The taiga vole (Microtus xanthognathus) is a large vole found in northwestern North America, including Alaska and northwestern Canada. The name "taiga vole" comes from its living in the boreal taiga zone. It is also sometimes called the yellow-cheeked vole or chestnut-cheeked vole because of the rusty-yellow color on its face around its vibrisae (whiskers); The taiga voles derive their name from these features: "xantho" is Greek for yellow and "gnathus" is Greek for jaw. It is typically much larger than most other North American voles, especially those from the genus Microtus.

An adult taiga vole, excluding tail length, usually ranges from  in length and usually weighs .

This species is found in northern forests near water or bogs. It makes runways through the surface growth and burrows. It is usually found in colonies. It feeds on grasses, lichens, horsetails and berries. It stores food in its burrows for the winter. Like the singing vole, this animal may give a warning call to alert other members of the colony of danger.

The female vole has litters of 7 to 10 young. The vole population in a given area can vary greatly from year to year.

They are active year-round, usually during dark periods.

Although not commonly encountered, they can be locally abundant.

The taiga vole is from the order Rodentia and the family Muridae.

Distribution and habitat

The taiga vole's habitat stretches from northwestern Canada to Alaska. Fossils have been found as far south as Arkansas, Tennessee and Virginia, suggesting that the taiga voles cover a much smaller range now than in the past. Taiga vole fossils have been found south of where the Laurentide Ice Sheet once was during the late Pleistocene. Fossil evidence suggests that they moved northwest after the Wisconsin glaciation event.  The taiga voles are mostly found today in boreal forests and tundra, which provides good evidence as to why fossils have been found so far south. Fossil specimens have been dated back to just before or just after the glacial maximum, when scientist believe that areas of the southern United States would have been covered by the boreal forests and tundra that the taiga vole prefers for habitat.

Reproduction and survival
The taiga voles live a polygynous lifestyle. Males are very territorial and defensive of resources. They typically mate during the North American summers, starting in early May and finishing around September. Each female will typically produce 2 litters per season but the second litter is usually smaller than the first. The taiga vole engages in communal winter nesting. A small group, usually 5-10 individuals, will share a nest during the winter. They will build very extensive burrows that occasionally will even go into the water where they can swim out. Taiga voles living in more dense populations typically have greater body mass than those living in less dense populations. They also exhibit the use of alarm calls, particularly during the mating seasons to warn potential mates of danger. The taiga vole cannot go more than 24 hours without eating or they can starve to death. They do not have complex metabolisms designed for fasting. They can consume all of their liver glycogen in 4 hours or less. They do not use torpor like many other small rodents do, so they must find other ways to slow the basal metabolic rate.  They will lower their body temperature by about .5 degrees Celsius to reduce energy costs. The taiga voles, as do many other voles, rely on fat reserves for thermoregulation, using brown fat adipose tissue to increase their thermogenic capacity.

References

Taiga
Arctic land animals
Mammals of the Arctic
Mammals of Canada
Mammals of the United States
Rodents of North America
Fauna of Alaska
Mammals described in 1815
Least concern biota of North America
Least concern biota of the United States

Taiga vole


James Crawford Thom (March 22, 1835 – February 16, 1898) was an American painter. Born in New York City, he studied at an artist colony in Perth Amboy, New Jersey along with Louis Comfort Tiffany of stained glass fame. He also studied with Edouard Frere, among others. He painted "By the River-Side" "Returning from the Wood", "Tired of Waiting", "Going to School", and "The Monk's Walk". Thom died in 1898 and is buried at the Chestnut Hill Cemetery in the Old Bridge section of East Brunswick, New Jersey.

Career

Thom studied at the National Academy in 1853. In 1859, he went to France with Corot and Frere in Ecouen. He was the first American painter joining the School of Ecouen created by Pierre edouard Frere. In the local census of 1861, he is registered as living in Ecouen, 13 "rue de Paris" under the name of Croquefort Tom. From 1864 to 1873, he worked in England, often exhibiting at the Royal Academy. His landscapes showed the influence of the second-generation Hudson River school painters. His genre paintings such as "Feeding the Ducks" and "Circus Scene".

