Australian cuisine is the food and cooking practices of Australia and its inhabitants. Australia has absorbed culinary contributions and adaptations from various cultures around the world, including British, European, Asian and Middle Eastern.

Indigenous Australians have occupied Australia for some 65,000 years, during which they developed a unique hunter-gatherer diet, known as bush tucker, drawn from regional Australian plants and animals. Australia became a collection of British colonies from 1788 to 1900, during which time culinary tastes were strongly influenced by British and Irish migrants, with agricultural products such as beef cattle, sheep and wheat becoming staples in the local diet. The Australian gold rushes introduced more varied immigrants and cuisines, mainly Chinese, whilst post-war immigration programs led to a large-scale diversification of local food, mainly due to the influence of migrants from the Mediterranean, East Asia and South Asia.

Australian cuisine in the 21st century reflects the influence of globalisation, with many fast-food restaurants and international trends becoming influential. Organic and biodynamic foods have also become widely available alongside a revival of interest in bush tucker. Australia exports many agricultural products, including cattle, sheep, poultry, milk, vegetables, fruit, nuts, wheat, barley and canola. Australia also produces wine, beer and soft drinks.

While fast food chains are abundant, Australia's metropolitan areas have restaurants that offer both local and international foods. Restaurants which include contemporary adaptations, interpretations or fusions of exotic influences are frequently termed Modern Australian.

History

Indigenous Australian bush food

Indigenous Australians have lived off native flora and fauna of the Australian bush for over 60,000 years. In modern times, this collection of foods and customs has become known as bush tucker.

It is understood that up to 5,000 species of Australian flora and fauna were eaten by Indigenous Australians. Hunting of kangaroo, wallaby and emu was common, with other foods widely consumed including bogong moths, witchetty grubs, lizards and snakes. Bush berries, fruits, and nuts were also used, including the now widely cultivated macadamia nut, and wild honeys were also exploited. Fish were caught using tools such as spears, hooks and traps; in some areas, the construction of complex weir systems allowed the development of forms of aquaculture.

Resource availability and dietary make-up varied from region to region and scientific theories of bush tucker plants being spread by hand have recently emerged. Food preparation techniques also varied, however a common cooking technique was for the carcass to be thrown directly on a campfire to be roasted.

Native food sources were used to supplement the colonists' diet following the arrival of the First Fleet in Botany Bay in 1788.

Development of modern Australian cuisine

Following the pre-colonial period, European colonisers began arriving with the First Fleet at Sydney harbour in 1788. The diet consisted of "bread, salted meat and tea with lashings of rum (initially from the West Indies but later made from the waste cane of the sugar industry in Queensland)." The British found familiar game in Australia including swan, goose, pigeon and fish, but the new settlers often had difficulty adjusting to the prospect of native fauna as a staple diet.  Meat constituted a large proportion of the Australian diet during the colonial era and into the 20th Century.

After initial difficulties, Australian agriculture became a major global producer and supplied fresh produce for the local market. Stock grazing (mostly sheep and cattle) is prevalent throughout the continent. Queensland and New South Wales became Australia's main beef cattle producers, while dairy cattle farming is found in the southern states, predominantly in Victoria. Wheat and other grain crops are spread fairly evenly throughout the mainland states. Sugar cane is also a major crop in Queensland and New South Wales. Fruit and vegetables are grown throughout Australia and wheat is a main component of the Australian diet. Today there are over 85,681 farm businesses in Australia, 99 percent of which are locally owned and operated.

Barbecued meat is almost synonymous with Modern Australian cuisine, though it is estimated that more than 10% of Australians are now vegetarian.

After World War II, subsequent waves of multicultural immigration, with a majority drawn from Asia and the Mediterranean region, and the strong, sophisticated food cultures these ethnic communities have brought with them influenced the development of Australian cuisine.

Arguably the first Modern Australian restaurant was Sydney's Bayswater Brasserie (est. 1982), which offered Mediterranean dishes with Asian and Middle Eastern influences and "showed Sydney [...] that food can be adventurous without being expensive".  The term itself was first used in print in the 1993 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide, which placed 34 restaurants under this heading, and was quickly adopted to describe the burgeoning food scene in Sydney in the 1990s.  Leading exponents of the style include Tetsuya Wakuda, Neil Perry and Peter Gilmore.

As of 2014, the term is considered somewhat dated, with many restaurants preferring to call their style "contemporary Australian cuisine" instead.

Fruit and vegetables

Fruit

There are many species of Australian native fruits, such as quandong (native peach), wattleseed, muntries/munthari berry, Illawarra plums, riberry, native raspberries, lilli pillies, as well as a range of native citrus species including the desert lime and finger lime. These usually fall under the category of bush tucker, which is used in some restaurants and in commercial preserves and pickles but not generally well known among Australians due to its low availability.

Australia also has large fruit-growing regions in most states for tropical fruits in the north, and stone fruits and temperate fruits in the south which has a mediterranean or temperate climate. The Granny Smith variety of apples originated in Sydney in 1868. Another well-known Western Australian apple variety is the Cripps Pink, known locally and internationally as "Pink Lady" apples, which was first cultivated in 1973.

Fruits cultivated and consumed in Australia include apples, banana, kiwifruit, oranges and other citrus, mangoes (seasonally), mandarin, stonefruit, avocado, watermelons, rockmelons, lychees, pears, nectarines, plums, apricots, grapes, melons, papaya (also called pawpaw), pineapple, passionfruit and berries (strawberries, raspberries etc.).

Vegetables
In the temperate regions of Australia vegetables are traditionally eaten seasonally, especially in regional areas, although in urban areas there is large-scale importation of fresh produce sourced from around the world by supermarkets and wholesalers for grocery stores, to meet demands for year-round availability. Spring vegetables include artichoke, asparagus, bean shoots, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, leek, lettuce, mushrooms, peas, rhubarb, and spinach; summer vegetables include capsicum, cucumber, eggplant, squash, tomato, and zucchini. Popular dishes include zucchini slice.

Meat and poultry

Chicken is the most commonly consumed of all meats or poultry by weight, with approximately 47 kg of chicken consumed by the average Australian per year.

 Australians ate around 25 kg of beef per person with beef having a 35% share of fresh meat sales by value, the highest of any fresh meat in 2018–19.

Lamb is very popular in Australia, with roasting cuts (legs and shoulders), chops, and shanks being the most common cuts. Lamb will often form part of either a Sunday roast or a barbecue. It is also commonly found as an ingredient in gyros and doner kebabs, brought by Greek and Turkish  immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. Australia consumes more lamb and mutton than any other country listed by the OECD-FAO (with Kazakhstan in second place). In 2017, Australians consumed an average of  per person. By way of comparison, New Zealanders average  and Americans just .

Lunch at an Australian pub is called a counter lunch, while the term counter meal is used for either lunch or dinner. Common dishes served at counter lunches and counter meals are steak and chips, chicken parmigiana and chips, a mixed grill (an assortment of grilled meats), and roast lamb or beef with roast vegetables.

Game
Kangaroo meat is available as game in Australia, although it is not among the most commonly eaten meats. In colonial-era recipes, kangaroo was treated much like ox tail, and braised until tender forming a rich gravy. It is available today in various cuts and sausages. Kangaroo is, however, a common commercial dog food in Australia.

Other less commonly eaten forms of game are emu and crocodile.

Fish and seafood

Seafood consumption is increasing, but it is less common in the Australian diet than poultry and beef.
Australian cuisine features Australian seafood such as southern bluefin tuna, King George whiting, Moreton Bay bugs, mud crab, jewfish, dhufish (Western Australia) and yabby. Australia is one of the largest producers of abalone and rock lobster.

Fish and chips is a take-away food that originated in the United Kingdom and remains popular in Australia. It generally consists of battered deep-fried fish with deep-fried chipped (slab-cut) potatoes. Rather than cod which is more common in the UK, the most popular fish at Australian fish and chips shops, at least in southern Australian states, is flake, a fillet of gummy shark (Mustelus antarcticus).

Flathead is also a popular sport and table fish found in all parts of Australia. Barramundi is a fish found in northern Australian river systems. Bay lobsters, better known in Australia as Moreton Bay bugs, are common in seafood restaurants, or may be served with steak as "surf and turf".

The most common species of the aquaculture industry are salmon, tuna, oysters, and prawns. Other food species include abalone, freshwater finfish (such as barramundi, Murray cod, silver perch), brackish water or marine finfish (such as barramundi, snapper, yellowtail kingfish, mulloway, groupers), mussels, mud crabs and sea cucumbers.

While inland river and lake systems are relatively sparse, they nevertheless provide freshwater game fish and crustacea suitable for dining. Fishing and aquaculture constitute Australia's fifth most valuable agricultural industry after wool, beef, wheat and dairy. Approximately 600 varieties of marine and freshwater seafood species are caught and sold in Australia for both local and overseas consumption. European carp, common in the Murray River as an invasive species, is not considered edible by most Australians despite being common in cuisines across Europe.

Dairy

Ever since the first British settlement of 1788, Australia has had a dairy industry. Today, the Australian dairy industry produces a wide variety of milk, cream, butter, cheese and yoghurt products.

Australians are high consumers of dairy products, consuming on average some  of milk per person a year,  of cheese,  of butter (a small reduction from previous year, largely for dietary purposes) and  of yoghurt products.

Beverages

Tea
For most of Australia's history following the arrival of British settlers, black tea was the most commonly consumed hot beverage; however, in recent years, coffee has overtaken tea in popularity. Since the 19th Century, billy tea was a staple drink for those out in the Australian bush, such as those working on the land or travelling overland. Boiling water for tea in a billy over a camp fire and adding a gum leaf for flavouring remains an iconic traditional Australian method for preparing tea. Famously, it was prepared by the ill-fated swagman in the renowned Australian folksong "Waltzing Matilda".

Tea and biscuits or freshly home-baked scones are common for afternoon tea between friends and family.

Coffee

Today's Australia has a distinct coffee culture. The coffee industry has grown from independent cafes since the early 20th century. The flat white first became popular in Australia, and its invention is claimed by a Sydneysider. The iconic Greek cafés of Sydney and Melbourne were the first to introduce locally roasted coffees in 1910.

