Genetic discrimination occurs when people treat others (or are treated) differently because they have or are perceived to have a gene mutation(s) that causes or increases the risk of an inherited disorder. It may also refer to any and all discrimination based on the genotype of a person rather than their individual merits, including that related to race, although the latter would be more appropriately included under racial discrimination. Some legal scholars have argued for a more precise and broader definition of genetic discrimination: "Genetic discrimination should be defined as when an individual is subjected to negative treatment, not as a result of the individual's physical manifestation of disease or disability, but solely because of the individual's genetic composition." Genetic Discrimination is considered to have its foundations in genetic determinism and genetic essentialism, and is based on the concept of genism, i.e. distinctive human characteristics and capacities are determined by genes.

Genetic discrimination takes different forms depending on the country and the protections that have been taken to limit genetic discrimination, such as GINA in the United States that protects people from being barred from working or from receiving healthcare as a result of their genetic makeup. The umbrella of genetic discrimination includes the notion of informed consent, which refers to an individual's right to make a decision about their participation in research with complete comprehension of the research study.

Within the United States, genetic discrimination is an ever-evolving concept that remains prominent across different domains. Emerging technology such as direct-to-consumer genetic tests have allowed for broad genetic health information to be more accessible to the public but raises concerns about privacy. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated difficulties of those with genetic conditions as they have faced discrimination within the U.S. healthcare system.

The idea of genetic discrimination has been combated since the 1947 Nuremberg Code that was created shortly after WWII, during which thousands of racialized and disabled victims died in tests conducted in Germany. Since then, new issues of racialized genetic discrimination have come to light involving sharing of genetic information to genomic biobanks and subsequent novel treatments. Many countries are still developing policies to combat genetic discrimination in science, law, and everyday life.

Legal status

United States

There are multiple legal protections in place in the United States, such as Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which all help to prevent genetic discrimination in the workplace, public services, and provide some insurance protection. Therefore, by law, those with genetic conditions are protected from possible discrimination and have a right to receive equitable care.

Genetic discrimination is illegal in the U.S. after passage of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) on May 21, 2008. It was signed into law by President George W. Bush, and passed in the US Senate by a vote of 95–0 and in the House of Representatives by 414–1. The legislation bars employers from using individuals' genetic information when making hiring, firing, job placement, or promotion decisions. GINA also protects individuals from genetic discrimination in healthcare; however, GINA itself does not define what genetic information is, leaving it up for debate. Prior to the 2008 GINA Act, individuals could be denied insurance, either partially or fully, based on genetic tests they had received.

Although it was passed in 2008 there were 201 cases that cited GINA in 2010 and 333 in 2014. It was not until 2013 that a company actually faced penalties under GINA.

Health insurance discrimination
In 2008, The New York Times reported that some individuals avoid genetic testing out of fear that it will would impede their ability to purchase insurance or find a job. They also reported that evidence of actual discrimination was rare. In November 2016 insurance company GWG Life was found to be collecting saliva samples in order to offer lower rates to people who are epigenetically healthier than others of their age. While this is positive discrimination, this does suggest future potential classification of clients by genetic data.

While the 2008 GINA Act does protect against genetic discrimination pertaining to health insurance, it does not protect against genetic discrimination under other forms of insurance, such as life, disability or long-term care insurance. Therefore, patients are enjoying less protection against genetic discrimination in comparison with other peer countries, such as France, Switzerland, Australia and the United Kingdom. Additionally, 2008 GINA offers no protection for home/mortgage insurance or when an employer has 15 or less employees. Excluded from the Act are also parties who are covered under Veterans Health Administration or Indian Health Services.  Because a variety of medical tests serve as proxies for genetic information, proponents of insurer access to genetic information argue that it does not require specific limiting legislation. However, this represents an important problem for recruiting participants to medical research according to other scholars stressing that protecting American against discrimination may only happen with the advent of a voluntary moratorium by the insurance industry.

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing

Background
Direct-to-consumer genetic testing was first offered in 1997 by GeneTree, a now defunct family history website. A genetic test is considered a direct-to-consumer test if it is presented to the consumer separate from a health care provider. These tests are easily accessible on the market and popularized by companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com. These genetic kits are expensive and disproportionately serve wealthy individuals. As a result, when the data collected from testing is sold to research companies, it represents a biased sample of the population. The Food and Drug Administration additionally halted all 23andMe marketing in 2013 over unsubstantiated claims 23andMe made regarding disease diagnosis and prevention. After an investigation, the FDA approved 23andMe to begin carrier screening in 2015 and to resume genetic health risk screening in 2017. This has led the way for an expansion of the market of direct-to-consumer genetic tests.

Controversy
The shortage of knowledge about and awareness of direct-to-consumer genetic testing is one of the contributors to the previously limited purchasing of this kind of service. As technology has progressed, genetic testing has become a more wide scale practice, potentially affecting the privacy of consumers as a result. While some providers of DTC testing destroy the samples after giving the consumer their data, others keep the samples for future data use. The way in which samples that are sent to DTC genetic testing companies are used after analysis is an important point of ethical controversy, as many worry that the creation of biobanks form DTC data creates increased possibility for genetic discrimination. Genomic information is playing an increasingly important role in medical practice and progress. As DTC companies continue to grow, a large obstacle they face is creating a sense of trust with the public in promising to uphold nondiscrimination standards as consumer health data is not currently regulated. Some argue that the clinical utility of results from DTC tests is extremely limited and thus the risk of genetic discrimination is not worth the utility of DTC tests. However, DTC companies argue that the lack of regulation for these companies equip them for a unique position to provide important health related data for contributions to personalized medicine.

One current example of this ethical controversy was demonstrated in the 2018 announcement of 23andMe's partnership with the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. In this deal, GlaxoSmithKline purchased a $300 million stake in 23andMe and in return 23andMe would allow the pharmaceutical company access to its biobank of genomic data for their pharmaceutical research. While these companies made this announcement in celebration of the opportunity for progress in pharmacogenomics and drug development, others were wary of the possible breaches of privacy that selling customer's personal genomic data may entail. Privacy concerns include incidental data sharing to third-party companies, such as insurance companies or employers. Privacy concerns with genetic information also extend to family members of DTC customers, having similar genetic make-up to their family member who did consent to data sharing, although these individuals did not consent  themselves. GINA protects against genetic discrimination in health insurance and employment; however, there are circumstances of exception. For example, GINA does not protect individuals from genetic discrimination in life insurance, disability insurance, and long-term care or employees in companies with fewer than 15 individuals or in the military. DTC companies are not regulated in the same way as physician genetic testing and the disclaimers of data sharing in DTC companies is not as clear as medical biobanks, such as the All of Us project sponsored by the NIH. However, this does not necessarily mean that the intentions of DTC companies are nefarious. According to a qualitative study published in the Journal of Personalized Medicine, these companies can prevent the feared genetic discrimination from privacy breaches by advocating for updated policy to regulate data privacy and being intentional about only sharing genetic information to sources who intend to contribute to medical discovery with the appropriate ethical standards.

Genetic discrimination during COVID-19
COVID-19, or a coronavirus labeled SARS-CoV-2, is a highly-transmittable, respiratory virus first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and the virus has since spread globally and reached a pandemic status. Individuals with co-morbidities, such as pre-existing conditions and disabilities like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, immunocompromised conditions, obesity, etc., are more likely to experience severe COVID-19 symptoms and have greater risk of worse outcomes, such as death. Genetic conditions are among some of the causes of these co-morbid conditions. While the body of knowledge surrounding COVID-19 and genetic susceptibilities to the virus is continually growing with new research, there is a preliminary understanding that genetic conditions or inherited mutations can increase one's likelihood of experiencing severe symptoms. Due to this increased potential of contraction and subsequent severe symptoms, individuals with genetic conditions are among those with co-morbidities that have received cautionary advisories from the CDC and preferential designation for the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

During the beginning months of the pandemic, existing legal protections, like GINA and the ADA, were put to the test. With scarce resources, including PPE, ventilators, and other crucial equipment, doctors and health care systems were put under incredible stress to treat an ever-increasing number of patients and in some places still continue to battle high numbers of cases. Due to the overwhelming surge in COVID-19 cases, hospital systems needed to enact triage protocols, or a system of guidelines meant to help direct resources and help health care professionals make choices about limited supplies. There were instances across the country early in the pandemic, where hospitals were accused of enacting discriminatory triage protocols which excluded those with genetic conditions, such as in Tennessee, where those with spinal muscular atrophy, an autosomal recessive disease, or other disabilities were prevented from receiving ventilators or other scarce resources. In other states for example, like Washington and Alabama, hospitals were accused of more broad discriminatory allocation policies which prevented larger groups of individuals with genetic conditions under categorizations of chronic conditions or intellectual disabilities from receiving life saving treatments, such as ventilators. Many advocacy groups raised complaints about these triage protocols to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights, and after the complaints the guidelines have been swiftly removed. These examples of triage protocols which had complaints raised against them are just a few of many across the country.

These instances may now call into question the efficacy of current legal protections and their ability to prohibit genetic discrimination, opening up discussions of whether they might need to reformed in order to continue to protect individuals' genetic privacy and autonomy, but also to account for instances like a pandemic, where individuals with genetic conditions might be at greater risk. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic may have uncovered possible gaps among existent legal protections, like GINA, which may leave room for discrimination in longterm care and disability insurance, or the ADA, which more so covers ongoing disabilities, rather than susceptibility to conditions. Additionally conversations have turned to how to protect DNA and genetic privacy during a pandemic like COVID-19. According to Hollenstein et al., in a preprint of their research on preserving genetic privacy, they address the possible issue of mass-scale detections and numerous samples being collected through COVID-19 tests and contact-tracing and what that means in terms of who then has access or owns this genetic information. While the exact solutions or changes to be made remain unknown, some solutions could possibly arise from research into equity-first preemption frameworks, which could help eliminate inequities in access to proper healthcare.

