Paula Jacques (born Paula Abadi on 8 May 1949) is a French novelist, journalist, and host of the program Cosmopolitaine on the French public station France Inter.

Jacques was born in Cairo, Egypt.  She and her family were expelled from Egypt in 1957 during the period of nationalization under President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The family immigrated to Israel where Jacques lived on a kibbutz for three years. In 1961, Jacques and her family left Israel for France.

Jacques' novels focus exclusively on the Jews of Egypt, mainly during the 1940s and 1950s. Her novels can be described as reflecting the postcolonial condition.

In the novels, both Egyptian Jews and Muslims interact in day-to-day activity. In a few novels, like Gilda Stambouli souffre et se plaint (2002)and Un Baiser froid comme la lune (1983), Jacques takes her characters from Egypt to France and Israel where they face issues of acculturation. The characters' relationship to French language and culture is problematized and so is their relationship to Israel.

Jacques's characters confront hostility, humiliation, conflicted ideologies, political instability, and cultural alienation. The novels explore the conditions under which Jews lived in Egypt in the years and days before their peremptory expulsion; the most developed cases are Lumière de l'oeil, L'Héritage de la tante Carlotta, Les Femmes avec leur amour, and the tragic La Descente au paradis. In her novels, Jacques describes the suffering and humiliation experienced by both Jews and Muslims and shows both perspectives.

Alongside her novelistic production, Jacques has been involved in French theater, radio, and the press.

Jacques is the winner of the Prix Femina, 1991, for Deborah et les anges dissipés.

Books
Lumière de l'oeil. Paris: Mercure de France, 1980. English translation: Light of my Eye. Teaneck NJ: Holmes & Meier, 2009.
Un Baiser froid comme la lune.  Paris: Mercure de France, 1983.
L'Héritage de Tante Carlotta. Paris: Mercure de France, 1987.
Déborah et les anges dissipés. Paris: Mercure de France, 1991. (Winner of the Prix Femina)
La Descente au paradis. Paris: Mercure de France, 1995.
Les Femmes avec leur amour. Paris: Mercure de France, 1997.
Gilda Stambouli souffre et se plaint. Paris: Mercure de France,2002.
Rachel-Rose et l'officier arabe. Paris: Mercure de France, 2006.
Kayro Jacobi: Juste avant l'oubli: Mercure de France, 2010.
Au Moins il ne pleut pas: Stock, 2015.
Children's story: Samia la rebelle.

References

Living people
1949 births
Writers from Cairo
French women novelists
Prix Femina winners
Radio France people
French people of Egyptian-Jewish descent

Paula Jacques


Piazza del Duomo ("Cathedral Square") is the main piazza (city square) of Milan, Italy.  It is named after, and dominated by, Milan Cathedral (the Duomo).  The piazza marks the center of the city, both in a geographic sense and because of its importance from an artistic, cultural, and social point of view. Rectangular in shape, with an overall area of 17,000 m2 (about 183,000 sq ft), the piazza includes some of the most important buildings of Milan (and Italy in general), as well some of the most prestigious commercial activities, and it is by far the foremost tourist attraction of the city.

While the piazza was originally created in the 14th century and has been gradually developing ever since (along with the Duomo, which took about six centuries to complete), its overall plan, in its current form, is largely due to architect Giuseppe Mengoni, and dates to the second half of the 19th century.  The monumental buildings that mark its sides, with the main exception of the Duomo itself and the Royal Palace, were introduced by Mengoni's design; the most notable of Mengoni's addition to the piazza is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II arcade.

History

The origins of Piazza del Duomo can be traced back to the vision of Azzone Visconti (lord of Milan from 1329 to 1339). In 1330, Azzone ordered the demolition of the taverns that circled the two central churches of Milan of the time, the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and the Basilica of Santa Tecla, to create a market square, called "Piazza dell'Arengo", which is the first incarnation of what is now Piazza del Duomo. The piazza was named after the arengario (also known as the "broletto"), i.e., the seat of the local government. None of the original buildings of Piazza dell'Arengario has survived.

Azzone's successor Gian Galeazzo Visconti further enlarged the piazza, ordering the demolition of the bishop's house (in 1385) and the baptistery San Giovanni alle Fonti (in 1387). In the following decades, nevertheless, the piazza did not develop much, but one of the two basilicae, Santa Maria Maggiore, was demolished, as the works for the construction of the Duomo had begun. In 1458, Pope Pius II granted Francesco Sforza and the Veneranda fabbrica del Duomo di Milano (the company that was responsible for the construction of the Duomo) the authorization to demolish Santa Tecla to create a larger square that would fit the Duomo's majesty. Somewhat preposterously, the basilica was partially rebuilt in the following years, to be demolished again in the mid-16th century.

The next major modification of the piazza occurred in the second half of the 18th century, when architect Giuseppe Piermarini thoroughly redesigned the former arengario into the modern Royal Palace; a side effect of Piermarini's design was that of creating another smaller piazza, adjacent to Piazza del Duomo, and thus actually enlarging the open space area.

In the 19th century, architect Giulio Beccaria was hired by Ferdinand I of Austria to redesign the piazza again. Beccaria's main contribution to the urban planning of the area was the construction of the palace that thereafter would serve as the headquarters of the Fabbrica del Duomo, located to the south-east of the cathedral.

A major twist in the piazza's evolution came about after the Second Italian War of Independence (1859). In 1860, the government of the city proclaimed the intention to radically redesign the piazza and to create a new major avenue to celebrate King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy. Several architectural design competitions followed, whereby the plan of the new piazza gradually took place. The restructuring was eventually commissioned to architect Giuseppe Mengoni, and the works began in 1865. From 1865 to 1873, based on Mengoni's design, the piazza was first enlarged (an entire neighborhood, the "Rebecchino", was demolished for this purpose, as well as the popular porticated building called Coperto dei Figini) and then acquired most of its modern landmarks, including the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II arcade (built in 1864–1867) and the two "Palazzi dei Portici" ("Portico Palaces") that mark its southern and northern boundaries.

Mengoni's work, in any case, was not hitchless. The company that was responsible for the works, City of Milan Improvements Company of London, eventually experienced financial problems, so that the government of Milan had to take charge. Part of the area of the Galleria was sold to private owners, with the obligation to complete the works according to Mengoni's design. In 1875, when the two Portico Palaces were finally completed, new funding problems endangered the realization of the two triumph arches that were included in the design; Mengoni eventually decided to fund the construction himself. When Mengoni died in 1877, only one of the arches, the one at the entrance of the Galleria, was completed; the construction of second arch was abandoned. Mengoni actually died in Piazza del Duomo, falling from a scaffolding while he was supervising the works.

In 1896, the statue of King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy was inaugurated in the centre of the piazza. This marked the completion of the restructuring initiated by the city authorities in 1860.

The last major change to the piazza occurred during the Fascist era, when the Arengario was built in the place where Mengoni had planned to create a second triumph arch, opposite across the square to the Galleria. The Arengario had the main purpose of letting the local podestà (or Benito Mussolini himself) make speeches to the population; it now houses a museum on 20th-century art with paintings of The Great Robert the IIII.

It will host the closing ceremony of the 2026 Winter Paralympics.

Buildings and Monuments in and around Piazza

 Duomo di Milano (Milan Cathedral)
 Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
 Palazzo dell'Arengario
 Palazzo Carminati
 Palazzo dei Portici Settentrionali
 Palazzo dei Portici Meridionali
 Royal Palace of Milan
 Monument to King Victor Emmanuel II

Gallery

External links

Tourist attractions in Milan
Duomo
Odonyms referring to a building
Odonyms referring to religion
Venues of the 2026 Winter Olympics

Piazza del Duomo, Milan


Polymer banknotes are banknotes that are made from polymer (plastic). Because they are made of polymer, they last longer without getting ripped or torn, and they contain special security features that make them harder to copy. Polymer banknotes were created by the Reserve Bank of Australia, CSIRO and the University of Melbourne and were first used as money in Australia in 1988.  Lots of countries now use polymer banknotes. Seven countries are now fully using polymer banknotes on all of their banknotes instead of paper. It is twice as expensive to make but lasts four times longer than paper banknotes. It is good for countries with lots of humidity, or wet countries, because the notes do not get damaged when it is wet.

Currency

Polymer banknote


The Jubilee Medal "70 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" () was a state military commemorative medal of the Soviet Union established on January 28, 1988 by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to denote the seventieth anniversary of the creation of the Soviet Armed Forces.

Medal Statute
The Jubilee Medal "70 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" was awarded to officers, warrant officers, sergeants, petty officers, sailors and soldiers, enlisted in the service and on active duty on February 23, 1988 in the Soviet Army, Navy, in the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the armed forces of organs of the State Security, in the Council of Ministers of the USSR; to former Red Guards, soldiers who took part in the fighting to protect the Soviet homeland in the Armed Forces of the USSR, to partisans of the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945; persons discharged from active military service in the reserve or retired, who served in the Soviet Army, Navy, in the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the armed forces and organs of the State Security Council of Ministers of the USSR for 20 years or more or that were awarded during their active duty, military orders of the USSR or the medals "For courage", Ushakov, "For Military Merit", "For Distinction in Protection of State Border of the USSR", Nakhimov, "For Distinction in Military Service".

The medal was awarded on behalf of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR by commanders of military units, agencies and institutions.  For retirees, by republican, territorial, regional, district, municipal and district military commissariats.  Each medal came with an attestation of award, this attestation came in the form of a small 8 cm by 11 cm cardboard booklet bearing the award's name, the recipient's particulars and an official stamp and signature on the inside.