In 1952, the first espresso machines began to appear in Australia and a plethora of fine Italian coffee houses were emerging in Melbourne and Sydney. Pellegrini's Espresso Bar and Legend Café often lay claim to being Melbourne's first 'real' espresso bars, opening their doors in 1954 and 1956 respectively. This decade also saw the establishment of one of Australia's most iconic coffee brands, Vittoria, which remains the country's largest coffee maker and distributor. The brand has existed in Australia since 1958, well before it moved to the US.

To this day, international coffee chains such as Starbucks have very little market share in Australia, with Australia's long established independent cafés existing along with homegrown franchises such as The Coffee Club, Michel's Patisserie, Dôme in WA, and Zarraffas Coffee in Queensland. One reason for this is that unlike with the United States and Asia, Australia for many decades had already had an established culture of independent cafés before coffee chains tried to enter the market.

Other hot beverages
The chocolate and malt powder Milo, which was developed by Thomas Mayne in Sydney in 1934 in response to the Great Depression, is mixed with cold or hot milk to produce a popular beverage. In recent years, Milo has been exported and is also commonly consumed in Southeast Asia even becoming a major ingredient in some desserts produced in the region.

Alcohol

Beer in Australia has been popular since colonial times. James Squire is considered to have founded Australia's first commercial brewery in 1798 and the Cascade Brewery in Hobart, Tasmania, has been operating since the early 19th century. Since the 1970s, Australian beers have become increasingly popular globally – with Foster's Lager being an iconic export brand. However, Fosters is not a large seller on the local market, with alternatives such as Victoria Bitter and Carlton Draught outselling the popular export. Craft beer is popular, as well as distinctive products from smaller breweries such as Coopers and Little Creatures.

The Australian wine industry is the fifth largest exporter of wine around the world, with 760 million litres a year to a large international export market and contributes $5.5 billion per annum to the nation's economy. Australians consume over 530 million litres annually with a per capita consumption of about 30 litres – 50% white table wine, 35% red table wine. Wine is produced in every state, with more than 60 designated wine regions totalling approximately 160,000 hectares. Australia's wine regions are mainly in the southern, cooler parts of the country, in New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia. Amongst the most famous wine districts are the Barossa Valley, Hunter Valley, Margaret River and Yarra Valley, and among the best known wine producers are Lindeman's, Penfolds, Rosemount Estate, Wynns Coonawarra Estate. In Australia's tropical regions, wine is produced from exotic fruits such as mango, passion fruit and lychees.

In modern times, South Australia has also become renowned for its growing number of premium spirits producers, with the South Australian Spirits industry quickly emerging as a world leader with producers being recognised globally such as Seppeltsfield Road Distillers, Never Never Distilling, Adelaide Hills Distilling and many more.

Rum served as a currency during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Australia when metallic currency was in short supply.

Take-away and convenience foods

The traditional places to buy take-away food in Australia has long been at a local milk bar, fish and chip shop, or bakery, though these have met with stiff competition from fast food chains and convenience stores in recent decades.

Iconic Australian take-away food (i.e. fast food) includes meat pies, sausage rolls, pasties, Chiko Rolls, and dim sims. Meat pies, sausage rolls, and pasties are often found at milk bars, bakeries, and petrol stations, often kept hot in a pie warmer or needing to be microwaved; meat pies are also a staple at AFL football matches. Chiko rolls, dim sims and other foods needing to be deep fried, are to be found at fish and chip shops, which have the necessary deep fryers in which to cook them.

Rolls, with a variety of fillings, are a common alternative to sandwiches, with double-cut rolls (effectively two sandwiches) a South Australian specialty.

The Australian hamburgers and steak sandwiches are also found at fish and chip shops. Australian hamburgers consist of a fried beef patty, served with shredded lettuce and sliced tomato in a (usually toasted) round bread roll or bun. Tomato sauce or barbecue sauce are almost always included. Bacon, cheese and fried onions are also common additions, as is a slice of beetroot and/or a fried egg, with other options including sliced pineapple. Pickles are rarely included, except in burgers from American chains. Steak sandwiches come with the same options, but instead of a beef patty they consist of a thin steak and are served in two slices of toast, not buns.

Commonly found at community and fundraising events are sausage sizzle stalls – a stall with a barbecue hot plate on which sausages are cooked. At a sausage sizzle the sausage is served in a slice of white bread, with or without tomato sauce and with the option of adding fried onions, and eaten as a snack or as a light lunch. A sausage sizzle at a polling station on any Australian state or Federal election day has humorously become known as a Democracy sausage.

The Halal Snack Pack, ("HSP", also known in South Australia as an AB) originated in Australia as a fusion of Middle Eastern and European flavours, common at kebab shops around Australia. It consists of doner kebab meat served over hot chips and covered in sauces (such as chilli, garlic, or barbecue sauce).

Baked goods and desserts
Damper is a traditional Australian bread prepared by swagmen, drovers and other travellers. It is a wheat flour based bread, traditionally baked in the coals of a campfire. Toast is commonly eaten at breakfast. An iconic commercial spread is Vegemite – this is a salty, B vitamin-rich savoury spread made from brewers yeast eaten on buttered toast, commonly at breakfast, or in sandwiches. A common children's treat dating back to the 1920s is fairy bread,  appearing around the same time as the boston bun.

A classic Australian biscuit is the ANZAC biscuit, which are often homemade and so-called as they were sent by families and friends to Australian soldiers fighting in Europe and the Dardanelles in the First World War. A popular commercial brand of biscuit are Arnott's Tim Tams.

A classic Australian cake is the lamington, made from two squares of butter cake or sponge cake coated in an outer layer of chocolate sauce and rolled in desiccated coconut. Another popular cake and dessert dish is the pavlova, a meringue-based dessert, however the origins of this are contested as New Zealand also lays claim to its invention.

The mango pancake, a stable of Yum Cha restaurants in Sydney and elsewhere in Australia, is believed to have originated in Sydney in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Regional foods

As well as national icons there are many regional iconic foods.

South Australia has FruChocs, King George whiting, and a range of foods of German origin including mettwurst, Bienenstich (beesting), streuselkuchen (German cake) and fritz. The state has its own iconic brands such as Farmers Union Iced Coffee, YoYo biscuits and Balfours frog cakes. Jubilee cake is a specialty of South Australia. In Adelaide, a variant on the meat pie is the pie floater, which is a meat pie served in a bowl of pea soup.

Victoria is famous for its home-grown Melbourne invention, the dim sim. Melbourne is also the home of the hot jam donut. Tasmania has leatherwood honey, abalone, and savoury toast. Queensland has Weis Fruit Bar and claims the lamington.

Cities

Brisbane
The cuisine of Brisbane derives from mainstream Australian cuisine, as well as many cuisines of international origin. Major native foods of the Brisbane region and commonly used in local cuisine include; the macadamia, lemon-scented myrtle, Australian finger lime, bunya nut, and Moreton Bay bug. The city's cuisine culture is often described as casual with an emphasis on outdoor dining. Roof-top dining has become an iconic part of the culinary landscape, as well as a large street food scene with food trucks and pop-up bars common. Brisbane also lays claim to several foods including "smashed avo"; although popularised in Sydney in the 1990s, smashed avocado was a common dish in Brisbane and Queensland dating back to the 1920s. Brisbane also claims the Lamington and the Conut.

See also

List of Australian and New Zealand dishes
 Australian wine
Australian whisky
 Chinese restaurants in Australia
 Culture of Australia
 Bush tucker
 Cuisine of Brisbane
 Australian Aboriginal sweet foods

References

Further reading

 Newling, J., 2015. Eat Your History: Stories and Recipes from the Australian Kitchen. Sydney Living Museums.
 O'Brien, C., 2016. The Colonial Kitchen: Australia 1788–1901. Rowman & Littlefield.
 O'Connell, J., 2017. A Timeline of Australian Food: From Mutton to Masterchef. NewSouth Publishing.
 Santich, B., 2006. "The high and the low: Australian cuisine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries". Journal of Australian studies, 30 (87), pp. 37–49.

External links

Australian food and drink – Native Australians and early settlers
Australian Flavour – Recipes verified as having been cooked in Australian in the late 1800s and 1900s plus others considered iconic

Australian cuisine


In mathematics, particularly in combinatorics, a Stirling number of the second kind (or Stirling partition number) is the number of ways to partition a set of n objects into k non-empty subsets and is denoted by  or . Stirling numbers of the second kind occur in the field of  mathematics called combinatorics and the study of partitions. They are named after James Stirling.

The Stirling numbers of the first and second kind can be understood as inverses of one another when viewed as triangular matrices. This article is devoted to specifics of Stirling numbers of the second kind. Identities linking the two kinds appear in the article on Stirling numbers.

Definition
The Stirling numbers of the second kind, written  or  or with other notations, count the number of ways to partition a set of  labelled objects into  nonempty unlabelled subsets. Equivalently, they count the number of different equivalence relations with precisely  equivalence classes that can be defined on an  element set. In fact, there is a bijection between the set of partitions and the set of equivalence relations on a given set. Obviously,

 for n ≥ 0,  and    for n ≥ 1,

as the only way to partition an n-element set into n parts is to put each element of the set into its own part, and the only way to partition a nonempty set into one part is to put all of the elements in the same part. Unlike Stirling numbers of the first kind, they can be calculated using a one-sum formula:

The Stirling numbers of the second kind may also be characterized as the numbers that arise when one expresses powers of an indeterminate x in terms of the falling factorials

(In particular, (x)0 = 1 because it is an empty product.)

In other words

Notation
Various notations have been used for Stirling numbers of the second kind.  The brace notation   was used by Imanuel Marx and Antonio Salmeri in 1962 for variants of these numbers.<ref>Antonio Salmeri, Introduzione alla teoria dei coefficienti fattoriali, Giornale di Matematiche di Battaglini 90 (1962), pp. 44–54.</ref> This led Knuth to use it, as shown here, in the first volume of The Art of Computer Programming (1968).Donald E. Knuth, Fundamental Algorithms, Reading, Mass.: Addison–Wesley, 1968.  According to the third edition of The Art of Computer Programming, this notation was also used earlier by Jovan Karamata in 1935.Jovan Karamata, Théorèmes sur la sommabilité exponentielle et d'autres sommabilités s'y rattachant, Mathematica (Cluj) 9 (1935), pp, 164–178.  The notation S(n, k) was used by Richard Stanley in his book Enumerative Combinatorics and also, much earlier, by many other writers.

