The Space Safety Programme, formerly the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme, is the European Space Agency's (ESA) initiative to monitor hazards from space, determine their risk, make this data available to the appropriate authorities and where possible, mitigate the threat.

The SSA Programme was designed to support Europe's independent space access and utilization through the timely and accurate information delivery regarding the space environment, particularly hazards to both in-orbit and ground infrastructure. In 2019 it evolved into the present Space Safety Programme with an expanded focus, also including missions and activities to mitigate and prevent dangers from space. The programme is split into four main segments:
 Space weather: monitoring the Sun, the solar wind, and in Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere, that can affect spaceborne and ground-based infrastructure or endanger human life or health. This data is processed by the Space Weather Service Network and made available freely via the Space Weather Portal. Upcoming missions such as Vigil will contribute to this monitoring system, allowing for timely warnings.
 Planetary Defence: detecting natural objects, such as asteroids and comets, which can potentially impact Earth,gathering observations from telescopes around the world and plotting their path through the sky to calculate the impact risk, as well as coordinating with the international community the response to a possible impactor, through groups such as the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) and the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG). ESA will soon launch the Hera mission, a follow-up to NASA's DART mission which performed the first kinetic impact test of Planetary Defence on 26 September 2022. Hera will rendezvous with the impacted Didymos binary asteroid system to study the crater formed, the dust plume released and more.
 Space debris: Tracking active and inactive satellites and space debris to better understand the debris environment; providing data, analysis and advice to spacecraft engineers to perform collision avoidance manoeuvres as well as developing a system of automated collision avoidance. The space debris office also works with the international community on norms and standards for the sustainable future of space.
 Clean Space: systematically considering the entire life-cycle of space activities, from the early stages of conceptual design to the mission's end of life – and even beyond, to removal of space debris. ESA Clean Space includes EcoDesign, embedding environmental sustainability within space mission design; Management of end-of-life, developing technologies to prevent the creation of future debris; in-orbit servicing/active debris removal, removing spacecraft from orbit and demonstrating in-orbit servicing of spacecraft. The first mission to remove a piece of space debris from orbit will be the ESA-commissioned Clearspace-1.

The Space Safety programme is being implemented as an optional ESA programme with financial participation by 14 Member States. The programme started in 2009 and its mandate was extended until 2019. The second phase of the programme received €46.5 million for the 2013–2016 period.

Space weather segment
The main objective of the space weather segment (SWE) is to detect and forecast of space weather events, avoid adverse effect on European space assets and ground-based infrastructure. To achieve that, the segment will focus on delivery of real-time space weather information, forecasts and warnings, supported by a data archive, applications and services. Assets currently available for the segment consist of multiple ground-based and spaceborne sensors monitoring the Sun, solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere. These include the PROBA2 satellite and the Kanzelhoehe Solar Observatory. The segment is jointly coordinated by the SWE Data Centre located at the ESTRACK Redu Station and the SSA Space Weather Coordination Centre (SSCC), both in Belgium.

Near-Earth object segment
The near-Earth object segment aims to deliver monitoring and warning of potential Earth impactors and tracking of newly discovered objects. The segment's current assets consist of a mixture of professional and amateur telescopes, including the OGS Telescope, that are supported by tracking databases. The plans are to create a fully integrated system supporting alerts for civil authorities, including the NEOSTEL flyeye telescope due for completion in 2020. The segment is operated by the SSA NEO Coordination Centre located at the ESA Centre for Earth Observation, Italy.

Space surveillance and tracking segment
The SST segment's primary goal is the detection, cataloguing and orbit prediction of objects orbiting the Earth. It is part of an effort to avoid collisions between orbiting satellites and debris, provide safe reentries, detect on-orbit explosions, assist missions at launch, deployment and end-of-life and overall reduce cost of space access. The segment currently relies on existing European radar and optical systems. Some of its assets are existing radio and optical telescopes, with now serving a secondary role for tracking space debris.

The radar-based SST assets are split into two categories: surveillance and tracking systems. SSA SST radar systems include:
 Surveillance
 Northern Cross transient radio telescope located at the Medicina Radio Observatory, serving as a receiver in bistatic radar system
 RAF Fylingdales's three face AN/FPS-132 Upgraded Early Warning phased array radar, serving as a monostatic system
 French Air Force bistatic radar-based space surveillance system GRAVES
 Tracking
 CAMRa 25-meter steerable parabolic dish S-band radar located at the Chilbolton Observatory
 EISCAT scatter radar capable of 3D monitoring of the atmosphere and ionosphere
 TIRA 34-meter parabolic dish with an L-band tracking radar and a Ku-band imaging radar

SSA SST optical surveillance and tracking assets include:
 Surveillance
 OLS telescope at the Observatorio Astronómico de Mallorca
 Starbrook and Starbrook north located at RAF Troodos
 Fabra-ROA telescope (TFRM) at Serra del Montsec
 ZimSMART robotic telescope
 Tracking
 Satellite laser ranging station Graz at Lustbühel Observatory
 Matera Laser Ranging Observatory (MLRO) in Italy
 OGS Telescope at the Teide Observatory
 TAROT and TAROT-South robotic telescope at the La Silla Observatory
 ZIMLAT telescope at the Zimmerwald Observatory
 ESA Flyeye Telescope at Sicily, Italy

As part of the SSA Programme new, dedicated surveillance radar supported by optical sensors systems will be developed. The segment is coordinated by the Space Surveillance Test & Validation (SSTC) Centre located at the ESAC in Spain.

Close approaches of Near-Earth objects and near earth asteroids are reported by ESA through the space situational awareness center.

See also
 Kessler syndrome
 Space surveillance
 United States Space Surveillance Network

References

External links
 Official Website
 Space Surveillance and Tracking Centre

European Space Agency programmes
Radar networks
Environmental science
Near-Earth object tracking
Space debris

Space Situational Awareness Programme


Herath Mudiyanselage Charitha Malinga Bandara (born 31 December 1979), commonly known as Malinga Bandara, is a former Sri Lankan cricketer, who played all formats. He is a right-handed batsman and also bowls legbreaks. He studied at the Kalutara Vidyalaya.

Domestic career
In Sri Lankan domestic cricket, Bandara played for a variety of sides. Having spent the previous two summers at Normandy CC of the Surrey Championship, turning out in 55 Games for the club, he also played county cricket for English county Gloucestershire during the 2005 season, he was so successful with the ball that he was named "Gloucestershire Player of the Season".  He joined Kent for the 2010 season.

International career
Bandara made his Test debut against New Zealand in 1998 but performed poorly and was subsequently dropped. A useful performance against England 'A' in March 2005 (securing match-figures of eleven for 126) resulted in a Test recall in December. He finished the three-Test series against India with nine wickets at an average of 32.88.

Bandara made his ODI debut against New Zealand in January 2006 at Wellington and was highly successful in the tournament, taking fourteen wickets at an average of 23.92, a strike rate of 29.2, and an economy rate of 4.90, bettering his more famous spin twin Muttiah Muralitharan. He took his best bowling figures of four for 31 against South Africa in the final VB Series round robin match at the Bellerive Oval, Hobart, on 7 February 2006. This performance ensured Sri Lanka's place in the finals against Australia.

He was subsequently ignored for Pakistan's tour of Sri Lanka in 2005/06 and missed out on the test series in England in 2006.

References

External links

1979 births
Basnahira South cricketers
Galle Cricket Club cricketers
Gloucestershire cricketers
Living people
Nondescripts Cricket Club cricketers
Sri Lanka One Day International cricketers
Sri Lanka Test cricketers
Sri Lanka Twenty20 International cricketers
Sri Lankan cricketers
Tamil Union Cricket and Athletic Club cricketers
Kent cricketers
Wayamba cricketers
Uva cricketers
Ruhuna cricketers
Cricketers at the 2010 Asian Games
Asian Games competitors for Sri Lanka
People from Kalutara
Cricketers from Western Province, Sri Lanka

Malinga Bandara


Kurt Frank Becker (born December 22, 1958) is a former American football guard. He played college football  at the University of Michigan from 1978 to 1981, was selected as a first-team All-American in 1981, and played professional football in the National Football League (NFL) for the Chicago Bears (1982-1988, 1990) and the Los Angeles Rams (1989).

Early years
Becker was born in Aurora, Illinois, in 1958.  He attended East Aurora High School in suburban Chicago.

University of Michigan
Becker enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1977 and played college football as an offensive guard for Bo Schembechler's Michigan Wolverines football teams from 1978 to 1981.  He started 36 consecutive games between 1979 and 1981. He was selected as a first-team player on both the 1980 and 1981 All-Big Ten Conference football teams. As a senior, he was also Michigan's co-captain and a Lombardi Award finalist, and was selected by the Associated Press, Newspaper Enterprise Association, and American Football Coaches Association as a first-team player on the 1981 College Football All-America Team.

Professional football
Becker was selected by the Chicago Bears in the sixth round (146th overall pick) of the 1982 NFL Draft. He played at the guard position for the Chicago Bears from 1982 to 1988.  He was the Bears' starting right guard in 1983 and 1984, appearing in 32 games, 30 as a starter, during those two seasons. In 1986, he won the Super Bowl with the Bears. He played for the Los Angeles Rams for two games during the 1989 NFL season before returning to the Bears for 10 games as a backup in 1990.

Later years
As of 2010, Becker was the associate head coach for Marmion Academy, a college-prep academy in Aurora. From 2013-2017, he was the head coach for the East Aurora High School football program.

References

1958 births
Living people
All-American college football players
American football offensive guards
Chicago Bears players
Los Angeles Rams players
Michigan Wolverines football players
Players of American football from Aurora, Illinois

Kurt Becker


HNoMS King Haakon VII was a Royal Norwegian Navy escort ship during World War II, named after King Haakon VII of Norway. She was given to the RNoN by the United States on 16 September 1942, in the presence of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Norwegian Crown Princess Märtha.

Handover ceremony
The original intention of the US authorities had been to hand over the warship to the exiled Norwegians on 3 August 1942, on the 70th birthday of King Haakon VII. This plan could however not be carried out as Crown Princess Märtha was going spend that day with her father-in-law the King in London and the handover date was postponed.

During the handover ceremony Roosevelt delivered his famous "Look to Norway" - speech.

King Haakon VII was formerly part of the U.S. Navy as USS PC 467. The ship was built in Neponset, Massachusetts where she was launched on 29 April 1942.

