In materials science, hardness (antonym: softness) is a measure of the resistance to  plastic deformation, such as an indentation (over an area) or a scratch (linear), induced mechanically either by pressing or abrasion. In general, different materials differ in their hardness; for example hard metals such as titanium and beryllium are harder than soft metals such as sodium and metallic tin, or wood and common plastics. Macroscopic hardness is generally characterized by strong intermolecular bonds, but the behavior of solid materials under force is complex; therefore, hardness can be measured in different ways, such as scratch hardness, indentation hardness, and rebound hardness. Hardness is dependent on ductility, elastic stiffness, plasticity, strain, strength, toughness, viscoelasticity, and viscosity. Common examples of hard matter are ceramics, concrete, certain metals, and superhard materials, which can be contrasted with soft matter.

Measures

There are three main types of hardness measurements: scratch, indentation, and rebound. Within each of these classes of measurement there are individual measurement scales. For practical reasons conversion tables are used to convert between one scale and another.

Scratch hardness

Scratch hardness is the measure of how resistant a sample is to fracture or permanent plastic deformation due to friction from a sharp object. The principle is that an object made of a harder material will scratch an object made of a softer material. When testing coatings, scratch hardness refers to the force necessary to cut through the film to the substrate. The most common test is Mohs scale, which is used in mineralogy. One tool to make this measurement is the sclerometer.

Another tool used to make these tests is the pocket hardness tester. This tool consists of a scale arm with graduated markings attached to a four-wheeled carriage. A scratch tool with a sharp rim is mounted at a predetermined angle to the testing surface. In order to use it a weight of known mass is added to the scale arm at one of the graduated markings, the tool is then drawn across the test surface. The use of the weight and markings allows a known pressure to be applied without the need for complicated machinery.

Indentation hardness

Indentation hardness measures the resistance of a sample to material deformation due to a constant compression load from a sharp object. Tests for indentation hardness are primarily used in engineering and metallurgy. The tests work on the basic premise of measuring the critical dimensions of an indentation left by a specifically dimensioned and loaded indenter. Common indentation hardness scales are Rockwell, Vickers, Shore, and Brinell, amongst others.

Rebound hardness
Rebound hardness, also known as dynamic hardness, measures the height of the "bounce" of a diamond-tipped hammer dropped from a fixed height onto a material. This type of hardness is related to elasticity. The device used to take this measurement is known as a scleroscope. Two scales that measures rebound hardness are the Leeb rebound hardness test and Bennett hardness scale. Ultrasonic Contact Impedance (UCI) method determines hardness by measuring the frequency of an oscillating rod. The rod consists of a metal shaft with vibrating element and a pyramid-shaped diamond mounted on one end.

Hardening

There are five hardening processes: Hall-Petch strengthening, work hardening, solid solution strengthening, precipitation hardening, and martensitic transformation.

In solid mechanics

In solid mechanics, solids generally have three responses to force, depending on the amount of force and the type of material:
 They exhibit elasticity—the ability to temporarily change shape, but return to the original shape when the pressure is removed. "Hardness" in the elastic range—a small temporary change in shape for a given force—is known as stiffness in the case of a given object, or a high elastic modulus in the case of a material.
 They exhibit plasticity—the ability to permanently change shape in response to the force, but remain in one piece. The yield strength is the point at which elastic deformation gives way to plastic deformation. Deformation in the plastic range is non-linear, and is described by the stress-strain curve. This response produces the observed properties of scratch and indentation hardness, as described and measured in materials science. Some materials exhibit both elasticity and viscosity when undergoing plastic deformation; this is called viscoelasticity.
 They fracture—split into two or more pieces.

Strength is a measure of the extent of a material's elastic range, or elastic and plastic ranges together. This is quantified as compressive strength, shear strength, tensile strength depending on the direction of the forces involved. Ultimate strength is an engineering measure of the maximum load a part of a specific material and geometry can withstand.

Brittleness, in technical usage, is the tendency of a material to fracture with very little or no detectable plastic deformation beforehand. Thus in technical terms, a material can be both brittle and strong. In everyday usage "brittleness" usually refers to the tendency to fracture under a small amount of force, which exhibits both brittleness and a lack of strength (in the technical sense). For perfectly brittle materials, yield strength and ultimate strength are the same, because they do not experience detectable plastic deformation. The opposite of brittleness is ductility.

The toughness of a material is the maximum amount of energy it can absorb before fracturing, which is different from the amount of force that can be applied. Toughness tends to be small for brittle materials, because elastic and plastic deformations allow materials to absorb large amounts of energy.

Hardness increases with decreasing particle size. This is known as the Hall-Petch relationship. However, below a critical grain-size, hardness decreases with decreasing grain size. This is known as the inverse Hall-Petch effect.

Hardness of a material to deformation is dependent on its microdurability or small-scale shear modulus in any direction, not to any rigidity or stiffness properties such as its bulk modulus or Young's modulus. Stiffness is often confused for hardness. Some materials are stiffer than diamond (e.g. osmium) but are not harder, and are prone to spalling and flaking in squamose or acicular habits.

Mechanisms and theory

The key to understanding the mechanism behind hardness is understanding the metallic microstructure, or the structure and arrangement of the atoms at the atomic level. In fact, most important metallic properties critical to the manufacturing of today's goods are determined by the microstructure of a material. At the atomic level, the atoms in a metal are arranged in an orderly three-dimensional array called a crystal lattice. In reality, however, a given specimen of a metal likely never contains a consistent single crystal lattice. A given sample of metal will contain many grains, with each grain having a fairly consistent array pattern. At an even smaller scale, each grain contains irregularities.

There are two types of irregularities at the grain level of the microstructure that are responsible for the hardness of the material. These irregularities are point defects and line defects. A point defect is an irregularity located at a single lattice site inside of the overall three-dimensional lattice of the grain. There are three main point defects. If there is an atom missing from the array, a vacancy defect is formed. If there is a different type of atom at the lattice site that should normally be occupied by a metal atom, a substitutional defect is formed. If there exists an atom in a site where there should normally not be, an interstitial defect is formed. This is possible because space exists between atoms in a crystal lattice. While point defects are irregularities at a single site in the crystal lattice, line defects are irregularities on a plane of atoms. Dislocations are a type of line defect involving the misalignment of these planes. In the case of an edge dislocation, a half plane of atoms is wedged between two planes of atoms. In the case of a screw dislocation two planes of atoms are offset with a helical array running between them.

In glasses, hardness seems to depend linearly on the number of topological constraints acting between the atoms of the network. Hence, the rigidity theory has allowed predicting hardness values with respect to composition.

Dislocations provide a mechanism for planes of atoms to slip and thus a method for plastic or permanent deformation.  Planes of atoms can flip from one side of the dislocation to the other effectively allowing the dislocation to traverse through the material and the material to deform permanently. The movement allowed by these dislocations causes a decrease in the material's hardness.

The way to inhibit the movement of planes of atoms, and thus make them harder, involves the interaction of dislocations with each other and interstitial atoms. When a dislocation intersects with a second dislocation, it can no longer traverse through the crystal lattice. The intersection of dislocations creates an anchor point and does not allow the planes of atoms to continue to slip over one another A dislocation can also be anchored by the interaction with interstitial atoms. If a dislocation comes in contact with two or more interstitial atoms, the slip of the planes will again be disrupted. The interstitial atoms create anchor points, or pinning points, in the same manner as intersecting dislocations.

By varying the presence of interstitial atoms and the density of dislocations, a particular metal's hardness can be controlled. Although seemingly counter-intuitive, as the density of dislocations increases, there are more intersections created and consequently more anchor points. Similarly, as more interstitial atoms are added, more pinning points that impede the movements of dislocations are formed. As a result, the more anchor points added, the harder the material will become.

Relation between hardness number and stress-strain curve

Careful note should be taken of the relationship between a hardness number and the stress-strain curve exhibited by the material.  The latter, which is conventionally obtained via tensile testing, captures the full plasticity response of the material (which is in most cases a metal).  It is in fact a dependence of the (true) von Mises plastic strain on the (true) von Mises stress, but this is readily obtained from a nominal stress – nominal strain curve (in the pre-necking regime), which is the immediate outcome of a tensile test.  This relationship can be used to describe how the material will respond to almost any loading situation, often by using the Finite Element Method (FEM).  This applies to the outcome of an indentation test (with a given size and shape of indenter, and a given applied load).

However, while a hardness number thus depends on the stress-strain relationship, inferring the latter from the former is far from simple and is not attempted in any rigorous way during conventional hardness testing.  (In fact, the Indentation Plastometry technique, which involves iterative FEM modelling of an indentation test, does allow a stress-strain curve to be obtained via indentation, but this is outside the scope of conventional hardness testing.)  A hardness number is just a semi-quantitative indicator of the resistance to plastic deformation.  Although hardness is defined in a similar way for most types of test – usually as the load divided by the contact area – the numbers obtained for a particular material are different for different types of test, and even for the same test with different applied loads.  Attempts are sometimes made to identify simple analytical expressions that allow features of the stress-strain curve, particularly the yield stress and Ultimate Tensile Stress (UTS), to be obtained from a particular type of hardness number.  However, these are all based on empirical correlations, often specific to particular types of alloy:  even with such a limitation, the values obtained are often quite unreliable.  The underlying problem is that metals with a range of combinations of yield stress and work hardening characteristics can exhibit the same hardness number.  The use of hardness numbers for any quantitative purpose should, at best, be approached with considerable caution.

See also

Related properties
Hot hardness
Hardness comparison
Hardness of ceramics
Toughness
Other strengthening mechanisms
Grain boundary strengthening
Precipitation hardening
Solid solution strengthening
Work hardening

Hardness scales, tools and tests
Leeb rebound hardness test
Tablet hardness testing
Persoz pendulum
Roll hardness tester
Schmidt hammer
Janka hardness test
Nanoindentation
Barcol hardness test

References

Further reading

Davis, J. R. (Ed.). (2002). Surface hardening of steels: Understanding the basics. Materials Park, OH: ASM International.
Dieter, George E. (1989). Mechanical Metallurgy. SI Metric Adaptation. Maidenhead, UK: McGraw-Hill Education.

Revankar, G. (2003). "Introduction to hardness testing." Mechanical testing and evaluation, ASM Online Vol. 8.