The notations used on this page for Stirling numbers are not universal, and may conflict with notations in other sources.

Relation to Bell numbers

Since the Stirling number  counts set partitions of an n-element set into k parts, the sum

over all values of k is the total number of partitions of a set with n members.  This number is known as the nth Bell number.

Analogously, the ordered Bell numbers can be computed from the Stirling numbers of the second kind via

Table of values
Below is a triangular array of values for the Stirling numbers of the second kind :

As with the binomial coefficients, this table could be extended to , but the entries would all be 0.

 Properties

Recurrence relation
Stirling numbers of the second kind obey the recurrence relation

with initial conditions

For instance, the number 25 in column k = 3 and row n = 5 is given by 25 = 7 + (3×6), where 7 is the number above and to the left of 25, 6 is the number above 25 and 3 is the column containing the 6.

To prove this recurrence, observe that a partition of the  objects into k nonempty subsets either contains the -th object as a singleton  or it does not. The number of ways that the singleton is one of the subsets is given by

since we must partition the remaining  objects into the available  subsets. In the other case the -th object belongs to a subset containing other objects. The number of ways is given by

since we partition all objects other than the -th into k subsets, and then we are left with k choices for inserting object . Summing these two values gives the desired result.

Another recurrence relation is given by

Simple identities
Some simple identities include

This is because dividing n elements into  sets necessarily means dividing it into one set of size 2 and  sets of size 1.  Therefore we need only pick those two elements;

and

To see this, first note that there are 2 ordered pairs of complementary subsets A and B.  In one case, A is empty, and in another B is empty, so  ordered pairs of subsets remain.  Finally, since we want unordered pairs rather than ordered pairs we divide this last number by 2, giving the result above.

Another explicit expansion of the recurrence-relation gives identities in the spirit of the above example.

 Identities
The table in section 6.1 of Concrete Mathematics provides a plethora of generalized forms of finite sums involving the Stirling numbers. Several particular finite sums relevant to this article include.

Explicit formula
The Stirling numbers of the second kind are given by the explicit formula:

This can be derived by using inclusion-exclusion to count the number of surjections from n to k and using the fact that the number of such surjections is .

Additionally, this formula is a special case of the kth forward difference of the monomial  evaluated at x = 0:

Because the Bernoulli polynomials may be written in terms of these forward differences, one immediately obtains a relation in the Bernoulli numbers:

Another explicit formula given in the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions is

Parity

The parity of a Stirling number of the second kind is equal to the parity of a related binomial coefficient:
 where
This relation is specified by mapping n and k coordinates onto the Sierpiński triangle.

More directly, let two sets contain positions of 1's in binary representations of results of respective expressions:

One can mimic a bitwise AND operation by intersecting these two sets:

to obtain the parity of a Stirling number of the second kind in O(1) time. In pseudocode:

where  is the Iverson bracket.

The parity of a central Stirling number of the second kind  is odd if and only if  is a fibbinary number, a number whose binary representation has no two consecutive 1s.

Generating functions
For a fixed integer n, the ordinary generating function for Stirling numbers of the second kind  is given by

where  are Touchard polynomials. If one sums the Stirling numbers against the falling factorial instead, one can show the following identities, among others:

and

Which has special case
.
For a fixed integer k, the Stirling numbers of the second kind have rational ordinary generating function

and have an exponential generating function given by

A mixed bivariate generating function for the Stirling numbers of the second kind is

Lower and upper bounds
If  and , then

Asymptotic approximation
For fixed value of  the asymptotic value of the Stirling numbers of the second kind as  is given by

If  (where o denotes the little o notation) then

Maximum for fixed n
For fixed ,  has a single maximum, which is attained for at most two consecutive values of k. That is, there is an integer  such that

Looking at the table of values above, the first few values for  are

When  is large

and the maximum value of the Stirling number can be approximated with

Applications

Moments of the Poisson distribution
If X is a random variable with a Poisson distribution with expected value λ, then its n-th moment is

In particular, the nth moment of the Poisson distribution with expected value 1 is precisely the number of partitions of a set of size n, i.e., it is the nth Bell number (this fact is Dobiński's formula).

Moments of fixed points of random permutations
Let the random variable X be the number of fixed points of a uniformly distributed random permutation of a finite set of size m.  Then the nth moment of X is

Note: The upper bound of summation is m, not n.

In other words, the nth moment of this probability distribution is the number of partitions of a set of size n into no more than m parts.
This is proved in the article on random permutation statistics, although the notation is a bit different.

Rhyming schemes
The Stirling numbers of the second kind can represent the total number of rhyme schemes for a poem of n lines.  gives the number of possible rhyming schemes for n lines using k unique rhyming syllables. As an example, for a poem of 3 lines, there is 1 rhyme scheme using just one rhyme (aaa), 3 rhyme schemes using two rhymes (aab, aba, abb), and 1 rhyme scheme using three rhymes (abc).

Variants

r-Stirling numbers of the second kind
The r-Stirling number of the second kind  counts the number of partitions of a set of n objects into k non-empty disjoint subsets, such that the first r elements are in distinct subsets. These numbers satisfy the recurrence relation

Some combinatorial identities and a connection between these numbers and context-free grammars can be found in

Associated Stirling numbers of the second kind
An r-associated Stirling number of the second kind is the number of ways to partition a set of n objects into k subsets, with each subset containing at least r elements. It is denoted by  and obeys the recurrence relation

The 2-associated numbers  appear elsewhere as "Ward numbers" and as the magnitudes of the coefficients of Mahler polynomials.

Reduced Stirling numbers of the second kind
Denote the n objects to partition by the integers 1, 2, ..., n.  Define the reduced Stirling numbers of the second kind, denoted , to be the number of ways to partition the integers 1, 2, ..., n into k nonempty subsets such that all elements in each subset have pairwise distance at least d.  That is, for any integers i and j in a given subset, it is required that . It has been shown that these numbers satisfy

(hence the name "reduced"). Observe (both by definition and by the reduction formula), that , the familiar Stirling numbers of the second kind.

See also
 Stirling number
 Stirling numbers of the first kind
 Bell number – the number of partitions of a set with n'' members
 Stirling polynomials
 Twelvefold way

References

 .

 .

 Calculator for Stirling Numbers of the Second Kind
 Set Partitions: Stirling Numbers

Permutations
Factorial and binomial topics
Triangles of numbers
Operations on numbers

pl:Liczby Stirlinga#Liczby Stirlinga II rodzaju

Stirling numbers of the second kind


Big Pond (Scottish Gaelic: Am Pòn Mòr) is a  community in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia, Canada on the south shore of Bras d'Or Lake. Big Pond is approximately in the centre between the communities of St. Peters, Nova Scotia and Sydney, Nova Scotia.

Big Pond is a community that produced award-winning singers Rita MacNeil and Gordie Sampson. Quiet through the winter, with weekends punctuated by church functions, steak darts, potluck suppers, Big Pond plays host to hundreds of visitors and tourists in the summer months particularly beachgoers.

The community is named after the larger of two ponds (actually enclosed lagoons) on the lake shore: Big Pond and Open Pond. The Mi'kmaq name for the location was "Naooktaboogooik" which roughly translates to "It stands alone".

External links
Big Pond Cape Breton Community Website

Communities in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality

Big Pond, Nova Scotia


William John Mitchell (15 December 1944 – 11 June 2010) was an Australian-born author, educator, architect and urban designer, best known for leading the integration of architectural and related design arts practice with computing and other technologies.

Early life and education
Mitchell was born on 15 December 1944, in Horsham, Victoria, Australia. He earned an undergraduate degree in 1967 from the University of Melbourne with a major in architecture and was awarded master's degrees from both Yale University (a Master of Environmental Design in environmental design in 1969) and the University of Cambridge (in 1977 with a major in architecture).

Career
Mitchell headed the architecture and urban design program at the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles starting in 1970. He was named the G. Ware and Edythe M. Travelstead Professor of Architecture and director of the Master of Design Studies program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1986 and was named as Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences and Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning in 1992. His 1977 book Computer-Aided Architectural Design and his 1990 work The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation and Cognition were credited by The New York Times as having "profoundly changed the way architects approached building design".

At MIT, Mitchell served as an advisor to MIT President Charles Marstiller Vest in guiding a decade-long, five-building expansion project at the university that included designs by Charles Correa, Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, Fumihiko Maki and Kevin Roche, and added one million square feet of classroom, office and other spaces to the MIT campus. The building project became the subject of his 2007 book Imagining MIT: Designing a Campus for the 21st Century, which was written in a single weekend while he was at a Dublin hotel. At the dedication ceremonies for the Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center in 2004, Mitchell said that schools like MIT "carry a particular responsibility to conceive of architectural projects not just as the rational allocation of resources to achieve quantifiable management goals, but also as inventive, critical contributions to our evolving culture" and that anything less would be "a betrayal of their advertised principles".

Starting in 2003, he created the Smart Cities program within the MIT Media Lab. Projects that Mitchell developed as part of the Smart Cities program included GreenWheel, a device that would add electric power to a bicycle; RoboScooter, a foldable electric scooter; and the MIT Car (also called the "CityCar", and developed into the Hiriko), which would be propelled by electric motors built into its wheels.  The car and scooter projects were envisioned as being made available for public use at locations in cities, with access and scheduling controlled by computer. The MIT Car was designed to fold up into a more compact shape while parked.  Following Mitchell's death, the CityCar Project was continued under the direction of Kent Larson in the Changing Places research group at the MIT Media Lab.

Along with colleagues Kent Larson and Alex (Sandy) Pentland at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mitchell is credited with first exploring the concept of a Living Laboratory.  They argued that a living lab represents a user-centric research methodology for sensing, prototyping, validating and refining complex solutions in multiple and evolving real life contexts.

Mitchell was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded seven honorary degrees.  He was a prolific author, writing almost a dozen notable books, plus assorted papers, articles, and speeches.

Personal life
A resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mitchell died due to complications of cancer at age 65 on 11 June 2010. He was survived by his second wife, Jane Wolfson and their son, as well as by a daughter from his first marriage, to Elizabeth Asmis.