Norwegian service
HNoMS King Haakon VII, under her first commander kapteinløytnant (Lieutenant) Leif R. Lund, was first based at Halifax. Later on she was moved to Red Bay in Newfoundland and Labrador. In November 1942 she took part in the escorting of eastbound transatlantic convoy SC-108. This trip showed that the small vessel was not sturdy enough for transatlantic escorting and after a spell in the UK she relocated to St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador in May 1943. For the rest of World War II King Haakon VII escorted convoys on the coast of North and Central America, from the coast of Labrador to the Caribbean. During her war service King Haakon VII sailed  and escorted 79 convoys without accidents. No men were lost or seriously injured on King Haakon VII during the war years. From 3 May to 2 June 1945 King Haakon VII was at Key West for maintenance and repairs, this delaying her the start of her return voyage to Norway until 4 June. On 26 June 1945 King Haakon VII arrived at the southern Norwegian port of Kristiansand.

Decommissioning and sale
She was decommissioned on 1 February 1951 and laid up in Trondheim. On 26 June 1952 the Norwegian Parliament decided that King Haakon VII was to be decommissioned and sold off. In August 1953 she was sold to Rogaland Sjøguttskole () for .

Footnotes

Literature

PC-461-class submarine chasers of the Royal Norwegian Navy
Ships transferred from the United States Navy to the Royal Norwegian Navy
World War II patrol vessels of Norway
1942 ships
Ships built in Boston
PC-467

HNoMS King Haakon VII


Tomasz Mędrzak (born December 18, 1954 in Łódź, Poland), was a teenage star of the 1973 In Desert and Wilderness movie and miniseries (1973), where he played Staś Tarkowski, having Monika Rosca as young partner. He is the son of Stefania Mędrzak.

He later did acting studies and has played a few movie roles. But he has always been focused rather on theatre. In 1996, he has been an art director of the Ochota Theater in Warsaw. He didn't really want to play Staś. He went to the auditions because he was interested in technical aspects of cinematography. Some time after being chosen, he wanted to decline, but the wife of the movie's director persuaded him to stay.

Filmography

References

External links

1954 births
Living people
Polish male actors
Polish male child actors

Tomasz Mędrzak


Captain Corelli's Mandolin, released simultaneously in the United States as Corelli's Mandolin, is a 1994 novel by the British writer Louis de Bernières, set on the Greek island of Cephalonia during the Italian and German occupation of the Second World War.

The main characters are Antonio Corelli, an Italian army captain, and Pelagia, the daughter of the local physician, Dr Iannis. An important event in the novel is the massacre of Italian troops by the Germans in September 1943—the Italian Acqui Division had refused to surrender and had fought the Germans for nine days before running out of ammunition. Some 1,500 Italian soldiers died in the fighting; 5,000 were massacred after surrendering, and the rest were shipped to Germany, of whom 3,000 drowned when the ship carrying them hit a mine.

In 2003, the novel was listed at number 19 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

Synopsis

The story begins with Dr. Iannis, a multilingual doctor with an established practice on the Greek island of Cephalonia. Iannis lives with his daughter Pelagia; Pelagia's mother died of tuberculosis. Pelagia, now a young woman, is headstrong and intelligent, and has learned about medicine by observing her father.

Pelagia meets a young fisherman named Mandras, and they become engaged. War has been declared, and Mandras decides to go fight at the front. Pelagia's letters to him go unanswered.

Meanwhile, Carlo Guercio fights among the Italian forces that invade Albania, and sees his beloved friend, Francesco,  with whom he is in love,  shot by the Greek army during the Greco-Italian War.

In 1941, Italian and German soldiers are posted to Cephalonia, where they are ostracized by the locals. Pelagia is determined to hate them, especially when a jovial young captain by the name of Antonio Corelli is domiciled with her. Mandras comes home from the war, injured and filthy, and as Pelagia nurses him she realizes she no longer loves him. Mandras leaves for the Greek mainland, where he joins the communist partisan organisation ELAS. ELAS is cruel towards the civilian population and more frequently attacks other partisan groups for being ideologically different than the Axis' occupying forces.

After Mussolini loses power, Italy joins forces with the Allies. The Italians who occupy Greece thus are freed from their duties. After defeating the Italian division, the German soldiers on Cephalonia turn on them, and order a massive execution. Corelli's life is saved by Carlo Guercio, who shields him with his body when they face execution by firing squad. Guercio dies, and the wounded Corelli is aided by a Greek back to Pelagia's house. Corelli has to stay hidden from the Germans, whose orders are to kill any surviving Italians.

As soon as he is well enough, Corelli escapes to Italy, promising Pelagia that he will return as soon as the war ends and then they will be married. Corelli leaves Antonia, his mandolin, with Pelagia for safekeeping.

The Germans become brutal but the war eventually ends. Communists take over the island for a period of time (and large parts of Greece in general) and mistreat the population. Dr Iannis is considered an intellectual, therefore suspect, and is sent to a camp along with some of his friends who protest against his treatment. Mandras returns, indoctrinated with Communist ideologies and having learned to read. He has read Pelagia's letters and knows that she does not love him, so he tries to rape her. This is prevented by the fact that Pelagia is armed, and by intervention of Mandras' mother who realizes what almost happened and repudiates her own son. Ashamed, he commits suicide. Mandras' mother comforts Pelagia and for the remainder of her life, remains close with Pelagia.

Some time after, a baby girl is left on Pelagia's doorstep, whom Pelagia adopts. Dr Iannis comes home, traumatised. Life goes on in Cephalonia, though interrupted by the 1953 Ionian earthquake, in which Iannis dies.

Corelli does not return, though Pelagia is convinced she sees his ghost. The baby girl, whom Pelagia has named Antonia, grows up and marries. Antonia later has a son who is named Iannis in honor of the doctor.

Many years later, an old man visits Pelagia. It is Antonio Corelli, now a famous mandolin player. He explains that he did not visit before because, having seen her with baby Antonia on her doorstep and believing her to be married, he was bitter. The novel ends on a happy note.

Major themes
Captain Corelli's Mandolin explores many varieties of love. We see the initial lust-based love between Pelagia and Mandras, which burns out as a result of the war, and the change it prompts in both of them. Corelli and Pelagia's slow-developing love is the central focus of the novel. Love is described by Dr Iannis as "what is left when the passion has gone", and it certainly appears that this criterion is fulfilled by the love of Corelli and Pelagia. The paternal love of Iannis for Pelagia is also strong and is heavily compared with that of Corelli.

The theme of music is predominant, offering a direct contrast to the horror and destruction that the war brings and showing how something beautiful can arise from something horrible.

The war is described in graphic detail, particularly the death of Francesco. It is responsible for the fall of Mandras and Weber, the deaths of Carlo and Francesco, and the separation of Pelagia and Corelli.

Throughout the novel, Bernières takes a harsh view of all forms of totalitarianism, condemning Fascism, Nazism, and Communism alike. Bernières himself described this as a novel about "what happens to the little people when megalomaniacs get busy."

Another theme of the novel is the study of history. Dr Iannis spends much of his spare time attempting to write a history of Cephalonia, but he often finds his personal feelings and biases running through whatever he writes. There is also a strong feeling against 'professional' history, which is suggested by Carlo Guercio's statement that "I know that if we [the Axis] win then there will be stories about mass graves in London and vice versa". This is reinforced by a quotation from Bernières which says that: "history ought to be made up of the stories of ordinary people only." From this viewpoint, it can be seen that Bernières is very much a revisionist historian, considering social history superior to political history.

Bernières takes an ambiguous attitude towards heroism and villainy in the novel: many of the characters, despite committing atrocities, are viewed as human victims of bad circumstances. For example, the German character Günter Weber receives a great degree of sympathy from the writer, even though he fully engages with the Nazi ideology and is guilty of taking part in the killing of an entire Italian division. Despite having become friends with many of the men, Weber must follow orders. Similarly, Mandras is guilty of murder, torture, and rape, yet the author portrays him sympathetically: "just another life tarnished... by war."

References
Near the end of the novel, in Chapter 62, Pelagia receives a photograph from Günter Weber and written on the back is a passage in German from Goethe's Faust, "Gretchen am Spinnrad," which is also a popular German Lied, set to music by Schubert. It reads:
Meine Ruh ist hin,
Mein Herz ist schwer,
Ich finde sie nimmer
und nimmermehr.

Which translates as:
My peace is gone,
My heart is sore [lit. "heavy"],
I will find it never
and nevermore.

Real story and precedents
Bernières has denied that the character of Corelli is based on Amos Pampaloni who was then an Italian artillery captain in Cephalonia, despite the many similarities in their stories. Pampaloni survived execution, joined the Greek People's Liberation Army, the Partisans in the Greek civil war, and fought with them in Epirus for fourteen months. Pampaloni was interviewed by The Guardian newspaper in 2000 and expressed the view that the novel misrepresented the Greek partisan movement.

The novel also shows some similarities to Bandiera bianca a Cefalonia, a novel by Marcello Venturi published in 1963, translated in English as The White Flag (1969).

Reception
The Orlando Sentinel called Corelli's Mandolin a "radically traditionalist" novel, "a good nourishing tale full of true things, historical and psychological, spiced with opinion and contrariness, with not one dollop of regard for artistic fashion."

The Cleveland Plain Dealer praised the multiple emotional levels of the novel, remarking, "Like Puccini, de Bernières can evoke golden narrative, full of both pain and gladness."

Gene Hyde wrote, "To defy Sisyphus and rebel against the absurd, especially in the face of war, is an excruciatingly difficult and noble task. The beauty of Bernières' unique and deeply moving novel is his insistence that our hope lies in these seemingly quixotic impulses."

Awards
 1995 – Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book
 2003 – 19th place on The Big Read

Adaptations

Radio
The novel was adapted as four 45-minute radio plays from 17–20 September 2007 on BBC Radio 4, having been chosen as a popular "Book of the Week" on the same station some years earlier. The episode titles were "A Pea in the Ear," "Invasion of the Italians," "Looking for Snails" and "Earthquake." It was narrated by Tom Goodman-Hill, with Celia Meiras as Pelagia, Stephen Greif as Dr Iannis, Daniel Philpott as Corelli. The mandolin music for it was composed and performed by Alison Stephens, and the production was produced and directed by David Hunter. Other cast members included:
Carlo – Anthony Psaila
Mandras – Chris Pavlo
Velisarios – Alexi Kaye Campbell
Father Arsenios – Alex Zorbas
Lemoni – Ania Gordon
Drosoula – Anna Savva
Hector – Nitin Ganatra
Officer – Simon Treves

Film

A film version of Captain Corelli's Mandolin was released in 2001, with Nicolas Cage as the Italian Captain Corelli, John Hurt as Dr Iannis, and Penélope Cruz as his daughter, Pelagia. The film, directed by John Madden, also starred Christian Bale and Irene Papas.

