Zhang Xianzhong (張獻忠 or Chang Hsien-chung; 18 September 1606 – 2 January 1647), courtesy name Bingwu (秉吾), art name Jingxuan (敬軒), was a Chinese peasant leader who led a peasant rebellion from Yan'an wei, Shaanxi (today Yulin, Shaanxi province) during the Ming-Qing transition. He conquered Sichuan in 1644, and named himself king and later emperor of the Xi dynasty. His rule in Sichuan was brief, and he was killed by the invading Qing army. He is commonly associated with the massacres in Sichuan that depopulated the region. However, the extent of his killings is disputed.

Biography

Early life
Zhang was born in Liushujian (柳树涧; literally 'willow spring', modern Dingbian, Shaanxi province), into a poor family. He was described as tall in stature, had a yellow complexion and a "tiger chin" (), and hence was given the nickname "Yellow Tiger". He served in the Ming army, and while in the army he was sentenced to death for violations of military rules, but was reprieved after an intervention by a senior officer who was impressed by his appearance.

As rebel leader
Towards the end the Ming dynasty, drought, famines and epidemics broke out in various parts of China. In the late 1620s, peasants revolted in Shaanxi, resisting attempts by the Ming government to collect grains and taxes. They coalesced into rebel armies called "roving bandits" (liúkòu 流寇) because of their highly mobile nature, and spread into other parts of China. Zhang deserted from the army, joined the rebel forces in Mizhi County in 1630, and established himself as a rebel leader, styling himself Bada Wang (八大王, Eighth Great King). His mobile forces would conduct raids along the western edge of Shaanxi, plundering swiftly and hiding out in the hills. Later he moved into other provinces, moving from place to place raiding towns and cities. He was defeated at various times by the Ming forces; Zhang would also surrender when it was expedient for him to do so, for example in 1631 and 1638, but would then later regroup and resume the rebellion.

In 1635 he joined a larger confederation of bandits that included another rebel leader, Li Zicheng (Li would later capture Beijing and end the Ming rule there). They devastated Henan and pushed into Anhui. After they had burnt the Ming ancestral temple at Zhongdu (Fengyang) in Anhui and ravaged the area, the rebel armies broke up and Zhang headed to Hubei. In 1637, joined by other rebels and with an army now reaching a size of 300,000 men, he again pushed into Anhui, then to Jiangsu, and almost down to Nanjing, auxiliary capital of Ming. But he was immediately defeated there and he retreated back to Hubei. In 1638, he surrendered to Ming supreme commander Xiong Wencan () and was allowed to serve as a regional Ming commander. However, he reneged on the agreement in 1639 and rebelled, and later defeated the Ming forces led by the Ming general Zuo Liangyu (). In 1640, he suffered defeats at the hand of Zuo and had to flee with his few remaining followers into the mountains of Eastern Sichuan. In 1641 he emerged from Sichuan and attacked Xiangyang, capturing and executing the imperial prince there.

In 1643, he took Macheng in Hubei, and his army swelled to some 57,000 after incorporating the city's rebels. He then captured the provincial capital of Wuchang, killed the imperial prince there, and proclaimed himself "Xi Wang" (King of the West). Wuchang however was soon recaptured by Ming forces, and for a while Zhang stayed at Changsha where he controlled much of Hunan and part of Jiangxi.

Conquest of Sichuan
In 1644, Zhang decided to abandon Hunan and led 100,000 of his troops towards Sichuan. His army converged on Chongqing from two directions and surrounded the city. After several days of fighting, his army managed to blast a hole through the city wall and captured the city on 25 July 1644. He was said to have cut off the hands of the city's defenders and massacred a large number of people.

The conquest of some other parts of Sichuan was made easier after he promised not to harm the local population if they seized their officials, took possession of the storehouse and surrendered without resistance. He took Chengdu on 9 September 1644, and met no real opposition in the rest of Sichuan afterwards. He then set up court in Chengdu, which he renamed Xijing (西京, Western Capital), and declared himself king of the Xi dynasty (大西王朝, Great Western dynasty). In the 10th lunar month of 1644 he declared himself as emperor with the reign title Dashun.

Rule in Sichuan

In Sichuan he attempted to set up a civil administration and initially gained considerable support. According to an account by Gabriel de Magalhães, a Portuguese Jesuit who was working in Sichuan with another Jesuit Lodovico Buglio (but both pressed to serve as astronomers to Zhang), "he began his rule with such liberality, justice and magnificence by which he captivated all hearts that many mandarins, famous both in civic as in military affairs whom fear was keeping concealed, left their hideouts and flew to his side."

However, resistance to his rule did not cease, and Chongqing was retaken by Ming loyalists in the spring of 1645. Zhang then embarked on a campaign of terror, which was well under way by the middle of 1645, to stamp out the remaining resistance in Sichuan. In November 1645, according to de Magalhães, Zhang, after hearing that "a huge and powerful army was coming against him", announced that "the people of his kingdom had a secret pact with the enemy and planned an uprising; because of this he was determined to kill any suspected resistors". The Jesuits, who now "understood the evil of this man", reported that while they managed to save a few of their Jesuit brothers who were taken, the rest were killed. Zhang's policy of terror increased in intensity, especially in 1646 after he had decided to abandon Sichuan. By then, Zhang's government had virtually disintegrated, all but three of his principal officials had either committed suicide or were executed.

Death
The Manchu Aisin Gioro founded the Qing dynasty in 1636 and advanced through the Great Wall after the fall of the Ming dynasty to rebels of Li Zicheng in 1644. In 1646 the Qing sent out a force under the leadership of Haoge intending to attack Zhang's domain in Sichuan. In October 1646, Zhang decided to abandon Sichuan, and headed towards his homeland in Shaanxi. However, the Qing army was also approaching from Shaanxi, and in January 1647, Zhang and the Qing forces met in Xichong where Zhang had set up camp, and he was killed in the confrontation. According to one account, he was betrayed by one of his officers, a native of Sichuan named Liu Chin-chung (Liu Jinzhong) who resented his policy of terror in Sichuan. Zhang was alerted to their presence and decided to confront them with only 8 to 10 men. Liu pointed Zhang out to the Qing when Zhang rushed out from his tent on learning of the betrayal, and he was then shot and killed by a skilled Manchu archer. The Draft History of Qing has an entirely different account of his death and says he was killed by Oboi during a battle.

Devastation of Sichuan
The events surrounding Zhang's rule and afterwards devastated Sichuan, where he was said to have "engaged in one of the most hair-raising genocides in imperial history". Lurid stories of his killings and flayings were given in various accounts. According to Shu Bi (), an 18th-century account of the massacre, after every slaughter, the heads or skulls were collected and placed in several big piles, while the hands were placed in other big piles, and the ears and noses in more piles, so that Zhang could keep count of his killings. In one incident, he is said to have organized an imperial examination ostensibly to recruit scholars for his administration, only to have all the candidates, who numbered many thousands, killed. In another, to give thanks for his recovery after an illness, he was said to have cut off the feet of many women. The severed feet were heaped in two piles with those of his favorite concubine, whose feet were unusually small, placed on top. These two piles of feet were then doused in oil and set alight to become what he called "heavenly candles".

He was reported to have ordered further massacres before he abandoned Chengdu in advance of the Qing armies. The massacres, a subsequent famine and epidemic, attacks by tigers, as well as people fleeing from the turmoil and the Qing armies, resulted in a large-scale depopulation of Sichuan. The worst affected areas are believed to be Chengdu and its surrounding counties (mainly in Chengdu Plain), and places on the path of Zhang's retreat from Chengdu to Shaanxi.

Seven Kill Stele

A popular account of his life has it that he erected in Chengdu a stele, which came to be known as the Seven Kill Stele (), with the following inscription:

There are, however, considerable doubts that this account is accurate. In 1934, a stele thought to be this very one was found by a missionary – its reverse side contains an added inscription by a Southern Ming general commemorating Zhang's numerous victims whose bones he had collected and buried in 1646. While the first two lines of the poem on this stele are similar, the line with the seven kills is absent in this stele. Instead the actual line reads: "The spirits and gods are knowing, so reflect on this and examine yourselves" (鬼神明明,自思自量). Many therefore considered the story to be a distortion from the Qing era.

Deaths
The actual number of people killed by Zhang is not known and is disputed. Official Ming dynasty history Ming Shi recorded a figure of 600 million deaths due to Zhang's activities, an obvious exaggeration, since the total population of China at that time was less than 150 million, perhaps much lower. According to an assessment by a modern historian, "the death toll is reputed to have been enormous, possibly one million out of a total provincial population of three million, before he was eventually killed by the Manchus." The combination of deaths from the massacres and other causes as well as flight of people from the province resulted in a sharp drop in the population of Sichuan. The population has been estimated to have dropped by as much as 75%, with fewer than a million people left in Sichuan, most of whom were clustered in the peripheral areas. The last Ming census figure for Sichuan in 1578 (more than 60 years before Zhang entered Sichuan) gave a population of 3,102,073. However, by 1661, only 16,096 adult males were registered in Sichuan, and Chengdu was said to have become a virtual ghost town frequented by tigers. A later figure for Sichuan was from the 1720s, which is over 70 years after Zhang's death and long after the resettlement of Sichuan had begun, and it recorded 634,802 households (which one estimate calculated to be around 2.5 million individuals).

Many, while acknowledging the massacres committed, do not believe that Zhang was responsible for the greater part of the population collapse in Sichuan, and thought that the greatest loss happened after his death due to the continuing turmoil, famine and diseases. Some argued that while a great many died, Sichuan did not become virtually depopulated as recorded. Some modern Chinese historians considered him a proto-revolutionary, maintaining that accounts of the massacres were exaggerated, or were committed by others including the Qing armies, that his victims were Ming nobles, rich landlords, and other "counter-revolutionary" elements, and that his heinous reputation was the result of "Qing slanders" and "reactionary propaganda".

