sant Mat, Surat Shabd Yoga, Vajrayana Buddhism, Wicca, and similar religious gnostic traditions. It denotes acceptance by the Guru and also implies that the Chela (student or disciple) agrees to the requirements (such as living an ethical lifestyle, meditating, etc.)

One of the most recognized religious initiation rites is Baptism within Christianity.
. Christian Baptism is seen as both part of the individual's faith and conversion as well as their initiation into the Church.

Trade union
In unionised organizations, the "initiation" is typically no more than a brief familiarization with basic procedures and the provision of a copy of the appropriate collective bargaining agreement that governs the work performed by members of the union. Some unions also charge a one-time initiation fee, after which the joining person is officially deemed to be a member in good standing.

Naval and military

Some communities on board a military vessel and also of military soldiers tend to form a closed 'family' which absorbs in members, who are often formally accepted, generally after a form of trial or hazing.

In addition, there can be similar rites of passages associated with parts of naval and military life, which do not constitute true initiations as the participants are already and remain members of the same community. One such rite is associated with crossing the equator on board a naval ship, but it can even be taken by passengers on board a cruise liner, who are not and do not become members of anything but the so-called "equator crossing club". Another form, "Kissing the Royal Belly" or "Royal Baby", calls for initiates to kneel before a senior member of the crew, who wears a mock diaper. This "Baby" usually has a huge stomach covered with greasy materials ranging from cooking oil to mustard, shaving cream, eggs, and oysters. Junior sailors must lick the Baby's navel area, while the "baby" grabs and shakes their head to better smear the goo onto their faces.

Gang
Gangs often require new members to commit crimes before accepting them as part of the gang.
New members may be physically beaten by fellow gang members to demonstrate their courage, also known as "beat-in" or "jump-in", which occasionally results in a fatality. One study indicates that young people are more likely to be hurt in gang initiation than they are by refusing to join. Female members may be required to have sex with male members as a form of initiation, also known as "sex in", though they may also be "jumped-in" like their male counterparts. One study shows that female members who were "sexed-in" as part of gang initiation were thereafter viewed with lower respect than those that were "jumped-in", even when promised they would become full-fledged members. Another study found that sexed-in members face greater risks of sexual exploitation and abuse by fellow male members.

Tribal

Tribes often have initiations. The initiation done in the Bapedi tribe of South Africa is normally regarded as a stage where a boy is to be taught manhood and a girl to be taught womanhood. In many African tribes, initiation involves circumcision/genital mutilation of males and sometimes circumcision/genital mutilation of females as well. Initiation is considered necessary for the individual to be regarded as a full member of the tribe. Otherwise, the individual may not be allowed to participate in ceremonies or even in social rituals such as marriage. A man will not be allowed to marry or have any special relationship with a woman who did not go to an initiation, because she is not considered to be a woman.

Initiation may be thought of as an event which may help teens prepare themselves to be good husbands and wives. Where modernization is occurring, initiation is not taken so seriously as before, although there are still certain areas which still perform initiations.

In some African tribes, boys take about 3–4 months participating in initiation rites and girls take about 1–2 months.

Australian Aboriginal tribes usually had long periods of time to help prepare adolescent boys, teaching them traditional lore before they were ready to attend large elaborate ceremonies at the time of initiation when they were finally recognized as full-fledged men in their society. Most tribes had circumcision and scarification as part of the male initiation rituals, while many Central Australian tribes also practiced subincision.

A salient shared cultural feature of the Min peoples of the New Guinea Highlands is initiation into a secret male religious cult. For example, the Urapmin people used to practice a type of male initiation known in Urap as ban. These elaborate rituals were a central part of Urapmin social life. The ban was a multistage process which involved beatings and manipulation of various objects. At each stage, the initiate was offered revelations of secret knowledge (Urap: weng awem), but at the next stage these would be shown to be false (Urap: famoul). These initiations were abandoned with the adoption of Christianity, and the Urap have expressed relief at no longer having to administer the beatings which were involved.

The Sateré-Mawé people of Brazil use intentional bullet ant stings as part of their initiation rites to become warriors.

Historical China
Chinese boys, under the Rites of Zhou, initiate their adulthood when they are 20 years old (加冠) and girls when they are 15 (及笄). Yili (儀禮), a text in the chapter of the rites(?) (士冠禮) describes various details of the ceremonies involved.

Nearing the late parts of the ceremony, the initiate gains an alias, or a "Courtesy name"; thereafter use of their personal name is strictly prohibited except before parents and rulers.

See also
 Hazing
 Ulwaluko

References

Bibliography

Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation, first edition, New York, NY Harper and Row, 1958.

External links

Rites of passage
Majority–minority relations

Initiation


Desalination means any process that removes the excess salt and other minerals from water in order to obtain fresh water suitable for animal consumption or irrigation. Most desalination is by distillation. Some is by reverse osmosis or other methods.

The main purpose is to make water for people to use. The salt is usually carried away as brine but in some places the solid salt is extracted.

Desalination  of brackish water is done in the United States in order to meet treaty obligations for river water entering Mexico. Several Middle Eastern countries have energy reserves so great that they use desalinated water for agriculture. Saudi Arabia's desalination plants account for about 24% of total world capacity. The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in UAE. It uses multi-stage flash distillation, dual-purpose and it is capable of producing 300 million cubic meters of water per year.

Methods
Distillation
Multi-stage flash (MSF)
Multiple-effect (MED|ME)
Vapor compression (VC)
Evaporation/condensation
Membrane processes
Electrodialysis reversal (EDR)
Reverse osmosis (RO)
Nanofiltration (NF)
Forward osmosis (FO)
Membrane distillation (MD)
Cold (freezing)
thermal
Solar humidification
Methane hydrate crystallisation
High grade water recycling

The traditional process used in these operations is vacuum distillation — essentially the boiling of water at less than atmospheric pressure, and thus a much lower temperature than normal. Due to the reduced temperature, energy is saved.

References

Other websites
 Middle East Desalination Research Centre
 Encyclopedia of Desalination and water and Water Resources
 Global Water Intelligence - monthly newsletter featuring 'Desal Project Tracker'
 Water Desalination Report - weekly newsletter on international desal
 International Desalination Association
 Desalination & Water Reuse - Official magazine of the International Desalination Association
 European Desalination Society
 IAEA - Nuclear Desalination
 German Desalination Society - DME
 Geothermal Desalination
 SDSU (San Diego State University) Center for Information Technology and Infrastructure (CITI) International Consortium of Advanced Technologies and Security
 "Desalination Journal" and Desalination Directory of the European Desalination Society
Desalination by humidification and dehumidification of air: state of the art
 Zonnewater - optimized solar thermal desalination (distillation)
 SOLAR TOWER Project - Clean Electricity Generation for Desalination.
 Solar Desalination using the MEH-Method
 Article: Water issues prompt new look at desalination
 Desalination bibliography Library of Congress
 Water-Technology
Water Desalination Worldewide, Market, Technologies and Companies
Cheap Drinking Water from the Ocean - Carbon nanotube-based membranes will dramatically cut the cost of desalination
BBC2 Newsnight Film: Israel build the world's largest desalination plant
Solar thermal-driven desalination plants based on membrane distillation
Encyclopedia of Water Sciences, Engineering and Technology Resources

Water

Desalination


Miron Costin (March 30, 1633 – 1691) was a Moldavian (Romanian) political figure and chronicler. His main work, Letopiseţul Ţărâi Moldovei [de la Aron Vodă încoace] (The Chronicles of the land of Moldavia [from the rule of Aron Vodă]) was meant to extend Grigore Ureche's narrative, covering events from 1594 to 1660. The Chronicles were first published in 1675.