Theatre
In 2011, the Mercury Theatre in Colchester, England, and the Kote Marjanishvili Theatre of Tbilisi, Georgia, produced an adaptation of the novel written by Mike Maran and directed by Levan Tsuladze. This production combined live actors and puppetry. It had its premiere in Georgia at the Tbilisi International Festival in October 2011, before transferring to the Mercury.

A new stage adaptation by Rona Munro and directed by Melly Still previews at the Leicester Curve from 13 to 20 April 2019 before opening at the Rose Theatre, Kingston (23 April to 12 May), and touring to Theatre Royal, Bath (14 to 18 May), Birmingham Repertory Theatre (29 May to 15 June), King's Theatre, Edinburgh (18 to 22 June) and Theatre Royal, Glasgow (25 to 29 June). Following its UK tour, the production transferred to London's West End at the Harold Pinter Theatre from 4 July to 31 August 2019 starring Alex Mugnaioni as Captain Antonio Corelli and Madison Clare as Pelagia.

References

External links

1994 British novels
British novels adapted into films
British novels adapted into plays
Cephalonia
Cultural depictions of Benito Mussolini
English novels
Italian occupation of Greece during World War II
Novels adapted into radio programs
Novels by Louis de Bernières
Novels set in Greece during World War II
Novels set on islands
Secker & Warburg books

Captain Corelli's Mandolin


Paddington Meadows is a Local Nature Reserve in Warrington, Cheshire. The land was donated to Warrington Borough council in 1995. It was designated in November 2005.

The site comprises almost 30 hectares of meadow grassland occupying the area to the south of Manchester Road (the A57) and to the north of the Mersey. It is five minutes by car from Warrington town centre.  There is ongoing active management of the hedgerows which include thinning and laying of the various edges. Hawthorns also grow in an orchard area rather than the more useful hedge arrangement. There are various paths around the perimeter and crossing the meadows that are open and closed at various times dependent on conservation projects.

On occasion the members of the Warrington rowing club can be seen using the Mersey.

Rare breed longhorn cattle are grazed on the site during the summer months and they play a vital role in keeping the grass short, which in turn encourages ground nesting birds such as skylark. A wild flower meadow has been created on one of the fields.

The site attracts flocks of fieldfares and redwings, which feed on the berries of some of the oldest hawthorn hedges in the Cheshire area.

A major project was started in 2009 to clean up the Woolston new cut canal that runs along the northern edge of the meadows. Invasive flora is being cut back and long-term projects are attempting to remove pollution and toxicants from the silt in the canal.

References

External links
Warrington Council website

Local Nature Reserves in Cheshire
Tourist attractions in Cheshire

Paddington Meadows


Ozoz Sokoh (born 1976) is a Nigerian culinary writer, food historian, recipe developer, and culinary anthropologist. She has organized events around Nigerian foodways, including the first World Jollof Day in 2017.

Early life and education
Sokoh was born in 1976 in Warri, on the southern coast of Nigeria. She attended the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria for 3 years, studying Urban and Regional Planning, and left in 1997. She moved to the United Kingdom where she earned a degree in Geology from the University of Liverpool. During her time in the UK, she began cooking Nigerian food to feel closer to home. According to Sokoh, she created her first recipe in 1998 while living and going to school in the UK.

Career
After graduating from the University of Liverpool, Sokoh worked as a geologist. She began a culinary blog, Kitchen Butterfly, and blogged about Nigerian food while she lived and worked in the Netherlands from 2007 to 2011. She developed recipes.

Upon her return to Nigeria in 2011, she began researching familiar Nigerian ingredients and their uses from the perspective of culinary anthropology. She researched and presented a documentary on Agege bread, a staple in Nigeria, for 'For Africans'.

In 2018 Sokoh created Feast Afrique, an online curated collection of books relating to the culinary history of West Africa and its diaspora. This collection includes a digital library of 240+ West African and diasporic culinary and literary resources. She has researched and written about the connections between the foods of West Africa and the foods of nations that engaged in the slave trade.

She organized the first World Jollof Day in 2017. The festival is held to celebrate Jollof rice, a dish that is ubiquitous in West Africa and the region's best known dish worldwide. She has created 'Eat The Book' experiences, celebrating African food from African writing by creating the dishes at literary and arts festivals. She was the co-organiser of Abori Food System Design Summit, which was held at Alliance Française, Lagos in 2019 and featured food exhibitions, discussions and a farmer's market.

In 2020, while a Forecast mentee, Sokoh produced Coast to Coast, a documentary about the spread of West African food through the diaspora.

Personal life
As of 2021 Sokoh lived in Ontario, Canada. She has children.

References

Living people
1976 births
Nigerian women writers
Nigerian food writers
Nigerian cuisine
Culinary arts
Obafemi Awolowo University alumni
Alumni of the University of Liverpool
People from Warri

Ozoz Sokoh


Coloboma of optic nerve is a rare defect of the optic nerve that causes moderate to severe visual field defects.

Coloboma of the optic nerve is a congenital anomaly of the optic disc in which there is a defect of the inferior aspect of the optic nerve. The issue stems from incomplete closure of the embryonic fissure while in utero. A varying amount of glial tissue typically fills the defect, manifests as a white mass.

Signs and symptoms
Vision in the affected eye is impaired, the degree of which depends on the size of the defect, and typically affects the visual field more than visual acuity. Additionally, there is an increased risk of serous retinal detachment, manifesting in 1/3 of patients. If retinal detachment does occur, it is usually not correctable and all sight is lost in the affected area of the eye, which may or may not involve the macula.

Diagnosis
The first noticeable signs of the syndrome usually do not appear until after the first twelve months of the child's life. The child usually has severe balance issues as he or she learns to sit or walk, often leaning or tilting the head toward the good eye to correct the brain's skewed perception of the world. Often the child will fall in the same direction while walking or run into objects that are placed on his or her blind side. Additionally, family members may notice a white reflex in the pupil of an affected child instead of the normal red reflex when taking photographs. The presence of this phenomenon is dependent on the degree of the coloboma, with larger colobomas more likely to manifest this particular phenomenon.

This anomaly must be confirmed through pupillary dilation and examination of the optic disc, as the symptoms alone do not constitute a diagnosis.

People with optic nerve colobomas live relatively normal lives. Although non-prescription glasses should be worn for eye protection, this syndrome does not usually prevent the individual from living a normal life, driving cars, playing sports, reading, etc. Certain activities, however, may be more difficult for patients with optic nerve colobomas due to a compromised view of the world. Like most other eye conditions, a diagnosis of optic nerve coloboma precludes a person from certain occupations.

Comparison with morning glory disc anomaly
Although both optic nerve colobomas and morning glory disc anomaly (MGDA) involve mutations of the PAX6 gene, these two separate diseases represent two distinct causes. An optic nerve coloboma is easily differentiated from morning glory anomaly. Colobomas affect only the inferior aspect of the nerve as it represents an incomplete closure of the embryonic fissure, whereas MGDA encompasses all aspects of the nerve and represents more generally a dysgenesis of the mesoderm.

Management

See also
 Coloboma
 Visual field defect
 Blindness
 Cataract

References

External links

Eye diseases

Coloboma of optic nerve


Gregg Thompson (born August 4, 1960) is an American former soccer player. He played as a defender who was the 1983 North American Soccer League Rookie of the Year. He was also voted team MVP (by his teammates) and the most Popular Player (by the fans) during his rookie year while playing for the Tampa Bay Rowdies. He spent two seasons in the NASL and four in the Major Indoor Soccer League. He was a member of the U.S. National Team from 1984 to 1986 and participated in the 1984 Summer Olympics. Thompson earned twelve caps with the United States national team.

High school and college
Thompson spent his early youth in California before moving to Stillwater, Minnesota when he was fourteen.  He became a star athlete at Stillwater High School.  His high school did not have a soccer team when he moved to Minnesota, so Thompson played football and ran track while playing soccer with local youth clubs.  He was an outstanding running back, averaging 8.9 yards per carry over his high school career while breaking over 40 football records at Stillwater High School.  Thompson was fast running the 40 yard dash in 4.4 seconds and strong benching over 350 lbs. (he weighed 165 pounds)  He earned All State honors and received football athletic scholarship offers from the University of Colorado, University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, numerous Division II schools and all of the Ivy League programs.

His biggest claim to fame was his accomplishments during the state semi-final game against Columbia Heights.  There was 30 seconds remaining on the clock, Stillwater was losing the game 14-13 and the ball was 37 yards away from the goalpost.  Stillwater decided to attempt a field goal.  Thompson was the field goal kicker as well.  Thompson was successful in making the 37 yard field goal but there was a penalty on the play.  The refs moved the ball back 5 yards.  Thompson was again successful in kicking a 42-yard field goal to win the game.  It was later found out that Thompson completely tore his ACL and meniscus on the fifth play of the game; nevertheless, his final game stats included throwing a touchdown pass, rushing for 125 yards and kicking the game-winning field goal.

Thompson also went to the state finals in track his senior year long jumping over 22' and triple jumping nearly 47'. (his first triple jump as a junior in high school was the fifth best ever recorded in the state at the time) While he was one of the best football players to come out of the state of Minnesota, he preferred soccer and chose to attend Indiana University when that school offered him an athletic scholarship to play soccer.  Thompson was voted the Minnesota High School Athlete of the Year when he graduated from Stillwater in 1978.

Thompson joined the Hoosiers in 1978.  He did not play in 1979 because of a knee injury, but became a regular through the 1980–1982 seasons.  In 1982, he captained Indiana as it ran to the NCAA championship game.  In that game, Indiana went up against Duke University and its top defenseman Joe Ulrich.  Thompson scored the first goal, but Duke replied and the game ended tied at one all.  The game was in its eighth overtime when Ulrich fouled Thompson just outside the box.  Thompson  replied with a swerving free kick which found the net, giving Indiana its first national title.  Thompson would come in second in the balloting for the Hermann Trophy that year, losing to Ulrich.

In 2007, Thompson was inducted into the Indiana University Hall of Fame.  One of only seven soccer players to be inducted into the IU Hall of Fame.

Professional
The Los Angeles Lazers of Major Indoor Soccer League selected Thompson with the number one selection in the 1983 MISL Draft.  Tampa Bay Rowdies of the North American Soccer League selected Thompson as the first pick in the 1983 NASL college draft.  He elected to sign with the Rowdies and was named the 1983 NASL Rookie of the Year after playing thirty games.  Following the 1984 NASL season, the league collapsed.  After the collapse of the NASL, the Rowdies traded Thompson to the Minnesota Strikers of Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL).  He remained with the Strikers through the 1987–1988 MISL season before retiring.

