Peter Richard Tait (15 March 1950 – 20 September 2002) was an English radio presenter.

Early career
Tait was born in Croydon, Surrey, England. After leaving school, he started a career in insurance, however he soon turned professional as a DJ with residencies in Leicester, Southend-On-Sea, Richmond, Brighton, East Grinstead and Croydon.

In 1977, he got a job at U.B.N. which was a radio station for the workers of United Biscuits.  After 18 months, he landed the job as afternoon show presenter at Radio Trent in Nottingham where he worked for five years.

In 1983, Radio Caroline relaunched and returned to the North Sea.  Tait was offered the Radio Caroline breakfast show where he was known as Peter Clark, and attracted an audience of over three million listeners, however due to the station having a lack of revenue, he left after three months.

Later career
On 2 January 1984, he joined Radio Aire in Leeds where he initially hosted the early breakfast show.  By 1986, he was presenting the drivetime show, hosting competitions such as 'Take on Tait', where he would invite listeners to call him to test his vast musical knowledge. He was back on the breakfast show by mid-1988 where he remained until the station frequency split in 1990.  Tait was also a regular presenter on the overnight sustaining service, The Superstation, so was often heard on many independent local radio stations across the UK.

On 17 July 1990, Magic 828 was launched and Tait initially presented the afternoon show.  By 1992, he had moved to the breakfast show where he remained until 2002, with a format similar to the one he had used on Radio Aire.  At this point, Magic 828 were the number one AM station in the country, attracting 169,000 listeners.

During his time at Radio Aire and Magic 828, Tait arranged and hosted many successful party nights.  The Radio Aire Solid Gold Nights and Magic 828 Party Nights featured acts such as Bobby Vee, Mud, The Three Degrees and Odyssey.

Death
In February 2002, family and friends were concerned about his health which prompted him to see a doctor. He died on 20 September 2002.  On the Monday following his death, Magic 828 and Radio Aire paid tribute to Tait with extended news bulletins, featuring archive clips from his old shows and comments from his colleagues and friends, including Dale Winton.

References

External links
 Peter Tait on Radio Aire

1950 births
2002 deaths
English radio presenters
People from Croydon
Deaths from cancer in England

Peter Tait (radio presenter)


A pivot language, sometimes also called a bridge language, is an artificial or natural language used as an intermediary language for translation between many different languages – to translate between any pair of languages A and B, one translates A to the pivot language P, then from P to B. Using a pivot language avoids the combinatorial explosion of having translators across every combination of the supported languages, as the number of combinations of language is linear (), rather than quadratic  – one need only know the language A and the pivot language P (and someone else the language B and the pivot P), rather than needing a different translator for every possible combination of A and B.

The disadvantage of a pivot language is that each step of retranslation introduces possible mistakes and ambiguities – using a pivot language involves two steps, rather than one. For example, when Hernán Cortés communicated with Mesoamerican Indians, he spoke Spanish to Gerónimo de Aguilar, who spoke Mayan to Malintzin, who spoke Nahuatl to the locals.

Examples

English, French, Russian, and Arabic are often used as pivot languages.  Interlingua has been used as a pivot language in international conferences and has been proposed as a pivot language for the European Union.  Esperanto was proposed as a pivot language in the Distributed Language Translation project and has been used in this way in the Majstro Tradukvortaro at the Esperanto website Majstro.com.  The Universal Networking Language is an artificial language specifically designed for use as a pivot language.

In computing

Pivot coding is also a common method of translating data for computer systems.  For example, the Internet Protocol, XML and high level languages are pivot codings of computer data which are then often rendered into internal binary formats for particular computer systems.

Unicode was designed to be usable as a pivot coding between various major existing character encodings, though its widespread adoption as a coding in its own right has made this usage unimportant.

References

 Hua Wu and Haifeng Wang. 2009. Revisiting Pivot Language Approach for Machine Translation.  ACL-09.
 Utiyama, M. & H. Isahara (2006) A comparison of pivot methods for phrase-based statistical machine translation. In Proceedings of NAACL/HLT, 484{491.

Translation
Constructed languages
Language

Pivot language


Agnes I (c. 1090 – 29 December 1125) was Abbess of Gandersheim and Quedlinburg.

She was the second daughter of Judith of Swabia and Władysław I Herman. She was the granddaughter of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor. Agnes became abbess at Gandersheim Abbey, the place of several famous women, such as Hroswitha of Gandersheim, recorded by Conrad Celtes.

She was Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg from 1110 until 1125. She was excommunicated by Pope Calixtus II for her loyalty to her maternal cousin, Henry V, the King of the Romans in 1119.

She died in Quedlinburg.

References

1090s births
1125 deaths
12th-century German abbesses
12th-century Christian abbesses
Abbesses of Quedlinburg
People excommunicated by the Catholic Church
Polish princesses
Piast dynasty

Agnes I, Abbess of Quedlinburg


Niels Nicolas Treschow (5 September 1751 – 22 September 1833) was a Norwegian philosopher, educator and politician.

Biography
Treschow was born in Strømsø, now part of Drammen in Buskerud.  He was the son of Peter Treschow (1718-1773) who was a merchant. He took his student examation in 1766 and was awarded a Master's Degree in philosophy in 1774. Treschow was rector at the  Trondheim Cathedral School from 1774-1780 and later served as an educator in Oslo and Copenhagen.

He became a professor at the newly established University of Oslo in 1813 and as one of initially only five professors was influential in forming the university during its first period. Today, the main building of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oslo bears his name.

He served as Minister of Education and Church Affairs 1814–1816, 1817–1819, 1820–1822 and 1823–1825, and member of the Council of State Division in Stockholm 1816–1817, 1819–1820, and 1822–1823. He was elected a member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters in 1790. In 1825, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.   He was decorated with both theCommander's Cross of the Order of the North Star and the Knight's Cross of Order of the Dannebrog.

Selected works
Forsøg om Guds tilværelse af theoretiske grunde: i anledning af den kantiske philosophie (1794)
Philosophiske Forsøg (1805)
Moral for Folk og Stat (1810–12)
Om Philosophiens Natur og Dele: en dogmatisk og historisk Indledning til denne Videnskab (1811)
Om den menneskelige Natur i Almindelighed, især dens aandelige Side (1812)
Almindelig Logik (1813)
Christendommens Aand, eller Den evangeliske Lære: frimodig og upartisk beskreven  (1828)

References

Other sources
Christophersen, H. O   (1977) Niels Treschow, 1751-1833: En tenker mellom to tidsaldrer (Grøndahl & Søn Forlag)
Norway and the Norwegians, Treschow —His writings — Anthropology — Eilschow  by Robert Gordon Latham, (published 1840 by R. Bentley in London) pp. 149–153.

External links
Treschows gate (Oslo)

1751 births
1833 deaths
People from Drammen
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters
Knights of the Order of the Dannebrog
19th-century Norwegian politicians
Academic staff of the University of Oslo
Norwegian philosophers
Rectors of the University of Copenhagen
Knights of the Order of Charles XIII
Ministers of Education of Norway

Niels Treschow


Karl Ewald Maximilian Burret, commonly known as Max Burret (6 June 1883 – 19 September 1964) was a German botanist.

Burret was born in Saffig near Andernach in the Prussian Rhine Province. He originally studied law at Lausanne and Munich at the instigation of his father. Burret had a greater interest in natural science than in law, and he eventually abandoned his law studies to conduct botanical research in Berlin, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1909 for his taxonomic thesis, and quickly became one of Germany's most prominent botanists.  Burret participated in many botanical science organizations in Germany, taking up leadership positions, such as assistant at the Berlin Botanical Museum and Garden from 1909 to 1911, as well as botanical assistant and lecturer at the Botanical Institute of the Agricultural College in Berlin in 1911 through 1921.  In 1922 he was appointed custodian of the Botanical Museum and Garden in Berlin, and later appointed to professor of botanical biology at Berlin University.

Burret made numerous travels in Europe and Africa, as well as South America.  He was invited by the Brazilian government to make a trip to that country, specifically for the study of the various species of palm trees indigenous to the region. Shortly after his return to Germany, he voyaged to the Old World tropics, visiting Sri Lanka, the Malay Peninsula, Java, and Sumatra in 1938 and 1939. Burret was among the first botanists to conduct ground-breaking research on palms, beginning in Africa and later in South America and Indomalaysia.  He identified, named and classified dozens of palm species, including Rhapis multifida (finger palm) and Livistona beccariana.  He also named and classified other tropical flora, chiefly those of the linden family.  The names of several genera of palm trees were named after him, including the genera Maxburretia and Burretiokentia.

Burret is the author of numerous systematic papers on the floral families Tiliaceae (the linden family) and Palmae (the palm family). He died in Berlin.

References

 BurretCEM at www.nationaalherbarium.nl
  Rhapis Palms named by Max Burret
 Studies in the genus Livistona (Arecaceae) at www.apscience.org.au

1883 births
1964 deaths
20th-century German botanists
Scientists from the Rhine Province

Max Burret


Jean-Baptiste Maunier (, born 22 December 1990) is a French actor and singer. He is best known for his role in the 2004 French film Les Choristes.

Early life
Jean-Baptiste Maunier was born to Thierry Maunier, a cameraman, and Muriel Maunier. He has a younger brother, Benjamin. His father sang in a well-known church choir (Les Petits Chanteurs de Saint Marc). Jean-Baptiste attended a Roman Catholic school in Lyon, France. He studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York between 2008 and 2009 to perfect his acting and English, returning to France to sing in Les Enfoirés charity concerts.

