John Diggle, also known by his code names Freelancer (with the Suicide Squad) and Spartan (with Team Arrow), is a fictional character in The CW's Arrowverse franchise and Superman & Lois, first introduced in the 2012 pilot episode of the television series Arrow. The character was created for the series by Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Andrew Kreisberg. Diggle is portrayed by David Ramsey

Diggle is introduced as a military veteran and Oliver Queen's new bodyguard. Over time, his relationship with Oliver evolves and he becomes his best friend and confidante in his crusade as the Green Arrow, joining him as Spartan and for a while succeeds him as the Green Arrow. After Oliver returns as the Green Arrow, he leaves the team and joins A.R.G.U.S. In Superman & Lois, an alternate Diggle is depicted as an affiliate of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and an ally of John Henry Irons.

Ramsey has reprised his role in the subsequent Arrowverse series The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl and Batwoman, as well as the non-Arrowverse series Superman & Lois. The character also appears in Arrows tie-in novels and digital comics, as well as the Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham video game. While Diggle was originally created for the television series, since 2013, a character of the same name has appeared in the Green Arrow series published by DC Comics.

Creation and casting

In February 2012, David Ramsey was cast in the pilot episode of Arrow as John Diggle, a "former military man now working as a bodyguard for hire who soon finds he is trapped in a battle of wits, loyalty and trust". The character was created by Arrow creators Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kreisberg. Named after comic book writer Andy Diggle, and created specifically for the series, Guggenheim said Diggle was designed to be Oliver Queen's (Stephen Amell) equal in "many respects" such as their abilities and intelligence. He further explained that Diggle's mutual abilities were a means of setting him up early in the series as a confidant for Oliver's vigilante persona. Ramsey enjoyed the fact that he did not have to worry about matching the comic books, saying, it allowed him to "just kind of take [his character] and run with it".

Development

Characterization
David Ramsey has compared Diggle to Alfred Pennyworth from the Batman comics, describing the character as Oliver's "moral voice". Ramsey, who has trained in various martial arts such as Wing Chun, Jeet Kune Do, and kickboxing, used his martial arts expertise to make Diggle believable, saying, "I think, honestly, it has to do with...having Diggle able to not just handle himself on screen but be able to really proficiently use the (martial) arts — and look like he is a trained soldier. You don't see the stunt guy. You actually see David Ramsey doing it." He has stated that since Diggle is older than most of Team Arrow and, to an extent, more experienced on the field and reconnaissance fighting, the other members "look to him for some leadership". While describing the other Arrow characters, particularly Team Arrow members like Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) as "extraordinary", Ramsey said people would be able to identify with Diggle because "he's just a guy who decided to better himself." He also said Diggle is not "a goody-two-shoes, but he'll stand up in your face and tell you the right way to get something done." Ramsey also compared Diggle to Little John, a character in various Robin Hood stories. A running gag is that Diggle, whenever taken suddenly to places by Barry Allen / Flash at super-speed, vomits as a result of motion sickness, an exception being in the Arrow season 6 episode "The Devil's Greatest Trick". Diggle's military career and heroism led some fans to draw comparisons between him and Green Lantern John Stewart. In 2015, Ramsey confirmed there had been talks of turning Diggle into "John Diggle Stewart". This was referenced in the 2018 "Elseworlds" crossover event, where Barry Allen of Earth-90 indicates that on his Earth, Diggle is the Green Lantern. A 2019 episode of Arrow reveals that Diggle has an estranged stepfather whose surname is Stewart. The series finale of Arrow features a scene where Diggle witnesses a meteor crash, and finds a box emitting a green light, which Ramsey said was a reference to fan theories that Diggle would become the series' version of Green Lantern.

Relationships
Regarding Diggle's relationship with Oliver in season 1 after realizing he is a vigilante, Ramsey said that "the biggest change is that they start working together", adding that, "He [Diggle] makes it clear to Oliver that this isn't about me being a yes man. This is about me understanding what you do and what it does to you as a person. What it does to your humanity." After Diggle leaves Team Arrow and joins A.R.G.U.S. in season 6 due to his differences with Oliver, Ramsey said, "he obviously loves Oliver, but he sees that there's more than one way to save the city. He's still committed to Oliver, to a certain degree, but even more so than Oliver, to the people of the city."

Diggle, alongside Felicity, is shown to play an important role in the transitioning of Oliver from a 'lone-wolf' to part of a vigilante team. This working relationship between these three characters has been described both in the media and the show as 'Original Team Arrow', and has received particular praise from critics. Commenting on this "symbiotic relationship", terming it "Arrow's most important", Carrie Raisler of The A.V. Club stated "Amell, Ramsey, and Rickards have the kind of lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry that makes all their scenes together hum", in her review of the first half of season 2. Similarly, Jesse Schedeen of IGN, reviewing the season three premiere, described the three as the "core trio" of the show and Jenny Rafferty of Vulture, writing about season four, described the relationship between the three as "the heartbeat of the show". Looking back at the series during her review of the season seven finale, Della Harrington of Den of Geek commented that "The magic of the show and the magic of his [Oliver's] team within the show alchemised when John Diggle and Felicity Smoak signed on."

Juliana Harkavy, who plays Dinah Drake, described Diggle as Drake's "best friend" and "her family".

Combat skills
Having served in the military, Diggle is well-versed in live combat, and his primary skill is marksmanship. He is also proficient in stick-fighting and knives. While his primary weapon of choice is a firearm, he is shown to be able to knock out people simply by striking them with his arms. He has also been shown to be on par with Oliver in fighting skills. Early in season 6, when Diggle takes up the Green Arrow mantle at Oliver's request, he wields a crossbow named "Green Monster" that was created by Felicity and Curtis and fires arrows.

Costume
For the first three seasons of Arrow, Diggle does not have a vigilante costume. By the time season 4 begins, he has gained one, which consists of a helmet and black gear. Via social media, the helmet was criticized by fans for its resemblance to that worn by the Marvel Comics character Magneto. In response to the criticism, Ramsey said, "I know there's a lot of criticism that it looks like the Magneto helmet. But by the time you see Diggle in action – we also get into what the helmet can do – you won't be thinking of the X-Men at all." In season 5, Diggle replaces his helmet with a new one, which Ramsey said can do "extraordinary things", apart from being just about concealment. Concept artist Andy Poon said the new helmet offers Diggle "full protection". He added that, since Diggle's codename is Spartan, he decided to make the helmet resemble "an actual spartan helmet design". Poon, a comic book fan himself, thought the new helmet would fix "the issues regarding some of the fan feedback about [the older helmet] looking similar to other comic book characters". Later in season 6, Diggle gains both a new Spartan costume and helmet, which eschew the gray overtones of previous Spartan costumes, and instead have a black and red scheme. In season 8, Diggle receives another suit, this time with a black and green color scheme as well as a green light emanating from his helmet as a nod to Green Lantern.

Fictional character biography

Earth-Prime

Early life
John Thomas Diggle was  born in 1977 in Starling City. He had a younger brother, Andy Diggle, but their relationship was always very tense. During his childhood, his father died on a military mission in Vlatava. He blamed his father's death on his step-father, who was in charge of the mission, Roy Stewart. Roy would train intensively both John and Andy on military combat. In 2003, he joined the United States Army, and was sent in Afghanistan, two years later becoming a Sergeant. When he discovered that Andy was a drug dealer, he beat him up, and convinced him to join the army. With both serving in Afghanistan, at some point Lt. Joyner offered them a deal to confiscate some of the opium they recovered and sell it off, a deal John refused, but not Andy. At some point, he met with Lyla Michaels in Afghanistan, and got married. At the end of his second tour, they divorced. John went back to Afghanistan for a third tour, while Lyla joined A.R.G.U.S. In 2008, he retired from the Army, and in 2010 he started working as a security guard, with his first job being protecting Tommy Merlyn. Sometime later, his brother was killed by Deadshot, and as a result he grew closer to his brother's widow, Carly Diggle.

Working with the Hood

In season 1, John Diggle was introduced as a former United States Army Special Forces soldier, honorably discharged at the rank of Master Sergeant in the pilot episode. He is hired as the bodyguard of billionaire Oliver Queen by his mother, Moira and later becomes his confidant in his mission to save Starling City. Diggle tries to help Oliver balance his normal life and vigilante life, and occasionally helps him in the field. Diggle provides Oliver with medical assistance, limiting his need for hospital treatment. Already a skilled fighter, Diggle receives additional training from Oliver. Diggle has a grudge against Floyd Lawton / Deadshot who allegedly killed his brother, Andy. Diggle dates his brother's widow, Carly, and is a father figure to her son, Andrew "A.J.", during this season.

Joining the Suicide Squad

In season two Diggle and Felicity Smoak continue to help Oliver with his crusade and Diggle continues to be Oliver's adviser and field partner, along with Sara Lance and Roy Harper. Diggle has a relationship with his ex-wife Lyla Michaels, is an unofficial member of A.R.G.U.S., and a member of the Suicide Squad under the codename "Freelancer". He also develops an uneasy alliance with Amanda Waller who occasionally asks him for field assistance with A.R.G.U.S. missions. In the season finale, it is revealed that Lyla is pregnant with Diggle's child.

Fighting the League of Assassins

Diggle continues to help Oliver and his team during season three, but has to devote more of his time to his new baby with Lyla, whom he names Sara after Sara Lance is killed. After Lyla is seriously injured in an attack, they decide to remarry. When Oliver is presumed dead at Ra's al Ghul's hands, Diggle leads Felicity, Roy, and Laurel Lance until his friend's return. After Oliver's return, Diggle accompanies him to Nanda Parbat to help him free Malcolm Merlyn, but the two are captured. Diggle and Lyla marry after a near-death experience with the Suicide Squad, when Lawton sacrifices himself for them. Diggle and Lyla decide to quit Team Arrow and A.R.G.U.S. for their daughter's sake. After Oliver leaves the team to join the League of Assassins as part of a deal to revive a near-deceased Thea Queen, Diggle becomes the team leader, though he is not yet ready to forgive Oliver for kidnapping Lyla as part of a deception to gain acceptance by the League. In season one of The Flash, Diggle arrives at Central City with Oliver and Felicity to locate a criminal who uses lethal boomerangs (Digger Harkness), but ends up assisting Team Flash (Barry's team) in defeating Roy Bivolo.