Personal life
Thom was born March 22, 1835, in New York City, New York, the son of sculptor James Thom (April 19, 1802 - April 17, 1850 ) and Jessie Thom (d. December 5, 1868). James married Louise Giles and had a son Salvatore Thom (b. 1865) born in France and Ada (b. 1866), James (b. 1867), Blanche and Jessie all born in England. Louise Giles Thom died in 1881. Thom then married Sarah Bloodgood, in 1884, the daughter of a carriage maker.
They lived at 10 Willow St (now Kossman St) Old Bridge (now East Brunswick). According to the 1861 Map of Middlesex, NJ, this house belonged to J.H. Bloodgood, Sarah's father. He had a carriage building shop next store to his house.

And through Salvatore (1867-1946), his son Salvatore Jr. (1894-1976) and his son Francis Crawford Thom (1931-2012) the Thoms have remained sculptors and painters.

Ada married Frank Hoffman of New Jersey and had four sons; the future Governor of New Jersey Harold G. Hoffman, Donald Hoffman, Fletcher Hoffman and Peter Hoffman. Harold G. Hoffman became known as the "most crooked governor New Jersey ever had." James Crawford Thom is buried in the Thom family plot in the Old Bridge Cemetery, Old Bridge, NJ.

From 1884 to his death, Thom lived in Old Bridge. He died of pneumonia in Atlantic Highlands.

Works
Works : Returning from the Wood (1864); Love in the Kitchen; Return of the Conscript; Going to Church, Christmas Eve (1876); Le jour de la Toussaint (1878); Watering his Horse, Morning Ride (1880); Rustic Sport, Summer Afternoon (1882); Old Farm House, South River, River Bank (1884); The Pets (1885)

References

External links
http://boards.ancestry.com/surnames.thom/58.67.69/mb.ashx

1835 births
1898 deaths
American people of Scottish descent
19th-century American painters
American male painters
People from East Brunswick, New Jersey
Painters from New York City
19th-century American male artists

J. C. Thom


The Sandman is a mythical character in European folklore who puts people to sleep and encourages and inspires beautiful dreams by sprinkling magical sand onto their eyes.

Representation in traditional folklore
The Sandman is a traditional character in many children's stories and books. In Scandinavian folklore, he is said to sprinkle sand or dust on or into the eyes of children at night to bring on sleep and dreams. The grit or "sleep" (rheum) in one's eyes upon waking is the supposed result of the Sandman's work the previous night.

Literature

E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) wrote a short story in 1816 titled Der Sandmann, which showed how sinister such a character could be made. According to the protagonist's nurse, he threw sand in the eyes of children who would not sleep, with the result of those eyes falling out and being collected by the Sandman, who then takes the eyes to his iron nest on the Moon and uses them to feed his children. The protagonist of the story grows to associate this nightmarish creature with the genuinely sinister figure of his father's associate, Coppelius. In Romanian folklore, there is a similar character, Moș Ene (Ene the Elder). Hoffmann's version of the sandman is also similar to the French Canadian character known as the  (Goodmaan Seven O'Clock), who, in some versions, throws sand in children's eyes to blind them so that he may capture them. Contrarily to the sandman, his bag is the place where he traps children who do not go to bed.

Hans Christian Andersen's 1841 folk tale Ole Lukøje introduced the Sandman, named Ole Lukøje, by relating dreams he gave to a young boy in a week through his magical technique of sprinkling dust in the eyes of the children. "Ole" is a Danish first name and "Lukøje" means "close eye". Andersen wrote:

In Norway and Sweden, he is called John Blund or Jon Blund ("blunda" is a verb that means both "to shut one's ones" and "to keep one's eyes shut", and "[en] blund" is a noun that means both "[an] occurrence of eyes shut" and "[an] occurrence of sleep"), and in the Netherlands, Belgium and parts of southern Africa, he is referred to as "Klaas Vaak".

Klaas Vaak is a character in a Dutch Musical 'De sprookjesmusical Klaas Vaak", has its own TV-series 'Fairytales of Klaas Vaak' and is one of the entertainers in the amusement park  'Efteling'.

Film and television

The East German stop motion children's television programme Unser Sandmännchen (Our Little Sandman), based on Hans Christian Andersen's Ole Lukøje character and the story by E. T. A. Hoffmann, has been broadcast since 1959, along with a West German version which was discontinued after reunification.

In the 1990s, Nilus the Sandman aired on Anglophone Canadian television.