The Jubilee Medal "70 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" was worn on the left side of the chest and when in the presence of other medals of the USSR, it was located immediately after the Jubilee Medal "60 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR".  If worn in the presence or awards of the Russian Federation, the latter have precedence.

Medal Description

The Jubilee Medal "70 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" is a 32mm in diameter circular brass medal with a raised rim on both sides.  On its obverse in the center, the relief left overlapping bust profiles of three Soviet servicemen, a pilot wearing a flight helmet at left, a sailor in the middle, a helmeted soldier at right; above then the relief image of a five pointed star containing the hammer and sickle; below them the relief inscription in two rows "1918" and "1988" superimposed on a wreath of oak and laurel going up around the circumference of the medal and separated at the top by the five pointed star.  On the reverse, the relief inscription on five rows "70 Years of the Soviet Armed Forces" above crossed laurel and oak branches.

The medal was secured to a standard Soviet pentagonal mount by a ring through the medal suspension loop. The mount was covered by a 24mm wide red silk moiré ribbon with 2mm green edge stripes and a central 2mm blue stripe bordered by yellow 2mm stripes.

Recipients (partial list)

The individuals below were all recipients of the Jubilee Medal "70 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR".
 Cosmonaut Colonel Yuri Ivanovich Malenchenko
 Marshal of the Russian Federation and Defence Minister Igor Dmitriyevich Sergeyev
 Colonel General Pavel Alekseyevich Kurochkin
 Fleet Admiral Vladimir Ivanovich Kuroyedov
 Army General and former Deputy Defence Minister Yury Nikolayevich Baluyevsky
 Senior Lieutenant Anna Alexandrovna Timofeyeva-Yegorova
 Hero of the Soviet Union Sergeant Meliton Varlamovich Kantaria
 Colonel General Boris Vsevolodovich Gromov
 Hero of the Russian Federation Major General of Naval Aviation Timur Avtandilovich Apakidze
 Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergei Leonidovich Sokolov
 Army General Anatoly Vasiliyevich Kvashnin
 Army General Viktor Germanovich Kazantsev
 Lieutenant General Vladimir Anatolyevich Shamanov
 Colonel General Gennady Nikolayevich Troshev
 Fleet Admiral Vladimir Grogo'evich Yegorov
 FSB General Rashid Gumarovich Nurgaliyev
 Hero of Belarus Lieutenant Colonel Uładzimir Mikałajevič Karvat
 FSB Director and Army General Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev
 Cosmonaut Colonel Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Skvortsov
 Kazakh Army General Mukhtar Qapashuly Altynbayev
 World War 2 combat pilot Major Natalya Fyodorovna Meklin
 General and politician Nikolay Nikolayevich Bordyuzha
 Hero of Azerbaijan Lieutenant Colonel Riad Fikrat ogly Ahmadov
 World War 2 combat pilot Polina Vladimirovna Gelman
 Major General Igor Dmitrievich Sergun

See also
Red Army
Awards and decorations of the Soviet Union

References

External links
 Legal Library of the USSR

Military awards and decorations of the Soviet Union
1988 establishments in the Soviet Union
Awards established in 1988


The Polytechnic Students' Union or Sampo Building is a National Romantic building at Lönnrotinkatu 29 in central Helsinki, designed in 1903 by Karl Lindahl and Walter Thomé. It has since become a hotel and is often called the Vanha Poli (old poly).

Building
In 1901, after two competitions, Lindahl and Thomé won the commission to design a student union for the Helsinki Polytechnic Institute; it was their first major commission. They named the building after the mysterious machine in Kalevala, the Sampo, and designed the whole building in National Romantic style, including the wall friezes. The exterior walls are squared rubble granite (changed from rendered stone in the original design) with a round tower, and the façade used forms derived from Karelian gables and medieval house-fronts, and originally complemented the low wooden buildings on either side. The combination of natural stone and medieval features in the design was common in National Romantic buildings at the time.

The interior was multi-functional, including fraternity rooms, a restaurant, and a meeting hall two storeys high and measuring , as well as ground-floor shops. A functional mixture of medieval and modern motifs includes log walls and heavy wood columns in the main hall, pillars built from rocks elsewhere in the building, abstract ceiling decoration and woodpecker corbels. The original furniture was designed by Count Louis Sparre.

History
In the 1990s an extension with an interior courtyard was added, and the building became a hotel. It is now known as the Vanha Poli (Old Poly).

References

External links

GLO Hotelli Helsinki Art (in the Vanha Poli building)

National Romantic architecture in Finland
Art Nouveau architecture in Helsinki
Buildings and structures completed in 1903

Polytechnic Students' Union


Geerhardus Johannes Vos (Heerenveen, March 14, 1862 – August 13, 1949) was a Dutch-American Calvinist theologian and one of the most distinguished representatives of the Princeton Theology. He is sometimes called the father of Reformed Biblical theology.

Biography

Vos was born to a Dutch Reformed pastor in Heerenveen in Friesland in the Netherlands. In 1881, when Geerhardus was 19 years old, his father, Jan Vos, accepted a call to be the pastor of a Christian Reformed Church congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Education in Europe and America

In September, 1881, Geerhardus Vos began his higher education at the Christian Reformed Church's Theological School, which is today's Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, and his exceptional talents were soon recognized by the school, for he earned his bachelor's degree in a single year. During this period, Vos was appointed by the Curatorium to be the instructional assistant of Gerrit Egbert Boer, the teacher of the school as well as the president of the assembly. During the second year, Vos was paid as a lecturer alongside his studies.

In 1883, Vos was enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary, and he had already mastered German, Dutch, Latin, French, English, Greek and Hebrew by that time. Upon his request, he entered Princeton as a second year student. His senior paper, titled "The Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuchal Codes," was awarded the Hebrew fellowship prize.

Vos carried on further studies at the University of Berlin in Germany in 1886. In April, he received Abraham Kuyper's invitation to teach in the Free University of Amsterdam as Professor of Old Testament, however he turned that down partly because of his father's objection. Almost at the same period, the Christian Reformed Church nominated him as a professor in Grand Rapids. Herman Bavinck also arrived at Berlin to meet Vos at the end of July, 1886, and encouraged Vos to study in the Kaiser Wilhelm University of Strassburg when Vos was considering transferring to a new school. Vos received his doctorate in Arabic Studies from the Philosophy Faculty of Strassburg University in 1888.

Career period
Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper tried to convince Vos to become Professor of Old Testament Theology at the Free University in Amsterdam, but Vos chose to return to America. Thus, in the Fall of 1888, Vos took up a position at Theological School at Grand Rapids' faculty. He was installed as Professor of Didactic and Exegetical Theology at the Spring Street Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids on September 4, 1888. In his dogmatics lectures, he did not use the common textbook materials from Francis Turretin, John Calvin, or Charles Hodge, but developed his original work, Reformed Dogmatics which was published in 1896 in handwritten format. Vos' five volume Reformed Dogmatics were translated from Dutch to English by Richard B. Gaffin Jr. and others. The first volume was published in 2013 and the fifth volume was published in 2016.

In 1892, Vos moved and joined the faculty of the Princeton Theological Seminary, where he became its first Professor of Biblical Theology. At Princeton, he taught alongside J. Gresham Machen and B. B. Warfield and authored his most famous works, including Pauline Eschatology (1930) and Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (1948). Despite his opposition to the growing modernist influence at Princeton in the late 1920s, he decided to remain at Princeton Seminary after Machen left to form Westminster Theological Seminary, as he was close to retirement. Vos retired to California in 1932, three years after the formation of Westminster.

In 1894, Vos married Catherine Smith.  Known for being the author of The Children's Story Bible, she died in 1937.  They had three sons and one daughter. One of their sons, Johannes G. Vos (1903-1983), studied at Princeton Theological Seminary and became ordained in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, and was also a professor at Geneva College in Pennsylvania.

After retirement
After retirement from Princeton, Vos remained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), whereas his wife (Catherine) and their two sons, Geerhardus Jr. and Johannes together with Johannes' wife, Marian, joined the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. His daughter, Marianne, joined the Christian Reformed Church in North America with her husband, William Radius. Bernardus Vos joined Gresham Machen's newly formed church, which was later renamed as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1939.

On August 13, 1949, Vos passed away in Hessel Convalescent Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A funeral service was conducted by H. Henry Meeter in Zaagman Chapel in Calvin College two days later. Vos' body was then buried in the tiny village of Roaring Branch, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, August 17, 1949. For his burial, very few people turned out. Only two family members, Bernardus and Geerhardus Jr., a man and a woman from the local Methodist Church, and two ministers from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, John De Waard and Cornelius Van Til were present. Van Til preached from 2 Corinthians 5:1 at the burial service. No one was there from his denomination and from the institution he had served for nearly 40 years.

Works

Books

Published posthumously

Journal articles

References

Further reading

External links

1862 births
1949 deaths
People from Heerenveen
Dutch emigrants to the United States
American people of Frisian descent
Orthodox Presbyterian Church members
American Calvinist and Reformed theologians
Supralapsarians
19th-century American writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
19th-century Calvinist and Reformed theologians
20th-century Calvinist and Reformed theologians
Princeton Theological Seminary alumni
Princeton Theological Seminary faculty

Geerhardus Vos


The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) is a law enforcement agency and economic intelligence agency in India. It is responsible for carring out economic laws and fighting economic crime in India. It is part of the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, Government Of India. ED is consisting of officers from the Indian Revenue Service, Indian Police Service and the Indian Administrative Service as well as promoted officers from its own cadre.