He also wrote Istoria în versuri polone despre Ţara Moldovei şi Munteniei (Polish verse history of Moldavia and Wallachia), also known under the title Poema polonă (The Polish poem).

Life

Miron Costin was born as the son of a rich Moldavian boyar (Ion or Iancu). He spent his earliest years in Poland, where his family had taken refuge from Ottoman violence in Moldavia. His father had become a Polish magnate, which gave Miron the right to study at the Jesuit College in Bar, then at Kamienec Podolski.

He returned to Moldavia in 1653, and became a trainee of the country's treasury. Valued by the administration, he rose quickly, becoming Vornic in 1669 (i.e.: overseer of the Court, with several political responsibilities both inside the state and abroad).

In 1691 his relation with Prince Constantin Cantemir deteriorated. He and his brother (Hatman Velicico) were believed to have tried to usurp the throne in Iaşi: both were executed in Roman.

Works
 Viiaţa lumii 1672
 The translation of Origines et occasus Transsylvanorum (Lyon, 1667) by Laurențiu Toppeltin of Mediaș
 Letopiseţul Ţărâi Moldovei de la Aron Vodă încoace 1675  German translation
 Chronika ziem Moldawskich y Multanskich (Cronica țărilor Moldovei și Munteniei) (in Polish)
 Istoria în versuri polone despre Ţara Moldovei şi Munteniei (Poema polonă) 1684
 De neamul moldovenilor approx. 1687

External links
 Miron Costin: Grausame Zeiten in der Moldau, Styria 1980 Graz&Vienna&Cologne  Link

References

1633 births
1691 deaths
Moldavian nobility
Moldavian and Wallachian chroniclers
17th-century Romanian historians
Romanian writers in Polish
People executed for treason against Moldavia

Miron Costin


"Morning in America" (Anglice; Latine Mane in America dicere possumus) est praeconii appellatio civilis televisificii, cui nomen verum est "Prouder, Stronger, Better" (Anglice; Latine Glorior, Potentior, Melior dicere possumus), quod his verbis incipit: "It's morning again in America" (Iterum est mane in America). Eum fuit anno 1984 pars Ronaldi Reagan petitionis praesidentis.

Textus
It's morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It's morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?

Iterum est mane in America. Hodie plus hominum quam quocumque tempore patriae nostrae laborabunt. Cum usuris sint dimidiae fastigii anno 1980, hodie fere duo milia familiarum novas aedes ement, plusquam quocumque tempore inter quattuor annos ante. Hodie post meridiam sex et dimidia milia adulescentum se in matrimonium ducent, et cum usuris sint minusquam quattuor annis ante, fidenter ad futurum prospicere possunt. Iterum est mane in America, et sub ductum Praesidentis Reagan, patria nostra est glorior et potentior et melior. Cur tandem ad statum nostrum abhinc quattuor annos breves redire vellent?

Nexus externi
 Morning in America -- link to video on YouTube
 CNN AllPolitics Ad Archive — archive of political ads, including "Bear in the Woods" and "Morning in America"
 "Creating Reagan's image" — the story of how Hal Riney developed the ad campaign
 "Reagan's Paid Political Advertisements, Page Two"
 "Morning in America: The Reagan Election" — background of 1984 election
 Review of the book Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s
 Ad Age: "Top 100 Advertising Campaigns" — "Morning in America" is 43.
 USA Today: "Voters in Ohio give political ads a thumbs down" uses "Prouder, Stronger, Better" as an expert's example of an ad that strikes a compelling theme.
 'boards magazine: "Why political TV ads suck so hard" cites "Bear" and "Prouder, Stronger, Better" as examples of effective and significant ads in contrast to recent ads.
 ReaganKnight blog includes compilation of links to 1984 'Morning in America' videos.
 Democrats Need 'Conviction Politics' Advocates "Morning in America" type ads for Democrats in 2008.
 http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1984

1984

Morning in America


Sir Thomas Elder (August 5, 1817—March 6, 1897) was a Scottish businessman who moved to South Australia and set up the largest wool selling company in the world.

Elder came to South Australia in 1854. He worked with his brother George, and then became a business partners with Edward Stirling, Robert Barr Smith and John Taylor. They spent money setting up the copper mines at Moonta and Wallaroo which made them all very rich. When Stirling and Taylor retired, Elder and Smith became Elder Smith and Company. This company became the biggest wool selling company in the world.

Elder spent money buying large properties for sheep in outback South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia. Some of these included Paratoo, Umberatana, Mount Lyndhurst, Blanchewater and Beltana. He had ridden camels while on holiday in Palestine, and thought they would be good for use in the Australian deserts. He brought 124 camels and Afghan people to breed camels at Beltana. These were used for the building of the Australian Overland Telegraph. Elder provided money and camels for exploration by Peter Egerton Warburton (1872-73), Ernest Giles (1875), John Ross (1874), Lewis (1875), and the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia (1891).

He became a member of the South Australian Parliament Legislative Council in 1863-69 and 1871-78. He became interested in horse racing and set up stables at Morphetville. He built a grand Scottish style house at Mount Lofty, which was where he died in 1897.

He was a very rich man, and gave money to many organizations in South Australia. This included £26,000 for the University of Adelaide, £20,000 for mathematics and general science, £31,000 to the Medical School, and £21,000 to the School of Music. In his will he gave £10,000 to the Presbyterian Church, £4000 for the Church of England cathedral, £4000 for the Methodist Prince Alfred College, £25,000 to set up a Working Men's Home, and £16,000 to the hospital.

References

1818 births
1897 deaths
Australian businesspeople
People from Adelaide
Scottish businesspeople

Thomas Elder


Volkswagen, or VW for short, is a car company from Germany. The word volkswagen means "People's car" in German. Its headquarters are in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony. It was started in the 1930s, at the request of the country's leader, Adolf Hitler, to produce a car designed by Ferdinand Porsche.

History
In the 1930s Adolf Hitler was looking for someone who could make a cheap car that the common German worker could afford. At the same time, Ferdinand Porsche had been working for years on a cheap car that could hold a family and would drive like a real car, not a micro car. He had already designed and built small cars with rear engines and shaped like a beetle (for better aerodynamics). At this time, owning a car in Germany was something only for the rich people, and most car companies were not interested in making a low-cost car. Porsche's company, also called Porsche, only made designs for others at that time. So Porsche could not find anyone to make the small car that he wanted.