Fighting Damien Darhk and Vandal Savage

Season four sees Diggle continuing to protect Starling City, now renamed Star City, with Laurel and Thea. Now going by the codename "Spartan", he discovers that the organization that targets the newly named Star City is H.I.V.E., who had hired Lawton to murder Andy. Diggle eventually forgives Oliver after their fight with a H.I.V.E. metahuman operative named Jeremy Tell. With Quentin Lance's help, Diggle learns that Damien Darhk had Andy murdered, and that he was a drug cartel leader and Darhk's territorial rival prior to his death. However, Diggle discovers that Darhk actually faked Andy's death and recruited him as a H.I.V.E. soldier, leading Diggle and his brother to become enemies. Guilt-ridden over his brother's role in causing Laurel's death, Diggle seeks revenge against Andy and Darhk. Diggle kills Andy after the latter threatens to harm Lyla and Sara. He initially lies to Lyla that he killed Andy in self-defense, but Oliver encourages Diggle to admit the truth to his wife. Diggle rejoins the army after confiding to his wife and Darhk's defeat.

In season two of The Flash, Diggle and the rest of Team Arrow aid Team Flash during their fight with Vandal Savage. Later in the season, when the metahuman King Shark escapes from his A.R.G.U.S. prison and arrives at Central City to kill Barry, Diggle and Lyla arrive to warn the latter. After King Shark is defeated by the combined efforts of Team Flash, Diggle and Lyla, he is taken back to A.R.G.U.S.

Stopping Adrian Chase and alien invasion

In the second episode of season five Diggle is betrayed by his commanding officer, J.G. Walker, following a failed attempt to sell nuclear weapons. Framed for Walker's crimes, Diggle is arrested. Oliver and Lyla break him out of state prison, and Diggle stays at H.I.V.E.'s former base until his innocence can be proven. Diggle remains guilty about killing Andy and continues to serve as Spartan to redeem himself. Due to the events of The Flash episode "Flashpoint", Diggle's family history is altered: his daughter Sara has been erased from existence and replaced by John "J.J." Diggle, Jr., as a result of a timeline change caused by Eobard Thawne, correcting the Flashpoint reality created by Barry Allen. Felicity is later able to prove Diggle's innocence by restoring the digital files that Walker had destroyed. However, Andy's betrayal and death at Diggle's hands has taken a toll on him; he struggles to control his rage and occasionally pulverizes criminals to vent it, fueling Oliver's concern over his erratic behavior. Diggle later befriends Oliver's chosen successor to Laurel's mantle, Dinah Drake, a Central City detective, and encourages her to set down roots in Star City. Diggle, along with the rest of Team Arrow, is later captured by Adrian Chase and taken to the island Lian Yu. Chase later detonates the explosive-rigged Lian Yu by shooting himself dead, with Diggle still on the island.

In season three of The Flash, Diggle joins forces with other superheroes to stop an alien invasion, while he learns of the alteration of his life with Lyla, his daughter's erasure and his son's status as a time aberration, and despite the hurt caused by these circumstances, he chooses to forgive Barry.

Working with A.R.G.U.S.

The season six premiere reveals that Diggle survived the explosion by taking shelter in a plane like the others. However, he was wounded by bomb shrapnel and suffers a degenerative nerve injury that affects his motor control that requires taking daily medications, resulting him to develop a drug dependency. When Oliver decides to retire from being the Green Arrow, he appoints Diggle as his successor, oblivious to the fact that Diggle is currently not in condition to remain in action. Oliver returns to vigilantism until Diggle is fully recovered from his injury. Curtis Holt develops an implant for Diggle to help him control his tremors as he progressively recovers. After Oliver decides to remain being the Green Arrow, Diggle accepts the job offer from Lyla as one of the commanding officers in A.R.G.U.S., using his new position to lead his subordinates to maintain order in the city's police's place due to them having been compromised by crime lord Ricardo Diaz. Near the end of the season, Diggle is fully healed and no longer needing Holt's implant. His A.R.G.U.S. team later joins forces with FBI agent Samanda Watson's subordinates, and working with Team Arrow, they ultimately take back the city from Diaz, who goes into hiding. After the Earth-X invasion he marries Oliver and Felicity, and Barry and Iris.

In season four of The Flash, Clifford DeVoe infiltrates the A.R.G.U.S. facility holding the metahuman Neil Borman by impersonating Diggle and kills most of the security; overcharging and killing Borman to be a nuclear battery for his satellites. Afterwards, Barry brings the real Diggle to S.T.A.R. Labs to reveal the location of the facility.

In season seven, Diggle remains working at A.R.G.U.S., and continues leading his manhunt against Diaz. The combined efforts of Diggle, A.R.G.U.S. and the other members of Team Arrow (except Oliver, who is in prison) result in the successful capture of Diaz. After Oliver is released from Slabside Maximum Security Prison in exchange for Diaz, Diggle and Felicity are the first to receive him. Later, Diaz is recruited by Diggle as a member of the "Ghost Initiative", his own version of the Suicide Squad. Diggle plans to use Diaz to locate Dante, the financier behind the legendary Longbow Hunters. Diggle returns to vigilantism along with Curtis and Rene Ramirez to capture the criminal Chimera. Despite succeeding, the trio are arrested for violating the city's anti-vigilante law, but mayor Emily Pollard ultimately offers to drop the charges against them, provided they agree to be deputized and work for the police, as Oliver has. The Ghost Initiative is successful in locating Dante, but when Diaz betrays the team and helps Dante escape, Diggle hands in his resignation to A.R.G.U.S. to save his wife's job, while sending Diaz back to Slabside. Diggle later meets his late father's commanding officer Roy Stewart; Diggle's father died during an operation abroad and he blames Stewart for leaving his father behind. Stewart went on to become Diggle's stepfather and put both Diggle and Andy through rigorous training to turn them into real soldiers, resulting in a strained relationship between Diggle and Stewart. The two make amends when Diggle learns that his father died because of his own negligence and Stewart is the reason anyone survived the operation. After Team Arrow thwarts the Ninth Circle's plan to destroy Star City, Diggle takes Oliver and a pregnant Felicity to an A.R.G.U.S. safe house in the woods where the two can raise their child safe from the Circle. The season also features flashforwards that take place in 2040. These feature Diggle's adoptive son Connor Hawke and reveal that J.J. is the leader of the Deathstroke gang. Connor states that J.J. grew up hating their parents and the expectations they put on them and considers the gang his way to rebel.

Stopping the Crisis

In season eight, Diggle meets six-year-old Connor for the first time, but does not yet adopt him. After the adult Connor is accidentally teleported from 2040 to 2019 with Oliver's children, Diggle is shocked and devastated to learn that J.J. is psychopathic and becomes Grant Wilson's protégé and successor as Deathstroke and kills Rene's daughter Zoe in the future. Though these revelations strain their friendship, Diggle and Rene are determined to change their respective children's fates. Despite Diggle learning that his future bond with his adoptive son is what possibly would cause J.J. to take the path of evil, Diggle chooses to accept his destiny to Connor while trying to save J.J. After the events of the Crisis, during which Oliver perished, Diggle's daughter Sara is restored to existence. While moving to Metropolis, Diggle is intrigued by a crashed spaceship and discovers a mysterious box that glows green. In season six of The Flash, Diggle arrives in Central City to give Barry the mask he gave Oliver the first time they met. Diggle also helps him come to terms with Oliver's death.

Helping other heroes

After almost a year, Diggle arrives in Central City to help Barry trap a Godspeed drone with an Entropy Trap. Diggle convinces Barry to go to 2049 to check on his daughter Nora, but he is knocked out of the Speed Force by Godspeed drones. Diggle, Cecile Horton, and Frost find an amnesiac August Heart, but soon make him remember his identity. Following this, Diggle vows to resolve something he has "been putting off": figuring out how to open the box.

Sometime later, James Olsen contacts Diggle to help his sister, Kelly Olsen, after Nyxlygsptlnz imploded the Ormfell Building, causing those caught in the implosion to be exposed to 5th Dimensional energies. When it is discovered that Councilwoman Jean Rankin took an experimental medicine that enabled her to use those energies at the cost of draining the victims of their energy, Diggle gives Kelly some inspirational advice when operating as the new Guardian and even mentions some wise words that he learned from Jefferson Pierce.

When on an A.R.G.U.S. assignment in Gotham City, Diggle encounters Luke Fox in a bar where he got involved in a poker game with Russell Tavaroff. When Tavaroff attacks Luke outside the bar, Diggle stops him. While comparing to how they both lost their fathers, Diggle advises Luke to take the right path as they notice the Bat-Signal giving off a Morse code. This conversation inspires Luke to become Batwing.

After a while, Diggle assists his old friend Jada Jet into finding Joker's joy buzzer that would be used to help treat Marquis. They find it in Renee Montoya's office. Diggle later finds Luke at the grave of Lucius Fox where he asks him to help open a box in his possession.

Declining the Box

After some time, Diggle visits Eobard Thawne, who is imprisoned in an A.R.G.U.S. supermax prison on Lian Yu. After Barry departed after asking Thawne about a Fast Track Labs worker claiming to be Eobard Thawne, Diggle appears to ask for his help on unlocking the mystery box he had found. Thawne helps him to reopen it, but Diggle declines its powers since he prefers to be with his family.

Assisting in fighting Bloodwork

While attending Barry Allen's birthday party, John Diggle is among those who got taken over by Bloodwork's blood samples. Khione later used her powers to free Diggle so that he can help Flash and Green Arrow. As Spartan, he helps Green Arrow, Flash, and Kid Flash in defeating Bloodwork before he can infect the Multiverse with his blood.