See also
 Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

References

Books

 World's Greatest Architect: Making, Meaning, and Network Culture (2008),

 Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City (2005),
 Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (2003),
 e-topia: Urban Life, Jim—But Not As We Know It (1999),
 High Technology and Low-Income Communities, with Donald A. Schön and Bish Sanyal (1998),
 City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn (1996), Cambridge MA: MIT Press,
 The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (1992), Cambridge MA: MIT Press,
 The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation, and Cognition (1990),
 Computer-Aided Architectural Design (1977), New York: Petrocelli/Charter,  — A seminal work on the use of Computer-Aided Design tools in architectural design

External links
William J. Mitchell, profile at MIT Media Lab
Smart Cities main page at MIT Media Lab

1944 births
2010 deaths
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
Architects from Melbourne
Australian urban planners
Design researchers
Deaths from cancer in Massachusetts
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Harvard University faculty
MIT School of Architecture and Planning faculty
People from Horsham, Victoria
Artists from Cambridge, Massachusetts
University of California, Los Angeles faculty
University of Melbourne alumni
Yale School of Architecture alumni
MIT Media Lab people
Australian emigrants to the United States

William J. Mitchell


Secco is a surname of Italian origin, which means dry. It may refer to:

Alessio Secco (b. 1970), Italian professional football manager
Deborah Secco (b. 1979), Brazilian actress
Louis Secco (1927–2008), Canadian Olympic ice hockey player
Secco, a minor antagonist of the manga and anime Golden Wind
Secco, a character in the Netflix adult animated series Tear Along the Dotted Line

See also
Secco, a musical term meaning "dry", "without resonance" or "quick"
Secco or Fresco-secco, a type of mural painting where paint is applied to dry plaster on a wall
Secco, the cult and lifestyle

Italian-language surnames

Secco


Anaphylaxis is a serious allergic reaction.  It begins suddenly. it may cause death.  Anaphylaxis has many symptoms (signs of being sick), such as an itchy rash, throat swelling, breathing problems, and low blood pressure. Common causes include insect bites, foods, and medications.

Anaphylaxis happens when a person eats, breathes in, or is injected with an allergen (something they are allergic to).  Their immune system over-reacts.  It sends out special proteins from inside certain white blood cells.  These proteins can start an allergic reaction or make the reaction worse.

Anaphylaxis is diagnosed (found to be sick with something) from a person's signs and symptoms.  The best treatment is an injection (a shot) of epinephrine (adrenaline).  Sometimes doctors give other medicines along with epinephrine.

Worldwide, about 0.05–2% of people have anaphylaxis at some point in their lives.  Anaphylaxis appears to be getting more common.

History
Cases of anaphylaxis have been reported since ancient times.

The condition was originally named "aphylaxis" by Charles Richet in 1902.  In 1913, Richet was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for his work on anaphylaxis.

Later, the name was changed to "anaphylaxis" because it sounded nicer.  The word "anaphylaxis" comes from the Greek words ἀνά (ana), against, and φύλαξις (phyla's), protection.

Signs and symptoms

Anaphylaxis can cause many different signs and symptoms over minutes or hours.  If the anaphylaxis is caused by something that entered the body directly through the bloodstream (through a vein), symptoms appear within an average of 5 to 30 minutes.  If it is caused by a food the person ate, symptoms appear within an average of 2 hours.

The most common body systems affected by anaphylaxis include:
 Skin (affected in 80–90% of cases)
 Lungs and breathing pathways (70%)
 Stomach and intestines (30–45%)
 Heart and blood vessels (10–45%)
 Central nervous system (10–15%)

People with anaphylaxis usually have problems with two or more of these body systems.

Skin symptoms

Skin symptoms usually include:
 Hives (raised, itchy bumps on the skin)
 Itchiness
 Flushing (a red face or skin)
 Swollen lips
 Runny nose
 Swelling of the mucous membrane on the surface of the eye and eyelid (conjunctiva)
 Angioedema (swelling under the skin).  People with angioedema may feel like their skin is burning instead of itching.
In 20% of cases, the tongue or throat may swell up, which can cause breathing problems.  If a person is having breathing problems, the skin may turn blue because the body is not getting enough oxygen.  This is called cyanosis.

Respiratory (breathing) symptoms
Respiratory signs and symptoms include:
 Trouble breathing (also called dyspnea or shortness of breath)
 Bronchoconstriction (when the bronchi, the tubes that bring air to the lungs, get narrower; this makes it harder for air to get to the lungs)
 Hoarseness, pain with swallowing, or a cough
 When a medical professional listens to the patient's lungs with a stethoscope, they may hear:
 Low-pitched sounds called wheezes, caused by bronchoconstriction
 High-pitched sounds called stridor, caused by swelling in the upper airway

Cardiovascular symptoms
When a person has anaphylaxis, some of the cells in the heart may release histamine. Histamine is a chemical made by the body. It can cause the heart's blood vessels to get narrower suddenly (this is called "coronary artery spasm").  If the heart's blood vessels get too narrow, the heart cannot get enough blood.  This can cause many serious problems:
 Heart cells can die.  This is called a myocardial infarction, or a heart attack
 The heart may beat too slowly or too quickly (these are called cardiac arrhythmias)
 The heart may stop beating altogether.  This is called cardiac arrest.

Anaphylaxis can also cause low blood pressure.  This may be caused by distributive shock, where the body's blood vessels get much wider because of the chemicals released by the immune system.  It can also be caused by cardiogenic shock, where the heart is not getting enough blood to pump out to the rest of the body.

Low blood pressure can cause many problems, including:
 A fast heart rate
 A slow heart rate.  This is not very common.  It happens in about 10% of cases.  It is called the Bezold-Jarisch reflex
 Syncope (fainting)

In rare cases, very low blood pressure may be the only sign of anaphylaxis.

People who already have heart disease are at greater risk of having heart problems from anaphylaxis.

Other symptoms
Anaphylaxis can also cause problems with other body systems:
 Stomach and intestines: A person may have abdominal pain, diarrhea, or vomiting (throwing up)
 Urinary and genital systems: Women may have pain in the pelvis that feels like cramps in the uterus.  Men and women may lose control of their bladder.
 Central nervous system: A person may have confused thoughts.  They may have headaches caused by blood vessels in the brain getting wider.  They may feel anxious (very worried) and believe they are going to die.

Causes
Anaphylaxis can be caused by the body's response to almost any foreign substance (anything that is outside the body). Common causes include venom from insect bites or stings; foods; and medications.  In children and young adults, foods are the most common trigger (or cause) of anaphylaxis.  In older adults, medications and insect bites or stings are more common triggers.

Food
Many foods can trigger anaphylaxis, even when the food is eaten for the first time. In the Western world, the most common causes are eating or touching peanuts, wheat, tree nuts, shellfish, milk, and eggs.  In the Middle East, sesame is a common trigger food.  In Asia, rice and chickpeas often cause anaphylaxis.

Severe cases of anaphylaxis usually happen when a person eats the trigger food.  However, some people have severe anaphylaxis when the trigger food touches some part of their body.

Children can outgrow their allergies.  For example, by age 16:
 80% of children with anaphylaxis to milk or eggs can eat these foods with no problems
 20% of children who had only one case of anaphylaxis to peanuts can eat peanuts with no problems

Medication
Any medication may cause anaphylaxis. The most common are β-lactam antibiotics (such as penicillin), then aspirin and NSAIDs.

Venom
Venom from stinging or biting insects, like bees and wasps (Hymenoptera) or kissing bugs (Triatominae), may cause anaphylaxis.  If a person has a bad allergic reaction to venom once, they have a greater risk of having anaphylaxis if they are stung or bitten again.  However, half of the people who die of anaphylaxis have had no anaphylactic reaction before.

Risk factors
Certain diseases, called atopic diseases, can make a person more likely to have allergies.  Atopic diseases include asthma, eczema, and allergic rhinitis.  People with these diseases have a high risk of anaphylaxis from food, latex, and radiocontrast agents.  However, these people do not have a higher risk from injected medications or stings.

One study of children with anaphylaxis found that 60% had a history of previous atopic diseases.  More than 90% of children who die from anaphylaxis have asthma.

The risk of having another anaphylactic reaction decreases as a person avoids the trigger for longer and longer.

How anaphylaxis happens
Anaphylaxis usually happens because the immune system over-reacts to an allergen.  The immune system releases mast cells and basophils, which are types of white blood cells.  The immune system sees the trigger as something bad and sends out white blood cells to kill it.  The mast cells and basophils attach to the allergen to try to kill it.  However, because the system is over-reacting, the mast cells and basophils explode and dump out chemicals that cause inflammation, like histamine.  Histamine causes many of the symptoms of anaphylaxis.  For example:
 Bronchoconstriction (where the tubes that carry air to the lungs get narrower)
 Vasodilation (where the blood vessels get wider)
 Fluid leaks out of blood vessels
 The heart muscle does not work as well

Diagnosis
Anaphylaxis is diagnosed based on signs, symptoms, and knowing that a person has been exposed to an allergen.  It is very likely that a person has anaphylaxis if any of these three things happen within minutes or hours after they were exposed to an allergen:
 Problems with the skin or mucosal tissue, plus either breathing problems or a low blood pressure
 Two or more of these symptoms:
 Problems with the skin or mucosa
 Breathing problems
 Low blood pressure
 Gastrointestinal symptoms
 Low blood pressure after exposure to an allergen

If a person has a bad reaction to an insect sting or a medication, blood tests for tryptase or histamine might be useful in diagnosing anaphylaxis. However, these tests are not very useful if the cause is food, or if the person has a normal blood pressure.  Also, these tests cannot say for sure that a person does not have anaphylaxis.

Allergy testing

Allergy testing may help to identify what caused a person's anaphylaxis. Skin allergy tests (such as patch tests) can be done for certain foods and venoms.  Skin tests can diagnose an allergy to penicillin, but there are no skin tests for other medications.  Blood tests can diagnose milk, egg, peanut, tree nut and fish allergies.