National and Olympic teams
At the end of the 1983 NASL season, Thompson joined the U.S. Olympic team as it prepared for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.  Thompson played all three games for the U.S. at the Olympics, including scoring the U.S. goal in its 1–1 tie with Egypt in front of 85,000 people at Stanford Stadium.  The U.S. finished the first round at 1–1–1 and failed to qualify for the second round.

Even before the Olympic games, Thompson had earned his first cap with the U.S. national team in a May 20, 1984 scoreless tie with Italy.  He would go on to play a total of 12 times for the full national team between 1984 and 1985, including several qualification matches for the 1986 FIFA World Cup.  His last national team game came in the May 31, 1985 debacle in Torrance, California when the U.S. lost to Costa Rica.  That loss cost the U.S. a spot in the final round of qualifications.

Post-playing career
Thompson is a partner in a real estate group located in Roseville, CA and coaches youth soccer. He has 4 children (3 boys & a girl)  Ty (the oldest) started all four years at Stanford.  During his senior year, captained Stanford to their first NCAA Division 1 Championship, Tanner played 4 years at Indiana University.  He was All-American during his sophomore, junior and senior year, Tommy was signed as a homegrown player by the San Jose Earthquakes after his freshman year at Indiana University and is a starter for the Earthquakes, Tatum (daughter) is his favorite soccer player of all time.

References

External links
 NASL/MISL stats

Living people
1961 births
Indiana Hoosiers men's soccer players
North American Soccer League (1968–1984) players
North American Soccer League (1968–1984) indoor players
Tampa Bay Rowdies (1975–1993) players
Tampa Bay Rowdies draft picks
Major Indoor Soccer League (1978–1992) players
Minnesota Strikers (MISL) players
United States men's international soccer players
Olympic soccer players for the United States
Footballers at the 1984 Summer Olympics
American soccer coaches
Soccer players from San Jose, California
American men's soccer players
Men's association football defenders

Gregg Thompson


Elida Local Schools is a school district that serves the villages of Elida, Gomer, and surrounding areas in Allen County, Ohio, United States.  The Elida School District was started in 1868. The district includes Elida High School, Elida Middle School, Elida Elementary School, and the Elida Central Office.  The present high school opened for the 2011–2012 school year.  The previous high school building was erected in 1914 with additions in 1956 and 1959.  Gomer School merged with Elida Local School District in 1969 and closed at the end of the 2011–2012 school year, just shy of its one hundredth year in 2014.  The Elida Field House was constructed in 1973 at the high school site.  The elementary was built in 1962 and a new wing was added in 1967.  The building housed kindergarten through sixth grade students, but currently houses students in kindergarten through fourth grade.  The middle school opened in 1981 and is home to fifth through eighth grade.  Prior to the middle school opening, the high school contained grades seven through twelve.

The High School and Middle School obtained a rating of Excellent, while the Elementary School obtained a grade of Effective. Elida also has a Choir and Band program.

External links
 Elida Local Schools
 Elida Local Schools on Facebook

References

School districts in Ohio
Education in Allen County, Ohio
1868 establishments in Ohio
School districts established in 1868

Elida Local School District


Submission (, aka Scandal) is an Italian film filmed in technicolor and directed by Salvatore Samperi based on his own script written in collaboration with Ottavio Jemma, according to Samperi. It belongs to the drama and erotic genres and had as principal actors Franco Nero, Lisa Gastoni, Raymond Pellegrin and Andréa Ferréol.

Plot

On a 1940 France, just before the great invasion, Eliane is a pharmacist who is married to her dull husband and has a teenage daughter. Eliane is an attractive woman who has let her passion fall dormant.

One evening, the pharmacy clerk makes a pass at her when he thinks she is another girl. Soon she lets the passion overtake her and she begins an affair with her employee. Armand, the pharmacy clerk, starts making ever-growing demands to Eliane, forcing her to have sex under the pharmacy counter and undress in front of a female employee of the pharmacy (who is also having an affair with Armand), among others demands, effectively turning her into his sex slave.

When Eliane finally let herself admit her submission to Armand, he demands her teenage daughter to prove she'd do anything for him.

Cast
Franco Nero as Armand
Lisa Gastoni as Eliane Michoud
Raymond Pellegrin as Prof. Henri Michoud
Andréa Ferréol as Juliette
Claudia Marsani as Justine Michoud
Carla Calò as Carmen

See also

 List of Italian films of 1976

References

External links

Italian crime drama films
Italian erotic drama films
1970s Italian-language films
1976 crime drama films
1976 films
BDSM in films
Films directed by Salvatore Samperi
Films scored by Riz Ortolani
1970s erotic drama films
1970s Italian films

Submission (1976 film)


Robert Rutman (15 May 1931 – 1 June 2021) was a German visual artist, musician, composer, and instrument builder. Best known for his work with homemade idiophones in his Steel Cello Ensemble, Rutman is regarded as a pioneer of multimedia performance in his mixing of music, sculpture, film, and visual art.

Biography

Early life and career

Born in Berlin in 1931, Rutman's mother was a Jewish actress and his father a Bulgarian brownshirt who died in 1933. When the Nazis came to power, he and his mother fled Germany, moving to Warsaw in 1938 and then to Finland just before Hitler invaded Poland. By way of Sweden, Rutman arrived in England in 1939 where he attended refugee schools throughout the Second World War. After completing his studies, Rutman moved to New York City in 1950, then had to return to West Germany for military service in 1951.

In 1952 Rutman returned to the U.S. and worked as a traveling salesman in Dallas, Texas, before moving to Mexico City to enroll in art school. He married in Mexico, and the couple had a son, Eric. In 1962 Rutman returned to New York where he opened a gallery on Charles Street called "A Fly Can't Bird But A Bird Can Fly", which presented poetry, theater, music, and visual art as multimedia events. Rutman's collaborators included the Beat poet Philip Lamantia, who mentions Rutman in his poem, "The night is a space of white marble", and sculptor Constance Demby, with whom he made his first sound sculptures in 1966.

In 1967 Demby and Rutman held several happening-style events that mixed sonic, visual, and performance art centered around big sheets of metal that the artists had found. In one piece called The Thing, Rutman wore a white cardboard box and banged on Demby's sheet-metal creation with "a rock in a sock." In another piece entitled Space Mass, Rutman projected film upon a piece of curved sheetmetal onto which Demby had welded several steel rods that she played as a percussion instrument. Rutman later remarked, "We thought it would sound good as a xylophone, but it didn't." Rutman would later make adjustments to the sheet metal-and-rod contraption, converting it into a fully playable and tunable idiophone.

Central Maine Power Music Company
In 1967 Rutman moved to Skowhegan, Maine, where he built a house in the woods and established another multimedia gallery. Though this gallery sent him into bankruptcy within its four years of operation, it was here that Rutman created the instruments for which he became known. Rutman made these new instruments from large panels of flexible sheet metal affixed with steel strings or freely swinging rods that he played with a bass or cello bow. He named one of his creations the steel cello, and another the bow chimes, describing both as "American Industrial folk instruments".

In 1970 Rutman founded the Central Maine Power Music Company (CMPMC) as his first ensemble to play these sculptures. The CMPMC included Rutman and Demby, with locals Hugh Robbins, Richie Slamm, and Sally Hilmer, and hammer dulcimerist Dorothy Carter, plus occasional guests who all played Rutman and Demby's bowed sheet metal creations. Rutman's original concept for the group was to have it be made up entirely of handmade instruments, and the group featured a configuration of circular sawblades used as percussion. But according to Rutman, his invented instruments ended up serving more as decorations for their performances, as the other members of the group brought in traditional eastern and western instruments, such as drums, electronic organ, flute, koto, saxophone, tamboura, and yang chin, as well as electronic musical novelties, including the Moog synthesizer and theremin.

CMPMC performances had a ritualistic quality that incorporated many non-musicians, such as video artist Bill Etra who added visual elements to their shows. The band toured the East Coast, playing at several planetariums in Massachusetts, as well as Lincoln Center, the World Trade Center, and at the United Nations Sculpture Garden in New York. Rutman told a reporter in 1974:

The best way to describe our music is to call it "not music." You see, it often happens that when people hear us play, they say, either in anger or in delight, "That's not music!" It's somewhat akin to the paintings of Jackson Pollock. When the art buffs first saw his work, with the paint drippings and all, they said, "That's not painting."

Steel Cello Ensemble

As Rutman's instruments piqued the interest of aficionados in both visual art and new music composition, his portfolio as an exhibition and concert artist grew. As art pieces, the steel cello and bow chimes toured to galleries and museums where bows were on hand for anyone to play them. Though his instruments were tunable, Rutman had no formal musical training aside from sporadic childhood piano lessons. With neither conventional tuning principles nor systems of notation, it was through alternate means that he began teaching many people to play his instruments. He moved to Boston's then-bohemian Cambridgeport neighborhood and disbanded the CMPMC to found a new, all-steel music group in 1976: the Robert Rutman U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble, whose members included Suzanne Bresler, Rex Morrill, Warren Senders, Jim Van Denakker, and David Zaig. A 1977 press release described the group and its instruments:

The steel cello is 8ft tall and is made from a sheet of stainless steel anchored into a heavy iron stand. It supports one string, which when bowed creates a multitude of resonances, from delicate brittle sounds to deep rich tones. The bow chime, which is shorter, forms a horizontal curve which supports vertical rods, which when bowed produce complementary metallic tones. The Ensemble consists of one steel cello and three bow chimes and together create sounds equal in dynamics to an orchestra.

The Ensemble toured North America, often playing at science museums and art spaces, as well as concert venues. In 1977 they performed at Harvard University's Science Center and at New York's Museum of Modern Art. To further document and promote his work, Rutman founded his own label, Rutdog Records, on which he released albums by his Steel Cello Ensemble. Rutdog also released Dorothy Carter's psych-folk album Waillee Waillee, on which Rutman backs the hammer dulcimerist on his steel cello. Rutman and Carter continued to collaborate for decades thereafter. Rutman's instruments were borrowed by American jazz musician Sun Ra during his 1978 residency at the Modern Theater in Boston; Sun Ra (rather unsuccessfully) attempted to play both the Bow Chime and Steel Cello during the concerts.

In the 1980s Rutman and his instruments began scoring theatrical works by Euripides, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Rilke, Thoreau, and others. In 1980 the Steel Cello Ensemble performed for Peter Sellars' Harvard University stage production of King Lear, and in 1985 worked with Laurie Anderson on Robert Wilson's rendition of Alcestis at the American Repertory Theatre.