Superman & Lois version

A variant of John Diggle appears on the Earth that Superman & Lois takes place on:

Delivering A.R.G.U.S. equipment

When called for help by General Sam Lane, John Diggle arrives in Smallville with some A.R.G.U.S. equipment. After a talk with Lois, Diggle scolds Sam for plotting to use the A.R.G.U.S. technology to take out Superman due to Tal-Rho planning to subject him to the Eradicator. When he finds out that John Henry Irons is from another Earth, Diggle states to Sam that they will have a talk about this later. Later on, Diggle mentions to Sam that he left the life of dealing with the deaths of people he knew and encountering people from other Earths.

Working with John Henry Irons

A few months later, Diggle visits John Henry Irons at a diner after the defeat of Ally Allston, wanting to know why Bruno Mannheim killed this Earth's Irons.

In other media

Print media

The character appeared in Arrow 2.5, a bi-weekly digital comic series that bridged the gap between the end of season two and the start of season three. He also features in the tie-in novels published for the series,  Arrow: Vengeance, written by Oscar Balderrama and Lauren Certo, The Flash: The Haunting of Barry Allen written by Susan and Clay Griffith, and its sequel Arrow: A Generation of Vipers from the same authors, as well as Arrow Fatal Legacies, co-authored by Marc Guggenheim and James R. Tuck, published in January 2018. This novel bridged the gap between the season five finale and the season six premiere of Arrow.

While Diggle was originally created for Arrow, a character of the same name was introduced into the Green Arrow comics during The New 52 run, in 2013, but having little resemblance to Ramsey's likeness. Looking at any elements of the show which would transfer to the comic-run, writer Jeff Lemire described the character of Diggle as "the breakout of that show", and wanted to incorporate elements of that into his story. When DC rebooted its continuity with DC Rebirth in 2016, Diggle continued to feature in the Green Arrow comics with more or less the same backstory as the show with minor alterations such as him being from Seattle.

Video games
The character appears in the Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham video game as part of the Arrow DLC pack. As well as featuring in the add-on pack's level, Diggle can also be used in any other level as a freeplay character.

Reception

Writing for the DC Comics website, Ashley V. Robinson named Diggle as one of her "all-time favorite characters". Jesse Schedeen of IGN praised Ramsey's performance in the episode "Brothers in Arms", calling it "easily Ramsey's strongest episode in a long time".

References

Further reading

African-American superheroes
American male characters in television
Arrow (TV series) characters
Characters created by Andrew Kreisberg
Characters created by Greg Berlanti
Characters created by Marc Guggenheim
Crossover characters in television
DC Comics male superheroes
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DC Comics television characters
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Fictional American secret agents
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Fictional eskrimadors
Fictional fratricides
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Fictional military sergeants
Fictional United States Army Special Forces personnel
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The Flash (2014 TV series) characters
Legends of Tomorrow characters
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Superman & Lois characters
Television characters introduced in 2012
Television characters introduced in 2021

John Diggle (Arrowverse)


The Pacinian corpuscle, lamellar corpuscle or Vater-Pacini corpuscle is one of the four major types of mechanoreceptors (specialized nerve ending with adventitious tissue for mechanical sensation) found in mammalian skin. This type of mechanoreceptor is found in both hairy, and hairless skin, viscera, joints, and attached to periosteum of bone, primarily responsible for sensitivity to vibration. Few of them are also sensitive to quasi-static or low frequency pressure stimulus. Most of them respond only to sudden disturbances and are especially sensitive to vibration of few hundreds of Hz. The vibrational role may be used for detecting surface texture, e.g., rough vs. smooth. Most of the Pacinian corpuscles act as rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors. Groups of corpuscles respond to pressure changes, e.g. on grasping or releasing an object.

Structure
Pacinian corpuscles are larger and fewer in number than Meissner's corpuscle, Merkel cells and Ruffini's corpuscles.

The Pacinian corpuscle is approximately oval-cylindrical-shaped and 1 mm in length. The entire corpuscle is wrapped by a layer of connective tissue. Its capsule consists of 20 to 60 concentric lamellae (hence the alternative lamellar corpuscle) including fibroblasts and fibrous connective tissue (mainly Type IV and Type II collagen network), separated by gelatinous material, more than 92% of which is water. It presents a whorled pattern on micrographs.

Function

Pacinian corpuscles are rapidly adapting (phasic) receptors that detect gross pressure changes and vibrations in the skin. Any deformation in the corpuscle leads to opening of pressure-sensitive or stretch-activated ion channels or mechanosensitive channels present in the axon membrane or axolemma of the neurite inside the core of the corpuscles or end-organ. This initiates generation of the receptor potential inside the corpuscles which is also secondarily supported by the voltage-activated ion channels present in the core of the corpuscles. Finally the receptor potential is modulated to neural spikes or action potential with the help of opening of sodium ion channels present at the first Ranveir's Node of the axon.

These corpuscles are especially sensitive to vibrations, which they can sense even centimeters away. Their optimal sensitivity is 250 Hz, and this is the frequency range generated upon fingertips by textures made of features smaller than 1 µm. Pacinian corpuscles respond when the skin is rapidly indented but not when the pressure is steady, due to the layers of connective tissue that cover the nerve ending. It is thought that they respond to high-velocity changes in joint position. They have also been implicated in detecting the location of touch sensations on handheld tools.

Pacinian corpuscles have a large receptive field on the skin's surface with an especially sensitive center.

Mechanism
Pacinian corpuscles sense stimuli due to the deformation of their lamellae, which press on the membrane of the sensory neuron and causes it to bend or stretch. When the lamellae are deformed, due to either application or release of pressure, a generator or receptor potential is created as it physically deforms the plasma membrane of the receptive area of the neuron, making it "leak" different cations through Mechanosensitive channels which initiates the receptor potential. This mechanotransduction process is also supported by distributed voltage sensitive ion channels in the inner-core and neurite of the corpuscles. Due to generation of receptor potential in the receptive area of the neurite (especially near the heminode or half-node of the axon) the potential at the first Ranvier's node can reach certain threshold, triggering nerve impulses or action potentials at the first node of Ranvier. The first Ranvier's node of the myelinated section of the neurite is often found inside the capsule. This impulse is then transferred along the axon from node to node with the use of sodium channels and sodium/potassium pumps in the axon membrane.

Once the receptive area of the neurite is depolarized, it will depolarize the first node of Ranvier; however, as it is a rapidly adapting fibre, this does not carry on indefinitely, and the signal propagation ceases. This is a graded response, meaning that the greater the deformation, the greater the generator potential. This information is encoded in the frequency of impulses, since a bigger or faster deformation induces a higher impulse frequency. Action potentials are formed when the skin is rapidly distorted but not when pressure is continuous because of the mechanical filtering of the stimulus in the lamellar structure. The frequencies of the impulses decrease quickly and soon stop due to the relaxation of the inner layers of connective tissue that cover the nerve ending.

Discovery
Pacinian corpuscles were the first cellular sensory receptor ever observed. They were first reported by German anatomist and botanist Abraham Vater and his student Johannes Gottlieb Lehmann in 1741, but ultimately named after Italian anatomist Filippo Pacini, who rediscovered them in 1835. John Shekleton, a curator of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, also discovered them before Pacini, but his results were published later. Similar to Pacinian corpuscles, Herbst corpuscles and Grandry corpuscles are found in bird species.

Additional images

See also
 Pallesthesia
 List of human anatomical parts named after people
 Pacinian neuroma – a very rare benign tumor of Pacinian corpuscles
 Rayleigh wave#Possible detection by animals

References

External links
 Virginia Commonwealth University

 Medical Illustration

Sensory receptors

Pacinian corpuscle


Troels Bech (born 29 July 1966) is a Danish professional football manager and former player, who managed Odense Boldklub (OB) to the 2002 Danish Cup trophy. He was the manager of Danish club Esbjerg fB until November 2008 and took over Danish club Silkeborg IF in January 2009. During his active career, he most prominently won the 1994 Danish Superliga championship with Silkeborg IF.

He was most recently managing Esbjerg fB.

Biography
Born in Svendborg, Bech started his career in Svendborg fB in the secondary Danish 2nd Division under manager Viggo Jensen. In 1987, Bech moved to Germany to play for Greuther Fürth in the Bayernliga. He played seven league games for Greuther Fürth as a midfielder, before he moved back to Svendborg. In 1988, Bech was reunited with Viggo Jensen, when he moved to play for Danish top-flight club Silkeborg IF.

In his first years at Silkeborg, Bech played as a central defender. He took most of Silkeborg's set pieces, and managed to score four goals in two games during the 1990 season; three penalty kicks and a goal directly on corner kick. Still a part of the team, Bech eventually found himself as a left defender. He won the 1994 Danish Superliga championship with Silkeborg, before ending his playing career later that year. At 27 years of age, he was declared medically unfit to play football, due to a recurringly injured Achilles tendon.

He soon began his coaching career, as assistant manager of Viborg FF in the Danish 1st Division. Serving under manager Viggo Jensen, Bech helped Viborg win promotion to the Superliga in 1995. He became manager of women's team Hjortshøj-Egå, with whom he won the 1997 Danish Elitedivision championship. He went on to coach 1st Division club AC Horsens, before he signed with league rivals Ikast FS. Shortly thereafter, Ikast merged with Herning Fremad to form FC Midtjylland (FCM). Bech was deemed surplus, as Herning manager Ove Pedersen went on to coach FCM.

In 2000, he became the manager of Superliga club Odense BK, which he guided to the 2002 Danish Cup trophy. He moved back to FCM in 2002, and managed the club to the 2003 Danish Cup final. He was fired by FCM in December 2003, due to bad results. He had another stint as Odense manager from 2004 to 2005, before he was signed as manager of Esbjerg fB in October 2005, effective from January 2006.

After a series of disappointing results in the Danish Superliga and after being allowed to leave the club to enter talks with SK Brann, Bech resigned on November 16, 2008.

December 2008 Bech was appointed manager of Danish club Silkeborg IF from January 2009 after the club had sacked former manager Peder Knudsen due to disappointing results.

Bech was announced as new manager of Odense Boldklub at the beginning of the 2012-13 Danish Superliga season. He was sacked on 30 September 2014 following a poor start to the 2014-15 season.

On 19 June 2015, Troels Bech was hired as sports director for Brøndby IF. He worked in this capacity until 31 December 2018 and decided to take a hiatus from football in 2019.