Differential diagnosis
Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between anaphylaxis; asthma; fainting caused by not having enough oxygen; and panic attacks.  However, there are some important differences between these conditions:
 People with asthma usually do not have itching, swelling, or problems with their stomach or intestines.
 After fainting, a person's skin is pale, and they will not have a rash or swelling.  Their breath sounds will be normal.
 A person who is having a panic attack may have flushed skin, but will not have hives or swelling.  Usually their blood pressure will not be low.  Their breath sounds will be normal.

Prevention
The best way to prevent anaphylaxis is to avoid the trigger that caused anaphylaxis in the past.  When this is not possible, there may be treatments to make the body stop reacting to the trigger.  This is called desensitization.  For example, treatment of the immune system (immunotherapy) with Hymenoptera venoms is able to make 80–90% of adults and 98% of children stop having allergic reactions to bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, and fire ants.  Most people who are allergic to certain medicines can just avoid those medicines.  However, desensitization is possible for many medications (for example, many chemotherapies) if the person has to take those medicines.

People with latex allergies may have to avoid "cross-reactive foods."  These are foods that have ingredients that are similar to latex.  Examples of these foods includeavocados, bananas, and potatoes.

Management
Anaphylaxis is a medical emergency that may require emergency medical treatment.  Some patients need help keeping their airways open so they can breathe in air.   Other patients need to be given extra oxygen or large amounts of intravenous fluids (fluids given through a needle into a vein).

Epinephrine is the best treatment for anaphylaxis.  Doctors often give antihistamines (which destroy histamine) and steroids along with epinephrine.  Once a person has returned to normal, they should be watched in the hospital for 2 to 24 hours to make sure their symptoms do not return.

Epinephrine

Epinephrine is the best and first treatment used for anaphylaxis.  It reverses many of the symptoms of anaphylaxis.  For example, it makes the bronchi (the passages to the lungs) get wider; it makes the blood vessels go back to their normal size; and it raises blood pressure.

Epinephrine comes in an "auto-injector," usually called an "EpiPen."  Once its safety cap is taken off, the EpiPen just has to be pressed into the thigh, and the right amount of epinephrine will automatically be injected into the person's body.  Doctors can prescribe EpiPens to people who know they have allergies, so they can treat themselves for anaphylaxis.  Many ambulances also carry EpiPens to treat anaphylaxis.

The EpiPen is meant to be injected into the thigh muscle, on the outside of the leg, as soon as anaphylaxis is suspected.  There is no reason why it should not be used if a person is having an anaphylactic reaction.  The injection may be repeated every 5 to 15 minutes if the person is still having breathing problems or other major symptoms. A second dose is needed in 16 to 35% of cases. More than two doses are rarely needed.

Epinephrine can cause minor side effects, including tremors, anxiety, headaches, and palpitations.

Epinephrine may not work in people who are taking β-blockers.  In these people, if epinephrine does not work, doctors can give intravenous glucagon.

Being prepared
People who are at risk for anaphylaxis are advised to have an "allergy action plan."  These plans often include:
 Parents telling schools about their children's allergies and what to do in case of an anaphylactic emergency
 Knowing how and when to use EpiPens
 Wearing a medical alert bracelet that says what the person is allergic to
 Planning for how to avoid triggers

Outlook
If anaphylaxis is diagnosed and the person is treated quickly, there is a good chance that they will recover.  Even if nobody knows what caused the anaphylaxis, the person usually makes a good recovery as long as they get medication to stop the reaction.

When people die from anaphylaxis, they usually die from respiratory (breathing) problems, usually the airway closing up, or cardiovascular problems, like shock. About 0.7% to 20% of people with anaphylaxis die from it.  Some people die within minutes.

Very rarely, people have exercise-induced anaphylaxis - anaphylaxis that is caused by exercise.  These people usually do well.  They usually have fewer anaphylactic episodes, which are less severe, as they get older.

References

Medical emergencies
Allergies

Anaphylaxis


In botany, a peduncle is a stalk supporting an inflorescence or a solitary flower, or, after fecundation, an infructescence or a solitary fruit. The peduncle sometimes has bracts (a type of cataphylls) at nodes. The main axis of an inflorescence above the peduncle is the rachis. There are no flowers on the peduncle but there are flowers on the rachis.

When a peduncle arises from the ground level, either from a compressed aerial stem or from a subterranean stem (rhizome, tuber, bulb, corm), with few or no bracts except the part near the rachis or receptacle, it is referred to as a scape.

The acorns of the pedunculate oak are borne on a long peduncle, hence the name of the tree.

See also
Pedicel (botany)
Scape (botany)

References

Plant anatomy
Plant morphology
+

scn:Pidicuddu

Peduncle (botany)


David Gockley (born July 13, 1943, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American opera company administrator. He served as general director of Houston Grand Opera from 1972 to 2005 and San Francisco Opera from  2006 to 2016. He is a student of Margaret Harshaw.

Biography
Richard David Gockley was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Wayne, Pennsylvania. He holds a bachelor's degree from Brown University, where he sang with the Jabberwocks, and a master's degree from Columbia University. According to San Francisco Opera's website, his father was an athletic coach and inspired his early love for sports, and he inherited a passion for music from his mother. He is the father of three children: Meredith, Lauren, and Adam.

He has served as president of OPERA America and is currently a board member.

Houston Grand Opera
In 1970, Gockley joined Houston Grand Opera as business manager and was appointed general director in 1972. Under his tenure, Houston Grand Opera presented 35 world premieres and six American premieres. Gockley oversaw the founding of the Houston Grand Opera Studio in 1977, the company's young artist development program, and the opening of the Wortham Theater Center in 1987. He introduced "plazacasts", free broadcasts of mainstage opera productions to outdoor audiences; created OperaVision, a series of screens located throughout the Wortham Center that projected close-up shots of the action on stage; and began annual radio broadcasts of Houston Grand Opera performances in the U.S. and abroad.

After a 33-year tenure as general director, Gockley resigned from Houston Grand Opera in 2005 to assume the post of general director for San Francisco Opera.

San Francisco Opera
Gockley became San Francisco Opera's sixth general director on January 1, 2006. Under Gockley's leadership, San Francisco Opera (SFO) has presented the world premieres of Appomattox by Philip Glass and Christopher Hampton in 2007; The Bonesetter's Daughter by Stewart Wallace and Amy Tan in 2008; and Christopher Theofanidis and Donna Di Novelli's Heart of a Soldier in 2011.

The company also presented the West Coast premieres of Rachel Portman's The Little Prince and Jake Heggie's chamber opera Three Decembers. San Francisco Opera also presented three world premieres in 2013: Nolan Gasser and Carey Harrison's The Secret Garden, based on the children's book by Frances Hodgson Burnett in conjunction with UC Berkeley's Cal Performances; Mark Adamo's The Gospel of Mary Magdalene; and Tobias Picker and J.D. McClatchy's Dolores Claiborne, based on the novel by Stephen King. San Francisco Opera will present the world premieres of La Ciociara by Marco Tutino and Luca Rossi in the summer of 2015, based on novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia, and Dream of the Red Chamber by Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang in fall 2016, based on the work of the same name by 18th-century Qing dynasty writer Cao Xueqin.

Gockley oversaw the creation of San Francisco Opera's Koret-Taube Media Suite, the first permanent high-definition broadcast-standard video production facility installed in any American opera house according to the company's website. Through the Koret-Taube Media Suite, he expanded on the plazacasts he pioneered at Houston Grand Opera with a series of "simulcasts", live broadcasts of San Francisco Opera mainstage performances to remote locations. The company has presented eight simulcasts throughout San Francisco and the Bay Area, specifically to San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza, Stanford University's Frost Amphitheater, and seven simulcasts presented on the scoreboard at San Francisco's AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. All simulcasts have been presented free to the public, drawing as many as 200,000 people collectively. San Francisco Opera also broadcast a live performance of Don Giovanni to four theaters across Northern California in June 2007.

Gockley continued his OperaVision program at San Francisco Opera and supervised the presentation of four San Francisco Opera productions in movie theaters across the United States. Unlike the Metropolitan Opera, which began live broadcasts of performances to theaters in 2006 using projection systems used for advertising, The opera partnered with The Bigger Picture to present four operas in a feature–film quality digital cinema format in 2008.

In 2007, the opera returned to national and international radio after 25 years under Gockley's leadership. Earlier in 2007, Gockley announced the appointment of Italian conductor Nicola Luisotti as the company's new music director, effective September 2009. Luisotti is the company's third music director following Sir John Pritchard and Donald Runnicles. In January 2009, Gockley announced the reappointment of Patrick Summers as principal guest conductor and named Giuseppe Finzi as the company's new assistant music director. In May 2011, it was announced that Gockley's contract was to be extended through SFO's 2015–16 season.

Gockley announced his retirement in 2014 and transferred leadership to Matthew Shilvock in August 2016.

Awards and honors
 Dean's Award for "Distinguished Professional Achievement", Columbia University Business School
 Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters, University of Houston, 1992
 Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts, Brown University, 1993
 William Rogers Award, Brown University, 1995

References

Sources
 Cummings, David, International Who's Who in Music and Musicians' Directory, Cambridge, England: Routledge; 17 edition June 13, 2000;

External links
 San Francisco Opera's official website
 Houston Grand Opera's official website
 Gockley, David and Louis Marchiafava. David Gockley Oral History, Houston Oral History Project, June 12, 1976.

1943 births
Living people
Brown University alumni
Columbia Business School alumni
Opera managers
People from Philadelphia

David Gockley


Plague Ship is a science fiction novel by  Andre Norton under the pseudonym Andrew North. It was published in 1956 by Gnome Press in an edition of 5,000 copies. The book is the second volume of the author's Solar Queen series.

Plot summary
The main protagonist of the novel is Dane Thorson, Cargo-master-apprentice on the Free Trader rocket ship the Solar Queen. Free Traders take on trading contracts on remote and recently discovered planets, which can be dangerous and unpredictable.

The Solar Queen has recently obtained a valuable trading contract on the planet Sargol and are building a relationship with one of the races on the planet, the cat-like Salariki.  The process goes slowly till the Salariki discover that the Solar Queen is carrying catnip and other plants from Terra that are unknown on Sargol.  The traders exchange what little of the plants they have for the rare and valuable Koros stones and collect a native red-colored wood to exchange at home. At the last minute the storm priests of the Salariki demand that the Solar Queen take a pre-paid contract to return within 6 months with more plants.