In 1986 Rutman was invited to play at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, which opened the door to many performances and collaborations in Europe, spanning decades. On his first two tours of Europe, Rutman was joined by fellow American Daniel Orlansky, and the group later expanded to include two Germans, Alexander Dorsch and Stephanie Wolff. Dorsch created a double stringed steel cello which he named "Jericho", and Wollf complimented Rutman's "undertone" throat singing  with "overtone" singing. The quartet of Rutman, Orlansky, Dorsch, and Wolff, was immortalized in the 1989 recording Noise in the Library, recorded live at Passionskirche in Berlin on May 31, 1989. Some of the prominent venues in the early "European Days" included the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, the America Haus in Munich, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, the Berlin Atonal, London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, and Warsaw's Palace of Culture and Science. In 1989 Rutman threw himself a farewell party in Cambridge before relocating to his birth city of Berlin where he continued to live and work. In an interview shortly before leaving the U.S., Rutman shared his perspective on his instruments and music:

I see the music as the American industrial. They are the product of our society...indigenous American instruments. They really reflect the sounds of our society, and the engines and drones and stuff like that. The indigenous properties of the instruments have a western harmonic tonality, like a brass horn. They produce this brilliant, harmonic, metallic sound. It's what electronic instruments want to do and really can't in the way that the steel cellos can do. It creates the environment that's both ancient and futuristic at the same time. It spans this whole sense of space and future and past. That's what's inherent in the sound of the instrument.

Further developments

Over the years, Rutman developed an interest in Tibetan meditation and music. He spent five years teaching himself to throat sing in the style of Tibet's Buddhist monks and began to match his instruments' low tonalities with his voice. He also re-incorporated traditional non-western instruments into Steel Cello Ensemble performances and recordings, including the tabla, Tibetan horn, and didgeridoo.

Because of the steel cello's mass, Rutman developed lighter weight instruments for impromptu shows. First came the buzz chime, a triangular wooden drone instrument, which he added to his Steel Cello Ensemble. In the 1990s he satirized his own work by creating the styrophone, a handheld instrument that mimicked the appearance of his bow chimes, but instead of its five protruding brass rods being affixed to giant sheets of steel, they appeared as spindly wires stuck into handheld blocks of styrofoam. Unlike his sheet-metal instruments, which can last indefinitely, each Styrophone is destroyed by the process of playing it. Rutman told an interviewer in 2013:

The styrophone is the exact opposite to the bow chime and the steel cello, which make a very full sound. Instead, the styrophone is like Gänsehaut! It's the opposite of beauty, it's like really ugly and I like that.

Throughout the 1990s Rutman continued to score theatre and film, including Wim Wenders' sequel to Wings of Desire and Heiner Goebbels' stage adaptation of Walden. Rutman also toured and recorded with German industrial music group Einstürzende Neubauten.

Rutman's training of other musicians has also spawned new generations of steel cellists and bow chimers, many of whom have gone on to compose and perform on the instruments. Among these are Klaus Wiese's Nono Orchestra, Wolfram Spyra and Pete Namlook as the duo Virtual Vices, Mathias Grassow and Adrian Palka. Other sculptor-musicians have designed and constructed their own variations of Rutman's instruments, such as the Dresden-based steel cello ensemble Stahlquartett.

Rutman's instruments are in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution. Instruments similar to Rutman's steel cello and bow chimes continued to appear in Constance Demby's work as "The Whale Sail" and "The Space Bass." Since their parting in the early 1970s, Demby maintained that Rutman's instruments were adaptations of her own.

Visual art

In addition to his music and instruments, Rutman continued to produce and exhibit drawings, oil paintings, engravings and wire sculptures, examples of which can be seen on his website. His influence is in the work of Jackson Pollock and abstract impressionism, and he is best known for depicting landscapes, nude figures, Catholic themes, and chairs.

Death
Rutman died in a Berlin hospice facility on 1 June 2021 at age 90.

Discography

Recordings listing Rutman or the Steel Cello Ensemble as primary artist

 Sound of Nothing (Art Supermarket Records LP, 1976)
 Bitter Suites (Rutdog Records LP, 1979; reissued by Holidays Records, 2013)
 Steel Cello Ensemble, Live in Europe (Rutdog Records cassette, 1987)
 1940 (Generations Unlimited cassette, 1988)
 In A State Of Flux (A State of Flux cassette, 1988)
 Noise in the Library (Rutdog Records cassette, 1989)
 1939 (Pogus Productions LP, 1989; CD with extra track, 1998)
 Live At The Waterworks, Berlin (Stuff Records CD, 1991)
 Big Waves (under the name Spacebow, with Carsten Tiedemann, Noteworks CD, 1995)
 Music To Sleep By (Tresor CD, 1997)
 Zuuhh!! Muttie Mum!! (Die Stadt CD, 1998)
 In A State of Flux (WCUW cassette, 1998)
 "Schritt Um Schritt"/"Buzz Off" (split single with Asmus Tietchens, Die Stadt 7", 1999)
 Eine Unbekannte Zeit: An Improvised Opera Performed Live In Bremen, Germany (Rutdog Records CD, 2003)
 Rutman, Ginsberg, Hentz, Irmler (Klangbad CD, 2011)
 Buzz Off (Peking Records CD, 2016)

Recordings as a guest musician

 On Dorothy Carter's albums Waillee Waillee (1978) and Lonesome Dove (2000), as well as many concerts
 On William Penn's album Crystal Rainbows, The Sounds Of Harmonious Craft (1978)
 On Geoff Bartley's album Interstates (1987)
 On Meret Becker's album Nachtmahr (1998)
 On Alexander Hacke's album Sanctuary (2005)
 On the Swans' album The Seer (2012)

Other works

Filmography
Rutman's film appearances include:
  (Die Sonnengöttin), by Rudolf Thome (Germany, 1992)
 Faraway, So Close! (In weiter Ferne, so nah), by Wim Wenders (Germany, 1993)
 Räder müssen rollen – Fahrplanmäßig in den Tod (1994)
 Living on the Edge, by Luke McBain and Michael Weihrauch (Germany, 1995)
 Killer Condom (Kondom des Grauens), by Martin Walz (Germany, 1996)
 Stimmen der Welt (1997)
 Steel Cello / Bow Chime, by David Chapman and Adrian Palka (UK, 2004)
 Bob Rutman: Artist, Musician, Instrument Maker, by Ira Schneider (Germany, 2007)
 How Long Is Now, by Danielle de Picciotto (Germany, 2010)
 Lievalleen (2019)

Live musical collaborations

 Merce Cunningham's Dance Series (1969)
 Peter Sellars' stage adaptation of King Lear (1980), later made into a film by Jean-Luc Godard (1987)
 Robert Wilson's Alcestis at the American Repertory Theatre with music direction by Laurie Anderson (1986–87)
 Heiner Goebbels' adaptation of Walden (1998)
 Einstürzende Neubauten, 1998 U.S. tour

Art exhibitions

In addition to displaying his visual artwork at his own concerts, Rutman has had solo exhibitions all over the world.

 Houston (1959)
 Mexico City (1960)
 Boston (1962, 1978)
 New York City (1963, 1964, 1980, 1983, 1985)
 Berlin (1988, 1990, 1991)
 Barcelona (1990)
 Dresden (1995)

Publications

 Berlin um Mitternacht co-authored with Rüdiger Schaper (Berlin: Argon, 1998)

References

External links

1931 births
2021 deaths
American composers
20th-century American sculptors
American male sculptors
20th-century American painters
American male painters
American people of Bulgarian descent
American people of German-Jewish descent
German composers
German sculptors
German male sculptors
German painters
German male painters
Audiovisual artists
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom
Musicians from Berlin
Immigrants to the United States
German people of Bulgarian descent
21st-century American painters
21st-century American sculptors
20th-century American male artists

Robert Rutman


Kollagunta Gopalaiyer Ramanathan (13 November 1920 – 10 May 1992) was an Indian mathematician known for his work in number theory. His contributions are also to the general development of mathematical research and teaching in India.

K. G. Ramanathan's early life and his family
K. G. Ramanathan was born in Hyderabad in South India. He completed his B.A. and M.A. in mathematics at Osmania University and the University of Madras respectively before going to Princeton to earn his Ph.D; his advisor was Emil Artin. At Princeton, Ramanathan also worked with Hermann Weyl and Carl Siegel. Thereafter he returned to India to team up with K. S. Chandrasekharan at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) at Colaba in 1951. At Princeton, for about two years, Ramanathan's neighbour was Albert Einstein, the legendary physicist. He used to sing Carnatic songs of Tyagaraja to Einstein for entertainment.

Ramanathan was married to Jayalakshmi Ramanathan. He had two sons. His father's name was Kollagunta Gopal Iyer, and his mother's name was Ananthalaxmi. His mother died at an early age. He had two sisters and one brother.

Career
At TIFR, he built up the number theory group of young mathematicians from India. For several years, he took interest to study Ramanujan's unpublished and published work. He was an Editorial board member of Acta Arithmetica for over 30 years. He retired from TIFR in 1985.

Awards
Ramanathan was given numerous achievements during his more than 30 years service at TIFR.

 Padma Bhushan, 1983
 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, 1965
 Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences
 Fellow of Indian National Science Academy
 Honorary fellow of TIFR.

Selected publications
 On Ramanujan's continued fraction, KG Ramanathan - Acta Arith, 1984
 Some applications of Kronecker's limit formula, KG Ramanathan - J. Indian Math. Soc, 1987

References

External links

 Obituary, reproduced from Acta Arithmetica,  Author: S. Raghavan
  K. G. R's Photo  This is reproduced from Acta Arithmetica 64 (1993) 1-6
    K. G. Ramanathan's Biography

1920 births
1992 deaths
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in literature & education
Indian number theorists
Presidents of the Indian Mathematical Society
University of Madras alumni
Osmania University alumni
Scientists from Hyderabad, India
20th-century Indian mathematicians
Recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Mathematical Science

K. G. Ramanathan


The Pastry War (; ), also known as the first French intervention in Mexico or the first Franco-Mexican war (1838–1839), began in November 1838 with the naval blockade of some Mexican ports and the capture of the fortress of San Juan de Ulúa in the port of Veracruz by French forces sent by King Louis Philippe I. It ended in March 1839 with a British-brokered peace. The intervention followed many claims by French nationals of losses due to unrest in Mexico. This would be the first of two French invasions of Mexico; a second, larger intervention would take place in the 1860s.

Background
During the early years of the new Mexican republic there was widespread civil disorder as factions competed for control of the country. The fighting often resulted in the destruction or looting of private property. Average citizens had few options for claiming compensation as they had no representatives to speak on their behalf. Foreigners whose property was damaged or destroyed by rioters or bandits were usually  also unable to obtain compensation from the Mexican government and they began to appeal to their own governments for help and compensation.

