Sherry ( ) is a fortified wine made from white grapes that are grown near the city of Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia, Spain. Sherry is a drink produced in a variety of styles made primarily from the Palomino grape, ranging from light versions similar to white table wines, such as Manzanilla and fino, to darker and heavier versions that have been allowed to oxidise as they age in barrel, such as Amontillado and oloroso. Sweet dessert wines are also made from Pedro Ximénez or Moscatel grapes, and are sometimes blended with Palomino-based sherries.

Under the official name of Jerez-Xérès-Sherry, it is one of Spain's wine regions, a  (DOP). The word sherry is an anglicisation of Xérès (Jerez). Sherry was previously known as sack, from the Spanish saca, meaning "extraction" from the solera. In Europe, "sherry" has protected designation of origin status, and under Spanish law, all wine labelled as "sherry" must legally come from the Sherry Triangle, an area in the province of Cádiz between Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa María. In 1933 the Jerez  was the first Spanish denominación to be officially recognised in this way, officially named D.O. Jerez-Xeres-Sherry and sharing the same governing council as D.O. Manzanilla Sanlúcar de Barrameda.

After fermentation is complete, the base wines are fortified with grape spirit to increase their final alcohol content. Wines classified as suitable for aging as fino and Manzanilla are fortified until they reach a total alcohol content of 15.5 percent by volume. As they age in a barrel, they develop a layer of flor—a yeast-like growth that helps protect the wine from excessive oxidation. Those wines that are classified to undergo aging as oloroso are fortified to reach an alcohol content of at least 17 per cent. They do not develop flor and so oxidise slightly as they age, giving them a darker colour. Because the fortification takes place after fermentation, most sherries are initially dry, with any sweetness being added later. In contrast, port wine is fortified halfway through its fermentation, which stops the process so that not all of the sugar is turned into alcohol.

Wines from different years are aged and blended using a solera system before bottling so that bottles of sherry will not usually carry a specific vintage year and can contain a small proportion of very old wine. Sherry is regarded by some wine writers as "underappreciated" and a "neglected wine treasure".

History

Jerez has been a centre of viniculture since wine-making was introduced to Spain by the Phoenicians in 1100 BCE. The practice was carried on by the Romans when they took control of Iberia around 200 BCE. The Moors conquered the region in 711 CE and introduced distillation, which led to the development of brandy and fortified wine.

During the Moorish period, the town was called Sherish (a transliteration of the Arabic شريش), from which both sherry and Jerez are derived. Wines similar in style to sherry have traditionally been made in the city of Shiraz in mid-southern Iran, but it is thought unlikely that the name derives from there.
Wine production continued through five centuries of Muslim rule. In 966, Al-Hakam II, the second Caliph of Córdoba, ordered the destruction of the vineyards, but the inhabitants of Jerez appealed on the grounds that the vineyards also produced raisins to feed the empire's soldiers, and the Caliph spared two-thirds of the vineyards.

In 1264 Alfonso X of Castile took the city. From this point on, the production of sherry and its export throughout Europe increased significantly. By the end of the 16th century, sherry had a reputation in Europe as the world's finest wine.

Christopher Columbus brought sherry on his voyage to the New World and when Ferdinand Magellan prepared to sail around the world in 1519, he spent more on sherry than on weapons.

Sherry became very popular in Great Britain, especially after Francis Drake sacked Cadiz in 1587. At that time Cadiz was one of the most important Spanish seaports, and Spain was preparing an armada there to invade England. Among the spoils, Drake brought back after destroying the fleet were 2,900 barrels of sherry that had been waiting to be loaded aboard Spanish ships. This helped popularize sherry in the British Isles.

Because sherry was a major wine export to the United Kingdom, many English companies and styles developed. Many of the Jerez cellars were founded by British families.

In 1894 the Jerez region was devastated by the insect phylloxera. Whereas larger vineyards were replanted with resistant vines, most smaller producers were unable to fight the infestation and abandoned their vineyards entirely.

Types
 Amontillado is a variety of sherry that is first aged under flor and then exposed to oxygen, producing a sherry that is darker than a Fino but lighter than an Oloroso. Naturally dry, they are sometimes sold lightly- to medium-sweetened (though these may no longer be labelled as Amontillado).
 Fino ('delicate' in Spanish) is the driest and palest of the traditional varieties of sherry. The wine is aged in barrels under a cap of flor yeast to prevent contact with the air.
 Jerez Dulce (sweet sherries) are made either by fermenting dried Pedro Ximénez (PX) or Moscatel grapes, which produces an intensely sweet dark brown or black wine, or by blending sweeter wines or grape must with a drier variety.
 Manzanilla is an especially light variety of fino sherry made around the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
 Manzanilla Pasada is a Manzanilla that has undergone extended aging or has been partially oxidised, giving a richer, nuttier flavour.
 Oloroso ('scented' in Spanish) is a variety of sherry aged oxidatively for a longer time than a Fino or Amontillado, producing a darker and richer wine. With alcohol levels between 18 and 20%, Olorosos are the most alcoholic sherries. Like Amontillado, naturally dry, they are often also sold in sweetened versions called Cream sherry (first made in the 1860s by blending different sherries, usually including Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez).
 Palo Cortado is a variety of sherry that is initially aged like an Amontillado, typically for three or four years, but which subsequently develops a character closer to an Oloroso. This either happens by accident when the flor dies or commonly the flor is killed by fortification or filtration.

On 12 April 2012, the rules applicable to the sweet and fortified Denominations of Origen Montilla-Moriles and Jerez-Xérès-Sherry were changed to prohibit terms such as "Rich Oloroso", "Sweet Oloroso" and "Oloroso Dulce". Such wines are to be labelled as "Cream Sherry: Blend of Oloroso / Amontillado" or suchlike.

The classification by sweetness is:

Protection of sherry

Spanish producers have registered the three names Jerez / Xérès / sherry, and so may prosecute producers of similar fortified wines from other places using any of the same names. In 1933, Article 34 of the Spanish Estatuto del Vino (Wine Law) established the boundaries of sherry production as the first Spanish wine denominación. Today, sherry's official status is further recognized by wider EU legislation, under which "sherry" sold within the EU must come from the triangular area of the province of Cádiz between Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa María. However, the name "sherry" is used as a semi-generic in the United States where it must be labeled with a region of origin such as American sherry or California sherry. However, such wines cannot be exported to the EU.

Both Canadian and Australian winemakers now use the term Apera instead of sherry, while consumers still use the term sherry.

Production

Climate
The Jerez district has a predictable climate, with approximately 70 days of rainfall and almost 300 days of sun per year. The rain mostly falls between the months of October and May, averaging . The summer is dry and hot, with temperatures as high as , but winds from the ocean bring moisture to the vineyards in the early morning and the clays in the soil retain water below the surface. The average temperature across the year is approximately .

Soil
There are three types of soil in the Jerez district for growing the grapes for sherry:
 Albariza: the lightest soil, almost white, and best for growing Palomino grapes. It is approximately 40 percent chalk, the rest being a blend of clay and sand. Albariza preserves moisture well during the hot summer months.
 Arenas: yellowish soil, also 10 percent chalk but with a high sand content.
 Barros: dark brown soil, 10 percent chalk with a high clay content.

The albariza soil is the best for growing the Palomino grape, and by law, 40 percent of the grapes making up a sherry must come from albariza soil. The barros and arenas soil is mostly used for Pedro Ximénez and Moscatel grapes.

The benefit of the albariza soil is that it can reflect sunlight back up to the vine, aiding it in photosynthesis. The nature of the soil is very absorbent and compact so it can retain and maximize the use of the little rainfall that the Jerez region receives.

Grapes
Before the phylloxera infestation in 1894, there were estimated to be over one hundred varieties of grape used in Spain for the production of sherry, but now there are only three white grapes grown for sherry-making:
 Moscatel: used similarly to Pedro Ximénez, but it is less common.
 Palomino: the dominant grape used for dry sherries. Approximately 90 per cent of the grapes grown for sherry are Palomino. As varietal table wine, the Palomino grape produces a wine of very bland and neutral characteristics. This neutrality is actually what makes Palomino an ideal grape because it is easily enhanced by the sherry winemaking style.
 Pedro Ximénez: used to produce sweet wines. When harvested these grapes are typically dried in the sun for two days to concentrate their sugars.

Sherry-style wines made in other countries often use other grape varieties.

Fermentation
The Palomino grapes are harvested in early September, and pressed lightly to extract the must. The must from the first pressing, the primera yema, is used to produce Fino and Manzanilla; the must from the second pressing, the segunda yema, will be used for Oloroso; the product of additional pressings is used for lesser wines, distillation, and vinegar. The must is then fermented in stainless steel vats until the end of November, producing a dry white wine with 11–12 per cent alcohol content. Previously, the fermentation and initial aging were done in wood; now it is almost exclusively done in stainless steel, with the exception of one or two high-end wines.

Fortification
Immediately after fermentation, the wine is sampled and the first classification is performed. The casks are marked with the following symbols according to the potential of the wine:

The sherry is fortified using destilado, made by distilling wine, usually from La Mancha. The distilled spirit is first mixed with mature sherry to make a 50/50 blend known as mitad y mitad (half and half), and then the mitad y mitad is mixed with the younger sherry to the proper proportions. This two-stage procedure is performed so the strong alcohol will not shock the young sherry and spoil it.

Aging

The fortified wine is stored in 500-litre casks made of North American oak, which is more porous than French or Spanish oak. The casks, or butts, are filled five-sixths full, leaving "the space of two fists" empty at the top to allow flor to develop on top of the wine.