Aftermath
Before he had abandoned Sichuan, Zhang divided his forces into four divisions, each led by one of his four generals (Li Dingguo, Sun Kewang, Liu Wenxiu, Ai Nengqi). These remnants of his army, as well as Ming loyalists, held out in Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou after Zhang's death, and most of Sichuan did not come under control of the Qing until a dozen years or so later, and fighting only finally ended in eastern Sichuan in 1664.

Resettlement of Sichuan
In order to fill up the depopulated regions of Sichuan, a massive resettlement program was initiated during the Qing dynasty, starting around 1670 or 1671 and lasting more than two centuries. Millions of people from Hubei, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Shaanxi and other provinces were resettled in Sichuan. Some of the early immigrants were those who returned after fleeing Sichuan (including the ancestors of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping), but some were also coerced. A large number of the migrants came from Huguang (now Hubei/Hunan), and the migration was therefore described by 19th century scholar Wei Yuan as "". By the 1720s, 70–80% of the population of Sichuan was reportedly non-native, and as much as 85% a century later.

References

Further reading

Liu Xianting 劉獻廷, Guangyang zaji 廣陽雜記
Mingshi 明史 (History of Ming)
Peng Zunsi 彭遵泗 (fl. 18th century), Shu Bi 蜀碧
.

External links

1606 births
1647 deaths
17th-century Chinese monarchs
Ming dynasty people
People from Yulin, Shaanxi
Ming dynasty rebels
Founding monarchs
Xi dynasty
Genocide perpetrators

Zhang Xianzhong


Mana series known in Japan as Seiken Densetsu (lit. The Legend of the Sacred Sword) is an action role-playing video game released by SquareSoft (now Square Enix).

The series began with collaborations with Final Fantasy series called Final Fantasy Adventure (Seiken Densetsu in Japan and in Europe called Mystic Quest) on June 28, 1991. Later after the first game was released, the Mana series had a standalone unit with the second installment Secret of Mana that was released in 1993 for Game Boy. In 1995, their third installment, Trials of Mana was released on Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Famicom, and at last Legend of Mana released on PlayStation. A remake of the original game, Sword of Mana (2003), was released for Game Boy Advance. All of the main original series were role-playing games, though they included a wide variety of gameplay mechanics, and the stories of the games were connected only thematically.

In 2006 and 2007, four more games was released as a part of World of Mana subseries, an attempt by Square Enix to release games in a series of variety genres and consoles. These series where the player can play Childern of Mana (2006), a dungeon crawler video game released on Nintendo DS. And Dawn of Mana, an 3D action-adventre game in 2007 for PlayStation 2, and also Heroes of Mana (2007) a real-time strategy for the DS. Three more games have been released, after the World of Mana subseries ended. Cirlcle of Mana (2013), a card-battle game only sale in Japan for the GREE mobile platform, one year later Rise of Mana a free-to-play action role-playing game only in Japan for iOS, Android, and PlayStation Vita. The last game Adventures of Mana a remake of Final Fantasy Adventure released in 2016, for the PlayStation Vita.

The Mana series has also released other games, such as Collection of Mana, Friends of Mana, Trials of Mana (2020), and Echoes of Mana (2022) the new entry in the Mana series to celebrate 30th anniversary.

Video game series

Mana (video game series)


Winston Guno Lackin (23 December 1954 – 11 November 2019) was a Surinamese politician. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Suriname in the cabinet of President Dési Bouterse between 13 August 2010 and 13 August 2015.

Career
Lackin was born on 23 December 1954 in Nickerie District. He went to high school in the capital city of Paramaribo. Lackin subsequently studied law at the Anton de Kom University of Suriname. Afterwards he studied at the Rio Branco Institute in Brazil between 1984 and 1986 to prepare for a career in diplomacy.

Between 1983 and 1984 Lackin was head of the Europe department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1986 to 1991 he was also employed by the Ministry. In 1991 he became first secretary at the Surinamese embassy at Brasília, Brazil. He stayed there until 1994 when he returned to his job at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In 1997 he went abroad once more when he became counselor at the Surinamese embassy in Brussels, Belgium. In 2000 he returned to Suriname, where he was employed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until his appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the cabinet of President  Dési Bouterse on 13 August 2010. On 13 August 2015 Lackin handed over the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs to Niermala Badrising.

Policies
In the first half of 2012 Suriname held the chairmanship of the Caribbean Community, and Lackin tried to make Suriname a bridge between the Caribbean Community and the Union of South American Nations.

In January 2013 Lackin spoke with his Dutch colleague Frans Timmermans, establishing the first ministerial contact with the Netherlands since 2010. Under Lackin relations between Suriname and the Netherlands improved in late 2014 and early 2015, with the countries exchanging ambassadors once more. Lackin said relations were completely restored.

Personal life
From 1985 to 1987, he was the drummer of the Brazilian music group Obina Shok. Lackin died on 11 November 2019 at his home in Suriname at the age of 64.

References

1954 births
2019 deaths
Anton de Kom University of Suriname alumni
Foreign ministers of Suriname
National Democratic Party (Suriname) politicians
People from Nickerie District
Surinamese percussionists

Winston Lackin


Michael Holmes is an Australian news anchor and correspondent for CNN International (CNNI), anchoring CNN Newsroom with Michael Holmes since 2019.  The shows air between the hours of 12am and 4am Friday through Monday ET.  Prior to that he anchored CNNI's CNN Today with Amara Walker.   He has also anchored the 10a ET edition of International Desk and in early 2013 joined Suzanne Malveaux as co-anchor of CNN USA's Around The World at noon ET, an hour-long bulletin focusing on international news. Previously, he was the host of CNNI's behind-the-news program BackStory and other CNN International programs.

He attended Wesley College, Perth High School from 1973 to 1977. Holmes began his career at the Daily News newspaper in Perth at the age of 17. Prior to his work at CNN, he was a reporter for more than a decade for Australia's Nine Network in Perth, Sydney, London and Melbourne. He spent four years based in London, covering Northern Ireland, the first Intifada, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first Gulf War and other major stories.  After returning to Australia he was later deployed to cover the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

He was the first Australian anchor hired by CNN International (commencing in 1996), and has reported extensively around the world, including nearly 20 deployments to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict including multiple assignments in Gaza and the West Bank and the 2011 uprising in Libya. He was also deployed to Ukraine to cover the Russian invasion in March and April 2022.

In 2004 he was in a CNN convoy ambushed by insurgents in Iraq which cost the lives of two staff members. One deployment to Iraq during the deadliest time of the war resulted in the CNN Documentary "Month of Mayhem", which won the 2007 CINE "Golden Eagle" and won a second Golden Eagle for his work on the documentary 72 Hours Under Fire.  He has won numerous other awards including two Peabody Awards for coverage of the Iraq War and the battle for Mosul in 2017, and an Edward R Murrow Award for coverage of Hurricane Maria.

Holmes has more than 40 years' experience in journalism and has visited or worked as a foreign correspondent in more than 80 countries. He currently resides in Atlanta.

References

External links
 Michael Holmes profile at CNN.com

Australian television personalities
Australian expatriate journalists in the United States
CNN people
Australian people of English descent
People educated at Wesley College, Perth
People from Perth, Western Australia
1960 births
Living people
Place of birth missing (living people)

Michael Holmes (broadcaster)


A carved turn is a skiing and snowboarding term for the technique of turning by shifting the ski or snowboard onto its edges. When edged, the sidecut geometry causes the ski (in the following, snowboard is implicit and not mentioned) to bend into an arc, and the ski naturally follows this arc shape to produce a turning motion. The carve is efficient in allowing the skier to maintain speed because, unlike the older stem Christie and parallel turns, the skis don't create drag by sliding sideways.

Starting a carved turn requires the ski to be rotated onto its edge, which can be accomplished through angulation of the hips and knees applied to both skis, leading them to efficiently carve a naturally parallel turn. Carving turns are generally smoother and longer radius than either stemmed or parallel turns. Carving maintains the skis efficiently turning along the direction of travel as opposed to skidding at an angle across the direction of travel. For a given velocity, carving with shaped skis typically requires less effort than stemming or parallel and offers increased speed and control in even steep descents and highly energetic turns, making it ubiquitous in racing.

Prior to the introduction of "shaped skis" in the 1990s, the technique was not simple to learn. Since then, it has become accessible and carving is commonly taught as a form of parallel skiing alongside the classic parallel "brushed" technique. Modern downhill technique is generally a combination of carving and skidding, varying the ratio between the two when rapid control over the turn or speed is required. Pure carving is a useful technique on "groomers" – slopes of moderate steepness with smooth snow – with skis dedicated to this style. Other situations remain almost pure parallel Christie technique, such as competitive mogul skiing, with edged turn initiation aided by the moguls themselves.

History

Shaped skis, also called parabolic skis, make carved turns possible at low speeds and with short turn radius. Skis had sidecut since they were first carved from wood – typically just 5mm or so on a long ski. But it wasn't until the early 1980s that much deeper cuts were explored. In 1979 Head developed the "Natural Turning Radius" concept and skis with 7.3mm sidecut (~35 m radius). Olin Corp developed a teaching ski with an 8 m radius (31mm sidecut) and the first asymmetric ski, with no up hill cut and, because side cut involves proportionately wide tips, a platform for the boot to allow a very narrow waist. A total of 150 pairs were produced.

In 1990 Volkl released their metal "Explosiv" with a 10-mm sidecut and 28-m turn radius. K2 introduced a 10mm sidecut race ski, whose improved edging and turning ability became a sought after by consumers. Volant released a 12mm cut ski in 1992, followed by Dynastar, and K2.