A few days after leaving the planet, several members of the crew suffer from attacks, which start with severe headaches and end in a semi-coma state.  Only 4 of the younger members of the crew are unaffected, including Dane Thorson.  Upon exiting hyperspace on return to the vicinity of Terra, the crew discovers that they are pariah and have been declared a plague ship.

On the short hop to earth, the crew discovers that pests have invaded the ship and are the cause of the illness.  In a final bid to prove their case they kidnap a medic and present his evidence by video to a solar-system-wide audience, which is successful.

In the meantime the rest of the crew have recovered, and after a final effort of negotiation the Solar Queen preserves its reputation by selling the contract with the Salariki to a large intergalactic trading company in exchange for credits and a quiet inter-solar mail route, which should lead to no more trouble.

Sources

External links

Plague Ship, available on Project Gutenberg

1956 American novels
American science fiction novels
Novels by Andre Norton
Books with cover art by Ed Emshwiller
Gnome Press books
Public domain books

Plague Ship


A name tag is a badge or sticker worn on the outermost clothing as a means of displaying the wearer's name for others to view.

Name tags may be temporary, such as a sticker with the iconic image being the "Hello!  My Name Is "; or it may be a more durable type. Temporary ones typically can be written upon so that the wearer's name may be handwritten or printed.  Permanent name tags are usually made of lightweight metal or plastic and may be known as name badges.

Name tags may be attached to garments with adhesive or worn with the assistance of a magnet, pin or velcro. Plastic or metal name tags can be attached to various backings used to attach to the clothing of the wearer. There are many types of name tag backings, including magnetic backings, locking pins, swivel clips, military clutch pins, alligator clips, and cell phone attachments. Magnetic backings, because they do not puncture clothing with pins, have recently become more popular for name tags. Some name tags are worn around the neck using a lanyard or necklace.

Name tags with magnetic backings pose a harmful threat to people who have pacemakers, as the magnet will interfere with the implant's normal function. It is suggested that people who have pacemakers use pinback backings with their name tags to avoid any disturbance with the pacemaker.

Name tags are used by some customer service companies, such as fast food restaurants, so that customers may identify employees by name. Professional employees or representatives of public-facing organizations such as universities, banks, or other companies where employees do not wear uniforms, may wear name tags as a way of distinguishing or identifying the bearer as such, while allowing the employee to wear daily business wear.

Military

Military personnel commonly wear name badges on their uniforms, though usually displaying only the family (last) name. However, there is not much emphasis on this formatting simply because of the plethora of cultures and naming conventions around the world. For example, in the Singapore Armed Forces, Indian last names are generally initialised and the first name spelt in full as last names can be quite a mouthful (hence serving functionality in nametags). With the large Chinese majority in Singapore, there have been contradictions in the convention, the most popular one being that the name be fully in initials save for the surname - spelt in full.

The use of name tags probably originated with laundry tags, used to identify clothing belonging to particular individuals. During World War II the United States military began making use of external name tags, in particular on flight clothing and combat uniforms worn by marines and paratroopers. The use of cloth name tapes became common by the Korean War and its use spread to other armies. The Canadian Army began using cloth name tapes on the combat uniform introduced in the 1960s. During this period, the use of name tags extended from combat and work clothing only, to the dress uniform (and tags made of engraved plastic rather than cloth).

Other professionals
Police officers usually often wear name tags on their uniforms that are separate from the badges that identify their official capacity as a law enforcement officer.

So that nametags have a degree of privacy, nametags may be attached with velcro which can be easily changed.

Conventions

Loose associations of people gathering for conventions, and other events where socialization is encouraged, often wear name tags.

"Hello my name is" stickers
"Hello my name is" stickers, first introduced by C-Line Products in 1959, became hugely popular. Many graffiti artists have been known to use these stickers as tags.

See also

References

External links

Badges
Identification
Stickers
Office equipment

Name tag


Scour Inc. was a multimedia Internet search engine, and provided Scour Exchange, an early peer-to-peer file exchange service.

History
Scour was founded by five students (Vince Busam, Michael Todd, Dan Rodrigues, Jason Droege and Kevin Smilak) from the Computer Science Department of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in December 1997. By mid-1998 Ilya Haykinson and Travis Kalanick, also Computer Science students at UCLA joined the founding team. It moved into the spotlight a year later when in June 1998, Scour received its first investment from former Disney president Michael Ovitz and Ron Burkle of Yucaipa companies.

The company's early products were an SMB search engine and Scour Media Agent, a Windows application to download files from SMB shares. The search engine would probe IP addresses for publicly shared files and then index them for download by other users.

In 1998, the company developed a web search engine as well, crawling the World Wide Web for links to multimedia audio, video and images.

In 1999 Scour received an investment from Michael Ovitz and the Yucaipa Company, an investment arm of the billionaire Ronald Burkle. Together, the total investment represented a controlling share in the company. After the investment, Scour expanded in terms of product offerings and personnel. The company launched a software product named MyCaster which allowed users to stream audio over the network, optionally mixing microphone input with an MP3 audio file in real time.

Faced with the increasing popularity of Napster, Scour developed a competing peer-to-peer service named Scour Exchange. Unlike Napster, the Scour software supported video and images in addition to just audio files, and integrated all users into one network. The company also tied its web site promotional materials to the Scour Exchange software and attempted to leverage its web and SMB indexes in providing additional search results inside the Scour Exchange application.

In the summer of 2000 the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) brought a lawsuit against Scour, alleging copyright infringement. Despite Scour's declarations of innocence, the company was not able to raise money to continue operations.  They laid off most of its staff in September of that year and filed for bankruptcy protection, to protect the company from the lawsuit, shortly afterwards. The company's assets went up for auction and, following a bidding war, all assets were purchased by Centerspan Communications of Portland, Oregon in late December of that year.

Scour metasearch engine

Scour has since relaunched in early 2008 as a metasearch engine combining the three most used search engines—Google, Yahoo! and Live Search—into a single aggregated search page with social concepts. Scour rewards users with a point for each unique search conducted through the Scour Toolbar or at the website, as well as for commenting or rating a result (to a maximum of three points per search). Points can also be acquired through use of its affiliate program, with a matching 25% commission given to the host of the referral. Once users have accumulated a certain number of points they can be redeemed for a Visa gift card or PayPal money transfer at an implied exchange rate of approximately USD$0.004 (¢) a point. The rate for those not in its target demographic, however, is significantly less—only USD$0.0001 per point. The program was cancelled in the summer of 2009.

Scour redirect virus
Since as early as 2009 a web browsing virus related to Scour surfaced. This virus hijacks the web browser being used and automatically redirects the user to Scour's search engine. Other websites have been reported to be redirected to as well with Scour being the primary one.  The user's browser is redirected to scour.com after clicking a link, usually from Google.

References

File sharing networks
Peer-to-peer file sharing
Internet search engines
Pay-per-click search engines
Social search
Companies established in 1997
Intellectual property law

de:Filesharing

Scour Inc.


A noise barrier (also called a soundwall, noise wall, sound berm, sound barrier, or acoustical barrier) is an exterior structure designed to protect inhabitants of sensitive land use areas from noise pollution. Noise barriers are the most effective method of mitigating roadway, railway, and industrial noise sources –
other than cessation of the source activity or use of source controls.

In the case of surface transportation noise, other methods of reducing the source noise intensity include encouraging the use of hybrid and electric vehicles, improving automobile aerodynamics and tire design, and choosing low-noise paving material. Extensive use of noise barriers began in the United States after noise regulations were introduced in the early 1970s.

History

Noise barriers have been built in the United States since the mid-twentieth century, when vehicular traffic burgeoned. I-680 in Milpitas, California was the first noise barrier. In the late 1960s, analytic acoustical technology emerged to mathematically evaluate the efficacy of a noise barrier design adjacent to a specific roadway. By the 1990s, noise barriers that included use of transparent materials were being designed in Denmark and other western European countries.

The best of these early computer models considered the effects of roadway geometry, topography, vehicle volumes, vehicle speeds, truck mix, road surface type, and micro-meteorology. Several U.S. research groups developed variations of the computer modeling techniques: Caltrans Headquarters in Sacramento, California; the ESL Inc. group in Sunnyvale, California; the Bolt, Beranek and Newman group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a research team at the University of Florida. Possibly the earliest published work that scientifically designed a specific noise barrier was the study for the Foothill Expressway in Los Altos, California.

Numerous case studies across the U.S. soon addressed dozens of different existing and planned highways. Most were commissioned by state highway departments and conducted by one of the four research groups mentioned above. The U.S. National Environmental Policy Act, enacted in 1970, effectively mandated the quantitative analysis of noise pollution from every Federal-Aid Highway Act Project in the country, propelling noise barrier model development and application. With passage of the Noise Control Act of 1972, demand for noise barrier design soared from a host of noise regulation spinoff.

By the late 1970s, more than a dozen research groups in the U.S. were applying similar computer modeling technology and addressing at least 200 different locations for noise barriers each year. , this technology is considered a standard in the evaluation of noise pollution from highways. The nature and accuracy of the computer models used is nearly identical to the original 1970s versions of the technology.

Small and purposeful gaps exist in most noise barriers to allow firefighters to access nearby fire hydrants and pull through fire hoses, which are usually denoted by a sign indicating the nearest cross street, and a pictogram of a fire hydrant, though some hydrant gaps channel the hoses through small culvert channels beneath the wall.

Design
The acoustical science of noise barrier design is based upon treating an airway or railway as a line source. The theory is based upon blockage of sound ray travel toward a particular receptor; however, diffraction of sound must be addressed. Sound waves bend (downward) when they pass an edge, such as the apex of a noise barrier. Barriers that block line of sight of a highway or other source will therefore block more sound. Further complicating matters is the phenomenon of refraction, the bending of sound rays in the presence of an inhomogeneous atmosphere. Wind shear and thermocline produce such inhomogeneities. The sound sources modeled must include engine noise, tire noise, and aerodynamic noise, all of which vary by vehicle type and speed.

The noise barrier may be constructed on private land, on a public right-of-way, or on other public land. Because sound levels are measured using a logarithmic scale, a reduction of nine decibels is equivalent to elimination of approximately 86 percent of the unwanted sound power.