External links

 An introduction to materials hardness
 Guidelines to hardness testing
 Testing the Hardness of Metals

Condensed matter physics
Matter
Solid mechanics
Materials science
Hardness tests
Physical properties

Hardness


Area code 302 is an area code for Delaware. It was one of the initial area codes created in October 1947. It still covers the entire state of Delaware. It is one of the longest area codes to cover an entire U.S. state without being split or overlaid.

302
Delaware

Area code 302


The Moors were the Muslims who lived in the Maghreb and on the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and parts of Southern France in the Middle Ages. In Europe, the word was often used for indigenous European people whose ancestors were converted to Islam, although Islam was not actually invented until 700 A.D., so the religion of the Moors who are indigenous to Europe was something else.

In 750 A.D. the Umayyad Dynasty was defeated in Syria. Many refugees came to what is now Spain and Portugal. They had a very big influence on the culture of these countries.

Umayyad Muslims were the ones who captured and named Al-Andalus, which means land of the Vandals. The majority of Moors in Iberia were native European populations who converted to Islam due to the Arab conquests of the peninsula. These Moors were forcefully converted to Catholicism after the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula in completion of the period popularly known as the Reconquista.

Other page
Othello

Ethnic groups in Morocco
Arab people
History of Spain

History of Portugal
Berber people
History of Islam
Berber

Moors


Yubeshi is a kind of japanese confection ("sweets"). Yubeshi is made in different shapes. Usually it is made with rice or rice flour, some nuts and a citrus fruit, often Yuzu. Walnuts are commonly used. Making Yubeshi is a lot of work.

Other websites

Japanese food

Yubeshi


Kivu was the name for a large "Region" in the Democratic Republic of Congo under the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko.

Kivu may also refer to:
 Apostolic Vicariate of Kivu, two vicariates of the White Fathers
 Diocese of Nord Kivu, an Anglican see
 Kivu 56 Power Station, a proposed installation in Rwanda
 Kivu Air, an airline based in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo
 Kivu conflict, began in 2004
 2013 Kivu Offensive
 Kivu District, a district of the Belgian Congo
 Kivu Lacus, a small hydrocarbon lake on the moon Titan
 Kivu Province, a province of the Belgian Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
 Kivu Railway, a former narrow gauge railway (1931-1958)
 Kivu Ruhorahoza (born 1982), Rwandese film director, writer and producer
 KivuWatt Power Station, Rwanda
 Lake Kivu, one of the African Great Lakes, on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda
 2008 Lake Kivu earthquake
 North Kivu, a province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
 2008 Nord-Kivu campaign, an armed conflict
 2014 North Kivu offensive
 South Kivu, a province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
 2010 South Kivu fuel tank explosion
 2014 South Kivu attack
 2015 South Kivu earthquake
 Provincial Assembly of Sud-Kivu
 Vicar Apostolic of Kivu, a predecessor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bukavu

See also
 2018 Kivu Democratic Republic of the Congo Ebola virus outbreak
 Kivu clawed frog (Xenopus vestitus)
 Kivu climbing mouse (Dendromus nyasae)
 Kivu giant pouched rat (Cricetomys kivuensis)
 Kivu long-haired shrew (Crocidura lanosa)
 Kivu shrew (Crocidura kivuana)
 Kivu ground thrush (Geokichla piaggiae tanganicae)
 Ornipholidotos kivu, a butterfly found in Kivu
 Retreat at Lake Kivu, an international forum for discussing issues related to genocide at Lake Kivu, Rwanda

Kivu (disambiguation)


Christopher of Werle, Prince of the Wends (born: before 1385; died: 25 August 1425) was from 1395 or earlier to 1425, Lord of Werle-Goldberg and Werle-Waren.  He succeeded his father, who died between 1385 and 1395.  He was the son of John VI of Werle and Agnes, a daughter of  Nicholas IV of Werle-Goldberg.

After his father's death, his brother Nicholas V ruled alone until Christopher came of age; from 1401, they ruled jointly.  After Nicholas V died in 1408, Christopher ruled alone.  He began calling himself "Prince of the Wends" on 4 May 1418 on the basis of chronicles written by Bishop Otto of Havelberg, which he regarded as evidence for his royal descent.  He was probably killed on 25 August 1425 during a battle at Pritzwalk against troops from Brandenburg.

He was probably unmarried and definitely childless.  With his death, the Werle-Goldberg line died out and Werle-Goldberg fell to his cousin William.

External links
 Genealogical table of the House of Mecklenburg
 Biographical information on Christopher on emecklenburg.de

Lords of Werle
House of Mecklenburg
14th-century births
Year of birth uncertain
1425 deaths
14th-century German nobility
15th-century German people

Christopher of Werle


A battlecruiser was like a battleship. It had thinner armor and lighter guns and was longer and less wide. They were faster than battleships, which meant they were made to go faster than bigger ships and chase down smaller ships.

Battlecruisers were used in the 20th century. The Royal Navy invented the battlecruiser, and soon later they were used by many countries around the world. They have been replaced with more modern ships which means they are no longer used. Battleships and battlecruisers are not used today because guided cruise missiles are much better than the guns battleships and battlecruisers had.

Warships

Battle cruiser


The Glarus thrust () is a major thrust fault in the Alps of eastern Switzerland. Along the thrust the Helvetic nappes were thrust more than 100 km to the north over the external Aarmassif and Infrahelvetic complex. The thrust forms the contact between older (Helvetic) Permo-Triassic rock layers of the Verrucano group and younger (external) Jurassic and Cretaceous limestones and Paleogene flysch and molasse.

The Glarus thrust crops out over a relatively large area in the cantons Glarus, St. Gallen and Graubünden, due to its horizontal orientation and the high local relief. Famous outcrops include those at Lochsite near Glarus (the town) and in a mountain cliff called Tschingelhörner between Elm and Flims (in the same cliff is a natural hole called the Martinsloch).

World Heritage
Thrust faults of this kind are not uncommon in many mountain chains around the world, but the Glarus thrust is a well accessible example and has as such played an important role in the development of geological knowledge on mountain building. For this reason the area in which the thrust is found was declared a geotope, a geologic UNESCO World Heritage Site, under the name "Swiss Tectonic Arena Sardona." The area of this "tectonic arena" encompasses 32,850 hectares of mainly mountainous landscape in 19 communities between the Surselva, Linthtal and Walensee. In the arena are a number of peaks higher than 3000 meters, such as Surenstock (its Romansh name is Piz Sardona, from which the name comes), Ringelspitz and Pizol.

In 2006 the Swiss government made a first proposal to declare the region World Heritage to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The IUCN then did not find the area to have an extraordinary or universal value and denied the proposal. The Swiss made a new, this time successful proposal in March 2008. The region was declared a World Heritage Site in July 2008, because "the area displays an exceptional example of mountain building through continental collision and features excellent geological sections through tectonic thrust."

The American Museum of Natural History in New York exposes a full-scale reconstruction of the Glarus thrust.

History
The first naturalist to examine the Glarus thrust was Hans Conrad Escher von der Linth (1767–1823). Escher von der Linth discovered that, contradictory to Steno's law of superposition, older rocks are on top of younger ones in certain outcrops in Glarus. His son Arnold Escher von der Linth (1807–1872), the first professor in geology at the ETH at Zürich, mapped the structure in more detail and concluded that it could be a huge thrust. At the time, most geologists believed in the theory of geosynclines, which states that mountains are formed by vertical movements within the Earth's crust. Escher von der Linth had therefore difficulty with explaining the size of the thrust fault. In 1848 he invited the British geologist Roderick Murchison, an international authority, to come and look at the structure. Murchison was familiar with larger thrust faults in Scotland and agreed with Escher's interpretation. However, Escher himself felt insecure about his idea and when he published his observations in 1866 he instead interpreted the Glarus thrust as two large overturned narrow anticlines. This hypothesis was rather absurd, as he admitted himself in private.

Escher's successor as professor at Zürich, Albert Heim (1849–1937), initially stuck to his predecessor's interpretation of two anticlines. However, some geologists favoured the idea of a thrust. One of them was Marcel Alexandre Bertrand (1847–1907), who interpreted the structure as a thrust in 1884, after reading Heims observations. Bertrand was familiar with the Faille du Midi (Variscan orogeny), a large thrust fault in the Belgian Ardennes. Meanwhile, British geologists began to recognize the nature of thrust faults in the Scottish Highlands. In 1883, Archibald Geikie accepted that the Highlands are a thrust system. Swiss geologists Hans Schardt and Maurice Lugeon then discovered in 1893 that in western Switzerland, Jurassic rock layers are on top of younger molasse too, and argued that the structure of the Alps is a large stack of nappes, large sheets of rock that had been thrust on top of each other. At the turn of the century, Heim was also convinced of the new theory. He and other Swiss geologists now started mapping the nappes of Switzerland in more detail. From that moment on, geologists began recognizing large thrusts in many mountain chains around the world.

However, it was still not understood where the huge forces that moved the nappes came from. Only with the arrival of plate tectonic theory in the 1950s an explanation was found. In plate tectonics, the horizontal movement of tectonic plates over the Earth's soft asthenosphere causes horizontal forces within the crust. Presently, geologists believe most mountain chains are formed by convergent movements between tectonic plates.

Notes and references

Literature

External links

Geology of the Alps
World Heritage Sites in Switzerland
Flims
Tourist attractions in Switzerland
Geography of the canton of Glarus
Geography of Graubünden
Geography of the canton of St. Gallen
Glarus–Graubünden border
Protected areas of the Alps

Glarus thrust


David Robinson (born April 2, 1949 in Woburn, Massachusetts) is an American rock drummer. He was in many rock bands like The Modern Lovers, DMZ, and The Cars.

He went to Woburn Memorial High School.

David has left the music industry and was not involved in the formation of The New Cars.

1949 births
Living people
American rock drummers
Restaurateurs
Musicians from Massachusetts
The Cars members

David Robinson


The Direction générale des études et recherches (English: General Directorate for Studies and Research, DGER), was a division of the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA), the intelligence agency of the Free French Forces, Charles de Gaulle's French government-in-exile in London. It was created in 1944, and Jacques Soustelle was the first director, from 6 November 1944 to 18 April 1945, followed by André Dewavrin until April 1946, when the DGER became the Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage (SDECE).