Sherry is then aged in the solera system where new wine is put into wine barrels at the beginning of a series of three to nine barrels. Periodically, a portion of the wine in a barrel is moved into the next barrel down, using tools called the canoa (canoe) and rociador (sprinkler) to move the wine gently and avoid damaging the layer of flor in each barrel. At the end of the series, only a portion of the final barrel is bottled and sold. Depending on the type of wine, the portion moved may be between five and thirty percent of each barrel. This process is called "running the scales" because each barrel in the series is called a scale. Thus, the age of the youngest wine going in the bottle is determined by the number of barrels in the series, and every bottle also contains some much older wine than is stated. Sherry is aged in the solera for a minimum of two years. A large solera system may consist of scales that require more than one barrel to hold.  The word 'solera' means 'on the ground'; this refers to the stacking system that was, and sometimes still is, used, with the youngest barrels at the top and the oldest scale, also somewhat ambiguously called 'the solera', at the bottom.  Of late, sherry producers and marketers have been bottling their wines en rama, with only a light filtration, and often a selection of a favored barrel from a larger solera.  Such sherries can be considerably more complex in flavour than the standard bottlings, and, according to many, are worth seeking out. In order to allow the sale of reliable average age-dated sherries, the regulating council has set up a system that accurately tracks the average age of the wines as they move through their solera.  Two average age-dated categories are recognized:  VOS ('Vinum Optimum Signatum' – 20 years old average age minimum) and VORS ('Vinum Optimum Rare Signatum' – 30 years old average age minimum).

Sherry-seasoned casks are sold to the Scotch whisky industry for use in aging whisky. Other spirits and beverages may also be aged in used sherry casks. Contrary to what most people think, these sherry-seasoned casks are specifically prepared for the whisky industry, they are not the same as the old (and largely inactive) butts used for the maturation of sherry.

Storing and drinking
Once bottled, sherry does not generally benefit from further aging and may be consumed immediately, though the sherries that have been aged oxidatively may be stored for years without noticeable loss in flavour. Bottles should be stored upright to minimize the wine's exposed surface area. As with other wines, sherry should be stored in a cool, dark place. The best fino sherries, aged for longer than normal before bottling, such as Manzanilla Pasada, will continue to develop in the bottle for some years.

Fino and Manzanilla are the most fragile types of sherry and should usually be drunk soon after opening, in the same way as unfortified wines. In Spain, Finos are often sold in half bottles, with any remaining wine being thrown out if it is not drunk the same day it is opened. Amontillados and Olorosos will keep for longer, while sweeter versions such as PX, and blended cream sherries, are able to last several weeks or even months after opening since the sugar content acts as a preservative.

Sherry is traditionally drunk from a copita (also referred to as a catavino), a special tulip-shaped sherry glass. Sampling wine directly from a sherry butt may be performed with a characteristic flourish by a venenciador, named after the special cup (the venencia) traditionally made of silver and fastened to a long whale whisker handle. The cup, narrow enough to pass through the bung hole, withdraws a measure of sherry which is then ceremoniously poured from a head height into a copita held in the other hand.

Various types are often mixed with lemonade (and usually ice). This long drink is now called Rebujito.  Its typically ice-free equivalent in the Victorian age was the sherry-cobbler.

In popular culture
Many literary figures have written about sherry, including William Shakespeare, Benito Pérez Galdós, and Edgar Allan Poe (in his story "The Cask of Amontillado").

Brothers Frasier and Niles Crane frequently consume sherry on the TV sitcom Frasier.

In the UK television show Yes, Minister, Jim Hacker frequently drinks sherry with Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Woolley in his office.

Sherry, and Amontillado specifically, is heavily featured in season 3, episode 10 of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Sherry is frequently mentioned in the novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and plays an important role in the narrative: the spy Jim Prideaux is alerted to the presence of a double agent within his division when Russian KGB agents are able to correctly identify the brand of sherry that was consumed during a secret meeting of MI6 personnel.

In John Mortimer's long-running Rumpole of the Bailey book and television series, Horace Rumpole continually complains about how various family doctors are served sherry by his wife Hilda when they visit. For example, in 'Rumpole and the Boat People': 'Dr MacClintock, the slow-speaking, Edinburgh-bred quack to whom my wife, Hilda turns in times of sickness, took a generous gulp of the sherry she always pours him when he visits our mansion flat, (It's lucky that all his N.H.S. patients aren't so generous or the sick of Gloucester Road would be tended by a reeling medico, yellow about the gills and sloshed on amontillado.)'

The historic sherry cellars have given rise to a breed of Spanish dog, the Andalusian wine-cellar rat-hunting dog, and iconic bull posters used to advertise sherry.

The film Withnail and I features a much-quoted scene where the two protagonists are offered sherry by the lecherous Uncle Monty.

Related products
 Brandy de Jerez
 Cooking sherry
 Harvey's Bristol Cream
 Sherry vinegar

References

Further reading

External links

 Jerez-Xérès-Sherry and Manzanilla DOP official website
 Website about sherry, with interactive timeline, sherry production process diagram

Jerez de la Frontera
Wine regions of Spain
Appellations
Wine classification
Spanish inventions
Articles containing video clips

Sherry


The Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum was located in Butetown, Cardiff, Wales, prior to the Cardiff Bay regeneration in the late 1990s. The museum formed part of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, now known as Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, and the first stage opened in 1977, and it closed just 22 years later in 1998.

Construction of the museum began in October 1974. Exhibits included cars, a bus and tram, a lighthouse, a figurehead from HMS Hamadryad, the Sea Alarm tugboat and a replica of Richard Trevithick's 1803 locomotive, Pen-y-Darren. A permanent exhibition described the history of the docks and coal mining in South Wales.

Dr Geraint Jenkins was curator of the museum from 1978 until 1987.

The museum closed on 1 June 1998 to make way for the new Mermaid Quay shopping development. Its exhibits were redistributed to other museums and the Sea Alarm was scrapped. A new location for a similar museum, in Swansea, was not chosen until two years after the closure. The National Waterfront Museum opened in Swansea in 2005.

References

External links

Butetown
1977 establishments in Wales
1998 disestablishments in Wales
Industry museums in Wales
Maritime museums in Wales
Museums in Cardiff

Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum


Vladimir Borisovich Yankilevsky (Russian: Владимир Борисович Янкилевский) (February 15, 1938 — January 4, 2017) was a Russian artist. He was born in Moscow.

Yankilevsky was known mostly for his work in the Soviet Nonconformist Art movement of the 1960s through the 1980s. His most famous works are his triptychs, works that are hard to classify. His works often create a nightmarish imagery to paint a picture of restrictive mental states about daily life in the Soviet Union, and with the human condition in general.

Yankilevsky was also known for having participated in the Manezh Art Exhibit of 1962, during which Nikita Khrushchev famously chastised the Nonconformist Art Movement as degenerate.

Yankilevsky died in Paris of leukemia on January 4, 2018 at the age of 79.

References

1938 births
2018 deaths
Russian artists
Russian painters
Russian sculptors
People from Moscow

Vladimir Yankilevsky


Ian Ryan is a Gaelic footballer from County Limerick, Ireland. He has played with the Limerick team since 2008. In his first year at senior level he helped Limerick to a famous won 4–12 to 4–3 over Meath a game in which he scored 3–7.  He finished the year with 3–20 from 4 games. He was later nominated for the All Stars Young Footballer of the Year. In 2009, he helped Limerick to a first Munster Final since 2004 but lost out by a point to Cork. In 2010 he helped Limerick to a National Football League Div 4 title, that same year he also played in a second Munster Final but was again on the losing side this time to Kerry.

He was for a time linked with a move to Aussie Rules however nothing ever came of it.

In 2008 he helped Munster to win the Railway Cup.

He plays his club football with St Senan's. He was part of the side that made it to the 2006 County Final but lost out to Fr Caseys.

References

Living people
Limerick inter-county Gaelic footballers
St Senan's (Limerick) Gaelic footballers
Year of birth missing (living people)

Ian Ryan


Jonathan Andrew Nelson (born November 10, 1974) is an American gospel singer and songwriter from Baltimore, Maryland.

Career

Nelson was born in Baltimore, Maryland to James Nelson, a pastor at the Greater Bethlehem Temple Church, and his wife Bessie Nelson. He studied at the Baltimore School for the Arts and Morgan State University. During a performance of Karen Clark-Sheard at his church, Nelson and his friends served as backup singers. After that, they continued to practice and sing together under the stage name 'Purpose'.

After some time, Purpose released an independent album which included the song "Healed", written by Nelson. In 2000, Nelson met Donald Lawrence, a Grammy-nominated choir leader, at a workshop on Washington, D.C. Lawrence heard the song "Healed" and asked Nelson for permission to record the song. The song became a gospel hit in 2005, and Nelson won the Stellar Award as Songwriter of the Year in 2006. Nelson also met producer Troy Sneed, who had heard another Purpose song called "The Right Place". Sneed produced the song for Pastor Rudolph McKissick and it became another commercial hit. Some time later, Nelson wrote "The Struggle Is Over" for Sneed, which became another hit.

In December 2006, Nelson released a self-financed live album. After that, he signed with Integrity Music and started working on his first full-length studio album. In February 2008, Nelson released Right Now Praise. The next year, he was nominated for a Dove Award for New Artist of the Year. That same year, he accepted the position of minister of music at The Faith Center with Bishop Henry Fernandez Sunrise, Florida and Empowerment Temple Church with Dr. Jamal Bryant Baltimore, Maryland. In 2010, he released his second album titled Better Days.

In 2016, Nelson released Fearless, with Light Records/Entertainment One Music (eOne Music).

Personal life

Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland to James D. Nelson and Bessie Nelson. He has three older siblings Anthony, Janice and James Jr, as well as his twin Jason. He got his education in Baltimore City public school system and later went to the Baltimore School of The Arts and Morgan State University. Nelson and his wife Christina Marie have two children together: J. Andrew Nelson II and Julianna Marie Nelson.

Discography
 Live in Baltimore: Everything You Are
 Right Now Praise, No. 7 on the Top Gospel Albums
 Better Days, No. 105 Billboard 200, and No. 4 on the Top Gospel Albums
 My Name is Victory
 Finish Strong (2013), No. 47 Billboard 200, and No. 1 on the Top Gospel Albums
 Fearless (2016), No. 117 Billboard 200

Awards and nominations

Jonathan Nelson was nominated for a Dove Award for New Artist of the Year at the 40th GMA Dove Awards.