In the 1970s, Bonne nuit les petits aired on French television. The show featured Nounours, a bear who took care of two toddlers, Nicolas and Pimprenelle. He would arrive on a cloud driven by his friend Sandman ("Le marchand de sable" in French) playing a flute as the sun set, and would only leave once he'd accompanied the children to bed. At the end of every episode, Nounours would say "Bonne nuit les petits" (which means "Good night, little ones") before Sandman created a light shower of sand, putting the two siblings, Nicolas and Pimprenelle, to sleep. The bear and Sandman would then take their leave on the same cloud, once Nounours had climbed back up the ladder that he'd descended at the beginning of the episode. Here, Sandman has a major role to play, with his flute, driving the cloud, interacting with the other characters from time to time and, most importantly, inducing the children to fall asleep.
The show was broadcast nightly at 7:50 pm, and each episode lasted 10 minutes, marking 8 pm as the bed-time when children, duly reassured, could sleep peacefully. It was later reduced to 5 minutes in the 1990s for the reboot series. In francophone Canada, it airs on Ici Radio-Canada Télé immediately before Le Téléjournal.

The Sandman appears in The Smurfs episodes "Darkness Monster" and "Lazy's Nightmare", voiced by Frank Welker.

In 1991, Paul Berry directed a stop-motion short film titled The Sandman based on the short story Der Sandmann by E. T. A. Hoffmann.

In 1998, the Sandman also appears in The Powerpuff Girls, where he appears in  the episode "Dream Scheme".

The Sandman appears in The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, portrayed by Michael Dorn. He is shown to be a member of the Council of Legendary Figures and tends to doze off during meetings, giving the other members cause to wake him up.

The Sandman is supposedly represented as the demon Der Kindestod in the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Among the earlier productions of the British sci-fi television show Doctor Who following 2005 is an episode revolving around Sandmen. The ninth episode of the ninth season (2015), titled "Sleep No More", is a found footage video narrated by Gagan Rassmussen (Reece Shearsmith), a scientist and professor from the 38th century. Rassmussen manufactures a dangerous adventure involving Sandmen, intended to engage people to watch the video and by which an electronic signal transmits to the brains of others in order to create further Sandmen. The episode also makes use of the song "Mr. Sandman", written by Pat Ballard in 1954, as the Morpheus-machine theme.

The Sandman appears in Rise of the Guardians as a member of the Guardians.

Netflix released The Sandman series in 2022, an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman comics.

Comics
In Marvel Mystery Comics, the Sandman lives in the Land of Dreams, which is located in the Realm of Fairies within the potentially imaginary world of Nowhere. The Sandman ruled over the realm and would place a blanket over it every day. Those who grabbed a dream from the dream tree would have a dream based on whatever they grabbed from the tree and awaken again when the Sandman removed the blanket over his land. Anyone who did not grab a dream would end up in an eternal, dreamless sleep.

Several fictional characters by the name of Sandman have appeared in comic books published by DC Comics. These include fantasy writer Neil Gaiman's 75-part comic book series called The Sandman for Vertigo Comics (an imprint of DC Comics). The original series ran from 1989 to 1996. It tells the story of Dream of the Endless, who rules over the world of dreams. He is an anthropomorphic personification of dreams known to various characters throughout the series as Morpheus, Oneiros, the Shaper of Form, Lord of the Dreaming, the Dream King, Dream-Sneak, the Cat of Dreams, Murphy, Kai'ckul, and Lord L'Zoril. He possesses three symbols of office: a helm, an amulet known as the Dreamstone, and a sand pouch.

A comics adaption of the above-mentioned German TV show Unser Sandmännchen has also been published. Most notably on the back pages of FF Dabei focusing on Pittiplatsch and his friends.

Music
Songs based on the figure of the Sandman include the 1950s classic "Mr. Sandman" by The Chordettes, Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" in which the singer is put to sleep by "a candy-colored clown they call the sandman" to dream of his lost love, and Metallica's "Enter Sandman" whose lyrics "juxtapose childhood bedtime rituals and nightmarish imagery" and originally included a reference to crib death. The Sandman also appears in the song "Blood Red Sandman" by Lordi, "Mein Herz brennt" by Rammstein, "Sandmann" by Oomph!, "Sandman" by Manchester-based duo Hurts, the 1971 song "Sandman" by America and the version of the lullaby "Morningtown Ride" recorded by The Seekers and is mentioned briefly in the songs "Headfirst Slide into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet" by Fall Out Boy and "Farewell and Goodnight" from the Smashing Pumpkins album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Ed Sheeran's album = (Equals) contains a song name "Sandman" that refers to the sandman bringing magical dreams. Oranger also released a song titled "Mr. Sandman" with reference to the mythical character. In 2021 SYML record a song at St. Mark's Cathedral called "Mr. Sandman". American rapper ASAP Rocky released a song called Sandman on his 2021 re-release of his debut mixtape Live. Love. ASAP.