Though Hitler never learned to drive, he was very interested in cars (he also created the autobahn, which led to the U.S. interstate highways). Hitler wanted the car to hold four people. It was to be cooled by oil instead of water. The car needed to be able to travel at least 100 km/h, or about 60 mph, and use no more than 7 liters of gasoline for 100 kilometers (about 34 mpg). The car companies in Germany at the time didn't want to make this new low-cost car, so Hitler formed a new company, run by the government. The first name given to the car was "KdF-Wagen." "KdF" stood for Kraft durch Freude, or "Strength through Joy." Some were made, but by the time the factory was finished in 1938, World War II started. The factory then built jeep-like cars for the German military instead.

After the war, people from the United Kingdom and the United States reopened the factory and started making cars again. The factory was in ruins from the war and could only make a few cars at a time. The British military were in charge of this section of Germany. At first they tried to find another car company to rebuild the factory. Henry Ford was offered the company for free. After looking it over, his adviser said "Mr. Ford, what we are being offered here is not worth a damn!" So the Volkswagen company went ahead by itself to make the car. The man who led the Volkswagen company during this time was Heinz Nordhoff.

At first they only made one type of car, the Volkswagen Beetle. (It was simply called the Type 1 Sedan by the company, it also had the nickname "Bug" in the U.S. and other nicknames elsewhere). In 1950, the Type 2 (the bus) was introduced, also built with an engine in the back of the vehicle. The cars became popular and well-known all over the world. The Beetle later became one of the best selling cars in history. It was built for many years afterward in factories in Germany, Brazil and Mexico.

The last original Volkswagen Beetle to be built was built in Mexico. It was built in July 2003. Volkswagen has a new car called the "New Beetle." which began selling in 1997, It looks like the old car, but is built quite differently. It is faster, safer, and has an engine in the front, not the back, and is water-cooled (using a radiator). It is much more suited to today's modern world in terms of design and security.

Volkswagen is currently involved in an emissions test scandal.

Recent vehicles
Some of Volkswagen's popular cars are the Golf, Jetta, Polo,Beetle and the Passat. VW's as they are commonly known, have also entered the off-road segment with cars like the Touarag, and the commercial segment with the Touran. This year sees VW's 21st anniversary since the Golf 1 went on sale in the 1980s. Since its birth VW has sold over 315,000 units of the Golf 1 alone. 2006 saw the entry of the fifth generation of the Golf. The flagbearer - the GTI - is powered by a 147Kw 2.0l 4 cylinder turbo charged engine,with VW DSG and FSI technology. The Golf GTI has evolved a long way since the 80's but the fifth generation GTI is criticised by some as it does not live up to the expectations and standards set by the legendary Mk1 GTI, which was fitted with an 1600, 8 valve motor.

Models

Air-cooled
 Type 1: Beetle(also known as "Bug"), Karmann Ghia, and some specialty models, like the Fridolin, a mini-delivery van
 Type 2: Bus (several styles, like an ambulance version, a camper van, and the 21-window touring van)
 Type 3: Squareback, Notchback and Fastback In 1968 these cars were the first general production cars in the world to have fuel-injection
 Type 4: 411-412 - not many were sold, but the large fuel-injected engine, made in common with Porsche for the Porsche 914, was later used in the VW bus

Water-cooled
The water-cooled line was started in 1974.
 Golf (or Rabbit)
 Fox
 Jetta
 Passat (or Dasher)
 Polo
 Transporter (or Eurovan)
 Touareg
 New Beetle
 Eos
 Sharan
 Tiguan
 Touran

References

Other websites
 Volkswagen Global
 Volkswagen Germany (in German)
 Volkswagen México - History
 Volkswagen USA official website

Volkswagen
Wolfsburg

Volkswagen


Several types of connectors for car audio systems are used.

Splicing wires
Splicing wires used in car audio are mainly for power, ground, amplifier and antenna, speakers, phone and others.

Power and ground
 ACC (red),  supplies +12V power to car audio and other accessories, only when the car's ignition is switched on.
 Constant (yellow), also called BAT or Battery, provides permanent +12V power from battery. This allows the radio to retain settings (for example, stored radio stations) when the ignition is switched off.
 Illumination (orange with white stripe) or dimmer, when it is night and cars lights are turned on, head unit screen illumination is dimmed.
 Ground, abbrev. as GND (black), 0V, usually connected to the vehicle's metal chassis and body.

Speakers
Wires with black stripes are for negative power:
 Right front speaker: gray.
 Left front speaker: white.
 Right rear: purple.
 Left rear: green.

Amplifier and Antenna
They have low electric current, which is activated when the radio is turned on.
 Antenna: blue.
 Amplifier remote turn on: blue with white stripe.

Phone And Others
 Phone: the cable to mute when receiving a call is brown.
 Back view, orange with white strip, works when reverse gear light is on, and it is used to turn on the back camera screen (i.e. when parking).
 Steering Wheel Controls, SWC or Key, brown with black stripe,  usually employs CAN bus.

ISO 10487 Harness Adapter

ISO 10487 was created in 1995 and defines a standard for connectors for the head unit to the car's electrical system, consisting of a system of four different connectors typically used in head units for car audio.

Parts
Part 1 of the standard is dedicated to "Dimensions and general requirements" and Part 2 to "Performance requirements".

Power (A)
The first connector A is always present, is usually black in colour, and contains pins for power supply, off/on (typically controlled by the ignition key), optional control for a motorised antenna and so on.
 On some cars the +12V Ignition and Battery positions are reversed, such as later Volkswagen Group cars, Peugeot 106, Vauxhall Astra, Citroën C3 and some JCB tractors.
 Pin 1 is optional; used for speed-dependent volume control and possibly navigation.
 Pin 2 is optional; used for phone mute
 Pin 3 is optional; used for reversing lamp signal on Becker radios with navigation.
 Pin 6 is optional; used for vehicle instrument illumination

Loudspeaker (B)

The second connector B is for connecting four loudspeakers, front, rear, left and right, and is usually brown in colour.

Miscellaneous (C)
Connector C is optional. Sometimes it appears as one 20-pin connector, often red in colour, or it may be divided into three separate connectors which may be hooked together, in which case C1 is usually yellow, C2 is typically green and C3 is generally blue in colour. The contact spacing is narrower than the other connectors, so the C connector is sometimes referred to as mini-ISO.

Note: ISO 10487 only defines the physical attributes of the connectors, not the pin/signal designations, which are manufacturer-defined.
The example above is oriented towards VW vehicles only.

Navigation (D)
The connector D is for satellite navigation systems. It has ten pins.

Quadlock
From 2000 and onwards, manufacturers, such as BMW, Citroën, Ford, Mercedes Benz, Peugeot, Volkswagen, Rover, Audi, SEAT, Opel or Škoda have sometimes started using a 40-pin connector instead, called the Quadlock.

Quadlock may not be the description used by manufacturers of the connector components. Therefore, searching for Quadlock components may be unsuccessful; for example, Molex refers to a typical component of the connector as MOST Frame Receptacle Housing (part number 986811001).