References

External links

 Interview with Gospel artist Jonathan Nelson on gmc
 Baltimore's Jonathan Nelson Welcomes New Life in Florida on Afro.com

1974 births
American male singer-songwriters
Living people
21st-century American singer-songwriters

Jonathan Nelson (singer)


James Morrison (July 9, 1861 – April 13, 1950) was the longest-serving bishop of the Diocese of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. Although one of the last powerful and austere Roman Catholic bishops in Canada, Morrison presided over a diocese that created one of the most successful Catholic social movements in Canada.

Morrison strictly adhered to the statutes of the Roman Catholic faith. Extremely skeptical of debt, he was cautious in all matters relating to church finances.  As Bishop of Antigonish he gained the ire of Rev. James Tompkins and other priests for refusing to allow St. Francis Xavier University to join a non-denominational university in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Although highly respected by the Catholic community, his cautious and frugal nature did not always foster tranquility.

Brief biography
James Morrison was born in the rural village of Savage Harbour, Prince Edward Island. He was educated at the Charlottetown Normal College and at St. Dunstan's University from 1882–1884. He attended the Urban College of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide in Rome from 1884–1889. Ordained for the Diocese of Charlottetown, Morrison held numerous positions, including Rector of St. Dunstan's University, 1892–1895, Vicar-general, 1904–1912 and formal diocesan administrator, 1911–1912.

Father Morrison had been vicar general, in the diocese of Charlottetown, P.E.I, Canada, when in 1908, Bishop MacDonald became a complete invalid. At this point Morrison assumed administrative control of the diocese until the latter part of 1912. When Rev. MacDonald died in 1912,  Bishop O'Leary succeeded, whilst Fr Morrison was further ordained bishop in September 1912.

Consecrated as Bishop of Antigonish on 4 September 1912, Morrison took over a diocese that was riddled with economic and political turmoil and wholly unprepared for the challenges of the twentieth century. He guided the diocese through two world wars, the challenges of economic decline, emigration and industrial unrest. He supported and fostered the St. Francis Xavier University extension department, which aspired to alleviate some of the economic and social problems of the Maritime Provinces, although historians disagree about the extent and reasons for this support. He was appointed Archbishop in 1944.

When he died in 1950 he was the longest-serving of all Canadian Catholic prelates.  From a historical perspective Morrison was one of an extremely few native born, pre- Confederation (1867) Canadians to later become an archbishop.

Career highlights

1884 - Graduates from St. Dunstan's University
1889 - Graduates from Urban College with doctorates in Philosophy and Divinity
1 November 1889 - Ordained a priest in the chapel of the Propaganda College by Msgr. Lenti.
1891 - Joins the staff of St. Dunstan's University
1892 - Appointed Rector of St. Dunstan's University
1904 - Appointed Vicar-general of the Diocese of Charlottetown
1905 - Awarded an honorary degree by St. Francis Xavier University
1907 - Parish priest, Vernon River, Prince Edward Island
1911 - Appointed Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Charlottetown
4 September 1912 - Consecrated Bishop of Antigonish in St. Ninian's Cathedral, Antigonish
1944 - Appointed Archbishop "ad personam"
13 April 1950 - dies in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, aged 88

References

 A.A. Johnston, A History of the Catholic Church in Eastern Nova Scotia, Volume 1, 2 (Antigonish: St. F.X. press, 1960, 1971).
 Peter Ludlow, The Canny Scot: Archbishop James Morrison of Antigonish (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015).

1861 births
1950 deaths
20th-century Roman Catholic bishops in Canada
Roman Catholic bishops of Antigonish
Canadian people of Irish descent
People from Kings County, Prince Edward Island
Pontifical Urban University alumni

James Morrison (bishop)


Blood donation is about donating blood; it does not affect the health of the person donating.

Bloodletting is the practice  of withdrawing blood from a patient to cure a disease. The practice was widely used in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. People stopped using it in the 19th century. The idea of bloodletting comes from an ancient system of medicine called Humorism: This system states, that there are different humors in the body. To remain healthy, a patient had to keep these humours in balance. Bloodletting was the most common medical practice performed by physicians from antiquity until the late 19th century, a span of almost 2,000 years.

It was found that only in very few cases, this treatment helps cure a disease. The practice has now been abandoned for all except a few very specific conditions. There was no other treatment for hypertension. Bloodletting could sometimes have had a beneficial effect in temporarily reducing blood pressure by reducing blood volume. The problem with hypertension is that it is difficult to diagonse from its symptoms. Modern methods directly measure blood pressure. In Antiquity, this  effect was therefore unintentional. In most cases, the historical use of bloodletting was harmful to patients.

The diseases where bloodletting actually helps include Polycythemia vera. In this disease, the number of red blood cells is increased, which changes the viscosity of the blood. Another disease is Polycythemia, which also leads to an increased number of red blood cells.

References

History of medicine

Bloodletting


Hoketus was an amplified musical ensemble founded by Dutch composer Louis Andriessen in the Netherlands in 1976.  The group was originally formed to perform Louis Andriessen's minimal composition Hoketus, but remained together and began to perform music composed for the group by other composers (many of whom came from within the group's ranks).  The group disbanded in 1987.

The ensemble's instrumentation and overall artistic aesthetic was quite radical; it was made up of two equal groups of instruments (two pianos, two Fender Rhodes electric pianos, two sets of panpipes, two saxophones, two electric bass guitars, and two percussionists).

Hoketus considered itself a collective and set a number of rules for itself, rules so stringent that taken together they could be considered a manifesto.  The group always performed with amplification set at a high volume, the two groups of instruments situating themselves as far apart as possible from one another on stage.  Personal expression was not permitted; melodies could only be built through the interlocking of single notes or chords, played in alternation between the groups using the Medieval technique of hocket (hence the group's name).  The group had an aesthetic bias toward works that were heavy, loud, dissonant, and brutal, showing influence from both hard rock and the works of Igor Stravinsky (one of Andriessen's favorite composers).

Besides Andriessen, other composers who wrote for Hoketus include Diderik Wagenaar, Cornelis de Bondt, Michael Nyman, Huib Emmer, Klas Torstensson, and Gene Carl.

An ensemble of similar instrumentation called Icebreaker was formed in York, England in 1989, and continues to perform works from the Hoketus repertoire.

References

Contemporary classical music ensembles
Dutch musical groups
Musical groups established in 1976
1976 establishments in the Netherlands

Hoketus


ISO 3166-1, is part of the ISO 3166 standard. It gives a code for the names of countries and dependent territories, and is published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes
 ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, a two-letter system, used in many applications, for example internet country code top-level domains (ccTLDs).
 ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, uses three letters, and makes it easier to work out the country name and code.
 ISO 3166-1 numeric, uses three digits. Using numbers is useful in countries that do not use the Latin alphabet. This is identical to codes defined by the United Nations Statistics Division.

ISO 3166-1 is not the only standard for country codes. Many international organizations use their own country codes, where some of them closely correspond to the ISO 3166-1 codes.

Rules for inclusion
Currently, 244 countries and territories have official ISO 3166-1 codes. The only way to enter a new country name into ISO 3166-1 is to have it registered in one of the following two sources:
 United Nations Terminology Bulletin Country Names, or
 Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use of the UN Statistics Division.

To be listed in the bulletin Country Names, a country or territory must be any of the following:
 a member country of the United Nations,
 a member of one of its specialized agencies, or
 a party to the Statute of the International Court of Justice.

Once a country name or territory name appears in either of these two sources, it will be added to ISO 3166-1 by default.

Officially assigned code elements
The following is a complete ISO 3166-1 encoding code list in alphabetical order by the English short country names officially used by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA), which uses country names from United Nations sources.
The table includes officially assigned codes only.

Reserved and user-assigned code elements
Besides the officially assigned codes, code elements may be expanded by using either reserved codes or user-assigned codes.

Reserved code elements are codes which, while not ISO 3166-1 codes, are in use for some applications in conjunction with the ISO 3166 codes. They are reserved to add flexibility to the coding system. Usually, obsolete codes may be kept as reserved, while some overseas territories, international organizations, and special nationality status have reserved codes of their own. See the corresponding sections in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 for their respective reserved codes (ISO 3166-1 numeric does not have reserved codes).

User-assigned code elements are codes at the disposal of users who need to add further names of countries, territories or other geographical entities to their in-house application of ISO 3166-1, and the ISO 3166/MA will never use them in the updating process of the standard. See the corresponding sections in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 and ISO 3166-1 numeric for their respective user-assigned codes.

Changes
A country or territory may get new codes if it changes its name or its territorial boundaries. A country generally gets new alphabetical codes if its name changes, whereas a new numeric code is associated with a change of boundaries. Changes to ISO 3166-1 are announced in periodic newsletters, of which 12 have been released since the first edition of ISO 3166-1 was published in 1997:
 Newsletter V-1 – Published 1998-02-05: change of official name of Samoa
 Newsletter V-2  – Published 1999-10-01: new entries for Palestinian Territory, Occupied
 Newsletter V-3  – Published 2002-02-01: change of alpha-3 code element for Romania
 Newsletter V-4  – Published 2002-05-20: name changes for various countries
 Newsletter V-5  – Published 2002-05-20: change of names and alphabetical code elements for East Timor
 Newsletter V-6  – Published 2002-11-15: change of names for East Timor (to Timor-Leste)
 Newsletter V-7 – Published 2002-11-15: change of official name of Comoros
 Newsletter V-8 – Published 2003-07-23: deletion of Yugoslavia, new entry for Serbia and Montenegro
 Newsletter V-9 – Published 2004-02-13: new entry for Åland Islands
 Newsletter V-10  – Published 2004-04-26: name changes for Afghanistan and Åland Islands
 Newsletter V-11  – Published 2006-03-29: new entries for Guernsey, Isle of Man and Jersey
 Newsletter V-12  – Published 2006-09-26: deletion of Serbia and Montenegro, new entries for Montenegro and Serbia
The second edition of ISO 3166-1 was published in 2007, which comprises a consolidation of all changes to the lists as published in the newsletters above.