Defunct French intelligence agencies
Military history of France


KIOCL Limited, formerly Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Limited is a central public sector undertaking under the ownership of the Ministry of Steel, Government of India, with its head office and administrative activities in Bangalore. It has a pelletisation plant in Mangalore and had an iron ore mine in Kudremukh (Chikkamagaluru district). The Kudremukh mine, one of the largest iron ore mines in the world, was closed in 2006.

The captive mining took place at Kudremukh on the Western Ghats range. The mined ore was transported 110 km through slurry pipelines running through the districts of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada up to the pelletisation plant in Panambur, adjacent to the premises of the New Mangalore Port.

The pellet plant with a capacity of 3.5 million tons per annum was commissioned at Mangalore in 1987. The plant was stopped in 2011 but in 2014 the plant resumed producing and exporting pellets, running on ores supplied by NMDC Limited. The pellets have been shipped to countries like China, Iran, Japan, and Taiwan.

In 2017 there were plans to restart captive mining operations, now at Sanduru in Bellary district.

Controversies
In 2016 KIOCL planned to develop a commercial resort in the Kudremukh national park, refurbishing some of its buildings, unused since the closure of the mine. The project had not obtained an environmental clearance. In October 2016 the Ministry of Environment and Forests ordered to immediately stop the work.

References

General references
 Company overview KIOCL Limited.
 Brief overview of KIOCL limited Ministry of Steel, Government of India.

Iron ore mining companies of India
Companies based in Mangalore
Non-renewable resource companies established in 1976
Indian companies established in 1976
Mining in Karnataka
1976 establishments in Karnataka
Companies listed on the National Stock Exchange of India
Companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange

Kudremukh Iron Ore Company


Ipala is a town and municipality in the Chiquimula department of Guatemala.

Geography
Ipala is a 30-minute microbus ride from Chiquimula headed south towards Jutiapa.  Roughly 3 kilometers from the base of the volcano, the land is full of lava rock and cacti.  There are several "aldeas" that surround Ipala, and the residents from them gather every Sunday in the city center for market day.

Economy
Economically speaking, Ipala is mostly agricultural.  The harvest (la cosecha) is an important event, and most families plant corn and beans for own consume and trade.  Inside Ipala, there are several neighborhoods (barrios) including El Maestro, El Suyate, and La Cruzita.  There is one main street (la calle principal) which is lined with restaurants, clothing stores and jewelry shops. The people of Ipala are camperos and ladinos.  Unlike Northern Guatemala, where the indigenous population speaks many dialects, in Ipala only Spanish is spoken.

Education
There are two public schools, going from kindergarten until 6th grade. Another public school well known as "INEBI" gives education from 7th grade until the 9th; at the morning shift while in the afternoon this school becomes as "ICOMA" that brings education for students involved in "Magisterio in education" ( students who studying to be a teacher). Although, the second public school is called "Colegio Proyeccion" which is based in the afternoon and night shifts for "Magisterio" as well. There are 3 private middle schools and High schools, the three of them in the morning shift as middle schools, and the afternoon as high schools, these schools are "Colegio Sinai, Colegio Católico, and Colegio Ipalteco."

Also Ipala have active youth schooling groups that get involved in sports and help the community; they have been known as "La tortilla tieza" and "Los monquis." both groups have been active since 2002- to present, however many members have had to leave this groups because they have travel to other cities, or counties. The members who are left also created the most recent group called "Rosario Central" who nowadays, are the ones with more activity.

Tourism
While visiting Ipala, check out "La Posa de la Pila", which is a bathing area in the river approximately 1 kilometer south of the fork in the road.  Safe food and water can be found at any "tienda", and there is a Chévere, which is a hamburger joint across from the Catholic Church. Another place very famous the community of Guatemala visit as tour is the "Ipala Volcano" which is approximatively 5 kilometers away from the main Ipala town. The volcano has a 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) and is famous for its wide summit crater which contains a crater lake called "La laguna del volcan de Ipala." Many neighborhoods also travel to Ipala, for the traditional and annual "Feria" that it has many unique activities for a long as one week, the main day is January 23 but usually it starts on January 21.

Sport
The town of Ipala has a variety of sports that many residents practice.  Soccer is the main one, which it has an inter-community major league, following for Basketball, volleyball and others.

Twin towns
Ipala has an active sister-city program with Riverdale Park, Maryland, United States
In July 2009, five teachers from Prince George's County visited Ipala, taught English, and trained English as a Second Language teachers in the municipality.  The program has continued each summer since 2009.

References

External links

Municipalities of the Chiquimula Department

Ipala, Guatemala


Evolution, also called The Evolution Of Beauty, is an advertising campaign launched by Unilever in 2006 as part of its Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, to promote the newly created Dove Self-Esteem Fund. The centre of the Unilever campaign is a 75-second spot produced by Ogilvy & Mather in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The piece was first displayed online on 6 October 2006, and was later broadcast as a television and cinema spot in the Netherlands and the Middle East. The ad was created from the budget left over from the earlier Daughters campaign, and was intended to be the first in a series of such online-focused campaigns by the company. Later such videos include Onslaught and Amy. Evolution was directed by Canadian director Yael Staav and Tim Piper, with sound design handled by the Vapor Music Group, and post-production by SoHo.

The advert was a critical, popular, and financial success. It won a number of awards in the advertising industry, including two Cannes Lions Grand Prix awards and an Epica D'Or. It has been discussed in many mainstream television programmes and print publications, and the exposure generated by the spot has been estimated to be worth over $150M. Evolution has also spawned numerous unofficial alternate versions, including a title sequence to a BBC sketch show and the short parody Slob Evolution, which has gone on to itself be nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award.

Sequence
The film opens with a "pretty, but ordinary girl" (Canadian cartoonist and television producer Stephanie Betts) entering and sitting down in a studio. Two harsh lights are then switched on and the first bars of The Flashbulb's "Passage D," a breakcore-piece with piano accompaniment, are heard. The short credits sequence provides the title of the film and credit to Dove. The camera then switches to a time lapse sequence, showing makeup and hair artist Diana Carreiro making Betts up and adjusting her hair, transforming her into a "strikingly beautiful billboard model." When the final physical adjustments of Betts's appearance have been made, the team members all move off-camera, and a series of camera flashes begins as the photographer takes shots of Betts in various poses.

One shot is selected from the batch and moved into a generic image editing software interface, where a series of "Photoshopping" adjustments are made to alter Betts's appearance even further, including but not limited to lengthening her neck, adjusting the curve of her shoulders, altering her hair and skin, and enlarging her eyes and mouth. The final image of Betts, now rendered almost unrecognizable, is then transferred to a billboard advertisement for the fictional "Easel" (or "Fasel") brand of foundation makeup. As the camera zooms out from the billboard, two young girls can be seen walking past and looking up at Betts' heavily edited image. The video fades to the statement, "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted." The film ends with an invitation to take part in the "Dove Real Beauty Workshops," the logo for the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, and, in some versions, the website address of Unilever-Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty, for which the film was originally produced.

Background

The Dove Campaign For Real Beauty was launched by Unilever in 2003, to coincide with the expansion of the Dove brand from soaps and other cleansing solutions to health and beauty products in general, including deodorants, shower gels, hair-care and skin-care products. The first stage of the campaign centred around a series of billboard advertisements, initially put up in the United Kingdom, and later worldwide. The spots showcased photographs of regular women (in place of professional models), taken by portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz. The ads invited passers-by to vote on whether a particular model was, for example, "Fat or Fab" or "Wrinkled or Wonderful", and the results of the votes dynamically updated and displayed on the billboard itself. Accompanying the billboard advertisements was the publication of the "Dove Report", a corporate study which Unilever intended to "[create] a new definition of beauty [which] will free women from self-doubt and encourage them to embrace their real beauty."

The series received significant media coverage from talk shows, women's magazines, and mainstream news broadcasts and publications, generating media exposure which Unilever has estimated to be worth more than 30 times the paid-for media space. Following this success, the campaign expanded into other media, including a series of television spots (Flip Your Wigs and the Pro-Age series, among others) and print advertisements ("Tested on Real Curves").  This culminated in the 2006 Little Girls global campaign, which featured regional versions of the same advertisement in both print and screen, for which Unilever purchased a 30-second spot in the commercial break during Super Bowl XL at an estimated cost of US$2.5M.

In 2006, Ogilvy & Mather were seeking to extend the campaign further, by creating one or more viral videos to host on the Campaign for Real Beauty website. The first of these, Daughters, was an interview-style piece intended to show how mothers and daughters related to issues surrounding the modern perception of beauty and the beauty industry. It was during the production of Daughters that a series of short films titled "Beauty Crackdown", one of which was Evolution, was promoted to Unilever as an "activation idea". The concept was one that art director Tim Piper pushed; he proposed to have Evolution produced using the money left over from the budget for Daughters. This ended up amounting to a total of C$135,000. It was originally intended to get people to the Campaign for Real Beauty website to see Daughters, and to participate in the workshops featured on the site.

Production

The team brought together for the ad included director Yael Staav, the first female director to win a Cannes Lion (for Hugging, a campaign for the ALS Society of Canada), fashion photographers Tiko Poulakakis and Gabor Jurina, makeup artist Diana Carreiro, art director Tim Piper, and Piper's then-girlfriend Stephanie Betts as the model. Betts, a cartoonist and producer of Canadian animated television programming such as Producing Parker, was chosen as the model for Evolution in part because Piper was first inspired to write the piece after seeing the amount of time his girlfriend spent applying make-up, and he felt that she would be an ideal "representation of the norm", highlighting the extreme changes that models undergo in the fashion industry. She was originally dubious about taking on the role but later stated that she was proud that she joined the campaign.

The actual production itself took place over the course of a single day, and over two-and-a-half hours of footage was taken for the make-up portion of the film. This was eventually condensed to 23 seconds in the final version. The stage was dressed in a manner identical to that of modern fashion shoots, with the lighting and camera being positioned to remove any shadows from Betts's face to aid in the post-production retouching. Sound design took three weeks, and was divided into two sections. Fifteen hours were spent creating several mixes of "Passage D" with each mix tested and discarded before the version used in the final film was settled upon. A further nine hours were spent adding in the various background noises to the piece, including sped-up human voices, a starter pistol and galloping racehorses.