In June 2020 he was announced as manager of struggling Esbjerg fB in the Danish Superliga on a contract running for the rest of the season.

Honours

As player
Silkeborg
 Danish Superliga: 1993–94

As coach
Hjortshøj-Egå
 Danish Elitedivision: 1996–97

Odense
 Danish Cup: 2001–02

References

External links

1966 births
Living people
People from Svendborg
Danish men's footballers
Danish football managers
SfB-Oure FA players
SpVgg Greuther Fürth players
Silkeborg IF players
AC Horsens managers
Ikast FC managers
Odense Boldklub managers
FC Midtjylland managers
Esbjerg fB managers
Silkeborg IF managers
Danish Superliga managers
Men's association football defenders
Men's association football midfielders
Footballers from the Region of Southern Denmark

Troels Bech


Gregorio Peces-Barba Martínez (13 January 1938 – 24 July 2012) was a Spanish politician and jurist. He was one of the seven jurists who wrote the Spanish Constitution of 1978, acting as a representative of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party.

Peces-Barba was born in Madrid.  He studied Law in Madrid and Strasbourg, writing his thesis about Jacques Maritain. He was a member of the Socialist Party since 1972 and was chosen as congressman for the province of Valladolid in 1977 in the first democratic elections in Spain in forty years. He was one of the seven jurists who wrote the constitution approved in referendum in 1978, and so he is considered a father of the constitution. In 1982 he was elected president of the congress of deputies and held that chair until 1986 when he decided not to rerun. He helped to create the Charles III University of Madrid and from 1989 until 2007 he was rector of that university.

He was chosen by president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to be High Commissioner for the help of the victims of terrorism in 2004. He was strongly criticised by the Asociación de Víctimas del Terrorismo and decided to resign in 2006. No successor was chosen.

He died on 24 July 2012, aged 74, in Oviedo, Spain.

References

1938 births
2012 deaths
Recipients of the Order of the Liberator General San Martin
Academic staff of the Charles III University of Madrid
Fathers of the Spanish Constitution of 1978
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party politicians
Members of the constituent Congress of Deputies (Spain)
Members of the 1st Congress of Deputies (Spain)
Members of the 2nd Congress of Deputies (Spain)
Complutense University of Madrid alumni
University of Strasbourg alumni
Presidents of the Congress of Deputies (Spain)

Gregorio Peces-Barba


is the incipit of the 4 March 1853 apostolic letter by which Pope Pius IX decreed the reestablishment of the episcopal hierarchy in the Netherlands. Through it, the administrative area formerly known as the Dutch Mission was divided into dioceses. Utrecht was raised, once more, to a Roman Catholic archdiocese, and received the four suffragan dioceses of Haarlem, 's-Hertogenbosch, Breda, and Roermond.

References

Documents of Pope Pius IX
Texts in Latin
1853 documents
1853 in Christianity

Ex qua die arcano


A theodolite () is a precision optical instrument for measuring angles between designated visible points in the horizontal and vertical planes. The traditional use has been for land surveying, but it is also used extensively for building and infrastructure construction, and some specialized applications such as meteorology and rocket launching.

It consists of a moveable telescope mounted so it can rotate around horizontal and vertical axes and provide angular readouts. These indicate the orientation of the telescope, and are used to relate the first point sighted through the telescope to subsequent sightings of other points from the same theodolite position. These angles can be measured with accuracies down to microradians or seconds of arc. From these readings a plan can be drawn, or objects can be positioned in accordance with an existing plan. The modern theodolite has evolved into what is known as a total station where angles and distances are measured electronically, and are read directly to computer memory.

In a transit theodolite, the telescope is short enough to rotate about the trunnion axis, turning the telescope through the vertical plane through the zenith; for non-transit instruments vertical rotation is restricted to a limited arc.

The optical level is sometimes mistaken for a theodolite, but it does not measure vertical angles, and is used only for leveling on a horizontal plane (though often combined with medium accuracy horizontal range and direction measurements).

Principles of operation

Preparation for making sightings

Temporary adjustments are a set of operations necessary in order to make a theodolite ready for taking observations at a station. These include its setting up, centering, leveling up and elimination of parallax, and are achieved in four steps:

 Setting up: fixing the theodolite onto a tripod along with approximate leveling and centering over the station mark.
 Centering: bringing the vertical axis of theodolite immediately over station mark using a centering plate also known as a tribrach.
 Leveling: leveling of the base of the instrument to make the vertical axis vertical usually with an in-built bubble-level.
 Focusing: removing parallax error by proper focusing of objective and eye-piece. The eye-piece only requires adjustment once at a station. The objective will be re-focused for each subsequent sighting from this station because of the different distances to the target.

Sightings
Sightings are taken by the surveyor, who adjusts the telescope's vertical and horizontal angular orientation so the cross-hairs align with the desired sighting point. Both angles are read either from exposed or internal scales and recorded. The next object is then sighted and recorded without moving the position of the instrument and tripod.

The earliest angular readouts were from open vernier scales directly visible to the eye. Gradually these scales were enclosed for physical protection, and finally became an indirect optical readout, with convoluted light paths to bring them to a convenient place on the instrument for viewing. The modern digital theodolites have electronic displays.

Errors in measurement
 Index error The angles in the vertical axis should read 90° (100 grad) when the sight axis is horizontal, or 270° (300 grad) when the instrument is transited. Half of the difference between the two positions is called the index error. This can only be checked on transit instruments.
 Horizontal axis error The horizontal and vertical axes of a theodolite must be perpendicular; if not then a horizontal axis error exists. This can be tested by aligning the tubular spirit bubble parallel to a line between two footscrews and setting the bubble central. A horizontal axis error is present if the bubble runs off central when the tubular spirit bubble is reversed (turned through 180°). To adjust, the operator removes half the amount the bubble has run off using the adjusting screw, then re-level, test and refine the adjustment.
 Collimation error The optical axis of the telescope must also be perpendicular to the horizontal axis; if not, then a collimation error exists.

Index error, horizontal-axis error (trunnion-axis error) and collimation error are regularly determined by calibration and are removed by mechanical adjustment. Their existence is taken into account in the choice of measurement procedure in order to eliminate their effect on the measurement results of the theodolite.

History

Historical background
Prior to the theodolite, instruments such as the groma, geometric square and the dioptra, and various other graduated circles (see circumferentor) and semicircles (see graphometer) were used to obtain either vertical or horizontal angle measurements. Over time their functions were combined into a single instrument that could measure both angles simultaneously.

The first occurrence of the word "theodolite" is found in the surveying textbook A geometric practice named Pantometria (1571) by Leonard Digges. The origin of the word is unknown. The first part of the Neo-Latin theo-delitus might stem from the Greek , "to behold or look attentively upon" The second part is often attributed to an unscholarly variation of the Greek word: , meaning "evident" or "clear". Other Neo-Latin or Greek derivations have been suggested as well as an English origin from "the alidade".

The early forerunners of the theodolite were sometimes azimuth instruments for measuring horizontal angles, while others had an altazimuth mount for measuring horizontal and vertical angles. Gregorius Reisch illustrated an altazimuth instrument in the appendix of his 1512 book Margarita Philosophica. Martin Waldseemüller, a topographer and cartographer made the device in that year calling it the polimetrum. In Digges's book of 1571, the term "theodolite" was applied to an instrument for measuring horizontal angles only, but he also described an instrument that measured both altitude and azimuth which he called a  instrument . Possibly the first instrument approximating to a true theodolite was the built by Josua Habemel in 1576, complete with compass and tripod. The 1728 Cyclopaedia compares "graphometer" to "half-theodolite". As late as the 19th century, the instrument for measuring horizontal angles only was called a simple theodolite and the altazimuth instrument, the plain theodolite.

The first instrument to combine the essential features of the modern theodolite was built in 1725 by Jonathan Sisson. This instrument had an altazimuth mount with a sighting telescope. The base plate had spirit levels, compass and adjusting screws. The circles were read with a vernier scale.

Development of the theodolite
The theodolite became a modern, accurate instrument in 1787, with the introduction of Jesse Ramsden's famous great theodolite, which he created using a very accurate dividing engine of his own design. Ramsden's instruments were used for the Principal Triangulation of Great Britain. At this time the highest precision instruments were made in England by such makers as Edward Troughton. Later the first practical German theodolites were made by Breithaupt together with Utzschneider, Reichenbach and Fraunhofer.

As technology progressed the vertical partial circle was replaced with a full circle, and both vertical and horizontal circles were finely graduated. This was the transit theodolite. This type of theodolite was developed from 18th century astronomical Transit instruments used to measure accurate star positions. The technology was transferred to theodolites in the early 19th century by instrument makers such as Edward Troughton and William Simms and became the standard theodolite design. Development of the theodolite was spurred on by specific needs. In the 1820s progress on national surveying projects such as the Ordnance Survey in Britain produced a requirement for theodolites capable of providing sufficient accuracy for large scale triangulation and mapping. The Survey of India at this time produced a requirement for more rugged and stable instruments such as the Everest pattern theodolite with its lower center of gravity.

Railway engineers working in the 1830s in Britain commonly referred to a theodolite as a "Transit". The 1840s was the start of a period of rapid railway building in many parts of the world which resulted in a high demand for theodolites wherever railways were being constructed. It was also popular with American railroad engineers pushing west, and it replaced the railroad compass, sextant and octant.  Theodolites were later adapted to a wider variety of mountings and uses. In the 1870s, an interesting waterborne version of the theodolite (using a pendulum device to counteract wave movement) was invented by Edward Samuel Ritchie. It was used by the U.S. Navy to take the first precision surveys of American harbors on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

In the early 1920s a step change in theodolite design occurred with the introduction of the Wild T2 made by Wild Heerbrugg. Heinrich Wild designed a theodolite with divided glass circles with readings from both sides presented at a single eyepiece close to the telescope so the observer did not have to move to read them. The Wild instruments were not only smaller, easier to use and more accurate than contemporary rivals but also sealed from rain and dust. Canadian surveyors reported that while the Wild T2 with 3.75 inch circles was not able to provide the accuracy for primary triangulation it was the equal in accuracy to a 12 inch traditional design. The Wild T2, T3, and A1 instruments were made for many years.