The Quadlock connector consists of a block of 16 flat pins analogous to the two main ISO 10487 connectors. While the physical contact pins are the same, the pin allocation is not entirely the same, and the connector housing is not compatible. In addition to the 16 pins, like ISO 10487, there are minor connectors for optional equipment. They fit within the frame of the main connector, and have coding so that they cannot be interchanged. Minor connector B has 12 pins for audio output signals. Minor connector C has 12 pins for various audio sources such as CD-changers, MP3 players.

See also
 CAN bus
 Car antenna jack
 Car radio
 Dashboard
 Dashcam
 Fuse (automotive)
 ISO 7736, standard for car radio enclosures
 Car
 Universal steering wheel control interface

References

External links
 Car Audio ISO connector pinout.
 ISO 10487 Passenger car radio connections
 Part 1: Dimensions and general requirements
 Part 2: Performance requirements
 Molex part information for MOST Frame Receptacle Housing with Lever and Cable Cover A.K.A Quadlock

Consumer electronics
In-car entertainment

Connectors for car audio


Autumn, also known as fall in North American English, is one of the four temperate seasons on Earth. Outside the tropics, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March (Southern Hemisphere). Autumn is the season when the duration of daylight becomes noticeably shorter and the temperature cools considerably. Day length decreases and night length increases as the season progresses until the Winter Solstice in December (Northern Hemisphere) and June (Southern Hemisphere). One of its main features in temperate climates is the striking change in colour for the leaves of deciduous trees as they prepare to shed.

Date definitions
Some cultures regard the autumnal equinox as "mid-autumn", while others with a longer temperature lag treat the equinox as the start of autumn. In the English-speaking world of high latitude countries, autumn traditionally began with Lammas Day and ended around Hallowe'en, the approximate mid-points between midsummer, the autumnal equinox, and midwinter. Meteorologists (and Australia and most of the temperate countries in the southern hemisphere) use a definition based on Gregorian calendar months, with autumn being September, October, and November in the northern hemisphere, and March, April, and May in the southern hemisphere.

In the higher latitude countries in the Northern Hemisphere, autumn traditionally starts with the September equinox (21 to 24 September) and ends with the winter solstice (21 or 22 December). Popular culture in the United States associates Labor Day, the first Monday in September, as the end of summer and the start of autumn; certain summer traditions, such as wearing white, are discouraged after that date. As daytime and nighttime temperatures decrease, trees change colour and then shed their leaves. Persians celebrate the beginning of the autumn on Mehregan.

Under the traditional East Asian solar term system, autumn starts on or around 8 August and ends on or about 7 November. In Ireland, the autumn months according to the national meteorological service, Met Éireann, are September, October, and November. However, according to the Irish Calendar, which is based on ancient Gaelic traditions, autumn lasts throughout the months of August, September, and October, or possibly a few days later, depending on tradition. In the Irish language, September is known as  ("middle of autumn") and October as  ("end of autumn"). Late Roman Republic scholar Marcus Terentius Varro defined autumn as lasting from the third day before the Ides of Sextilis (August 11) to the fifth day before the Ides of November (November 9).

Etymology

The word autumn () is derived from Latin autumnus, archaic auctumnus, possibly from the ancient Etruscan root autu- and has within it connotations of the passing of the year. Alternative etymologies include Proto-Indo-European  ("cold") or  ("dry").

After the Greek era, the word continued to be used as the Old French word  ( in modern French) or  in Middle English, and was later normalised to the original Latin. In the Medieval period, there are rare examples of its use as early as the 12th century, but by the 16th century, it was in common use.

Before the 16th century, harvest was the term usually used to refer to the season, as it is common in other West Germanic languages to this day (cf. Dutch , German , and Scots ). However, as more people gradually moved from working the land to living in towns, the word harvest lost its reference to the time of year and came to refer only to the actual activity of reaping, and autumn, as well as fall, began to replace it as a reference to the season.

The alternative word fall for the season traces its origins to old Germanic languages. The exact derivation is unclear, with the Old English  or  and the Old Norse  all being possible candidates. However, these words all have the meaning "to fall from a height" and are clearly derived either from a common root or from each other. The term came to denote the season in 16th-century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year". Compare the origin of spring from "spring of the leaf" and "spring of the year".

During the 17th century, Englishmen began emigrating to the new North American colonies, and the settlers took the English language with them. While the term fall gradually became nearly obsolete in Britain, it became the more common term in North America.

The name backend, a once common name for the season in Northern England, has today been largely replaced by the name autumn.

Associations

Harvest

Association with the transition from warm to cold weather, and its related status as the season of the primary harvest, has dominated its themes and popular images. In Western cultures, personifications of autumn are usually pretty, well-fed females adorned with fruits, vegetables and grains that ripen at this time. Many cultures feature autumnal harvest festivals, often the most important on their calendars.

Still-extant echoes of these celebrations are found in the autumn Thanksgiving holiday of the United States and Canada, and the Jewish Sukkot holiday with its roots as a full-moon harvest festival of "tabernacles" (living in outdoor huts around the time of harvest). There are also the many festivals celebrated by indigenous peoples of the Americas tied to the harvest of ripe foods gathered in the wild, the Chinese Mid-Autumn or Moon festival, and many others. The predominant mood of these autumnal celebrations is a gladness for the fruits of the earth mixed with a certain melancholy linked to the imminent arrival of harsh weather.

This view is presented in English poet John Keats' poem To Autumn, where he describes the season as a time of bounteous fecundity, a time of 'mellow fruitfulness'.

In North America, while most foods are harvested during the autumn, foods usually associated with the season include pumpkins (which are integral parts of both Thanksgiving and Halloween) and apples, which are used to make the seasonal beverage apple cider.

Melancholia

Autumn, especially in poetry, has often been associated with melancholia. The possibilities and opportunities of summer are gone, and the chill of winter is on the horizon. Skies turn grey, the amount of usable daylight drops rapidly, and many people turn inward, both physically and mentally. It has been referred to as an unhealthy season.

Similar examples may be found in Irish poet W.B. Yeats' poem The Wild Swans at Coole where the maturing season that the poet observes symbolically represents his own ageing self. Like the natural world that he observes, he too has reached his prime and now must look forward to the inevitability of old age and death. French poet Paul Verlaine's "Chanson d'automne" ("Autumn Song") is likewise characterised by strong, painful feelings of sorrow. Keats' To Autumn, written in September 1819, echoes this sense of melancholic reflection but also emphasises the lush abundance of the season. The song "Autumn Leaves", based on the French song "Les Feuilles mortes", uses the melancholic atmosphere of the season and the end of summer as a metaphor for the mood of being separated from a loved one.

Halloween

Autumn is associated with Halloween (influenced by Samhain, a Celtic autumn festival), and with it a widespread marketing campaign that promotes it. The Celtic people also used this time to celebrate the harvest with a time of feasting. At the same time though, it was a celebration of death as well. Crops were harvested, livestock were butchered, and Winter was coming.

Halloween, 31 October, is in autumn in the northern hemisphere. Television, film, book, costume, home decoration, and confectionery businesses use this time of year to promote products closely associated with such a holiday, with promotions going from late August or early September to 31 October, since their themes rapidly lose strength once the holiday ends, and advertising starts concentrating on Christmas.