Canada
The Genetic Non-Discrimination Act received Royal Assent and became law in Canada on May 4, 2017. It introduced amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act and Canada Labour Code that prohibit genetic discrimination in employment and accommodations within federally regulated industries, and also introduced criminal penalties for entities requiring individuals to undergo genetic testing as a condition for the provision of goods or services, or as a condition for entering or continuing a contract. The Act also forbids anyone from refusing to enter into a goods or services agreement with another person on the grounds that that person has refused to disclose the results of an already completed genetic test. Violations are punishable by fines of up 1 million and/or imprisonment of up to five years. Accordingly, one effect of the legislation is to prohibit insurance providers from demanding that a prospective client undergo a genetic test—or to disclose an existing test—as a prerequisite to the provision of insurance coverage.

The Genetic Non-Discrimination Act was opposed by the insurance industry and, upon its passage, then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould stated she believed the law may be unconstitutional. The provisions of the law, as they applied to provincially regulated industries, were challenged by the government of Quebec before the Quebec Court of Appeal, which held them unconstitutional. On July 10, 2020, the Supreme Court of Canada reversed the decision and upheld the law in a 5–4 split ruling.

United Kingdom
The Equality Act of 2010 prohibits the use of genetic information for employment decisions such as hiring and promotions.  While no formal law exists banning the use of genetic information for insurance policy decisions, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Association of British Insurers voluntarily entered a moratorium from 2014 to 2019 to refrain from using genetic information with regards to insurance.

Malawi
Malawi is the only country in Africa that has enacted any laws regarding genetic discrimination. Malawi's National Health Sciences Research Committee adopted the policy requirements of the Science and Technology Act No.16 of 2003.

Australia
In Australia, genetic information is less likely to influence health insurance coverage decisions as health insurance is "community rated", meaning that all individuals pay the same amount regardless of their history or genetic makeup. However, genetic test results can be used by life insurance companies to deny cover, increase the cost of premiums, or place exclusions on cover. Since 2008, the amount of insurance applications with attached genetic test results has increased by 90%. Although the community rating for health insurance allows for a more even distribution of risk and cost to consumers, life insurance companies are legally allowed to "underwrite" when evaluating the genetic risks of applicants; essentially, those with higher risk could potentially be charged higher premiums. Life insurance companies can require individuals to report genetic testing results if they have already been tested, but cannot force individuals to take genetic tests. These companies are able to require individuals to disclose genetic testing results from research and direct-to-consumer tests.

Research in Australia demonstrated that life insurance discrimination deters people from participating in research and pursuing clinical genetic testing. In 2017, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services conducted an inquiry into the life insurance industry. In its 2018 report, the Committee recommended an urgent ban on the use of genetic test results by life insurers, and that the Australian government maintain a watching brief to consider whether legislation was required in future.

In 2019, the Financial Services Council, the industry body for Australian life insurers, introduced a voluntary, partial, moratorium on using genetic test results for applications up to certain financial limits. The moratorium is self-regulated, with no government oversight.

In 2020, the Australian Genetics and Life Insurance Moratorium: Monitoring the Effectiveness and Response (A-GLIMMER) project was funded by the Australian Government Medical Research Futures Fund Genomics Health Futures Mission. The project was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the moratorium in addressing genetic discrimination in Australia, from various stakeholder perspectives.

The project conducted research with consumers, health professionals, genetic researchers and financial services personnel. It also conducted a policy analysis of the moratorium compared with the recommendations made by the Parliamentary Committee in 2018, finding that the moratorium did not meet the expectations of the recommendations. The A-GLIMMER project concluded on 30 June 2023. It published its findings in a report, which found that genetic discrimination continues to occur in Australia, and continues to deter individuals from pursuing genetic testing and participating in genetic research. The report concluded that the moratorium is inadequate to address and prevent genetic discrimination in life insurance, and should be replaced with a legislative model of prohibition. The Project recommended that:

1. The Australian Government amend the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) ('the Act') to prohibit insurers from using genetic or genomic test results to discriminate between applicants for risk-rated insurance, and consider amendments to the regulation of financial services to ensure insurers are subject to a positive duty to not discriminate.

2. The Australian Government allocate responsibility and appropriate resources to the Australian Human Rights Commission ('AHRC') to enforce, promote, educate and support individuals and all relevant stakeholders to understand and meet the new legal obligations under the Act. The AHRC should consult with a range of genetics and genomics experts and stakeholders to achieve this goal.

The Australian government is considering the recommendations in the report. The Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones, made a statement that "We don't want people to avoid having genetic tests which could detect life threatening conditions because of a fear it may affect access to insurance. Early detection can lead to life saving interventions. That's in everyone's interest."

Argentina
Genetic discrimination is a rising issue in Argentina. Health plans discriminate against those who have disabilities or who have genetic conditions. In the past decade, however, National Law 26689 was  passed providing patients with the right to not experience discrimination as a result of genetic conditions.

Global instruments
The Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1997), the International Declaration on Human Genetic Data (2003) and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (2005) are global instruments drawn up by the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO.

Genetic testing in the workplace

Some people have genes that make them more susceptible to developing a disease as a result of an occupational exposure. For example, workers with beryllium sensitivity and chronic beryllium disease are more likely to carry the gene HLA-DPB1 than workers without these conditions. By offering optional genetic testing to workers and allowing only the workers to see their own results, employers could protect genetically susceptible individuals from certain occupational diseases. A beryllium manufacturing company initiated a pilot program to test prospective workers for the HLA-DPB1 gene at a university-based laboratory. The company paid for the testing and counseling but received results that did not identify which workers had the gene.

In 1991, the American Medical Association Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs suggested that the following five conditions must be satisfied in order for genetic screening by an employer to be appropriate:

 The disease must develop so rapidly that monitoring would be ineffective in preventing it.
 The genetic test is highly accurate.
 The genetic variation results in an unusually elevated susceptibility to occupational illness.
 Undue expense is needed to protect susceptible workers by lowering the level of the toxic substance in the workplace.
 The worker must provide informed consent prior to being tested.

Several occupational health screening measures similar to genetic testing are already taking place. For example, in 1978, DuPont reported testing African American applicants for sickle cell trait and restricted these workers from exposure to nitro and amino compounds. However, research indicates that workers or applicants would not take advantage of genetic testing due to fear of discrimination. A 1995 poll of the general public found that over 85% are concerned about access to use of genetic information by insurers and employers. Likewise, in the case of the beryllium manufacturer described above, so few workers participated in the genetic testing that the company decided instead to pursue an "enhanced preventive model of workplace controls."

Race
Researchers emphasize that race is not a scientifically valid concept and cannot accurately describe biological variation. Attempts to do using genetics may lead down a slippery slope toward scientific racism, the pseudoscientific practice of justifying racism using empirical evidence. Though the human genome is extremely complex, humans share 99.9% of their DNA and differences among people cannot be attributed to social categories of race.

Some cases, however, have found statistical evidence of genetic differences between human populations, such as mutations within the Duffy blood group. Yet research looking at 109 genetic markers across 16 populations by Guido Barbujani "does not suggest that the racial subdivision of our species reflects any major discontinuity in our genome". As genomic research continues to investigate human genetic variation on a large scale, racial genetic discrimination remains a concern for many.

Linking genetic conditions and treatments to race

State governments in the United States have attempted to combat racial discrimination by barring instances of discrimination by insurers that involve linking specific genetic conditions to race, such as the sickle cell trait in African Americans. Further, therapeutic interventions or treatments based on genetic variants associated with race can sometimes be inaccurate and lead to negative health outcomes. An example of this has been doctors prescribing an improper dosage of a drug called warfarin prescribed to African American populations, despite research disproving they require a higher dose than white populations. The medical community recognizes that genetic variants—such as predisposition to drug metabolism among others—make up only one facet of a person's health, which is also impacted by their environment and lifestyle.

Genetic privacy
In addition, many individuals are concerned with their genetic privacy and worry that they will face discrimination based on their genetic information. These worries may include loss of confidentiality, risk of information being shared with insurance providers, risk of genetic samples being used without their consent, and health-based discrimination more broadly.

Genomic biobanks
Contributing to genomic biobanks can be an additional source of concern for minority populations. Biobanks are collections of biological samples which can include blood, tissue, or DNA from many people. Despite the utility of biobanks to furthering genomic research, minority groups fear that their samples may be used improperly or even be used to strike down an entire culture. Such was the case when genetic samples were taken from the Havasupai people, a Native American tribe in Arizona. They consented for their samples to provide insight into the prevalence of diabetes in their community, but did not consent to them to investigate links to schizophrenia or provide evolutionary genetic analysis to discredit the tribe's origin beliefs. Misuse of genetic data may create long-lasting distrust towards the medical community.

Diversity in genomics
Some efforts have been made to use genetic testing for reconciliation projects involving people of African descent, which attempt to make social reparations based upon genetic genealogy. Though genetic ancestry testing can be a valuable source of information for those seeking connections to their heritage or recognize a new identity, African Americans may feel coerced into genetic testing or unknowingly face discrimination. Participants also have very little control over how their data will be used, including within the medical sphere or the criminal justice system. As such, increased circulation of genetic genealogical data may be harmful for African Americans.