Post-production at SoHo was originally planned to take approximately three days, but it was extended to two weeks. Gabor Jurina, the photographer responsible for the digital retouching of the actual photographs taken of Betts during the shoot, supplied the post-production team with 118 digital stills of the intermediate stages of the transformation from the "real" photograph of the made-up Betts to the final image shown on the billboard. These were re-cut and assembled to create the functions shown in the "Photoshopping" sequence, such as stretching Betts's neck and adjusting the size of certain of her facial features. Other post-production work included stabilising Betts's head in the center of the shot during the make-up sequence, covering certain continuity errors, creating and compositing the billboard advertisement, and constructing a false image-editing interface.

Release and reception
Evolution was incorporated into the Canadian Campaign for Real Beauty website on 6 October 2006 in order to coincide with the start of the Los Angeles Fashion Week, and was uploaded by art director Tim Piper to video sharing website YouTube shortly after. While it has remained a largely internet-based campaign, Evolution has appeared as a television commercial in the Netherlands and the Middle East, and in the U.S. inside commercial breaks in The Hills.

Once uploaded, the advert was viewed over 40,000 times in its first day, 1.7 million times within a month of its upload, and 12 million times within its first year. Even without having appeared offline, the advert was discussed by a number of mainstream television programmes, including Good Morning America, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and The View, and news networks such as CNN, NBC, and ABC News; the overwhelming majority came out in support of the campaign's message. Spaces at the mother and daughter workshops sold out almost immediately, and the total exposure generated through the $50,000 piece was estimated by Ogilvy & Mather in October 2006 as being worth around $150M. Comparisons have often been drawn up between the campaign and Dove's earlier purchase of a 30-second spot for Little Girls during the Super Bowl XL. The Super Bowl spot cost an estimated $2.5M, reached an audience of 500 million, and generated only one third of the boost in traffic to the Campaign for Real Beauty website of Evolution. The spot was also credited for its part in producing double-figure growth in sales of Dove product, and Unilever reported that its overall sales in the period following the release of Evolution rose by 5.8%, up from 3.9% the previous year.

Evolution was particularly popular with critics within the advertising industry, and has garnered a number of awards since its debut in October 2006. It was the favourite in the run up to the Cannes Lions to win the festival's Grand Prix in the Cyber category,  generally considered one of the most prestigious awards in the industry. Ultimately, the prize went to three entries: Nike+, advertising the Nike brand,  Heidies 15 MB of Fame, promoting fashion company Diesel S.p.A.'s website and products, and Evolution. Evolution also went on to win the Grand Prix in the Film category, beating Pretty from Nike, Inc., Paint for Sony's BRAVIA line of high-definition television sets, and The Power of Wind for the Wind Energy Initiative. The victory attracted a certain amount of controversy, as the jury switched Evolution from the "Fundraising & Appeals" category, whose entries are ineligible to win the Grand Prix, to the "Corporate Image" category at the last minute. Chairman of the jury Bob Scarpelli said of the decision, "We moved it into another category because we felt that strongly about it. We were not trying to break rules or set precedents, we just went with our hearts and minds, and asked the festival if we could move it." As a result of the win, Evolution became the first entry in the festival's history to take home Grand Prix awards from two categories and the first web-based advertisement to win in the Film category (followed in 2009 by Philips' Carousel)

The piece went on to win a number of other awards, including a silver Clio Award (in the Toiletries/Pharmaceuticals category), the Film Grand Prix and two Gold prizes at the London International Awards, an Epica D'Or and Gold Prize in the Interactive category of the Epica Awards, among others.

Music copyright violations
On October 17, 2017, the original version of Evolution along with hundreds of copies were removed from YouTube and other video hosting sites due to copyright violation citing "Alphabasic Records" or "Alphabasic Publishing" as the claimant. According to Benn Jordan, the writer and owner of the music, Dove had allegedly failed to renew or pay for the music license, causing the publisher and YouTube to remove the videos. On November 8, 2017, Jordan claimed that despite many attempts to resolve the issue, Dove has continued to use his music illegally by not renewing the license.

Legacy

Slob Evolution

The popularity of Evolution and its presence on many video-sharing websites led inevitably to a large number of alternate versions and parodies being uploaded by the public. In under six months, parodies on YouTube alone received over 5 million hits between them, Of these, by far the most successful was a professionally made piece entitled Slob Evolution.

Slob Evolution is an Emmy Award-nominated short film created as a parody of the original Evolution spot in late 2006. The piece was directed by Simon Willows, known for his work on the Volvic mineral water television and cinema commercials, and was produced by Claire Jones with the production company Blink Productions. Post-production work was done by Framestore CFC.

In Slob Evolution, the role of the model is taken by a teenage boy who, instead of having make-up applied in the time-lapse sequence, is given fast food, alcoholic beverages, and cigarettes, transforming over the course of thirty seconds into an overweight middle-aged slob. Further adjustments are made in a similar image-editing interface to that used in Evolution,. The subject's neck is shortened, his features made more asymmetric, and a tattoo is added. The image is transferred to a billboard advertisement for the fictional "Lardo" brand of "man cream", and the piece ends with a fade to the statement, "Thank God our perception of reality is distorted. No one wants to look at ugly people."

The parody was uploaded to video-sharing website YouTube on December 4, 2006 and was promoted only through a seeding of 30 e-mails. Within its first month, Slob Evolution received over 278,000 hits. It went on to be nominated for a number of prestigious awards, including the "Comedy: Short Form" and "Viral" categories of the 2007 Webby Awards, and in the "Outstanding Broadband Comedy" category of the 2007 Daytime Emmy Awards. The popular and critical attention that Blink Productions received for Slob Evolution led to Tiger Aspect, the production company behind the 2007 BBC comedy sketch show Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul, contacting the production company to produce an introduction to the show in a similar vein.

The title sequence to Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul begins with a shot of Morwenna Banks and Laura Solon. The familiar time-lapse sequence shows the pair being given several pints of lager, cigarettes, and fast food. Their hair is cut and their make-up removed as they slowly morph into Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, the joint hosts of Ruddy Hell! It's Harry And Paul. After bras are removed from the pair's shirts, the camera zooms out to show a billboard advertisement similar to that in Slob Evolution, with the show's title displayed underneath.

Other works
Shortly after releasing Evolution online, post-production company SoHo uploaded a five-minute making-of documentary, which includes interviews with creative directors Janet Kestin and Tim Piper, photographer Gabor Jurina, post-production director Paul Gowan, digital artists Kevin Gibson and Terry Rose, and sound designer Andrew Harris, who discuss the various stages of the post-production process behind the creation of the spot. The making-of also includes a shot of Evolutions storyboard and a short segment of behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot itself, showing Stephanie Betts before and after the make-up process.

After the debut of Evolution, Dove quickly ordered several follow-up online advertisements, the first two of which (Onslaught and Amy) appeared online in October 2007. These were also written and directed by Tim Piper. The pair are predicted to prove at least as popular as Evolution. Other companies have attempted to use the same formula, with mixed results. Among the more-commented on campaigns is Beauty is..., launched by Nivea in 2007 and comprising television, print, and online segments which push the same message as the Dove campaign.

See also
Dove Real Beauty Sketches

References

External links

 Evolution at YouTube, uploaded by the director. Retrieved January 15, 2010.

2006 works
Canadian television commercials
Viral videos
Winners of the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival Film Grand Prix

Evolution (advertisement)


Lucumí or Lukumí may refer to:
Lucumí language, a lexicon of words and phrases used as the liturgical language of Santería in Cuba
Lucumí people, an Afro-Cuban ethnic group of Yoruba ancestry
Lucumí religion, another name for the Santería faith
Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Hialeah, Florida, United States
Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, a U.S. Supreme Court case

People
Brayan Lucumí (b. 1994), Colombian footballer
Carlota Lucumí (d. 1844), Afro-Cuban slave and rebel leader
Édison Hipólito Chará Lucumí (1980 – 2011), Colombian footballer
Janer Guaza Lucumí (b. 1991), Colombian footballer
Jeison Lucumí (b. 1995), Colombian footballer
Jhon Lucumí (b. 1998), Colombian footballer
Luis Sinisterra Lucumí (b. 1999), Colombian footballer
Remigio Lucumí (1811/1816 – 1905), Afro-Cuban babalawo (Yoruba priest)
Sebastián Rincón Lucumí (b. 1994), Colombian footballer

See also
 Loukoumi

Language and nationality disambiguation pages

Lucumí


Thierry Bianquis (3 August 1935 – 2 September 2014) was a French Orientalist and Arabist. His main interest was the medieval Islamic Middle East, most notably the Fatimid era of Egypt and Syria, which was the subject of his dissertation.

Born in Broummana, Lebanon, in 1935, he spent his childhood in the country before coming to France for his higher education. He was a resident of the Institut Français d'Etudes Arabes de Damas at Damascus in 1967–1975, and served as its director in 1975–1981, as well as a member of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale at Cairo in 1971–1975. In 1991, he was elected professor of Islamic history and civilisation at Université Lumière Lyon 2. Alongside his own voluminous publications, he served as an editor of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, and was one of the main authors of The Cambridge history of Egypt: Islamic Egypt (641-1517).

Sources

1935 births
2014 deaths
French Arabists
French scholars of Islam
French orientalists
People from Matn District

Thierry Bianquis


Michigan Government Television (MGTV) was a public affairs Government-access television (GATV) cable TV channel. Modeled on C-SPAN, its programming covered events and proceedings within the state government, including sessions of the Michigan House of Representatives and the Michigan Senate.

MGTV was operated by a non-profit corporation funded by cable subscription fees. The channel was on the air five days a week from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in 2008. Because of the limited schedule and limited channel pre-digital TV era, MGTV usually shared time with PEG, Leased access or infomercial channels.

History
The Michigan Cable Telecommunications Association commissioned from Public Sector Consultants a study on the feasibility of a state C-SPAN styled cable channel in 1993. The Michigan Public Service Commission and Ameritech settled an overcharging lawsuit. Governor John Engler already had his plan for such a network in motion by earmarking the overcharged settlement funds for the project. A master control room was designed and placed in the Romney office building with additional control rooms and cameras for the two capitol chambers. The cable association assisted with professional advice.