Career

Acting career
Maunier gained fame for his starring role in the 2004 French film Les Choristes, in which he plays Pierre Morhange, a delinquent with an exceptional singing voice at the correctional school Fond de L'Étang. Christophe Barratier, the director of Les Choristes, chose Maunier because "he had the right look" and a marvellous voice. He was also exceptionally appealing for the role.

Following the release of the film, Maunier and the choir took part in numerous concerts all over the world, including Japan and Canada. In February 2005, he left the choir in order to devote more time to his studies and to his acting career. In April and August 2005, he took part in a four-episode television series for France 2, Le Cri, playing a young steelworker. The series was released in 2006.

Maunier appears in Le Grand Meaulnes (2006) as Francois Seurel. In Piccolo, Saxo et compagnie (2006), an animated film, he lent his voice to the character "Saxo". In the summer of 2006, Maunier acted in Hellphone, a full-length film directed by James Huth. In this film, Maunier plays the role of Sid. The film was released in March 2007.
In L'Auberge rouge, directed by Gérard Krawczyk (an adaptation of the 1951 version) Maunier stars as Octave. It opened in theaters in France on 5 December 2007. Jean-Baptiste spent a year studying at New York's Lee Strasberg Institute in 2008 to unleash his acting potentials. Staying in the USA allowed him to perfect his English. He returned to France in 2010, and performed in the Enfoirés charity concert of 2010.

Singing career
Upon entering collège (middle school), Maunier was asked to make a choice between various activities. He chose singing and became a member of Les Petits Chanteurs de Saint-Marc (full name is "La Chorale des Petits Enfants De Saint-Marc"). In the choir, he was tutored by Nicolas Porte. In Les Choristes, the film that made him widely famous for his singing skills, both Maunier's solo and the chorus of "Les Petits Chanteurs de Saint-Marc" are featured on the original soundtrack.

In 2005, to keep a souvenir of his voice before it broke, Maunier decided to sing with Clemence Saint-Preux and had released the single, Concerto pour deux voix, which was in turn an adaptation of Concerto pour une Voix.

Since 2005 he has participated in Les Enfoirés, an ensemble of notable singers and performers in France that periodically performs charity concerts. He contributed a song named "Le Monde Qui Est Le Mien" for the album "We Love Disney 2" and also released a single, "Je Reviens".

Filmography

Theater

References

External links

 Official Site

1990 births
Living people
People from Var (department)
French male film actors
French male television actors
French child singers
Boy sopranos
French Roman Catholics
Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute alumni
21st-century French singers
21st-century French male singers

Jean-Baptiste Maunier


In some countries, Habilitation is a step toward becoming a professor that comes after people receive their Ph. D. (doctor of philosophy or "doctorate"). The term habilitation is derived from the Medieval Latin habilitare, meaning "to make suitable, to fit", from Classical Latin habilis "fit, proper, skillful".

Education
Academia

Habilitation


Brigadier General Richard Kane (1662–1736) was an Irish soldier who served in the British Army. He is particularly associated with the island of Minorca.

Origins
Born to Thomas O'Cahan and his wife, Margaret Dobbin, at his mother's home in Duneane, County Antrim, in Ulster, Ireland, in December 1662. At the age of 26, he anglicised his name to Kane and joined a volunteer Protestant regiment in his home town, Carrickfergus, raised to oppose James II's Catholic rule.

The Nine Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession
Kane enlisted as a Lieutenant in the Antrim Volunteers, part of the Army of the North. This was a scratch force of Protestants raised to oppose the Royal Irish Army which was loyal to James II.

Kane took part in the defence of Derry in 1689. Shortly afterwards, he joined the Earl of Meath's Regiment (later the Royal Irish Regiment, and otherwise known as the 18th Regiment) and fought in William III's campaigns in Ireland. He was present at the Battle of the Boyne and Siege of Limerick in 1690.

His regiment was singled out in recognition of its bravery during the 1695 siege of Namur at which he was wounded. In 1702, William died and the Duke of Marlborough took command of the army. Kane fought under Marlborough in many bloody battles of the War of the Spanish Succession and was severely wounded at Blenheim. In December 1710, Queen Anne named him colonel of his own regiment of foot (formerly the regiment of the disgraced George Macartney), which was finally disbanded in 1717.

In 1711, Kane sailed to Canada in an unsuccessful expedition under General Jack Hill to take Quebec from the French. On that voyage, he visited Boston. In the following year he commanded British troops in a takeover of the town of Dunkirk which ended disastrously when an epidemic killed half of the men.

Menorca and Gibraltar
In the summer of 1712, Queen Anne signed orders for the Duke of Argyll to proceed to the Spanish island of Menorca as its Governor. Menorca had been captured by the British in 1708 and under the terms of the peace treaty then being negotiated, the island would remain in British hands. Argyll remained titular governor for the next three years, but the work was really for Richard Kane, the lieutenant governor. He arrived 10 November 1712 and remained on the island, apart from a few absences, until his death twenty four years later.

In Menorca, against the interference of the Roman Catholic Church and always short of funds, Kane reformed the legal system, drew up a new constitution, built a road connecting the old Spanish capital, Ciudadela, with Mahón, the new capital, and improved trade by making Mahon a free port. He introduced new agricultural methods and imported new varieties of cereal, new breeds of cattle and drought-resistant clover to feed them.

In 1720–1721, he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Gibraltar when it was threatened by Spain and, in 1725, George I ordered Kane to Gibraltar again to strengthen the defences and ward off Spanish invaders. This he did, at the same time recommending a civil government for "the Rock". George I rewarded him in 1725 for his work by giving him the colonelcy of a regiment (later the 9th Regiment of Foot). Kane returned to Menorca in February 1727, just before the Spanish launched an unsuccessful siege on Gibraltar.

He was formally appointed Governor of Menorca in 1733 and given the rank of brigadier general in 1735. He was not knighted. Richard Kane died in Mahon on 31 December 1736 after almost twenty five years of devoted service on the island. He was buried in the chapel of St. Philip's Castle which was later bombed by the Spanish. A bust by J. M. Ruysback with a Latin inscription listing his many achievements is in Westminster Abbey. Although an excellent soldier, Kane is best remembered as a colonial administrator devoted to the people in his care.

Memorial at Westminster Abbey

In the west aisle of the north transept in Westminster Abbey is a memorial to Kane by the sculptor John Michael Rysbrack. It consists of a monument in white, grey and black marbles with a bust in armour with shoulder length hair on a pedestal. The Latin inscription can be translated:

"Sacred to the memory of Richard Kane laid to rest at the citadel of the Balearic island of Menorca named for Saint Philip, who was born on December 20, 1666, at Duneane in County Antrim. In 1689, he served his military apprenticeship in the famous siege of Derry, whereafter, under William III of blessed memory, he continued in armed service both at home, until the subjugation of all Ireland, and abroad, in Flanders, at great risk of life, not least by reason of a grave wound received at the siege of Namur. In 1702, when war broke out afresh in the reign of Queen Anne, again he campaigned in Belgium before joining the expedition to Canada. In 1712, under the renowned Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, and later under Baron Carpenter, he acted as civil governor of Menorca where, capably undertaking all tasks, both civil and military, and in command of army and navy alike, he planned, ordered and maintained everything that was necessary, expedient or beneficial for the preservation of the island, in war and in peace, on sea and on land, and also had paved, fortified and adorned a truly royal road throughout the length of an island hitherto impassable. In 1720, at the behest of George I, he crossed from Mahon to Gibraltar and thwarted an attack by the Spaniards who planned to take it by surprise. In 1725, he returned to the same scene of action for eighteen months and, when the enemy laid the Peninsula under heavy siege, quashed their every hope of taking it. After this sequence of sterling achievements as Lieutenant Governor in 1733 at the command of George II neither by his own seeking nor with prior knowledge, as with his other offices wheresoever held, he was elevated to the supreme command in Menorca. But oh, oh, how uncertain is the life of man! He who under four sovereigns had borne arms with the greatest shrewdness, courage and dignity, who had served God with all his heart and played the role not less of a Christian than of a good soldier, of pure faith and old-fashioned courtesy, dear to his friends, amiable to his associates, affable to his people, kind and generous to all, and in all things concerned more for the public good than for his own, left an island that was both British and Spanish sadly mourning his loss and in his seventy sixth year on December 19, 1736, breathed his last."

Bibliography
He left a Narrative of All the Campaigns of King William and the Duke of Marlborough and wrote A New System of Military Discipline for Foot on Action which became the British army's "bible" at the time.

References

|-

|-

1662 births
1736 deaths
Governors of Gibraltar
British Army brigadiers
People from Carrickfergus
British military personnel of the War of the Spanish Succession
Royal Irish Regiment (1684–1922) officers
British military personnel of the Anglo-Spanish War (1727–1729)
Irish colonial officials
Military personnel from County Antrim

Richard Kane


The Maitland Art Center (formerly known as The Research Studio) is a historic site in Maitland, Florida. It was founded and designed by architect and artist J. Andre Smith (1880–1959) in 1937 as an artist colony, dedicated to experimental art.  Funded by philanthropist Mary Curtis Bok, the colony hosted artists such as Ralston Crawford, Milton Avery, and Consuelo Kanaga. It is located at 231 West Packwood Avenue. On November 17, 1982, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

The Maitland Art Center is one of the five museums encompassed by the Art & History Museums - Maitland (A&H).  The A&H's Maitland Art Center offers artist residency programs, a variety of art classes for adults and children, professional development for artists, and dynamic programming for art appreciation.  The A&H is a non-profit organization funded by earned income and contributions by the City of Maitland, the State of Florida, United Arts of Central Florida, grants, and individual donations.