As minority populations are hesitant to contribute their DNA to genomic research, there continues to be a lack of inclusive health information being disseminated and incorporated in medical treatments. Genomic research has been predominantly based upon DNA samples with European heritage, which fails to holistically and accurately describe the complexity of all people's genetics.

Other confounding factors related to diversity such as age, gender, or socioeconomic status may also influence genetic discrimination in addition to race.

Popular culture

According to Jonathan Roberts and his colleagues, the media evokes irrational fear among the public about advances in genetic techniques. In a recent study, participants who were prompted to convey their attitudes about unfamiliar scientific concepts relating to genetics ultimately drew conclusions based on examples from popular culture.

Genoism is a neologism coined by Andrew Niccol, director and writer of the 1997 film Gattaca, used to describe unethical and illegal genetic discrimination. Predictions of physical and mental performance are computed via genetics from DNA collected from hair, fingernails, skin flakes, spit swabs, eyelashes, etc.  Upon birth, a number of genetically induced characteristics are calculated: physical and intellectual capacity, life expectancy, probable successful diseases, and likely causes of death, all determined via blood samples and genetic testing. Job interviews, health insurance purchasing, and even potential dates can be sized up according to the perceived quality of the person's DNA due to advancements in genome sequencing.  This put an ironic twist to Darwin's sexual selection for good genes. According to the movie, "We now have discrimination down to a science."

See also
Dysgenics
Gattaca, the most notable film about genetic discrimination
Genetic privacy
Human Genome Project
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act
Americans with Disabilities Act
Affordable Care Act
Genetic Discrimination Observatory

References

External links
 National Human Genome Research Institute on Genetic Discrimination

 Respond Genetic Discrimination

Human genetics
Eugenics
Medical ethics
Discrimination by type
Science fiction themes

Genetic discrimination


Eugene Kantor Klavan (May 4, 1924 – April 8, 2004) was an American disc-jockey, columnist and author.

Early years
Klavan was born in Baltimore, Maryland and attended Baltimore City College (high school). His radio career began with brief stints at Baltimore's WITH and WCBM, followed by WTOP in Washington, D.C., where he would remain until moving to WNEW New York in 1952.  While in Washington, DC, Klavan also hosted, for a short time, a local television show which featured him doing silly things on camera while he played recorded music.

1130 WNEW New York
Klavan is most known for his time as half of the morning program "Klavan and Finch." The program ran from 1952 to 1968 on WNEW 1130; prior to 1952, Dee Finch had co-hosted the show with Gene Rayburn. Co-host Finch departed and Klavan continued solo until 1977. He wrote a biography in 1964, We Die at Dawn, that largely focused on the morning show.  He followed it up in 1972 with Turn That Damned Thing Off, a book about the news media industry. In 1977 he moved from WNEW to 710 WOR and left radio in 1980. He later became a commentator at WCBS-TV, a host for American Movie Classics, and a columnist for Newsday.

Klavan's sons Andrew Klavan and Laurence Klavan are best-selling authors and screenwriters.

References

External links
New York Times Obituary
Aircheck at Airchexx
Arcane Radio Trivia Bio
Airwaves of New York Article
WNEW, The World's Greatest Radio Station

1924 births
2004 deaths
American radio personalities

Gene Klavan


Screwball Scramble is a toy made by Tomy that involves guiding a 14-millimeter-diameter chrome steel ball bearing around an obstacle course. It is known in Japan under the name . A player guides the ball by using various buttons, dials and levers that affect parts of the course. If a mistake is made a player must start again. The aim of the game is to complete the course as fast as possible. It takes no batteries and is recommended for children five and above. The toy was popular during the 1980s, and is still available today.

The toy was originally known as "Run Yourself Ragged", then later "Snafu: The Maze Game That Runs You Ragged", "Crazy Maze", "Tricky Golf", and other names. The device was cloned in the Soviet Union as "Кто быстрее" (Kto bystree - "Who is faster"). A second course, entitled "Screwball Scramble Level 2" and designed to be connected to the first one, has also been produced since the early 2020s.

Parts of the course
 The first part of the course is the tilting walkway; by pressing a button the player must tilt the parts of the walkway in order to rock the ball across and place it on the platform at the end.
 By turning a dial the player must pick the ball up from the platform using the magnetic crane and deposit it on the parallel bars.
 The parallel bars are two metal rods on which the ball sits. By moving these rods apart with a lever, the ball can be made to roll along the rods. If the rods are opened too far, however, the ball will fall through. If successful, the ball will roll off the end of the rods and onto the unstable table.
 The unstable table is a flat table with a border around it and various pegs in the middle; the player must tilt this table with a lever in order to get the ball onto a ramp at the end, and avoid falling off at a false opening in the border.
 The ramp leads to the tire obstacle, by hitting a button the player must jump up onto successively higher levels and finally through a hoop.
 After this the ball enters a blind (covered) maze, which the player must use a lever to guide the ball through by tilting. The cover for the maze is removable, which is useful for younger players.
 Once through the maze the ball is placed on a rocket-shaped platform which is moved, using the same dial as the crane, to put the ball into a catapult.
 Hitting the final button activates the catapult and fires the ball towards a bell. Once the bell rings the game is over.
 Also, the player can attempt to complete the course before the 60-second timer runs out.

References

External links

Takara Tomy

Screwball Scramble


Lerik District (, ) is one of the 66 districts of Azerbaijan. It is located in the south-east of the country and belongs to the Lankaran-Astara Economic Region. The district borders the districts of Yardimli, Masally, Lankaran, Astara and the Ardabil Province of Iran. Its capital and largest city is Lerik. As of 2022, the district had a population of 87,000. It is located between the Talysh Mountains and the agricultural plain of the Lankaran Lowland.

History
Lerik district was established in August 1930. It was called "Zuvand District" until January 1938. 29 municipalities operate in the district. The district includes a city and 162 villages with a total area of 1084 square kilometer. In accordance with the presidential decree dated June 13, 2008, the settlement of Lerik was granted the status of a city.

The territory of the Lerik district is one of the oldest settlements in Azerbaijan. There exist some caves which are considered to belong to the Bronze Age. These caves are located in the foothills of the mountains.

Different items belonging to the Stone Age were found in the Lerik district. The cave called "Buzeyir" is the oldest settlement in the territory of Azerbaijan. In the 18th-19th centuries, French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan, K. Schaffer and his brother Henri called this territory "archaeological paradise" during archaeological excavations. Morgan has conducted archaeological excavations at the Gizilbashlar cemetery in the village of Veri of Lerik.

Professor Asadulla Jafarov, head of the Archeology and Ethnography Department of the History Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, conducted scientific researches in the territory of Lerik region and for the first time discovered an ancient human camp belonging to the Middle Paleolithic Age in the Buzeyir cave.

People
Lerik is mainly famous for the longevity of some of its citizens. It is known for myths of human longevity; a man named Shirali Baba Muslimov, born in the village of Barzavu, who was reported by the Guinness Book of Records to have been aged 168 when he died and was believed to have lived between 1805 and 1973. The vast majority of the district's population is talysh, the rest are azerbaijanis and other nationalities.

Population

Travel
Located in Lerik are a local history museum and the Karabakh war memorial, located between the parade ground and the modest city hall.

Lerik can be reached from Lankaran using the A323 road. It is a very scenic route along the Lankaran river and the Hirkan National Park. Buses run regularly to Lankaran and Baku.
The maximum annual precipitation in Lerik and the Talysh Mountains is between 1,600 mm to 1,800 mm, which along the Lankaran Lowland is the highest precipitation in the country.

Geographical position
The Lerik region territory is surrounded by the Talysh mountain range.  Lerik region is bordered by Yardimli in the south and south-west, in the north-east Lankaran, in the north-west Masalli, and in the south-east Astara. The Talysh mountain range extends along the border with the Islamic Republic of Iran and in the north beyond the Peshtasar and Bouravar mountain ranges. The length of the border is 49.5 kilometers with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Zuvand (Diabar) Trench is located between the Talysh and Buddhist ridges. The Komurgoy (2492 m) and Gizyurd (2433 m) are the highest peaks in the Talysh Range. It mostly consists of Paleogene volcanogenic-sedimentary rocks. The region covers  40.3 thousand hectares of forest.

The Zuvand State Reserve is located in Zuvand. The Botanical Research Center of the National Academy of Sciences studies of the Fauna and Flora is operating here.

Climate

Economy
The district is mainly occupied by mountainous relief, where the population is mainly engaged in agriculture. Annually 2790 tons of grains from 1454 hectares are planted in the region.

Education
There are 107 secondary schools in the district. About 1269 teachers work in schools.

Health
Lerik Region Central Hospital provides medical care to 82 thousand people.

Cultural heritage
There are 27 architectural monuments of local importance, memorial monuments, and 78 decorative monuments in the territory of the Lerik district. A historical museum, as well as the museum of "Longevity", and an art gallery operates in the city.

Ancient mansion "Qizyurdu"l, Baba Isa tomb in the village of Mondigah, Mausoleum of Khalifa Zechariah, Mosque in Lulekaran village (19th century) Jabir Mausoleum (12th–14th centuries) and so on are the most famous monuments in the region.

Among historical places, the Boy and Girl castles are very famous in the territory. These castles were constructed with the purpose of defense. In one legend it is said that these castles were the houses of ancient Albanians. There are still Albanian cemeteries near the castles.

During the Safavid rule, Shah Ismayil also sent his faithful people to the Lerik region. The Babagil mausoleum, which turned into a sanctuary, is the hallmark of those times.