By March 1994, the Michigan House Oversight and Ethics Committee was holding meetings over the Michigan Public Service Commission plans to use $2 million in overcharged fees for the Michigan Government Television project and on February 28, 1994, Lark Samouelian started work as the appointed MGTV project manager. Engler had original plan to run the channel as a part of the executive branch, but was getting resistance.

With Engler just wishing to get the channel off the ground, the Michigan Cable Telecommunications Association offered to place the channel under non-profit 501(c)3 corporation controlled by the cable companies' executives. In December 1995, the cable companies' non-profit took over the channel.  Bill Trevarthen was hired as executive director in February 1996 with his start date of April 1, 1996.

MGTV was launched on July 15, 1996. Programming included House and Senate committees, board meetings from within the executive branch, press conferences, speeches by policy makers and events made available by the state's universities. In October 1996, MGTV made Michigan only the second state to air oral arguments from the state's Supreme Court. For the first year, the channel was only available three Lansing area cable providers, TCI, Media One and Horizon. Satellite uplink was provisioned from Videocom after considering Michigan Information Technology Network's Ku band uplink, which had rain fade. The uplink allowed the channel to go statewide. Live coverage of the Senate began in late 1997 followed soon by the House of Representatives.

For the 1998 election, the channel taped Lansing State Journal editorial board interviews with all statewide candidates and ballot issue advocates. This began a long term relationship with the newspaper. MGTV broadcast additional hours for the Senate expulsion hearing for Senator David Jaye in 2001.

In mid-January 2013 MGTV discontinued operations claiming lack of interest and clearance issues with providers. The non-profit turned over equipment to the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget, which would use the equipment to launch on the internet as MiTV January 1, 2013, and had no cable system restrictions on availability.

Production
While coverage of the public bodies were gavel-to-gavel and unedited, similar to C-SPAN, MGTV did produce some educational documentary programs. Two notable documentaries were about the Civil War flags at the Capitol and their human stories and the other on the World War II Japanese-Americans internment lawsuit focusing on the part of Michigan native and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy. The network also broadcast the oral histories and programs of the Michigan Political History Society.

The channel also recorded the Lansing State Journals editorial board interviews with all statewide candidates and ballot issue advocates starting in 1998. The channel also held live call-in Q&A sessions with statewide candidates.

References

Michigan Legislature
Commercial-free television networks
Television networks in the United States
Legislature broadcasters in the United States
Television channels and stations established in 1996
Television channels and stations disestablished in 2013
1996 establishments in Michigan
Defunct local cable stations in the United States
Television stations in Michigan
American public access television

Michigan Government Television


Pterostylis maxima, commonly known as the large rustyhood, is a plant in the orchid family Orchidaceae and is endemic to south-eastern Australia. It has a rosette of leaves at its base and up to eight relatively large, dark brown flowers with transparent "windows" and a thin, dark insect-like labellum.

Description
Pterostylis maxima, is a terrestrial,  perennial, deciduous, herb with an underground tuber. It has a rosette of between six and twelve egg-shaped leaves at the base of the flowering spike, each leaf  long and  wide. Between two and eight dark reddish-brown flowers with transparent sections, each flower  long and  wide are borne on a flowering spike  tall. Four to six stem leaves are wrapped around the flowering spike. The dorsal sepal and petals are joined to form a hood called the "galea" over the column with the dorsal sepal having a thread-like tip  long. The lateral sepals are wider than the galea, dished, densely hairy on their outer edges and suddenly taper to thread-like tips  long and parallel to each other. The labellum is reddish-brown, thin and insect-like,  long and about  wide. The "head" end is swollen with two long bristles and there are up to 8 to 12 shorter bristles on each side of the "body". Flowering occurs from October to November.

Taxonomy and naming
Pterostylis maxima was first formally described in 1989 by David Jones and Mark Clements from a specimen collected near Bendigo and the description was published in Australian Orchid Research. The specific epithet (maxima) is a Latin word meaning "greatest" or "largest".

Distribution and habitat
The large rustyhood occurs in scattered populations south from Temora in New South Wales and across Victoria to the south-east bioregion of South Australia. It grows in woodland, open forest and mallee.

Conservation
Pterostylis maxima is described as "vulnerable" in Victoria and as "endangered" in South Australia.

References

maxima
Endemic orchids of Australia
Orchids of New South Wales
Orchids of South Australia
Orchids of Victoria (state)
Plants described in 1989

Pterostylis maxima


Our Town is a three-act play created by American playwright Thornton Wilder in 1938. Described by Edward Albee as "the greatest American play ever written", it presents the fictional American town of Grover's Corners between 1901 and 1913 through the everyday lives of its citizens.

Wilder uses metatheatrical devices, setting the play in the actual theatre where it is being performed.  The main character is the stage manager of the theatre who directly addresses the audience, brings in guest lecturers, fields questions from the audience, and fills in playing some of the roles.  The play is performed without a set on a mostly bare stage.  With a few exceptions, the actors mime actions without the use of props.

The first performance of Our Town was at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey on January 22, 1938. It went on to success on Broadway and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and remains popular today with frequent revivals.

Synopsis

Act I: Daily Life
The Stage Manager introduces the audience to the small town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, and the people living there as a morning begins in the year 1901.  Joe Crowell delivers the paper to Doc Gibbs, Howie Newsome delivers the milk, and the Webb and Gibbs households send their children (Emily and Wally Webb, George and Rebecca Gibbs) off to school on this beautifully simple morning.  Professor Willard speaks to the audience about the history of the town. Editor Webb speaks to the audience about the town's socioeconomic status, political and religious demographics, and the accessibility and proliferation, or lack thereof, of culture and art in Grover's Corners. The Stage Manager leads us through a series of pivotal moments throughout the afternoon and evening, revealing the characters' relationships and challenges.

It is at this time when we are introduced to Simon Stimson, an organist and choir director at the Congregational Church. We learn from Mrs. Louella Soames that Simon Stimson is an alcoholic when she, Mrs. Gibbs, and Mrs. Webb stop on the corner after choir practice and "gossip like a bunch of old hens," according to Doc Gibbs, discussing Simon's alcoholism. It seems to be a well known fact amongst everyone in town that Simon Stimson has a problem with alcohol; all the characters speak to his issue as if they are aware of it and his having "seen a peck of trouble," a phrase repeated by more than one character throughout the show. While the majority of townsfolk choose to "look the other way," including the town policeman, Constable Warren, it is Mrs. Gibbs who takes Simon's struggles with addiction to heart, and has a conversation with her husband, Doc Gibbs, about Simon's drinking.

Underneath a glowing full moon, Act I ends with siblings George and Rebecca, and Emily gazing out of their respective bedroom windows, enjoying the smell of heliotrope in the "wonderful (or terrible) moonlight," with the self-discovery of Emily and George liking each other, and the realization that they are both straining to grow up in their own way.

The audience is dismissed to the first intermission by the Stage Manager who quips, "That's the end of Act I, folks. You can go and smoke, now. Those that smoke."

Act II: Love and Marriage
Three years have passed, and George and Emily prepare to wed. The day is filled with stress. Howie Newsome is delivering milk in the pouring rain while Si Crowell, younger brother of Joe, laments how George's baseball talents will be squandered. George pays an awkward visit to his soon-to-be in-laws. Here, the Stage Manager interrupts the scene and takes the audience back a year, to the end of Emily and George's junior year. Emily confronts George about his pride, and over an ice cream soda, they discuss the future and  confess their love for each other. George decides not to go to college, as he had planned, but to work and eventually take over his uncle's farm. In the present, George and Emily say that they are not ready to marry—George to his mother, Emily to her father—but they both calm down and happily go through with the wedding.

Act III: Death and Eternity
Nine years have passed. The Stage Manager, in a lengthy monologue, discusses eternity, focusing attention on the cemetery outside of town and the people who have died since the wedding, including Mrs. Gibbs (pneumonia, while traveling), Wally Webb (burst appendix, while camping), Mrs. Soames, and Simon Stimson (suicide by hanging). Town undertaker Joe Stoddard is introduced, as is a young man named Sam Craig who has returned to Grover's Corners for his cousin's funeral. That cousin is Emily, who died giving birth to her and George's second child. Once the funeral ends, Emily emerges to join the dead. Mrs. Gibbs urges her to forget her life, warning her that being able to see but not interact with her family, all the while knowing what will happen in the future, will cause her too much pain. Ignoring the warnings of Simon, Mrs. Soames, and Mrs. Gibbs, Emily returns to Earth to relive one day, her 12th birthday. She joyfully watches her parents and some of the people of her childhood for the first time in years, but her joy quickly turns to pain as she realizes how little people appreciate the simple joys of life. The memory proves too painful for her and she realizes that every moment of life should be treasured. When she asks the Stage Manager if anyone truly understands the value of life while they live it, he responds, "No. The saints and poets, maybe – they do some." Emily returns to her grave next to Mrs. Gibbs and watches impassively as George kneels weeping over her. The Stage Manager concludes the play and wishes the audience a good night.