Materials
Several different materials may be used for sound barriers. These materials can include masonry, earthwork (such as earth berm), steel, concrete, wood, plastics, insulating wool, or composites. Walls that are made of absorptive material mitigate sound differently than hard surfaces. It is also possible to make noise barriers with active materials such as solar photovoltaic panels to generate electricity while also reducing traffic noise.

A wall with porous surface material and sound-dampening content material can be absorptive where little or no noise is reflected back towards the source or elsewhere. Hard surfaces such as masonry or concrete are considered to be reflective where most of the noise is reflected back towards the noise source and beyond.

Noise barriers can be effective tools for noise pollution abatement, but certain locations and topographies are not suitable for use of noise barriers. Cost and aesthetics also play a role in the choice of noise barriers. In some cases, a roadway is surrounded by a noise abatement structure or dug into a tunnel using the cut-and-cover method.

Disadvantages
Potential disadvantages of noise barriers include:
 Blocked vision for motorists and rail passengers. Glass elements in noise screens can reduce visual obstruction, but require regular cleaning
 Aesthetic impact on land- and townscape
 An expanded target for graffiti, unsanctioned guerilla advertising, and vandalism
 Creation of spaces hidden from view and social control (e.g. at railway stations)
 Possibility of bird–window collisions for large and clear barriers

Effects on air pollution

Roadside noise barriers have been shown to reduce the near-road air pollution concentration levels. Within 15–50 m from the roadside, air pollution concentration levels at the lee side of the noise barriers may be reduced by up to 50% compared to open road values.

Noise barriers force the pollution plumes coming from the road to move up and over the barrier creating the effect of an elevated source and enhancing vertical dispersion of the plume. The deceleration and the deflection of the initial flow by the noise barrier force the plume to disperse horizontally. A highly turbulent shear zone characterized by slow velocities and a re-circulation cavity is created in the lee of the barrier which further enhances the dispersion; this mixes ambient air with the pollutants downwind behind the barrier.

See also
 Health effects from noise
 Noise control
 Safety barrier
 Soundproofing

References

External links

Environmental engineering
Noise pollution
Noise control
Road infrastructure
Acoustics
Sound
1970s introductions

Noise barrier


Joseph Norman Alessi (born September 20, 1959) is an American classical trombonist with the New York Philharmonic.

Life
Joseph Norman Alessi was born in Detroit, Michigan and attended high school in San Rafael, California. His father, also named Joseph Alessi, was a professional trumpet player, and his mother, Maria (née Leone) sang in the Metropolitan Opera chorus. His younger brother Ralph Alessi is a jazz trumpeter. Displaying notable talent himself from an early age, Alessi graduated early from high school at age 16 and successfully auditioned to join the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.  During this time he appeared as a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony. In 1976-77, following a previously unsuccessful audition, Alessi gained entry to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied until 1980.

Career
During his third year at Curtis, Alessi joined the Philadelphia Orchestra as interim Second Trombone; he later won the job permanently and performed with the orchestra for four seasons. Following one season as Principal Trombone at the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Alessi joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Trombone in the Spring of 1985.

Alessi made his solo debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1990 when he performed the Fantasy for Trombone by Paul Creston. In 1992, he performed with the New York Philharmonic in the world premiere of the Trombone Concerto by Christopher Rouse, which later received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Alessi has since developed an increasingly active solo career, performing throughout the United States and internationally. His discography consists of over 14 full-length albums, in addition to guest appearances on albums by other artists. The New York Philharmonic has released recordings of the Rouse Concerto and the Colorado Symphony, featuring Alessi as soloist. His 1999 recording of Star-Child, by George Crumb, was voted Best Classical Contemporary Composition at the 43rd Grammy Awards in 2001.

Alessi joined the faculty of the Juilliard School in 1986, shortly after joining the New York Philharmonic. The Juilliard trombone studio has since furthered its international reputation as one of the most exemplary trombone college programs, and the Juilliard Trombone Choir has regularly performed with Alessi on his recording projects. Since 1999 Alessi has conducted the Alessi Seminar; a biennial trombone workshop that attracts trombonists from around the world to spend time with him in lessons, masterclasses, and recitals. Several of his past students now occupy senior positions in major orchestras throughout the world.

In recognition of Alessi's immense contributions to the trombone community, he was awarded the 2002 ITA Award, the most prestigious award offered by the International Trombone Association.

Playing style
Joseph Alessi's playing is often noted for refined musicianship, an extraordinarily rich sound quality and complete technical control. The music he chooses to play is mainly romantic, classical, and modern (but mainly tonal) music, while occasionally adding in some jazz playing.

Discography

Solo recordings
 Beyond the End of the Century - with Jonathan Feldman, piano (Summit Records DCD-309)
 Bone-A-Fide Brass - with Imperial Brass (Summit Records DCD-480)
 Illuminations - with the University of New Mexico Wind Symphony (Summit Records DCD-367)
 New York Legends (Cala Records CACD0508)
 Nicola Ferro: Caliente - Latin music (CD Baby)
 Return to Sorrento (Naxos Records 8.570232)
 Slide Area - with Jonathan Feldman, piano (Summit Records d'Note DCD-130) - 1992
 Slide Partners - 100 Years of American Trombone Virtuosity (Dillon Music CD004)
 Trombonastics (Summit Records DCD-314)
 Trombone Recital Tour in Japan 2011 (Pro Arte Musicae PAMP-1047)
 Visions - with Columbus State University Wind Ensemble; Robert Rumbelow, conductor (Summit Records DCD-486)

Recordings as featured soloist
 An American Celebration; Volume II - includes live recording of Rouse Concerto with the New York Philharmonic (New York Philharmonic Special Editions)
 Christopher Rouse: Gorgon - with Colorado Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop, conductor (RCA 09026-68410-2)
 Eric Nathan: Multitude Solitude (Albany Records TROY1586)
 Fandango - with Philip Smith, trumpet; University of New Mexico Wind Symphony (Summit Records DCD-271)
 French Wind Band Classics - with Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra; Timothy Reynish, conductor (Chandos Records CHAN 9897)
 Hora Decima Brass Ensemble (Summit DCD 363)
 Maestro - with Foden's Band; Bramwell Tovey, conductor (Egon CD-SFZ136)
 Melinda Wagner: Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra; Four Settings; Wick - with New York Philharmonic; Lorin Maazel, conductor (Bridge Records 9345)
 Passaggi: Music for Wind Band - with The Hartt School Wind Ensemble; Glen Adsit, conductor (Naxos 8.572109)
 Rock Stars - with University of Florida Wind Symphony; David A. Waybright, conductor (Mark Masters 9409-MCD)
 Song of Exuberance - with Metro Brass; Charles Baker, conductor (Dillon Music DILLONCD001) - 2001
 The 66th Annual Midwest Clinic - In Honor of Our Mentors - 2012 - with Senzoku Gakuen College of Music Blue Tie Wind Ensemble; Masato Ikegami, conductor (Mark Records 50306-MCD)

Ensemble recordings
 Four of a Kind: Music for Trombone Quartet - with Blair Bollinger, Scott Hartman, and Mark Lawrence (Summit Records DCD-123) - 1991
 Four of a Kind 2: Take me out to the ball game - with Blair Bollinger, Scott Hartman, and Mark Lawrence (Summit Records DCD-345) - 2003
 Trombones Under the Tree - with Mark Lawrence, Carl Lenthe, and M. Dee Stewart (Summit Records DCD-146) - 1993
 Collage, the New York Trombone Quartet Plays! - with Edward Neumeister, James E. Pugh, and David Taylor (TNC CD 1441) - 2013
 Just for Fun - World Trombone Quartet with Michel Becquet, Jörgen van Rijen, and Stefan Schulz (arcantus arc 16004) - 2016
 Slide Monsters- with Eijiro Nakagawa, Marshall Gilkes, and Brandt Attema - 2018

Orchestral recordings
 George Crumb: 70th Birthday Album - The Complete Works, Volume 3 - with Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra (Bridge 9095)
 Mahler: Symphonie No. 3 in d minor - with New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon 427 328-2)
 Charles Wuorinen: Choral Works - with Minnesota Orchestra (Koch 37336-2)

References

External links

 Discography of Classical Trombone CDs

American classical trombonists
Male trombonists
Musicians from Detroit
Juilliard School faculty
Curtis Institute of Music alumni
Living people
Musicians from San Rafael, California
1959 births
Educators from Michigan
Classical musicians from California
Classical musicians from Michigan
20th-century classical trombonists
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century classical trombonists
21st-century American male musicians
Summit Records artists

Joseph Alessi


Mason Webb (born May 6, 1986) is an American former professional soccer player.  He currently plays for Surrey United Firefighters. Upon playing midfield in his youth career, Mason has moved to an outside fullback position where he has been regarded as one of the top defenders in the VMSL.  Earning the top point scorer as a defender, netting two goals, and getting nine assists for a total of 13 points, during the 2011 season VMSL season. His accuracy in passing and crossing, his speed going forward and closing down attackers, and his control on and off the ball have led to him to the nickname "the Jag," short for the Jaguar.

Career
He played one year with Snohomish United and served as the team captain in four of his five years with WFC Rangers. As a midfielder, Mason also played four years on the Washington state and US Region IV Olympic Development Program (ODP) teams. In 2004, Mason received a full scholarship to Oregon State University alongside current soccer players, Ryan Johnson (Portland Timbers and Jamaica national football team), Robbie Findley (Real Salt Lake and United States men's national soccer team), Bryan Jordan (San Antonio Scorpions and United States men's national under-23 soccer team), Daniel Leach (Barnet, Dover Athletic, U-17 Australian National Team). He has played alongside twin brother, and former American professional soccer player, Nick Webb for most of his career.

Mason played for the USL-1 League Champions Vancouver Whitecaps in 2008. He took one year off of soccer to finish his undergraduate study at Oregon State while he still had a scholarship, earning his Bachelor of Science in Psychology.  Upon graduation, Mason moved back to Bellingham WA, and has played for 2-time VMSL League and Imperial Cup Champions, the Surrey United Firefighters

Personal life
He is the twin brother of Nick Webb.