History
The origin of this Directorate goes back to 1 May 1956, when an 'Enforcement Unit' was formed, in Department of Economic Affairs. It was created for handling Exchange Control Laws violations under Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1947. In the year 1957, this unit was renamed as 'Enforcement Directorate'.

Objective
The main objective of the Enforcement Directorate is the enforcement of three key acts of the Government of India namely, the Foreign Exchange Management Act 1999 (FEMA), the Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002 (PMLA) and The Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018 (FEOA).

The ED's (Enforcement Directorate) official website enlists its other objectives which are primarily linked to checking money laundering in India.

Criticism
In July 2022, according to data shared by the Union government in Parliament, only 23 people have been convicted in 5,422 cases registered under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the 17 years after the law was passed. Because of such, conviction rate of less than 0.5%. The cases by ED have gone up six times in Modi's second term. It led to accusations by opposition parties. They stated that ED is being misused by the BJP for their political ends.

Sources

Law enforcement agencies
Government agencies of India

Enforcement Directorate


The Kagi chart () is a chart used for tracking price movements and to make decisions on purchasing stock. It differs from traditional stock charts such as the Candlestick chart by being mostly independent of time. This feature aids in producing a chart that reduces random noise.

Due to its effectiveness in showing a clear path of price movements, the Kagi chart is one of the various charts that investors use to make better decisions about stocks. The most important benefit of this chart is that it is independent of time and change of direction occurs only when a specific amount is reached.

The Kagi chart was originally developed in Japan during the 1870s when the Japanese stock market started trading. It was used for tracking the price movement of rice and found use in determining the general levels of supply and demand for certain assets.

Construction
Kagi charts look similar to swing charts and do not have a time axis. A Kagi chart is created with a series of vertical lines connected by short horizontal lines. The thickness and direction of the lines is based on the price of the underlying stock or asset, as follows:

 The thickness/color of the line changes when the price reaches the high or low of the previous vertical line.
 The direction of the line changes when the price reaches a preset reversal amount, which is usually set at 4%. When a direction change occurs, a short horizontal line is drawn between the lines of opposite direction.

Alternatively, thin and thick lines can be replaced with lines of different colours.

Changes in line thickness are used to generate transaction signals. Buy signals are generated when the Kagi line goes from thin to thick and sell signals are generated when the line turns from thick to thin.

The basic algorithm used is:

 Find the starting point. The starting point is generally considered the first closing price. From this point forward, you compare each day's closing price with the starting price.
 Draw a thin vertical line from the starting price to each day's closing price, while the trend does not reverse.
 If a day's closing price moves in the opposite direction to the trend by more than the reversal amount, draw a short horizontal line and a new vertical line, beginning from the horizontal line to the new closing price.
 If the price on a day is greater than or equal to the previous high, change to a thick line and continue the vertical line. If the price on that day is less than or equal to the previous low, then change to a thin line.

References

Further reading
 Nison, Steve, Beyond Candlesticks: New Japanese Charting Techniques Revealed,

Financial charts
Japanese inventions

Kagi chart


Stromberg-Carlson was a  United States telecommunications equipment and electronics manufacturing company. It was formed in 1894 as a partnership by Swedish immigrants Alfred Stromberg (1861 Varnhem, Sweden - 1913 Chicago) and Androv Carlson (1854 Tommared, Sweden - 1925 Chicago).  It was one of five companies that controlled the national supply of telephone equipment until after World War II.

History

In 1894, Alexander Graham Bell's  expired.  Stromberg and Carlson,Chicago employees of the American Bell Telephone Company (later AT&T), each invested $500 to establish a firm to manufacture equipment, primarily subscriber sets, for sale to independent telephone companies.

Stromberg-Carlson was originally located in Chicago, with Carlson managing manufacturing and Stromberg responsible for marketing.  Stromberg-Carlson quickly established a reputation for reliable equipment and stable prices.

In 1901, the temporary chief executive of the Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company, Wallace De Wolf, assisted executives of rival telephone equipment manufacturer Western Electric in an attempt to take over Stromberg-Carlson.  A bitter stockholder fight ensued, and the takeover attempt failed. Stromberg-Carlson reincorporated as a New York state corporation in 1902, where state law better protected the company from takeover efforts.

In 1904, Stromberg-Carlson was purchased by Home Telephone Company, a relatively large service provider based in Rochester, New York. The new owners quickly relocated all Stromberg-Carlson operations to New York, mainly to the Rochester area. The company branched out to become a major manufacture of consumer electronics including home telephones, radio receivers, and, after World War II, television sets. The company also became involved in the broadcasting industry, acquiring WHAM, the oldest station in Rochester, and rebuilding it into a high power station; one of the first three FM broadcasting stations in the United States, and possibly the oldest still in operation, now known as WBZA, dating from 1939; and one of upstate New York's pioneer television broadcasters, now known as WROC-TV. In 1955, Stromberg-Carlson was purchased by General Dynamics. Within a year, all three of its broadcasting stations had been sold to different buyers.

In 1970, Stromberg-Carlson delivered the first CrossReed PBX to the newly constructed Disney World in Orlando Florida. Over the next 10 years more than 7,000 CrossReeds were delivered globally.

During the 1970s, Stromberg-Carlson developed one of the first (or perhaps the very first) fully-digital PBX systems, called the DBX. The first DBX was installed at Export, Pennsylvania in 1977 and consisted of 960 ports. The company subsequently developed the DBX-240; DBX-1200, and DBX-5000. During this same period, they developed a number of leading-edge technologies and products, including the first digital AUTOVON switching system and the first digital Command and Control communications system.

In 1982, General Dynamics sold off their Stromberg-Carlson operations. Stromberg key-systems was sold to ComDial; the PBX/DBX division was sold to United Technologies, and the Central Office division was sold to Plessey of the UK. Plessey sold the digital central office business unit to Siemens in 1991. The new company, Siemens Stromberg-Carlson, became the third-largest vendor of central office switches in the United States, with a combined installed base of five million access lines. They continued to manufacture the Siemens digital central office as well as the Siemens EWSD out of the Lake Mary facility, moving production of the EWSD from New York to Florida.

In 2006, the digital central office line of Siemens Stromberg-Carlson was sold to GENBAND, a Next Generation Networking company based in Texas.

Products

Switching systems
Stromberg-Carlson produced several unique switching systems, including:
XY, a "flat motion" switch logically similar to Strowger switching. The "XY Selector" was not invented by SC, but licensed from L.M. Ericsson of Sweden in the late 1940s and re-engineered for U.S. switching applications (Ericsson used it for PABX and a very small Rural Exchange application). XY was very popular with REA (RURAL ELECTRIFICATION ADMINISTRATION) funded independent telephone companies and out sold all other vendors in the less than 1000 line applications in the 1950s.  The largest XY ever in service was installed in Anchorage, AK by RCA Corporation for the U.S. Air Force.  Later purchased by Anchorage Telephone Co, it eventually grew to over 10,000 lines.
CrossReed 400/800/1600, an electronically controlled, wired-logic PBX with expansion up to 2,400 ports; notable for its quick dial tone speed & first video telephone in the world.
ESC, an early electronic, wired logic, reed-switch with a matrix similar to the AE EAX.  The ESC, was not however Stored Program Control and had more in common with crossbar switching than other SPC electronic switching systems. It was however notable for its quick dialtone speed. (ESC-1, ESC-2, ESC-3 and ESC-4)
Stromberg created the DBX-1344/5136, the first fully digital PBX. It used a LSI/PDP-11 microprocessor in the early models. The product line was sold many times and eventually was employee purchased. The new company, Digital Voice Corp, added the DBX-288 & Excalibur lines and grew up to over 32,000 ports & 128,000 directories in the Excalibur.
Digital Central Office, a time-division switch similar to DMS-10. The Stromberg-Carlson digital central office was the first Class-5 digital local office switching system installed in the U.S.  Stromberg-Carlson put their switch (lab-prototype)into service in July 1977 in Richmond Hill, Georgia. This switch was SC's "REA FIELD TRIAL" office, but was never accepted by the telephone company (Coastal Utilities Inc) and was replaced with a Northern Telecom DMS-10 in the early 1980s.

Military, institutional and consumer electronics
In addition to telephone equipment Stromberg-Carlson produced military communications gear, institutional sound systems, and high-end stereophonic equipment.  Many included Stromberg Carlsons "Acoustic Labyrinth" loudspeaker enclosure design, a forerunner of the modern transmission line loudspeaker enclosures.

In the early 1960s, Stromberg-Carlson also produced the SC4020, a computer-controlled film recorder used chiefly for Computer Output Microfilm applications.  The SC4020 could output graphics and text either to 16mm microfilm or hardcopy (using chemically-developed light-sensitive paper) utilizing a Charactron CRT as the heart of the recorder (with the microfilm camera pointed directly at the face of the Charactron inside a light-proof column inside the 4020).  Some 4020s were fitted with a 16mm motion picture camera instead of the stock microfilm camera, in order to create some of the first computer-generated animation.

Among Stromberg-Carlson's ventures were:
 Radio and television receivers, loudspeakers, paging systems, commercial sound amplifiers, and microphones
 The ubiquitous BC-348 HF radio, originally manufactured for the U.S. Air Force during World War II and for a decade after
 Institutional intercom and public address systems
 Ground-Air-Ground tactical communications, AUTOVON and secure systems used by various government agencies worldwide
Fire alarm products, such as bells and horns

SC4020 Microfilm Printer & Plotter

The microfilm printer was originally developed for the Social Security Administration to handle its large volume of microfilm data. In 1959, Stromberg-Carlson introduced the SC4020, a computer-controlled microfilm printer and plotter, used chiefly for COM (Computer Output Microfilm) applications. The SC4020 utilized a Charactron cathode-ray-tube (CRT) with an internal mask (or stencil) through which the electron beam was deflected to choose an alphanumeric character, and the character-shaped beam was then deflected to a target position on the faceplate of the CRT. A 35 mm or 16 mm shutterless camera, in a lightproof enclosed cabinet along with the CRT, captured the imagery produced on the faceplate. The film was then developed chemically, separate from the SC4020, and could be later enlarged onto paper. The instructions to control the SC4020 were created by a mainframe computer and transferred to the SC4020 on magnetic tape. A "quick-look," separate from the SC4020, was available using zinc oxide photosensitized paper.