In 1926 a conference was held at Tavistock in Devon, UK where Wild theodolites were compared with British ones. The Wild product outclassed the British theodolites so  manufacturers such as Cooke, Troughton & Simms and Hilger & Watts set about improving the accuracy of their products to match their competition. Cooke, Troughton and Simms developed the Tavistock pattern theodolite and later the Vickers V. 22.

Wild went on to develop the DK1, DKM1, DM2, DKM2, and DKM3 for Kern Aarau company. With continuing refinements, instruments steadily evolved into the modern theodolite used by surveyors today. By 1977 Wild, Kern and Hewlett-Packard were all offering "Total stations" which combined angular measurements, electronic distance measurement and microchip functions in a single unit.

Operation in surveying

Triangulation, as invented by Gemma Frisius around 1533, consists of making such direction plots of the surrounding landscape from two separate standpoints. The two graphing papers are superimposed, providing a scale model of the landscape, or rather the targets in it. The true scale can be obtained by measuring one distance both in the real terrain and in the graphical representation.

Modern triangulation as, e.g., practiced by Snellius, is the same procedure executed by numerical means. Photogrammetric block adjustment of stereo pairs of aerial photographs is a modern, three-dimensional variant.

In the late 1780s, Jesse Ramsden, a Yorkshireman from Halifax, England who had developed the dividing engine for dividing angular scales accurately to within a second of arc (≈ 0.0048 mrad or 4.8 µrad), was commissioned to build a new instrument for the British Ordnance Survey. The Ramsden theodolite was used over the next few years to map the whole of southern Britain by triangulation.

In network measurement, the use of forced centering speeds up operations while maintaining the highest precision. The theodolite or the target can be rapidly removed from, or socketed into, the forced centering plate with sub-millimeter precision. Nowadays GPS antennas used for geodetic positioning use a similar mounting system. The height of the reference point of the theodolite—or the target—above the ground benchmark must be measured precisely.

Transit theodolite
The term transit theodolite, or transit for short, refers to a type of theodolite where the telescope is short enough to rotate in a full circle on its horizontal axis as well as around its vertical axis. It features a vertical circle which is graduated through the full 360 degrees and a telescope that could "flip over" ("transit the scope").  By reversing the telescope and at the same time rotating the instrument through 180 degrees about the vertical axis, the instrument can be used in 'plate-left' or 'plate-right' modes ('plate' refers to the vertical protractor circle).  By measuring the same horizontal and vertical angles in these two modes and then averaging the results, centering and collimating errors in the instrument can be eliminated. Some transit instruments are capable of reading angles directly to thirty arc-seconds (≈ 0.15 mrad). Modern theodolites are usually of the transit-theodolite design, but engraved plates have been replaced with glass plates designed to be read with light-emitting diodes and computer circuitry, greatly improving accuracy up to arc-second (≈ 0.005 mrad) levels.

Use with weather balloons
There is a long history of theodolite use in measuring winds aloft, by using specially-manufactured theodolites to track the horizontal and vertical angles of special weather balloons called ceiling balloons or pilot balloons (pibal). Early attempts at this were made in the opening years of the nineteenth century, but the instruments and procedures weren't fully developed until a hundred years later. This method was extensively used in World War II and thereafter, and was gradually replaced by radio and GPS measuring systems from the 1980s onward.

The pibal theodolite uses a prism to bend the optical path by 90 degrees so the operator's eye position does not change as the elevation is changed through a complete 180 degrees. The theodolite is typically mounted on a rugged steel stand, set up so it is level and pointed north, with the altitude and azimuth scales reading zero degrees. A balloon is released in front of the theodolite, and its position is precisely tracked, usually once a minute. The balloons are carefully constructed and filled, so their rate of ascent can be known fairly accurately in advance. Mathematical calculations on time, rate of ascent, azimuth and angular altitude can produce good estimates of wind speed and direction at various altitudes.

Modern electronic theodolites

In modern electronic theodolites, the readout of the horizontal and vertical circles is usually done with a rotary encoder. These produce signals indicating the altitude and azimuth of the telescope which are fed to a microprocessor. CCD sensors have been added to the focal plane of the telescope allowing both auto-targeting and the automated measurement of residual target offset. All this is implemented in embedded software of the processor.

Many modern theodolites are equipped with integrated electro-optical distance measuring devices, generally infrared based, allowing the measurement in one step of complete three-dimensional vectors—albeit in instrument-defined polar coordinates, which can then be transformed to a preexisting coordinate system in the area by means of a sufficient number of control points. This technique is called a resection solution or free station position surveying and is widely used in mapping surveying.

Such instruments are "intelligent" theodolites called self-registering tacheometers or colloquially "total stations", and perform all the necessary angular and distance calculations, and the results or raw data can be downloaded to external processors, such as ruggedized laptops, PDAs or programmable calculators

Gyrotheodolites

A gyrotheodolite is used when the north-south reference bearing of the meridian is required in the absence of astronomical star sights. This occurs mainly in the underground mining industry and in tunnel engineering. For example, where a conduit must pass under a river, a vertical shaft on each side of the river might be connected by a horizontal tunnel. A gyrotheodolite can be operated at the surface and then again at the foot of the shafts to identify the directions needed to tunnel between the base of the two shafts. Unlike an artificial horizon or inertial navigation system, a gyrotheodolite cannot be relocated while it is operating. It must be restarted again at each site.

The gyrotheodolite comprises a normal theodolite with an attachment that contains a gyrocompass, a device which senses the rotation of the Earth in order to find true north and thus, in conjunction with the direction of gravity, the plane of the meridian. The meridian is the plane that contains both the axis of the Earth's rotation and the observer. The intersection of the meridian plane with the horizontal defines the true north-south direction found in this way. Unlike magnetic compasses, gyrocompasses are able to find true north, the surface direction toward the north pole.

A gyrotheodolite will function at the equator and in both the northern and southern hemispheres. The meridian is undefined at the geographic poles. A gyrotheodolite cannot be used at the poles where the Earth's axis is precisely perpendicular to the horizontal axis of the spinner, indeed it is not normally used within about 15 degrees of the pole where the angle between the earth's rotation and the direction of gravity is too small for it to work reliably. When available, astronomical star sights are able to give the meridian bearing to better than one hundred times the accuracy of the gyrotheodolite. Where this extra precision is not required, the gyrotheodolite is able to produce a result quickly without the need for night observations.

See also

 Cinetheodolite
 Dumpy level
 Inclinometer
 LIDAR
 Macrometer
 Plane table
 Rankine's method
 Survey camp
 Temporary adjustments of theodolite

 Manufacturers

 Leica Geosystems
 Sokkia
 Topcon
 Trimble (company)

References

External links

Angle measuring instruments
Geodesy
Inclinometers
Optical instruments
Surveying instruments

Theodolite


The Yirrganydji (Irrukandji) people are an Indigenous Australian people of Queensland who trace their descent from the Irukandji and, as such, are the original custodians of a narrow coastal strip within Djabugay country that runs northwards from Cairns, Queensland to Port Douglas. Their traditional lifestyle was that of fishers along this coastal strip and around the river mouths, islands and seas between the Barron River and Port Douglas.

Language
The Irukandji spoke Yirrgay, one of the five dialects of the language group generally known as Djabugay. These dialects indicate that Djabugay was genetically related to Yidiny, with a lexical overlap of 53%.

Country
Irukandji country, according to Norman Tindale, extended over some , running along the narrow coastal strip from Cairns to the Mowbray River at Port Douglas. Their inland extension went some 7 miles northwest of Cairns, around the tidal waters of the Barron River around Redlynch. Dialects defined tribal distinctions, and the Irukandji dialect Yirrgay, was the southernmost of the group, with the Yidinji people to their immediate south, while, northwards, one encountered, in geographic order, Guluy, Ngakali and finally Djabugay. The Bulway-speakers lay to their west, from Woree to Mareeba.

History
The Irukandji as a distinct tribal identity were close to extinction by the end of the 19th century. William Parry-Okeden, in a short report on Queensland Aboriginal people written in his capacity as Police Commissioner, wrote in 1897 that he counted 6 Yettkie, a name now thought to refer to a remnant of the Irukandji. The following year Billy Jagar, leader of the Irukandji, received a King plate, designating him as 'King of Barron', a gesture repeated in 1906 with a second plate bearing the same inscription. Jagar died at the age of 60 in 1930 in his traditional payu hut at the northern end of the Cairns Esplanade. Writing in 1974 Tindale stated:
'The term Irukandji for the people on the coast near Redlynch in the area around Cairns has been in dispute because of their early demise as a tribe. By 1952 remembrance of their existence had almost died out and a mixed Tjapukai and Mamu group, from higher up the Barron River, and from the south had usurped their territory. They call themselves the Djumbandji. The coastal Irukandji were said to have been a taller people than the rain forest dwellers. In 1964 Jack Doolan questioned several informants, none from the Cairns area, who believed the Irukandji did not exist. They based their ideas on information that irukandji meant "from the north." They suggested that if a  Keramai (Giramai)  or a Mamu was questioned about the country from which a northern stranger might have come he  would simply refer to him as an Irukandji, that is, a "northerner." In similar fashion he might refer to a man from the west as gambilbara, a rain forest man, or from the east as a djindigal (Jindigal).'

Modern times
In recent times there have been clashes in claims advanced respectively by the Yirrganydji Aboriginal Tribal Corporation (Dawul Wuru Aboriginal Corporation) and the Djabugay Aboriginal Tribal Corporation, the former insisting that any development projects by the Djabugay in the historic territories of their Irukandji forebears, require their consent and participation.

The Irukandji jellyfish are named after Irrukandji country.

Alternative names
 Irakanji, Yirkandji, Yirkanji.
 Yirgay.
 Yettkie. (Parry-Okeden 1897, misreading of Yerrkie.)
 Illagona.
 Wongulli. (camp toponym, at Cairns' southern city limit (1974)
 Dungara. (horde on Lower Barron River)
 Tingaree.
 Dungarah.
 Dingal.