Notes

1986 births
Living people
Oregon State Beavers men's soccer players
Vancouver Whitecaps (1986–2010) players
Whitecaps FC Academy players
Sportspeople from Bellingham, Washington
USL First Division players
USL League Two players
American men's soccer players
American expatriate men's soccer players
Expatriate soccer coaches in Canada
American expatriate sportspeople in Canada
Soccer players from Washington (state)
Men's association football defenders
Men's association football midfielders
American soccer coaches

Mason Webb


Julianne Adams (born 11 July 1966) is an Australian wheelchair basketball player.

Personal
Adams was born in Perth on 11 July 1966. As a child, Adams thought that she could perhaps be an Olympic gymnast. From the age of five to seventeen, Adams was involved with competitive gymnastics. During this period, she would often train for over thirty hours a week. While attending university, she worked in gymnastics as a designer of routines for other gymnasts, which could be video taped and compared against national standards. It was while practising routines she had done before that she injured herself falling on her neck, and severed her spinal cord after landing on her back. While she was in the hospital following her accident, she was approached by a wheelchair basketball player.  The sport administrator knew of her background in competitive athletics and recruited her to play wheelchair basketball.  She was not initially interested in participating in the sport, but her physiotherapy program required her to play. After playing the sport for the first time, she fell in love with it and decided to pursue it on a more competitive level.

Competitive career

Wheelchair basketball national team

Adams competed in the Australian women's national wheelchair basketball team's first international tournament, which took place in St. Ettienne, France in 1990, and Australia finished in sixth place. She participated in the training camp for the women's team in preparation for the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics but did not make the final selection. This disillusioned her and she did not compete in the sport for several years. She was selected for the 1996 Atlanta Games squad and moved from Western Australia to Melbourne to be on the national team. Between 1996 and 2000, the government increased funding for Australian Paralympic athletes.  Before this period, Adams and other Paralympians were largely paying their own way to compete, such as the case with Adams paying her own way to compete in France. Getting compensation from government funding of sport organisations meant that she could spend more time working on improving her sporting performance. In the eight months before the 2000 Summer Paralympics, she could be an athlete full-time. She was part of the national squad that beat Canada in a June 2000 tournament.  The victory against the Canadians was the first time Canada had lost a game in a tournament in ten years. She was part of the silver medal-winning Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team at the 2000 Summer Paralympics.

Women's National Wheelchair Basketball League
She was named as one of the Women's National Wheelchair Basketball League's All Star Five in 2001, 2002 and 2003 as a member of the Victorian Wheelies.  In 2008, she was competing for the Western Stars.

Recognition
In 2000, she was given a special medallion by Victoria's Premier Steve Bracks and Community Services Minister Christine Campbell in recognition for her performance at the 2000 Paralympics.  She appeared in the 2000 documentary Screamin' wheelies.

References

Paralympic wheelchair basketball players for Australia
Paralympic silver medalists for Australia
Wheelchair basketball players at the 1996 Summer Paralympics
Wheelchair basketball players at the 2000 Summer Paralympics
Sportswomen from Western Australia
1966 births
Living people
Medalists at the 2000 Summer Paralympics
People with paraplegia
Basketball players from Perth, Western Australia
Paralympic medalists in wheelchair basketball
20th-century Australian women
21st-century Australian women

Julianne Adams


Ko Phi Phi Le or Ko Phi Phi Leh (, , ) is an island of the Phi Phi Archipelago, Andaman Sea. It is in the Krabi province of Thailand and is part of Hat Noppharat Thara–Mu Ko Phi Phi National Park.

Geography
Ko Phi Phi Le,  in area, is the second largest island of the archipelago, the largest being Ko Phi Phi Don. The island consists of a ring of steep limestone hills surrounding two shallow bays, Maya Bay and Loh Samah. During low tide, Maya Bay cannot be accessed directly from the sea via boat, due to shallow waters and coral. Boats must anchor at the deeper Loh Samah, requiring people to walk through a short section of rocks and jungle to reach Maya Bay itself. There is also one large shallow fjord-like inlet called Pi Ley with a small coral reef at the entrance. Maya Bay harbors bioluminescent plankton.

Tourism

Hat Noppharat Thara–Mu Ko Phi Phi National Park as a whole, from October 2015 to May 2016, generated revenues of 362 million baht from 1.2 million tourists, 77 percent foreign. In 2018, the Maya Bay cove and beach closed temporarily, and then indefinitely to visitors because of environmental issues caused by overtourism. The cove reopened to tourists in early 2022, after nearly four years of closure.

Environmental issues
Controversy arose regarding the 1999 production of the film The Beach, released February 2000, due to 20th Century Fox bulldozing and landscaping the natural beach setting of Ko Phi Phi Le to make it more "paradise-like". The production altered some sand dunes and cleared some coconut trees and grass to widen the beach. The production company also removed 5 tonnes of garbage from the beach, left behind by tourists. Offers to restore this along with replanting were not accepted. Fox set aside a fund to reconstruct and return the beach to its natural state. Nevertheless, lawsuits were filed as many believed the damage to the ecosystem is permanent and restoration attempts failed.

The lawsuits dragged on for years. In 2006, Thailand's supreme court upheld an appeals court ruling that the filming had harmed the environment and ordered that damage assessments be made. Defendants in the case included 20th Century Fox and some Thai government officials.

The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation claims to be investigating ways to control tourist numbers amid concerns that visitors are destroying the environment at marine tourism spots. The move was prompted by marine scientist Thon Thamrongnawasawat, who posted photos of large numbers of low-season tourists packed onto small Maya Beach. According to Mr Thon, during low season 2016, about 5,000 tourists a day crowd onto Maya beach, which is just 250 metres long and 15 metres wide. The beach has 14 available toilets. Tourists are worth 1.6 million baht a day to the park. Thon said that state agencies were running campaigns to drum up tourist numbers with no regard for the environment's carrying capacity.

In March 2018, Thai authorities announced that Maya Beach would be closed to tourists for four months to allow it to recover from environmental damage  due to excessive visitor numbers. The beach had been receiving an estimated 5,000 visitors per day, while 200 boats per day set anchor in the bay. Surveys by marine biologists had found that 80 percent of the coral reefs surrounding the bay have been destroyed by boat traffic and pollution; marine life was virtually nonexistent as a result. When Maya Beach reopens visitor numbers will be limited to 2,000 people per day and boats will have to dock outside the bay. The government will spend 100 million baht to construct a boat parking zone and floating pier to receive tourists. It will use an online ticketing system to manage sales and income from entry fees.

In June 2018, work on coral rehabilitation was initiated by the Marine National Park Operation Center 3 based in Trang. The coral rehabilitation system and methodology was obtained from Ocean Quest Global. Local non-governmental organizations like Reef Guardian Thailand also lent their hands in the restoration efforts.

On October 1, 2018, the Thai Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation announced that Maya Beach would be closed indefinitely, because tests performed during the four month closure earlier in the year found the ecological damage to be far more extensive than previously thought. The director of the office, Songtam Suksawang, said that the beach "was completely destroyed, along with the plants which covered it," and that reopening would not occur until the ecosystem "fully recovers to a normal situation."

In December 2018, it was reported that blacktip reef sharks were seen swimming close to Maya Bay's beach. The bay had been closed to tourism in June due to the damage caused by mass tourism. Marine biologists took the return of the sharks as a positive signal that the tourist ban was allowing the ecosystem to heal.

By February 2019, over 15,000 corals from several local species have been propagated in the bay. The system of rehabilitation is fully organic and no artificial or man-made materials were introduced in the coral rehabilitation project. It is the largest coral rehabilitation project in the world that uses only natural means.

The restoration period for the bay was lengthened due to travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Blacktip sharks began breeding there again. In 2022, the bay reopened to tourists, under strict protocols of no boats, no swimming and no more than a one hour visit per person for a limited number of visitors at a time.

See also
 Environmental issues with coral reefs
 List of islands of Thailand
 Southeast Asian coral reefs

References

External links

Geography of Krabi province
Phi Phi Le
Islands of the Strait of Malacca
Places with bioluminescence
Populated places in Krabi province

Ko Phi Phi Le


A poop deck is part of a ship. It is the deck that is the roof of a cabin. It is at the back of a ship. Usually, it is the highest deck. Note that poop comes from French poupe, Latin puppis, which is the name of the stern of a ship.

Ship building

Poop deck


Portakar or navel stones () are traditional ritual stones in Armenia. They are bound up with cult of the fertility goddess, called in ancient Armenia, like the cult of the goddess Anahit.

History
According to Armenian mythology, women who wished to become pregnant must lean their stomach against the stone. Candle lighting was part of the cult. If a woman became pregnant she should come back and make a mark at the stone.

References

Stones

Portakar


The 1959 DDR-Oberliga was the eleventh season of the DDR-Oberliga, the first tier of league football in East Germany. Rather than in the traditional autumn-spring format the Oberliga played for six seasons from 1955 to 1960 in the calendar year format, modelled on the system used in the Soviet Union. From 1961–62 onwards the league returned to its traditional format.

The league was contested by fourteen teams. SC Wismut Karl-Marx-Stadt, incidentally based at Aue and not Karl-Marx-Stadt, won the championship, the club's last of three national East German championships. On the strength of the 1959 title Wismut qualified for the 1960–61 European Cup where the club was knocked out by SK Rapid Wien in the first round. League runners-up ASK Vorwärts Berlin qualified for the 1960–61 European Cup Winners' Cup instead of FDGB-Pokal winner SC Dynamo Berlin and was knocked out by Rudá Hvězda Brno in the preliminary round.

Bernd Bauchspieß of Chemie Zeitz was the league's top scorer with 18 goals.

Table
The 1959 season saw two newly promoted clubs, BSG Lokomotive Stendal and Chemie Zeitz.

Results

References

Sources

External links
 Das Deutsche Fussball Archiv  Historic German league tables

1959 domestic association football leagues
1959
Ober
Ober
Ober

1959 DDR-Oberliga


A national monument is a monument constructed in order to commemorate something of importance to national heritage. The term may also refer to a specific monument status, such as a national heritage site, by reason of their cultural importance rather than age respectively.

National monument status is usually granted to colossal symbols of national identity.

Related pages
Cultural identity

National symbols

National monument