Characters
 Stage Manager – a narrator, commentator, and guide through Grover's Corners. He joins in the action of the play periodically, as the minister at the wedding, the soda shop owner, a local townsman, etc., and speaks directly to Emily after her death.
 Emily Webb – one of the main characters; we follow her from a precocious young girl through her wedding to George Gibbs and her early death.
 George Gibbs – the other main character; the boy next door, a kind but irresponsible teenager who matures over time and becomes a responsible husband, father and farmer.
 Frank Gibbs – George's father, the town doctor.
 Julia (Hersey) Gibbs –George's mother. She dreams of going to Paris but doesn't get there. She saved $350 for the trip from the sale of an antique furniture piece but willed it to George and Emily. Dies while visiting her daughter in Ohio.
 Charles Webb – Emily's father, Editor of the Grover's Corners Sentinel
 Myrtle Webb – Emily and Wally's mother.
Secondary characters
 Joe and Si Crowell – local paperboys. Joe's intelligence earns him a full scholarship to MIT where he graduates at the top of his class. His promise will be cut short on the fields of France during World War I, according to the Stage Manager. Both he and his brother Si hold marriage in high disdain.
 Simon Stimson – the choir director and church organist. We never learn the specific cause of his alcoholism and suicide, although Joe Stoddard, the undertaker, observes that "He's seen a peck of troubles." He remains bitter and cynical even beyond the grave. Some critics interpret Simon as a closeted homosexual.
 Howie Newsome – the milkman, a fixture of Grover's Corners.
 Rebecca Gibbs – George's younger sister. Later elopes with a traveling salesman and settles in Ohio.
 Wallace "Wally" Webb – Emily's younger brother. Died of a burst appendix on a Boy Scout camping trip.
 Professor Willard – A rather long-winded lecturer.
 Woman in the Balcony – attendee of Editor Webb's political and social report – concerned with temperance
 Belligerent Man at Back of Auditorium – attendee of Editor Webb's political and social report – concerned with social justice
 Lady in a Box – Attendee of Editor Webb's political and social report – concerned with culture and beauty.
 Mrs. Louella Soames – A gossipy townswoman and member of the choir.
 Constable Bill Warren – The policeman.
 Three Baseball Players – Who mock George at the wedding.
 Joe Stoddard – the undertaker
 Sam Craig – a nephew of Mrs Gibbs who left town to seek his fortune. He came back after 12 years in Buffalo for Emily's funeral.
 Man from among the Dead
 Woman from among the Dead
 Mr. Carter (Dead)
 Farmer McCarty
 Bessie – Howie Newsome's horse. (visible to the characters, but not the audience)

Composition
Wilder began making notes for the play while he was teaching and lecturing in Chicago in the 1930s.  Constantly on the move, he worked on the play wherever he went. In June 1937, he stayed in the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, one of the many locations where he worked on the play. It is believed Wilder drafted the entire third act during a visit to Zürich in September 1937, in one day, after a long evening walk in the rain with a friend, author Samuel Morris Steward.

Wilder explained his vision in writing the play:

"Our Town" is not offered as a picture of life in a New Hampshire village or as a speculation about the condition of life after death. . . .It is an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our life. I have made the claim as preposterous as possible, for I have set the village against the largest dimension of time and place. The recurrent words in this play (few have noticed it) are "hundreds", "thousands", and "millions".

Setting
The play is set in the actual theatre where the play is being performed, but the date is always May 7, 1901. The Stage Manager of the May 7, 1901, production introduces the play-within-the-play which is set in the fictional community of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. The Stage Manager gives the coordinates of Grover's Corners as 42°40′ north latitude and 70°37′ west longitude (those coordinates are actually in Massachusetts, about a thousand feet off the coast of Rockport), and at the beginning of Act III he mentions several real New Hampshire landmarks in the vicinity: Mt. Monadnock and the towns of Jaffrey, Jaffrey Center, Peterborough, and Dublin.

Style
In Wilder's writing of Our Town, he employed a metatheatrical style. He utilized the Stage Manager role to narrate the story and also to appear as several different characters. The Stage Manager, as the play's "Narrator," creates the story's point of view. The Narrator is supernatural as he is entirely aware of his relationship with the audience; as such it allows him freedom to break the fourth wall and address them directly.

The play's stage direction indicates that the play is to be staged and performed with little scenery, no set, and minimal props. Wilder's reasoning was, "...I tried to restore significance to the small details of life by removing the scenery. The spectator through lending his imagination to the action restages it inside his own head. In its healthiest ages, the theatre has always exhibited the least scenery."

Wilder commented on the sparse stage setting:

Each individual assertion to an absolute reality can only be inner, very inner.  And here the method of staging finds its justification–in the first two acts there are at least a few chairs and tables; but when Emily revisits the earth and the kitchen to which she descended on her twelfth birthday, the very chairs and table are gone. Our claim, our hope, our despair is in the mind–not in things, not in "scenery". Moliere said that for the theater all he needed was a platform and a passion or two. The climax of this play needs only five square feet of boarding and the passion to know what life means to us.

The characters mime the objects with which they interact. Their surroundings are created only with chairs, tables, staircases, and ladders. For example, the scene in which Emily helps George with his evening homework, conversing through upstairs windows, is performed with the two actors standing atop separate ladders to represent their neighboring houses.

Wilder called Our Town his favorite out of all his works, but complained that it was rarely done right, insisting that it "should be performed without sentimentality or ponderousness—simply, dryly, and sincerely."

Production history

Our Town was first performed at McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey, on January 22, 1938.

It next opened at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston, on January 25, 1938.

The New York City debut of Our Town was on February 4, 1938, at Henry Miller's Theatre and later moved to the Morosco Theatre, where it ran until November 19, 1938; this production was produced and directed by Jed Harris. Wilder received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1938 for the work. The Jed Harris production of Our Town was revived at New York City Center on January 10, 1944, running for 24 performances until January 29, with Montgomery Clift as George, Martha Scott as Emily, and Thomas W. Ross as Mr. Webb.

In 1946, the Soviet Union prevented a production of Our Town in the Russian sector of occupied Berlin "on the grounds that the drama is too depressing and could inspire a German suicide wave."

Victor Carin directed a production by the Edinburgh Gateway Company in 1965.

Henry Fonda played the Stage Manager in a production that ran on Broadway from Nov 27 to Dec 27, 1969. Elizabeth Hartman played Emily and Harvey Evans played George. Margaret Hamilton and Ed Begley were in the cast.

A production at New York City's Lincoln Center opened on December 4, 1988, after 27 previews and ran for 136 performances until April 2, 1989; the cast included Spalding Gray as "Stage Manager," Frances Conroy as "Mrs. Gibbs," Penelope Ann Miller as "Emily," and Eric Stoltz as "George." The production was videotaped for broadcast on PBS (see "Adaptations" below).

In 2003, Paul Newman, marking his final stage performance, acted in the role of "Stage Manager" with Jayne Atkinson as "Mrs. Gibbs" and Jane Curtin as "Mrs. Webb" in a production staged at New York City's Booth Theatre. It opened on December 4, 2002, after three previews and ran until January 26, 2003. The production was videotaped for broadcast on Showtime and later on PBS (see "Adaptations" below).

An award-winning revival of Our Town opened at the Barrow Street Theatre, in New York City, on February 26, 2009. The production was directed by David Cromer, who also performed the role of Stage Manager for much of the show's run. Upon closing, the production had played four preview and 644 regular performances, making it the longest-running production of the play in its history.  In addition to Cromer, other notable actors who performed in the role of Stage Manager included Helen Hunt, Michael McKean, Jason Butler Harner, Stephen Kunken and Michael Shannon.

In 2017, Tony Award-winning Deaf West Theater, a Los Angeles-based theater company, co-produced with the Pasadena Playhouse a production of Our Town performed in American Sign Language and spoken English.

A new revival directed by Kenny Leon is scheduled to open on Broadway in the Fall of 2024. Casting, theatre, and specific dates are still to be announced.

Awards
 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. On May 2, 1938, Thornton Wilder won the prize of $1,000 "for the original American play. . .which shall represent in marked fashion the educational value and power of the stage, preferably dealing with the American life."
 1989 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival
 1989 Tony Award for Best Revival

Adaptations

 Our Town was first performed on radio May 12, 1939, on The Campbell Playhouse. The cast included Orson Welles as the Stage Manager, John Craven of the original stage production as George Gibbs, and Patricia Newton as Emily Webb.
 Our Town (1940 film), adaptation starring Martha Scott as Emily and William Holden as George Gibbs, with an original music score composed by Aaron Copland. Many members of the original cast repeated their roles in this film, although the ending was changed so that Emily lived.
 Our Town (1940 radio), on May 6, 1940, a radio version was performed by many of the same film actors for Lux Radio Theater.
 Our Town (1946 radio), on September 29, 1946, a radio version was performed on the Theatre Guild on the Air featuring Thornton Wilder himself as the Stage Manager and Dorothy McGuire as Emily.
 In 1953, The Ford 50th Anniversary Show, broadcast live on both the CBS and NBC television networks, featured a scene from Our Town, including performances by Mary Martin and Oscar Hammerstein II. The Ford show attracted an audience of 60 million viewers. Forty years after the broadcast, television critic Tom Shales recalled the broadcast as both "a landmark in television" and "a milestone in the cultural life of the '50s."
 Our Town (television), a live musical 1955 television adaptation on Producers' Showcase starring Frank Sinatra as the Stage Manager, Paul Newman as George Gibbs, and Eva Marie Saint as Emily. The first and only musical version of the play to be telecast. The song "Love and Marriage" was written for this production by Jimmy van Heusen and Sammy Cahn.
 Our Town, a 1977 television adaptation of the play, starring Hal Holbrook as the Stage Manager, Robby Benson as George Gibbs and Glynnis O'Connor as Emily Webb.
 Grover's Corners, a 1987 musical adaptation performed at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Illinois.
 Our Town, a 1989 telecast of a Lincoln Center stage production starring Spalding Gray, Frances Conroy, Penelope Ann Miller, and Eric Stoltz.
 In 1994, Philip Jerry choreographed a balletic adaptation set to the music of Aaron Copland which the American Repertory Ballet in Princeton, New Jersey, has performed in the decades since its premiere.
 OT: Our Town, a 2002 documentary by Scott Hamilton Kennedy about a production of the play by Dominguez High School in Compton, California.
 Our Town, a 2003 television film adaptation starring Paul Newman as the Stage Manager. It was shown on PBS as part of Masterpiece Theatre after first being shown on the cable channel Showtime. It was filmed at the Booth Theatre in Manhattan, where it played on Broadway in 2002.
 Our Town (opera), an operatic version of the play with music by Ned Rorem.
 The film Wonder has a reference of the play, but only the beginning and end scenes were seen.
 The style of the play is mimicked in the 2003 Lars Von Trier film Dogville.
 A performance of Our Town is central to Ann Patchett'''s 2023 novel Tom Lake''.