Related pages
 ISO 3166-2
 List of IOC country codes, slightly different codes from ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes, used by the International Olympic Committee
 List of FIFA country codes, slightly different codes from ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes, used by FIFA
 Comparison of IOC, FIFA, and ISO 3166 country codes
 Federal Information Processing Standard

References

Notes

Information on reserved codes taken from "Reserved code elements under ISO 3166-1" published by Secretariat of ISO/TC 46, ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, 2001-02-13, available on request from ISO 3166/MA.

Other websites
 ISO 3166/MA – ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency at the International Organization for Standardization – includes up-to-date lists of two-letter codes.
 United Nations Statistics Division – Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use – includes three-letter and numeric codes.
 CIA World Factbook – Cross-Reference List of Country Data Codes  (public domain)
 a list of ISO 3166-1 codes (including three-letter and numeric codes), and includes information about changes that have been made over the years.
 an xml document  containing country codes and country names in 7 languages.
 A page detailing all the ISO 3166-1 "2 digit codes" from FlagsInformation.com.

ISO 3166
Lists of countries
Country codes

ISO 3166-1


The Torridonian is a sedimentary sandstone which sits on top of the earliest rocks in Scotland. The map shows the sandstone as orange: it is on the western edge of the mainland, and on part of Skye. Geographically, this is part of the district of Wester Ross.

The sandstone is the earliest sedimentary rock in this part of the world. Under it lies much older gneiss known as the Lewisian complex. All the rock under the sandstone is igneous and metamorphosed igneous rock.

The sandstones are red beds laid down by rivers and lakes in a landscape of low rocky hills. A great thickness of red sandstone, brought in by rivers, buried the old hills. This took place in the Proterozoic, 1,200 to 544 million years ago (mya). There are older and younger sandstone groups, with a long period between them. The lower sandstone is a breccia, with broken fragments of earlier rocks.

As a result of later periods of rifting and mountain-building, some of the Torridian sandstone lies under the sea, and some of it is uplifted into mountains.

References

Proterozoic
Sandstones
Geography of Scotland

Torridonian


Raymond Geoffrey, Viscount of Marseille, usually called Barral of Marseille, was the third son of Hugh Geoffrey of Marseille and his wife Cécile of Aurons. Barral of Marseille was a patron of troubadours, including Folquet of Marseille and Peire Vidal.

Barral was first married to Alasacie Porcellet, daughter of Hugues Sacristan and Galberge Porcellet. They had one daughter, Barrale. He later repudiated Adelaide and married Marie of Montpellier in 1192 or shortly before, but died in the same year.

His daughter, Barrale, was married to Hugh III des Baux, son of Bertrand I des Baux and Tiburge of Orange (daughter of William of Aumelas). Their son was Barral des Baux.

Viscounts of France
Patrons of literature
1192 deaths
Year of birth unknown

Raymond Geoffrey of Marseille


Greg Miller (born 1967) is an American photographer based in Connecticut. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. He is known for his use of a large format camera.

Biography
Miller was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1967. He started his commercial photography career in 1988. He graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1990 with a bachelor of fine arts degree in photography. His projects include photographs of county fairs, marching band camps, Ash Wednesday rites of New Yorkers in Midtown Manhattan and school children waiting for the morning bus in Connecticut. He is a teacher of photography in the International Center of Photography in New York City.

Miller lives in Connecticut with his wife and daughters.

Awards
2008: Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

References

External links

1967 births
Living people
American photographers

Greg Miller (photographer)


The Waffen-SS was part of the Schutzstaffel (SS). "Waffen-SS" means "Armed SS" in German. The Waffen-SS was a paramilitary organization within the SS.

The divisions of the Waffen-SS were made of highly trained soldiers. Their original job was to protect higher-ranking people in the SS and the Nazi Party but later the Waffen-SS became a fully fledged military unit. Together with the Sturmabteilung ("Storm Battalion," or SA), they were used as a paramilitary police force.

In 1937, some soldiers were reorganized and nazi leaders gave some SS members the job of guarding and running concentration camps (and, later, death camps).  These soldiers were moved from the Waffen-SS to the SS-Totenkopfverbände.

In some of the concentration camps, like Auschwitz and Buchenwald, doctors of the Waffen-SS did experiments on humans.

Heinrich Himmler led the SS from 1929 until Nazi Germany lost World War II in 1945. After World War II, the SS were found guilty of crimes against humanity, and the SS was completely abolished.

Divisions of the Waffen-SS
The Waffen-SS was grouped into divisions, as follows:
 SS-Infantry-Divisions
 SS-Mountain-Divisions
 SS-Armored-Grenadier-Divisions
 SS-Tank-Divisions
 SS-Cavalry-Divisions

The differences to the normal army units were as follows:
 All Infantry divisions had Anti-aircraft-cannons and supply battalions
 All mountain divisions had either a tank division or stormtroopers.
 All tank divisions had special battalions
 All divisions had more infantry

War crimes of the Waffen-SS
 The motorised infantry "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" took over the Wormhoudt, in northern France. This happened in the month of May 1940. During the takeover, members of the division shot 45 captured British prisoners of war.
 About a day after Allied soldiers had landed in Normandy, members of the SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend" shot about 18 Canadian prisoners of war in the courtyard of the Abbey Ardenne Near Caen. Kurt Meyer was charged after the war for the war crime and was sentenced to death.  However, the case fell apart when Canadian officers came to his defense.
 The massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane is directly linked to the history of the Waffen-SS. The 2nd tank division "Das Reich" killed 642 people. There were 245 women and 207 children among them. The victims were either shot, or burned in their houses.

British SS
One of the strangest SS units was the British Free Corps. It was a unit of the Waffen SS during World War II.  The unit was made of about 27 prisoners of war from the British Empire. One British soldier who helped recruit other soldiers to join the unit was John Amery. After the war, he was sentenced to death for high treason, he was then executed.

The troops after 1945
After the end of the war, all soldiers were dismissed from the SS, since the SS was dissolved after the fall of the German Reich.

In 1951, the Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der ehemaligen Angehörigen der Waffen-SS was founded in Germany. This translates to Mutual support organisation of former members of the Waffen-SS'.  In English, it is better known as "HIAG."  The group wanted soldiers who were in the Waffen-SS to be treated the same as soldiers of the Wehrmacht (the regular German Army).

The group also publishes a magazine. The magazine tries to send the message that the Waffen-SS Soldiers were just and not inhumane or war criminals any more than any other soldiers on neither side of the conflict. Sometimes, there are also revisionist articles in it.

References

Other websites
 Waffen-SS
 Waffen-SS Divisions

War crimes
World War II
SS

Waffen-SS


Insects are the most numerous and widespread class in the animal kingdom, accounting for up to 90% of all animal species. In the 2010s, multiple reports about the widespread decline in insect populations across multiple orders have emerged. The reported severity had shocked many observers, even though it was preceded by the earlier findings of pollinator decline, as well as anecdotal evidence of greater apparent abundance of insects earlier in the 20th century, such as the windscreen phenomenon.  Possible causes are similar to those causing other biodiversity loss, namely habitat destruction, including intensive agriculture; the use of pesticides (particularly insecticides); urbanization, and industrialization; introduced species; and - to a lesser degree and only for some regions - climate change.

Most commonly, the declines involve reductions in abundance, though in some cases entire species are going extinct. The declines are far from uniform. In some localities, there have been reports of increases in overall insect population, and some types of insects appear to be increasing in abundance across the world. Not all insect orders are affected in the same way; most affected are bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, dragonflies and damselflies. However, many of the remaining groups have simply received less research, and comparative figures from earlier decades are often not available. In the few major global studies, estimates of the total number of insect species at risk of extinction range between 10% and 40%, though all of these estimates have been frought with controversy.

Studies concur that in areas where insects are declining, their abundance had been diminishing for decades. Yet, those trends had not been spotted earlier, as there has historically been much less interest in studying insects in comparison to mammals, birds and other vertebrates. One reason is the comparative lack of charismatic species of insects. In 2016, it was observed that while 30,000 insect species are known to inhabit Central Europe, there are practically no specialists in the region devoted to full-time monitoring. This issue of insufficient research is even more acute in the developing countries. As of 2021, nearly all of the studies on regional insect population trends come from Europe and the United States, even though they account for less than 20% of insect species worldwide. With few exceptions, Africa, Asia and South America still lack multi-decade observations of insects which are required to draw conclusions about population trends on a large scale, and overcoming this obstacle is considered a top priority by expert entomologists.

In response to the reported declines, increased insect related conservation measures have been launched. In 2018 the German government initiated an "Action Programme for Insect Protection" Their goals include promoting insect habitats in the agricultural landscape, and reducing pesticide use, light pollution, and pollutants in soil and water. In 2019 a group of 27 British entomologists and ecologists wrote an open letter calling on the research establishment in the UK "to enable intensive investigation of the real threat of ecological disruption caused by insect declines without delay".

Context

The fossil record concerning insects stretches back hundreds of millions of years. It suggests there are ongoing background levels of both new species appearing and extinctions. Very occasionally, the record also appears to show mass extinctions of insects, understood to be caused by natural phenomena such as volcanic activity or meteor impact. The Permian–Triassic extinction event saw the greatest level of insect extinction, and the Cretaceous–Paleogene the second highest. Insect diversity has recovered after mass extinctions, as a result of periods in which new species originate with increased frequency, although the recovery can take millions of years.

Concern about a human-caused Holocene extinction has been growing since the late 20th century, although much of the early concern was not focused on insects. In a report on the world's invertebrates, the Zoological Society of London suggested in 2012 that insect populations were in decline globally, affecting pollination and food supplies for other animals. It estimated that about 20 percent of all invertebrate species were threatened with extinction, and that species with the least mobility and smallest ranges were most at risk.