See also
 Morpheus – Greek god of dreams

References

14. Rise of the guardians

Bibliography

 Wm. G. Thilgen Jr. (2013) The Sand Man (Lulu Press, Inc.)

External links

Dream
European folklore characters
Sleep in mythology and folklore

Sandman


Emil Trinkler (19 May 1896, Bremen – 19 April 1931, Bremen) was a German geographer and explorer of Tibet and Afghanistan, the son of a tobacco trader.

Life and travels
Having fought in the World War I, Trinkler graduated in geography and natural science from the University of Munich in 1922. His exploratory journeys in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet included close study of glaciers. Among several books he published on his return to Germany was Im Land der Stürme (In the Land of Storms, 1930). His archaeological collections can be found in the Überseemuseum Bremen.

Death and remembrance
Trinkler died as the result of an automobile accident near Bremen at the age of 35. A street in Bremen has been named for him.

Literary works
Tibet : Sein geographisches Bild und seine Stellung im Asiatischen Kontinen, (1922)
Through the heart of Afghanistan, (1928)., translation of Trinkler's Quer durch Afghanistan nach Indien (1927)
The Stormswept Roof of Asia, translation of Trinkler's Im Land der Stürme (1930)

Notes

External links

1896 births
1932 deaths
Scientists from Bremen (city)
German explorers
Explorers of Asia
German orientalists
German geographers
German male non-fiction writers
20th-century geographers
Road incident deaths in Germany

Emil Trinkler


Bishop John Carroll is a statue by the sculptor Jerome Connor commemorating Archbishop John Carroll, the founder of Georgetown University and the first Catholic bishop in the United States. Located in front of Healy Hall, on university's campus in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., the statue consists of a bronze sculpture of Carroll on top of a granite pedestal.

The monument rises more than  in height, and was unveiled in 1912 with an elaborate three-day ceremony. Among the thousands of people in attendance were dignitaries including bishops and high-ranking clergy; members of Congress; judges, including the Chief Justice; the Attorney General; and distinguished alumni. The statue has been the subject of student frivolities over the years, including a still current tradition of sitting in the archbishop's lap.

History

After the completion of Healy Hall, an area was set aside for a future statue of Georgetown's founder. On January 23, 1909, in a speech titled "A Dream Realized and a Dream Still Unfulfilled," Rev. John A. Conway, S.J. announced to Georgetown alumni at the annual Founder's Day banquet his wish that a monument to John Carroll, the founder of Georgetown University, be erected. In addition to establishing the university, Carroll was the first Bishop and later Archbishop of Baltimore, the oldest Catholic see in the United States, making him the first Catholic bishop in the United States. Fundraising began that year, and a total of $7,000 was raised in the effort ().

Dedication

Three days of pomp over the erection of the statue began on the evening of May 3, 1912. The Philodemic Society hosted a reception in Gaston Hall, with music provided by the university's glee club. Thomas Walsh delivered an ode, and Daniel William O'Donoghue gave a history of the society and a tribute to the life of John Carroll. Afterwards, the alumni retired to the refectory and gave informal speeches. The statue was publicly unveiled at 11:00 a.m. on May 4, 1912. In advance of the scheduled unveiling, the foundry that was casting the statue notified the university that the metalwork would not be ready in time. Not wishing to rescind invitations to dignitaries slated to speak, Georgetown went ahead with the unveiling ceremony after a brown-painted plaster cast of the statue was placed on the pedestal, unbeknownst to the several thousand ceremony attendees. This secret was kept until 1940, when Brother James Harrington, the overseer of campus workers in 1912, revealed it to the university's student newspaper, The Hoya.

The ceremony began with a procession of clergy, government officials, faculty, and alumni. At the unveiling, Chief Justice Edward Douglass White formally presented the statue on behalf of the National Alumni Association, which financed the project. In his speech—which was said to have had a profound impact on Edmund A. Walsh (the founder of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service), who was in attendance—White commented on the connection between John Carroll and his brother, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, and on the common Christian principles that underlie the founding of Georgetown University and the United States. Following his speech, the American flag was lifted to reveal the statue, as the United States Marine Band played "Maryland, My Maryland".