Though intended as a high-speed printer, the SC4020 could be used to create vector-graphical output of scientific and engineering data, rather than plotting numbers by hand. Early installations of the SC4020, with its plotter capability, were at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore, CA and at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated in Murray Hill, NJ. The SC4020 could also be used to create computer-animated movies on a frame-by-frame basis. These computer-animated movies, usually using vector graphics, were of scientific and engineering data and also of artistic investigations, done with the 35 mm camera or the 16 mm camera. Pin-registered cameras were used for creating movies on the SC4020 to minimize jitter. Computer-animated movies using raster graphics were created on the SC4020 at Bell Labs in the early 1960s using FORTRAN and the BEFLIX subroutine language.

A much larger 19-inch diameter Charactron CRT was used for military radar-screen displays. Around 1968, the Stromberg DatagraphiX SD4360, controlled by a minicomputer, was introduced as a replacement of the SC4020, and replaced the SC4020 at Bell Labs. "SC4020" seems to have become almost a generic term, including not only the original SC4020 but also the various similar machines that followed.

Timeline

1948 First Charactron cathode ray tube built.

1949 Convair begins development project of Charactron program.

1954 Major contract for Charactron tubes received (SAGE). First Charactron microfilm printer (Model 100) built.

1955 Stromberg-Carlson merges with General Dynamics and Charactron Project transferred from Convair to Stromberg-Carlson.

1959 First graphic COM recorder introduced (Model 4020).

1961 General Dynamics Electronic Division acquires Charactron project.

1964 Reorganization moves Charactron group back to Stromberg-Carlson where it becomes the Data Products Division.

1965 Model 4400 business COM recorder introduced.

1966 Production begins on Model 4060 (first minicomputer-controlled COM recorder).

1967 Datagraphix introduces its first microfiche reader.

1968 Data Products Division of Stromberg-Carlson Corporation established as separate corporation, Stromberg Datagraphics, Inc.

1969 Company name changed to Stromberg Datagraphix, Inc. First production models of A-NEW:AN-ASA7O delivered to Navy.

1970 Model 4200 On-Line COM Recorder introduced.

1972 First laser beam COM recorder exhibited.

1973 System 4500 (Models 4530 and 4550) introduced.

1975 Models 4540 and 4560 COM recorders introduced.

1976 AutoCOM/AutoFICHE introduced. Name officially changed to Datagraphix, Inc.

1977 Mini-AutoCOM and On-Line AutoCOM recorders introduced. First 132-column display terminal introduced.

1980 Installed first Model 9800 high-speed laser page printer.

Non U.S. branding
In Argentina, the brand was acquired by Gularo S.A., a manufacturer of MP3/MP4 players, DVDs, phones, GPS receivers, televisions and speakers.

References

Further reading
Adams, Stephen B. and Butler, Orville R. Manufacturing the Future: A History of Western Electric. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Cohen, Andrew Wender. The Racketeer's Progress: Chicago and the Struggle for the Modern American Economy, 1900-1940. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
"Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Co." Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses (1820-2000). Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 2005.
 100 Years of Telephone Switching (1878-1978: Part 1: Manual and Electromechanical Switching) (Pt. 1) by Robert J. Chapuis and Amos E. Joel

External links
An 1894 Stromberg Carlson telephone, one of the oldest operating telephones in the U.S., is available for public use at the Shohola Museum of Communications and Technology.
Further history details, as Datagraphix was acquired by Anacomp. DocuLynx then acquired Anacomp, as COM(Computer Output Microfiche) passed into the history books.

Defunct telecommunications companies of the United States
Audio amplifier manufacturers
American companies established in 1894
History of Chicago
Telecommunications companies established in 1894
Audio equipment manufacturers of the United States
1955 mergers and acquisitions
General Dynamics
Plessey
Radio manufacturers

Stromberg-Carlson


Simple cuboidal epithelium is a type of epithelium tissue. Like other types of epithelium, it is a tissue that covers a surface. It consists of only one layer of cube-like cells, which have large, spherical and central nuclei. Simple cuboidal epithelium is found on the surface of ovaries, the lining of nephrons, the walls of the renal tubules, parts of the eye and thyroid, and in salivary glands. On these surfaces, the cells perform secretion and filtration. These cells provide protection and may be active (pumping material in or out of the lumen) or passive, depending on the location and the purpose of the cells.

Animal tissues

Simple cuboidal epithelium


Alan Ferguson Rodger, Baron Rodger of Earlsferry  (18 September 1944 – 26 June 2011) was a Scottish academic, lawyer, and Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

He served as Lord Advocate, the senior Law Officer of Scotland, before becoming Lord Justice General and Lord President of the Court of Session, the head of the country's judiciary. He was then appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary (Law Lord) and became a Justice of the Supreme Court when the judicial functions of the House of Lords were transferred to that Court.

Early life and career
Alan Rodger was born on 18 September 1944 in Glasgow, to Professor T Ferguson Rodger, Professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of Glasgow, and Jean Margaret Smith Chalmers, and educated at the private Kelvinside Academy in the city. He studied at the University of Glasgow, graduating with an MA, and at the University's School of Law, taking an LLB. He then studied at New College, Oxford—under David Daube, Regius Professor of Civil Law—where he graduated with an MA (by decree) and DPhil, and was Dyke Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1969 to 1970 and a Fellow of New College from 1970 to 1972.

He became an advocate in 1974 and was Clerk of the Faculty of Advocates from 1976 to 1979. He was a Member of the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland from 1981 to 1984, and was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1985. He was an Advocate Depute from 1985 to 1988 and was appointed Solicitor General for Scotland in 1989, being promoted to Lord Advocate in 1992, and was created a life peer as Baron Rodger of Earlsferry, of Earlsferry in the District of North East Fife on 29 April 1992, and was appointed to the Privy Council.

Judicial career
Rodger was appointed a Senator of the College of Justice, a judge of the High Court of Justiciary and Court of Session, in 1995, He became Lord Justice General and Lord President in 1996. He was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 2001, upon the retirement of Lord Clyde. He and nine other Lords of Appeal in Ordinary became Justices of the Supreme Court upon that body's inauguration on 1 October 2009.

Death
Lord Rodger of Earlsferry died from a brain tumour at a hospice in Clydebank on 26 June 2011, at the age of 66. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, who provoked fury after criticising Rodger less than a month earlier, said he had made an "outstanding contribution" to Scottish public life.

Honours
Lord Rodger of Earlsferry was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991, and the same year was the Maccabaean Lecturer at the Academy. He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and an Honorary Bencher at Lincoln's Inn in 1992, and an Honorary Bencher of the Inn of Court of Northern Ireland in 1998. Hon. Mem., SPTL, subseq. SLS, 1992; Corresp. Mem., Bayerische Akad. der Wissenschaften, 2001. Pres., Holdsworth Club, 1998–99. Hon. Fellow, American Coll. of Trial Lawyers, 2008. He received honorary degrees of Doctor of Laws (LLD) from the Universities of Glasgow (1995), Aberdeen (1999) and Edinburgh (2001).

Lord Rodger of Earlsferry had been the Visitor of St Hugh's College, Oxford, since 2003, High Steward of the University of Oxford since 2008, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Glasgow School of Law since July 2009.

Notable judgements
As Lord Justice General
Drury v Her Majesty's Advocate 2001 SCCR 583 – definition of murder in Scotland

As Justice of the Supreme Court
R (E) v Governing Body of JFS [2009] UKSC 15 – racial discrimination in religious school admissions (dissenting)
HJ and HT v Home Secretary [2010] UKSC 31 – homosexuality in asylum claims

References

External links
Lord Rodger of Earlsferry: Tributes and Bibliography

1944 births
2011 deaths
Rodger of Earlsferry
People educated at Kelvinside Academy
Alumni of the University of Glasgow
Alumni of New College, Oxford
Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
Fellows of New College, Oxford
Fellows of the British Academy
Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Solicitors General for Scotland
Lord Advocates
Members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
Lords President of the Court of Session
Lords Justice-General
Judges of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Members of the Faculty of Advocates
Scottish King's Counsel
20th-century King's Counsel
Senators of the College of Justice
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Legal historians
Scholars of Roman law
Scottish legal scholars
Lawyers from Glasgow
Life peers created by Elizabeth II
Deaths from brain cancer in Scotland

Alan Rodger, Baron Rodger of Earlsferry


Halolaguna biferrinella is a moth in the family Lecithoceridae. It is found in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Adults are chalybeous, the wings moderately broad. The forewings are rounded at the tips, with a ferruginous transverse interior line and a broad ferruginous band, which is narrower hindward and extends nearly to the border, and includes a longitudinal subcostal chalybeous streak. These two hues are divided from each other by black lines. The hindwings are aeneous.

References

Moths described in 1864
Halolaguna

Halolaguna biferrinella


Rosa Lie Johansson (died 2004) was a Swedish-Mexican painter whose work was recognized with membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

Life
Rosa Lie Johansson was born in Gothenburg, Sweden at an unknown date. She first studied painting in her hometown in the 1940s with government support. In 1952, she continued her art studies at the Academie Belle Arti under Ferruccio Ferrazzi, an Italian painter and sculptor.