The A&H's Maitland Art Center is one of the few examples of Mayan Revival architecture, also known as Fantasy Architecture in the southeast.  The grounds are a common location for outdoor weddings.  The art center offers three areas for weddings: the Main Garden, the Chapel, and the Mayan Courtyard.

The Center (as The Research Studio (Maitland Art Center)) was designated a National Historic Landmark in August 2014.  It was given this designation primarily for its distinctive architecture, a Mayan-influenced interpretation of Art Deco, sometimes referred to as Mayan Revival.

See also
List of National Historic Landmarks in Florida
National Register of Historic Places listings in Orange County, Florida

References

External links

Florida's Office of Cultural and Historical Programs
Orange County listings
Maitland Art Center

Art Colony Bell at A History of Central Florida Podcast

National Historic Landmarks in Florida
National Register of Historic Places in Orange County, Florida
Art museums and galleries in Florida
Tourist attractions in Orange County, Florida
Historic American Buildings Survey in Florida
Mayan Revival architecture
Buildings and structures completed in 1937
1937 establishments in Florida
Maitland, Florida

Maitland Art Center


Pyinbya (, ; 817–876) was the king of Pagan Dynasty of Burma (Myanmar) who founded the city of Pagan (Bagan) in 849 CE. Though the Burmese chronicles describe him as the 33rd king of the dynasty founded in early 2nd century CE, modern historians consider Pyinbya one of the first kings of Pagan, which would gradually take over present-day central Burma in the next two hundred years. He was the paternal great-grandfather of King Anawrahta, the founder of Pagan Empire.

Chronicle tradition
According to the Burmese chronicles, the future king was born to King Saw Khin Hnit of Pagan. He was born in either 817 CE (or 802 CE). He was lord of Pyinbya village of Pagan prior to his accession, and known as Pyinbya Mintha. He succeeded his brother King Khelu as king in 846 CE. He founded the city of Pagan on 23 December 849 (6th waxing of Pyatho 211 ME). He also founded a settlement of Taungdwin in 857, perhaps the southernmost limit of his nascent kingdom. He died in 876 CE at age 59 (in his 60th year). (Note that main Burmese chronicles do not agree on his regnal years or birth and death years. The oldest chronicle Zatadawbon Yazawin is considered to be the most accurate for the Pagan period.) The table below lists the dates given by four main chronicles, as well as Hmannan's dates when anchored by the Anawrahta's inscriptionally verified accession date of 1044.

Pyinbya was succeeded by his son Tannet.

Scholarship views
According to mainstream scholarship, Pyinbya is one of the earliest kings of Pagan, founded by the Mranma (Bamar / Burmans) of the Nanzhao Kingdom. Pagan is the first known Burman settlement in the Irrawaddy valley, following the devastating raids into upper Irrawaddy valley by Nanzhao that lasted from the 750s to the 830s. After the attacks, which left the Pyu states severely weakened, large numbers of Mranma  warriors of Nanzhao and their families remained in the upper Irrawaddy valley. Pagan was founded as a fortified settlement along a bend in the Irrawaddy river. The new settlement may have been designed to help the Nanzhao pacify the surrounding countryside. It was a certainly a strategic spot, close to the Chindwin river and just to the west of a richly irrigated rice plain.

Pagan was one of several competing city-states until the late 10th century when it grew in authority and grandeur. Two hundred years after Pyinbya founded Pagan, his great-grandson Anawrahta went on to create the Pagan Empire, the first ever unification of the Irrawaddy valley and its periphery.

Notes

References

Bibliography

Pagan dynasty
817 births
876 deaths
9th-century Burmese monarchs

Pyinbya


Biketown (stylized as BIKETOWN), also known as Biketown PDX, is a bicycle-sharing system in Portland, Oregon, that began operation on July 19, 2016. The system is owned by Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) and operated by Lyft, with Nike, Inc. as the title sponsor. At launch, the system had 100 stations and 1,000 bicycles serving the city's central and eastside neighborhoods, with hopes to expand outward.

History

Planning for a modern bicycle-sharing system for Portland began in 2009, under the direction of PBOT. Beginning in 1994, a group of Portlanders experimented with a free community bike sharing system called the "Yellow Bike Project"; the program, inspired by a similar scheme in Amsterdam and operated by the Community Cycling Center, was declared a failure three years later after many of the bikes were subject to vandalism, theft and disrepair.

In December 2011, Metro approved the allocation of a $2 million federal grant to PBOT for the development of a bike share system. Alta Bike Share, a national operator of similar systems headquartered in Portland, was contracted in September 2012 to be the system's operator. The $4 million cost of the system and inability to secure a corporate sponsor led to several delays in the planned launch.

In March 2014, selected supplier Bixi declared bankruptcy, forcing another delay in the system's launch to 2015. Planned operator Alta Bike Share would later be sold to Motivate in October.

In September 2015, the Portland City Council approved a new contract with Motivate to move forward on the bikeshare program. Motivate went on to place a $1.5 million order placed with Social Bicycles to manufacture and deliver "smart" bicycles that include on-board computers and other technologies.

In January 2016, Portland-area based Nike signed a $10 million, five-year deal to be the program's sponsor, naming it "Biketown". On June 13, 2016, officials announced various details for the program, including a launch date of July 19. More than 1,000 Portlanders signed up for the first batch of annual memberships by launch day, and almost 2,500 during the first month of the service.

The service launched on July 19, 2016, during a ceremony in which 150 riders took an inaugural ride across the Tilikum Crossing bridge. During the service's first month, almost 59,000 rides were taken. Holders of annual memberships  accounted for 36 percent of rides taken during that period.

The placement of Biketown stations that replaced public street parking sparked some controversy over a "lack of outreach" by PBOT.

In April 2023, Porland and Biketown announced that they were to add about 500 new e-bikes to their fleet. This would bring the total count to about 2,000 bikes. The new Biketown stations that are being built will be made from recycled footwear scraps and rubber.

Service area
Portland residents were surveyed online and invited to five open house discussions to decide the locations of the bike racks. The final locations were based on the 4,500 responses. As of its launch in 2016, Biketown operates 100 stations in  of the city.

Neighborhoods that are served by Biketown include:

 Downtown Portland
 Pearl District
 Goose Hollow
 Nob Hill
 Rose Quarter
 Lloyd District
 Piedmont
 Humboldt
 Kerns
 Buckman
 Hosford-Abernethy

Pricing and fees

Biketown operates with three payment options for riders. A single-ride fare of $2.50 includes 30 minutes of riding. A day pass ($12) includes 180 minutes of riding and the ability to rent up to 4 bicycles at a time (at a cost of $6 each). An annual membership of $12 per month includes unlimited rides within a 90-minute daily limit, as well as the 4-bicycle maximum available to day-pass users.

Riders making extended trips over their allotted time limit are charged 10 cents per additional minute. A fee of $2 is charged for locking a bicycle at a public rack within the system area; a fee of $20 is charged for the doing the same outside of the system area. A $1 account credit is awarded for bringing a bicycle from a public rack to a designated station.

There is a discount program available for low income participants for $3/month.

A fee of $1,500 is charged for a lost bicycle.

The city's contract with operator Motivate includes provisions to introduce a discount to 500 low-income residents of $35 per year.

Equipment

Biketown's fleet of 1,000 bicycles were manufactured by Social Bicycles of Brooklyn, New York and designed in part by Nike, at a cost of $1,500 each. The eight-speed bikes weigh  and come equipped with automatic lights and a bell; the seat is positioned for upright ridership. Unlike a typical bike share system, Biketown's bicycles do not need to be docked at a designated station, instead using on-board computers with location tracking and U locks; this allows bikes to be stored at public bicycle racks, though users are charged an additional fee. Bikes are rented by customers using a PIN, generated by a smartphone app or computer, or a member card. Biketown is the largest self-secured bike share system in North America.

In June 2016, PBOT announced plans to add "adaptive bikes", such as handcycles and tricycles, that can be rented for people with disabilities. They will be branded as Biketown but will be organized through local adaptive bike shops, rather than at the standard street kiosks.

Biketown does not provide helmets for its users, but does offer coupons to purchase one at a store.

The original fleet of Biketown bicycles were retired in September 2020 after their replacement e-bicycles entered service. The remaining 750 bicycles were donated to a bikeshare operator in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Related programs

Biketown WHQ

Not part of the Biketown PDX service, but sharing some aspects, is a private bike-sharing program for employees of Nike in the Beaverton area, where Nike's world headquarters is located.  As of 2016, the program had already been in place "for years", but was recently renamed Biketown WHQ.  The suffix, standing for World Headquarters, is intended to differentiate the program from the public Biketown PDX service in Portland.  The City of Portland owns the rights to the "Biketown" name, but gave Nike permission to use it for its program.  It has a fleet of 400 bicycles, which company employees can use to go between any of Nike's several Beaverton-area facilities.  In 2016, when Nike signed a 10-year sponsorship contract with Portland for the latter's new bike-sharing service, it also purchased for its own service new bicycles of the same design (and color: orange) as used on the Biketown PDX service, from Social Bicycles.  However, the Biketown WHQ program is operated by Holy Spokes, a Portland bike shop, rather than by Motivate.

See also

 Cycling in Portland, Oregon
 List of bicycle-sharing systems

References

External links

2016 establishments in Oregon
Bicycle sharing in the United States
Community bicycle programs
Cycling in Portland, Oregon
Organizations based in Portland, Oregon

Biketown


Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (also known as Madagascar 3) is a 2012 American computer-animated movie made by DreamWorks Animation. It is the third movie of the Madagascar movie series and is a sequel to the first two Madagascar films. It is the first 3-D movie in the series. It is directed by Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath, and Conrad Vernon. It was released on June 8, 2012.