References

Further reading

External links

 The Thornton Wilder Society "Teaching Materials"
 Exploring Thornton Wilder's "Our Town"
 Dramatic and Theatrical Aspects in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town"
 "Our Town" - Cummings Study Guide'
 "Our Town" - 1940 Black and White Film - at The Internet Archive
 Our Town Plot Summary and Critical Analysis
 In Our Living and Our Dying: "Our Town" in the 21st Century - Short documentation film about "Our Towns" Legacy
 A Film - "Our Town" 2003 Broadway Production Paul Newman as Stage Manager
 A Film - How Thornton Wilder's Play Speaks to a Changing America and Around the World
 The Lasting Impact of "Our Town" - A segment from CBS News - Sunday Morning
 "Our Town" - 1989 PBS Series - Great Performances
 Shakespeare Hour Episode 51: "Our Town" - A discussion of the staging, motifs, and leitmotifs in the play "Our Town" -  Alan Paul (Director, "Our Town"): Howard Sherman (Author, Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century); and Craig Wallace (played the role of Mr. Webb in "Our Town")

1938 plays
Broadway plays
Drama Desk Award-winning plays
Pulitzer Prize for Drama-winning works
Plays by Thornton Wilder
Tony Award-winning plays
West End plays
Plays set in New Hampshire
Plays set in the 1900s
Plays set in the 1910s
Fiction set in 1901
Fiction set in 1904
Fiction set in 1913
American plays adapted into films
Coward-McCann books

Our Town


Goose bumps are tiny bumps on the surface of the skin caused by involuntary muscle contractions at the base of each hair.

Goosebumps may refer to:

Fiction
 Goosebumps, a series of children's horror novels by R. L. Stine
 Goosebumps (original series)
 Goosebumps (video game series)
 Goosebumps (1995 TV series), a children's horror series, based on the books
 Goosebumps (film), a horror movie, based on the books
 Goosebumps (2023 TV series), an American horror comedy series aired on Disney+ and Hulu

Music
 "Goosebumps" (BA Robertson song), 1979
 "Goosebumps" (Travis Scott song), 2016
 "Goosebumps", a song by Jerry Lee Lewis from Young Blood, 1995
 "Goosebumps", a song by Lemon Demon from Nature Tapes, 2014
 "Goosebumps", a song by Seeed from Next!, 2005
 "Goosebumps", a song by Meghan Trainor from Thank You, 2016

See also
 "Goosebumpz", a 2013 song by Mac Miller

Goosebumps (disambiguation)


The Highlands & Islands Fire & Rescue Service (previously Highland and Islands Fire Brigade) (Scottish Gaelic: Seirbheisean Smàlaidh na Gàidhealtachd 's nan Eilean) was the statutory fire and rescue service for northern Scotland, covering the council areas of Highland, Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles, and so covering a major part of the Highlands and Islands area. It was the fire service covering the largest geographical area in the United Kingdom (its area being roughly equivalent in size to Belgium), and had its headquarters in the city of Inverness. It was established in 1975 and was amalgamated into the single Scottish Fire and Rescue Service in 2013.

History

This Fire Service stemmed from the Northern Area Fire Brigade, formed in 1947 after the passing of the Fire Services Act, and covered the same area the service did until 2013, excluding the Western Isles. In 1975, with the reorganisation of local government, the service became the Northern Fire Brigade and gained the Western Isles as part of its area. In 1983 the name changed again, to Highland and Islands Fire Brigade, to more accurately reflect the area which the Brigade served. The final name, Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service, was adopted in summer 2005, under the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005. As well as the name change, for the first time in the service's history, a Gaelic motto, dìon is freagair, or "protect and respond", was sanctioned.

The Chief Fire Officer before amalgamation was Stewart James Edgar QFSM MBA Chartered FCIPD Cmgr FCMI MIoD FIFireE. Stewart was awarded the Queens Fire Service Medal for Distinguished Service in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2013.

Amalgamation in 2013
The Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service, along with the other seven fire and rescue services across Scotland, was amalgamated into a single, new Scottish Fire and Rescue Service on 1 April 2013. This replaced the previous system of eight regional fire and rescue services across Scotland which existed since 1975. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has its headquarters in Perth.

Stations
The service latterly operated 101 stations throughout the Highlands and Islands. The only wholetime station was in Inverness, which also operated a retained pump. 88 stations were retained and 12 operated as "Community Response Units". All the service's stations were supported locally by district offices, which supervised the operations of the stations in their respective areas. These offices were located in Inverness, Aviemore, Fort William, Invergordon, Ullapool, Dornoch, Portree, Thurso, Stornoway, Benbecula, Kirkwall, and Lerwick. Inverness was also the location of the main headquarters, which was situated next to the city's fire station.

Training facility
The service also had a training facility based 25 miles north of Inverness in Invergordon, as well as a state of the art control centre, which again is based in the Highland capital, but on a different site from the main headquarters.

Regional Fire and Rescue Services in Scotland 1975-2013
The following eight regional fire and rescue services (originally known as fire brigades) were merged on 1 April 2013, creating the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service:
Central Scotland Fire and Rescue Service
Dumfries and Galloway Fire and Rescue Service
Fife Fire and Rescue Service
Grampian Fire and Rescue Service
Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service
Lothian and Borders Fire and Rescue Service
Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service
Tayside Fire and Rescue Service

The same boundaries were also used for the eight territorial police forces, which were amalgamated into Police Scotland on 1 April 2013.

See also
 Scottish Fire and Rescue Service
 Fire and rescue authority (Scotland)

References

External links
Official website

Fire and rescue services of Scotland
Highland (council area)
Outer Hebrides
Orkney
Organisations associated with Shetland
Organisations based in Inverness


Butlers Cross is a hamlet within the parish of Ellesborough (where the 2011 Census population was included), in Buckinghamshire, England.  It is in the south of the parish, at the crossroads between the road from Ellesborough to Little Kimble, and the road from Terrick to the Chequers country house.

The hamlet's name refers to this junction of the two roads, and the fact that this was the place where the Chequers staff and servants normally lived.

On the corner of the junction is a pub called 'The Russell' (formerly the 'Russell Arms'), referring to the family that once owned Chequers. Opposite the pub is a village hall, the Ellesborough Parish Hall, which holds local community events and regular activities such as children's groups, band rehearsals, self-defence and martial arts classes.

Hamlets in Buckinghamshire

Butlers Cross


Thomas Letts (1803 – 1873) was an English stationer and printer who popularised the diary. He was born at Stockwell, London, the son of John Letts, a bookbinder and printer of the Royal Exchange. In 1816, his father published 'Letts's diary or bills owed book and almanack' as the first commercially produced diary, which Thomas developed into of dozens of differently printed and bound, annual publications.

Thomas took over the family-owned company in 1835, printing a range of diaries that stretched from small pocket diaries to commercial foolscap folio one-day-per-page editions. Additionally, his factories at North Road, New Cross printed interest tables, specialist clerical and medical diaries, calendars, parliamentary registers, ledgers, and logbooks.

Letts' publications became ubiquitous, being used by many of the well-known Victorian writers and diarists who were well acquainted with the product range. For example, writing in the Cornhill Magazine, William Makepeace Thackeray noted he preferred a Letts No. 12 diary.

Thomas was joined in the family business by his son, Charles, and together they raised capital for expansion into a limited company in 1870, trading as 'Letts, Son & Co.' However Thomas died soon afterwards, being buried in West Norwood Cemetery in a Grade II listed monument.

The public company lost direction and went into liquidation in 1885. Charles reformed the company privately as Charles Letts & Co., trading profitably for the next century. In 2001, Letts acquired the Filofax Group.

References
 Anita McConnell, 'Letts, Thomas (1803–1873)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004  (subscription)

External links
 Filofax heritage

1803 births
1873 deaths
English printers
Burials at West Norwood Cemetery
People from Stockwell
19th-century English businesspeople

Thomas Letts


Sov du lilla videung (English: "Sleep, you little willow young"), otherwise known as Videvisan ("Willow song") or Solskenets visan ("Sunshine's song") is a poem by the author Zachris Topelius which was first published in the ninth issue of the children's magazine Trollsländan ("Dragonfly") on February 27, 1869.

Topelius is considered to be the first author of Swedish-language literature specifically intended for children. From the 1840s till his death he wrote some 230 poems, songs, stories and fairy tales. He was also the first in Scandinavia to write plays for children. He appeared widely, including in Trollsländan, with columns under the heading Vinterlek ("Winter play"). He intended the pieces he wrote to become a part of children's play, not to be used as theatrical performances.

Sov du lilla videung was part of just such a small children's play entitled Stormen och Solskenet ("The storm and the sunshine"). The introduction describes the main role of the "Sunshine" character:

The most famous musical setting for the poem is by the Swedish composer Alice Tegnér (1864–1943).

Topelius's text

Stormen och Solskenet has three roles, all intended to be played by children. The game begins with set design guidelines: "The playroom represents a country road going through a forest. It is early spring; the snow is melting, and birds are singing." A bit further into the text Sunshine says: "Could I bring the willow bush to life? I want to try." She takes a branch of willow bush, rocks it on her knee and sings:
Sof, du lilla videung; än så är det vinter.
Än så sofva björk och ljung, ros och hyacinther.
Än så är det långt till vår,
Innan rönn i blomma står.
Sof, du lilla videung, än så är det vinter.

("Sleep, you little willow young; still it is the winter.
So sleep yet, birch and roses, hyacinths and heather.
For it's long until the spring,
Ere the rowans flowers bring.
Sleep, you little willow young, for it's still the winter.")

Sunshine continues: "When I gaze at you, the sap begins to rise out into your fine bark, you get warm around your frozen heart, and feel something in the air, which tells you the spring is coming. Yes, so is it (sings:)
Solskensöga ser på dig; solskens famn dig vaggar.
Snart blir grönt på skogens stig, snart hvar blomma flaggar.
Än en liten solskensbön:
Vide liten blir så grön.
Solskensöga ser på dig; solskens famn dig vaggar.

("Eye of Sunshine gaze at you; in Sunshine's lap you rock.
Soon will green the forest path, raising every bloom aloft.
Yet a little Sunshine-plea:
Willow little, be so green.
Eye of Sunshine gaze at you; in Sunshine's lap you rock.")

In 1871 Topelius's fourth issue of Läsning för barn ("Reading for children") appeared. Stormen och Solskenet was published once more but with some minor changes to the lyrics.