Studies finding insect decline have been available for decades—one study tracked a decline from 1840 to 2013—but it was the 2017 re-publication of the German nature reserves study that saw the issue receive widespread attention in the media. The press reported the decline with alarming headlines, including "Insect Apocalypse". Ecologist Dave Goulson told The Guardian in 2017: "We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon." For many studies, factors such as abundance, biomass, and species richness are often found to be declining for some, but not all locations; some species are in decline while others are not. The insects studied have mostly been butterflies and moths, bees, beetles, dragonflies, damselflies and stoneflies. Every species is affected in different ways by changes in the environment, and it cannot be inferred that there is a consistent decrease across different insect groups. When conditions change, some species adapt easily to the change while others struggle to survive.

A March 2019 statement by the Entomological Society of America said there was not yet sufficient data to predict an imminent mass extinction of insects and that some of the extrapolated predictions might "have been extended well past the limits of the data or have been otherwise over-hyped". For some insect groups such as some butterflies, moths, bees, and beetles, declines in abundance and diversity have been documented in European studies. These have generally led to an overall pattern of decline, but there are variable trends for individual species within groups. For instance, a minority of British moths are becoming more common.  Other areas have shown increases in some insect species, although trends in most regions are currently unknown. It is difficult to assess long-term trends in insect abundance or diversity because historical measurements are generally not known for many species. Robust data to assess at-risk areas or species is especially lacking for arctic and tropical regions and a majority of the southern hemisphere.

In March 2019 Chris D. Thomas and other scientists wrote in response to the apocalyptic "Insectageddon" predictions of Sánchez-Bayo, "we respectfully suggest that accounts of the demise of insects may be slightly exaggerated". They called for "joined-up thinking" in responding to insect declines, backed up by more robust data than were currently available.

Causes

Destruction and pollution
The causes of the declines in insect populations are not fully understood. They are likely to vary between different insect groups and geographical regions. A study placed these causes in the order of importance as follows: "(i) habitat loss and conversion to intensive agriculture and urbanisation; ii) pollution, mainly that by synthetic pesticides and fertilisers; iii) biological factors, including pathogens and introduced species; and iv) climate change." Other factors that are thought to be important are introduced species, eutrophication from fertilizers, and artificial lighting.

The use of increased quantities of insecticides and herbicides on crops have affected not only non-target insect species, but also the plants on which they feed.

For example, a review in 2017 commented on a large study in Germany about insect population decline as follows: "The authors of the German study were not able to link the observed decline to climate change or pesticide use; although agricultural intensification and the practices associated with it, were, however, suggested as likely to be involved in some way."

Climate change
Climate change and the introduction of exotic species (see climate change and invasive species) that compete with the indigenous ones put the native species under stress, and as a result they are more likely to succumb to pathogens and parasites. Plants grow faster in presence of increased CO2 (due to the CO2 fertilisation effect) but the resulting plant biomass contains fewer nutrients. While some species such as flies and cockroaches might increase as a result, the total biomass of insects is estimated to be decreasing by between about 0.9 to 2.5% per year.

Consequences

Insect population decline affects ecosystems, and other animal populations, including humans. Insects are at "the structural and functional base of many of the world's ecosystems." A 2019 global review warned that, if not mitigated by decisive action, the decline would have a catastrophic impact on the planet's ecosystems. Birds and larger mammals that eat insects can be directly affected by the decline. Declining insect populations can reduce the ecosystem services provided by beneficial bugs, such as pollination of agricultural crops, and biological waste disposal.

According to the Zoological Society of London, in addition to such loss of instrumental value, the decline also represents a loss of the declining species' intrinsic value.

Methodology
Three principal metrics are used to capture and report on insect declines:
 Abundance – simply put the numerical total of individual insects. Depending on context, it can refer to the number of insects in a particular assembly, in a geographical area, or the sum total of insects globally  (regardless of which species the individuals belong to).
 Biomass – the total weight of insects (again regardless of species).
 Biodiversity – the number of extant insect species. Depending on context, a reduction in biodiversity can mean certain species of insects have vanished locally, though it may mean species have gone totally extinct across the entire planet.

Most of the individual studies tracking insect declines report just abundance, others just on biomass, some on both, and yet others report on all three metrics. Data directly related to diversity loss at global level is more sparse than for abundance or biomass declines. Estimates for diversity loss at a planetary level tend to involve extrapolating from abundance or biomass data; while studies sometimes show local extirpation of an insect species, actual world wide extinctions are challenging to discern. In a 2019 review, David Wagner noted that currently the Holocene extinction is seeing animal species loss at about  100–1,000 times the planet's normal background rate, and that various studies found a similar, or possibly even faster extinction rate for insects. Wagner opines that serious though this biodiversity loss is, it is the decline in abundance that will have the most serious ecological impact.

In theory it is possible for the three metrics to be independent. For instance, a decline in biomass might not involve a decrease in abundance or diversity if all that was happening was that typical insects were getting smaller. In practice though,  abundance and biomass tend to be closely related, typically showing a similar level of decline. Change in biodiversity is often, though not always,
directly proportional to the other two metrics. Some studies find cases where, in certain locations, change in biodiversity is inversely proportional to the other metrics. For example, a 42 year study of insects in the pristine Breitenbach stream near Schlitz, which is believed to have been unaffected by anthropogenic decline related causes except for climate change, found that while abundance of insects decreased, biodiversity actually rose, especially during the first half of the study.

Global studies
A 2020 meta-analysis found that globally terrestrial insects appear to be declining in abundance at a rate of about 9% per decade, while the abundance of freshwater insects appears to be increasing by 11% per decade. The study analysed 166 long-term studies, involving 1676 different sites across the world. It found considerable variations in insect decline depending on locality – the authors considered this a hopeful sign, as it suggests local factors, including conservation efforts, can make a big difference. The article stated that the increase in freshwater insects may in part be due to efforts to clean up lakes and rivers, and may also relate to global warming and enhanced primary productivity driven by increased nutrient inputs.  However, the data selection and methodology of the article were criticised in several publications.

In 2022, 66 researchers conducted a survey of 3331 biodiversity experts (meaning scientists who published a study on the subject of biodiversity over the past decade). This included 629 experts in terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates: on average, they believed that around 30% (with an uncertainty range between 20 and 50%) of these species are or have been threatened with extinction (including the species which had already gone extinct since 1500).  As insects account for the vast majority of the world's invertebrates, this figure by extension applies to them as well.

A 2019 survey of 24 entomologists working on six continents found that on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the worst, all the scientists rated the severity of the insect decline crisis as being between 8–10.

Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services reported its assessment of global biodiversity in 2019.  Its summary for insect life was that "Global trends in insect populations are not known but rapid declines have been well documented in some places. ... Local declines of insect populations such as wild bees and butterflies have often been reported, and insect abundance has declined very rapidly in some places even without large-scale land-use change, but the global extent of such declines is not known. ... The proportion of insect species threatened with extinction is a key uncertainty, but available evidence supports a tentative estimate of 10 per cent." In 2022, some researchers had expressed concern about the apparent mismatch between this tentative IPBES estimate, and that of 629 experts on invertebrate biodiversity they surveyed, which was closer to 30%. They argued that more investigations into insects and other "hyperdiverse and understudied taxa" are urgently required to clarify the matter.

Survey results for specific regions

United Kingdom
The Rothamsted Insect Survey at Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, England, began monitoring insect suction traps across the UK in 1964. According to the group, these have produced "the most comprehensive standardised long-term data on insects in the world". The traps are "effectively upside-down Hoovers running 24/7, continually sampling the air for migrating insects", according to James Bell, the survey leader, in an interview in 2017 with the journal Science. Between 1970 and 2002, the insect biomass caught in the traps declined by over two-thirds in southern Scotland, although it remained stable in England. The scientists speculate that insect abundance was already lost in England by 1970 (figures in Scotland were higher than in England when the survey began), or that aphids and other pests increased there in the absence of their insect predators.

A 2014 review noted: "Of all insects with IUCN-documented population trends [203 insect species in five orders], 33% are declining, with strong variation among orders." In the UK, "30 to 60% of species per order have declining ranges". Insect pollinators, "needed for 75% of all the world's food crops", appear to be "strongly declining globally in both abundance and diversity", which has been linked in Northern Europe to the decline of plant species that rely on them. The study referred to the human-caused loss of vertebrates and invertebrates as the "Anthropocene defaunation".

Anecdotal evidence for insect decline has been offered by those who recall apparently greater insect abundance in the 20th century. Entomologist Simon Leather recalls that, in the 1970s, windows of Yorkshire houses he visited on his early-morning paper round would be "plastered with tiger moths" attracted by the house's lighting during the night. Tiger moths have now largely disappeared from the area. Another anecdote is recalled by environmentalist Michael McCarthy concerning the vanishing of the "moth snowstorms", a relatively common sight in the UK in the 1970s and earlier. Moth snowstorms occurred when moths congregated with such density that they could appear like a blizzard in the beam of automobile headlights.

In 2004 the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds organised a Big Bug Count, issuing "splatometers" to about 40,000 volunteers to help count the number of insects colliding with their number plates. They found an average of one insect per 5 miles (8 km), which was less than expected.

Germany

In 2013 the Krefeld Entomological Society reported a "huge reduction in the biomass of insects" caught in malaise traps in 63 nature reserves in Germany (57 in Nordrhein-Westfalen, one in Rheinland-Pfalz and one in Brandenburg). A reanalysis published in 2017 suggested that, in 1989–2016, there had been a "seasonal decline of 76%, and mid-summer decline of 82%, in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study". The decline was "apparent regardless of habitat type" and could not be explained by "changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics". The authors suggested that not only butterflies, moths and wild bees appear to be in decline, as previous studies indicated, but "the flying insect community as a whole".