There are 11 cultural centers, 64 libraries (one central library in the city, one children's library), 55 clubs, 1 painting gallery, 2 primary music schools in the district.

303700 copies of the political, artistic and scientific literature have been collected in the branches of the centralized library system of the district. 24 thousand people benefit from this fund.

Notable people
Valeh Muslumov, National Hero of Azerbaijan

Gallery

See also
 Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests - ecoregion that covers the Lerik District.

References

External links
 www.Azerb.Com
 Living Past 100 - "No Big Deal" in this Village : Report on the centenarians of Lerik.

Districts of Azerbaijan

Lerik District


Vincent "Vinnie" Calabrese (born 7 October 1987) is a former Australian professional snooker player from Campbelltown, New South Wales. He was based in Cambridge together with his compatriot Neil Robertson, although he has since moved back to Australia.

Early career
Calabrese started playing snooker aged 7 and soon came to success, winning a number of local tournaments. At the age of just 16 he had already claimed the Australian Snooker Championship. Since 2006 he has been spending a lot of time in England, playing in the PIOS tournaments and practising with Neil Robertson. His initial attempts to gain the main tour place via PIOS and later Q School were unsuccessful, however in 2013 he captured the Oceania Championship in Papua New Guinea with a 6–5 victory against Matthew Bolton to earn a two-year card for the 2013–14 and 2014–15 seasons.

2013/2014 season
Thanks to the newly introduced flat draws, Calabrese was able to qualify for the venue stages of his debut tournament, the Wuxi Classic, as he defeated Anthony McGill 5–3. He lost 5–1 to John Higgins in the last 64 at the venue in China. At the UK Championship he led world number 22 Dominic Dale 5–2, but was pegged back to 5–5 with Calabrese saying afterwards that he couldn't hold himself together. However, in the deciding frame he made a composed 70 break to win 6–5 before losing 6–3 against Gary Wilson in the second round. Calabrese was knocked out of the first round of seven of the eight European Tour events, but at the Bluebell Wood Open he defeated world number two Mark Selby 4–2, Dechawat Poomjaeng 4–2 and David Morris 4–1 and then led Jimmy Robertson 3–0 in the last 16, but was beaten 4–3. He finished his debut season on the tour ranked world number 105.

2014/2015 season
Calabrese won just two matches during the 2014–15 season. In February 2015, Calabrese gave up his World Snooker Tour card after the Welsh Open, in which he lost 4–1 to Ronnie O'Sullivan in the first round, to return to being an amateur player so he could compete in the Oceania Championship. In March 2015, Calabrese won the Oceania Championship by defeating Matthew Bolton 6–3 in the final and earned a two-year tour card for the 2015–16 and 2016–17 seasons.

2015/2016 season
Calabrese won just two of 13 games during the 2015/2016 season. He was relegated from the professional tour at the end of season, although he had resigned his tour place a few months prior to this.

Performance and rankings timeline

Career finals

Amateur finals: 15 (9 titles)

References

External links

1987 births
Living people
Australian snooker players
Sportspeople from Sydney

Vinnie Calabrese


The doctrine of necessity is the basis on which extraordinary actions by administrative authority, which are designed to restore order or uphold fundamental constitutional principles, are considered to be lawful even if such an action contravenes established constitution, laws, norms, or conventions. The maxim on which the doctrine is based originated in the writings of the medieval jurist Henry de Bracton, and similar justifications for this kind of extra-legal action have been advanced by more recent legal authorities, including William Blackstone.

In a controversial 1954 judgment, Pakistani Chief Justice Muhammad Munir validated the extra-constitutional use of emergency powers by Governor General, Ghulam Mohammad. In his judgment, the Chief Justice cited Bracton's maxim, 'that which is otherwise not lawful is made lawful by necessity', thereby providing the label that would come to be attached to the judgment and the doctrine that it was establishing.

The doctrine of necessity may also refer to the necessity of a judge with a reasonable apprehension of bias continuing to decide a matter if there is no alternative to that judge. The Supreme Court of Canada applied this doctrine in the 1998 Reference re Remuneration of Judges (No 2) case.

International law
In international law, the exception is allowed by the UN's International Law Commission (ILC) to be used by a state facing "grave and imminent peril":

Therefore, an obligation of customary international law or an obligation granted under a bilateral investment treaty may be suspended under the doctrine of necessity. It is "an exception from illegality and in certain cases even as an exception from responsibility."
In order to invoke the doctrine of necessity:
 The invoking State must not have contributed to the state of necessity,
 Actions taken were the only way to safeguard an essential interest from grave and impending danger.

Instances of invocation
The doctrine of necessity has  been invoked in a number of Commonwealth countries.

Pakistan, 1954

On 24 October 1954 the Governor-General of Pakistan, Ghulam Mohammad, dissolved the Constituent Assembly and appointed a new Council of Ministers on the grounds that the existing one no longer represented the people of Pakistan. Stanley de Smith argues that the real reason for the dissolution was because Mohammad objected to the constitution which the Assembly was about to adopt.  The President of the Constituent Assembly, Maulvi Tamizuddin, appealed to the Chief Court of Sind at Karachi to restrain the new Council of Ministers from implementing the dissolution and to determine the validity of the appointment of the new Council under Section 223-A of the constitution.

In response, members of the new Council of Ministers appealed to the court saying that it had no jurisdiction to approve the request of the President to overturn the dissolution and appointments.  They argued that Section 223-A of the constitution had never been validly enacted into the Constitution because it was never approved of by the Governor-General, and therefore anything submitted under it was invalid.  The Chief Court of Sind ruled in favour of President Tamizuddin and held that the Governor-General's approval was not needed when the Constituent Assembly was acting only as a Constituent Assembly and not as the Federal Legislature.  The Federation of Pakistan and the new Council of Ministers then appealed to the court, the appeal was heard in March 1955 (Federation of Pakistan v Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan).

In the appeal hearing under Chief Justice Muhammad Munir, the court decided that the Constituent Assembly functioned as the 'Legislature of the Domain' and that the Governor-General's assent was necessary for all legislation to become law.  Therefore, the Chief Court of Sind had no jurisdiction to overturn the Governor General's dissolution and it was held as valid.

However, the ground of which the court found in favour of the Federation of Pakistan called into question the validity of all legislation passed by the Assembly, not to mention the unconstitutionality of the Assembly itself since 1950.  To solve this problem, the Governor-General invoked Emergency Powers to retrospectively validate the Acts of the Constituent Assembly. An appeal was filed against the Governor-General for invoking emergency powers and the Chief Justice had to determine the constitutionality of invoking the Emergency Powers and whether the Governor-General could give his assent to legislation retroactively.

The Court held that in this case the Governor-General could not invoke emergency powers because in doing so he validated certain laws that had been invalid because he had not assented to them previously.  Justice Munir also ruled that constitutional legislation could not be validated by the Governor General but had to be approved by the Legislature.  The lack of a Constituent Assembly did not transfer the Legislature's powers over to the Governor-General.

The Court was referred to for an opinion. On 16 May 1955 it ruled:

 The Governor General in certain circumstances had the power to dissolve the Constituent Assembly.
 The Governor-General has during the interim period the power 'under the common law of civil or state necessity' of retrospectively validating the laws listed in the Schedule to the Emergency Powers ordinance.
 The new Assembly (formed under the Constituent Convention Order 1955) would be valid and able to exercise all powers under the Indian Independence Act 1947.

In his verdict, Munir declared it was necessary to go beyond the constitution to what he claimed was the Common Law, to general legal maxims, and to English historical precedent. He relied on Bracton's maxim, 'that which is otherwise not lawful is made lawful by necessity', and the Roman law maxim urged by Ivor Jennings, 'the well-being of the people is the supreme law'.

Grenada, 1985
In a 1985 judgment, the Chief Justice of the High Court of Grenada invoked the doctrine of necessity to validate the legal existence of a court then trying for murder the persons who had conducted a coup against former leader Maurice Bishop. The court had been established under an unconstitutional "People's Law" following the overthrow of the country's constitution, which had subsequently been restored. The defendants argued that the court before which they were being tried had no legal existence under the restored constitution, and they were therefore being deprived of their constitutional right to a trial before a "Court established by law". The High Court acknowledged that the lower court "had come into existence in an unconstitutional manner", but "the doctrine of necessity validated its acts." On this basis, the murder trials were allowed to proceed.

Nigeria, 2010: Parliament creates an Acting President
A related (although non-judicial) use of the doctrine took place when, on 9 February 2010, the Nigerian National Assembly passed a resolution making Vice President Goodluck Jonathan the Acting President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Both chambers of the Assembly passed the resolution after President Umaru Yar'Adua, who for 78 days had been in Saudi Arabia receiving medical treatment, was unable to formally empower the vice president to exercise full powers as acting president, as provided for in Section 145 of the country's constitution. No provision of the Nigerian constitution empowering the National Assembly to pass any such resolution, causing Senate President David Mark to assert that the Senate had been guided by the "doctrine of necessity" in arriving at its decision.

United Kingdom, 2022–2023: Northern Ireland Protocol changes
On 13 June 2022, United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Liz Truss introduced the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in the House of Commons, which, if enacted, would allow the UK government to unilaterally "disapply" (the word used) parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol that it had signed up to, a part of the Brexit withdrawal agreement. The UK government conceded that the bill would mean breaching its obligations under international law but said that its position was justified, explicitly invoking the doctrine of necessity and saying that having to uphold the Protocol was placing unacceptable levels of strain on institutions in Northern Ireland and that there was "no other way" of safeguarding the UK's interests.