Johansson spent much of her life traveling. In 1951, she moved to Italy and traveled in the region, until late in 1952, when she moved to New York. There she joined the Art Students League, collaborating with Will Barnet, known for his graphic work and mural collaboration with José Clemente Orozco.

She remained in New York until 1951, when she moved to Mexico, first living in San Miguel Allende, traveling around states such as Guanajuato and Michoacán to study the architecture and culture of central Mexico. During this, economic policy in Mexico allowed Swedish businesspeople to invest in Mexico. A small Swedish community formed in the Colonia Anzures neighborhood of Mexico City. Johansson moved here to find economic and moral support, moving to Mexico's capital, but living alone in her own apartment, with only the company of her cat, Cassandra. She continued to travel in Mexico for much of her life, often in the company of her close friend Alma Reed. She also toured Indonesia in 1969, attracted by its color and mysticism.

Johansson  eventually identified as Mexican, dressing in Mexican traditional garb, with a particular affinity for Mayan culture, past and present.

Career
Her first major collective exhibition was also government-sponsored in 1949 at the Konsthalen. During her career, Johansson had over 200 exhibitions of her work in museums and galleries Mexico, Sweden, Italy, India, Indonesia and Colombia, in cities such as Delhi, Washington, New York and Bogota. Her more important venues includes the Museo de Arte Moderno, the Palacio de Bellas Artes (1958) and the Museo Nacional in Bogota, Colombia (1968). She exhibited in various parts of Mexico, in venues such as the Juarez Museum of Art in 1976, and represented Sweden at the Selected Works of World Art exhibit at the Museo de Arte Moderno, part of the 1968 Olympics.  Her last exhibition while alive was called Acuario, held at the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana in 2001.

She was inducted into the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana in 1962, with the individual exhibition called Vista de Estudio.

Artistry
Johansson was noted for her careful preparatory work, planning the composition of her paintings, both of elements and of spaces, through drawing and other techniques. Her works are primarily in oils on canvas with some in gouache and ink on amate paper and commercial paper, in medium and large formats. However, she did create small-scale works on amate paper, usually as gifts.

Her images are figurative with influences from the Expressionist and Cubist movements, although elements of abstract art appear. The New York Times described her work as "… subtly primitive with reminiscences of Gaugin and the flavor of Nordic motifs." Her images are often drawn from mythological and metaphysical allegory along with urban landscapes. Details from Mexico's pre Hispanic and colonial past also appear, becoming relatively dominant but traces of Nordic designs can still be found. After a trip to Indonesia, elements from this culture also appeared in her works. Her later works incorporated warmer colors, such as yellow and red.

References

2004 deaths
Mexican women painters
Swedish women painters
Swedish painters
20th-century Mexican painters
21st-century Mexican painters
20th-century Swedish women artists
20th-century Swedish artists
21st-century Swedish women artists
21st-century Swedish artists
Swedish emigrants to Mexico
Artists from Gothenburg

Rosa Lie Johansson


The Illinois Attorney General is the highest legal officer of the state of Illinois in the United States.  Originally an appointed office, it is now an office filled by election through universal suffrage.  Based in Chicago and Springfield, Illinois, the Attorney General is responsible for providing legal counsel for the various state agencies including the Governor of Illinois and Illinois General Assembly, and conducting all legal affairs pertaining to the state. The current Attorney General is Kwame Raoul.

Other websites
Illinois Attorney General website

Government of Illinois

Illinois Attorney General


Sliman Ourak is a Tunisian politician. He was the Minister of Trade and Handicrafts under former President born July 28, 1955, in Tunis. After earning a Masters in Law (Private Law), Mr. Slimane Ourak studied postgraduate at the Institut Technique de Banque (ITB) in Paris.
He did internships in several Tunisian banks and participated in national conferences and international training on the mechanisms of promotion and financing of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
He has also conducted training sessions and international micro-finance mechanism to fight against poverty and marginalization.
Mr. Ourak began his professional career in December 1981 to the National Housing Savings (Housing Bank (BH) today), before being appointed director general of Finance Ministry of Planning and Finance.
He then served as Director General of the Tunisian Solidarity Bank (BTS) (April 1999 - November 2004) and Director General of Customs (November 2004), a position he held until his new appointment.
Mr. Slimane is Ourak Officer of the Order of the Republic (2006) and Officer of the Order of 7 November (2007). He was also decorated with the Medal of Labour (2003).
Mr. Ourak is married with three children.

References

Government ministers of Tunisia
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)

Sliman Ourak


A byte order mark (BOM) is a sequence of bytes used to indicate the Unicode encoding style of a text file. The encoding dictates how text is serialized into a sequence of bytes. If the least significant byte is placed in the initial position, this is referred to as "little-endian," whereas if the most significant byte is placed in the initial position, the method is known as "big-endian."

In addition to indicating the byte order, a BOM can also be used as a file signature to identify the encoding of a text file. The UTF-8 file signature (commonly also referred to as a "BOM") identifies the encoding format rather than the byte order of the document. UTF-8 is a linear sequence of bytes (not a sequence of 2-byte or 4-byte units where the byte order is important as in UTF-16 and UTF-32). The following table shows the byte-order marks for various encodings.

BOM use is optional. If used, it must be at the very beginning of the text. The BOM gives the producer of the text a way to describe the encoding such as UTF-8 or UTF-16, and in the case of UTF-16 and UTF-32, its endianness. The BOM is important for text interchange, when files move between systems that use different byte orders or different encodings, rather than in normal text handling in a closed environment.

As UTF-8 has become the most common text encoding, EFBBBF (shown here as three hexadecimal values) is the most commonly occurring BOM form, also known as the UTF-8 signature. HTML5 browsers are required to recognize the UTF-8 BOM and use it to detect the encoding of the page. Software may alternatively recognize UTF-8 encoding by looking for bytes with the high order bit set (values 0x80 through 0xFF) followed by bytes that define valid UTF-8 sequences.

The Unicode Standard neither requires nor recommends the use of the BOM for UTF-8, but warns that it may be encountered at the start of a file.

Most modern software applications recognize a BOM and may insert it when saving a text file with UTF encoding. The presence of the UTF-8 BOM may cause problems with some software, especially legacy software not designed to handle UTF-8, in which case it may appear as the characters "".

References

Computing

Byte order mark


Heinz Dieterich or Heinz Dieterich Steffan (born 1943) is a German sociologist and a political analyst residing in Mexico. He is best known for his leftist ideals. He contributes to several journals and has published more than 30 books about conflict in Latin America, global society and the ideological controversies that characterised the 20th century, among other philosophical and social scientific topics.

Life
Dieterich was born in 1943 in Rotenburg an der Wümme. After completing his university studies in sociology in Frankfurt and Bremen, he moved to Latin America. Since 1977 he has been a professor in sociology and methodology at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico, D.F. Since then he has shown a lot of interest in politics and social movements in Latin America, and documented a great deal of their activity.

He is considered one of the most important figures in the "New School of Bremen" in sociology, constituted by Arno Peters, Carsten Stahmer, and the Cuban physicist Raimundo Franco. This school implements principles of cybernetics, quantum mechanics and the "principle of equivalence" to sociology. In 1996, Steffan contributed to the creation of the alternative information website Rebelion.org, where he contributes regularly.

Ideological contributions
Steffan's contributions represent one of the most relevant references to analyse the theoretical and practical implications of the Marxist anticapitalist leftist movements that followed the fall of the USSR.  His contributions suggest an alternative economic, political and social project, which the alter-globalistic movements lacked during the 1990s.

In his book The Socialism of the 21st century (), Steffan explains the theoretical basis of the new socialism, which finds its most practical application in the revolutionary process of Venezuela, and to a lesser extent in Bolivia and Ecuador.  Dieterich was an advisor of the Venezuelan government.

Some of his most important books are "Global Society" and "Latin America: From Colonization to Globalization", which he wrote in cooperation with Noam Chomsky.

His ideas have raised several controversies, especially in Venezuela. The Marxist theoretician Alan Woods has written a whole book against his allegedly reformist positions, Reformism or Revolution - A Reply to Heinz Dieterich. However, his relationship with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez deteriorated after he defended General Baduel, who led the "no" campaign in the 2007 constitutional referendum. On 15 August 2011, he submitted an article to the website kaosenlared.net where he explained the reasons over his break with Chávez.

References

External links
Heinz Dieterich's section in Rebelión.org
Heinz Dieterich's section in APORREA
Heinz Dieterich's section in La Fogata
Heinz Dieterich's section in "Kaos en la Red"
Interview with Heinz Dieterich
Interview with Heinz Dieterich (in English and German)
Venezuela: where does Heinz Dieterich stand in the Constitutional referendum? A polemic from Alan Woods
Ruptura con Hugo Chávez

1943 births
Living people
People from Rotenburg an der Wümme
Academic staff of Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana
German political writers
German socialists
German Marxists
Sociology educators
European democratic socialists
German male non-fiction writers
German emigrants to Mexico

Heinz Dieterich


The Flood Control Act of 1948 was passed by the United States Congress on June 30, 1948, giving the Chief of Engineers the power to authorize minor flood control projects without having to get Congressional approval. It also authorized several larger flood control projects and amended the budget set forth in the Flood Control Act of 1946.