Release dates

Video game

Unlike the previously movie was published by Activision, Madagascar 3: The Video Game is developed by D3 Publisher.

2012 animated movies
American animated movies
English-language movies
American family movies
American romance movies
Sequel movies
Madagascar (franchise)
Movies about animals
Movies about lions
Movies about penguins
Movies about primates
Movies directed by Eric Darnell
Movies directed by Conrad Vernon
Movies directed by Tom McGrath
Movies composed by Hans Zimmer
Movies set in Rome

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted


23rd Street is a local station on the IND Sixth Avenue Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue (Avenue of Americas ) in Manhattan. It is served by the F train at all times, the M train during weekdays, and by the <F> train during rush hours in the peak direction. This station and 14th Street Station are only two local stations on the Sixth Avenue Line.

The 23rd Street station of the IND Sixth Avenue Line shares the entrance with the 23rd Street station of the PATH, which is located in between this station's two side platforms. This station is for F and M trains.

Sometimes, E trains and other trains enter this station via 6th Avenue to World Trade Center or Jamaica Center or other stations .

After this station, the next stations will be 34th Street Herald Square and 14th Street .

New York City Subway stations
Manhattan

23rd Street station (IND Sixth Avenue Line)


The United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) is a British charity, registered in 1993 and re-registered in 2015. The UKAHT is a member of the Antarctic Heritage Trust coalition. The UKAHT's Patron is Princess Anne, The Princess Royal.

The organization's stated goals are as follows:
Help conserve selected early British scientific bases on the Antarctic Peninsula and South Georgia region for the enjoyment and education of visitors. The UKAHT operates Port Lockroy, which is designated Historic Site and Monument (No. 61) under the Antarctic Treaty;
Support the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust in conserving the historic huts in the Ross Sea area built by the explorers Scott, Shackleton and Borchgrevink;
Promote an educational programme to stimulate public interest in science, the global environment and Antarctic research through the inspiration of earlier British Antarctic endeavors;
Help with the acquisition and preservation of British historical Antarctic artefacts.

Projects
Port Lockroy (Historic Site No. 61 under the Antarctic Treaty) is operated as a museum and post office (on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) by UK Antarctic Heritage Trust during the austral summer.  Proceeds from the gift shop fund the repair and conservation of this site and others on the Antarctic Peninsula.

In 2004, the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust began a comprehensive restoration project in the Ross Sea region of Antarctica, focussing on huts belonging to explorers of the region.  Although the New Zealand branch of the Trust has operational responsibility for the project, the UK Trust is a supporter of the efforts which include the preservation of huts belonging to Sir Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott (both British explorers).

References

 "British Antarctic Survey: Port Lockroy Station ", Natural Environment Research Council, Retrieved 2010-April-25
 "UK Antarctic Heritage Trust web site ", Retrieved 2010-April-25

External links

British Antarctic Territory
Nature conservation organisations based in the United Kingdom
1993 establishments in the United Kingdom
Organizations established in 1993
United Kingdom and the Antarctic
Charities based in Cambridgeshire

United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust


Magnox Ltd is a nuclear decommissioning Site Licence Company (SLC) controlled by Cavendish Fluor Partnership, its designated Parent Body Organisation (PBO). It operates under contract for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a government body set up specifically to deal with the nuclear legacy under the Energy Act 2004.

Magnox Ltd is responsible for the decommissioning of ten Magnox nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom. The ten sites are Berkeley, Bradwell, Chapelcross, Dungeness A, Hinkley Point A, Hunterston A, Oldbury, Sizewell A, Trawsfynydd and Wylfa. All the sites have ceased production. In addition, as part of the Trawsfynydd unit, Magnox Ltd operates a hydro-electric power station at Maentwrog.

The only Magnox power station in the UK not managed by Magnox Ltd is Calder Hall, which is part of the Sellafield site and is controlled by another SLC, Sellafield Ltd.

History
Magnox Ltd is the successor company to Magnox Electric, which was created in 1996 to take ownership of the Magnox assets from 'Nuclear Electric' and 'Scottish Nuclear'. The remaining nuclear power stations of these two companies, seven advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) sites and one pressurized water reactor (PWR) site, were transferred to a separate company, 'British Energy', which was then privatised in 1996. In January 1998 Magnox Electric came under the control of another government-owned company, 'British Nuclear Fuels', operating as 'BNFL Magnox Generation'.

Following the reorganisation of the UK nuclear industry in 2005 ownership of BNFL's Magnox sites transferred to the newly created 'Nuclear Decommissioning Authority' ('NDA'). BNFL created a new subsidiary, 'Reactor Sites Management Company' ('RSMC'), to manage and operate Magnox Electric on behalf of the NDA. In June 2007, BNFL sold RSMC to the newly formed US company EnergySolutions; and transferred operational and management responsibilities of Magnox sites to the US company.

On 1 October 2008, Magnox Electric was split into two companies based on the locations of the sites. Magnox North became the operator of Chapelcross, Hunterston A, Oldbury, Trawsfynydd and Wylfa. Magnox South became and operator of Berkeley, Bradwell, Dungeness, Hinkley Point A and Sizewell A. Both companies continued to be managed by RSMC.

In January 2011 to reduce costs and to help extend best practices across all sites, it was decided to reverse the split with Magnox North and Magnox South recombining as Magnox Ltd.

References

Nuclear energy in the Unitit Kinrick

Magnox Ltd


Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that the majority of mental states in folk psychology do not exist. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. The argument is that psychological concepts of behavior and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the nonexistence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.

Eliminativism about a class of entities is the view that the class of entities does not exist. For example, materialism tends to be eliminativist about the soul; modern chemists are eliminativist about phlogiston; and modern physicists are eliminativist about luminiferous ether. Eliminative materialism is the relatively new (1960s–70s) idea that certain classes of mental entities that common sense takes for granted, such as beliefs, desires, and the subjective sensation of pain, do not exist. The most common versions are eliminativism about propositional attitudes, as expressed by Paul and Patricia Churchland, and eliminativism about qualia (subjective interpretations about particular instances of subjective experience), as expressed by Daniel Dennett, Georges Rey, and Jacy Reese Anthis. These philosophers often appeal to an introspection illusion.

In the context of materialist understandings of psychology, eliminativism is the opposite of reductive materialism, arguing that mental states as conventionally understood do exist, and directly correspond to the physical state of the nervous system. An intermediate position, revisionary materialism, often argues the mental state in question will prove to be somewhat reducible to physical phenomena—with some changes needed to the commonsense concept.

Since eliminative materialism arguably claims that future research will fail to find a neuronal basis for various mental phenomena, it may need to wait for science to progress further. One might question the position on these grounds, but philosophers like Churchland argue that eliminativism is often necessary in order to open the minds of thinkers to new evidence and better explanations. Views closely related to eliminativism include illusionism and quietism.

Overview

Various arguments have been made for and against eliminative materialism over the last 50 years. The view's history can be traced to David Hume, who rejected the idea of the "self" on the grounds that it was not based on any impression. Most arguments for the view are based on the assumption that people's commonsense view of the mind is actually an implicit theory. It is to be compared and contrasted with other scientific theories in its explanatory success, accuracy, and ability to  predict the future. Eliminativists argue that commonsense "folk" psychology has failed and will eventually need to be replaced by explanations derived from neuroscience. These philosophers therefore tend to emphasize the importance of neuroscientific research as well as developments in artificial intelligence.

Philosophers who argue against eliminativism may take several approaches. Simulation theorists, like Robert Gordon and Alvin Goldman, argue that folk psychology is not a theory, but depends on internal simulation of others, and therefore is not subject to falsification in the same way that theories are. Jerry Fodor, among others, argues that folk psychology is, in fact, a successful (even indispensable) theory. Another view is that eliminativism assumes the existence of the beliefs and other entities it seeks to "eliminate" and is thus self-refuting.

Eliminativism maintains that the commonsense understanding of the mind is mistaken, and that neuroscience will one day reveal that mental states talked about in everyday discourse, using words such as "intend", "believe", "desire", and "love", do not refer to anything real. Because of the inadequacy of natural languages, people mistakenly think that they have such beliefs and desires. Some eliminativists, such as Frank Jackson, claim that consciousness does not exist except as an epiphenomenon of brain function; others, such as Georges Rey, claim that the concept will eventually be eliminated as neuroscience progresses. Consciousness and folk psychology are separate issues, and it is possible to take an eliminative stance on one but not the other. The roots of eliminativism go back to the writings of Wilfred Sellars, W.V.O. Quine, Paul Feyerabend, and Richard Rorty. The term "eliminative materialism" was first introduced by James Cornman in 1968 while describing a version of physicalism endorsed by Rorty. The later Ludwig Wittgenstein was also an important inspiration for eliminativism, particularly with his attack on "private objects" as "grammatical fictions".

Early eliminativists such as Rorty and Feyerabend often confused two different notions of the sort of elimination that the term "eliminative materialism" entailed. On the one hand, they claimed, the cognitive sciences that will ultimately give people a correct account of the mind's workings will not employ terms that refer to commonsense mental states like beliefs and desires; these states will not be part of the ontology of a mature cognitive science. But critics immediately countered that this view was indistinguishable from the identity theory of mind. Quine himself wondered what exactly was so eliminative about eliminative materialism:

On the other hand, the same philosophers claimed that commonsense mental states simply do not exist. But critics pointed out that eliminativists could not have it both ways: either mental states exist and will ultimately be explained in terms of lower-level neurophysiological processes, or they do not. Modern eliminativists have much more clearly expressed the view that mental phenomena simply do not exist and will eventually be eliminated from people's thinking about the brain in the same way that demons have been eliminated from people's thinking about mental illness and psychopathology.