Musical settings
 Alice Tegnér's musical setting for the song was published in 1895 in the third booklet of the Sjung med oss, Mamma! ("Sing with us, Mama!") series, under the title Videvisan ("Willow song") Tegnér adjusted the text slightly to fit her melody and modernized the spelling. Tegnér's songs were reprinted in 1943 in the Nu ska vi sjunga ("Now we shall sing") anthology under the title Visor om djur och blommor ("Songs about animals and flowers").
 In 1900 the Danish-Swedish composer Preben Nodermann (1867–1930) published a melody (with minor modifications of Topelius's text) titled Solskenets visa ("Sunshine's song") in Sex visor för barn ("Six songs for children"). Danish and Norwegian versions of the song, entitled Solskinnsvise, have become well known and have been published in Norway both as sheet music and as recordings.
 The Swedish composer Ivar Hallström also wrote a melody to Topelius's text entitled Solskenets visa, which was published in a 1931 songbook of the Gothenburg public school system. Hallström's song text differs from both the Topelius original and the Tegnér version.

Score examples with audio

Recordings

An early recording of the Tegnér version was made by Inga Berentz in Stockholm in 1909. In May 1925 Polyphon recorded the song's performance by soprano Margareta Schönström; it was published on the company's 78-rpm Gnom brand with the catalogue number K 139. Maria Llerena has also sung it in Spanish as Duerme mi Nenita on her 1988 album Chiquitico mio. In addition, there are over 100 recordings listed in the Swedish media database.

References

Works by Zacharias Topelius
Swedish children's songs
1895 songs
Holiday songs
Lullabies
Songs about flowers

Sov du lilla vide ung


Blushing is the reddening of a person's face due to psychological reasons. It is normally involuntary and triggered by emotional stress associated with passion, embarrassment, shyness, fear, anger, or romantic stimulation.

Severe blushing is common in people who have social anxiety in which the person experiences extreme and persistent anxiety in social and performance situations.

Description
Blushing is generally distinguished, despite a close physiological relation, from flushing, which is more intensive and extends over more of the body, and seldom has a mental source. Idiopathic craniofacial erythema is a medical condition where a person blushes strongly with little or no provocation. People who have social phobia are particularly prone to idiopathic craniofacial erythema.

Physiology
A blush is a reddening of the cheeks and forehead brought about by increased capillary blood flow in the skin. It can also extend to the ears, neck and upper chest, an area termed the 'blush region'.

There is evidence that the blushing region is anatomically different in structure. The facial skin, for example, has more capillary loops per unit area and generally more vessels per unit volume than other skin areas. In addition, blood vessels of the cheek are wider in diameter, are nearer the surface, and visibility is less diminished by tissue fluid. These specific characteristics of the architecture of the facial vessels led Wilkin in an overview of possible causes of facial flushing to the following conclusion: "[...] increased capacity and greater visibility can account for the limited distribution of flushing".

Evidence for special vasodilation mechanisms was reported by Mellander and his colleagues (Mellander, Andersson, Afzelius, & Hellstrand. 1982). They studied buccal segments of the human facial veins in vitro. Unlike veins from other areas of the skin, facial veins responded with an active myogenic contraction to passive stretch and were therefore able to develop an intrinsic basal tone. Additionally Mellander et al. showed that the veins in this specific area were also supplied with beta-adrenoceptors in addition to the common alpha-adrenoceptors. These beta-adrenoceptors could exert a dilator mechanism on the above-described basal tone of the facial cutaneous venous plexus. Mellander and his colleagues propose that this mechanism is involved in emotional blushing. Drummond has partially confirmed this effect by pharmacological blocking experiments (Drummond. 1997). In a number of trials, he blocked both alpha-adrenergic receptors (with phentolamine) and beta-adrenergic receptors (with propranolol introduced
transcutaneously by iontophoresis). Blushing was measured at the forehead using a dual channel laser Doppler flowmeter. Subjects were undergraduate students divided into frequent and infrequent blushers according to self-report. Their mean age was 22.9 years, which is especially favorable for assessing blushing, since young subjects are more likely to blush and blush more intensively. The subjects underwent several procedures, one of which was designed to produce blushing. Alpha-adrenergic blockade with phentolamine had no influence on the amount of blushing in frequent or in infrequent blushers, indicating that release of sympathetic vasoconstrictor tone does not substantially influence blushing. This result was expected since vasoconstrictor tone in the facial area is known to be generally low (van der Meer. 1985). Beta-adrenergic blockade with propranolol on the other hand decreased blushing in both frequent and infrequent blushers. However, despite complete blockade, blood flow still increased substantially during the embarrassment and blushing inducing procedure. Additional vasodilator mechanisms must therefore be involved.

Psychology
Charles Darwin devoted Chapter 13 of his 1872 The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals to complex emotional states including self-attention, shame, shyness, modesty and blushing. He described blushing as "... the most peculiar and most human of all expressions."

Several different psychological and psycho-physiological mechanisms for blushing have been hypothesized by Crozier (2010): "An explanation that emphasizes the blush's visibility proposes that when we feel shame we communicate our emotion to others and in doing so we send an important signal to them. It tells them something about us. It shows that we are ashamed or embarrassed, that we recognise that something is out of place. It shows that we are sorry about this. It shows that we want to put things right. To blush at innuendo is to show awareness of its implications and to display modesty that conveys that you are not brazen or shameless. The blush makes a particularly effective signal because it is involuntary and uncontrollable. Of course, a blush can be unwanted [but the] costs to the blusher on specific occasions are outweighed by the long-term benefits of being seen as adhering to the group and by the general advantages the blush provides: indeed the costs may enhance the signal's perceived value." A number of techniques may be used to help prevent or reduce blushing.

It has also been suggested that blushing and flushing are the visible manifestations of the physiological rebound of the basic instinctual fight/flight mechanism, when physical action is not possible.

See also
 Endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy

References

Further reading

Vickers, S., MyBlushingCure.com: Free Information from a former blusher, Australian Publisher, 2012
Crozier, W. R., Blushing and the Social Emotions: The Self Unmasked, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Miller, R. S., Embarrassment: Poise and Peril in Everyday Life, Guilford Press, 1997.
Jadresic, E., When Blushing Hurts: Overcoming Abnormal Facial Blushing (2nd edition, expanded and revised), iUniverse, 2014. .
Daniels B. W Understanding Uncontrollable Facial Blushing, Neptune, Elizabeth Stewart, 2010.
ESFB Channel  - The online community for people suffering from facial blushing, excessive sweating, rosacea and social phobia
 - Blushing in Plato

Reflexes
Emotion

Blushing


Modafinil is a stimulant. It is mainly used to treat narcolepsy and some cases of sleep apnea. The drug was developed in the 1980s. It is sold under different brand names, as well as generic drugs. Usually it is a prescription drug. As there are signs that it
causes birth defects, it likely should not be taken during pregnancy.

Drugs

Modafinil


Gita Ramjee  (née Parekh; 8 April 1956 – 31 March 2020) was a Ugandan-South African scientist and researcher in HIV prevention. In 2018, she was awarded the 'Outstanding Female Scientist' award from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership. She died in Umhlanga, Durban, South Africa, from COVID-19 related complications.

Early life and education

Gita Parekh was born on 8 April 1956 and grew up in Colonial Uganda before her family were driven into exile under Idi Amin in the 1970s. She attended high school in India before attending the University of Sunderland in England. She graduated in 1980 with a BSc (Hons) in Chemistry and Physiology. She married a South African-Indian fellow student, Praveen Ramjee, and moved to Durban where she began working in the Department of Paediatrics at the Medical School of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. After her two sons were born she completed her Masters, and subsequently a PhD in 1994.

Career
After completing her PhD in kidney diseases of childhood, Ramjee joined the South African Medical Research Council as a scientist. She rose rapidly through the ranks to head the largest unit of the Council, the HIV Prevention Research Unit. She helped expand the unit from 22 scientific staff to 350 and was instrumental in growing its international reputation.

At the time of her death, Ramjee was the Chief Scientific Officer at the Aurum Institute, a not-for-profit AIDS/Tuberculosis research organisation, as well as director of the South African Medical Research Council's Prevention Research Unit. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Microbicide Conference in 2012. She was an honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the University of Washington in Seattle, and the University of Cape Town. She was a member of a number of local and international committees including the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC).

Research
Her specialisation in HIV prevention and treatment research led her to lead the expansion of phase I through phase III HIV prevention and treatment clinical trials in the greater Durban area as the Clinical Trials Unit Principal Investigator. Ramjee was concerned that the focus should not only be on clinical trials but treatment accompanied by HIV prevention education and care. In an interview she stated, "Women are the hardest hit by HIV in this region, and there is still a lot to do to address health issues in developing countries. There is a need for [a] more holistic approach to HIV prevention which should include reproductive health care for women." Ramjee was one of the first South African scientists to work on developing microbicides.

She received the 2017 MRC Scientific Merit Award gold medal.

As an academic, she published more than 170 articles and was both a reviewer and editor of several scientific journals.

Death
Ramjee was in London to deliver a lecture at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine on 17 March 2020, entitled 'HIV: diverse challenges among children and women in Asia and Africa'. On her return to South Africa she felt unwell and was hospitalised. She died from complications relating to COVID-19.

David Mabuza, deputy president of South Africa, led the tributes calling her a "champion in the fight against the HIV epidemic." As the chairperson of the South African National AIDS Council, he stated: "The passing of Professor Ramjee comes as a huge blow to the entirety of the healthcare sector and the global fight against HIV/AIDS." Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa, praised her work for women, saying "She was involved in almost every major HIV prevention trial on microbicide … and defined her niche in developing technologies for women." The president of the South African Medical Research Centre, Glenda Gray, also paid tribute to her work "She tried to address the whole ecosystem that makes women vulnerable, from the biological to the political."

The Gita Ramjee Prize is awarded by the Aurum Institute in her memory to female scientists in the field of HIV prevention.

References

2020 deaths
Academic staff of the University of KwaZulu-Natal
South African medical researchers
Alumni of the University of Sunderland
Ugandan people of Indian descent
HIV/AIDS researchers
Women medical researchers
Ugandan emigrants
Ugandan women scientists
South African people of Indian descent
21st-century women scientists
21st-century South African scientists
20th-century South African scientists
20th-century South African women scientists
Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa
Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
1956 births

Gita Ramjee