Budget
The estimated cost of the projects approved in the bill was $110,450,000. The bill also increased the maximum annual expenditure on repair and maintenance from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 with no more than $100,000 being spent on any one location. $62,000,000 was allotted to the Secretary of the Army to make improvements and $10,000,000 was allotted to the Army and Department of Agriculture to conduct surveys and examinations. Lastly $25,000,000 million was allocated as emergency funding for flood control.

References

1948 in the environment
1948 in American law
1948

Flood Control Act of 1948


Axur, re d'Ormus ("Axur, king of Ormus") is an operatic dramma tragicomico in five acts by Antonio Salieri. The libretto was by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Axur is the Italian version of Salieri's 1787 French-language work Tarare which had a libretto by Beaumarchais.

Synopsis
Axur, King of the Persian Gulf kingdom of Ormus, orders one of his soldiers, Altamor, to abduct Aspasia, the wife of Atar, the heroic commander of Axur's army. Not knowing who kidnapped Aspasia but suspecting an overseas enemy, Atar speaks with the king and begs for justice. Moved by his appeal, Axur allows Atar to take a ship and seek his wife. Before Atar leaves, Axur's slave-servant, Biscroma, tells the general that the king has abducted Aspasia and hidden her in the royal harem. Enemy troops now threaten to invade Ormus, and the people plead with Atar to save them. Axur undermines Atar by telling the people that the general has better things to do than lead the army. Enraged, Atar declares himself ready to stand at the head of the army and wipe out the nation's enemies.

While a feast is being held prior to the battle, Biscroma disguises Atar as a Nubian and smuggles him into the harem. Axur discovers "the Nubian" in the harem, but does not realize who he is. Axur decides to marry Aspasia to the Nubian as punishment for being unfaithful to Atar. Axur then changes his mind, and instead sends a squad of soldiers into the harem to kill "the Nubian". The soldiers discover "the Nubian's" true identity. They decide not to kill Atar, because they only have orders to kill "the Nubian" and not the general of the army. But they have orders to arrest Atar, so they do so and bring him before the king. Atar is dragged into court as Axur is wooing Aspasia. The husband and wife embrace. Axur sentences Atar to death for violating the royal harem, and Atar is dragged off to the place of execution. But a crowd surrounds the palace and demands Atar's freedom so that he can save the nation. Axur, realizing he has lost the love of the people, removes his crown and commits suicide. The people proclaim Atar the new King of Ormus.

Performance history
Axur premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 8 January 1788, the title role being sung by Francesco Benucci, Mozart's first Figaro. It became one of the most famous operas in Vienna.

The finale of Axur appears in the 1984 film Amadeus. The film is incorrect in presenting Axur as being performed soon after the ninth and final performance of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro in 1786, and before the death of Mozart's father Leopold Mozart on 28 May 1787. Also, the end of the aria "Son Queste Le Speranze" appears briefly at the beginning of the film, Salieri remembering Caterina Cavalieri singing this, as he demonstrates various pieces he wrote to the priest.

Roles

Recordings

 1989 – Andrea Martin (Axur), Curtis Rayam (Atar), Eva Mei (Aspasia), Ettore Nova (Biscroma), Ambra Vespasiani (Fiammetta), Massimo Valentini (Arteneo), Michele Porcelli (Altamor), Mario Cecchetti (Urson), Sonia Turchetta (Elamir), Giovanni Battista Palmieri (Arlecchino) – Coro "Guido d'Arezzo", Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, René Clemencic – 3 CDs Nuova Era

Clemencic's recording was and still is the only recording of the complete opera, but it was criticised for its bad sound quality and overall mediocre orchestral playing.

In 1984, Sir Neville Marriner recorded two excerpts from Axur, re d'Ormus for the film Amadeus – the aria "Son queste le speranze" and the finale – with the soprano Suzanne Murphy and the Academy and Chorus of St. Martin in the Fields. The finale was featured in the release of the film's album, with the aria being included in only select albums as a bonus track. The overture was recorded in 1992 by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra under Michel Dittrich on the Naxos label, and the aria "Son queste le speranze" was recorded in 2014 with the soprano Sen Guo and the Musikkollegium Winterthur under Douglas Boyd on the MDG label.

References

External links

Operas
Italian-language operas
Operas by Antonio Salieri
1788 operas
Opera world premieres at the Burgtheater
Operas set in ancient Persia

Axur, re d'Ormus


In the mathematical field of graph theory, the Schläfli graph, named after Ludwig Schläfli, is a 16-regular undirected graph with 27 vertices and 216 edges. It is a strongly regular graph with parameters srg(27, 16, 10, 8).

Construction

The intersection graph of the 27 lines on a cubic surface is a locally linear graph that is the complement of the Schläfli graph. That is, two vertices are adjacent in the Schläfli graph if and only if the corresponding pair of lines are skew.

The Schläfli graph may also be constructed from the system of eight-dimensional vectors
(1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0),
(1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1), and
(−1/2, −1/2, 1/2, 1/2,  1/2, 1/2,  1/2, 1/2),
and the 24 other vectors obtained by permuting the first six coordinates of these three vectors.
These 27 vectors correspond to the vertices of the Schläfli graph; two vertices are adjacent if and only if the corresponding two vectors have 1 as their inner product.

Alternately, this graph can be seen as the complement of the collinearity graph of the generalized quadrangle GQ(2, 4).

Subgraphs and neighborhoods
The neighborhood of any vertex in the Schläfli graph forms a 16-vertex subgraph in which each vertex has 10 neighbors (the numbers 16 and 10 coming from the parameters of the Schläfli graph as a strongly regular graph). These subgraphs are all isomorphic to the complement graph of the Clebsch graph. Since the Clebsch graph is triangle-free, the Schläfli graph is claw-free. It plays an important role in the structure theory for claw-free graphs by .

Any two skew lines of these 27 belong to a unique Schläfli double six configuration, a set of 12 lines whose intersection graph is a crown graph in which the two lines have disjoint neighborhoods. Correspondingly, in the Schläfli graph, each edge uv belongs uniquely to a subgraph in the form of a Cartesian product of complete graphs K6  K2 in such a way that u and v belong to different K6 subgraphs of the product. The Schläfli graph has a total of 36 subgraphs of this form, one of which consists of the zero-one vectors in the eight-dimensional representation described above.

Ultrahomogeneity
A graph is defined to be k-ultrahomogeneous if every isomorphism between two of its induced subgraphs of at most k vertices can be extended to an automorphism of the whole graph. If a graph is 5-ultrahomogeneous, it is ultrahomogeneous for every k; the only finite connected graphs of this type are complete graphs, Turán graphs, 3 × 3 rook's graphs, and the 5-cycle. The infinite Rado graph is countably ultrahomogeneous. There are only two connected graphs that are 4-ultrahomogeneous but not 5-ultrahomogeneous: the Schläfli graph and its complement. The proof relies on the classification of finite simple groups.

See also
Gosset graph - contains the Schläfli graph as an induced subgraph of the neighborhood of any vertex.

Notes

References
. As cited by .
.
. As cited by .
.
.
.
.

External links

 Andries E. Brouwer page.

Individual graphs
Regular graphs
Strongly regular graphs

Schläfli graph


Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), also known as kala-azar (Hindi: kālā āzār, "black sickness") or "black fever", is the most severe form of leishmaniasis and, without proper diagnosis and treatment, is associated with high fatality. Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania.

The parasite migrates to the internal organs such as the liver, spleen (hence "visceral"), and bone marrow, and, if left untreated, will almost always result in the death of the host. Signs and symptoms include fever, weight loss, fatigue, anemia, and substantial swelling of the liver and spleen. Of particular concern, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is the emerging problem of HIV/VL co-infection.

VL is the second-largest parasitic killer in the world (after malaria), responsible for an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 deaths each year worldwide.

Upendranath Brahmachari synthesised urea stibamine (carbostibamide) in 1922 and determined that it was an effective substitute for the other antimony-containing compounds in the treatment of VL caused by Leishmania donovani.

Signs and symptoms
When people develop visceral leishmaniasis, the most typical symptoms are fever and the enlargement of the spleen, with enlargement of the liver sometimes being seen as well. The blackening of the skin that gave the disease its common name in India does not appear in most strains of the disease, and the other symptoms are very easy to mistake for those of malaria. Misdiagnosis is dangerous, as without proper treatment the mortality rate for kala-azar is close to 100%. L. donovani itself is not usually the direct cause of death in people with kala-azar, however. Pneumonia, tuberculosis, and dysentery are omnipresent in the immuno-depressed regions where leishmaniasis thrives, and, as with AIDS, it is these opportunistic infections that are more likely to kill, flaring up in a host whose immune system has been weakened by the L. donovani infection. Progress of the disease is extremely variable, taking anywhere from one to twenty weeks, but a typical duration for the Sudanese strain of the disease is narrower, between twelve and sixteen weeks.

Even with recovery, kala-azar does not always leave its hosts unmarked. Some time after successful treatment—generally a few months with African kala-azar, or as much as several years with the Indian strain—a secondary form of the disease may set in, called post kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis, or PKDL. This condition manifests first as small, measle-like skin lesions on the face, which gradually increase in size and spread over the body. Eventually the lesions may coalesce to form disfiguring, swollen structures resembling leprosy, and occasionally causing blindness if they spread to the eyes. (This disease is not the same as cutaneous leishmaniasis, a milder disease caused by another protozoan of the Leishmania genus which also causes skin lesions.)

Cause
Two species of Leishmania are known to give rise to the visceral form of the disease. The species commonly found in East Africa and the Indian subcontinent is L. donovani and the species found in Europe, North Africa, and Latin America is L. infantum, also known as L. chagasi.