On 15 June, vice-president of the European Commission Maroš Šefčovič said that there was "no legal nor political justification" for the bill and that it was illegal. He also announced that the Commission would re-open the infringement proceedings against the UK government which had been started in March 2021, including two new counts where it was alleged the UK breached the Protocol.

In a session of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on 21 June 2022, Lorand Bartels, Professor of International Law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and Malgosia Fitzmaurice, Professor of Public International Law at Queen Mary University of London, were questioned about the use of the doctrine of necessity. Fitzmaurice said that necessity is the "most contentious and controversial" of circumstances which allow treaty terms to be disregarded; she stated that using necessity as a justification "should be very carefully considered" seeing as action could instead be taken using Article 16 of the protocol. Bartels suggested that the necessity doctrine could only be used to breach some parts of the protocol.

During the leadership election during the summer of 2022, Rishi Sunak said his preference was a negotiated settlement with the EU while Liz Truss, who was the minister responsible for introducing the Protocol Bill, supported it as a method to "[break] the deadlock in a legal way". Although Truss won that leadership election, she resigned soon after amid a government crisis and Sunak became prime minister.

The UK government and the European Commission made a joint statement on 27 February 2023 announcing the Windsor Framework, a legal agreement which addressed concerns around the Northern Ireland Protocol. As a result, the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill was withdrawn and will be allowed to lapse at the end of the current session of parliament.

Notes and references

External links

 This article cites many references relevant to the general topic of "doctrine of necessity"

Politics of Pakistan
Political terminology in Pakistan
Military terminology of Pakistan
Legal doctrines and principles

Doctrine of necessity


Integral Equations and Operator Theory is a journal dedicated to operator theory and its applications to engineering and other mathematical sciences. As some approaches to the study of integral equations (theoretically and numerically) constitute a subfield of operator theory, the journal also deals with the theory of integral equations and hence of differential equations. The journal consists of two sections: a main section consisting of refereed papers and a second consisting of short announcements of important results, open problems, information, etc.  It has been published monthly by Springer-Verlag since 1978.  The journal is also available online by subscription.

The founding editor-in-chief of the journal, in 1978, was Israel Gohberg. Its current editor-in-chief is Christiane Tretter.

References

External links
 Journal homepage

Mathematics journals
Academic journals established in 1978

Integral Equations and Operator Theory


The Vermilion River Radio Observatory (VRO) was a research facility operated by the University of Illinois from 1959 to 1984, featuring a  linear parabolic radio telescope. The  site was a pioneering facility in radio astronomy.

Parabolic array radio telescope
The site was chosen after an aerial survey indicated that the site was naturally contoured to require the least effort to excavate a  long by  wide north–south trough for the parabolic cylinder shape that would focus radio waves into a receiver array. Located near the Vermilion River, the site was about  from the university campus, near Danville, Illinois. Work began in 1959. Once the natural ravine was shaped, it was covered with asphalt and wire mesh, forming a reflector aimed by the Earth's rotation to sweep the sky. A wood trestle   high was built at the reflector's focus to carry the receivers. The array was configured to allow phasing adjustments to sweep 60 degrees of sky. The facility was suitable for conducting survey work over large areas of sky, but could not be used to study specific targets.

The telescope project was led by electrical engineering professor George Swenson, under the founding impetus of University of Illinois Astronomical Observatory director George C. McVittie. Professor Y.T. Lo designed the antenna array, using a logarithmic conical spiral concept originated by professor John Dyson. Feed elements and the recording system were designed by research engineer Kwang-Shui Yang and student Kenneth Seib, using commercial radio receiving equipment. The array was optimized for study at a 49-centimeter wavelength.

The array mapped a significant portion of the northern hemisphere's sky, allowing the compilation of a catalog of astronomical radio sources. It identified more than 1,000 discrete radio sources beyond the Milky Way, as well as radio-emitting ionized hydrogen regions within the Milky Way. The array found two new supernova remnants. The most notable radio source discovered by the VRO is active galactic nucleus VRO 42.22.01, the prototype for BL Lacertae objects.

120-foot steerable radio telescope
In 1967 Swenson proposed an array of three steerable  parabolic dishes, which could be used to study individual features. The three receivers were to be used as an interferometer to achieve high angular resolution. The new telescope would operate at 49 centimeters and 18 centimeters. Only one of the three dishes was funded by the National Science Foundation and built to a conceptual design by Neil Stafford of the Stanford Research Institute, leaving it most effective as a spectrometer initially. It was built by university staff and students. Starting in 1974 it was linked to other locations to perform the very long baseline interferometry studies it was intended for.

Channel 37
The 49 cm band is equivalent to about 610 megahertz, coinciding with UHF television channel 37. After concern was expressed that even distant transmitters would interfere with astronomical research at the VRO site, the Federal Communications Commission decided in 1963 not to allocate Channel 37 to any transmitters in the United States.

Closure
Erosion in the natural stream valley gradually deformed the linear reflector, and it was taken out of use by 1970. The site was repeatedly vandalized. A 1981 vandalism incident damaged the steerable dish enough that it was disabled, and the site was finally decommissioned in 1984. The property is used for ecological studies and cropland by the University of Illinois and Illinois state agencies. The old observatory buildings are used for laboratories.

See also
 List of astronomical observatories

References

External links
History of the VRO
Vermilion River Observatory property
Reprint of the 1971 Sky and Telescope article on the 120-foot telescope

Radio observatories
1959 establishments in Illinois
Astronomical observatories in Illinois

Vermilion River Observatory


Laadi Ayii Ayamba is a Ghanaian politician and member of the 8th parliament of the 4th Republic of Ghana representing the Pusiga Constituency in the Upper East Region on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress. She was also a member of the 6th and 7th parliament. She is a woman activist and mostly addresses issues relating to women on the floor of parliament. She served as the chairperson of the Committee on Gender and Children in the 6th parliament of the 4th Republic of Ghana from 2013 to 2017.

Early life and education
Laadi Ayi Ayamba was born on 26 December 1961, She is a native of Pusiga in the Upper East Region. She attended middle school at the Pusiga Continuation Middle School. She furthered her education from that point at the Gbewaa Teacher Training College, where she graduated as a trained teacher. She later went to the University of Education, Winneba where she obtained a bachelor's degree in Basic Education.

Career
Ayamba started her professional career as a teacher from 1981 to 1991. She was then a head-teacher until 2000, where she was reappointed as Officer in charge of Day Nursery Schools by the Ghana Education Service.

Politics

Member of parliament
Ayamba is a member of the National Democratic Congress and she took her seat in parliament as the Member Parliament for the Pusiga Constituency, Upper East Region after being elected over her opponents Simon Akunye Atingban and Osman Aludiba Ayuba who were contesting for the same position. She won the election with a total of 15,847 votes out of the 29,592 valid votes, representing 46.78% of the total valid votes.

ECOWAS
In 2021, Laadi together with Alexander Kwamena Afenyo-Markin, Abdul-Aziz Ayaba Musah, Johnson Kwaku Adu and Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzrah were sworn in during the Extraordinary Session 2021 of the Parliament of the ECOWAS which happened in Freetown in Sierra Leone.

Chairperson on Committee on Gender and Children
She served as the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on Gender and Children she represented Ghana in Geneva, Switzerland at the 59th session of UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to contribute to Ghana's efforts to ensuring the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. In her role she stated that Ghana was making attempts to tackle outmoded harmful cultural practices through promulgation of laws to ban those practices. She also made mention of the country's policy of Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) which had implemented and needed to be intensified in rural areas where young girls migrate to the cities and to help them stay within their communication and acquire the right skills to improve their societies. She also led the proposal of the gender committee as chairperson to increase sex education in schools to help curb high incidences of teenage pregnancy.

Affirmative Action Bill
She is a woman advocate who supported the Affirmative Action Bill and supported the bill's provision to ensure that 40 percent quota for political participation for women and also that women should be allowed to contest the ''safe seats'' of their parties to ensure a good representation of women.

2020 elections
She retained her seat in the 2020 December elections after winning with a majority of 63 votes. She beat her closest opponent Abdul-Karim Zanni Dubiure of the NPP by getting 14,929 votes representing 42.31% against 14,866 representing 42.13%

Personal life
Ayamba is a Muslim. She is divorced (with fifteen children).

References

Ghanaian MPs 2017–2021
1961 births
Living people
Ghanaian Muslims
National Democratic Congress (Ghana) politicians
University of Education, Winneba alumni
Ghanaian MPs 2021–2025
Ghanaian MPs 2013–2017
People from Upper East Region
Ghanaian educators
Ghanaian headmistresses
Ghanaian schoolteachers

Laadi Ayii Ayamba


Henry Thomson JP (1828 – 13 September 1903) was a 19th-century Mayor of Christchurch and Member of Parliament for the  electorate in Canterbury, New Zealand.

Early life
Thomson was born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1828.  He was the fifth son of William Thomson, a shipbuilder. He received his education at Wigtown, Galloway, Scotland. At age 18, he started work for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

In 1852, he left after six years to emigrate to Victoria, Australia. Thomson was clerk-in-charge of the office of the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay railway during its construction. He was afterwards superintendent of the wharf and railway station at Sandridge (now called Port Melbourne).