Notes

Citations

Sources

External links
 Ausanthrop Australian Aboriginal tribal database
 ABC Radio Hindsight Abstract on Yirrganydji ancestor 'King Billy Jagar
 ABCs 'Speaking Out' The Long Journey of Billy Jagar's King Plate, regarding Yirrganydji ancestor 'King Billy Jagar

Aboriginal peoples of Queensland
Far North Queensland

Yirrganydji


In statistics, the method of moments is a method of estimation of population parameters. The same principle is used to derive higher moments like skewness and kurtosis.

It starts by expressing the population moments (i.e., the expected values of powers of the random variable under consideration) as functions of the parameters of interest. Those expressions are then set equal to the sample moments. The number of such equations is the same as the number of parameters to be estimated. Those equations are then solved for the parameters of interest. The solutions are estimates of those parameters.

The method of moments was introduced by Pafnuty Chebyshev in 1887 in the proof of the central limit theorem. The idea of matching empirical moments of a distribution to the population moments dates back at least to Pearson.

Method
Suppose that the problem is to estimate  unknown parameters  characterizing the distribution  of the random variable . Suppose the first  moments of the true distribution (the "population moments") can be expressed as functions of the  s:

Suppose a sample of size  is drawn, resulting in the values . For , let

be the j-th sample moment, an estimate of . The method of moments estimator for   denoted by  is defined to be the solution (if one exists) to the equations:

The method described here for single random variables generalizes in an obvious manner to multiple random variables leading to multiple choices for moments to be used. Different choices generally lead to different solutions [5], [6].

Advantages and disadvantages
The method of moments is fairly simple and yields consistent estimators (under very weak assumptions), though these estimators are often biased.

It is an alternative to the method of maximum likelihood.

However, in some cases the likelihood equations may be intractable without computers, whereas the method-of-moments estimators can be computed much more quickly and easily. Due to easy computability, method-of-moments estimates may be used as the first approximation to the solutions of the likelihood equations, and successive improved approximations may then be found by the Newton–Raphson method.  In this way the method of moments can assist in finding maximum likelihood estimates.

In some cases, infrequent with large samples but less infrequent with small samples, the estimates given by the method of moments are outside of the parameter space (as shown in the example below); it does not make sense to rely on them then.  That problem never arises in the method of maximum likelihood Also, estimates by the method of moments are not necessarily sufficient statistics, i.e., they sometimes fail to take into account all relevant information in the sample.

When estimating other structural parameters (e.g., parameters of a utility function, instead of parameters of a known probability distribution), appropriate probability distributions may not be known, and moment-based estimates may be preferred to maximum likelihood estimation.

Alternative method of moments
The equations to be solved in the method of moments (MoM) are in general nonlinear and there are no generally applicable guarantees that tractable solutions exist. But there is an alternative approach to using sample moments to estimate data model parameters in terms of known dependence of model moments on these parameters, and this alternative requires the solution of only linear equations or, more generally, tensor equations. This alternative is referred to as the Bayesian-Like MoM (BL-MoM), and it differs from the classical MoM in that it uses optimally weighted sample moments. Considering that the MoM is typically motivated by a lack of sufficient knowledge about the data model to determine likelihood functions and associated a posteriori probabilities of unknown or random parameters, it is odd that there exists a type of MoM that is Bayesian-Like. But the particular meaning of Bayesian-Like leads to a problem formulation in which required knowledge of a posteriori probabilities is replaced with required knowledge of only the dependence of model moments on unknown model parameters, which is exactly the knowledge required by the traditional MoM [1],[2],[5]–[9]. The BL-MoM also uses knowledge of a priori probabilities of the parameters to be estimated, when available, but otherwise uses uniform priors.

The BL-MoM has been reported on in only the applied statistics literature in connection with parameter estimation and hypothesis testing using observations of stochastic processes for problems in Information and Communications Theory and, in particular, communications receiver design in the absence of knowledge of likelihood functions or associated a posteriori probabilities [10] and references therein. In addition, the restatement of this receiver design approach for stochastic process models as an alternative to the classical MoM for any type of multivariate data is available in tutorial form at the university website [11, page 11.4]. The applications in [10] and references demonstrate some important characteristics of this alternative to the classical MoM, and a detailed list of relative advantages and disadvantages is given in [11, page 11.4], but the literature is missing direct comparisons in specific applications of the classical MoM and the BL-MoM.

Examples
An example application of the method of moments is to estimate polynomial probability density distributions. In this case, an approximating polynomial of order  is defined on an interval . The  method of moments then yields a system of equations, whose solution involves the inversion of a Hankel matrix.

Proving the central limit theorem
Let  be independent random variables with mean 0 and variance 1, then let . We can compute the moments of  asExplicit expansion shows thatwhere the numerator is the number of ways to select  distinct pairs of balls by picking one each from  buckets, each containing balls numbered from  to . At the  limit, all moments converge to that of a standard normal distribution. More analysis then show that this convergence in moments imply a convergence in distribution.

Essentially this argument was published by Chebyshev in 1887.

Uniform distribution
Consider the uniform distribution on the interval , . If  then we have

Solving these equations gives

Given a set of samples  we can use the sample moments  and  in these formulae in order to estimate  and .

Note, however, that this method can produce inconsistent results in some cases. For example, the set of samples  results in the estimate  even though  and so it is impossible for the set  to have been drawn from  in this case.

See also
 Generalized method of moments
Decoding methods

References

[4] Pearson, K. (1936), "Method of Moments and Method of Maximum Likelihood", Biometrika 28(1/2), 35–59.

[5] Lindsay, B.G. & Basak P. (1993). "Multivariate normal mixtures: a fast consistent method of moments", Journal of the American Statistical Association 88, 468–476.

[6] Quandt, R.E. & Ramsey, J.B. (1978). "Estimating mixtures of normal distributions and switching regressions", Journal of the American Statistical Association 73, 730–752.

[7] https://real-statistics.com/distribution-fitting/method-of-moments/

[8] Hansen, L. (1982). "Large sample properties of generalized method of moments estimators", Econometrica 50, 1029–1054.

[9] Lindsay, B.G. (1982). "Conditional score functions: some optimality results", Biometrika 69, 503–512.

[10] Gardner, W.A., "Design of nearest prototype signal classifiers", IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 27 (3), 368–372,1981

External links

 Cyclostationarity

Probability distribution fitting
Moment (mathematics)

Method of moments (statistics)


Abenezra is a lunar impact crater located in the rugged highlands in the south-central section of the Moon. Abenezra is named after the Sephardic Jewish sage, poet, biblical commentator, and astrologer Abraham ibn Ezra. It is attached along the southeast rim to the crater Azophi. To the northeast lies the crater Geber, and further to the southeast is the larger Sacrobosco.

The rim of Abenezra has a noticeably polygonal shape, with uneven wall segments. The inner walls are terraced, and the floor is irregular and ridged. These ridges form unusual, sinuous patterns across the floor. The crater overlays the eastern part of another crater-like formation designated Abenezra C.

Satellite craters

By convention these features are identified on lunar maps by placing the letter on the side of the crater midpoint that is closest to Abenezra.

References

External links

Abenezra at The Moon Wiki

Impact craters on the Moon

Abenezra (crater)


David Green (born September 7, 1953) is an American former professional gridiron football running back who played for both the Montreal Alouettes and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League and the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League.

Early years
Born September 7, 1953 in Jacksonville, North Carolina, he attended Richlands High School and Chowan Junior College (in Murfreesboro, North Carolina).

He played his university football at Edinboro University in Edinboro, Pennsylvania. Playing in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference in 1975 and 1976, Green was named Honorable Mention All-American by the Associated Press and to the Conference all star team. In 19 games he had a career average 104 rushing yards per game at Edinboro. He was inducted into the Edinboro Hall of Fame on April 30, 1988.

Professional career
Green played with the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL for three seasons. He played 5 games in 1978, 16 games in 1979 and 14 games in 1980. He also played in two Grey Cup games: the 66th Grey Cup and 67th Grey Cup. His best year was 1979, when he rushed 287 times for 1,678 yards and he had nine 100 yard plus rushing games. His best day came on October 27, 1979, against the Ottawa Rough Riders, when he rushed 29 times for 212 yards. He also scored 3 touchdowns against the Toronto Argonauts on October 22, 1979. He was the CFL's Most Outstanding Player Award and an All Canadian all star that season. He was an All East division all star in 1980.

His best Grey Cup game was the 67th Grey Cup against the Edmonton Eskimos, when he led all players with 142 rushing yards (the third highest single game total) in a close loss. He won the Grey Cup Most Valuable Player award for this performance.

Following his all-star performance, he publicly announced his intention to bargain for a better Alouettes contract for the 1980 CFL season as his contract stated if he won the 1979 Most Outstanding Player Award, he could re-negotiate. In his dealings, he made public comments about seeking a million dollars, sought a trade with the Toronto Argonauts, and, in June 1980, even filed retirement papers to force the Alouettes hand, who stated Green would have to honour the original contract if a mutual agreement could not be reached. Finally, a deal was signed prior to the first regular season game.

Prior to the 1981 CFL season, new Alouettes owner Nelson Skalbania traded Green and Keith Baker to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in exchange for the negotiating rights to Vince Ferragamo, which they held. Green was benched for the fourth quarter of a July game against the Calgary Stampeders after he insisted on taping up an injured ankle despite new head coach Frank Kush's outlawing of the practice of taping ankles and shoes.

In 1982, Green played for the Cleveland Browns of the NFL, during the strike shortened season, returning a single kickoff for 13 yards.

References

1953 births
Living people
People from Jacksonville, North Carolina
Players of American football from North Carolina
African-American players of American football
African-American players of Canadian football
American football running backs
Canadian football running backs
Chowan Hawks football players
Edinboro Fighting Scots football players
Montreal Alouettes players
Hamilton Tiger-Cats players
Cleveland Browns players
Canadian Football League Most Outstanding Player Award winners
21st-century African-American people
20th-century African-American sportspeople

David Green (Canadian football)


The Claroteidae are a family of catfish (order Siluriformes) found in Africa. This family was separated from Bagridae. However, the monophyly of the family is sometimes contested.