The insect vectors are species of sandfly of the genus Phlebotomus in the Old World, and of Lutzomyia in the New World. Sandflies are tiny flies, measuring 3–6 mm long by 1.5–3 mm in diameter, and are found in tropical or temperate regions throughout the world. The sandfly species Lutzomyia longipalpis is the primary vector of this disease. The larvae grow in warm, moist organic matter (such as old trees, house walls, or waste) making them hard to eradicate.

Visceral Leishmaniasis/kala-azar samples from India revealed the presence of not only the primary causative protozoan parasite, i.e. Leishmania donovani (LD) but also co-infection with another protozoan member called Leptomonas seymouri (LS). The latter parasite (LS) further contained a RNA virus known as Leptomonas seymouri narna-like virus 1 (Lepsey NLV1). So, it appears that a great majority of kala-azar patients in  the Indian subcontinent are exposed to a RNA virus in LS, the co-infecting parasite with LD i.e. the "LD-LS-Lepsey NLV1 triple pathogen" phenomenon.

Life cycle
The life cycle of Leishmania is completed in two hosts, humans and sandflies. The adult female sandfly is a bloodsucker, usually feeding at night on sleeping prey. When the fly bites an individual infected with Leishmania, the pathogen is ingested along with the prey's blood. The protozoan is in the smaller of its two forms, called an amastigote, which is round, non-motile, and only 3–7 micrometers in diameter. Inside the stomach of the sandfly, the amastigotes quickly transform into elongated and motile forms called the promastigotes. Promastigote is spindle-shaped, triple the size of the amastigote, and has a single flagellum that allows mobility. The promastigotes live extracellularly in the alimentary canal, reproducing asexually, then migrate to the proximal end of the gut where they become poised for a regurgitational transmission. As the fly bites, the promastigotes are released from the proboscis and introduced locally at the bite site.

Once inside the human host, promastigotes invade macrophages. Inside the cells they transform back into the smaller amastigote form. The amastigotes replicate in the most hostile part of the macrophage cell, inside the phagolysosome, whose normal defensive response they are able to prevent. After repeated multiplication, they break down their host cell by sheer pressure of mass, but there is some recent speculation that they are able to leave the cell by triggering the exocytosis response of the macrophage. The daughter cells protozoans then migrate to fresh cells or through the bloodstream to find new hosts. In this way the infection is progressive, spreading to the host's mononuclear phagocyte system, particularly the spleen and liver. The free amastigotes in peripheral tissues are then ingested by sandfly to enter another cycle.

Regulatory T and B cells
The cell-mediated immunity (CMI) that kills Leishmania also produces inflammation. If the inflammation is excessive, it can cause tissue damage. The role of regulatory T and regulatory B cells is to suppress CMI enough to prevent tissue damage. However, an excessive regulatory response can prevent clearance of Leishmania and could explain the anergy of VL, poor response to drug treatment, development of PKDL, and relapses. A role for regulatory cells in VL has long been suspected. A variety of regulatory T and B cells have been implicated in VL, including Type 1 T helper cells that secrete IL-10 in addition to IFN-γ, natural T reg, Tr1, CD8+ T reg, and B reg. All of these lymphocytes act, at least in part, by secreting IL-10 and other suppressive cytokines.

CD4+ T regs are present at increased frequency in the bone marrow of VL patients, are one source of IL-10, and proliferate in response to Leishmania antigen. Levels of FoxP3 mRNA were also up-regulated in lesional tissue from PKDL patients. However, T regs are not elevated in spleen cells from VL patients nor does depletion of T regs increase Leishmania antigen specific IFN-γ secretion The highest levels of IL-10 mRNA in spleen cells is in CD8+ and other non-FoxP3+ T cells. White blood cell CD8+ T cells from VL patients have elevated IL-10 levels. There is a 9.6 fold increase in IL-10 expressing CD8+ T cells among PBMC lymphocytes from PKDL patients. In the one study of T cell clones from VL patients, the clones isolated from VL PBMC were 100% CD8+. When mixed with self PBMC one or three years after successful treatment the CD8+ T cells decreased Leishmania antigen specific proliferation and IFN-γ secretion and increased IL-10 secretion. Depletion of CD8+ T cells from VL PBMC stopped endogenous IL-10 secretion but increased Leishmania antigen specific IL-10 secretion, suggesting that CD8+ regulatory T cells are responsible for endogenous IL-10 secretion. CD4+ clones could only be isolated from VL PBMC after CD8+ T cell depletion. The CD4+ clones had little effect on IL-10 secretion but decreased IFN-γ secretion when mixed with self PBMC collected after successful treatment.

Regulatory B cells are known to favor development of regulatory T cells and suppress development of Type 1 T helper cells by producing IL-10 and other down-regulatory cytokines. IL-10 levels are elevated in B cells from VL PBMC. A study of dogs with naturally acquired VL showed that the percentage of regulatory B cells increased three-fold during VL. Depletion of B cells increased CD4+ T cell proliferation and IFN-γ secretion but decreased IL-10 secretion. Blocking IL-10 or programmed cell death receptors on B cells increased Leishmania antigen specific T cell proliferation and IFN-γ secretion. Co-culture of T cells with B cells decreased the percentage of CD4+ T cell proliferation and IFN-γ secretion four-fold.

Diagnosis
The gold standard for diagnosis is visualization of the amastigotes in splenic aspirate or bone marrow aspirate. This is a technically challenging procedure that is frequently unavailable in areas of the world where visceral leishmaniasis is endemic.

Serological testing is much more frequently used in areas where leishmaniasis is endemic. A 2014 Cochrane review evaluated different rapid diagnostic tests. One of them (the rK39 immunochromatographic test) gave correct, positive results in 92% of the people with visceral leishmaniasis and it gave correct, negative results in 92% of the people who did not have the disease. A second rapid test (called latex agglutination test) gave correct, positive results in 64% of the people with the disease and it gave correct, negative results in 93% of the people without the disease. Other types of tests have not been studied thoroughly enough to ascertain their efficacy.

The K39 dipstick test is easy to perform, and village health workers can be easily trained to use it. The kit may be stored at ambient temperature and no additional equipment needs to be carried to remote areas. The DAT anti-leishmania antigen test, standard within MSF, is much more cumbersome to use and appears not to have any advantages over the K39 test.

There are a number of problems with serological testing: in highly endemic areas, not everyone who becomes infected will actually develop clinical disease or require treatment. Indeed, up to 32% of the healthy population may test positive, but not require treatment.  Conversely, because serological tests look for an immune response and not for the organism itself, the test does not become negative after the patient is cured, it cannot be used as a check for cure, or to check for re-infection or relapse. Likewise, patients with abnormal immune systems (e.g., HIV infection) will have false-negative tests.

Other tests being developed include detects erythrosalicylic acid.

Prevention
As of 2018, there are no vaccines or preventive drugs for visceral leishmaniasis, but vaccines are in development. The most effective method to prevent infection is to protect from sand fly bites. To decrease the risk of being bitten, these precautionary measures are suggested:
 Outdoors:
1. Avoid outdoor activities, especially from dusk to dawn, when sand flies generally are the most active.

2. When outdoors (or in unprotected quarters), minimize the amount of exposed (uncovered) skin to the extent that is tolerable in the climate. Wear long-sleeved shirts, long pants, and socks; and tuck your shirt into your pants.

3. Apply insect repellent to exposed skin and under the ends of sleeves and pant legs. Follow the instructions on the label of the repellent. The most effective repellents generally are those that contain the chemical DEET (N,N-diethylmetatoluamide).
 Indoors:
1. Stay in well-screened or air-conditioned areas.

2. Keep in mind that sand flies are much smaller than mosquitoes and therefore can get through smaller holes.

3. Spray living/sleeping areas with an insecticide to kill insects.

4. If you are not sleeping in a well-screened or air-conditioned area, use a bed net and tuck it under your mattress. If possible, use a bed net that has been soaked in or sprayed with a pyrethroid-containing insecticide. The same treatment can be applied to screens, curtains, sheets, and clothing (clothing should be retreated after five washings)."

Treatments
As with many diseases in developing nations, (including trypanosomiasis and malaria) effective and affordable chemotherapy is sorely lacking and parasites or insect vectors are becoming increasingly resistant to existing anti-parasite drugs. Possibly due to the lack of financial return, new drugs are slow to emerge and much of the basic research into potential drug targets takes place in universities, funded by charitable organizations. Product Development Partnership, Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative works on the development of new treatments (combination treatments and new chemical entities) for visceral leishmaniasis.

The traditional treatment is with pentavalent antimonials such as sodium stibogluconate and meglumine antimoniate. Resistance is now common in India, and rates of resistance have been shown to be as high as 60% in parts of Bihar, India.

The treatment of choice for visceral leishmaniasis acquired in India is now amphotericin B in its various liposomal preparations. In East Africa, the WHO recommended treatment is SSG&PM (sodium stibogluconate and paromomycin) developed by Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) in 2010.

Miltefosine is the first oral treatment for this disease. The cure rate of miltefosine in Phase III clinical trials is 95%; Studies in Ethiopia show that is also effective in Africa. In HIV immunosuppressed people which are coinfected with leishmaniasis it has shown that even in resistant cases 2/3 of the people responded to this new treatment.
Miltefosine has received approval by the Indian regulatory authorities in 2002, in Germany in 2004 and in U.S.A. in 2014. It is now registered in many countries.