In 1856, Thomson came to Wellington, and a year later moved to Nelson. On 28 April 1859, he married Mary Ann Thomson (née Coates), daughter of Giles Coates, at Christ Church in Nelson. After two years in Nelson, he had a short experience on the Otago gold fields, and in 1865 settled in Christchurch, where he was employed by the jewellers Coates and Co., the company of his father in law.  He later became a partner in the firm. On the death of Giles Coates, he became the sole proprietor until 1891, when he retired from business. In 1868, Thomson was manager of the Canterbury section of the New Zealand railways, which then extended from Lyttelton to Selwyn as the Canterbury Great South Railway.

Political career

Before 1916, elections for Christchurch City Council were held annually. Thomson was elected onto the town and later city council five times: in 1867, 1868, 1875, 1878 and 1880.

The town council held a meeting on 10 June 1868 to elect its first mayor. In those days, the councillors elected one of their group as mayor, i.e. the position was not elected at large (by the voting public) as is the case today.

The following councillors attended the meeting: William Wilson, James Purvis Jameson, T. Tombs, George Ruddenklau, Henry Thomson, W. A. Sheppard, W. Calvert and John Anderson, who chaired the meeting. Thomson moved that Wilson be elected as the first mayor of Christchurch, and Tombs seconded the motion. The chairman put the motion to the meeting and it was carried unanimously. With the meeting, the council had brought itself under the Municipal Corporations Act 1867.

At the end of 1877, Thomson stood for Mayor of Christchurch against the incumbent, James Gapes. Gapes declared that he would not have wanted to oppose a city councillor standing for the office of mayor, but that he stood to clear up his reputation, as unwarranted accusations had been made against him.  Thomson, over the course of the election campaign, started to believe that he would not have a chance at the election. The result was very close, with Thomson receiving 474 votes against 461 votes for Gapes. The returning officer declared Thomson elected at the evening of the election day (28 November 1877). Thomson was installed as mayor at a meeting on 19 December 1877. Thomson's election caused a vacancy on the City Council. The only candidate for the by-election was James Jameson, who was thus declared elected unopposed.

Thomson stood for re-election against the senior councillor Charles Thomas Ick. Ick defeated Thomson by 601 votes to 343.

He represented the Christchurch North electorate from 1881 to 1884, when he retired. He was a supporter of the Atkinson Ministry.

Westby Perceval, Aaron Ayers, Thomson and Eden George contested the Christchurch South electorate in the . Perceval won the election and Thomson came third.

Death
Thomson died on 13 September 1903. He was buried at Linwood Cemetery.

Notes

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:

|-

1828 births
1903 deaths
Burials at Linwood Cemetery, Christchurch
English emigrants to New Zealand
Members of the New Zealand House of Representatives
Mayors of Christchurch
New Zealand MPs for Christchurch electorates
Christchurch City Councillors
New Zealand Freemasons
Unsuccessful candidates in the 1887 New Zealand general election
19th-century New Zealand politicians

Henry Thomson (New Zealand politician)


Pietro Riario (1445 – 3 January 1474) was an Italian cardinal and Papal diplomat.

Biography
Born in Savona, he was the son of Paolo Riario and Pope Sixtus IVs' sister, Bianca Della Rovere. Sixtus nominated him in 1471 bishop of Treviso and cardinal, and, in 1473, archbishop of Florence. He was entrusted with Sixtus' foreign policy. To reinforce the alliance between Rome and Milan, he had his brother Girolamo married to the daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan.

He was a humanist known for his patronage of literature and the arts, his huge feasts, luxurious behaviour and irreligious conduct. He had a large palace begun in Rome, near the church of Santi Apostoli (it was completed by his cousin Giuliano della Rovere, pope as Julius II). In 1473 he had the square before his palazzo transformed with painted canvas and wooden construction into temporary but luxurious lodging for the daughter of the King of Naples, who was entertained in June with an extravagant banquet with forty piatti that included roast stags, herons, the requisite roast peacock, even a roast bear. The bread was gilded.

In 1473 he travelled to northern Italy to oversee the cession of Imola from Milan to the Republic of Florence. At his return to Rome, Riario died suddenly in his house at age 28. It was suspected that he had been poisoned, although an indigestion was more likely. He was buried in Santi Apostoli in a magnificent Renaissance tomb sculpted by Mino da Fiesole and Andrea Bregno. His role as Sixtus' collaborator was inherited by his cousin Giuliano della Rovere.

Notes

1445 births
1474 deaths
People from Savona
15th-century Italian cardinals
Roman Catholic archbishops of Florence
Bishops of Treviso
Italian patrons of the arts
Cardinal-nephews
15th-century Italian Roman Catholic archbishops
Medieval Italian diplomats
Latin Patriarchs of Constantinople
15th-century diplomats
15th-century Roman Catholic archbishops in the Republic of Florence

Pietro Riario


Van der Pol (also "Van de Pol", "Van de Poll", "Van den Pol" or "Van Pol") is a Dutch, toponymic surname, originally meaning "from the raised land". Notable people with the surname include:

Van der Pol(l) / Vanderpol
Alfred Vanderpol (1854–1915), French engineer, philanthropist and author
Anneliese van der Pol (born 1984), Dutch-born American actress and singer
Balthasar van der Pol (1889–1959), Dutch physicist
a.o. known for the Van der Pol oscillator and the Bonhoeffer-van der Pol model
Jaap van der Poll (1914–2010), Dutch javelin thrower
Jos van der Pol (born 1961), Dutch conceptual and installation artist
Liesbeth van der Pol (born 1959), Dutch architect
Van de Pol
 (1907–1996), Dutch billiards player
Van den Pol
Anthony van den Pol (1949–2020), Yale Professor of Neurosurgery
Van Pol
Christiaan van Pol (1752–1813), Dutch flower painter
Thijs van Pol (born 1991), Dutch football forward
Vera van Pol (born 1993), Dutch artistic gymnast
Louis van der Pol (1896–1982), Dutch impressionist painter

See also
10443 van der Pol, main-belt asteroid named after Balthasar van der Pol
Pol (disambiguation)
, Dutch noble family
Jacob R. H. Neervoort van de Poll (1862–1924), Dutch entomologist

References

Dutch-language surnames
Surnames of Dutch origin
Dutch toponymic surnames

Van der Pol


Greg Boone (born September 14, 1986) is a former American football fullback. He originally went to Virginia Tech as a quarterback and made the move to tight end during the 2006 season. He still received time as a quarterback, primarily in the "Wild Turkey" formation, Virginia Tech's version of the Wildcat formation.

High school
Boone played safety and quarterback in high school. He was ranked by Rivals.com as the No. 36 athlete in the country and twelfth in the state of Virginia. During his senior year, he had 70 completions out of 120 attempts, 1,400 yards passing, three interceptions and eight rushing Touchdowns.

College

2005–2006
Boone was redshirted his first year at Virginia Tech, and spent the year working with the scout team. He won "Super Iron Hokie" honors, a team award for the weight room.

2006–2007
After the redshirt Boone was moved from Quarterback to Tight End. He made his first start against Northeastern for 39 plays. He caught one pass for five yards. He made his first college touchdown in a game against North Carolina after catching a 41 yard pass. During a game against Kent State, he suffered an ankle injury 13 plays into the game and ended up missing the game against Wake Forest. He finished the season with five catches, sixty-eight yards, and one touchdown. During the spring practices, he won the team most improved award.

2008–2009
Boone started every game of the 2007–2008 season except for one. After the game against the Florida State Seminoles, Quarterbacks Sean Glennon and Tyrod Taylor suffered high ankle sprains, and Boone finished the game as Quarterback.

References

1986 births
Living people
Players of American football from Chesapeake, Virginia
American football tight ends
Virginia Tech Hokies football players
Milwaukee Mustangs (2009–2012) players
American football quarterbacks

Greg Boone


Fentimans is a botanical brewery based in Hexham, Northumberland, England.

History
Thomas Fentiman, an iron puddler from Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, acquired a recipe for botanically brewed ginger beer in 1905 when a fellow tradesman approached Fentiman for a loan. The loan was never repaid so Thomas became the owner of the recipe. The firm became a door-to-door ginger beer sales company using a horse-drawn vehicle for transport. His ginger beer was stored in handmade stone jars known as 'grey hens', all stamped with the Fentimans mascot based on Thomas' German Shepherd dog 'Fearless' who won the Crufts obedience class twice in 1933 and 1934. The botanically brewed ginger beer became popular quickly and the business grew, with several brewing and production facilities being opened in the North of England.

The company fell on hard times as supermarkets entered the soft drinks market. As a result, sales of the Grey Hens (the stone jars in which ginger beer was sold) slumped and the company closed down in the mid 1960s. But in 1988, Thomas Fentiman's great grandson re-established the business with a mission to produce drinks in the original way, using the traditional ginger beer recipe and 100% natural ingredients. From then, with old-style products and vintage goods becoming more popular, Fentimans has enjoyed a wave of popularity.

Since 1905, Fentimans has been brewing botanical sodas with ingredients including roots, bark and flowers, and with the exception of adding new flavours, Fentimans are still making their sodas the same as they did back at the turn of the century. Some production processes have been updated, for example, pasteurisation has been introduced to extend the shelf life of the drinks. This, in turn, causes the loss of some carbon dioxide, so addition of mild carbonation was introduced.

21st century
Fentimans expected to double its turnover from 2015 to 2019, driven by demand from mainland Europe and the US. Fentimans has franchised in the US, where products are manufactured in Pennsylvania and are available across North America. More than two-thirds of Fentimans' overseas sales are in Europe, with the bulk of the remainder in the US, Japan, South America, Canada and Russia. Both UK and US divisions use the same recipe and brewing methods to create Fentimans. North America has purchased identical brewery equipment to that used decades ago, to maintain the characteristic flavour.