Other associations

In some parts of the northern hemisphere, autumn has a strong association with the end of summer holiday and the start of a new school year, particularly for children in primary and secondary education. "Back to School" advertising and preparations usually occurs in the weeks leading to the beginning of autumn.

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated in Canada, in the United States, in some of the Caribbean islands and in Liberia. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada, on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States (where it is commonly regarded as the start of the Christmas and holiday season), and around the same part of the year in other places. Similarly named festival holidays occur in Germany and Japan.

Television stations and networks, particularly in North America, traditionally begin their regular seasons in their autumn, with new series and new episodes of existing series debuting mostly during late September or early October (series that debut outside the autumn season are usually known as mid-season replacements). A sweeps period takes place in November to measure Nielsen Ratings.

American football is played almost exclusively in the autumn months; at the high school level, seasons run from late August through early November, with some playoff games and holiday rivalry contests being played as late as Thanksgiving.  In many American states, the championship games take place in early December. College football's regular season runs from September through November, while the main professional circuit, the National Football League, plays from September through to early January.

Summer sports, such as association football (in Northern America, East Asia, Argentina, and South Africa), Canadian football, stock car racing, tennis, golf, cricket, and professional baseball, wrap up their seasons in early to late autumn; Major League Baseball's championship World Series is popularly known as the "Fall Classic". (Amateur baseball is usually finished by August.) Likewise, professional winter sports, such as ice hockey and basketball, and most leagues of association football in Europe, are in the early stages of their seasons during autumn; American college basketball and college ice hockey play teams outside their athletic conferences during the late autumn before their in-conference schedules begin in winter.

The Christian religious holidays of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day are observed in autumn in the Northern hemisphere. Easter falls in autumn in the southern hemisphere.

The secular celebration of International Workers' Day also falls in autumn in the southern hemisphere.

Since 1997, Autumn has been one of the top 100 names for girls in the United States.

In Indian mythology, autumn is considered to be the preferred season for the goddess of learning Saraswati, who is also known by the name of "goddess of autumn" (Sharada).

In Asian mysticism, Autumn is associated with the element of metal, and subsequently with the colour white, the White Tiger of the West, and death and mourning.

Tourism

Although colour change in leaves occurs wherever deciduous trees are found, coloured autumn foliage is noted in various regions of the world: most of North America, Eastern Asia (including China, Korea, and Japan), Europe, southeast, south, and part of the midwest of Brazil, the forest of Patagonia, eastern Australia and New Zealand's South Island.

Eastern Canada and New England are famous for their autumnal foliage, and this attracts major tourism (worth billions of US dollars) for the regions.

Views of autumn

Allegories of autumn in art

See also
 Autumn in New England
 Diwali

References

External links

Etymologies

Autumn


The liberalisation and democratisation efforts of Alexander Dubchek and Czechoslovakia's Communist Party, known as Prague Spring, took place in 1968. As the Soviet Union thought that Czechoslovakia was moving away of communism, an alliance of Warsaw Pact countries (Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland, and Hungary) invaded Czechoslovakia on August 20-21, 1968. Immediately after the invasion, a series of protests took place in Czechoslovakia.

Prague Spring symbolizes the experiment of establishing of a socialism with a human face, in post-war Eastern Bloc and its violent suppression from Warsaw Pact countries in August 21, 1968. The event is included in a greater series of Cold War-related unrests. Some examples are May 1968 in France, the student protests against Vietnam War and the military junta in Greece (1967-1974).

After the invasion, the most reforms who took place during Prague Spring were reversed or halted. This period after Prague Spring is known as normalization. The only exception was the federalisation of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia became officially a federal country on January 1, 1969.

Czechoslovakia

Prague Spring


Web 2.0 () is what people call new ways of showing or using things on the Internet.

Web 2.0 is considered beneficial because it is easy for people to publish their work, connect with other people, and share and exchange information.

To people who use the Internet, wikis and blogs are Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is mostly about user-generated and interactive content.

Before Web 2.0, Internet users could just read information on web pages. With Web 2.0, users can interact with the site and add information. In Web 1.0, the previous version, information was only written by the website author.

The Internet technology which is used for web 2.0 is not different from the old Internet technology, but the ways people use the web (the Internet) has changed.

Some people think that Wikipedia is a great example of "Web 2.0". Many other famous websites, such as Facebook and Youtube, are considered Web 2.0 Websites.

Web 2.0


A galvanometer is a type of ammeter. It is an instrument for detecting and measuring electric current. It is named after Luigi Galvani. It is an analog electromechanical transducer that produces a rotary deflection, through a limited arc, in response to electric current flowing through its coil. The term has been expanded to include uses of the same mechanism in recording, positioning, and servomechanism equipment.

Operation
The most familiar use is as an analog measuring instrument, often called a meter. It is used to measure the direct current (flow of electric charge) through an electric circuit. The D'Arsonval/Weston form used today is constructed with a small pivoting coil of wire in the field of a permanent magnet. The coil is attached to a thin pointer that traverses a calibrated scale. A tiny torsion spring pulls the coil and pointer to the zero position.

When a direct current (DC) flows through the coil, the coil generates a magnetic field. This field acts against the permanent magnet. The coil twists, pushing against the spring, and moves the pointer. The hand points at a scale indicating the electric current. Careful design of the pole pieces ensures that the magnetic field is uniform, so that the angle of the pointer is proportional to the current. A useful meter generally contains provision for damping the mechanical resonance of the moving coil and pointer, so that the pointer settles quickly to its position without oscillation.

Tangent galvanometer

A tangent galvanometer is an early measuring instrument used for the measurement of electric current. It works by using a compass needle to compare a magnetic field generated by the unknown current to the magnetic field of the Earth. It gets its name from its operating principle, the tangent law of magnetism, which states that the tangent of the angle a compass needle makes is proportional to the ratio of the strengths of the two perpendicular magnetic fields. It was first described by Claude Servais Mathias Pouillet in 1837.

A tangent galvanometer consists of a coil of insulated copper wire wound on a circular non-magnetic frame. The frame is mounted vertically on a horizontal base provided with levelling screws. The coil can be rotated on a vertical axis passing through its centre. A compass box is mounted horizontally at the centre of a circular scale. It consists of a tiny, powerful magnetic needle pivoted at the centre of the coil. The magnetic needle is free to rotate in the horizontal plane. The circular scale is divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant is graduated from 0° to 90°. A long thin aluminium pointer is attached to the needle at its centre and at right angle to it. To avoid errors due to parallax a plane mirror is mounted below the compass needle.

Electricity
Measuring tools
Machines

Galvanometer


Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968 for his discovery of resonance states in particle physics using the hydrogen bubble chamber. In 2007 the American Journal of Physics commented, "Luis Alvarez was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century."

After receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1936, Alvarez went to work for Ernest Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Alvarez devised a set of experiments to observe K-electron capture in radioactive nuclei, predicted by the beta decay theory but never before observed. He produced tritium using the cyclotron and measured its lifetime. In collaboration with Felix Bloch, he measured the magnetic moment of the neutron.