Elan engineers Jurij Franko and Pavel Skofic experimentally adjusted sidecut and developed a physical model—desired radius, speed, forces and lean one could generate, and bend the ski to solve for this combination. By 1991 they released a ski with a sidecut that was, at 22.25 mm, three times that of previous standard for slalom skis and a tight, 15–m turning radius. It took eight of the top ten places in its initial racing, allowing skiers to stand with a stronger straighter leg and make the desired carve. In the US, ski instructors found that students could easily make parallel turns that would otherwise take considerable practice and training. The company put the ski on the market in 1993 as the Elan SCX.

Kneissl, struggling in bankruptcy released a radical 19–mm sidecut ski for a radius of 14 m. In tests, Elan found that its skis substantially boosted skier capability. Engineers experimented and were funded at Atomic, Blizzard and others. With cuts of 20 mm, short skis were a necessity to avoid unnecessarily heavy tips and tails. Increasing widths held snow contact constant as lengths and turn radius plummeted. The necessary tip and tail mass as well as carved edge contact made 180 cm skis as stable as straight skis 20% longer. Design challenges such as engineering increased stiffness to keep wide tips from bending over bumps and in deeps continued to be met as Wright's law took over ski design.

Some (Atomic, Fischer and Head) leaped at the new designs while others resisted (Rossignol/Dynastar, K2) or took other directions (Salomon with their incredibly successful cap or "monocoque" design). The expense of competing against the dual innovations of the new carving skis and radical manufacturing innovation such as the cap, and investment in new presses to handle the width of carving skis saw several companies go to the wall, including Blizzard, while innovators such as the Slovenian Elan company thrived combining new manufacturing with "parabolic" ski design. In 1994 K2 launched its K2 Fours: a 22 meter radius 195 cm downhill ski. In 1996 Bode Miller took multiple wins. The market shifted dramatically, with "old" skis piling up, unsalable even in clearance racks.

Dynamics
Skis bend when edged (angling of the ski running base to the snow surface). Combined with sidecut, this creates a curved interface to the snow, and at a turn of that radius, the ski carves, rather than skids, with all points of the edge of the ski traveling along the same curve on the snow surface. These basic physical facts drive the radical parabolic sidecut.

When making a carving turn, a skier is skiing in dynamic equilibrium, so to balance the centripetal force the skier brings their center of mass to the inside of the turn. This is like a cyclist leaning to the inside of a turn to avoid being thrown off of their bicycle. Beginners to the sport are often hesitant to angulate into these turns, as they feel that such an action will cause them to fall.  Ski instructors therefore teach new skiers to overcome this hesitation.

The ski is made with a side-cut radius.  This is the radius of a circle that would fit into the shape of the edge of the ski if viewed in plan-view. This is approximately the maximum radius of turn that can be cleanly carved. Expertly used skis are capable of carving clean circular arc segments whose approximate minimum radius is proportional to the cosine of the angle of tilt multiplied by the side-cut radius.

Path

Carving typically involves the skier making a series of "Cs", or half circles, down the hill (with two consecutive "C"s forming an "S"). Skidding turns on the other hand would rather follow a "Z"-shaped path.

Some instructors teach their students to think of these half circles as a clock. For example, the most extreme left portion of a turn would be at 9 o'clock and the extreme right is 3 o'clock.  The turns are accomplished by utilizing a "rolling" of both skis from edge to edge.

Speed
Recreational skiing is usually done at speeds in range between 5 m/s and 15 m/s with average turn radius of less than 15 m. Accordingly, sidecuts of modern recreational skis are calculated for turn radius of approximately 7 to 15 m.

Unlike a skidding turn, which primarily uses the skidding effect to reduce speed (hence the "Z"-path), a (perfect) carved turn does not lose any speed because there is no braking action in the turns.  Rather, the reduction of the average path slope angle resulting from the skier's S-shaped path down the slope, as opposed to a path straight down, reduces the skier's speed.  The skier wishing to go slower must wait a little longer before initiating the next C-turn, making the "C" longer.  This will lead the skier to ski more across the slope (in extremes uphill), reducing the average path slope angle.

Snowboarding

A carved turn is distinguishable by its subsequent "pencil line" mark left in the snow. This indicates that only the edge of the board made contact with the snow, and no skidding took place during the turn. The rider is using pressure, twist and tilt to get only the side of the board into the snow. Then engaging the sidecut edge which determines the carved turn shape. This type of turn causes the board to bend and store a large amount of potential energy during the turn. Allowing this potential energy to be released and then used to propel the boarder into the next turn. The act requires the snowboarding skills of twist, tilt, and pressure to engage the edge into the snow and start the turn. No pivoting should be involved while the edge of the board is engaged with the snow as it will cause skidding, or the edge to release from the snow.

See also
 Glossary of surfing

References

External links

Skiing techniques
Surfing terminology

Carved turn


The Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church and its Liturgical Museum can be found in the Downtown of Miskolc (7 Deák square.)

The church was built between 1785 and 1806 in Zopf style. Its furniture is also in Zopf style, from the late 18th century. It is a listed historic monument. The church houses an iconostasis 16 m high, with 88 pictures of the life of Jesus. The Baroque iconostasis was carved in the workshop of Miklós Jankovits of Eger, the pictures (with the exception of four of them) were painted by Anton Kuchelmeister of Vienna. The copy of the Akhtyrka Icon of the Mother of God was a gift from Empress Catherine II of Russia.

The Orthodox believers already had a small chapel in the early 18th century (St. Naum Chapel), which stood on today's Széchenyi street. The building of the church was decided in the second part of the century. Originally they planned to build a large church with an onion dome, designed by Johannes Michart, but it was opposed by the (mainly Protestant) leaders of the city and by those who were accustomed to the more conservative artistic styles of the period. It was finally decided that the church would be built according to the design by Johann Michael Schajdlet. The interior is divided into three parts: entrance hall, naos, and sanctuary.

A school (1805), a hospital and a parsonage were also built next to the church. The churchyard also served as a burial place, several of the marble tombstones are still there.

The Orthodox Liturgical Museum of Hungary houses the richest Orthodox liturgical collection of Hungary. The museum was opened in the building of the former school in 1988. Its permanent exhibition shows the history and arts of the Orthodox Church and schools. The first room resembles a chapel, recalling the atmosphere of Greek chapels where believers worshiped before large Baroque churches were built. In the second room visitors can see goldsmith's work and liturgical clothes, while in the third room the icon collection is exhibited.

External links
 Hungarian Orthodox Museum
 Museums in Miskolc

Churches in Miskolc
Museums in Miskolc
Religious museums in Hungary
Eastern Orthodox church buildings in Hungary
Churches completed in 1806
19th-century churches in Hungary

Greek Orthodox Church and Museum, Miskolc


Benin has varied resources of wildlife comprising flora and fauna, which are primarily protected in its two contiguous protected areas of the Pendjari National Park and W National Park. The former is known for many species of avifauna and the latter park is rich in mammals and predators. In addition, many other forest reserves are noted in the country but are not easily accessible, well protected or adequately surveyed for its wildlife resources. The protected area of Benin which is defined as a National Protected Area System is in northern Benin, mostly with a woody savanna ecosystem. It covers 10.3 percent of the nation and is part of the three-nation W-Arly-Pendjari Complex (WAP) (of which 43 percent is in Benin, 36 percent in Burkina Faso and 21 percent in Niger).

Forests of particular note are the riparian forests which form a dominant ecosystem, accounting for one-third of the estimated flora of 3,000 species in Benin. These forests are found along river banks consisting of semi-deciduous, dry, and open forest and woodland savanna. However, these systems have been subject to severe misuse by way of deforestation, which necessitated the enforcement of a law, which imposes restrictions on cutting of these forests.

In south Benin, where malaria is a common disease as in the rest of Africa, medicinal plants are used for treatment as a form of traditional or alternative medicine.

National parks

W National Park

W National Park, IUCN Management Category II, a transboundary park among Niger, Benin and Burkina Faso, as a part of the Niger River, encompasses an area of  in Benin; the "W" is after the W-shaped bends in the Niger River that border's the park and which is fed the Tapoa River in the north, and the Mékrou River in the south. Its elevation is between . In addition, the buffer zones are the hunting zones of Mékrou , Djona  and Kompa , apart from transition areas in a  zone. This area in the West African savanna belt covers terrestrial, semi-aquatic and aquatic ecosystems. Primarily of semi-arid to semi-humid Sudanese wooded savanna, 500 plant species have been identified. Sudanian savanna fauna consists of 70 diurnal mammals and more than 112 species of fish including the monkfish Squatina aculeata. The park has about 200,000 people living within it and on its periphery, which creates conflicts between park managers, herders and farmers.

Pendjari National Park

The Pendjari National Park covers  entirely in the far north-west of Benin. It has buffer zones namely, the Pendjari (348,000 ha) that incorporates the hunting zones of Pendjari-Porga (76,000 ha), Batia (75,500 ha) and Konkombri (25,900 ha). Initially known as forest reserve, it was declared a national park on May 6, 1961, after the independence of Benin. In June 1986, it was classified as a MAB Biosphere Reserve (including the adjoining hunting zones of Pendjari and Atacora) and in February 2007, the Pendjari River Valley was recognized as a wetland of international importance and designated as a Ramsar site. The park is part of the W-Arli-Pendjari complex (WAP), which is a vast protected area in Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger. The hills and cliffs of the Atakora range make the north-west one of the most scenic areas of Benin. They provide a wonderful backdrop to the Pendjari National Park, which, in its isolation, remains one of the most interesting in West Africa.

Riparian forests

Riparian forests in Benin are important conservation sites that need more care than is currently available. These forests, which are flood-dependent and the flora that is dependent on this source of water, are seen in many parts of Benin. However, forest and savanna species are also part of this ecosystem as they have a combination of plants from various forest and savanna types. Hence, the riparian forests have been found to be more diverse than those of the single one-ecosystem-based vegetation. They also provide the needed categories of food for many animal and other forest species to survive.