April 2023
In recent times they have changed their recipe in the UK to include the sweetener Steviol glycosides. Some say this dramatically alters the taste of many of their classic drinks. According to an email reply to a question on the changes they said that it was done to "reduced sugar" and make them "in-line with the governments High Fat Salt Sugar (aka HFSS) regulations."

Fentimans' range includes both gluten-free alcoholic ginger beer and a mixer range; mixers include tonic, diet tonic, rose lemonade, bitter lemonade and ginger ale.

Botanical brewing
Thomas Fentiman's botanical brewing is a technique using a combination of infusion, blending and fermentation of natural ingredients. This approach has not changed much in over 100 years as the knowledge and expertise have been passed on from generation to generation of the Fentiman family.

Thomas Fentiman's original recipe involved milling ginger roots before putting them into copper steam-jacketed pans and leaving them to simmer to release their flavour. Natural botanical ingredients such as herbs, natural flavourings, sugar, spring water and brewer's yeast were then added, thoroughly stirred, and boiled together. The liquid was then transferred into wooden vats and left to undergo the process of fermentation. The liquid went on fermenting and was then decanted from the wooden vats into the iconic handmade stone jars ('grey hens') where it would be ready to drink within seven days.

Alcohol content
In 2009 the state of Maine in the United States banned the sale of Fentimans Victorian Lemonade to anyone aged under 21 after reclassifying it as an "Imitation Liquor". The ban was introduced after a schoolboy in the small town of Houlton, Maine, noticed the lemonade's label stated it contained "up to 0.5% alcohol" and showed his high school principal. They in turn contacted the local police who went to the State's liquor licensing officials and Maine's attorney general's office. Fentimans responded to the ban with a statement telling any concerned citizens of Houlton and law enforcement officers and officials to steer clear of the company's other naturally-fermented botanical soft drinks. Although the lemonade label states that the beverage may contain up to 0.5% alcohol by volume (below the soft drinks' alcohol limit legislated for in the United States of America), Fentimans said it was closer to 0.3%, the same as many common products such as mouthwashes or chewing gums. A person would need to consume 200 fluid ounces (5.7 litres or 12 US pints) to equal the intoxication level from one beer.

Products

Fentimans' current products are:

Soft drinks (275ml/750ml)

 Curiosity Cola
 Cherry Cola
 Dandelion & Burdock
 Mandarin and Seville Orange Jigger
 Lemon Shandy
 Victorian Lemonade
 Rose Lemonade
 Traditional Ginger Beer
 Sparkling Lime and Jasmine
 Gently Sparkling Elderflower
 Old English Root Beer
 Apple and Blackberry
 Sparkling Raspberry
 Pink Ginger

Mixers (125 ml/500 ml)
 Ginger Ale
 Tonic Water/Light Tonic Water
 Rose Lemonade
 Curiosity Cola
 Pink Grapefruit Tonic Water
 Valencian Orange Tonic Water
 Connoisseurs Tonic Water
 Pink Rhubarb Tonic Water
 Oriental Yuzu Tonic
 Tropical Soda
 Elderflower & Rose Tonic

Craft beer
 Hollows & Fentimans Alcoholic Ginger Beer

References

External links
 Fentimans
 Fentimans North America

1905 establishments in the United Kingdom
Companies based in Northumberland
English brands
Food and drink companies established in 1905
Ginger beer
Hexham

Fentimans


1001 Things You Should Know is a British game show that aired on Channel 4 from 12 November 2012 to 31 May 2013 and hosted by Sandi Toksvig.

Format
Three contestants compete in each show. They are offered a choice of 12 categories, and in each category, an expert (either a celebrity from a Channel 4 show or just a field expert) asks them a question, the answer of which it is thought people 'should know'. There is no prize money awarded for answering this question correctly, but the contestant can then answer a (harder) related cash question for money. Wrong answers lock a contestant out of the game, and the question is open to 'steals'.

In round one, correct answers to the cash question are worth £100. In round two, with fewer categories left to choose from, correct answers are worth £300, whilst in round three they are worth £601.

The categories include: Film, Geography, Music, Celebrity, Sport, Art, Food & Drink, History, Television, Human Body, Science, Nature, Maths, Politics, Animals and Mystery. (The Mystery category is the only category that appears on every show.)

Final round
The final round involves the three categories the contestants have thus far avoided, and the player in the lead gets the first choice of category. The player in 3rd place answers first, and must correctly answer 2 questions, the first of which is the one they should know. An incorrect answer to either puts them out of the game. However, if the leading player gets both questions correctly, they'll automatically win the game even if other players have also answered correctly. If no-one answers both questions correctly in the final round, then, there is no returning champion, and 3 new contestants will compete in the next show instead.

In Series 2, this was altered, as instead of all 3 contestants picking their categories, only the person who banked the most money picks which category everybody gets.

The winner of the game gets the chance to answer a single question in order to win the entire prize pot built up by the 3 contestants. If this question is not answered correctly, the prize pot rolls over to the next show. The champion from each show returns for the following show to compete against two new contestants, regardless of whether they win the jackpot or not.

Category Experts

Series 1

Series 2

Transmissions

References

External links

2012 British television series debuts
2013 British television series endings
2010s British game shows
Channel 4 game shows
Television shows produced by Thames Television
Television series by Fremantle (company)
English-language television shows

1001 Things You Should Know


Canal Nou Internacional () was a Spanish television channel from the Valencian Community operated by Ràdio Televisió Valenciana. It was created with the intention of approaching Valencia to the valencian community around the world, as well as promoting it to the rest of citizens of those areas. Thus its area of distribution was bigger than those of the three autonomous terrestrial broadcast channels (Canal Nou, Canal Nou Dos and Canal Nou 24) and that its programming was a mix of content from the three regional channels, but usually with greater presence Canal Nou Dos content, as they are self-produced programs. These were joined by the reports, which are broadcast on Canal Nou and Canal Nou 24 as well as some sports.

The channel was known as Canal Comunitat Valenciana (CCV) until 5 May 2005, changing its name on that day to Televisió Valenciana Internacional (TVVi). On 6 September 2010 the channel changed its name again, this time to Canal Nou International. Its contents were almost exclusively in Valencian language.

Reception
The reception of the channel could be made through the Hispasat satellite and the various cable TV operators, but by 16 July 2010 the channel broadcast exclusively through the Internet, ceasing its broadcasts by other platforms without notice due to accumulated debts with Telefónica de Sistemas. On 1 March 2011 all references and links to the channel were removed from Radiotelevisió Valenciana's site, but the page where the broadcast could be followed is still active, broadcasting their original Canal Nou and Canal Nou Dos content and a test card broadcasting Ràdio Nou, when the contents broadcast by those channels cannot be streamed by Internet.

Notes

External links
Official Website
Watch live

2005 establishments in the Valencian Community
2013 disestablishments in the Valencian Community
Catalan-language television stations
Defunct television channels in Spain
Radiotelevisió Valenciana
Television channels and stations established in 2005
Television channels and stations disestablished in 2013
Mass media in the Valencian Community

Canal Nou Internacional


A therapsid is a member of the clade Therapsida which is a major group of eupelycosaurian synapsids that includes mammals and their ancestors and relatives. Many of the traits today seen as unique to mammals had their origin within early therapsids, including limbs that were oriented more underneath the body, as opposed to the sprawling posture of many reptiles and salamanders.

Therapsids evolved from "pelycosaurs", specifically within the Sphenacodontia, more than 279.5 million years ago. They replaced the "pelycosaurs" as the dominant large land animals in the Guadalupian through to the Early Triassic. In the aftermath of the Permian–Triassic extinction event, therapsids declined in relative importance to the rapidly diversifying reptiles during the Middle Triassic.

The therapsids include the cynodonts, the group that gave rise to mammals (Mammaliaformes) in the Late Triassic, around 225 million years ago. Of the non-mammalian therapsids, only cynodonts survived beyond the end of the Triassic, with the only other remaining group of therapsids to have survived into the Late Triassic, the dicynodonts, becoming extinct towards the end of the period. The last surviving group of non-mammaliaform cynodonts were the Tritylodontidae, which became extinct during the Early Cretaceous.

Characteristics

Jaw and teeth
Therapsids' temporal fenestrae were larger than those of the pelycosaurs. The jaws of some therapsids were more complex and powerful, and the teeth were differentiated into frontal incisors for nipping, great lateral canines for puncturing and tearing, and molars for shearing and chopping food.

Posture

Therapsid legs were positioned more vertically beneath their bodies than were the sprawling legs of reptiles and pelycosaurs. Also compared to these groups, the feet were more symmetrical, with the first and last toes short and the middle toes long, an indication that the foot's axis was placed parallel to that of the animal, not sprawling out sideways. This orientation would have given a more mammal-like gait than the lizard-like gait of the pelycosaurs.

Physiology

The physiology of therapsids is poorly understood. Most Permian therapsids had a pineal foramen, indicating that they had a parietal eye like many modern reptiles and amphibians. The parietal eye serves an important role in thermoregulation and the circadian rhythm of ectotherms, but is absent in modern mammals, which are endothermic. Near the end of the Permian, dicynodonts, therocephalians, and cynodonts show parallel trends towards loss of the pineal foramen, and the foramen is completely absent in probainognathian cynodonts. Evidence from oxygen isotopes, which are correlated with body temperature, suggests that most Permian therapsids were ectotherms and that endothermy evolved convergently in dicynodonts and cynodonts near the end of the Permian. In contrast, evidence from histology suggests that endothermy is shared across Therapsida, whereas estimates of blood flow rate and lifespan in the mammaliaform Morganucodon suggest that even early mammaliaforms had reptile-like metabolic rates. Evidence for respiratory turbinates, which have been hypothesized to be indicative of endothermy, was reported in the therocephalian Glanosuchus, but subsequent study showed that the apparent attachment sites for turbinates may simply be the result of distortion of the skull.