In 1940, Alvarez joined the MIT Radiation Laboratory, where he contributed to a number of World War II radar projects, from early improvements to Identification friend or foe (IFF) radar beacons, now called transponders, to a system known as VIXEN for preventing enemy submarines from realizing that they had been found by the new airborne microwave radars. The radar system for which Alvarez is best known and which has played a major role in aviation, most particularly in the post war Berlin airlift, was Ground Controlled Approach (GCA). Alvarez spent a few months at the University of Chicago working on nuclear reactors for Enrico Fermi before coming to Los Alamos to work for Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan project. Alvarez worked on the design of explosive lenses, and the development of exploding-bridgewire detonators. As a member of Project Alberta, he observed the Trinity nuclear test from a B-29 Superfortress, and later the bombing of Hiroshima from the B-29 The Great Artiste.

After the war Alvarez was involved in the design of a liquid hydrogen bubble chamber that allowed his team to take millions of photographs of particle interactions, develop complex computer systems to measure and analyze these interactions, and discover entire families of new particles and resonance states. This work resulted in his being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968. He was involved in a project to x-ray the Egyptian pyramids to search for unknown chambers. With his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, he developed the Alvarez hypothesis which proposes that the extinction event that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs was the result of an asteroid impact.

Early life
Luis Walter Alvarez was born into a Roman Catholic family in San Francisco on June 13, 1911, the second child and oldest son of Walter C. Alvarez, a physician, and his wife Harriet née Smyth, and a grandson of Luis F. Álvarez, a Spanish physician, born in Asturias, Spain, who lived in Cuba for a while and finally settled in the United States, who found a better method for diagnosing macular leprosy. He had an older sister, Gladys, a younger brother, Bob, and a younger sister, Bernice. His aunt, Mabel Alvarez, was a California artist specializing in oil painting.

He attended Madison School in San Francisco from 1918 to 1924, and then San Francisco Polytechnic High School. In 1926, his father became a researcher at the Mayo Clinic, and the family moved to Rochester, Minnesota, where Alvarez attended Rochester High School. He had always expected to attend the University of California, Berkeley, but at the urging of his teachers at Rochester, he instead went to the University of Chicago, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1932, his master's degree in 1934, and his PhD in 1936. As an undergraduate, he belonged to the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. As a postgraduate he moved to Gamma Alpha.

In 1932, as a graduate student at Chicago, he discovered physics there and had the rare opportunity to use the equipment of legendary physicist Albert A. Michelson. Alvarez also constructed an apparatus of Geiger counter tubes arranged as a cosmic ray telescope, and under the aegis of his faculty advisor Arthur Compton, conducted an experiment in Mexico City to measure the so-called East–West effect of cosmic rays. Observing more incoming radiation from the west, Alvarez concluded that primary cosmic rays were positively charged. Compton submitted the resulting paper to the Physical Review, with Alvarez's name at the top.

Alvarez was an agnostic even though his father had been a deacon in a Congregational church.

Early work

Alvarez's sister, Gladys, worked for Ernest Lawrence as a part-time secretary, and mentioned Alvarez to Lawrence. Lawrence then invited Alvarez to tour the Century of Progress exhibition in Chicago with him. After he completed his oral exams in 1936, Alvarez, now engaged to be married to Geraldine Smithwick, asked his sister to see if Lawrence had any jobs available at the Radiation Laboratory. A telegram soon arrived from Gladys with a job offer from Lawrence. This started a long association with the University of California, Berkeley. Alvarez and Smithwick were married in one of the chapels at the University of Chicago and then headed for California. They had two children, Walter and Jean. They were divorced in 1957. On December 28, 1958, he married Janet L. Landis, and had two more children, Donald and Helen.

At the Radiation Laboratory he worked with Lawrence's experimental team, which was supported by a group of theoretical physicists headed by Robert Oppenheimer. Alvarez devised a set of experiments to observe K-electron capture in radioactive nuclei, predicted by the beta decay theory but never observed. Using magnets to sweep aside the positrons and electrons emanating from his radioactive sources, he designed a special purpose Geiger counter to detect only the "soft" X-rays coming from K capture. He published his results in the Physical Review in 1937.

When deuterium (hydrogen-2) is bombarded with deuterium, the fusion reaction yields either tritium (hydrogen-3) plus a proton or helium-3 plus a neutron (). This is one of the most basic fusion reactions, and the foundation of the thermonuclear weapon and the current research on controlled nuclear fusion. At that time the stability of these two reaction products was unknown, but based on existing theories Hans Bethe thought that tritium would be stable and helium-3 unstable. Alvarez proved the reverse by using his knowledge of the details of the 60-inch cyclotron operation. He tuned the machine to accelerate doubly ionized helium-3 nuclei and was able to get a beam of accelerated ions, thus using the cyclotron as a kind of super mass spectrometer. As the accelerated helium came from deep gas wells where it had been for millions of years, the helium-3 component had to be stable. Afterwards Alvarez produced the radioactive tritium using the cyclotron and the  reaction and measured its lifetime.

In 1938, again using his knowledge of the cyclotron and inventing what are now known as time-of-flight techniques, Alvarez created a mono-energetic beam of thermal neutrons. With this he began a long series of experiments, collaborating with Felix Bloch, to measure the magnetic moment of the neutron. Their result of , published in 1940, was a major advance over earlier work.

World War II

Radiation Laboratory
The British Tizard Mission to the United States in 1940 demonstrated to leading American scientists the successful application of the cavity magnetron to produce short wavelength pulsed radar. The National Defense Research Committee, established only months earlier by President Franklin Roosevelt, created a central national laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the purpose of developing military applications of microwave radar. Lawrence immediately recruited his best "cyclotroneers", among them Alvarez, who joined this new laboratory, known as the Radiation Laboratory, on November 11, 1940. Alvarez contributed to a number of radar projects, from early improvements to Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) radar beacons, now called transponders, to a system known as VIXEN for preventing enemy submarines from realizing that they had been found by the new airborne microwave radars. Enemy submarines would wait until the radar signal was getting strong and then submerge, escaping attack. But VIXEN transmitted a radar signal whose strength was the cube of the distance to the submarine so that as they approached the sub, the signal—as measured by the sub—got progressively weaker, and the sub assumed the plane was getting farther away and didn't submerge.

One of the first projects was to build equipment to transition from the British long-wave radar to the new microwave centimeter-band radar made possible by the cavity magnetron. In working on the Microwave Early Warning system (MEW), Alvarez invented a linear dipole array antenna that not only suppressed the unwanted side lobes of the radiation field but also could be electronically scanned without the need for mechanical scanning. This was the first microwave phased-array antenna, and Alvarez used it not only in MEW but in two additional radar systems. The antenna enabled the Eagle precision bombing radar to support precision bombing in bad weather or through clouds. It was completed rather late in the war; although a number of B-29s were equipped with Eagle and it worked well, it came too late to make much difference.