The riparian forests ecosystem is in a limited area and spread in a linear shape. The forests account for at least one-third of the estimated 3,000 species of flora of Benin, with several valuable, rare or even endemic species. These forests are woodlands of semi-deciduous, dry, and open forest, and woodland savanna that occur along riverbanks or along streams. The physiognomy of this type of forest is highly variable with trees of average height of  and some places as high  with dense understorey. Adjacent more open ecosystems also affect the vegetation in these forests.

However, this ecosystem of hygrophilic and edaphic freshwater forests is of general structural complexity and extent. It was in a state of extinction due to "shifting cultivation, grazing, selective cutting of valuable or rare tree species, road and dam construction, and over-exploitation of non-timber forest products" to meet the basic needs of rural community. This misuse also resulted in degradation of the ecosystem of rare plants and animals. It reached a chronic stage when indigenous multilayered plant communities became extinct in several areas with resultant creation of open fields, shrubs or grass savanna of least value. Thus, degradation of the ecologically rich system necessitated intervention at the Government level through enabling legislation to stop further damage to the ecosystem. The government of the Republic of Benin enacted a new forest law (no. 93-009) in July 1993, under which the uniqueness of riparian forests as refuge ecosystem for plant and wildlife of many kinds, was duly recognized. The rules enacted clearly defined that "clearance of wood and shrubs is not allowed within  at both sides of any waterway (article 28). Moreover, in the management plans of most forest reserves in Benin, gallery forests are to be left uncut"... Rare species (e.g. mahogany family species of the Khaya genus; the Moraceae species, Milicia excelsa), "... outside the gallery forests will not be cut either." In spite of such legislation the enforcement is not effective; it is reported that uncontrolled and unplanned, mostly illegal, utilisation of forest resources continues, particularly in non-protected areas.

Fauna
The major faunal groups in Benin are mammals, birds and reptiles.

Mammals

Predators include: the lion (Panthera leo), the largest predator of Africa (found in both parks); the leopard (Panthera pardus) a secretive large African cat (found even outside the two parks); the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is in the national parks but is a rare sight; several (Felis silvestris), a smaller cat; the caracal (Caracal caracal), the African wild cat (Felis sylvestris); the African hunting dog (Lycaon pictus) said to be in W. Park (may be extinct); side-striped jackal (Canis adustus); the black-backed jackal (Canis mesomelas); the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) found in both parks.

Nocturnal predators include:
 African civet (civettictis civetta) – a bulky long haired animal
 small-spotted genet (Genetta genetta) and the large-spotted genet (Genetta tigrina) found in both parks
 spotted-necked otter (Lutra maculicollis)
 honey badger (Mellivora capensis)
 many mongoose species such as:
 marsh mongoose  (Atilax paludinosus)
 the Egyptian mongoose (Herpestes ichneumon)
 cusimanse (Crossarchus obscurus)
 the white-tailed mongoose (Ichneumia albicauda)
 slender or pygmy mongoose (Galerella sanguinea), solitary inhabitant of the savanna
 Gambian mongoose (mungos gambianus)

Mammals found here include: African bush elephant (loxodonta Africana) found widely in savannas, deserts, rainforest, and in the national parks; hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) found in rivers of both parks; the African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) an ox like animal in large herds in savannas and in smaller groups in parks; warthog (Phacochoerus africanus) in both parks; the aardvark (Orycteropus afer) insectivore found in savannas; pangolins; hedgehogs; porcupine species; rock hyrax (Procavia capensis); Cape ground squirrel (Xerus inauris).

The parks and other areas have a major population of antelope. Seventeen species are identified, out of which the endangered species are sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii), bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus) and korrigum (Damaliscus korrigum korrigum).

Other species of various status are:
 grey duiker (Sylvicapra grimmia)
 bushbuck
 Maxwell's duiker (Philantomba maxwellii)
 red-flanked duiker (Cephalophus rufilatus)
 black duiker (Cephalophus niger)
 yellow-backed duiker (Cephalophus silvicultor) (vulnerable)
 grey duiker (Sylvicapra grimmia)
 bohor reedbuck (Redunca redunca)
 waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus) found near water sources
 Buffon's kob (Kobus kob)
 roan antelope (Hippotragus equinus) found in both parks but more in Pendjari
 western hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus major) ungainly in appearance
 red-fronted gazelle (Eudorcas rufifrons)
 oribi (Ourebia ourebi), more abundant in Pendjari Park than in W National Park

Primates reported include olive baboon (Papio anubis) of large size with inverted "U" shaped tail; the green monkey (Cercopithecus sabaeus), the most common monkey species; the common patas monkey (Erythrocebus patas) with an orange tinged coat occur in northern Benin.

Reptiles
Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus), the largest living reptile, is seen in river banks and ponds in the two protected parks. There are also dwarf caimans, and chameleons in 100 colour variations.

Tortoises include leopard tortoise (Stigmochelys pardalis), several species of terrapin and turtles – out of eight species of marine turtles four are found in Benin coast, namely, the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), olive ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) and leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea). The indigenous hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) is the source of traditional tortoiseshell).

Lizards found are harmless and of two types, the water and savanna monitors – Varanus niloticus and Varanus exanthematicus – both are predatory species; house gecko (Hemidactylus mabouia), a translucent white lizard; agama species in large size of varied mixed colours and the skinks.

Birds

Birds are a special feature in all types of habitats ranging from rainforest to deserts in Benin, which have two main climatic zones, namely the thick tropical vegetation in the south and the dry savannas and light woodlands in the north. The birding sites for coastal waders are the coastal lagoons of Les Bouches du Roi and the backwaters of Ouidha beach. Water birds and forest birds are found in Lake Nokoué and Lake Ahémé. Feathered birds are found in granite rock hills near Dassa-Zoume. The national parks are full of savanna specific birds.

The weaver species reported are: Twelve species of weavers of family Ploceidae are found in Benin, out of the overall 111 of the genus Ploceus (true weavers) identified; they are larger than a sparrow, males are more colourful than female species.

Other reported species are:
 Holub's golden-weaver
 southern masked weaver (Ploceus velatus)
 Vieillot's black weaver (Ploceus nigerrimus)
 black-billed weaver (Ploceus melanogaster)
 grosbeak weaver (Amblyospiza albifrons)
 sparrow
 buffalo weavers
 dideric cuckoo (Chrysococcyx caprius)
 a handsome white-breasted cuckooshrike (Coracina pectoralis) which lays its eggs in weavers' nests.

More species of birds are:
 helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris), black-and-white-chicken-like cuckoo found in North Benin
 Abyssinian ground hornbill (Bucorvus abyssinicus), a large distinctive bird
 the marabou stork (Leptoptilos crumeniferus)
 the black crowned crane (Balearica pavonina), a tall grey-black bird
 the saddle-billed stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis), a large white bird with black wings.
Raptor species (mostly carion-eating birds) are found in both parks. A common sight is the African fish eagle (Haliaeetus vocifer), which is black and white.

Molluscs

Insects

Insect species found in Benin include the tsetse fly and many vectors of epidemic diseases.

Flora

Dense forests are not recorded in Benin. Along the coastal areas coconut, palmyra palms, oil palms are seen up to Abomey, where after vegetation is savanna merged with that of Guinea and Sudan. Other tree species noted are West African ebony, shea tree, Bombax costatum, called the kapok or  tree, and Khaya senegalensis, the Senegal mahogany.

The W National Park constitutes the southern limit of tiger bush plateau distribution. Riverine and gallery forests are noted on the banks of the Mekrou River (with seasonal flows), and other tributaries of the Niger River. The plains have an extensive coverage of grasses. In the savanna woodlands, grassland and stunted savanna woodlands, the plant species recorded are:
 Adansonia digitata, one of the baobabs
 Anogeissus leiocarpus
 Celtis spp., the 'hackberry'
 Clematis integrifolia
 Boscia senegalensis
 Balanites aegyptiaca
 Bombax costatum, the 'kapok' or
 Parkia biglobosa, the 'African locust tree'
 Bauhinia variegata, the 'camel's foot tree'
 Senna reticulata
 Tamarindus indica, the  tamarind
 Terminalia avicennioides
 Prosopis africana
 Piliostigma reticulatum
In the evergreen gallery forests, the 'sausage tree' or Kigelia africana and Afzelia africana (the 'lenke' or 'African mahogany') are found. Orchid species recorded are the Eulophia cucculata and Eulophia guineensis.

The Pendjari Park consists of: grasslands which have no trees or shrubs; shrub lands which are fully covered by grass; trees; wooded savanna formations with a herbaceous layer but with no undergrowth; forests along the river, thin forests with plenty of trees of size of ; and gallery forests which are dense with shrubs. The rocky cliffs of the Pendjari National Park are sparsely wooded. The Volta depression has savanna ecosystem with woodlands and rare species such as Burkea africana, Anogeissus leiocarpus, Pterocarpus erinaceus, Detarium microcarpum, Lannea acida, Sterculia setigera, Combretum ghasalense (syn. Combretum adenogonium) and Acacia spp. On the deep soils of some of the summits and the Atakora escarpment one finds a greater variety of plant species with Isoberlinia doka and Afzelia africana. The Pendjari River has an impressive gallery forest and river forest. The park includes both Guinea savanna woodland and Sudanian savanna, with areas of grassland dominated by Acacia sieberiana and Terminalia macroptera.

The most common species found in the riparian forests are: Pterocarpus santalinoides (Papilionaceae), Cola laurifolia (Sterculiaceae) and Syzygium guineense (Myrtaceae), out of which a few species are endemic and valuable.