Additional speeches were made by: the Archbishop of Baltimore, Cardinal James Gibbons; the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Champ Clark; the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, Ambassador Baron Hengelmuller; the Attorney General, George W. Wickersham; the president of the National Alumni Association and chairman of the statue's ways and means committee, George E. Hamilton; and the President of Georgetown University, Alphonsus J. Donlon. President William Howard Taft was supposed to speak at the ceremony but cancelled to attend a memorial service for his close aide who died on the Titanic, sending Wickersham in his stead. Also on the dais were Bishop Denis O'Connell of Richmond; Bishop Henry Northrop of Charleston; Monsignor Thomas Shahan, the rector of the Catholic University of America; Rev. Joseph Hanselman, the provincial of the Jesuit province of Maryland and New York; Monsignor John Joyce Russell, the pastor of St. Patrick's Church; Harry M. Clabaugh, the Dean of Georgetown Law Center; and four former university presidents: J. Havens Richards, John D. Whitney, Jerome Daugherty, and Joseph J. Himmel.

The following day, celebrations continued at the Willard Hotel. Before more than 300 alumni, Rev. Conway gave a speech about Carroll's integration of his patriotic and priestly commitments. Senator-elect Joseph E. Ransdell, John G. Agar, Chief Justice Seth Shepard, and Dr. William Creighton Woodward also made statements. Afterwards, Bishop Northrop celebrated a solemn mass in Dahlgren Chapel, during which Rev. Terence J. Shealy made a speech about Carroll's influence on the Constitution's prohibition of religious tests for public office under Article VI. The festivities concluded with a reception hosted by the president of the university and the faculty.

Several weeks later, the plaster cast stand-in was replaced with its bronze counterpart in the middle of the night.

Description

Bishop John Carroll is positioned on a circular lawn between Healy Hall and the university's front gates, an area known as Healy Circle. It was created by Irish sculptor Jerome Connor who  trained as a stone carver.

The bronze sculpture depicts John Carroll, seated in a chair and resting his hands on its arms as he gazes slightly to his right, toward the front gates and out onto the Potomac River and downtown Washington. His lips are pressed together, and he appears to be in a moment of thought. In his right hand is a book, in which his index finger is inserted to mark a page. Carroll is dressed in Jesuit ecclesiastical attire, which sprawls over the arms and across the back of the chair. His hair is brushed away from his face and reaches down to his collar. Beneath his chair is a stack of books, a decoration that was inspired by the books beneath the chair of the John Harvard statue at Harvard University, on which Bishop John Carroll was modeled. The bronze sculpture portion of the statue measures  long by  wide by  tall.

The sculpture rests on a plinth of North Carolina granite, which measures  long by  wide by  tall. This brings the overall dimensions of the statue to  long,  wide, and  tall. An inscription on the front of the base reads: "JOHN CARROLL" and beneath it, "FOVNDER", while the rear contains the words "PRIEST" and beneath it, "PATRIOT PRELATE". On the right-hand side of the sculpture, near the base, is the artist's signature and date of completion: "Jerome Conner – 1912".

Student traditions

A popular belief is that the sculpture was modified in 1923 by filling in the space beneath the chair with a bronze stack of books in response to pranks by students who would place a chamber pot in the vacant space. However, this myth is untrue, as the books were a part of the original statue from its creation. On one occasion, students painted the statue red. A tradition that has developed is for graduating Georgetown students to climb the statue and sit in the lap of John Carroll.

The statue has appeared in a number of films, including The Exorcist, The Exorcist III, Scorpio, and Born Yesterday.

See also

List of public art in Washington, D.C., Ward 2

Notes

References

External links

YouTube: Celebrating 100 Years of the John Carroll Statue

1912 establishments in Washington, D.C.
1912 sculptures
Bronze sculptures in Washington, D.C.
Georgetown University
Monuments and memorials in Washington, D.C.
Outdoor sculptures in Washington, D.C.
Sculptures of men in Washington, D.C.
Statues in Washington, D.C.
Sculptures of books

Statue of John Carroll


George Michael Low (born Georg Michael Löw, June 10, 1926 – July 17, 1984) was an administrator at NASA and the 14th president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Low was one of the senior NASA officials who made decisions as manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office in the Apollo program of crewed missions to the Moon.