While it was a minority view in the 1960s, eliminative materialism gained prominence and acceptance during the 1980s. Proponents of this view, such as B.F. Skinner, often made parallels to previous superseded scientific theories (such as that of the four humours, the phlogiston theory of combustion, and the vital force theory of life) that have all been successfully eliminated in attempting to establish their thesis about the nature of the mental. In these cases, science has not produced more detailed versions or reductions of these theories, but rejected them altogether as obsolete. Radical behaviorists, such as Skinner, argued that folk psychology is already obsolete and should be replaced by descriptions of histories of reinforcement and punishment. Such views were eventually abandoned. Patricia and Paul Churchland argued that folk psychology will be gradually replaced as neuroscience matures.

Eliminativism is not only motivated by philosophical considerations, but is also a prediction about what form future scientific theories will take. Eliminativist philosophers therefore tend to be concerned with data from the relevant brain and cognitive sciences. In addition, because eliminativism is essentially predictive in nature, different theorists can and often do predict which aspects of folk psychology will be eliminated from folk psychological vocabulary. None of these philosophers are eliminativists tout court.

Today, the eliminativist view is most closely associated with the Churchlands, who deny the existence of propositional attitudes (a subclass of intentional states), and with Daniel Dennett, who is generally considered an eliminativist about qualia and phenomenal aspects of consciousness. One way to summarize the difference between the Churchlands' view and Dennett's is that the Churchlands are eliminativists about propositional attitudes, but reductionists about qualia, while Dennett is an anti-reductionist about propositional attitudes and an eliminativist about qualia.

More recently, Brian Tomasik and Jacy Reese Anthis have made various arguments for eliminativism. Elizabeth Irvine has argued that both science and folk psychology do not treat mental states as having phenomenal properties so the hard problem "may not be a genuine problem for non-philosophers (despite its overwhelming obviousness to philosophers), and questions about consciousness may well 'shatter' into more specific questions about particular capacities." In 2022, Anthis published Consciousness Semanticism: A Precise Eliminativist Theory of Consciousness, which asserts that "formal argumentation from precise semantics" dissolves the hard problem because of the contradiction between precision implied in philosophical theory and the vagueness in its definition, which implies there is no fact of the matter for phenomenological consciousness.

Arguments for eliminativism

Problems with folk theories
Eliminativists such as Paul and Patricia Churchland argue that folk psychology is a fully developed but non-formalized theory of human behavior. It is used to explain and make predictions about human mental states and behavior. This view is often referred to as the theory of mind or just simply theory-theory, for it theorizes the existence of an unacknowledged theory. As a theory in the scientific sense, eliminativists maintain, folk psychology must be evaluated on the basis of its predictive power and explanatory success as a research program for the investigation of the mind/brain.

Such eliminativists have developed different arguments to show that folk psychology is a seriously mistaken theory and should be abolished. They argue that folk psychology excludes from its purview or has traditionally been mistaken about many important mental phenomena that can and are being examined and explained by modern neuroscience. Some examples are dreaming, consciousness, mental disorders, learning processes, and memory abilities. Furthermore, they argue, folk psychology's development in the last 2,500 years has not been significant and it is therefore stagnant. The ancient Greeks already had a folk psychology comparable to modern views. But in contrast to this lack of development, neuroscience is rapidly progressing and, in their view, can explain many cognitive processes that folk psychology cannot.

Folk psychology retains characteristics of now obsolete theories or legends from the past. Ancient societies tried to explain the physical mysteries of nature by ascribing mental conditions to them in such statements as "the sea is angry". Gradually, these everyday folk psychological explanations were replaced by more efficient scientific descriptions. Today, eliminativists argue, there is no reason not to accept an effective scientific account of cognition. If such an explanation existed, then there would be no need for folk-psychological explanations of behavior, and the latter would be eliminated the same way as the mythological explanations the ancients used.

Another line of argument is the meta-induction based on what eliminativists view as the disastrous historical record of folk theories in general. Ancient pre-scientific "theories" of folk biology, folk physics, and folk cosmology have all proven radically wrong. Eliminativists argue the same in the case of folk psychology. There seems no logical basis, to the eliminativist, to make an exception just because folk psychology has lasted longer and is more intuitive or instinctively plausible than other folk theories. Indeed, the eliminativists warn, considerations of intuitive plausibility may be precisely the result of the deeply entrenched nature in society of folk psychology itself. It may be that people's beliefs and other such states are as theory-laden as external perceptions and hence that intuitions will tend to be biased in their favor.

Specific problems with folk psychology
Much of folk psychology involves the attribution of intentional states (or more specifically as a subclass, propositional attitudes). Eliminativists point out that these states are generally ascribed syntactic and semantic properties. An example of this is the language of thought hypothesis, which attributes a discrete, combinatorial syntax and other linguistic properties to these mental phenomena. Eliminativists argue that such discrete, combinatorial characteristics have no place in neuroscience, which speaks of action potentials, spiking frequencies, and other continuous and distributed effects. Hence, the syntactic structures assumed by folk psychology have no place in such a structure as the brain. To this there have been two responses. On the one hand, some philosophers deny that mental states are linguistic and see this as a straw man argument. The other view is represented by those who subscribe to "a language of thought". They assert that mental states can be multiply realized and that functional characterizations are just higher-level characterizations of what happens at the physical level.

It has also been argued against folk psychology that the intentionality of mental states like belief implies that they have semantic qualities. Specifically, their meaning is determined by the things they are about in the external world. This makes it difficult to explain how they can play the causal roles they are supposed to in cognitive processes.

In recent years, this latter argument has been fortified by the theory of connectionism. Many connectionist models of the brain have been developed in which the processes of language learning and other forms of representation are highly distributed and parallel. This tends to indicate that such discrete and semantically endowed entities as beliefs and desires are unnecessary.

Evolution eliminates intentionality
Any naturalistic, purely causal, non-semantic account of content must rely on Darwinian natural selection to build neural states capable of storing unique propositions, as required by folk psychology. Theories that attempt to account for intentionality within materialism face the disjunction problem, which results in the indeterminacy of propositional content. If such theories cannot solve the disjunction problem, then neurons cannot store unique propositions. The only process that can build neural circuits, evolution by natural selection, cannot solve the disjunction problem. The whole point of Darwin's theory is that in the creation of adaptations, nature is not active but passive. What is really going on is environmental filtration—a purely passive and not very discriminating process that prevents most traits below some minimal local threshold from persisting. Natural selection is selection against. Selection for requires foresight, planning, and purpose. Darwin's achievement was to show that the appearance of purpose belies the reality of purposeless, unforesighted, unplanned, mindless causation. All adaptation requires is selection against. That was Darwin's point. But the combination of blind variation and selection against is not possible without disjunctive outcomes.

It is important that selection against is not the contradictory of selection for, i.e. that selection against trait T is not just selection for trait not-T. This is because there are traits that are neither selected against nor selected for: the neutral ones that biologists, especially molecular evolutionary biologists, call silent, switched off, junk, non-coding, etc. Selection for and selection against are contraries, not contradictories.

Natural selection cannot discriminate between coextensive properties. To see how Darwinian selection against works in a real case, consider two distinct gene products, one of which is neutral or even harmful to an organism and the other of which is beneficial, that are coded for by adjacent genes on the chromosomes. This is the phenomenon of genetic linkage. The traits that the genes coded for will be coextensive in a population because the gene-types are coextensive in that population. Mendelian assortment and segregation do not break up these packages of genes with any efficiency. Only crossover, the breaking up and faulty re-annealing of chromosomal strings or similar processes, can do this. As Darwin realized, no process producing variants in nature picks up on future usefulness, convenience, need, or adaptational value. The only thing evolution (natural selection-against) can do about the free-riding maladaptive or neutral trait, whose genes are riding along close to the genes for an adaptive trait, is wait around for the genetic material to be broken at just the right place, between the genes. Once this happens, Darwinian processes can begin to tell the difference between them. But only when environmental vicissitudes break up the DNA on which the two adjacent genes sit can selection against get started—if one of the two proteins is harmful.

Darwinian theory's disjunction problem is that the process Darwin discovered cannot tell the difference between these two genes or their traits until crossover breaks the linkage between one gene, which is going to increase its frequency, and the other, which is going to decrease its frequency. If they are never separated, it will remain blind to their differences forever. What is worse, and more likely, one gene sequence can code for a favorable trait—a protein required for survival—while part of the same sequence can code for a maladaptive trait—some gene product that reduces fitness. Natural selection will have an even harder time discriminating between these two traits. Since evolution cannot solve the disjunction problem, the right conclusion for the materialist is to accept eliminativism by denying that neural states have as their informational content specific, particular, determinate statements that attribute non-disjunctive properties and relations to non-disjunctive subjects.

Arguments against eliminativism

Intentionality and consciousness are identical
Some eliminativists reject intentionality while accepting the existence of qualia. Other eliminativists reject qualia while accepting intentionality. Many philosophers argue that intentionality cannot exist without consciousness and vice versa, and so any philosopher who accepts one while rejecting the other is being inconsistent. They argue that, to be consistent, one must accept both qualia and intentionality or reject them both. Philosophers who argue for such a position include Philip Goff, Terence Horgan, Uriah Kriegal, and John Tienson. The philosopher Keith Frankish accepts the existence of intentionality but holds to illusionism about consciousness because he rejects qualia. Goff notes that beliefs are a kind of propositional thought.