Traditional medecine
Malaria, which is a virulent disease in Benin as in the rest of Africa, is treated by herbal medicines. The treatments practiced in southern Benin are based on plant species that are extracted and administered orally or through bathing. There are 85 plant species which are used to make 35 mixtures for treatment.

Botanical garden
The diversity of plants in Western Africa is preserved at the Papatia Botanical Garden in northern Benin. This garden, which is spread over 12 ha, is a species-rich savanna area where a hundred woody plants and several hundred herbaceous species have been maintained. A tree-nursery is part of this garden created to increase rare species.

Organizations
According to the Strategic Plan for the Conservation and Management of Protected Areas approved in 1994, organization such as the National Centre for Wildlife Management (or in  – CENAGREF) was created in 1996 for the sole purpose of the conservation and management of national parks including the buffer zones and the transition areas. The Direction of Pendjari National Park set up in 1996 and the Direction of W National Park set up in 1999 are administrative organizations under the CENAGREF that are responsible for the management of the parks. The Association of Civil Communities in the Protected Areas of the W National Park and the Séri Zone (Association des Communes Riveraines aux Aires Protégées du Parc W et de la Zone de Séri – ACRAP/WS) and Village Associations for the Management of Wildlife Reserves (or Associations Villageoise de Gestion des Reserves de Faune -AVIGREF) were also set up with the responsibility community training and promoting multi-level communication between farmers and other stakeholders and capacity building and the development of effective governance following decentralized resource management. IUCN has associated with these organizations to address all aspects of management of the natural resources of the W National Park.

Notes

References

External links

Biota of Benin
Benin

Wildlife of Benin


Product management is the business process of planning, developing, launching, and managing a product or service. It includes the entire lifecycle of a product, from ideation to development to go to market. Product managers are responsible for ensuring that a product meets the needs of its target market and contributes to the business strategy, while managing a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle. Software product management adapts the fundamentals of product management for digital products.

History

The concept of product management originates from a 1931 memo by Procter & Gamble President Neil H. McElroy. McElroy, requesting additional employees focused on brand management, needed "Brand Men" who would take on the role of managing products, packaging, positioning, distribution, and sales performance.

The memo defined a brand man's work as:

 Study carefully the shipments of his brands by units.
 Where brand development is heavy ... examine carefully the combination of effort that seems to be clicking, and try to apply this same treatment to other territories.
 Where brand development is light:
 Study the advertising and promotion history of the brand.
 After uncovering our weaknesses, develop a plan that can be applied to this local sore spot.
 Outline this plan in detail for the division manager.
 Prepare sales helps and all other necessary material for carrying out the plan.
 Keep whatever records are necessary and make whatever field studies are necessary to determine whether the plan has produced the expected results.
 Take full responsibility ... for the general printed word plans for his brands.
 Take full responsibility for all other advertising expenditures.
 Experiment with and recommend wrapper revisions.
 Sees district manager a number of times a year to discuss with him any possible faults in our promotion plans for that territory.

In modern terms, McElroy defined the role as: analyze product distribution, optimize working distribution strategies, diagnose and solve distribution issues, optimize product positioning and product marketing, and collaborate with regional distribution managers.

Role of product managers

Product managers are responsible for managing a company's product line on a day-to-day basis. As a result, product managers are critical in both driving a company's growth, margins, and revenue. They are responsible for the business case, conceptualizing, planning, product development, product marketing, and delivering products to their target market. Depending on the company size, industry, and history, product management has a variety of functions and roles. Frequently there is an income statement (or profit and loss) responsibility as a key metric for evaluating product manager performance.

Tasks
Product managers analyze information including customer research, competitive intelligence, industry analysis, trends, economic signals, and competitive activity, as well as documenting requirements, setting product strategy, and creating the roadmap. Product managers align across departments within their company including product design and development, marketing, sales, customer support, and legal.

See also

References

External links

Brand management

Product management


In Chinese philosophy, earth or soil (), is the changing point of the matter. Earth is the third element in the Wu Xing cycle.

Earth is a balance of both yin and yang, the feminine and masculine together. Its motion is centralising, and its energy is stabilizing and conserving. It is associated with the colour yellow/ ochre and the planet Saturn, and it lies at the centre of the compass in the Chinese cosmos. It is associated with late summer and the turn of each of the four seasons, its climate is dampness. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, earth governs the Yin, Zang organ the Spleen, and the Yang, Fu organ Stomach, mouth and muscles. Its Primal Spirit is the Yi, and is represented by the Yellow Dragon. Color Yellow, Golden (Sun)

Attributes

The Wu Xing Earth is associated with the qualities of patience, thoughtfulness, practicality, hard work, and stability. The earth element is also nurturing and seeks to draw all things together with itself, in order to bring harmony, rootedness and stability. Other attributes of the earth element include ambition, stubbornness, responsibility present planning and fidelity . Its Yin or negative emotion  is worry or pensiveness   and its Yang positive emotion is happiness. The soul associated with Earth is the Yi (意).

Astrology

Earth plays an important role in Chinese astrology. In Chinese astrology earth is included in the 10 Heavenly Stems (the five elements in their yin and yang forms), which combine with the 12 Earthly Branches (or Chinese signs of the zodiac), to form the 60 year cycle. Yang earth years end in 8 (e.g. 1998), while Yin earth years end in 9 (e.g. 1999). Earth is the central balance of the elements and therefore lends qualities to all 12 animals as well.

The element earth is associated with the planet Saturn on account of its yellow color. However, some Western astrologers have suggested that the Western associations of Saturn give it greater affinity with the rigid, controlling Chinese element of Metal; while the Chinese conception of earth as a centering, harmonizing element has more in common with the Western notion of the planet Venus.

As I Ching and Feng Shui described, Earth is the center to which all movements tend to go to even if temporarily, that is to say, it can polarize with any of the other movements-elements: Fire, Water, Wood and Metal. These four types of Earth are Earth-of-water (Wet/Cold Earth), Earth-of-Fire (Arid/Hot Earth), Earth-of-Metal (Dry/Hard Earth) and Earth-of-Wood (Loose-Fertile/Warm Earth).

Yellow, orange, beige and brown colors represent Earth.

Earth governs Ox, Dragon, Goat, and Dog.

Cycle of Wu Xing

In the controlling cycle, earth controls water by damming or absorbing it; wood can overcome it by breaking it up (by the roots).

In the 'insulting' cycle, earth overcomes wood by stagnating its growth or covering it up.

In the constructive cycle, earth is produced by fire's ashes, and then solidifies its minerals to produce metal.

In the consuming cycle, metal makes earth poor by sucking all its minerals, and dries its humidity.

References

it:Terra (elemento)#Tradizione cinese

Earth (wuxing)


An electron and a electron hole that are attracted to each other by the Coulomb force can form a bound state called an exciton. It is an electrically neutral quasiparticle that exists mainly in condensed matter, including insulators, semiconductors, some metals, but also in certain atoms, molecules and liquids. The exciton is regarded as an elementary excitation that can transport energy without transporting net electric charge.

An exciton can form when an electron from the valence band of a crystal is promoted in energy to the conduction band e.g., when a material absorbs a photon. Promoting the electron to the conduction band leaves a positively charged hole in the valence band. Here 'hole' represents the unoccupied quantum mechanical electron state with a positive charge, an analogue in crystal of a positron. Because of the attractive coulomb force between the electron and the hole, a bound state is formed, akin to that of the electron and proton in a hydrogen atom or the electron and positron in positronium. Excitons are composite bosons since they are formed from two fermions which are electron and hole.

The concept of excitons was first proposed by Yakov Frenkel in 1931, when he described the excitation of an atomic lattice considering what is now called the tight-binding description of the band structure. In his model the electron and the hole bound by the coulomb interaction are located either on the same or on the nearest neighbouring sites of the lattice, but the exciton as a composite quasi-particle is able to travel through the lattice without any net transfer of charge, which lead to many propositions for optoelectronic devices.

Excitons are often treated in the two limiting cases:

(i) The small radius excitons, or Frankel excitons, where the electron-hole relative distance is restricted to one or only a few nearest neighbour unit cells. Frenkel excitons typically occur in insulators and organic semiconductors with relatively narrow allowed energy bands and accordingly, rather heavy Effective mass.

(ii) the large radius excitons are called Wannier-Mott excitons, for which the relative motion of electron and hole in the crystal covers many unit cells. Wannier-Mott excitons are considered as hydrogen-like quasiparticles. The wavefunction of the bound state then is said to be hydrogenic, resulting in a series of energy states in analogy to a hydrogen atom. Compared to a hydrogen atom, the exciton binding energy in a crystal is much smaller and the exciton's size (radius) is much larger. This is mainly because of two effects: (a) Coulomb forces are screened in a crystal, which is expressed as a relative permittivity  εr  significantly larger than 1 and (b) the Effective mass of the electron and hole in a crystal are typically smaller compared to that of free electrons. Wannier-Mott excitons with binding energies ranging from a few to hundreds of meV, depending on the crystal, occur in many semiconductors including Cu2 O, GaAs, other III-V and II-VI semiconductors, transition metal dichalcogenides such as MoS2.
Excitons give rise to spectrally narrow lines in optical absorption, reflection, transmission and luminescence spectra with the energies below the free-particle band gap of an insulator or a semiconductor. Exciton binding energy and radius can be extracted from optical absorption measurements in applied magnetic fields.

The exciton as a quasiparticle is characterized by the momentum (or wavevector K) describing free propagation of the electron-hole pair as a composite particle in the crystalline lattice in agreement with the Bloch theorem. The exciton energy depends on K and is typically parabolic for the wavevectors much smaller than the reciprocal lattice vector of the host lattice. The exciton energy also depends on the respective orientation of the electron and hole spins, whether they are parallel or anti-parallel. The spins are coupled by the exchange interaction, giving rise to exciton energy fine structure.