The 12 genera contain 86 known species of claroteids in two subfamilies, Claroteinae and Auchenoglanidinae. The subfamily Auchenoglanidinae is sometimes classified as a separate family Auchenoglanididae. This group was also often formerly placed in Bagridae. The monophyly of Auchenoglanidinae is uncontested; it contains the three genera Auchenoglanis, Parauchenoglanis and Notoglanidium.

Two commonly known species are the giraffe catfish, Auchenoglanis occidentalis, and the African big-eye catfish, Chrysichthys longipinnis.

Claroteids have  moderately elongated bodies, usually with four pairs of barbels, an adipose fin, and strong pectoral and dorsal fin spines.

References

Catfish families

Taxa named by Pieter Bleeker

Claroteidae


The Buick Invicta is a full-size automobile produced by Buick from 1959 to 1963. The Invicta was a continuation of the mid-range Buick Century that mated the standard size Buick LeSabre (pre-1959, Buick Special) body with Buick's larger 401 cubic inch Fireball V8 engine. The Invicta continued to be the intermediate hardtop coupe, hardtop sedan, convertible and station wagon, labeled as the Buick Invicta Estate until it was replaced by the Buick Wildcat as a coupe or sedan, while the station wagon was replaced by the Buick Sport Wagon in 1965.

The name was derived from Latin and signified 'unconquerable, invincible, unbeatable, unvanquished' according to Buick Motor Division sales training materials.

First generation (1959–1960)

The Invicta series was introduced as a full line of body styles for model year 1959.  Sales never approached that of either the entry-level LeSabre or top level Electra models, but were consistent with the traditional sales penetration of Buick's sporty mid-priced models (the 1954 to 1958 Century and 1963 to 1970 Wildcat). The Invicta continued the tradition of installing Ventiports on the front fenders from the Century.

In a survey of 1959 Buick owners in the March, 1959 issue of Popular Mechanics, 47.1% of owners like the ride comfort, though many (25.2%) said the drive shaft tunnel was too big.

Starting in 1960, an Invicta Custom trim package was offered, featuring bucket seats and a 'consolette' in the hardtop coupe, convertible and wagon and a leather bench seat with a center armrest on some 4 door hardtops. Sales were nominal.

According to Robin Moore's 1969 book The French Connection, "the 1960 Buick Invicta had a peculiarity in body construction conducive to the installations of...extraordinary, virtually detection-proof traps concealed within the fenders and undercarriage" that made it a popular model for international heroin smugglers.

Second generation (1961–1963)

The Invicta received several updates for the 1961 model year. It was the last year the 364 cubic inch Buick V8 engine was offered before the engine was retired. The station wagon did not reappear until the 1962 model year.

1962 saw the debut of the Wildcat two-door hardtop within the Invicta series. The Wildcat featured most of the interior trim of the Invicta Custom, which included standard bucket seats and upgraded door panels.  Instead of the Invicta Custom's short console, however, the Wildcat had a long console with a tachometer and a shift lever. Other Wildcat features included special badging and exterior trim, along with a vinyl top and Electra 225-like taillights, rather than those of the LeSabre/Invicta. These features placed the Wildcat well in step with the shift towards sports-oriented models.

For 1963, the Wildcat would replace the Invicta four-door hardtop, two-door coupe, and convertible. The Invicta series had a 6-passenger station wagon as its sole model. Only 3,495 Invicta station wagons were built for 1963, after which the name disappeared.

Buick Invicta concept (2008)

The Invicta nameplate was re-trademarked by Buick in 2004, a concept car bearing that name was unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show on April 19, 2008. The vehicle was designed in a collaboration between the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan and Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center in Shanghai, China. The designers responsible for the exterior design were Justin Thompson and Richard Duff.

The concept was equipped with a 2.0-liter direct injection turbo engine rated at  and  mated with a 6-speed automatic transmission, MacPherson strut front and independent rear suspensions, four-wheel anti-lock disc brakes, 20 x 8.5 inch polished aluminum wheels with P245/40R20 tires. Featured on the car are several traditional Buick design cues: the Sweepspear, VentiPorts, a tri-color Buick trishield, and the waterfall grille.

The vehicle's designs were later used on the second generation Buick LaCrosse.

References

Invicta
Rear-wheel-drive vehicles
Full-size vehicles
Convertibles
Coupés
Sedans
Station wagons
1960s cars
Motor vehicles manufactured in the United States
Cars introduced in 1959

Buick Invicta


Asphalt concrete is a composite material. It is commonly used to build roads, parking lots, airports, and embankment dams. Asphalt mixtures have been used in making pavements since the beginning of the twentieth century. It is made up of mineral aggregate bound together with asphalt. The process was made by Edward De Smedt.

Asphalt mixtures
Mixing of asphalt and aggregate is done in one of several ways:

Hot-mix asphalt concrete (commonly abbreviated as HMA)
This is made by heating the asphalt binder to make it less viscous, and drying the aggregate to remove moisture from it before mixing it. Mixing is done at about 300 °F (roughly 150 °C) for virgin asphalt and 330 °F (166 °C) for polymer modified asphalt, and the asphalt cement at 200 °F (95 °C). HMA is used on roads with lots of traffic.

Warm-mix asphalt concrete (commonly abbreviated as WMA)
This is made by adding either zeolites, waxes, asphalt emulsions, or sometimes even water to the asphalt binder before mixing. It is good for the environment because small amounts of fossil fuels are used to make them. It also releases less carbon dioxide into the air. In 2012, a survey of producers that made asphalt in the US found that nearly 25% of asphalt made was warm mix.

Cold-mix asphalt concrete
This is made by emulsifying the asphalt in water. It is done with an emulsifying agent before mixing. While it is emulsified, the asphalt is less viscous. The emulsion will break after enough water evaporates from it. Cold mix is commonly used on roads with less traffic.

References

Building materials
Road transport

Asphalt concrete


Theodoros Natsinas (; 8 July 1872 - 2 February 1949) was a Greek teacher. He was born in Siatista (), then part of the Ottoman Empire, now in Greece.

Career
He studied Physics and Mathematics at the University of Athens, where he received his degree. After the completion of his studies in 1898, he taught at secondary schools in Argos and Spetses. In 1899, the University of Athens proposed to the Greek Government that he should be posted as a teacher at Kayseri in Turkey on a "national" mission to support the local Greek population. From 1903 to 1907 he taught at Constantinople.

At 1907 he served as director of a school in Siatista and took part in the Greek Struggle for Macedonia. He was arrested by the Ottoman authorities and taken to nearby city of Lapsista in West Macedonia. He was released after the intervention of the Greek Bishop of Sisanion and Siatista.

In the interwar years, after West Macedonia became part of Greece, he taught in Kozani, founded the first Agricultural Cooperative there, and helped to set up the first Scouts team in West Macedonia. In 1918 he was appointed general Superintendent of Secondary Education of Greece.

In politics he was a supporter of the Liberal Party of Eleftherios Venizelos.

Founding a school in Thessaloniki

After 1921 he worked in Thessaloniki. Initially, together with a partner, G. Karantanis, they took over the management of a school established by Stefanos Noukas (the Marasleia School). At first, the school was known as the Natsinas - Karantanis School, but, subsequently, after the two partners split, the school was renamed the Theodoros Natsinas School.

He was one of the founding members of the Society for Macedonian Studies.

Personal life
He had one daughter and three sons: Sultana Natsina, the Lieutenant General Alexandros Natsinas, the creator and first Director (1953–1963) of the Greek Central Intelligence Service, the politician Stefanos Natsinas, and Leandros Natsinas who studied civil engineering at Ghent, Belgium.

He is the author of the book "Macedonian Itinerant Merchants in the Countries of Austria-Hungary" (first edition 1939).

The municipality of Thessaloniki honored him by naming a city street after him.

Notes

External links
Documents from National Foundation Eleftherios Venizelos
Greek Migration to Europe
Studies about Vlachs
Laboratory of Research about Modern Hellenic - Greek Philosophy
The contribution of Siatista in Greek nation's cause.
Maraslion.

1872 births
1949 deaths
People from Siatista
Greek Macedonians
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens alumni
Macedonia under the Ottoman Empire
Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to Greece

Theodoros Natsinas


BWP-2000 (BWP stands for Bojowy Wóz Piechoty - Infantry Fighting Vehicle) is a prototype Polish IFV developed from early 1990s to 1999 but eventually canceled.

Development

The origin of the Polish BWP-2000 is the MT-S( МТ-С ) tracked transporter developed jointly by Poland, Soviet Union and East Germany in late 1980s. That vehicle was mainly developed by the Soviet OKB-40 design bureau in Mytischi and by the Polish OBRUM (Ośrodek Badawczo-Rozwojowy Urządzeń Mechnicznych - Institute of Research and Development of Mechanical Devices) from Gliwice. The OBRUM developed the BWP-2000 with help from Polish experts on IFVs. Poland is gradually replacing the former Soviet designs with Western-type systems. Two prototypes were made and in 1997 one of them was fitted with a fully developed and tested Italian Oto Melara T60/70A turret. This turret was developed as a private venture by Oto Melara and as of mid-2005 it has remained in prototype stage. By mid-2005, there were no plans for the Polish BWP-2000 IFV to enter production for the Polish Army. The main priority of the Polish Army is the introduction of the KTO Rosomak. If the BWP-2000 ever enters production it is going to be produced by Bumar łabędy.

In December 2009 Polish Minister of Defence Bogdan Klich announced that BWP-1M "Puma" modernization program has been canceled due to both tested OWS not standing up to the requirements. Currently Polish Land Forces are considering a new multipurpose platform UPG-NG ("Universalne Podwozie Gąsienicowe-Nowej Generacji" which stands for "Universal Tracked Chassis-of New Generation") as the replacement for the aging BMP-1 fleet as well as the basis for new light/medium tank with 120 mm unmanned turret and autoloader. The platform is currently under development by OBRUM and could be put into full-scale production by 2015. Its potential competitor is a licensed build CV90 offered by BUMAR Group.