Intuitive reservations
The thesis of eliminativism seems so obviously wrong to many critics, who find it undeniable that people know immediately and indubitably that they have minds, that argumentation seems unnecessary. This sort of intuition-pumping is illustrated by asking what happens when one asks oneself honestly if one has mental states. Eliminativists object to such a rebuttal of their position by claiming that intuitions often are mistaken. Analogies from the history of science are frequently invoked to buttress this observation: it may appear obvious that the sun travels around the earth, for example, but this was nevertheless proved wrong. Similarly, it may appear obvious that apart from neural events there are also mental conditions, but that could be false.

But even if one accepts the susceptibility to error of people's intuitions, the objection can be reformulated: if the existence of mental conditions seems perfectly obvious and is central to our conception of the world, then enormously strong arguments are needed to deny their existence. Furthermore, these arguments, to be consistent, must be formulated in a way that does not presuppose the existence of entities like "mental states", "logical arguments", and "ideas", lest they be self-contradictory. Those who accept this objection say that the arguments for eliminativism are far too weak to establish such a radical claim and that there is thus no reason to accept eliminativism.

Self-refutation
Some philosophers, such as Paul Boghossian, have attempted to show that eliminativism is in some sense self-refuting, since the theory presupposes the existence of mental phenomena. If eliminativism is true, then eliminativists must accept an intentional property like truth, supposing that in order to assert something one must believe it. Hence, for eliminativism to be asserted as a thesis, the eliminativist must believe that it is true; if so, there are beliefs, and eliminativism is false.

Georges Rey and Michael Devitt reply to this objection by invoking deflationary semantic theories that avoid analyzing predicates like "x is true" as expressing a real property. They are instead construed as logical devices, so that asserting that a sentence is true is just a quoted way of asserting the sentence itself. To say "'God exists' is true" is just to say "God exists". This way, Rey and Devitt argue, insofar as dispositional replacements of "claims" and deflationary accounts of "true" are coherent, eliminativism is not self-refuting.

Correspondence theory of truth
Several philosophers, such as the Churchlands and Alex Rosenberg, have developed a theory of structural resemblance or physical isomorphism that could explain how neural states can instantiate truth within the correspondence theory of truth. Neuroscientists use the word "representation" to identify the neural circuits' encoding of inputs from the peripheral nervous system in, for example, the visual cortex. But they use the word without according it any commitment to intentional content. In fact, there is an explicit commitment to describing neural representations in terms of structures of neural axonal discharges that are physically isomorphic to the inputs that cause them. Suppose that this way of understanding representation in the brain is preserved in the long-term course of research providing an understanding of how the brain processes and stores information. Then there will be considerable evidence that the brain is a neural network whose physical structure is identical to the aspects of its environment it tracks and whose representations of these features consist in this physical isomorphism.

Experiments in the 1980s with macaques isolated the structural resemblance between input vibrations the finger feels, measured in cycles per second, and representations of them in neural circuits, measured in action-potential spikes per second. This resemblance between two easily measured variables makes it unsurprising that they would be among the first such structural resemblances to be discovered. Macaques and humans have the same peripheral nervous system sensitivities and can make the same tactile discriminations. Subsequent research into neural processing has increasingly vindicated a structural resemblance or physical isomorphism approach to how information enters the brain and is stored and deployed.

This isomorphism between brain and world is not a matter of some relationship between reality and a map of reality stored in the brain. Maps require interpretation if they are to be about what they map, and eliminativism and neuroscience share a commitment to explaining the appearance of aboutness by purely physical relationships between informational states in the brain and what they "represent". The brain-to-world relationship must be a matter of physical isomorphism—sameness of form, outline, structure—that does not require interpretation.

This machinery can be applied to make "sense" of eliminativism in terms of the sentences eliminativists say or write. When we say that eliminativism is true, that the brain does not store information in the form of unique sentences, statements, expressing propositions or anything like them, there is a set of neural circuits that has no trouble coherently carrying this information. There is a possible translation manual that will guide us back from the vocalization or inscription eliminativists express to these circuits. These neural structures will differ from the neural circuits of those who explicitly reject eliminativism in ways that our translation manual will presumably shed some light on, giving us a neurological handle on disagreement and on the structural differences in neural circuitry, if any, between asserting p and asserting not-p when p expresses the eliminativist thesis.

Criticism
The physical isomorphism approach faces indeterminacy problems. Any given structure in the brain will be causally related to, and isomorphic in various respects to, many different structures in external reality. But we cannot discriminate the one it is intended to represent or that it is supposed to be true "of". These locutions are heavy with just the intentionality that eliminativism denies. Here is a problem of underdetermination or holism that eliminativism shares with intentionality-dependent theories of mind. Here, we can only invoke pragmatic criteria for discriminating successful structural representations—the substitution of true ones for unsuccessful ones—the ones we used to call false.

Dennett notes that it is possible that such indeterminacy problems remain only hypothetical, not occurring in reality. He constructs a 4x4 "Quinian crossword puzzle" with words that must satisfy both the across and down definitions. Since there are multiple constraints on this puzzle, there is one solution. Thus we can think of the brain and its relation to the external world as a very large crossword puzzle that must satisfy exceedingly many constraints to which there is only one possible solution. Therefore, in reality we may end up with only one physical isomorphism between the brain and the external world.

Pragmatic theory of truth
When indeterminacy problems arose because the brain is physically isomorphic to multiple structures of the external world, it was urged that a pragmatic approach be used to resolve the problem. Another approach argues that the pragmatic theory of truth should be used from the start to decide whether certain neural circuits store true information about the external world. Pragmatism was founded by Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, and later refined by our understanding of the philosophy of science. According to pragmatism, to say that general relativity is true is to say that it makes more accurate predictions than other theories (Newtonian mechanics, Aristotle's physics, etc.). If computer circuits lack intentionality and do not store information using propositions, then in what sense can computer A have true information about the world while computer B lacks it? If the computers were instantiated in autonomous cars, we could test whether A or B successfully complete a cross-country road trip. If A succeeds while B fails, the pragmatist can say that A holds true information about the world, because A's information allows it to make more accurate predictions (relative to B) about the world and to move around its environment more successfully. Similarly, if brain A has information that enables the biological organism to make more accurate predictions about the world and helps the organism successfully move around in the environment, then A has true information about the world. Although not advocates of eliminativism, John Shook and Tibor Solymosi argue that pragmatism is a promising program for understanding advancements in neuroscience and integrating them into a philosophical picture of the world.

Criticism
The reason naturalism cannot be pragmatic in its epistemology starts with its metaphysics. Science tells us that we are components of the natural realm, indeed latecomers in the 13.8-billion-year-old universe. The universe was not organized around our needs and abilities, and what works for us is just a set of contingent facts that could have been otherwise. Once we have begun discovering things about the universe that work for us, science sets out to explain why they do. It is clear that one explanation for why things work for us that we must rule out as unilluminating, indeed question-begging, is that they work for us because they work for us. If something works for us, enables us to meet our needs and wants, there must be an explanation reflecting facts about us and the world that produce the needs and the means to satisfy them.

The explanation of why scientific methods work for us must be a causal explanation. It must show what facts about reality make the methods we employ to acquire knowledge suitable for doing so. The explanation must show that our methods work — for example, have reliable technological application — not by coincidence, still less miracle or accident. That means there must be some facts, events, processes that operate in reality and brought about our pragmatic success. The demand that success be explained is a consequence of science's epistemology. If the truth of such explanations consists in the fact that they work for us (as pragmatism requires), then the explanation of why our scientific methods work is that they work. That is not a satisfying explanation.

Efficacy of folk psychology
Some philosophers argue that folk psychology is quite successful. Simulation theorists doubt that people's understanding of the mental can be explained in terms of a theory at all. Rather they argue that people's understanding of others is based on internal simulations of how they would act and respond in similar situations. Jerry Fodor believes in folk psychology's success as a theory, because it makes for an effective way of communication in everyday life that can be implemented with few words. Such effectiveness could not be achieved with complex neuroscientific terminology.

Qualia
Another problem for the eliminativist is the consideration that human beings undergo subjective experiences and hence their conscious mental states have qualia. Since qualia are generally regarded as characteristics of mental states, their existence does not seem compatible with eliminativism. Eliminativists such as Dennett and Rey respond by rejecting qualia. Opponents of eliminativism see this response as problematic, since many claim that existence of qualia is perfectly obvious. Many philosophers consider the "elimination" of qualia implausible, if not incomprehensible. They assert that, for instance, the existence of pain is simply beyond denial.

Admitting that the existence of qualia seems obvious, Dennett nevertheless holds that "qualia" is a theoretical term from an outdated metaphysics stemming from Cartesian intuitions. He argues that a precise analysis shows that the term is in the long run empty and full of contradictions. Eliminativism's claim about qualia is that there is no unbiased evidence for such experiences when regarded as something more than propositional attitudes. In other words, it does not deny that pain exists, but holds that it exists independently of its effect on behavior. Influenced by Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Dennett and Rey have defended eliminativism about qualia even when other aspects of the mental are accepted.

Quining qualia
Dennett offers philosophical thought experiments to argue that qualia do not exist. First he lists five properties of qualia:

 They are "directly" or "immediately" graspable during our conscious experiences.
 We are infallible about them.
 They are "private": no one can directly access anyone else's qualia.
 They are ineffable.
 They are "intrinsic" and "simple" or "unanalyzable."