The radar system for which Alvarez is best known and which has played a major role in aviation, most particularly in the post-war Berlin airlift, was Ground Controlled Approach (GCA). Using Alvarez's dipole antenna to achieve a very high angular resolution, GCA allows ground-based radar operators to watch special precision displays to guide a landing airplane to the runway by transmitting verbal commands to the pilot. The system was simple, direct, and worked well, even with previously untrained pilots. It was so successful that the military continued to use it for many years after the war, and it was still in use in some countries in the 1980s. Alvarez was awarded the National Aeronautic Association's Collier Trophy in 1945 "for his conspicuous and outstanding initiative in the concept and development of the Ground Control Approach system for safe landing of aircraft under all weather and traffic conditions".

Alvarez spent the summer of 1943 in England testing GCA, landing planes returning from battle in bad weather, and also training the British in the use of the system. While there he encountered the young Arthur C. Clarke, who was an RAF radar technician. Clarke subsequently used his experiences at the radar research station as the basis for his novel Glide Path, which contains a thinly disguised version of Alvarez. Clarke and Alvarez developed a long-term friendship.

Manhattan Project

In the fall of 1943, Alvarez returned to the United States with an offer from Robert Oppenheimer to work at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project. However, Oppenheimer suggested that he first spend a few months at the University of Chicago working with Enrico Fermi before coming to Los Alamos. During these months, General Leslie Groves asked Alvarez to think of a way that the US could find out if the Germans were operating any nuclear reactors, and, if so, where they were. Alvarez suggested that an airplane could carry a system to detect the radioactive gases that a reactor produces, particularly xenon-133. The equipment did fly over Germany, but detected no radioactive xenon because the Germans had not built a reactor capable of a chain reaction. This was the first idea of monitoring fission products for intelligence gathering. It would become extremely important after the war.

As a result of his radar work and the few months spent with Fermi, Alvarez arrived at Los Alamos in the spring of 1944, later than many of his contemporaries. The work on the "Little Boy" (a uranium bomb) was far along so Alvarez became involved in the design of the "Fat Man" (a plutonium bomb). The technique used for uranium, that of forcing the two sub-critical masses together using a type of gun, would not work with plutonium because the high level of background spontaneous neutrons would cause fissions as soon as the two parts approached each other, so heat and expansion would force the system apart before much energy has been released. It was decided to use a nearly critical sphere of plutonium and compress it quickly by explosives into a much smaller and denser core, a technical challenge at the time.

To create the symmetrical implosion required to compress the plutonium core to the required density, thirty-two explosive charges were to be simultaneously detonated around the spherical core. Using conventional explosive techniques with blasting caps, progress towards achieving simultaneity to within a small fraction of a microsecond was discouraging. Alvarez directed his graduate student, Lawrence H. Johnston, to use a large capacitor to deliver a high voltage charge directly to each explosive lens, replacing blasting caps with exploding-bridgewire detonators. The exploding wire detonated the thirty-two charges to within a few tenths of a microsecond. The invention was critical to the success of the implosion-type nuclear weapon. He also supervised the RaLa Experiments. Alvarez later wrote that:

Again working with Johnston, Alvarez's last task for the Manhattan Project was to develop a set of calibrated microphone/transmitters to be parachuted from an aircraft to measure the strength of the blast wave from the atomic explosion, so as to allow the scientists to calculate the bomb's energy. After being commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, he observed the Trinity nuclear test from a B-29 Superfortress that also carried fellow Project Alberta members Harold Agnew and Deak Parsons (who were respectively commissioned at the rank of captain).

Flying in the B-29 Superfortress The Great Artiste in formation with the Enola Gay, Alvarez and Johnston measured the blast effect of the Little Boy bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima. A few days later, again flying in The Great Artiste, Johnston used the same equipment to measure the strength of the Nagasaki explosion.

Bubble chamber

Returning to the University of California, Berkeley as a full professor, Alvarez had many ideas about how to use his wartime radar knowledge to improve particle accelerators. Though some of these were to bear fruit, the "big idea" of this time would come from Edwin McMillan with his concept of phase stability which led to the synchrocyclotron. Refining and extending this concept, the Lawrence team would build the world's then-largest proton accelerator, the Bevatron, which began operating in 1954. Though the Bevatron could produce copious amounts of interesting particles, particularly in secondary collisions, these complex interactions were hard to detect and analyze at the time.

Seizing upon a new development to visualize particle tracks, created by Donald Glaser and known as a bubble chamber, Alvarez realized the device was just what was needed, if only it could be made to function with liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen nuclei, which are protons, made the simplest and most desirable target for interactions with the particles produced by the Bevatron. He began a development program to build a series of small chambers, and championed the device to Ernest Lawrence.

The Glaser device was a small glass cylinder () filled with ether. By suddenly reducing the pressure in the device, the liquid could be placed into a temporary superheated state, which would boil along the disturbed track of a particle passing through. Glaser was able to maintain the superheated state for a few seconds before spontaneous boiling took place. The Alvarez team built chambers of 1.5 in, 2.5 in, 4 in, 10 in, and 15 in using liquid hydrogen, and constructed of metal with glass windows, so that the tracks could be photographed. The chamber could be cycled in synchronization with the accelerator beam, a picture could be taken, and the chamber recompressed in time for the next beam cycle.

This program built a liquid hydrogen bubble chamber almost  long, employed dozens of physicists and graduate students together with hundreds of engineers and technicians, took millions of photographs of particle interactions, developed computer systems to measure and analyze the interactions, and discovered families of new particles and resonance states. This work resulted in the Nobel Prize in Physics for Alvarez in 1968, "For his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics, in particular the discovery of a large number of resonant states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chambers and data analysis."

Scientific detective

In 1964, Alvarez proposed what became known as the High Altitude Particle Physics Experiment (HAPPE), originally conceived as a large superconducting magnet carried to high altitude by a balloon in order to study extremely high-energy particle interactions. In time the focus of the experiment changed toward the study of cosmology and the role of both particles and radiation in the early universe. This work was a large effort, carrying detectors aloft with high-altitude balloon flights and high-flying U-2 aircraft, and an early precursor of the COBE satellite-born experiments on the cosmic background radiation (which resulted in the award of the 2006 Nobel Prize, shared by George Smoot and John Mather.)

Alvarez proposed Muon tomography in 1965 to search the Egyptian pyramids for unknown chambers. Using naturally occurring cosmic rays, his plan was to place spark chambers, standard equipment in the high-energy particle physics of this time, beneath the Pyramid of Khafre in a known chamber. By measuring the counting rate of the cosmic rays in different directions the detector would reveal the existence of any void in the overlaying rock structure.

Alvarez assembled a team of physicists and archeologists from the United States and Egypt, the recording equipment was constructed and the experiment carried out, though it was interrupted by the 1967 Six-Day War. Restarted after the war, the effort continued, recording and analyzing the penetrating cosmic rays until 1969, when he reported to the American Physical Society that no chambers had been found in the 19% of the pyramid surveyed.