Commercial relationships between France and Mexico existed prior to Spain's recognition of Mexico's independence in 1830, and after the establishment of diplomatic relationships France rapidly became Mexico's third largest trade partner. However, France had yet to secure trade agreements similar to those that the United States and United Kingdom (then Mexico's two largest trade partners) had, and as a result of this French goods were subject to higher taxes.

Chronology

In a complaint to King Louis-Philippe, a French pastry chef known only as Monsieur Remontel claimed that in 1832 Mexican officers looted his shop in Tacubaya (then a town on the outskirts of Mexico City). However, Mexican sources claim that the officers, from Santa Anna's government, simply refused to pay for their bills. Remontel demanded 60,000 pesos as reparations for the damage (his shop was valued at less than 1,000 pesos).

In view of Remontel's complaint (which gave its name to the ensuing conflict) and of other complaints from French nationals (among them the looting in 1828 of French shops at the Parian market and the execution in 1837 of a French citizen accused of piracy), in 1838 prime minister Louis-Mathieu Molé demanded from Mexico the payment of 600,000 pesos (3 million Francs) in damages, an enormous sum for the time, when the typical daily wage in Mexico City was about one peso (8 Mexican reals).

When President Anastasio Bustamante made no payment, the French king ordered a fleet under Rear Admiral Charles Baudin to declare and carry out a blockade of all Mexican ports on the Gulf of Mexico from Yucatán to the Rio Grande, to bombard the Mexican fortress of San Juan de Ulúa, and to seize the city of Veracruz, which was the most important port on the Gulf coast. French forces captured Veracruz by December 1838 and Mexico declared war on France.

With trade cut off, the Mexicans began smuggling imports in Mexico via Corpus Christi (then part of the Republic of Texas). Fearing that France would blockade the Republic's ports as well, a battalion of Texan forces began patrolling Corpus Christi Bay to stop Mexican smugglers. One smuggling party abandoned their cargo of about a hundred barrels of flour on the beach at the mouth of the bay, thus giving Flour Bluff its name. The United States soon sent the schooner Woodbury to help the French in their blockade.

Meanwhile, acting without explicit government authority, Antonio López de Santa Anna, known for his military leadership, came out of retirement from his hacienda named "Manga de Clavo" near Xalapa and surveyed the defenses of Veracruz. He offered his services to the government, which ordered him to fight the French by any means necessary. He led Mexican forces against the French and fought at the Battle of Veracruz (1838). In a skirmish with the rear guard of the French, Santa Anna was wounded in the leg by French grapeshot. His leg was amputated and buried with full military honors. Exploiting his wounds with eloquent propaganda, Santa Anna catapulted back to power.

Peace restored
The French forces withdrew on 9 March 1839 after a peace treaty was signed. As part of said treaty the Mexican government agreed to pay 600,000 pesos as damages to French citizens while France received promises for future trade commitments in place of war indemnities. However, this amount was never paid and that was later used as one of the justifications for the second French intervention in Mexico of 1861.

Following the Mexican victory in 1867 and the collapse of the Second French Empire in 1870, Mexico and France would not resume diplomatic relationships until 1880 when both countries renounced claims related to the wars.

Notes

External links

Conflicts in 1838
Conflicts in 1839
1838 in Mexico
1838 in France
1839 in France
1839 in Mexico
Independent Mexico
Wars involving Mexico
Wars involving France
Wars involving the United Kingdom
Second French intervention in Mexico
19th century in Mexico
Looting
19th-century military history of France
19th-century military history of the United Kingdom

Pastry War


Amritsar Tahsil was an administrative subdivision of the Lahore Division in British Punjab of British India. The tahsil had an area of 545 square miles. To the west was Lahore situated on the Ravi River and east was the Beas River, which divided it from the State of Kapurthala. The area contained fertile land irrigated by the Bari Doab Canal. The city of Amritsar city is located in this area. The population of the tahsil in 1901 was 488,383, compared with 462,734 in 1891. The city of Amritsar (population, 162,429 in 1901) was the headquarters. It also contained the towns of Majitha (6,403) and Jandiala Guru (7,750); and 373 villages.

References

Lahore Division

Amritsar Tahsil


Robert Bruce Merrifield (July 15, 1921 – May 14, 2006) was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984 for the invention of solid phase peptide synthesis.

Early life
He was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on 15 July 1921, the only son of George E. Merrifield and Lorene née Lucas. In 1923 the family moved to California where he attended nine grade schools and two high schools before graduating from Montebello High School in 1939. It was there that he developed an interest both in chemistry and in astronomy.

After two years at Pasadena Junior College he transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). After graduation in chemistry he worked for a year at the Philip R. Park Research Foundation taking care of an animal colony and assisting with growth experiments on synthetic amino acid diets. One of these was the experiment by Geiger that first demonstrated that the essential amino acids must be present simultaneously for growth to occur.

He returned to graduate school at the UCLA chemistry department with professor of biochemistry M.S. Dunn to develop microbiological methods for the quantitation of the pyrimidines. The day after graduating on 19 June 1949, he married Elizabeth Furlong and the next day left for New York City and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.

Career
At the institute, later Rockefeller University, he worked as an Assistant for Dr. D.W. Woolley on a dinucleotide growth factor he discovered in graduate school and on peptide growth factors that Woolley had discovered earlier. These studies led to the need for peptide synthesis and, eventually, to the idea for solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) in 1959. In 1963, he was sole author of a classic paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in which he reported a method he called "solid phase peptide synthesis". This article is the fifth most cited paper in the journal's history.

In the mid-60s Dr. Merrifield's laboratory first synthesized bradykinin, angiotensin, desamino-oxytocin and insulin. In 1969, he and his colleague Bernd Gutte announced the first synthesis of the enzyme ribonuclease A. This work proved the chemical nature of enzymes.

Dr. Merrifield's method greatly stimulated progress in biochemistry, pharmacology and medicine, making possible the systematic exploration of the structural basis of the activities of enzymes, hormones and antibodies. The development and applications of the technique continued to occupy his laboratory, where he remained active at the bench until recently. In 1993, Jeffrey I. Seeman published Life during a Golden Age of Peptide Chemistry, Merrifield's autobiography, in the series "Profiles, Pathways, and Dreams" for the American Chemical Society. He received the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities Award for outstanding contributions to Biomolecular Technologies in 1998.

The achievement of synthesizing ribonuclease A (with Bernd Gutte) was all the more significant in that it demonstrated that the linear sequence of amino acids joined in peptide bonds determined directly the tertiary structure of a peptide or protein. I.e. that information coded in one dimension can directly determine the three-dimensional structure of a molecule.

SPPS has been expanded to include solid phase synthesis of nucleotides and saccharides.

Personal life
After raising their 6 children, James, Nancy, Betsy, Cathy, Laurie and Sally, his wife Elizabeth (Libby), a biologist by training, joined the Merrifield laboratory at Rockefeller University where she worked for over 23 years.

After a long illness R. Bruce Merrifield died on May 14, 2006, at the age of 84 in his home in Cresskill, New Jersey. At the time of his death he was survived by his wife Libby, their 6 children and 16 grandchildren. Libby died on September 13, 2017.

References

External links
 Ulf Ragnarsson, "Bruce Merrifield", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2013)

American biochemists
American Nobel laureates
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Nobel laureates in Chemistry
University of California, Los Angeles faculty
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
People from Cresskill, New Jersey
People from Fort Worth, Texas
1921 births
2006 deaths
Recipients of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
Rockefeller University people

Robert Bruce Merrifield


The Messe des pêcheurs de Villerville (Mass of the fishermen of Villerville) is a missa brevis written by Gabriel Fauré in collaboration with his former pupil André Messager. A later version, published as Messe basse contained only movements composed by Fauré.

Messe des pêcheurs de Villerville (1881)
Fauré and Messager worked together on the mass in the summer of 1881.

The sections of the mass run as follows:
 Kyrie (Messager)
 Gloria (Fauré)
 Sanctus (Fauré)
 O Salutaris (Messager)
 Agnus Dei (Fauré)

The first performance took place in Villerville on 4 September 1881 accompanied by a harmonium and a violin.  The concert was in aid of the fishermen's charitable association. Messager orchestrated the first four sections, and Fauré the last. A second performance, this time accompanied by orchestra, was given in Villerville the following year.

Messe basse (published 1907)
In 1907, Heugel & Cie. published a version of the mass, removing Messager's sections and the Gloria (apart from a part of its music that was reused for the added Benedictus), and incorporating a new Kyrie by Fauré; this version, produced by Fauré in 1906, appeared under the title Messe basse.

References

Masses (music)
Compositions by Gabriel Fauré
Compositions by André Messager
Collaborations in classical music
1881 compositions

Messe des pêcheurs de Villerville


Monroe Berkowitz (1919–2009) was Professor of Economics at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he was chair for many years, and director of the Bureau of Economic Research. Berkowitz was a leading authority on the economics of disability and rehabilitation in public programs, private disability insurance, and public and private rehabilitation systems in the U.S. and other countries. Berkowitz developed the "Ticket to Work" program that was enacted into law in 1999. He was the 2006 recipient of the National Academy of Social Insurance Robert M. Ball Award for outstanding achievements in social insurance.

Early life and education

A graduate of Ohio University (1942), Berkowitz received his Master's and Doctoral degrees in Economics from Columbia University. He served as Director of Special Studies, President's Commission on Workers' Compensation, Director of the Rutgers University Bureau of Economic Research, Director of Research at Rehabilitation International, a member of the International Return to Work Group, organizer of the New Jersey Disability Research Consortium of the New Jersey Developmental Disabilities Council, and Founding Member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He also served as consultant to numerous government and other agencies including the Social Security Administration, the World Health Organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Rehabilitation International. He has held Fulbright and other fellowships, and worked in England, India, New Zealand, and elsewhere throughout the world.

Works

Berkowitz authored and co-authored 15 books, more than 50 reports, proceedings, chapters, etc., and scores of articles including: Economics, Experience and Analysis (with Mitchell, Murad, and Bagley, 1951), The Economic Consequences of Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury (with Harvey and Greene), his Disability and the Labor Market with Anne Hill (1986) won the Book of the Year Award from the President's Committee of Employment of Persons with Disabilities, and his 1987 work, Permanent Partial Disability and Workers' Compensation, with John Burton, won the George Kulp Award of the American Risk and Insurance Association. He was a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators, the National Academy of Social Insurance, the American Economic Association, and the Industrial Relations Research Association.

Death

Berkowitz died on November 15, 2009.

See also
 Rutgers University

Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
2009 deaths
1919 births
Ohio University alumni
Rutgers University faculty

Monroe Berkowitz


Astragalus tennesseensis is a species of flowering plant in the legume family known by the common name Tennessee milkvetch. It is native to the United States, where it is known from Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee and Alabama. Most of the occurrences are in Tennessee.