In metals and highly doped semiconductors a concept of the Gerald Mahan exciton is invoked where the hole in a valence band is correlated with the Fermi sea of conduction electrons. In that case no bound state in a strict sense is formed, but the Coulomb interaction leads to a significant enhancement of absorption in the vicinity of the fundamental absorption edge also known as the Mahan or Fermi-edge singularity.

Frenkel exciton
In materials with a relatively small dielectric constant, the Coulomb interaction between an electron and a hole may be strong and the excitons thus tend to be small, of the same order as the size of the unit cell. Molecular excitons may even be entirely located on the same molecule, as in fullerenes.  This Frenkel exciton, named after Yakov Frenkel, has a typical binding energy on the order of 0.1 to 1 eV. Frenkel excitons are typically found in alkali halide crystals and in organic molecular crystals composed of aromatic molecules, such as anthracene and tetracene. Another example of Frenkel exciton includes on-site d-d excitations in transition metal compounds with partially filled d-shells. While d-d transitions are in principle forbidden by symmetry, they become weakly-allowed in a crystal when the symmetry is broken by structural relaxations or other effects. Absorption of a photon resonant with a d-d transition leads to the creation of an electron-hole pair on a single atomic site, which can be treated as a Frenkel exciton.

Wannier–Mott exciton
In semiconductors, the dielectric constant is generally large.  Consequently, electric field screening tends to reduce the Coulomb interaction between electrons and holes. The result is a Wannier–Mott exciton, which has a radius larger than the lattice spacing. Small effective mass of electrons that is typical of semiconductors also favors large exciton radii. As a result, the effect of the lattice potential can be incorporated into the effective masses of the electron and hole.  Likewise, because of the lower masses and the screened Coulomb interaction, the binding energy is usually much less than that of a hydrogen atom, typically on the order of . This type of exciton was named for Gregory Wannier and Nevill Francis Mott. Wannier–Mott excitons are typically found in semiconductor crystals with small energy gaps and high dielectric constants, but have also been identified in liquids, such as liquid xenon. They are also known as large excitons.

In single-wall carbon nanotubes, excitons have both Wannier–Mott and Frenkel character. This is due to the nature of the Coulomb interaction between electrons and holes in one-dimension. The dielectric function of the nanotube itself is large enough to allow for the spatial extent of the wave function to extend over a few to several nanometers along the tube axis, while poor screening in the vacuum or dielectric environment outside of the nanotube allows for large (0.4 to ) binding energies.

Often more than one band can be chosen as source for the electron and the hole, leading to different types of excitons in the same material. Even high-lying bands can be effective as femtosecond two-photon experiments have shown. At cryogenic temperatures, many higher excitonic levels can be observed approaching the edge of the band, forming a series of spectral absorption lines that are in principle similar to hydrogen spectral series.

3D semiconductors
In a bulk semiconductor, a Wannier exciton has an energy and radius associated with it, called exciton Rydberg energy and exciton Bohr radius respectively. For the energy, we have

where  is the Rydberg unit of energy (cf. Rydberg constant),  is the (static) relative permittivity,  is the reduced mass of the electron and hole, and  is the electron mass. Concerning the radius, we have

where  is the Bohr radius.

For example, in GaAs, we have relative permittivity of 12.8 and effective electron and hole masses as 0.067m0 and 0.2m0 respectively; and that gives us  meV and  nm.

2D semiconductors
In two-dimensional (2D) materials, the system is quantum confined in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the material. The reduced dimensionality of the system has an effect on the binding energies and radii of Wannier excitons. In fact, excitonic effects are enhanced in such systems.

For a simple screened Coulomb potential, the binding energies take the form of the 2D hydrogen atom

.

In most 2D semiconductors, the Rytova–Keldysh form is a more accurate approximation to the exciton interaction

where  is the so-called screening length,  the average dielectric constant of the surrounding media, and  the exciton radius. For this potential, no general expression for the exciton energies may be found. One must instead turn to numerical procedures, and it is precisely this potential that gives rise to the nonhydrogenic Rydberg series of the energies in 2D semiconductors.

Example: excitons in transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs)
Monolayers of a transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) are a good and cutting-edge example where excitons play a major role. In particular, in these systems, they exhibit a bounding energy of the order of 0.5 eV with a Coulomb attraction between the hole and the electrons stronger than in other traditional quantum wells. As a result, optical excitonic peaks are present in these materials even at room temperatures.

0D semiconductors

In nanoparticles which exhibit quantum confinement effects and hence behave as quantum dots (also called 0-dimensional semiconductors), excitonic radii are given by

where  is the relative permittivity,  is the reduced mass of the electron-hole system,  is the electron mass, and  is the Bohr radius.

Hubbard exciton

Hubbard excitons are linked to electrons not by a Coulomb's interaction, but by a magnetic force. Their name derives by the English physicist John Hubbard.

Hubbard excitons were observed for the first time in 2023 through the Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. Those particles have been obtained by applying a light to a Mott antiferromagnetic insulator.

Charge-transfer exciton
An intermediate case between Frenkel and Wannier excitons is the charge-transfer (CT) exciton. In molecular physics, CT excitons form when the electron and the hole occupy adjacent molecules. They occur primarily in organic and molecular crystals; in this case, unlike Frenkel and Wannier excitons, CT excitons display a static electric dipole moment. CT excitons can also occur in transition metal oxides, where they involve an electron in the transition metal 3d orbitals and a hole in the oxygen 2p orbitals. Notable examples include the lowest-energy excitons in correlated cuprates or the two-dimensional exciton of TiO2. Irrespective of the origin, the concept of CT exciton is always related to a transfer of charge from one atomic site to another, thus spreading the wave-function over a few lattice sites.

Surface exciton
At surfaces it is possible for so called image states to occur, where the hole is inside the solid and the electron is in the vacuum. These electron-hole pairs can only move along the surface.

Atomic and molecular excitons
Alternatively, an exciton may be described as an excited state of an atom, ion, or molecule, if the excitation is wandering from one cell of the lattice to another.

When a molecule absorbs a quantum of energy that corresponds to a transition from one molecular orbital to another molecular orbital, the resulting electronic excited state is also properly described as an exciton. An electron is said to be found in the lowest unoccupied orbital and an electron hole in the highest occupied molecular orbital, and since they are found within the same molecular orbital manifold, the electron-hole state is said to be bound. Molecular excitons typically have characteristic lifetimes on the order of nanoseconds, after which the ground electronic state is restored and the molecule undergoes photon or phonon emission. Molecular excitons have several interesting properties, one of which is energy transfer (see Förster resonance energy transfer) whereby if a molecular exciton has proper energetic matching to a second molecule's spectral absorbance, then an exciton may transfer (hop) from one molecule to another. The process is strongly dependent on intermolecular distance between the species in solution, and so the process has found application in sensing and molecular rulers.

The hallmark of molecular excitons in organic molecular crystals are doublets and/or triplets of exciton absorption bands strongly polarized along crystallographic axes. In these crystals an elementary cell includes several molecules sitting in symmetrically identical positions, which results in the level degeneracy that is lifted by intermolecular interaction. As a result, absorption bands are polarized along the symmetry axes of the crystal. Such multiplets were discovered by Antonina Prikhot'ko and their genesis was proposed by Alexander Davydov. It is known as 'Davydov splitting'.

Giant oscillator strength of bound excitons
Excitons are lowest excited states of the electronic subsystem of pure crystals. Impurities can bind excitons, and when the bound state is shallow, the oscillator strength for producing bound excitons is so high that impurity absorption can compete with intrinsic exciton absorption even at rather low impurity concentrations. This phenomenon is generic and applicable both to the large radius (Wannier–Mott) excitons and molecular (Frenkel) excitons. Hence, excitons bound to impurities and defects possess giant oscillator strength.

Self-trapping of excitons
In crystals, excitons interact with phonons, the lattice vibrations. If this coupling is weak as in typical semiconductors such as GaAs or Si, excitons are scattered by phonons. However, when the coupling is strong, excitons can be self-trapped. Self-trapping results in dressing excitons with a dense cloud of virtual phonons which strongly suppresses the ability of excitons to move across the crystal. In simpler terms, this means a local deformation of the crystal lattice around the exciton. Self-trapping can be achieved only if the energy of this deformation can compete with the width of the exciton band. Hence, it should be of atomic scale, of about an electron volt.

Self-trapping of excitons is similar to forming strong-coupling polarons but with three essential differences. First, self-trapped exciton states are always of a small radius, of the order of lattice constant, due to their electric neutrality. Second, there exists a self-trapping barrier separating free and self-trapped states, hence, free excitons are metastable. Third, this barrier enables coexistence of free and self-trapped states of excitons. This means that spectral lines of free excitons and wide bands of self-trapped excitons can be seen simultaneously in absorption and luminescence spectra. While the self-trapped states are of lattice-spacing scale, the barrier has typically much larger scale. Indeed, its spatial scale is about  where  is effective mass of the exciton,  is the exciton-phonon coupling constant, and  is the characteristic frequency of optical phonons. Excitons are self-trapped when  and  are large, and then the spatial size of the barrier is large compared with the lattice spacing. Transforming a free exciton state into a self-trapped one proceeds as a collective tunneling of coupled exciton-lattice system (an instanton). Because  is large, tunneling can be described by a continuum theory. The height of the barrier . Because both  and  appear in the denominator of , the barriers are basically low. Therefore, free excitons can be seen in crystals with strong exciton-phonon coupling only in pure samples and at low temperatures. Coexistence of free and self-trapped excitons was observed in rare-gas solids, alkali-halides, and in molecular crystal of pyrene.

Interaction
Excitons are the main mechanism for light emission in semiconductors at low temperature (when the characteristic thermal energy kT is less than the exciton binding energy), replacing the free electron-hole recombination at higher temperatures.