Scientists stated in 2019: "In 2017, a 27-year long population monitoring study revealed a shocking 76% decline in flying insect biomass at several of Germany's protected areas (Hallmann et al., 2017). This represents an average 2.8% loss in insect biomass per year in habitats subject to rather low levels of human disturbance, which could either be undetectable or regarded statistically non-significant if measurements were carried out over shorter time frames. Worryingly, the study shows a steady declining trend over nearly three decades."

According to The Economist, the study was the "third most frequently cited scientific study (of all kinds) in the media in 2017". It "pushed the governments of Germany and the Netherlands into setting up programmes to protect insect diversity." The British entomologist Simon Leather said that he hoped media reports, following the study, of an "ecological Armageddon" had been exaggerated; he argued that the Krefeld and other studies should be a wake-up call, and that more funding is needed to support long-term studies. The Krefeld study's authors were not able to link the decline to climate change or pesticides, he wrote, but they suggested that intensive farming was involved. While agreeing with their conclusions, he cautioned that "the data are based on biomass, not species, and the sites were not sampled continuously and are not globally representative".

Puerto Rico
A 2018 study of the El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico reported a decline in arthropods, and in lizards, frogs, and birds (insect-eating species) based on measurements in 1976 and 2012. The American entomologist David Wagner called the study a "clarion call" and "one of the most disturbing articles" he had ever read. The researchers reported "biomass losses between 98% and 78% for ground-foraging and canopy-dwelling arthropods over a 36-year period, with respective annual losses between 2.7% and 2.2%". The decline was attributed to a rise in the average temperature; tropical insect species cannot tolerate a wide range of temperatures. The researchers were shocked by the results: "We couldn't believe the first results. I remember [in the 1970s] butterflies everywhere after rain. On the first day back [in 2012], I saw hardly any."

Netherlands
In 2019 a study of butterfly numbers in the Netherlands from 1890 to 2017 reported an estimated decline of 84 percent. When analysed by type of habitat, the trend was found to have stabilised in grassland and woodland in recent decades but the decline continued in heathland. The decline was attributed to changes in land use due to more efficient farming methods, which has caused a decline in weeds. The recent up-tick in some populations documented in the study was attributed to (conservationist) changes in land management and thus an increase in suitable habitat.

Switzerland
A report by the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences in April 2019 reported that 60 percent of the insects that had been studied in Switzerland were at risk, mostly in farming and aquatic areas; that there had been a 60 percent decline in insect-eating birds since 1990 in rural areas; and that urgent action was needed to address the causes.

United States and Western Europe

A 2019 review analysed 73 long-term insect surveys that had shown decline, most of them in the United States and Western Europe. While noting population increases for certain species of insects in particular areas, the authors reported an annual 2.5% loss of biomass. They wrote that the review "revealed dramatic rates of decline that may lead to the extinction of 40% of the world's insect species over the next few decades", a conclusion that was challenged. They did note the review's limitations, namely that the studies were largely concentrated on popular insect groups (butterflies and moths, bees, dragonflies and beetles); few had been done on groups as Diptera (flies), Orthoptera (which includes grasshoppers and crickets), and Hemiptera (such as aphids); data from the past from which to calculate trends is largely unavailable; and the data that does exist mostly relates to Western Europe and North America, with the tropics and southern hemisphere (major insect habitats) under-represented.

The methodology and strong language of the review were questioned. Other criticism included that the authors attributed the decline to particular threats based on the studies they reviewed, even when those studies had simply suggested threats rather than clearly identifying them. Some reviewers said the study might underestimate the rate of insect decline in the tropics. Some reviewers also had concerns about the review's search terms, geographic biases, calculations of extinction rates, and inaccurate assessment of drivers of population change. Nevertheless, they found that while it was "a useful review of insect population declines in North America and Europe, it should not be used as evidence of global insect population trends and threats."

In a 2020 paper that studied insects and other arthropods across all Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) sites in the U.S., the authors found some declines, some increases, but generally few consistent losses in arthropod abundance or diversity. This study found some variation in location, but generally stable numbers of insects. As noted in the paper, the authors did not do any a priori selection of arthropod taxa. Instead, they tested the hypothesis that if the arthropod decline was pervasive, it would be detected in monitoring programs not originally designed to look for declines. They suggest that overall numbers of insects vary but overall show no net change. However, the methodology of the article was criticized because it failed to account for changes in sampling location and sampling effort at LTER sites and for the impact of experimental conditions, had inconsistencies in the database constitution and relied on an inadequate statistical analysis.
The windshield phenomenon – car windscreens covered in dead insects after even a short drive through a rural area in Europe and North America – seems also largely to have disappeared; in the 21st century, drivers find they can go an entire summer without noticing it. John Rawlins, head of invertebrate zoology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, speculated in 2006 that more aerodynamic car designs could explain the change. Entomologist Martin Sorg told Science in 2017: "I drive a Land Rover, with the aerodynamics of a refrigerator, and these days it stays clean." Rawlins added that land next to high-speed highways has become more manicured and therefore less attractive to insects.

Countermeasures

Overall policies and conventions
The most influential factors, that can be counteracted, are habitat loss and degradation, pesticide use, and climate change. Policies at all levels of government across the globe are required to address these in a meaningful way.

Much of the world's efforts to retain biodiversity at national level is reported to the United Nations as part of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Reports typically describe policies to prevent the loss of diversity generally, such as habitat preservation, rather than specifying measures to protect particular taxa. Pollinators are the main exception to this, with several countries reporting efforts to reduce the decline of their pollinating insects.

Following the 2017 Krefeld and other studies, Germany's environment ministry, the BMU, started an Action Programme for Insect Protection (Aktionsprogramm Insektenschutz). Their goals include promoting insect habitats in the agricultural landscape, and reducing pesticide use, light pollution, and pollutants in soil and water.

Reduction of pesticide-use
Beyond halting habitat loss and fragmentation and limiting climate change, reducing pesticide use is required for preserving insect populations. Pesticides have been found far from their application source and legislatively mandated elimination of cosmetic pesticide use, as well as general reductions of pesticide use, could greatly benefit insects. Organic food/farming-related measures can be solutions.

However, some scientists warned that excessive focus on reducing pesticide use could be counterproductive as pests already cause a 35 percent yield loss in crops, which can rise to 70 percent if pesticides are not used. If the yield loss was compensated for by expanding agricultural land with deforestation and other habitat destruction, it could exacerbate insect decline.

Wildflower strips and buffer zones

A wildflower strip is a strip of land sown with seeds of biodiverse insect- and pollinator-friendly flowering plant species, usually at the edge of an agricultural field, intended to sustain local biodiversity, conserve insects, restore farmland birds and counteract the negative consequences of agricultural intensification.

Buffer-zones around nature reserves where pesticide-use is drastically reduced has been proposed for inclusion in the countermeasures. Scientists who proposed the measure conducted a Germany-wide field study and found that insect samples in these areas are contaminated with ~16 pesticides on average, proportionate to the agricultural production area in a radius of 2 km.

Wildlife gardens

The Entomological Society of America suggests that people maintain plant diversity in their gardens and leave "natural habitat, like leaf litter and dead wood". The Xerces Society in the U.S. has been doing a Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count which includes observations from volunteers for 22 years.

It has been suggested that "Because many insects need little space to survive, even partial conversion of lawns to minimally disturbed natural vegetation—say 10%—could significantly aid insect conservation, while simultaneously lowering the cost of lawn maintenance".

Awareness raising
In the UK, 27 ecologists and entomologists signed an open letter to The Guardian in March 2019, calling on the British research establishment to investigate the decline. Signatories included Simon Leather, Stuart Reynolds (former president of the Royal Entomological Society), John Krebs and John Lawton (both former presidents of the Natural Environment Research Council), Paul Brakefield, George McGavin, Michael Hassell, Dave Goulson, Richard Harrington (editor of the Royal Entomological Society's magazine, Antenna), Kathy Willis and Jeremy Thomas.

More media coverage has been proposed.

In a 2019 paper, scientists listed 100 studies and other references suggesting that insects can help meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) adopted in 2015 by the United Nations. They argued that the global policy-making community should continue its transition from seeing insects as enemies, to the current view of insects as "providers of ecosystem services", and should advance to a view of insects as "solutions for SDGs" (such as using them as food and biological pest control). The public in many countries is largely unaware of benefits and services that insects provide (such as honey, ecosystem balance, food for other animals, pollination, soil health, etc.), and negative perceptions of insects are widespread.

Society and culture

In arts
In April 2019, in response to the studies about insect decline, Carol Ann Duffy released several poems, by herself and others, to mark the end of her tenure as Britain's poet laureate and to coincide with protests that month by the environmentalist movement Extinction Rebellion. The poets included Fiona Benson, Imtiaz Dharker, Matthew Hollis, Michael Longley, Daljit Nagra, Alice Oswald, and Denise Riley. Duffy's contribution was "The Human Bee".

Decline of professionals studying insects
One reason that studies into the decline are limited is that entomology and taxonomy are themselves in decline. At the 2019 Entomology Congress, leading entomologist Jürgen Gross said that "We are ourselves an endangered species" while Wolfgang Wägele – an expert in systematic zoology – said that "in the universities we have lost nearly all experts". In 2016, Jürgen Deckert of Berlin Natural History Museum commented that while around 30,000 insect species are known to inhabit Central Europe, there are "only a few specialists" dedicated to the region, and even they often do monitoring as a side job. General biology courses in college give less attention to insects, and the number of biologists specialising in entomology is decreasing as specialities such as genetics expand. In addition, studies investigating the decline tend to be done by collecting insects and killing them in traps, which poses an ethical problem for conservationists.

Further, the above describes the situation in the developed countries: the developing countries have typically not had time to build up their entomology in the first place. Consequently, nearly all of the major insect studies to date are from Europe and the United States, even though it's estimated that fewer than 20% of insect species worldwide are in those countries.