Description

The BWP-2000 has a typical IFV layout. The steering compartment with the driver's station is located on the left hand side of the front of the hull. The engine compartment is located on the right hand side of the front of the hull. The fighting compartment is located along with the turret in middle of the hull. The troop compartment is located in back. The vehicle has a three men crew consisting of a driver, a gunner and a commander. The vehicle uses a number of chassis components from the MT-S transporter. The chassis was called Kalina. The hull made entirely out of welded steel. It protects the vehicle against APFSDS-T projectiles of up to 35 mm in calibre over the frontal arc. The roof and sides protect it against 12.7 mm rounds fired from a range of 100 m. The other parts of the armour protect it against 7.62 mm rounds from any distance and angle. Both the hull and the turret can be fitted with additional passive of explosive reactive armour. The driver has a single-piece hatch cover that lifts and opens to the right (like in the BWP-1). In front of the driver's hatch is located a wide-angle periscope which can be replaced by a passive night vision device for use during night conditions. The power pack an air inlet/outlet louvres in the roof and the exhaust outlet on the right hand side. The turret is the Italian Oto Melara T60/70A which is normally armed with a stabilized 60 mm rifled autocannon, a 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun and 12.7 mm anti-aircraft heavy machine gun. Inside the turret are the stations of both the gunner and the commander. The 60 mm autocannon can be replaced by a variety of guns from 25 mm autocannons to 105 mm guns. The turret is equipped with two clusters of four electrically operated smoke grenade launchers on each side. The troop compartment can transport up to eight fully equipped soldiers. Like in the BWP-1 the troops enter and leave the vehicle through the rear of the vehicle but in BWP-2000 they do this via a power-operated ramp. The engine comes from the T-72.

References

Armoured fighting vehicles of Poland
Tracked infantry fighting vehicles
Reconnaissance vehicles
Science and technology in Poland
Infantry fighting vehicles of Poland

BWP-2000


Epsilon Serpentis, Latinized from ε Serpentis, is a single, white-hued star in the constellation Serpens, in its head (Serpens Caput). It is visible to the naked eye with an apparent visual magnitude of +3.69. Based upon an annual parallax shift of 46.30 mas as seen from Earth, it is located 70 light years from the Sun. It is moving closer to the Sun with a radial velocity of −9 km/s.

This is an Am star on the main-sequence with a stellar classification of kA2hA5mA7 V. This notation indicates the spectrum displays the calcium K-line of an A2 star, the hydrogen lines of an A5 star, and the metal lines of an A7 star. It has been examined for the presence of a magnetic field, but the detected level was not statistically significant.

Epsilon Serpentis has an estimated 1.82 times the mass of the Sun and 1.78 times the Sun's radius. The star is radiating 12 times the Sun's luminosity from its photosphere at an effective temperature of around 7,928 K. It is a candidate for an infrared excess at a wavelength of 25 μm, suggesting a circumstellar disk of dust with a temperature of  may be orbiting roughly 4.2 AU from the host star. The star is around half a billion years old and is spinning with a projected rotational velocity of 33.1 km/s.

Etymology
Epsilon Serpentis was a member of indigenous Arabic asterism al-Nasaq al-Yamānī, "the Southern Line" of al-Nasaqān "the Two Lines". along with α Ser (Unukalhai), δ Ser, δ Oph (Yed Prior), ε Oph (Yed Posterior), ζ Oph and γ Oph.

According to the catalogue of stars in the Technical Memorandum 33-507 - A Reduced Star Catalog Containing 537 Named Stars, al-Nasaq al-Yamānī or Nasak Yamani were the title for two stars :δ Ser as Nasak Yamani I and ε Ser as Nasak Yamani II (exclude α Ser, δ Oph, ε Oph, ζ Oph and γ Oph).

In Chinese,  (), meaning Right Wall of Heavenly Market Enclosure, refers to an asterism which represents eleven old states in China and which marks the right borderline of the enclosure, consisting of ε Serpentis, β Herculis, γ Herculis, κ Herculis, γ Serpentis, β Serpentis, α Serpentis, δ Serpentis, δ Ophiuchi, ε Ophiuchi and ζ Ophiuchi. Consequently, the Chinese name for ε Serpentis itself is  (, ), represent the state Ba (巴) (or Pa).

References

A-type main-sequence stars
Am stars
Circumstellar disks
Serpentis, Epsilon
Serpens
Durchmusterung objects
Serpentis, 37
141795
077622
5892
Nasak Yamani II

Epsilon Serpentis


These Old Shades (1926) is a historical romance written by British novelist Georgette Heyer. The novel is set around 1755: Heyer refers to the Duke of Avon's participation in the 1745 uprising as ten years previous; in addition the Prince of Condé is said to be about 20 years old.  However, she also refers to Madame de Pompadour as actively involved with Louis XV, whereas her relationship with the King ended at about 1750.

Plot summary
Fortune favours Justin Alastair, the notorious Duke of Avon, casting in his way, one Paris night, the means to revenge himself on his enemy, the Comte de Saint-Vire. Avon literally collides with an abused boy, Léon Bonnard, whose red hair, deep blue eyes and black eyebrows proclaim him a child of the Comte.

Not knowing the exact relationship between the boy and Saint-Vire, Avon purchases him from his brother, a tavern keeper. He takes the boy as his page, and as such can parade the boy throughout French high society, even at a party at Versailles held by Louis XV.  The Duke displays Léon before the Comte's wife and his son and heir. He notes the resemblance of the son, Henri, to Léon's brother, Jean Bonnard, a tavern keeper. He also notes that the boy, Léon's age, prefers rural life, and wants to be a farmer. After this excursion to Versailles, the Comte becomes greatly interested in Léon and attempts to purchase him. Meanwhile, both Avon and his friend, Hugh Davenant, have realised that Léon is actually a girl, Léonie. Léonie is wildly devoted to Avon, seeing him as her saviour from a life of abuse, rather than as dissolute and scandalous, as the rest of the fashionable world views him.

The Duke journeys into Champagne, where Léonie grew up, to meet a childhood mentor, the village priest who educated her. This discussion confirms for Avon what he had suspected: Léonie is the legitimate child of the Comte and his wife and was switched at birth with the Bonnard's newborn son, who has been raised as the Comte's heir ever since, as the Comte feared his wife would not bear any other children and he was eager to prevent his younger brother Armand from becoming his heir.

The dissipated Avon has come to care for Léonie so while he continues his scheme of revenge on the Comte, he takes Léonie to England with him where he announces his intention to make her his ward. He teaches her to be a lady, while letting her be known as Léonie de Bonnard. The Comte has become increasingly desperate and kidnaps her and carries her to France. Léonie escapes from him with the help of the Duke's younger brother, Lord Rupert. The party is then joined by Fanny Marling, the Duke's sister, and her husband, Edward Marling.

Once in France, the Duke introduces Léonie into Parisian society, where she makes a big splash. A rumour comes to Léonie's ears that she is the Comte's illegitimate child—the family likeness is very striking. The Comte then persuades Léonie that her illegitimacy is destroying the Duke's reputation, as society views her as his lover. Her distress at this leads her to flee to live with the kindly village priest of her childhood.

This event spurs Avon to complete his revenge. At a large party, he tells the true story of Léonie's life, then embellishes it by adding that she has drowned herself in the Seine. This breaks her mother, whose open grief betrays the Comte's guilt. Knowing he is ruined in society, the Comte shoots himself. His despised brother becomes the new Comte.

Avon reunites with Léonie, they express their true feelings, and they marry.

Characters
 Justin "Satanas" Alastair, Duke of Avon, age approximately 40
 Léon Bonnard, later revealed to be Léonie de Saint-Vire, the Comte's daughter, 19 years old
 Hugh Davenant, the Duke's friend, in his early 30s
 Comte de Saint-Vire
 Henri de Saint-Vire, the Comte's supposed son, approximately 19 years old
 Armand de Saint-Vire, younger brother of the Comte
 Jean Bonnard, a tavern-keeper, Léon's supposed older brother
 Gaston, the Duke's valet
 Walker, the Duke's maître d'hôtel
 Lady Fanny Marling, the Duke's sister
 Mr Edward Marling, Fanny's husband
 Harriet Field, the Duke's cousin, a widow, duenna to Léonie
 Lord Rupert Alastair, the Duke's younger brother

Sequels
The novel's title is taken from Austin Dobson's epilogue poem to his collection of essays Eighteenth Century Vignettes.
Devil's Cub (1932) follows These Old Shades with the adventures of Avon's and Léonie's son Dominic, a shockingly selfish and indulged young man who elopes with a poor relation of one of his father's friends.  An Infamous Army (1937) completes the family saga with the Duke of Avon's great-granddaughter, Barbara, marrying the hero of An Infamous Army. It is also a sequel to Regency Buck (1935).

These Old Shades was itself originally intended to be a sequel to Heyer's first novel The Black Moth (1921), which would redeem the devilish Belmanoir. But as The Black Moth was a melodrama and a sequel per se would not work in with the plot, she decided to make the new novel stand alone, renamed many characters and made them 'shades' of their former selves.

Precedent
After These Old Shades became popular despite its release during the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, Heyer determined that publicity was not necessary for good sales, thenceforth  refusing to grant interviews. As she told a friend: "My private life concerns no one but myself and my family."

Sources

External links

Novels by Georgette Heyer
1926 British novels
Historical romance novels
Fiction set in 1755
Heinemann (publisher) books

These Old Shades


Tomfinlough is a civil parish in County Clare, in Ireland. There is a ruined parish church at the northern end of a lake, called Finn Lough, or Fenloe. Tomfinlogh is the oldest known settlement in the region of Newmarket-on-Fergus. It contains the village of Ardsallis. The parish contains the following townlands: Ayleacotty, Ballycar, Boheraroan, Caherkine, Caherscooby, Carrowmeer, Carrownakilly, Finlough, Granaghan, Granaghan Beg,  Granaghan More, Kilnacrandy, Langough, Mausnarylaan, Mooghaun North, Mooghaun South, Muckanagh (Butler), Muckanagh (Studdert), Muckanagh (Vandeleur), Newmarket, Rathlaheen North, Rathlaheen South and Snugborough.

Villages in Ireland
County Clare

Tomfinlough