Early life and education
Low was born near Vienna, Austria, to Artur and Gertrude Löw (née Burger), who had a prosperous manufacturing business, and was educated in private schools in Switzerland and England. His father died in 1934. When Nazi Germany occupied Austria in 1938, Low's family—being Jewish—emigrated to the United States. In 1943, Low graduated from Forest Hills High School in Forest Hills, New York, and entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where he joined the Delta Phi fraternity. His college education was interrupted by the Second World War and from 1944 to 1946, he served in the United States Army. During his military service, he became a naturalized American citizen and legally changed his name to George Michael Low.

After military service, Low returned to RPI and received his Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering in 1948. He then worked at Convair in Fort Worth, Texas, as a mathematician in an aerodynamics group. Low returned to RPI late in 1948 and received his Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering in 1950.

NACA & NASA career

At Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory
After completing his M.S. degree, Low joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) as an engineer at the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio, (later the Lewis Research Center and now the Glenn Research Center). He worked as the head of the Fluid Mechanics Section (1954–1956) and chief of the Special Projects Branch (1956–1958). Low specialized in experimental and theoretical research in the fields of heat transfer, boundary layer flows, and internal aerodynamics. In addition, he worked on such space technology problems as orbit calculations, reentry paths, and space rendezvous techniques.

NASA Goett Committee
During the summer and autumn of 1958, preceding the formation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Low worked on a planning team to organize the new aerospace agency. Soon after NASA's formal organization in October 1958, Low transferred to the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he served as Chief of Manned Space Flight. In this capacity, he was closely involved in the planning of Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Low played a critical role in advocating for a lunar landing as NASA's long-term goal. He testified before Congress, spoke to the media, and presented at industry conferences on behalf of NASA. Low also formed the Low Committee in 1960, which produced a lunar landing feasibility study that played a role in John F. Kennedy's decision to set a goal of landing humans on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

Houston & ASPO
In February 1964, Low transferred to NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, (now the Johnson Space Center) and served as Deputy Center Director. In April 1967, following the Apollo 1 fire, he was named manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office (ASPO), where he was responsible for directing the changes to the Apollo spacecraft necessary to make it flightworthy. In this role he led the use of FMEA, or failure mode and effects analysis, to rigorously define the possible risks in human space flight. Low also created and chaired the Configuration Control Board, which had as its purpose to monitor technical changes that could inadvertently affect some other part of the complex Apollo system, thereby helping assure future mission safety. Flight Director Glynn Lunney praised Low's leadership, and his contributions helped return the Apollo project schedule to the promised date for the Moon landing.

NASA Deputy Administrator
George Low became NASA deputy administrator in December 1969, serving with Administrators Thomas O. Paine and James C. Fletcher. He served as acting administrator after Paine's resignation. In these roles, Low played a significant part in the development of the Space Shuttle program, the Skylab program, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Rocket engineer Wernher von Braun blamed Low for what he felt was shabby treatment in the early 1970s while he was at NASA Headquarters. According to Bob Ward's 2005 biography, von Braun believed Low was jealous of his fame and that Low helped force von Braun's unhappy departure from the space agency. However, another biography by space historian Michael J. Neufeld disputed Low's involvement in von Braun's resignation. Low's biography by Richard Jurek also disputes this account, indicating Low's efforts to try to retain and engage von Braun in strategic planning in the early 1970s and being pleased with von Braun's work.

President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Retiring from NASA in 1976, Low became president of RPI. He held that position until his death in 1984. He initiated the Rensselaer Technology Park. The New York State Center for Industrial Innovation was renamed the George M. Low Center for Industrial Innovation by RPI shortly after his death.

Personal life
In 1949, Low married Mary Ruth McNamara of Troy, New York. Between 1952 and 1963, they had five children: Mark S., Diane E., George David, John M., and Nancy A. His son David became an astronaut for NASA in 1985, flew three times on the Space Shuttle, and died in 2008.

On April 8, 1985, the White House announced that Low had been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to the fields of education and science.

In popular culture
In the 1996 TV movie, Apollo 11 Low was played by Dennis Lipscomb. In the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon he was played by Holmes Osborne.

References

Bibliography

External links
 Guide to the George M. Low Papers, 1930-1984

1926 births
1984 deaths
Deaths from cancer in the United States
Deputy Administrators of NASA
People from Fort Worth, Texas
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute faculty
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni
Presidents of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
National Medal of Science laureates
United States Army soldiers
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Forest Hills High School (New York) alumni
Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to the United States
Nixon administration personnel
Ford administration personnel
United States Army personnel of World War II

George Low


There is a long history of chestnut cultivation and consumption in Switzerland, particularly in the southern regions. During the 20th century, chestnut has evolved from a staple food to a popular confectionery ingredient.