The existence of exciton states may be inferred from the absorption of light associated with their excitation. Typically, excitons are observed just below the band gap.

When excitons interact with photons a so-called polariton (or more specifically exciton-polariton) is formed. These excitons are sometimes referred to as dressed excitons.

Provided the interaction is attractive, an exciton can bind with other excitons to form a biexciton, analogous to a dihydrogen molecule. If a large density of excitons is created in a material, they can interact with one another to form an electron-hole liquid, a state observed in k-space indirect semiconductors.

Additionally, excitons are integer-spin particles obeying Bose statistics in the low-density limit.  In some systems, where the interactions are repulsive, a Bose–Einstein condensed state, called excitonium, is predicted to be the ground state. Some evidence of excitonium has existed since the 1970s but has often been difficult to discern from a Peierls phase. Exciton condensates have allegedly been seen in a double quantum well systems. In 2017 Kogar et al. found "compelling evidence" for observed excitons condensing in the three-dimensional semimetal 1T-TiSe2

Spatially direct and indirect excitons
Normally, excitons in a semiconductor have a very short lifetime due to the close proximity of the electron and hole. However, by placing the electron and hole in spatially separated quantum wells with an insulating barrier layer in between so called 'spatially indirect' excitons can be created. In contrast to ordinary (spatially direct), these spatially indirect excitons can have large spatial separation between the electron and hole, and thus possess a much longer lifetime. This is often used to cool excitons to very low temperatures in order to study Bose–Einstein condensation (or rather its two-dimensional analog).

See also
 Orbiton
 Oscillator strength
 Plasmon
 Polariton superfluid
 Trion

References

Quasiparticles
Bosons

Exciton


The Laxgibuu or Laxgyibuu (variously spelled) is the name for the Wolf "clan" (phratry) in the language of the Tsimshian nation of British Columbia, Canada, and southeast Alaska.  It is considered analogous or identical to identically named clans among the neighboring Gitksan and Nisga'a nations.

The name Laxgibuu derives from gibuu, which means wolf in the Gitxsan and Nisga'a languages.  In Tsimshian the word is gibaaw (gyibaaw or gyibaw), but Tsimshians still use the word Laxgibuu for Wolf clan.

The chief crest of the Laxgibuu is the Wolf.  Other crests used by some matrilineal house-groups of the Laxgibuu include black bear.

Some Laxgibuu house-groups are related to Wolf clan groups among the Tahltan and Tlingit First Nations to the north.  In the case of the Tlingit, the connection is through Tlingit Wolves who migrated south from what is now Alaska to escape inter-clan warfare and settled among the Tsimshian, Gitxsan, and Nisga'a.  Descendants of some of these migrants share with their distant Tlingit relatives variants on the "Bear Mother" story which has been well recorded by anthropologists and folklorists.  The Kitsumkalum Laxgibuu are one example of a Tsimshian Wolf group who own the right to tell this story.

Nisga'a - Laxgibuu
Some Nisga'a Laxgibuu Wilp (House groups) include:

Gitwilnaak'il Clan:
House of Duuḵ - William Moore
House of K'eex̱kw - Herbert Morven
House of Gwingyoo - Ben Gonu Sr. & Reginald Percival (prev. Leonard Robinson)
Gisḵ'ansnaat Clan:
House of Sg̱at'iin - Isaac Guno
House of Ni'isyoḵ - Martin Adams
House of Gwisḵ'aayn - Gerald Robinson
Gitlax̱t'iyooḵ Clan:
House of Bax̱k'ap - Jacob Nyce
House of Ax̱dii M̓in'aajax̱ - Gary Alexcee
House of W̓ii Gadim X̱sgaak - Clyde Azak
Gitgigeenix Clan:
House of N̓agwa'un - (previously Rod Maxwell)
House of Ni'islisy̓aan - Edward Moore
House of Kw'ax̱suu - Floyde Stevens
House of Gints'aadax̱ - Henry Stephens
Gitwilluuyaxw Clan:
House of Ksdiyaawaḵ - George Williams Sr.

House of Wii N̓aa Buxw - successor apparent: Calvin Morven (previously Terry Morven)
House of Ax̱gwindaskw - Clifford Azak Sr.
House of Aama Gat - (previously Gary Stevens)
House of W̓ii Gwisyaxw - Arnie Stewart, Sr.
House of X̱sduutgum Lax̱ha - Joe Calder

Bibliography

Barbeau, Marius (1929) Totem Poles of the Gitksan, Upper Skeena River, British Columbia.  (Anthropological Series 12, National Museum of Canada Bulletin 61.)  Ottawa: Canada, Department of Mines.
Barbeau, Marius (1950) Totem Poles.  (2 vols.)  (Anthropology Series 30, National Museum of Canada Bulletin 119.)  Ottawa: National Museum of Canada.  Reprinted, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec, 1990.
Marsden, Susan (2001) "Defending the Mouth of the Skeena: Perspectives on Tsimshian Tlingit Relations."  In: Perspectives in Northern Northwest Coast Prehistory, ed. by Jerome S. Cybulski, pp. 61–106.  (Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada, Paper 160.)  Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization
McDonald, James A. (2003) People of the Robin: The Tsimshian of Kitsumkalum. CCI Press
Council of Elders, Ayuuḵhl Nisg̱a'a Department & Nisg̱a'a Lisims Government (2008) Anhluut'ukwsim Saẁinskhl Nisg̱a'a: Nisg̱a'a Feast Procedures & Protocols Gitlax̱t'aamiks, British Columbia

Tsimshian
Gitxsan
Nisga'a
Clans and Houses of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast

Laxgibuu


The Governor William King House, also known locally as the Stone House, is a historic house on Whiskeag Road in Bath, Maine.  Built in 1812, this stone house's lancet-arch windows are one of the first examples of Gothic Revival architecture in New England.  The house was built as a summer retreat for William King, who led the drive for Maine statehood, and served as the state's first governor.  The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Description and history
The King House is located in a rural area of northern Bath, on the south side of Whiskeag Road.  It is a -story stone structure, built out of dressed granite blocks and covered by a gabled roof.  The main facade faces to the east, and is three bays wide, with a central entrance flanked by tall sash windows with multipane lancet-arch sections rising to the eaves.  The roof is topped by a square cupola.  The interior of the building retains well-preserved but restrained Federal period woodwork.

William King (1768-1852) was one of Bath's leading businessmen and merchants of the early 19th century.  He was a leader of the Massachusetts militia (Maine then being a part of that state) during the War of 1812.  He was an instrumental figure in promoting Maine's statehood, and in the drafting of its constitution, and was elected its first governor in 1820.  He acquired a large tract of land in this area in 1809–13, on which he planted an orchard.  He had this house built about 1812 as a summer retreat; his principal residence was more centrally located in Bath.

See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Sagadahoc County, Maine

References

Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine
Gothic Revival architecture in Maine
Houses completed in 1812
Houses in Bath, Maine
National Register of Historic Places in Sagadahoc County, Maine
Governor of Maine

Gov. William King House


The Morelia International Film Festival (Spanish: Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia; FICM) was founded in 2003 in the city of Morelia, Michoacán, México. It is an annual event that takes place during the second week of October.

FICM emerged as a need to create a unique meeting point in México for the cinematographic community, the people of Michoacán, and international filmmakers. The festival's goal is to establish a forum to promote up-and-coming Mexican cinema talents, to create incentives and cultural opportunities for the Mexican and international public, and to display the cultural richness of the state of Michoacán.

The festival has achieved notable prestige and prominence in Mexico as a result of its outreach and growth. It is rapidly becoming known in other parts of the world for its uniqueness and quality.

Award winners (Best Mexican Film)

Special Guests
Throughout its history, FICM has been privileged to host distinguished guests such as Olivier Assayas, Javier Bardem, Demián Bichir, Alfonso Cuarón, Geraldine Chaplin, Amat Escalante, Stephen Frears, Gael García Bernal, Terry Gilliam, Michel Gondry, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Salma Hayek, Todd Haynes, Werner Herzog, James Ivory, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Abbas Kiarostami, Pablo Larraín, Jennifer Lawrence, Tommy Lee Jones, Diego Luna, Julia Ormond, Marisa Paredes, Sally Potter, Edgar Ramírez, Carlos Reygadas, Robert Rodriguez, Volker Schlöndorff, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Béla Tarr, Guillermo del Toro, Danny Trejo and Gus Van Sant among others.

Artistic Excellence Award
In 2018, the festival presented the inaugural lifetime achievement award to director  Alfonso Cuarón prior to a screening of his landmark film Roma. In 2019, the award will be presented to Robert Redford.

Michoacán Tribute
Every year, FICM honors an important figure of Mexican cinema from the state of Michoacán. In previous years, the festival has paid tribute to the filmmakers Miguel Contreras, Fernando Méndeza and the Alva brothers; the cinematographers Ezequiel Carrasco and José Ortiz Ramos; the actors Julio Alemán and Damián Alcázar; and the actresses Stella Inda and Lilia Prado.

Critics' Week
Since its beginning in 2003, FICM established a solid partnership with the Critics' Week of the Cannes Film Festival, which has promoted Mexican filmmakers such as Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro and Fernando Eimbcke. A selection of films from the Critics' Week is presented each year at FICM with the presence of some of their participants. Likewise, the Critics' Week shows some of winning films from FICM.

Academy Awards
Since 2008, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) of the United States officially recognized FICM by offering the winning fiction, documentary and animation short films at Morelia the opportunity to be considered for an Oscar® nomination.

Parallel Activities
Once the activities in Morelia have ended, the festival presents the winning short films, documentaries and feature films, as well as a careful selection of films shown outside of competition, at different Mexico City venues. Film series, outdoor screenings, conferences, round tables and exhibitions in Morelia, Pátzcuaro and Mexico City complete FICM's year-round activities.