Inverted qualia

The first thought experiment Dennett uses to demonstrate that qualia lack the listed necessary properties to exist involves inverted qualia: consider two people who have different qualia but the same external physical behavior. But now the qualia supporter can present an "intrapersonal" variation. Suppose a neurosurgeon works on your brain and you discover that grass now looks red. Would this not be a case where we could confirm the reality of qualia—by noticing how the qualia have changed while every other aspect of our conscious experience remains the same? Not quite, Dennett replies via the next intuition pump, "alternative neurosurgery". There are two different ways the neurosurgeon might have accomplished the inversion. First, they might have tinkered with something "early on", so that signals from the eye when you look at grass contain the information "red" rather than "green". This would result in genuine qualia inversion. But they might instead have tinkered with your memory. Here your qualia would remain the same, but your memory would be altered so that your current green experience would contradict your earlier memories of grass. You would still feel that the color of grass had changed, but here the qualia have not changed, but your memories have. Would you be able to tell which of these scenarios is correct? No: your perceptual experience tells you that something has changed but not whether your qualia have changed. Dennett concludes, since (by hypothesis) the two surgical procedures can yield exactly the same introspective effects while only one inverts the qualia, nothing in the subject's experience can favor one hypothesis over the other. So unless he seeks outside help, the state of his own qualia must be as unknowable to him as the state of anyone else's. It is questionable, in short, that we have direct, infallible access to our conscious experience.

The experienced beer drinker

Dennett's second thought experiment involves beer. Many people think of beer as an acquired taste: one's first sip is often unpleasant, but one gradually comes to enjoy it. But wait, Dennett asks—what is the "it" here? Compare the flavor of that first taste with the flavor now. Does the beer taste exactly the same both then and now, only now you like that taste whereas before you disliked it? Or is it that the way beer tastes gradually shifts—so that the taste you did not like at the beginning is not the same taste you now like? In fact most people simply cannot tell which is the correct analysis. But that is to give up again on the idea that we have special and infallible access to our qualia. Further, when forced to choose, many people feel that the second analysis is more plausible. But then if one's reactions to an experience are in any way constitutive of it, the experience is not so "intrinsic" after all—and another qualia property falls.

Inverted goggles

Dennett's third thought experiment involves inverted goggles. Scientists have devised special eyeglasses that invert up and down for the wearer. When you put them on, everything looks upside down. When subjects first put them on, they can barely walk around without stumbling. But after subjects wear them for a while, something surprising occurs. They adapt and become able to walk around as easily as before. When you ask them whether they adapted by re-inverting their visual field or simply got used to walking around in an upside-down world, they cannot say. So as in our beer-drinking case, either we simply do not have the special, infallible access to our qualia that would allow us to distinguish the two cases or the way the world looks to us is actually a function of how we respond to the world—in which case qualia are not "intrinsic" properties of experience.

Criticism

Edward Feser objects to Dennett's position as follows. That you need to appeal to third-person neurological evidence to determine whether your memory of your qualia has been tampered with does not seem to show that your qualia themselves—past or present—can be known only by appealing to that evidence. You might still be directly aware of your qualia from the first-person, subjective point of view even if you do not know whether they are the same as the qualia you had yesterday—just as you might really be aware of the article in front of you even if you do not know whether it is the same as the article you saw yesterday. Questions about memory do not necessarily bear on the nature of your awareness of objects present here and now (even if they bear on what you can justifiably claim to know about such objects), whatever those objects happen to be. Dennett's assertion that scientific objectivity requires appealing exclusively to third-person evidence appears mistaken. What scientific objectivity requires is not denial of the first-person subjective point of view but rather a means of communicating inter-subjectively about what one can grasp only from that point of view. Given the relational structure first-person phenomena like qualia appear to exhibit—a structure that Carnap devoted great effort to elucidating—such a means seems available: we can communicate what we know about qualia in terms of their structural relations to one another. Dennett fails to see that qualia can be essentially subjective and still relational or non-intrinsic, and thus communicable. This communicability ensures that claims about qualia are epistemologically objective; that is, they can in principle be grasped and evaluated by all competent observers even though they are claims about phenomena that are arguably not metaphysically objective, i.e., about entities that exist only as grasped by a subject of experience. It is only the former sort of objectivity that science requires. It does not require the latter, and cannot plausibly require it if the first-person realm of qualia is what we know better than anything else.

Illusionism
Illusionism is an active program within eliminative materialism to explain phenomenal consciousness as an illusion. It is promoted by the philosophers Daniel Dennett, Keith Frankish, and Jay Garfield, and the neuroscientist Michael Graziano. Graziano has advanced the attention schema theory of consciousness and postulates that consciousness is an illusion. According to David Chalmers, proponents argue that once we can explain consciousness as an illusion without the need for a realist view of consciousness, we can construct a debunking argument against realist views of consciousness. This line of argument draws from other debunking arguments like the evolutionary debunking argument in the field of metaethics. Such arguments note that morality is explained by evolution without positing moral realism, so there is a sufficient basis to debunk moral realism.

Criticism

Illusionists generally hold that once it is explained why people believe and say they are conscious, the hard problem of consciousness will dissolve. Chalmers agrees that a mechanism for these beliefs and reports can and should be identified using the standard methods of physical science, but disagrees that this would support illusionism, saying that the datum illusionism fails to account for is not reports of consciousness but rather first-person consciousness itself. He separates consciousness from beliefs and reports about consciousness, but holds that a fully satisfactory theory of consciousness should explain how the two are "inextricably intertwined" so that their alignment does not require an inexplicable coincidence. Illusionism has also been criticized by the philosopher Jesse Prinz.

See also
Attention schema theory
Blindsight
Constructivist epistemology
Cotard delusion
Deconstructivism
Epiphenomenalism
Functionalism
Mind–body problem
Monism
Nihilism
Phenomenology
Physicalism
Principle of locality
Property dualism
Reductionism
Scientism
Substance dualism
Vertiginous question

References

Further reading
Baker, L. (1987). Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. .
Broad, C. D. (1925). The Mind and its Place in Nature. London, Routledge & Kegan.  (2001 Reprint Ed.).
Churchland, P.M. (1979). Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind. New York, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. .
Churchland, P.M. (1988). Matter and Consciousness, revised Ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press. .
Rorty, Richard. "Mind-body Identity, Privacy and Categories" in The Review of Metaphysics XIX:24-54. Reprinted Rosenthal, D.M. (ed.) 1971.
Stich, S. (1996). Deconstructing the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. .

External links

Bibliography on Eliminative Materialism at Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: An Annotated
Eliminative and Multiplicative Materialism by Albert P. Carpenter
Eliminative Materialism at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Materialism
Metaphysics of mind
Physicalism
Qualia

Eliminative materialism


Boiga multomaculata, also called the many-spotted cat snake,  large-spotted cat snake and marbled cat-eyed snake, is a species of rear-fanged colubrid snakes.

Description
Dorsally it is gray-brown, with two alternating series of round dark brown, reddish-brown or chestnut-colored spots and two other series of smaller spots on the lower sides. On the head it has two blackish bands which diverge posteriorly. There is a blackish streak from the eye to the corner of the mouth. Ventrally it is whitish, marbled or spotted with brown, and there is a series of brown spots along each side. Adults may attain 77 cm (30 in.) in total length.

Geographic range and Distribution
The snake is found in a wide variety of locales, including areas of Western Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, India (Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Miao - Changlang district), Southern China (incl. Hong Kong and Hainan), Indonesia (Java, Sulawesi, Sumatra, Borneo), Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore and Bali, and North Central Florida, USA.

Behavior
A very secretive snake, it hides in hollows and cracks of tree trunks during the day. Unlike most boigas, this species is a cathemeral snake, with which it is active at both day and night. It's quite nervous and will scuttle away at the slight disturbance. They rarely bite, however. It prefers rocky crevices and thin branches that are in plain sight.

Feeding Habits
Mostly observed hunting just before daybreak, it primarily feeds on lizards such as geckos and small skinks but they will also eat lizard eggs. This snake also frequents branches that are overhanging a water source, thus it may also devour fish in the process.

Venom
Being a rear-fanged snake, it is mildly venomous. The effects are the same as most boiga species but because of its size, it never poses any threat. There are no known or recorded fatalities as well.

References

 Boie, F. 1827 Bemerkungen über Merrem's Versuch eines Systems der Amphibien, 1. Lieferung: Ophidier. Isis van Oken, Jena, 20: 508–566.
 Boulenger, George A. 1890 The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Reptilia and Batrachia. Taylor & Francis, London, xviii, 541 pp.
 Hnízdo, J. 1998 Boiga multomaculata (Boie 1827) im Terrarium. Elaphe 6 (1): 9-12

multomaculata
Snakes of Asia
Snakes of Southeast Asia
Reptiles of Bangladesh
Reptiles of Cambodia
Snakes of China
Snakes of India
Reptiles of Indonesia
Reptiles of Laos
Reptiles of Malaysia
Reptiles of Myanmar
Reptiles of Singapore
Reptiles of Thailand
Snakes of Vietnam
Reptiles of Borneo
Taxa named by Friedrich Boie
Reptiles described in 1827

Boiga multomaculata


The Big Three were a Merseybeat group from Liverpool. They are best known for their 1963 recording of "Some Other Guy" and their close connection to The Beatles.

Career
The Big Three evolved from a group called Cass and the Cassanovas, formed in May 1959 by Brian Casser as a trio comprising Casser (rhythm guitar, lead vocals), Adrian Barber (lead guitar, vocals), and Brian J. Hudson (drums) (born Brian James Hudson, 21 April 1938, Cleveland, North Yorkshire). The original line-up played at St George's Hall, Liverpool, on Friday, 15 May 1959. Johnny Hutchinson (born 18 July 1940) replaced Hudson in July 1959. In need of a bass guitarist, Hutchinson brought in Johnny Gustafson in December. At that time, Gustafson did not have a proper bass guitar, so Barber converted an acoustic for him. Gustafson's first gig was at The Tower Ballroom, New Brighton, on 31 December 1959.