See also
 Biodiversity loss
 Colony collapse disorder
 Decline in amphibian populations
 Holocene extinction
 List of endangered insects
 Pollinator decline
 Defaunation

References

Entomology
Environmental conservation
Insect ecology
Population ecology

Decline in insect populations


Backpropagation is a method of training neural networks to perform tasks more accurately. The algorithm was first used for this purpose in 1974 in papers published by Werbos, Rumelhart, Hinton, and Williams. The term backpropagation is short for "backward propagation of errors".

It works especially well for feed forward neural networks (networks without any loops) and problems that require supervised learning.

How it works
The idea is to test how wrong the neural network is and then correct it. This is repeated many times.

With a little more detail:

 You create a loss function, which shows how far the answers from the neural net are from the real answers. (This is often done many times. After that you take the average)
 You calculate how to adjust the parameters (weights and biases) inside the neural net through the derivative of the loss function. Specifically, the chain rule is used to find the derivative with respect to each parameter.
 You adjust the parameters. How you adjust the parameters is based on your training method, with one of the simplest being gradient descent .

This is repeated until the neural network is good enough at its job -i.e., its error as measured by the loss function is low.

References

Algorithms

Backpropagation


Darkstalkers Resurrection is a 2013 video game developed by Iron Galaxy Studios and published by Capcom. It is a compilation of Capcom's two classic 2D fighting games in the Darkstalkers series, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge (1995) and Darkstalkers 3 (1997). The game features HD visuals, online multiplayer, replay sharing, spectator mode, and in-game unlockables. It was released in March 2013 as a downloadable title on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade to a positive critical reception, though the publisher claimed it has failed commercially.

Gameplay

Darkstalkers Resurrection features online play and other new enhancements in the same respect to Iron Galaxy Studios' previous Capcom arcade re-releases Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition and Marvel vs. Capcom Origins. The game utilizes the GGPO netcode to provide smooth online gameplay. Matchmaking follows in the footsteps of Iron Galaxy Studios' earlier products and introduces additional options such as region matching and ping display. Aside from the standard ranked and player matches, Resurrection also includes an online tournament mode. The game adds HD filtering with multiple viewing options, YouTube replay uploads, eight-player lobbies and a tutorial mode which provides in-depth tips to the mechanics of the game. Players who complete in-game challenges receive points which can be redeemed to unlock bonus content via the "Vault" system, including custom artwork by Stanley "Artgerm" Lau, concept art, videos, and other rewards.

Development
Darkstalkers Resurrection was announced by Capcom executive producer, Yoshinori Ono, during the Street Fighter 25th Anniversary panel at New York Comic Con on October 11, 2012. According to Capcom USA senior vice president Christian Svensson, Resurrection had been in development for about a year before its announcement. When the time to decide whether Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge or Darkstalkers 3 would receive the HD treatment arrived during planning cycles, Resurrection producer Derek Neal revealed that his team was "agonizing over which to release". Due to the divide in the community's preference between the two titles, Capcom opted to release both instead as a dual pack. Neal stated that games would be left unchanged in terms of balance and priority with the intention of remaining faithful to the original arcade versions. In December–January 2013, Capcom ran the "Embrace the Dark" character creation competition.

Release
Darkstalkers Resurrection was scheduled to be released between March 12–14 in North America, Europe and Japan. On March 14, the day of the game's regional release, two tie-in books are published in Japan: the manga collection Vampire Resurrection Official Anthology Comic (ヴァンパイア リザレクション オフィシャルアンソロジーコミック, Banpaia Rizarekushon Ofisharu Ansorojī Komikku) and the art book Vampire Artworks (ヴァンパイア アートワークス, Banpaia Ātowākusu), featuring works of Capcom's Japanese artists.

Reception

Darkstalkers Resurrection received universally positive reviews, resulting in the averaged ratings of more than 80% at both GameRankings and Metacritic for both platforms. Svensson said that while the game had appeared in digital bestseller top ten lists, it has not managed to sell enough copies to be considered commercially successful.

See also
Marvel vs. Capcom Origins, Iron Galaxy Studios' 2012 HD compilation of Marvel Super Heroes and Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes

References

External links

2013 video games
Darkstalkers video games
Iron Galaxy games
PlayStation 3 games
PlayStation Network games
Fighting games
Capcom video game compilations
Video games scored by Jake Kaufman
Video games developed in the United States
Xbox 360 Live Arcade games
Multiplayer and single-player video games

Darkstalkers Resurrection


A corona is an aura of plasma which surrounds the sun and other stars. The Sun's corona extends millions of kilometres into space and is most easily seen during a total solar eclipse. It is also observable with a device called a coronagraph. The word "corona" is a Latin word meaning "crown", from the Ancient Greek κορώνη (korōnē, "garland, wreath").

The Sun's corona is much hotter (by a factor from 150 to 450) than the visible surface of the Sun. The photosphere's average temperature is 5800 kelvin compared to the corona's one to three million kelvin. The corona is 10−12 times as dense as the photosphere, and so produces about one-millionth as much visible light. The corona is separated from the photosphere by the relatively shallow chromosphere. The exact mechanism by which the corona is heated is still the subject of some debate. The outer edges of the Sun's corona are constantly being blown away by the open magnetic flux generating the solar wind.

References

Stars
Light sources

Corona


West Washington Historic District is a national historic district located at South Bend, St. Joseph County, Indiana.  It encompasses 330 contributing buildings in an upper class residential section of South Bend. It developed between about 1854 and 1910, and includes notable examples of Italianate, Greek Revival, and Romanesque Revival style architecture. Located in the district are the separately listed Morey-Lampert House, Oliver Mansion (Copshaholm, 1896) designed by Lamb and Rich, Second St. Joseph County Courthouse, South Bend Remedy Company Building, and Tippecanoe Place. Other notable buildings include the Bartlett House (1850), Birdsell House (1897), DeRhodes House (Avalon Grotto, 1906) designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Holley House (c. 1860), Kaiser-Schmidt House (c. 1890), Listenberger-Nemeth House (c. 1870), Meahger-Daughterty House (1884), O'Brien House (c. 1920),  Oren House (c. 1875), The People's Church (1889), St. Hedwig's Church (c. 1895), St. Patrick's Church (1886), St. Paul's Memorial United Methodist Church (1901), West House (c. 1850), and a row of worker's houses (c. 1865–1900).

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

References

Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Indiana
Italianate architecture in Indiana
Greek Revival architecture in Indiana
Romanesque Revival architecture in Indiana
Historic districts in South Bend, Indiana
National Register of Historic Places in St. Joseph County, Indiana

West Washington Historic District


Scott Matthews is an English singer-songwriter from Wolverhampton, England.

Life and career
His first album Passing Stranger was released on 13 March 2006 on San Remo Records before being re-released on Island Records later in the year. Janice Long was the first of the BBC DJs to play his music.  Soon, tracks from Passing Stranger were also being played by Mark Radcliffe and Bob Harris on BBC Radio 2. In April, Scott played sessions on BBC Radio 2 & BBC 6 Music.

Matthews' first single "Elusive" was released in September. The single received much airplay from BBC Radio DJs Jo Whiley, Dermot O'Leary, and Zane Lowe.  Between 7–10 August, Lowe played "Elusive" once each night as his chosen Single of the Week.  Matthews also visited the station to perform "Elusive" and other songs from the album in May and August 2006.  In May 2007, he won the Ivor Novello Award for "Best Song Musically and Lyrically" for "Elusive".

Matthews has toured the UK extensively in support of his album and appeared in support of the Foo Fighters for their acoustic Skin and Bones concerts around the country in June 2006.

Matthews' second album Elsewhere was produced by Matthews and Gavin Monaghan and released on Island Records.

His third album, What the Night Delivers, was produced by Jon Cotton.

Home Part 1 is the fourth studio release from Matthews. The album is the first to be recorded entirely by Matthews in his home studio. What the Night Delivers features guest performances by double bassist Danny Thompson (whom Matthews met whilst performing in Joe Boyd's stage production of Way to Blue-The Songs of Nick Drake) and regular contributing musicians, Sam Martin, Danny Keane and Scott's brother, Darren Matthews who plays piano on two tracks; "The Clearing" and "The Night is Young".

The album was followed by Home Part 2 in September 2016, released via Scott's own label Shedio Records. Tracks include "Black Country Boy", the title of which references the Black Country region of the West Midlands. The album was produced by Scott.

Discography

Albums
 Passing Stranger (2006) No. 45 UK Albums Chart
 Elsewhere (2009) Released 25 May 2009
 Live in London (2010) Released November 2010
 What The Night Delivers (2011) Released 5 September 2011
 Home (Part 1) (2014) Released November 2014
 Home Part 2 (2016) Released September 2016
 The Great Untold (2018) Released April 2018
 New Skin (2020) Released December 2020

Singles

Other contributions
The Saturday Sessions: The Dermot O'Leary Show (2007, EMI) – "Boy With the Thorn in His Side"

References

External links
Scott Matthews' Official site

1976 births
Living people
English male singer-songwriters
English singer-songwriters
English folk singers
English folk guitarists
musicians from Wolverhampton
Ivor Novello Award winners
21st-century English singers
21st-century English male singers

Scott Matthews


ភាសាពែរ្ស (ពែរ្ស: فارسی , អ.ស.អ.: [fɒːɾˈsiː]) គឺជាភាសាអ៊ីរ៉ង់ ដែលជាភាសាមួយក្នុងចំណោមភាសាឥណ្ឌូអ៊ីរ៉ង់នៃក្រុមភាសាឥណ្ឌូអឺរ៉ុប។ ភាគច្រើននិយាយនៅប្រទេសអ៊ីរ៉ង់ និងប្រទេសអាហ្វហ្គានីស្ថាន។

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran (known as  Farsi  or  Parsi),  Afghanistan (officially known as "Dari" since 1958 for political reasons), Tajikistan (officially known as "Tajik" since the Soviet era), and other countries which historically came under Persian influence. The Persian language is classified as a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of Sassanid Persia, itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Persian Empire in the Achaemenid era. Persian is a pluricentric language and its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages.

There are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status  in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. For centuries Persian has also been a prestigious cultural language in Central Asia, South Asia, and Western Asia. Persian is used as a liturgical language of Islam in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan.