The drug is generally better tolerated than other drugs. Main side effects are gastrointestinal disturbance in the first or second day of treatment (a course of treatment is 28 days) which does not affect the efficacy. Because it is available as an oral formulation, the expense and inconvenience of hospitalization is avoided, and outpatient distribution of the drug becomes an option, making miltefosine a drug of choice. However, there are some important disadvantages: 1) there is evidence of reduced efficacy after a decade of use 2) it is teratogenic and cannot be used in women of child-bearing age without anticonception during and for 4 months after treatment.

Incomplete treatment has been cited as a major reason of death from visceral leishmaniasis.

The nonprofit Institute for OneWorld Health has adopted the broad spectrum antibiotic paromomycin for use in treating VL; its antileishmanial properties were first identified in the 1980s.  A treatment with paromomycin costs about US$15. The drug had originally been identified in the 1960s. The Indian government approved paromomycin for sale and use in August 2006.

Prognosis

Protective immunity
Immunity to Leishmania is determined by the interplay of white blood cells, cytokines, immune complexes, and genetic and environmental factors.
Protective immunity develops either after successful treatment of VL (cured) or after asymptomatic infections that resolve without development of VL (asymptomatic). Both types of immunity are characterized by cell-mediated immunity (CMI), including skin test positivity, proliferation, and interleukin 2 (IL-2), interferon gamma (IFN-γ), and interleukin 12 (IL-12) secretion by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) in response to Leishmania antigens. T cells isolated from both cured and asymptomatic PBMC activate autologous macrophages to kill intracellular amastigotes. IFN-γ activates macrophages to kill intracellular parasites so its role in VL has been studied extensively and IFN-γ production is often used as a marker of protective immunity. Cured PBMC generally secrete less IFN-γ and more interleukin 10 (IL-10) in response to Leishmania antigens than asymptomatic PBMC. IL-12 is important in the development and maintenance of Type 1 T helper cell responses and protective immunity so its role in VL has also been studied. Addition of IL-12 to some VL PBMC increases proliferation and IFN-γ secretion in response to Leishmania antigens and anti-IL-12 inhibits proliferation and IFN-γ secretion by some cured PBMC. Other cytokines also appear to be important in immunity to Leishmania but their roles are not as well characterized.

Leishmania antigen stimulation of PBMC from cured patients show a mixed T helper cell and regulatory T cell response. Both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells contributed to IFN-γ production. Studies of Leishmania antigen specific T cell clones from cured patient PBMC confirm that cured patients have a mixed T cell response that involves both CD4+ helper T cells and CD4+ and CD8+ regulatory T cells.  Two studies of asymptomatic T cell clones show that most have Type 1 profiles and secrete more IFN-γ than T cell clones from cured patients. Neither study revealed the presence of Type 2 or regulatory T cells. Some clones secreted soluble factors that caused the death of CD8+ regulatory T cells but not CD4+ T cells from VL patients, which might explain the strong protective immunity of asymptomatic patients.

Non-protective immunity
VL patients are unable to clear their infections because they lack CMI. This anergy may be limited to Leishmania antigens or extend to mitogens and other antigens as the disease progresses. In addition to skin test negativity, VL patient PBMC do not proliferate or secrete IL-2 or IFN-γ in response to Leishmania antigens. Memory T cells may be depleted in VL patient PBMC. Since IL-10 is known to suppress innate and acquired immunity and prevent IFN-γ from activating macrophages, its role in VL has been studied extensively and elevated IL-10 production is often used as a marker of non-protective immunity in VL. Elevated levels of IL-10 in the plasma, infected tissues, and PBMC of VL patients accompany the anergy of VL. PKDL patients also have elevated IL-10 levels. VL patients with the highest IL-10 levels are more likely to be unresponsive to treatment and progress to PKDL. PBMC secretion of IL-10 without the addition of Leishmania antigen (endogenous) is inversely correlated with antigen specific IFN-γ secretion but Leishmania antigen specific IL-10 and IFN-γ secretion are not correlated, suggesting that endogenous secretion is more important in pathology. Addition of anti-IL-10 increases proliferation and IFN-γ secretion by PBMC from some patients. Both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells have been shown to contribute to IL-10 secretion by VL PBMC. The high level of immune complexes characteristic of VL have also been shown to increase IL-10 levels.

Epidemiology

More than 90% of the global burden of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) was contributed by seven countries in 2015: Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. In India, more than 70% of VL cases are reported from the state of Bihar. North Bihar, India (including Araria, Purnea, and Kishanganj) is the endemic zone of this disease. The disease is endemic in more than 60 countries. In Iran this includes Ardabil, Fars, and North Khorasan.

However, while the disease's geographical range is broad, it is not continuous. The disease clusters around areas of drought, famine, and high population density. In Africa, this has meant a knot of infection centers mostly in South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. Living conditions here have changed very little in the past century, and the people are not normally very mobile. Parts of South Sudan, in particular the Upper Nile region, are almost totally cut off from the rest of the country, and most people tend to remain at their place of birth although there have been huge population movements due to the civil war, leading to severe epidemics.

History

Kala-azar first came to the attention of Western doctors in 1824 in Jessore, British Raj (now Bangladesh), where it was initially thought to be a form of malaria. Assam gave kala-azar one of its common names, Assam fever. Another common name, kala-azar (Hindustani: काला आज़ार (Devanagari) کالا آزار (Nastaleeq) kālā āzār), is derived from kala which means black in Sanskrit, as well as in the languages descended from it, including Assamese, Hindi and Urdu; the word azar means Fever in Persian and Hindustani; as such the disease is named for the darkening of the skin on the extremities and abdomen that is a symptom of the Indian form of the disease. The agent of the disease was also first isolated in India by Scottish doctor William Leishman (who observed the parasite in spleen smears of a soldier who died of the disease in Dumdum, Calcutta, India - hence the name dumdum fever) and Irish physician Charles Donovan, working independently of each other. As they published their discovery almost simultaneously, the species was named for both of them—Leishmania donovani.

Today, the name kala-azar is used interchangeably with the scientific name visceral leishmaniasis for the most acute form of the disease caused by L. donovani. The disease is endemic in West Bengal, where it was first discovered, but is seen at its most deadly in north and east Africa. It can also be found throughout the Arab world and southern Europe (where the causative organism is L. infantum), and a slightly different strain of the pathogen, L. chagasi, is responsible for leishmaniasis in the new world. Several species of canines serve as reservoir hosts of L. infantum (chagasi).

Contemporary life has made itself felt even here, however—not as "progress" but in the form of the many small wars of Africa's post-colonial era. In the Sudan, where civil war has been continuous since 1983, the violence has been concentrated in the more populated south, and kala-azar was concentrated there too. But the wars have driven a steady stream of refugees out of the region, and these traveled either across the southern border or into the remoter western part of the country called the Upper Nile, where both war and the disease that went with it had not yet penetrated.

These refugees, moving at foot-speed, carried the disease with them, and when it arrived it hit the Upper Nile with a force comparable to smallpox hitting the American Indians. The isolated people of the Upper Nile had no access to medicine or education about the new disease among them. Worse, their immune systems were defenseless against this new pathogen, foreign to them though it came only from another part of their own country. One village at the center of the epidemic, Duar, was left with four survivors out of a population of a thousand, and from the late eighties to the mid-nineties a total of 100,000 died from the sickness in that region alone. In the words of Jill Seaman, the doctor who led relief efforts in the Upper Nile for the French organization Médecins Sans Frontières, "Where else in the world could 50% of a population die without anyone knowing?" Due to the South Sudanese Civil War, kala-azar has spread rapidly among the population.

The Indian medical practitioner Upendra Nath Brahmachari was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1929 for his discovery of ureastibamine (an antimonial compound for the treatment of kala-azar) and a new disease, post kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis. Brahmachari's cure for visceral leishmaniasis was the urea salt of para-amino-phenyl stibnic acid which he called Urea Stibamine.

During the nineteenth century, kala-azar was discovered near moving bodies of water in southeast Asia. Dr. Jean Dow and Dr. William McClure, are credited with finding the cure for the disease in China. Largely uncredited for her contribution, Dr. Jean Dow was one of the first to isolate the microorganism in China and conduct clinical studies on its origin. This work continued under Ernest Struthers and Lionel Napier at the School of Tropical Medicine at Calcutta to discover that kala-azar was transmitted by sandflies.

In 31st October 2023, Bangladesh has been declared to be the first country to totally eradicate the disease.

Research
Combination drug therapies are currently under investigation, particularly by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi).  Combination therapies allow for the use of existing drugs in combination, each in lower doses, which helps to decrease the incidence of severe side effects and drug toxicity, as well as the risk for development of resistance against the drugs; they have been shown to be cost-effective strategies.
Comparative homology modelling of the enzyme Hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyl transferase (HGPRT; EC 126.96.36.199)  in L. donovani suggest that among all of the computationally screened compounds, pentamidine, 1,3-dinitroadamantane, acyclovir and analogs of acyclovir had higher binding affinities than the real substrate (guanosine monophosphate).

DNDi has a number of compounds in preclinical and phase 1 development, but no novel drugs are expected in the next 5 years. In the meantime, new combination therapies, and well as improvements to existing drugs targets, are under development.  Single-dosage administrations of liposomal amphotericin B have been shown to be effective, and oral formulations are currently under development to increase access and facilitate distribution of the efficacious drug in the field.

A 2018 study published details of a new potential preclinical drug candidate for the treatment for visceral leishmaniasis with an anti-leishmanial drug-like chemical series based on a pyrazolopyrimidine scaffold.

There is no good vaccine candidate which prevents kala azar. A 2019 paper described designing an immunologic adjuvant which would make a VL vaccine more effective.

References

External links

Leishmaniasis
Insect-borne diseases
Parasitic infestations, stings, and bites of the skin

Visceral leishmaniasis