In November 1966 Life published a series of photographs from the film that Abraham Zapruder took of the Kennedy assassination. Alvarez, an expert in optics and photoanalysis, became intrigued by the pictures and began to study what could be learned from the film. Alvarez demonstrated both in theory and experiment that the backward snap of the President's head was consistent with his being shot from behind being called the "jet-effect" theory. Prominent forensic investigator Josiah Thompson, in his 2021 book Last Second in Dallas, closely examined Alvarez's experiment and found it flawed, suggesting Alvarez may have been politically motivated to oppose any theory suggesting a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Alvarez's theory had, however, been further refined and corroborated by other researchers. Alvarez also investigated the timing of the gunshots and the shockwave that disturbed the camera, and the speed of the camera, pointing out a number of details that the FBI photo analysts either overlooked or got wrong. He produced a paper intended as a tutorial, with informal advice for the physicist intent on arriving at the truth of the case.

Dinosaur extinction

In 1980 Alvarez and his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, along with nuclear chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Michel, "uncovered a calamity that literally shook the Earth and is one of the great discoveries about Earth's history".

During the 1970s, Walter Alvarez was doing geologic research in central Italy. There he had located an outcrop on the walls of a gorge whose limestone layers included strata both above and below the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary. Exactly at the boundary is a thin layer of clay. Walter told his father that the layer marked where the dinosaurs and much else became extinct and that nobody knew why, or what the clay was about—it was a big mystery, and he intended to solve it.

Alvarez had access to the nuclear chemists at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and was able to work with Frank Asaro and Helen Michel, who used the technique of neutron activation analysis. In 1980, Alvarez, Alvarez, Asaro, and Michel published a seminal paper proposing an extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction (then called the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction). In the years following the publication of their article, the clay was also found to contain soot, glassy spherules, shocked quartz crystals, microscopic diamonds, and rare minerals formed only under conditions of great temperature and pressure.

Publication of the 1980 paper brought criticism from the geologic community, and an often acrimonious scientific debate ensued. Ten years later, and after Alvarez's death, evidence of a large impact crater called Chicxulub was found off the coast of Mexico, providing support for the theory. Other researchers later found that the end-Cretaceous extinction of the dinosaurs may have occurred rapidly in geologic terms, over thousands of years, rather than millions of years as had previously been supposed. Others continue to study alternative extinction causes such as increased volcanism, particularly the massive Deccan Traps eruptions that occurred around the same time, and climate change, checking against the fossil record. However, on March 4, 2010, a panel of 41 scientists agreed that the Chicxulub asteroid impact triggered the mass extinction.

Aviation
In his autobiography, Alvarez said, "I think of myself as having had two separate careers, one in science and one in aviation. I've found the two almost equally rewarding." An important contributor to this was his enjoyment of flying. He learned to fly in 1933, later earning instrument and multi-engine ratings. Over the next 50 years he accumulated over 1000 hours of flight time, most of it as pilot in command. He said, "I found few activities as satisfying as being pilot in command with responsibility for my passengers' lives."

Alvarez made numerous professional contributions to aviation. During World War II he led the development of multiple aviation-related technologies. Several of his projects are described above, including Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) for which he was awarded the Collier Trophy in 1945. He also held the basic patent for the radar transponder, for which he assigned rights to the U.S. government for $1.

Later in his career Alvarez served on multiple high level advisory committees related to civilian and military aviation. These included a Federal Aviation Administration task group on future air navigation and air traffic control systems, the President's Science Advisory Committee Military Aircraft Panel, and a committee studying how the scientific community could help improve the United States' capabilities for fighting a nonnuclear war.

Alvarez's aviation responsibilities led to many adventures. For example, while working on GCA he became the first civilian to fly a low approach with his view outside the cockpit obstructed. He also flew many military aircraft from the co-pilot's seat, including a B-29 Superfortress and a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. In addition, he survived a crash during World War II as a passenger in a Miles Master.

Other activities
Alvarez was a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group and the Bohemian Club.

Death
Alvarez died on September 1, 1988, of complications from a succession of recent operations for esophageal cancer. His remains were cremated, and his ashes were scattered over Monterey Bay. His papers are in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

In popular culture
In the 2023 film Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan, Alvarez was portrayed by actor Alex Wolff.

Awards and honors
 Fellow of the American Physical Society (1939) and President (1969)
 Collier Trophy of the National Aeronautics Association (1946)
 Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1947)
 Medal for Merit (1947)
 Fellow of the American Philosophical Society (1953)
 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1958)
 California Scientist of the Year (1960)
 Albert Einstein Award (1961)
 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (1961)
 National Medal of Science (1963)
 Michelson Award (1965)
 Nobel Prize in Physics (1968)
 Member of the National Academy of Engineering (1969)
 University of Chicago Alumni Medal (1978)
 National Inventors Hall of Fame (1978)
 Enrico Fermi award of the US Department of Energy (1987)
 IEEE Honorary Membership (1988)
 The Boy Scouts of America named their Cub Scout SUPERNOVA award for Alvarez (2012)
 Minor planet 3581 Alvarez is named after him and his son, Walter Alvarez.

Selected publications
 "Two-element variable-power spherical lens", Patent US3305294A (December 1964)

Patents
 Golf training device
 Electronuclear Reactor
 Optical range finder with variable angle exponential prism
 Two-element variable-power spherical lens
 Variable-power lens and system
 Subatomic particle detector with liquid electron multiplication medium
 Method of making Fresnelled optical element matrix
 Optical element of reduced thickness
 Method of forming an optical element of reduced thickness
 Deuterium tagged articles such as explosives and method for detection thereof
 Stabilized zoom binocular
 Stand alone collision avoidance system
 Television viewer
 Stabilized zoom binocular
 Optically stabilized camera lens system
 Nitrogen detection
 Inertial pendulum optical stabilizer

Citations

General references

External links

  including the Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1968, "Recent Developments in Particle Physics"
 About Luis Alvarez
 IEEE interview with Johnston, patentholder of the exploding-bridgewire detonator

 Annotated bibliography for Luis Alvarez from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
 Garwin, Richard L., 1992, "Memorial Tribute For Luis W. Alvarez" in Memorial Tributes, National Academy of Engineering, Vol. 5. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
 Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, United States Department of Energy
 Oral History interview transcript with Luiz Alvarez on 14 1967, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
 Oral History interview transcript with Luiz Alvarez on 15 February 1967, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives

1911 births
1988 deaths
20th-century American inventors
20th-century American physicists
Accelerator physicists
American agnostics
American Nobel laureates
American nuclear physicists
American people of Asturian descent
American people of Spanish descent
American scientific instrument makers
Collier Trophy recipients
Enrico Fermi Award recipients
Experimental physicists
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
History of air traffic control
Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel
Manhattan Project people
Members of JASON (advisory group)
National Medal of Science laureates
Nobel laureates in Physics
Particle physicists
People associated with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Academics from San Francisco
Scientists from San Francisco
University of California, Berkeley faculty
University of Chicago alumni
Hispanic and Latino American physicists
Deaths from esophageal cancer
Deaths from cancer in California
Presidents of the American Physical Society

Luis Walter Alvarez