Persian has had a considerable, mainly lexical influence on neighboring languages, particularly the Turkic languages in Central Asia, Caucasus, and Anatolia, neighboring Iranian languages, as well as Armenian, and Indo-Aryan languages, especially Urdu. It also exerted some influence on Arabic, particularly Bahraini Arabic, while borrowing much vocabulary from it after the Muslim conquest of Persia.

With a long history of literature in the form of Middle Persian before Islam, Persian was the first language in Muslim civilization to break through Arabic's monopoly on writing, and the writing of poetry in Persian was established as a court tradition in many eastern courts. Some of the famous works of Persian literature are the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, works of Rumi, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Divan of Hafiz and poems of Saadi.

ភាសាពែរ្ស


Charles Wade Barkley (born February 20, 1963) is an American former professional basketball player. Nicknamed "Sir Charles" for his aggressive and outspoken behavior, and "The Round Mound of Rebound" for his unusual build and talent as a player, Barkley established himself as one of the National Basketball Association's (NBA) most dominating power forwards.

For a power forward, Barkley had an extremely versatile offensive game. He was not considered a great player at the defensive end. He is referred to as Chuck Barkley by many of his friends.

Barkley had many nicknames over the course of his college and pro career, making him one of the basketball players, and persons, with the most nicknames. Some of the other nicknames include "The Chuckster" and "The Chuck Wagon". Barkley is regarded as one of the best rebounders in the history of the game.

Many people view him as the greatest player who did not win an NBA championship during his career, although others argue for players such as Karl Malone, John Stockton and Patrick Ewing. Often considered the best power forward in the league (NBA), people did not agree with his totalitarian views. He is an analyst on the television show Inside the NBA. The program features host Ernie Johnson with analysts Kenny Smith and Shaquille O'Neal.

Other websites

 Charles Barkley: NBA.com Profile
 Charles Barkley: NBA.com historical playerfile
 Charles Barkley: NBA.com Historical Biography
 Charles Barkley: Hall of Fame Profile

1963 births
African-American basketball players
Living people
Houston Rockets players
Philadelphia 76ers players
Phoenix Suns players
Sportspeople from Alabama
National Basketball Association players with retired numbers
American basketball players
Space Jam characters
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees

Charles Barkley


Lewis Lord Russell (born George Lewis Lord, September 10, 1889 – November 12, 1961) was an American actor of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s who starred in a number of vaudeville shows, Broadway dramas and Hollywood films, including the Academy Award winning The Lost Weekend (1945) and the Marx Brothers film, A Night in Casablanca (1946).

Early life and work
Russell was born in Farmington, Illinois to British immigrants Samuel and Martha Jane (Wood) Lord, he was the only child of nine born in the United States and, curiously, the only one who developed an English accent. His father was an Illinois coal miner. After running away from home as a teenager, he began his life in the restaurant business, becoming an avid cook and eventually owning two restaurants. He also designed rugs and tapestries and worked as a tailor in New York, creating elaborate costumes for the stage.

Career
As a vaudeville actor, Russell toured the U.S. and played at the Palace Theater in Peoria, Illinois, at a time when the phrase "Will it play in Peoria?" was well-known to vaudevillians who tested out their routines and sketches in front of the demanding and often difficult-to-please Peoria crowds.

Billing himself as an actor from London,  Russell broke into the Broadway scene in the mid 1930s and starred as "The Squire" in the Broadway revival production of Emlyn Williams's The Corn is Green (1943) with leading lady Ethel Barrymore at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York. He also toured with actress Glenda Farrell for several years in the New Rochelle Circuit.  According to legend, he declined the starring role in The Man who Came to Dinner (1942) with Bette Davis, and created the role of the janitor in My Sister Eileen (1942/1955). He played Pancho Villa and had several starring roles in silent pictures, acting at least once opposite Pola Negri.  He also played Jane Wyman's concerned father, Charles St. James, in The Lost Weekend, Ray Milland's most popular film.

The playbill for the opening night of Bright Rebel (1938), a drama about the British Romantic-Era poet Lord Byron, features the following biographical note, which not only confirms Russell's adoption of an English identity but also suggests that he starred in many more plays than currently on record: "LEWIS L. RUSSELL (Lord Melbourne) is both an Englishman and an actor by birth. He was born in Leeds, England, shortly after his mother, a well-known English actress, gave one of those 'the show must go on' performances. With as dramatic a beginning as that he could hardly help getting back on the stage and there has been for some fifty years. A few scattered plays among the innumerable he has appeared in are 'The Rosary,' 'Lombardy, Ltd.,' 'The Bad Man,' 'Within the Law,' 'Madame X,' 'Accent on Youth,' and 'Yes My Darling Daughter.'"

Later life
He designed his own home in Pasadena, California, where he kept house, Ernest Hemingway-style, with his two-dozen cats. He died in Reseda, California at the age of 72.

Roles

Broadway

 Dead End (October 28, 1935 – June 12, 1937) as Medical Examiner
 London Assurance (February 18, 1937 – February 1937) as Max Harkaway
 Abe Lincoln in Illinois (October 15, 1938 – December 1939) as Judge Bowling Green
 Bright Rebel (December 27, 1938 – January 1939) as Lord Melbourne
 Return Engagement (November 1, 1940 – November 7, 1940) as Baldy Bemis
 Cuckoos on the Hearth (September 16, 1941 – January 3, 1942) as Zadoc Grimes
 The Corn Is Green (May 3, 1943 – June 19, 1943) as The Squire

Films

 The Affairs of Susan (1945) as Mr. Cusp
 Molly and Me (1945) as Sir Arthur Burroughs
 You Came Along (1945) as Chairman
 The Lost Weekend (1945) as Charles St. James
 Hold That Blonde! (1945) as Henry Carteret
 She Wouldn't Say Yes (1945) as Colonel Brady
 One Way to Love (1946) as Roger Winthrop
 A Night in Casablanca (1946, a Marx Bros. film) as Governor Galoux
 She Wrote the Book (1946) as George Dixon
 If I'm Lucky (1946) as P.H. Gillingwater (uncredited)
 Monsieur Beaucaire (1946) as Chief Justice (uncredited)
 Cross My Heart (1946) as Judge
 Ladies Man (1947) as David Harmon
 Jewels of Brandenburg (1947) as Roger Hamilton
 The Trouble with Women (1947) as Dr. Wilmer Dawson
 I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now (1947) as T.J. Milford (uncredited)
 The Prince of Thieves (1948) as Sir Fitz-Alwin (uncredited)
 My Dog Rusty (1948) as Mayor Fulderwilder
 Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948) as Tom Widgery
 When the Redskins Rode (1951) as Gov. Dinwiddie
 The Underworld Story (1950) as Calvin
 Corky of Gasoline Alley (1951) as Hull (uncredited)
 Les Misérables (1952) as Waiter (uncredited)
 Against All Flags (1952) as Oxford  (uncredited)
 Sangaree (1953) as Capt. Bronson
 The King's Thief (1955) as Gentleman (uncredited)
 The Naked Hills (1956) as Baxter (uncredited) (final film role)

Television
 Public Prosecutor, episode "The Case of the Missing Hour" (1947) as Jerome O. Kendrick
 The Life of Riley, "Egbert's Chemistry Set" (1949) as Doctor
 China Smith, "Shanghai Clipper" (1952) as Lord Ratcliffe
 Front Page Detective, "Seven Seas to Danger" (1952) as Dr. Oscar Grandell
 Adventures of Superman, "Five Minutes to Doom" (1953) as W. T. Wayne
 I Married Joan, "Brad's Moustache" (1953) as a Member of the Nominating Committee

References

External links

 (archive)

1889 births
1961 deaths
American people of British descent
People from Farmington, Illinois
Male actors from Illinois
American male film actors
American male stage actors
Vaudeville performers
20th-century American male actors
Actors from Pasadena, California

Lewis Russell


The Orphanage was a visual effects studio located in California.  It had offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco.  It was co-founded in 1999 by Stu Maschwitz, Jonathan Rothbart, and Scott Stewart, who all previously worked at Industrial Light & Magic. Scott Kirsner at Hollywood Reporter interviewed a couple of the founders, and writes about the company and its plans. Stu Maschwitz created the Magic Bullet software which gives video a film look, and wrote a book about guerrilla filmmaking called The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap.

The Orphanage was known for its work on both commercials and features. The company then launched but later closed Orphanage Animation Studios which was headed up by Genndy Tartakovsky, and was due to make their film debut with the ill-fated Power of the Dark Crystal. They never made any projects except for Sym-Bionic Titan.

The Orphanage did approximately 640 shots for the "That Yellow Bastard" section of Sin City (2005). as well as three other films with Robert Rodriguez, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D, and the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez co-directed double feature Grindhouse.

The company has worked on a number of Hollywood blockbusters including Superman Returns, Night at the Museum, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest & At World's End, and the Korean blockbuster The Host.  They created the Heads-up display (HUD) for the hi-tech suit of armour in the Marvel Studios production of Iron Man, for which their work was nominated for a 2008 VES Award (for Best Compositing).

They have also created commercials and a handful of Super Bowl spots for clients as varied as Comcast, Toshiba, HP, Benadryl, Nicoderm, and several award-winning spots for Sony PlayStation's Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando.

On February 4, 2009, the company announced it was suspending operations indefinitely, after 10 years in the business. The announcement was made by company co-founders Stu Maschwitz, Scott Stewart, and Jonathan Rothbart, and announced on Mr. Maschwitz's blog. No immediate notice was posted on the company's website. Although the announcement gave no reason for the closing, bloggers attributed the closing to general economic conditions.

The Orphanage selected filmography

References

Visual effects companies
American animation studios
Computer animation
Mass media companies established in 1999
1999 establishments in California
2009 disestablishments in California
Companies based in Los Angeles
Companies based in San Francisco
Cinema of the San Francisco Bay Area

The Orphanage (company)