In May 1960, the band auditioned for Larry Parnes at the Wyvern Social Club, Seel Street, Liverpool, with a number of other bands including The Silver Beetles (one of The Beatles' earlier names). Hutchinson sat in with the band when their drummer Tommy Moore (born Thomas Henry Moore, in 1931, Liverpool died in 1981) failed to turn up. In December 1960, Casser left the group and moved to London, reducing them to a trio again, and the band re-emerged in January 1961 as The Big Three. Despite being a three-piece they were known as "one of the loudest, most aggressive and visually appealing acts".

Brian Epstein signed them to his agency and sent them over to Hamburg's Star-Club. It was during that trip in July 1962 that Brian Griffiths (born 27 August 1943, Liverpool) joined the group, and the best-known line-up of the Big Three was established. Barber would subsequently emigrate to the United States, where he would later become known as an in-house recording engineer and producer at Atlantic Records, where he produced the Allman Brothers Band's debut album in 1969.

Epstein arranged for them to audition for Decca Records, for which audition they recorded "Some Other Guy". The song was a minor chart hit, and later it became a standard in the Merseybeat scene.

The Big Three and Epstein terminated their partnership in July 1963. Gustafson and Griffiths quit in November 1963, and with drummer Ian Broad from Rory Storm and the Hurricanes formed the Seniors and left for Germany. Hutchinson replaced them with Faron Ruffley (born William Faron Ruffley, 8 January 1942, Walton, Liverpool) and Paddy Chambers (born Patrick John Chambers, 3 April 1944, Liverpool, died 18 September 2000) from Faron's Flamingos.

Chambers left in March 1964 and was replaced by Paul Pilnick from Lee Curtis' Allstars. Pilnick only stayed a short time before moving on to Tony Jackson & The Vibrations in October 1964, with Ruffley leaving around the same time.

Various musicians passed through the band after Pilnick left, including bass players John Bradley, Adrian Lord (ex Mojos), and Mike Bankes, whilst Ray Marshall and Howie Casey played saxophone on a trip to Germany. Barry Womersley was guitarist for a while, but was replaced by Brian Griffiths during the time that they were managed by Chris Wharton. Wharton had hopes of re-enlisting Johnny Gustafson but this came to nothing. Hutchinson had played with the Spidermen, but reformed the group with Barry Womersley and Ray Marshall.

Between 1964 and 1966, the line-up consisted of John Hutchinson, Ray Marshall (vocals, bass) and Barry Womersley (lead guitar). During 1966 the band folded. Hutchinson received an offer to join Kingsize Taylor & the Dominoes but he declined, instead deciding to retire from music.

Arty Davies of 'Liverpool Beat' says that following the demise of the Womersley/Marshall/Hutchinson line-up, a couple of bookings featured the following : Dave Blackstone (lead guitar), Johnny Hutchinson (drums) and Pete Mumford (bass guitar). There is an apocryphal story in Alan Clayson's book Beat Merchants that Hutchinson packed up his drums after a first set at the Blue Angel, collected his pay and went home, with another drummer taking his place. Presumably this was the band's last gig.

In 1973, Gustafson and Griffiths teamed up with Elton John drummer Nigel Olsson, and Quatermass keyboardist J. Peter Robinson for a reunion album, Resurrection, released on Polydor Records. In 1999 Griffiths got together with another former Big Three member, Faron Ruffley, to do a small spot of Big Three numbers at the Merseycats charity night; the drummer for the get-together was Arty Davies (Faron's Flamingos).

In 2009, RPM Records issued a CD compilation entitled Cavern Stomp.

In 2017 Bill Kenwright released and toured the sell-out musical Cilla The Musical; The Big Three (played by Jay Osborne, Chris Weeks and Tom Dunlea) appeared in the show and doubled as the show band. Following the tour the three players were 'handed down the baton' to become the next generation of The Big Three by original members Griffiths, Gustafson, and Hutchinson. The new Big Three are set to write and release brand new material in early 2020.

Johnny Hutchinson died on 12 April 2019. He, Gustafson and Griffiths all appear in the film about the band Some Other Guys.

Members
 Johnny Hutchinson – drums, vocals (1961–1966)
 Adrian Barber – first guitarist, lead guitar, vocals (1961–7/1962)
 Johnny Gustafson – bass guitar, vocals (1961–1963, 1973)
 Brian Griffiths – guitar (7/1962–1963, 1973, 1999)
 Faron Ruffley – bass guitar (1963–1964, 1999)
 Paddy Chambers – guitar, vocals (1963–1964)
 Paul Pilnick – guitar, vocals (1964)
 Ray Marshall – bass guitar, vocals (1964–1966)
 Barry Womersley (known professionally as Barry Walmsley) – lead guitar (1964–1966)
 Nigel Olsson – drums (1973)

Related musicians
 Cilla Black and Beryl Marsden were backed by the Big Three
 J. Peter Robinson – piano (1973 album recordings)
 Arty Davies – drums (1999 one-off gig)

Timeline

Discography

Singles
"Some Other Guy" (Leiber, Stoller, Barrett) / "Let True Love Begin" (Decca F 11614, 29 March 1963, UK No. 37)
"By the Way" / "Cavern Stomp" (Decca F 11689, 28 June 1963, UK No. 22)
"I'm With You" / "Peanut Butter" (Decca F 11752, 11 October 1963)
"If You Ever Change Your Mind" / "You've Got to Keep Her under Your Hand" (Decca F 11927, 12 June 1964)
"Some Other Guy" / "Let It Rock" / "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody" (Polydor 2058 343, 16 March 1973)

EPs
At the Cavern (live) ("What'd I Say" / "Don't Start Running Away" / "Zip A Dee Doo Dah" / "Reelin' and Rockin'") (Decca DFE 8552 [mono], 22 November 1963; reissued 1981)

Albums
 Resurrection (Polydor 2383199, March 1973)

Compilation albums
 Cavern Stomp (LP, Edsel ED 111, 1982)
 Cavern Stomp (CD, Deram, 1994)
 Cavern Stomp (The Complete Recordings) (RPM Records, 2009)

References

External links
Mersey Beat: The Big Three Story by Bill Harry

English pop music groups
English rock music groups
British rhythm and blues boom musicians
British rhythm and blues musical groups
Musical groups from Liverpool
Musical groups established in 1961
Musical groups disestablished in 1964
English musical trios
Beat groups
Decca Records artists
Polydor Records artists
1961 establishments in England

The Big Three (English band)


3-Bromocytisine is a derivative of the toxic alkaloid cytisine that acts as a highly potent agonist at neural nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, binding primarily to the α4β2 and α7 subtypes. 3-Bromocytisine is a full agonist at the α7 subtype while it is only a partial agonist at α4β2, but has an extremely strong binding affinity at α4β2 with 200-fold selectivity for α4β2 over α7. In animal studies 3-bromocytisine stimulates the release of dopamine and noradrenaline and increases locomotor activity.

References

Nicotinic agonists
Nitrogen heterocycles
Lactams
Organobromides

3-Bromocytisine


Pathet Lao was a political and communist movement in Laos that was established in the mid-20th century. The organization eventually succeeded in gaining the highest power in Laos after an internal war. war or revolution (against the French and American) that lasted from the 1950s to 1975. The organization had very close relationship with the Vietnamese communists. During the Indochina War, the organization was effectively organized, supported and equipped by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

References

Communism
Organizations based in Laos

Pathet Lao


The Federal Telecommunications Institute (Spanish: Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones; abbreviated as IFT and incorrectly referred to as IFETEL) is an independent government agency of Mexico charged with the regulation of telecommunications and broadcasting services. It was formed on September 10, 2013, as part of larger reforms to Mexican telecom regulations, and replaced the Federal Telecommunications Commission (Cofetel).

The current President of the IFT is Gabriel Oswaldo Contreras Saldívar.

History
On August 8, 1996, President Ernesto Zedillo created Cofetel, which originally was based in the tower of the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation.

In 2013, President Enrique Peña Nieto created the IFT to replace Cofetel as part of the telecommunications reform package of the Pacto por México. The IFT is an autonomous federal agency that is responsible for the regulation of the use of spectrum, telecommunications and broadcasting networks and offerings, and access to infrastructure. IFT also regulates the awarding of concessions and permits for broadcast stations and promotes and protects competition in telecommunications.

Through an agreement with PROFECO, the IFT also handles user comments and complaints for communications services.

Organization
The IFT is headed by a board of seven commissioners, including a Chair. They are each nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

The sitting commissioners are:
 Gabriel Oswaldo Contreras Saldívar (Chairman)
 Mario Germán Fromow Rangel
 Adolfo Cuevas Teja
 Arturo Robles Rovalo
 Javier Juárez Mojica
 Sóstenes Díaz González
 Ramiro Camacho Castillo

References

External links

2013 establishments in Mexico
Executive branch of the government of Mexico
Telecommunications in Mexico
Telecommunications law

Federal Telecommunications Institute


The debate has involved the Government of India and the Supreme Court of India, and is connected to the debate about a uniform civil code (Article 44, a Directive Principle of state policy, Constitution of India) in India. On 22 August 2017, the Indian Supreme Court tagged instant triple talaq (talaq-e-biddah) as unconstitutional. Three of the five judges in the panel concurred that the practice of triple talaq is unconstitutional. The remaining two declared the practice to be constitutional.
However, unconstitutionality is not the same as being declared illegal. India's Muslim neighbours are among 23 countries that have banned triple talaq already. The Quran established means to avoid hasty divorces. It prescribes two waiting periods of three months before the divorce is final in order to give the husband time to reconsider his decision. On 30 July 2019, the Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq illegal and unconstitutional, and made it a punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2019.

Family
Islam in India

Triple talaq in India