This plant produces cream-colored flowers in April and May. The seedlings grow slowly and several years pass before the plants reach reproductive maturity. The species is adapted to drought, remaining metabolically active in habitat that is dry over the summer.

This plant has been nearly extirpated from Illinois and Indiana, but it has been reintroduced there in a few select populations. Some natural populations have been rediscovered in Illinois.

The plant grows in cedar glades and glade ecotones and open prairies. It may be found in the partial shade of Juniperus virginiana, but it does not tolerate heavy shade.

This species is unique within genus Astragalus and it is the only species in section Tennesseensis.

References

External links
USDA Plants Profile

tennesseensis
Flora of Alabama
Taxa named by Alvan Wentworth Chapman

Astragalus tennesseensis


Coode Island is a former island at the convergence of the Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers, 4 km west of central Melbourne, Australia. The island was formed by the excavation of the Coode Canal in 1887, and became connected to the mainland in the 1930s. Today the low-lying land is part of the Port of Melbourne, and is used as the site of Swanson and Appleton Docks and their associated container storage and rail yards, as well as a number of chemical storage facilities.

History

Before the 1880s, the area of Coode Island was an expansive low-lying wetland. The island became isolated from the mainland after the Coode Canal was dug to shorten the length of the Yarra River in 1886. A shipping canal was constructed to the south of the existing course of the river through Fishermans Bend, to allow access from the Port of Melbourne to Yarraville.  The boundaries were the canal on the south, the Maribyrnong River on the west and the Yarra River on the north and east. Once formed, the island became an industrial area of 97 hectares. The island was named after Sir John Coode, an English harbour engineer who was engaged by the Melbourne Harbor Trust to select the optimum route for the canal as part of the Port of Melbourne. The former course of the Yarra River was slowly filled in over the years, along with the associated swamps, and by the mid-twentieth century, Coode Island was no longer a true island, although the name remained.

By 1909 the area was being used as an animal quarantine station and after 1915 as a sanatorium for victims of bubonic plague and other contagious diseases. By the 1920s the area was inhabited by hermits living in huts and abandoned ships. In 1927 the Larkin Aircraft Supply Company had set up operations on the island, including a factory and aerodrome, which was used until World War II.

In 1960 the area began being used for the storage of petrochemicals. In 1968 the Swanson Dock container terminal was constructed on the south side of the former island, which reduced the size of Coode Island.

On 21 August 1991, at the Anchor Tank facility, St. Elmo's fire ignited one of the storage tanks, resulting in the Coode Island explosion. About 8.5 million litres of organic compounds burned including acrylonitrile and benzene, creating a toxic cloud over nearby residential suburbs, which was dispersed by strong winds.  The ignition spread between tanks through a common vent system, nitrogen blanketing had been considered unnecessary when the tanks were designed, and the common vent system was installed as a later modification to allow recovery of fumes for environmental purposes.

Proposals were made to move the facility to Point Lillias near Geelong, but environmental and Aboriginal heritage concerns thwarted the plans. In 2000 the Bracks Government announced that Coode Island would be the site of Victoria's major petrochemical storage facility, with six companies leasing the facility from the Melbourne Port Authority.

See also
Coode Canal
Port of Melbourne
West Melbourne, Victoria
Yarra River

References

Islands of Victoria (state)
Explosions in Australia
River islands of Australia
Yarra River
Industrial fires and explosions in Australia
1991 in Australia
1990s fires in Oceania
1991 disasters in Oceania
1991 fires
1991 industrial disasters
Port of Melbourne
Maribyrnong River

Coode Island


Der Rat der Götter (The Council of the Gods) is an East German black-and-white film, directed by Kurt Maetzig. It was released in 1950.

Plot
In the early 1930s, Dr. Scholz is a chemist working for IG Farben. While he develops new types of rocket fuel and a gas which he believes to be a pesticide, his corporate superiors support Adolf Hitler in his quest to dominate Germany, and subsequently, the whole of Europe. Director General Mauch and his fellow managers, who jokingly call themselves 'the council of the gods', are cleverly using the Second World War to earn a fortune, by supplying the Third Reich and - through their cartel with Standard Oil - the Western Allies. Scholz, fearing to lose his position, turns a blind eye even as he realizes what the gas he developed is used for. Throughout the war, American bombers do not destroy IG Farben plants, as they are pressured by the company's associates in the United States to leave its infrastructure intact. After the war ends, the Americans acquit most of the directors from charges of crimes against humanity and secretly use their experience to produce chemical weapons, that would be deployed against the Soviet Union. After an explosion in a chemical factory kills hundreds, Scholz - who is now a communist - cannot remain silent. He publicizes the truth about IG Farben's wartime activity, warning that they plan yet another to make more money. An immense demonstration takes place outside the firm's headquarters. The American general supervising the managers proposes to disperse them with tanks, but Mauch refuses, fearing the crowd's reaction. The demonstration turns into a May Day rally.

Cast
 Paul Bildt as privy councilor Mauch
 Eva Pflug as Mabel Lawson
 Laya Raki as dancer
 Fritz Tillmann as Dr. Hans Scholz
 Willy A. Kleinau as Mr. Lawson
 Hans-Georg Rudolph as Tilgner
 Albert Garbe as uncle Karl
 Helmuth Hinzelmann as Schirrwind
 Inge Keller as Edith Scholz
 Yvonne Merin as Claudia Mauch
 Käthe Scharf as Mrs. Scholz
 Herwart Grosse as von Decken
 Theodor Vogeler as Dr. Hüttenrauch
 Arthur Wiesner as Scholz's father
 Karl-Heinz Deickert as Dieter Scholz
 Agnes Windeck as Mrs. Mauch
 Helene Riechers as Scholz's mother

Production
Friedrich Wolf and his Soviet co-author, Phillipp Gecht, began writing the script in the summer of 1948, shortly after the end of the IG Farben Trial. They used many original documents from the judicial process, but mainly relied of Richard Sasuly's book IG Farben. Another event which influenced their work was the explosion that destroyed BASF's chemical plant in Ludwigshafen and caused 280 deaths at 28 July 1948, which was combined into the plot's ending. Wolf later told that the title, The Council of the Gods, was inspired by the divine assembly that closed the Odyssey: IG Farben's directors were the "gods" that run the affairs while the common mortals bled and died on the field, like in the Homerian myth. The author told that his work was to "reveal the 'gods' and the machinations behind the curtains". He was also determined to discredit Germany's old elites, both due to personal convictions and the ideological requirements of the Socialist Unity Party.

The characters in Wolf's story were modeled on the real directors of IG Farben, and even their names sounded much alike: the film's arch-villain, privy councillor Mauch, was based on Carl Krauch. Wolf sought a director to create the film himself, and eventually chose Kurt Maetzig. The author's son, Konrad Wolf, served as an assistant-director. The work on The Council of the Gods lasted for two years. Maetzig later claimed that the film was made as a "documentary feature film": while the characters were basically fictional, it was based on real events. He maintained that he viewed the IG Farben trial, that was run only by the US, as the beginning of the rift between the wartime Allies and to an extent - even of the Cold War, and tried to depict it as such in the film.

The filming took place on the background of the escalating Cold War. At 1949, the Socialist Unity Party's Politburo established a DEFA Commission to directly oversee all films produced in East Germany, after it found those made during 1946-7 as "lacking a saying on the matters of society". The Council was East Germany's first "massive propaganda film."  Maetzig, who had directed several socially critical pictures at that time and reprimanded by the establishment, turned to making more politically pleasing works. The Council of the Gods was "intended to be a propaganda super-production," and its style was inspired by Mikheil Chiaureli's Stalinist epics.  It was officially dedicated "to all peace-loving people of the world" and intended to show how "the IG Farben were the originators of the war".

Principal photography took place in Halle an der Saale. As many as 500 extras were used to make the crowd scenes. Although DEFA director-general Sepp Schwab demanded that the film would be Socialist Realist in style, only one common worker - Uncle Karl, played by Albert Grabe - was featured in the picture.  The lack of working-class heroes displeased the SED, and State Secretary for Press and Agitation Hermann Axen criticized The Council of the Gods for "over-emphasizing the roles of the capitalists".

Reception
The film sold 5,347,261 tickets in East Germany. It received a special Honorary Diploma in the 1950 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. On 8 October 1950, Maetzig, Wolf, cinematographer  Friedl Behn-Grund and set designer Willy Schiller were all awarded the National Prize, 1st degree, for their work on the film.

The Council of the Gods was praised by the SED, and defined by it as the "most important film" of 1950; a politburo resolution stated that it was "up to the standards required by our country's democratic public opinion". Although it had a premiere in West Berlin, and a West German distributor sought to purchase it, it was not released in the Federal Republic of Germany, which rejected as communist propaganda. The Soviet magazine Art of Cinema claimed that the military commandants of West Berlin's three occupation sectors registered an official complaint to the Soviets, claiming that the picture had such an influence on the public that it was undermining their authority. Ivor Montagu, who watched it in East Germany, received a copy to his home in London on 22 June 1951.

In a contemporary review of the film, West German journalist Curt Riess wrote that "almost everything in it is a fraud." The Federal Republic's Catholic Film Service cited it as "noteworthy political drama made by DEFA, the finale of which culminates in a scene worthy of the peace movement à la Moscow." At 1961, American critics Scott MacDonald and Amos Vogel cited it as a "hard-hitting propaganda film", but also as "the most important East German picture made up to date." During 1977, film scholars Miera and Antonin Liehm claimed that it was "propaganda", as well.

David Caute noted that "The Council of the Gods was the first picture to "fully embrace the ideological animosities of the Cold War", and that it tried to demonstrate that beside their wartime collaboration, IG Farben, Standard Oil and the capitalists dominating both were preparing a new war. Alexander Stephan pointed out that it was the first to "articulate anti-capitalist economical positions" and aimed them against America. Daniela Berghahn shared this view, writing that the film asserted that the capitalist economical structures brought about World War II, and that they remained intact both in the United States and in West Germany. Bernd Stöver claimed that the film was part of a propaganda campaign run by the East German government in the early stages of the Cold War, the message of which was not only that capitalism is aggressive by nature, but also that the post-Nazi magnates of the Federal Republic were planning to resume "Hitler's great crusade against socialism" in the immediate future, with the aid of their Western allies. Ralf Schenk wrote that the American representative was portrayed as a "latent fascist", keen to fight a new war against the Soviet Union.