Integument

The evolution of integument in therapsids is poorly known, and there are few fossils that provide direct evidence for the presence or absence of fur. The most basal synapsids with unambiguous direct evidence of fur are docodonts, which are mammaliaforms very closely related to crown-group mammals. Fossilized facial skin from the dinocephalian Estemmenosuchus has been described as showing that the skin was glandular and lacked both scales and hair.

Coprolites containing what appear to be hairs have been found from the Permian. Though the source of these hairs is not known with certainty, they may suggest that hair was present in at least some Permian therapsids.

The closure of the pineal foramen in probainognathian cynodonts may indicate a mutation in the regulatory gene Msx2, which is involved in both the closure of the skull roof and the maintenance of hair follicles in mice. This suggests that hair may have first evolved in probainognathians, though it does not entirely rule out an earlier origin of fur.

Whiskers probably evolved in probainognathian cynodonts. Some studies had inferred an earlier origin for whiskers based on the presence of foramina on the snout of therocephalians and early cynodonts, but the arrangement of foramina in these taxa actually closely resembles lizards, which would make the presence of mammal-like whiskers unlikely.

Evolutionary history

Therapsids evolved from a group of pelycosaurs called sphenacodonts. Therapsids became the dominant land animals in the Middle Permian, displacing the pelycosaurs. Therapsida consists of four major clades: the dinocephalians, the herbivorous anomodonts, the carnivorous biarmosuchians, and the mostly carnivorous theriodonts. After a brief burst of evolutionary diversity, the dinocephalians died out in the later Middle Permian (Guadalupian) but the anomodont dicynodonts as well as the theriodont gorgonopsians and therocephalians flourished, being joined at the very end of the Permian by the first of the cynodonts.

Like all land animals, the therapsids were seriously affected by the Permian–Triassic extinction event, with the very successful gorgonopsians and the biarmosuchians dying out altogether and the remaining groups—dicynodonts, therocephalians, and cynodonts—reduced to a handful of species each by the earliest Triassic. The dicynodonts, now represented by a single group of large stocky herbivores, the Kannemeyeriiformes, and the medium-sized cynodonts (including both carnivorous and herbivorous forms), flourished worldwide throughout the Early and Middle Triassic. They disappear from the fossil record across much of Pangea at the end of the Carnian (Late Triassic), although they continued for some time longer in the wet equatorial band and the south.

Some exceptions were the still further derived eucynodonts. At least three groups of them survived. They all appeared in the Late Triassic period. The extremely mammal-like family, Tritylodontidae, survived into the Early Cretaceous. Another extremely mammal-like family, Tritheledontidae, are unknown later than the Early Jurassic. Mammaliaformes was the third group, including Morganucodon and similar animals. Some taxonomists refer to these animals as "mammals", though most limit the term to the mammalian crown group.

The non-eucynodont cynodonts survived the Permian–Triassic extinction; Thrinaxodon, Galesaurus and Platycraniellus are known from the Early Triassic. By the Middle Triassic, however, only the eucynodonts remained.

The therocephalians, relatives of the cynodonts, managed to survive the Permian-Triassic extinction and continued to diversify through the Early Triassic period. Approaching the end of the period, however, the therocephalians were in decline to eventual extinction, likely outcompeted by the rapidly diversifying Saurian lineage of diapsids, equipped with sophisticated respiratory systems better suited to the very hot, dry and oxygen-poor world of the End-Triassic.

Dicynodonts were among the most successful groups of therapsids during the Late Permian, and survived through to near the end of the Triassic.

Mammals are the only living therapsids. The mammalian crown group, which evolved in the Early Jurassic period, radiated from a group of mammaliaforms that included the docodonts. The mammaliaforms themselves evolved from probainognathians, a lineage of the eucynodont suborder.

Classification

Six major groups of therapsids are generally recognized: Biarmosuchia, Dinocephalia, Anomodontia, Gorgonopsia, Therocephalia, and Cynodontia. A clade uniting therocephalians and cynodonts, called Eutheriodontia, is well-supported, but relationships among the other four clades are controversial. The most widely accepted hypothesis of therapsid relationships, the Hopson and Barghausen paradigm, was first proposed in 1986. Under this hypothesis, biarmosuchians are the earliest-diverging major therapsid group, with the other five groups forming the Eutherapsida, and within Eutherapsida, gorgonopsians are the sister taxon of eutheriodonts, together forming the Theriodontia. Hopson and Barghausen did not initially come to a conclusion about how dinocephalians, anomodonts, and theriodonts were related to each other, but subsequent studies suggested that anomodonts and theriodonts should be classified together as the Neotherapsida. However, there remains debate over these relationships; in particular, some studies have suggested that anomodonts, not gorgonopsians, are the sister taxon of Eutheriodontia, other studies have found dinocephalians and anomodonts to form a clade, and both the phylogenetic position and monophyly of Biarmosuchia remain controversial.

In addition to the six major groups, there are several other lineages and species of uncertain classification. Raranimus from the early Middle Permian of China is likely to be the earliest-diverging known therapsid. Tetraceratops from the Early Permian of the United States has been hypothesized to be an even earlier-diverging therapsid, but more recent study has suggested it is more likely to be a non-therapsid sphenacodontian.

Biarmosuchia

Biarmosuchia is the most recently-recognized therapsid clade, first recognized as a distinct lineage by Hopson and Barghausen in 1986 and formally named by Sigogneau-Russell in 1989. Most biarmosuchians were previously classified as gorgonopsians. Biarmosuchia includes the distinctive Burnetiamorpha, but support for the monophyly of Biarmosuchia is relatively low. Many biarmosuchians are known for extensive cranial ornamentation.

Dinocephalia

Dinocephalia comprises two distinctive groups, the Anteosauria and Tapinocephalia.

Historically, carnivorous dinocephalians, including both anteosaurs and titanosuchids, were called titanosuchians and classified as members of Theriodontia, while the herbivorous Tapinocephalidae were classified as members of Anomodontia.

Anomodontia

Anomodontia includes the dicynodonts, a clade of tusked, beaked herbivores, and the most diverse and long-lived clade of non-cynodont therapsids. Other members of Anomodontia include Suminia, which is thought to have been a climbing form.

Gorgonopsia

Gorgonopsia is an abundant but morphologically homogeneous group of saber-toothed predators.

Therocephalia

It has been suggested that Therocephalia might not be monophyletic, with some species more closely related to cynodonts than others. However, most studies regard Therocephalia as monophyletic.

Cynodontia

Cynodonts are the most diverse and longest-lived of the therapsid groups, as Cynodontia includes mammals.  Cynodonts are the only major therapsid clade to lack a Middle Permian fossil record, with the earliest-known cynodont being Charassognathus from the Wuchiapingian age of the Late Permian. Non-mammalian cynodonts include both carnivorous and herbivorous forms.

See also
 Evolution of mammals
 Timeline of the evolutionary history of life
 Vertebrate paleontology

Notes

References

Further reading
 Benton, M. J. (2004). Vertebrate Palaeontology, 3rd ed., Blackwell Science.
 Carroll, R. L. (1988). Vertebrate Paleontology & Evolution. W. H. Freeman & Company, New York.
 Kemp, T. S. (2005). The origin and evolution of mammals. Oxford University Press.
 Romer, A. S. (1966). Vertebrate Paleontology. University of Chicago Press, 1933; 3rd ed.
 Bennett, A. F., & Ruben, J. A. (1986). "The metabolic and thermoregulatory status of therapsids." In The ecology and biology of mammal-like reptiles. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 207-218.

External links

 "Therapsida: Mammals and extinct relatives" Tree of Life
 "Therapsida: overview" Palaeos

Cisuralian first appearances
Extant Permian first appearances
Fossil taxa described in 1905
Taxa named by Robert Broom

Therapsid


Nixonton (also Nixons Town or Windmill Point) is an unincorporated community in Pasquotank County, North Carolina, United States. Nixonton was once a municipality, having been incorporated in 1758.

A small port, a hub for Quaker trade in the area, existed at the townsite from the 1740s. In 1746, Zachariah Nixon (III, d. 1752), bequeathed 161.5 acres of the land north of the Little River of Albemarle Sound in Pasquotank County to be incorporated as a town. The Nixons were an important settler family, and upon his death in 1752, Nixon gave his sons Francis (d. 1772) and Zachariah IV (d. 1775) large sums of land, including in what was then known as "Nixon town". By the time it was incorporated on December 5, 1758, over 50 acres of the town had been divided into a grid of half-acre lots with 70 permanent residents; it was named "Nixon's town" and Francis Nixon, among others, was appointed trustee to develop the town. In 1770, Nixonton was the only town in Pasquotank and in 1784 the Pasquotank court house was established Nixonton, which was also the county seat between 1785 (also when the town's prison was commissioned) and 1800, when it was replaced in both capacities by the newly-built Elizabeth (City). Nixonton Academy school existed between 1804 and the 1830s.

It is part of the Elizabeth City micropolitan area.

References

Unincorporated communities in Pasquotank County, North Carolina
Elizabeth City, North Carolina micropolitan area
Populated places established in 1758
Unincorporated communities in North Carolina
Former municipalities in North Carolina

Nixonton, North Carolina