See also

 Film festivals in North and Central America
 Premio Cuervo Tradicional

References

External links

 Morelia International Film Festival official website

Film festivals in Mexico
Autumn events in Mexico

Morelia International Film Festival


The Village is a social service agency providing community services and resources for at-risk families and children in Hartford, Connecticut.  With an organizational history dating to the early 19th century, it is one of the oldest such institutions in the state.  Its architecturally distinguished campus, located 1680 Albany Avenue, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Services
The Village provides a broad array of services intended to support the needs of children and families.  Services offered include financial and social services for at-risk families, more intensive services including outpatient and inpatient residential treatments for children with emotional and mental health issues, and adoption placement services.

Campus
The Village's primary facilities are located in northwestern Hartford, at the junction of Albany Avenue (United States Route 44) and Bloomfield Avenue (Connecticut Route 189).  Resembling an English country village, it was designed by New York architect Grosvenor Atterbury and built in the 1920s.  The "cottage plan" of its layout, with multiple smaller buildings, was then a popular form for the institutional treatment of needy individuals.  Although there is a similarity of design to the buildings in the complex, each one has unique and distinguishing characteristics, in a bid to give each one a more homelike feeling for its residents.

History
The Village's origins are in a number of early social services organizations whose foundings were in the early 19th century.  The Female Beneficent Society was founded in 1809 for the benefit of indigent girls, and the Hartford Orphan Asylum was established in 1833.  These organizations merged in 1865, retaining the name "Hartford Orphan Asylum".  It built a dormitory-style facility on Putnam Avenue in 1879.  With the rise in popularity of the "cottage plan" for institutional housing, the organization had its current campus built in the 1920s on land donated by Reverend Francis Goodwin.  Through the 20th century, the organization's mission broadened beyond the care of orphaned children to include family services, seeking to address issues caused by poverty and family breakdown.

See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Hartford, Connecticut

References

External links
The Village web site

National Register of Historic Places in Hartford, Connecticut
Buildings and structures completed in 1923
Buildings and structures in Hartford, Connecticut

The Village (Hartford, Connecticut)


Yvonne Harrison Castro (born December 2, 1975 in New York City) is a Puerto Rican track and field runner. She has participated at many international events. She is currently an assistant sprint coach at Saint Joseph's University alongside Michael Glavin.

Biography
Harrison's name became a household name in Puerto Rico in part because of the coverage given to her career by local newspapers such as El Vocero and El Nuevo Dia, which follow her accomplishments and doings almost on a daily basis.

She finished in seventh place at the Rio de Janeiro Grand Prix of Athleticism. After a competition in Osaka, Japan, she sustained an injury that required her to take a rest from competition for a while.

Harrison went to Texas to train for the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece. According to her trainer, Victor Lopez, she was making an excellent running time during the training in Texas.

About two weeks before the Olympics, she travelled to Seville, Spain, where she finished her Olympic training.

Harrison's participation at the 2004 Olympic Games was her first participation in such an event.
...

Achievements

See also
List of Puerto Ricans

References

External links

1975 births
Living people
Track and field athletes from New York City
American female hurdlers
Olympic track and field athletes for Puerto Rico
Puerto Rican female hurdlers
Athletes (track and field) at the 2004 Summer Olympics
Central American and Caribbean Games gold medalists for Puerto Rico
Competitors at the 2002 Central American and Caribbean Games
Central American and Caribbean Games medalists in athletics

Yvonne Harrison


The Cigarette Smoking Man (abbreviated CSM or C-Man) is a fictional character, and one of the main players, in the American science fiction drama television series The X-Files.

He serves as the nemesis of FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder. In the show's sixth season, his name is said to be C.G.B. Spender, but Dana Scully suggests this is one of "hundreds of aliases". He is almost always seen chain-smoking Morley cigarettes. In the eleventh season, he reveals his full name is Carl Gerhard Busch.

Although he utters only four audible words in the entire first season of the show, the Smoking Man eventually develops into the series' primary antagonist. In his early appearances he is seen in the offices of Section Chief Scott Blevins and Assistant Director Walter Skinner. They are Mulder and his partner Dana Scully's supervisors.

An influential man working for the powers that be, Smoking Man is a key member in a government conspiracy unit known only as the Syndicate. They are hiding the truth of alien existence and their plan to colonize Earth. Smoking Man's power and influence remains strong, after most of the Syndicate is destroyed.

The Smoking Man is portrayed by Canadian actor William B. Davis. When Davis first took the role, the character was written as an extra for the pilot episode. He returned for small cameo appearances during the first season, making increasingly more appearances in the seasons that followed. Davis never received an award for his portrayal alone, but he was nominated for ensemble awards.

TV Guide included him in their 2013 list of The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time.

References

Television characters

Cigarette Smoking Man


Florida Bay is the large shallow lagoon between the southern end of the Florida mainland (the Florida Everglades) and the Florida Keys, a long series of small islands. The Bay is significant for its ecology of sea grass and the organisms that live there.

Nearly all of Florida Bay is included in Everglades National Park. The southern edge, along the Florida Keys is in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Outside the Bay is the northern part of the Keys, and outside them is the Florida Reef, the only barrier coral reef in North America.

Ecology

Flora and fauna
The Bay has the largest known seagrass bed in the world. Sea grass beds contain many species from various phyla. Seagrass herbivory is important in the food chain, and eaten by a number of animals, some of them rare. Species that feed on sea grass include green turtles, dugongs, manatees, fish, geese, sea urchins and crabs. The mangrove swamps in the shallow areas are also quite extensive.

Carbonate production
Florida Bay is a model for the conditions which produced limestones on many of the continental shelves of the world. It is a kind of carbonate 'factory'.p144

In the Florida Bay a type of flowering plant called sea grass is in abundance. Also in abundance is white, milky water full of calcium carbonate. This is mainly formed by Melobesia, a small red alga which lives on the sea grass.p151 Also, the organisms produce huge amounts of slime, which is a polysaccharide. There is good reason to think the slime is produced by the algae to control the way their carbonate skeletons are formed.p139 As a side-effect the slime limits the amount of carbonate which goes into solution in the water, so most of it gets deposited on the bottom.p155

Florida Bay is a flat platform which has laid down a huge amount of carbonate rock.
"You have to drill for more than 3000 feet before you reach a different rock type, and that is of Cretaceous age—some 70 million years ago".p158

Waterspouts
Waterspouts are a feature of the area. There are as many as 500 waterspouts per year. They are common from June to October, but can occur at other times.

References

Other websites

Geography of Florida
Ecosystems
Bodies of water of the United States

Florida Bay


Morpholine is an organic chemical compound having the chemical formula O(CH2CH2)2NH. This heterocycle features both amine and ether functional groups. Because of the amine, morpholine is a base; its conjugate acid is called morpholinium. For example, treating morpholine with hydrochloric acid makes the salt morpholinium chloride. It is a colorless liquid with a weak, ammonia- or fish-like odor. The naming of morpholine is attributed to Ludwig Knorr, who incorrectly believed it to be part of the structure of morphine.

Production
Morpholine is often produced industrially by the dehydration of diethanolamine with sulfuric acid:

Uses

Industrial applications
Morpholine is a common additive, in parts per million concentrations, for pH adjustment in both fossil fuel and nuclear power plant steam systems. Morpholine is used because its volatility is about the same as water, so once it is added to the water, its concentration becomes distributed rather evenly in both the water and steam phases. Its pH-adjusting qualities then become distributed throughout the steam plant to provide corrosion protection. Morpholine is often used in conjunction with low concentrations of hydrazine or ammonia to provide a comprehensive all-volatile treatment chemistry for corrosion protection for the steam systems of such plants. Morpholine decomposes reasonably slowly in the absence of oxygen at the high temperatures and pressures in these steam systems.

Organic synthesis
Morpholine undergoes most chemical reactions typical for other secondary amines, though the presence of the ether oxygen withdraws electron density from the nitrogen, rendering it less nucleophilic (and less basic) than structurally similar secondary amines such as piperidine. For this reason, it forms a stable chloramine.

It is commonly used to generate enamines.

Morpholine is widely used in organic synthesis. For example, it is a building block in the preparation of the antibiotic linezolid, the anticancer agent gefitinib (Iressa) and the analgesic dextromoramide.

In research and in industry, the low cost and polarity of morpholine lead to its common use as a solvent for chemical reactions.

Agriculture

As a fruit coating
Morpholine is used as a chemical emulsifier in the process of waxing fruit. Naturally, fruits make waxes to protect against insects and fungal contamination, but this can be lost as the fruit is cleaned. A small amount of new wax is applied to replace it. Morpholine is used as an emulsifier and solubility aid for shellac, which is used as a wax for fruit coating. The European Union has forbidden the use of morpholine in fruit coating.

As a component in fungicides
Morpholine derivatives used as agricultural fungicides in cereals are known as ergosterol biosynthesis inhibitors.

Amorolfine
Fenpropimorph
Tridemorph

See also
 Morpholino

References

External links

Ether solvents
Amine solvents
Foul-smelling chemicals
Nitrogen heterocycles
Oxygen heterocycles
Six-membered rings

Morpholine


This article is about the kitchen appliance. For the 3D computer graphics program, see Blender (program)

A blender is an electric kitchen appliance used for making drinks, mixing liquids, and puréeing (chopping up into small bits) fruits and vegetables for sauces and soups.

Parts of a blender
A blender consists of a glass or plastic container with a mounted blade in the bottom, and a base that has an electric motor and switches to turn on the motor or change its speed.
Blenders are used to make milk shakes (a blend of ice cream and milk) and fruit smoothies (a mix of fruit and ice).

Food made with blenders
Blenders are also used to make cold alcoholic drinks that include crushed ice or ice cream, such as margaritas and Mississippi Mudslide drinks.

Cooking appliances
Home appliances

Blender