Ursula Heukenkamp noted that the portrayal of the main protagonist, Dr. Scholz, and the main antagonist, Mauch, was typical to communist cinema: the first was merely an insignificant part of a huge company, who could not stop developing chemicals even when he realized they were used to gas millions, and only became free when he embraced socialism; the second was interested in profit alone, with no regard from which side the money came. She also wrote that the film was the last to depict the horrors of the Second World War from the viewpoint of passive victims; henceforth, East German cinema turned to concentrate on the active resistance of the anti-fascists.

In a 2006 interview, Kurt Maetzig told Markus Wolf that he still regarded the film as an important work, and not as one of those he regretted making.

References

External links

 Der Rat der Götter original poster on ostfilm.de.

1950 films
East German films
1950s German-language films
German black-and-white films
Films directed by Kurt Maetzig
Films about Nazi Germany

The Council of the Gods


Julien Mory Sidibé (1927 – March 17, 2003) was a Roman Catholic bishop in Mali from 1974 until his death.

Born in the village of Goualala, Mali, Julien Mory Sidibé began his education at a local Catholic missionary school, later studying at the seminary at Goumi in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). In 1957, he was ordained a priest in Bougouni, Mali.  For five years he directed the catechism school of Faladie, then that of Ntonimba.

In 1971, he began working on his dissertation in theology in France, and was soon informed by Luc Sangare, archbishop of Bamako, that he would be made a bishop on his return to Mali, a post Sidibé took in 1974.  He is particularly remembered for a speech at Mali's 1991 National Conference in which he supported the country's transition to a more democratic political system.

He was Bishop of Ségou from 1974 until his death.

References
This article began as a translation of the corresponding French article, which cites the following as a source:

Le Segovien article

1927 births
2003 deaths
20th-century Roman Catholic bishops in Mali
21st-century Roman Catholic bishops in Mali
People from Sikasso Region
Roman Catholic bishops of Ségou

Julien Mory Sidibé


Tailgation is shorthand for "Tailgate Nation." Tailgations are communities of sports fans who congregate in the parking lots of football stadiums before games.  They erect tents and fire up barbecues, haul out portable beer pong tables and cornhole....all hours before a major sporting event.  Deep South Tailgations, typically seen at SEC football games feature high-end RV's, HD television screens and lots of fried chicken. Tailgations are defined by the activities and traditions held sacred by any tailgater: among them, BBQ, beer, games, and community. Tailgations grow organically, with traditions being passed down from one generation to the next.

Origin
The term is attributed to sports blogger Jason Maloni, a business of sports expert with Levick Strategic Communications and contributor to the Washington Post sports blog The League.

References

External links

Sports fandom

Tailgation


Siderokausia (), in Ottoman Turkish rendered as ﺳﻴﺪر َﻩ ﻗﺴﯽ Sidrekapsï, was a silver and gold mine active in the Byzantine and Ottoman periods, located in the northeastern Chalkidiki peninsula in northern Greece. The settlements of the region are known to this day as Mademochoria (Μαντεμοχώρια, "mine villages"). In the Ottoman period, a coin mint was attached to the mine.

History
The area, which first appears under the name Siderokausia in the 9th century, is located in northeastern Chalkidiki, around Stratoniki. Following the Ottoman conquest of the region in the early 15th century, the area flourished once more. At its height, some 500 to 600 kilns were active for the processing of lead and zinc. By 1705, the Ottoman sultans had granted the twelve mining villages, or Mademochoria (Μαντεμοχώρια < Turkish maaden, "mine" + Greek χωριό, "village"), extensive autonomy and privileges, in exchange for the payment of one twelfth of the annual silver production. According to the English traveller William Martin Leake, the supervision of the mines, along with the government of the twelve villages (which he calls ελευθεροχώρια, "free villages"), was under an Ottoman official, the madem aghasi. The twelve villages were Anthemounta (modern Galatista), Vavdos, Riana, Stanos, Varvara, Liaringova (modern Arnaia), Novoselo (modern Neochori), Machalas (Stageira), Isvoro (modern Stratoniki), Chorouda, Revenikia (modern Megali Panagia), and Ierissos.

The mine (Ottoman Turkish ma'den-i Sidrekapsi) was very large: "...by far the most productive of the Balkan mines during the first half of the sixteenth century...employing as many as 6,000 miners... Its total output has been estimated at about six tons per year...". The attached mint was active from about 1530 to the 18th or perhaps the 19th century, and produced silver akçe and gold sultani. For the sultani, it was one of the three main mints of the Empire, along with Cairo and Istanbul.

The Mademochoria retained their privileged status until their participation in the Greek War of Independence in 1821. The abortive uprising led to the cantonment of no less than 10,000 troops in the region, to guard the mines, with the villages being charged with their upkeep. As a result, the mines entered a period of crisis that led to their takeover by a Franco-Ottoman consortium, the Kassandra Mines company, based in Paris. In 1893, the company received exploitation rights for the antimony, lead, and manganese mines. A multi-national workforce of some 6,000 workers was employed in the ca. 600 kilns.

In 1920, the mines were bought by the Anonymous Greek Chemical Products and Fertilizer Company (Ανώνυμη Ελληνική Εταιρεία Χημικών Προϊόντων & Λιπασμάτων, ΑΕΕΧΠ & Λιπασμάτων), partly in order to secure their supply of sulfides for their fertilizer factories. At that time, the main loading site was located at the site of the modern village of Stratoni, where the minerals were brought via a six-kilometer-long Decauville-type railway line. In 1932, this system was replaced by an aerial transport line. Following the Asia Minor Catastrophe, Asia Minor refugees from the mining village of Balya Karaydın were settled in temporary shelters at Stratoni. Following the 1932 Ierissos earthquake, the settlement was rebuilt, and the modern village emerged.

References

Sources
 O. Davies, "Ancient Mines in Southern Macedonia", The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 62 (Jan.-Jun., 1932), p. 140
 Speros Vryonis, Jr., "The Question of the Byzantine Mines", Speculum 37:1:13-14 (Jan., 1962)

Gold mines in Greece
Economy of the Ottoman Empire
Mints (currency)
Silver mines in Greece
Medieval Macedonia
Macedonia under the Ottoman Empire
History of Chalkidiki
Mining communities in Greece

Siderokausia


Sex Matters is a Canadian talk show that broadcasts on CP24 exploring many issues about human sexuality. The program is hosted by CP24's Cynthia Loyst. Live broadcasts of the program airs Thursday and Friday nights at 10:30 pm on CP24. CP24 also rebroadcasts the program every Saturday and Sunday nights at 10:30 pm. Star! also airs the program every Saturday and Sunday nights at 11:30 pm. The program first aired on February 11, 2010 on CP24.

See also
 SexTV

External links

2010 Canadian television series debuts
Sex education television series
2010s Canadian documentary television series

Sex Matters


The Hawke's Bay wine region is New Zealand's oldest and second-largest wine-production region, on the east coast of the North Island. Production reached 41,000 tonnes in 2018 from  of planted vines, representing 10.2% of total national production. Some of the oldest wineries still operating in New Zealand, including Te Mata Estate, Church Road, and Mission Estate, were established in the Hawke's Bay area in the late 19th century. Despite this, it was only established as a geographical indication (GI) in 2018. The GI protects any wine produced within the boundaries of the entire Hawke's Bay Region, but in practice the vineyards are chiefly concentrated in the plains and low hills surrounding the cities of Napier and Hastings.

Climate

Wines

Red wines made from Merlot blends and Syrah are consistently well reviewed. Varietal white wines from Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris and Viognier are also produced.

Sub-regions

There are several sub-regions within the Hawke's Bay GI, most notably Gimblett Gravels and Bridge Pa Triangle, which have developed reputations for fine red wines.

Gimblett Gravels

The Gimblett Gravels is an area of approximately  defined by the extent of a particular local soil stratum known as the Omahu Gravels. It is one of the few geographical indications in the world defined by a soil type rather than the usual geographical, municipal or political boundaries. The designation is controlled as a registered trademark owned by the Gimblett Gravels Winegrowers Association, available only to its members. Membership is open to any producer that can show their vineyards are on the Gimblett Gravels soil (and thus by definition within the Gimblett Gravels area), and membership then allows the use of the label designation on any wines sourced (minimum 95%) from these vineyards. There are no other grape growing or winemaking regulations. Notable producers are Te Awa, Villa Maria, Trinity Hill, Newton Forrest Estate, Craggy Range, Esk Valley, Church Road, Sacred Hill, and CJ Pask.

Bridge Pa Triangle

Also known as the Ngatarawa Triangle, the Bridge Pa Triangle wine district is approximately  traced by three roads: Ngatarawa Road, State Highway 50 and Maraekakaho Road. The area adjoins the Gimblett Gravels to the north, and contains the old riverbed of the nearby Ngaruroro River before it changed course after an earthquake in the 1860s. The soils include free draining alluvial gravels and shallow clay-loam soils over Lake Taupō pumice tephras. Vineyards were first established in the area in 1981 by Alwyn Corban and Garry Glazebrook, who founded Ngatarawa Wines. Their successes attracted others to the area, and the Bridge Pa Triangle Wine District organisation was eventually incorporated in 2015. Membership allows producers to use the Bridge Pa Triangle logo and branding on the label as long as the wine has a minimum of 85% of the grapes sourced from the area. There are no other grape or wine-production regulations. Notable wineries in the area include Alpha Domus, Sileni Estates, Red Metal and Ash Ridge. Several other producers make single vineyard wines from their plantings in the Bridge Pa Triangle area, most notably the award-winning Syrah from Te Mata Estate's "Bullnose" vineyard.

Te Mata

The Te Mata Special Character Zone is an area of hills adjacent to Havelock North and Te Mata Peak. It was first protected by the Hawke's Bay Regional Council in 1996, making it New Zealand's first legally protected wine growing area. The principal producers in the region are Te Mata Estate, Craggy Range and Black Barn, but other producers have vineyards in the area, including De La Terre and Trinity Hill.

Te Awanga

Several vineyards are established in the coastal area around the small town of Te Awanga,  east of Hastings. The area has the sunny warm Hawke's Bay climate, moderated by cool coastal breezes at night. Notable producers here are Beach House, Clearview Estate, and Elephant Hill.

Central Hawke's Bay

Growers  further south around the towns of Waipawa and Waipukurau registered their own sub-region geographical indication in 2019, which covers roughly the southern half of the larger Hawke's Bay GI, with the same boundary as the Central Hawke's Bay District local authority. The principal producers are Lime Rock, Junction Wines and Pukeora Estate.

References

External links

 Hawke's Bay Winegrowers
 Gimblett Gravels Wine Growing District
 Bridge Pa Triangle Wine District

Wine regions of New Zealand
Geography of the Hawke's Bay Region

Hawke's Bay wine region