The chestnut was introduced in Ticino during the Roman era. Chestnut grove and coppice management replaced slash-and-burn agriculture. The climate of southern Switzerland particularly suited the chestnut, to the point it became known as the "bread tree". The chestnut was also introduced in the southern valleys of the Grisons and Valais.

Chestnut cultivation declined in the 18th century, when potatoes and maize were introduced in Switzerland. It remained however an important staple food for the poors until the early 20th century; the Siegfried Map introduced a specific symbol for chestnut groves in 1914. The maintenance of chestnut groves ceased during the 20th century due to diseases and declined after the massive exploitation of wood for tannin factories.

Since the 1990s, chestnut groves and chestnuts have been of interest to tourists and local communities started their revalorization. Today, 98% of Swiss chestnut trees are found on the south side of the Alps (Ticino and the Grisons), for instance in the Malcantone and Val Bregaglia. Chestnut groves are also found in Valais, particularly in Fully and Saint-Gingolph, and various other locations around Lake Lucerne and the Walensee.

The consumption of chestnuts today is essentially festive. Ticino restaurants and pastry chefs all over Switzerland also make vermicelli, an autumnal dessert consisting of a sweet chestnut purée and whipped cream.

See also
Olive production in Switzerland
Agriculture in Switzerland

References

Swiss cuisine
Agriculture in Switzerland
Castanea

Chestnut production in Switzerland


Givi Badrishvili ( September 12, 1934) is a Georgian agronomist. He is a Doctor of Agricultural Sciences (1986), and a member of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

In 1959 he graduated from the Georgian Research Institute of Horticulture, Viticulture and Wine-Making, and from 1976–1982 he was Deputy Director of the Research Institute for Science there. He was later a State Agricultural Technical Director, conducting much research into horticulture, viticulture and winemaking in Georgia. He explored ways to process fruit using production-intensive technology. He is now a director of the Georgian Research Institute of Horticulture, Viticulture and Wine-Making. Badrishvili has received several awards for his work.

References

Agronomists from Georgia (country)
1934 births
Living people

Givi Badrishvili


James Walter Miller (1890–1950) was an American citizen and an alleged asset of the San Francisco Office of the KGB from 1943 to 1945.  Miller worked in the United States Government  wartime mail censorship office. Miller was allegedly recruited into espionage for the Soviet Union by Isaac Folkoff of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). His cover name was "Vague".

Born Milawski in Russia, he changed his name to Miller after coming to the United States in 1907.  He became a member of the Communist Party in Los Angeles.  Miller was associated with Victor Milo while in the California Communist Party. Miller at one time worked for Russky Golos (Russian Voice), the American-Russian Institute, and People's World.

Miller was one of Folkoff's most valuable agents. Miller spoke Russian, and was a Russian-language translator with the financial and trade section of the U.S. government wartime mail censorship office. Miller worked in an area of considerable interest to Soviet intelligence.  In 1943 Folkoff passed on to the KGB material from Miller on several occasions. San Francisco Rezident Grigory Kheifets attested to Miller's bone fides in a Venona decrypt, putting to rest reservations from Moscow that because of Miller's eagerness, he may be a double agent.

Miller began passing information to Harrison George at the People's World.  In 1943 Miller reported the Mail Censor's office found secret writing in a letter that a Naval GRU Officer sent to Moscow.  In 1944 Miller came to the attention of the FBI in the "Comintern Apparatus" investigation. The FBI witnessed Miller meeting Kheifets at least six times in early 1944. Miller was eventually forced out of the government office.  He died in 1950.

Venona

James Walter Miller is referenced in the following Venona project decryptions:

450 KGB San Francisco to Moscow, 1 November 1943
472 KGB San Francisco to Moscow, 9 November 1943
511 KGB San Francisco to Moscow, 7 December 1943
539 KGB San Francisco to Moscow, 31 December 1943
147 San Francisco to Moscow, 27 March 1944
68 KGB San Francisco to Moscow, 27 February 1945

References
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press (1999), pgs. 207, 228–229.

American spies for the Soviet Union
American people in the Venona papers
Espionage in the United States
1890 births
1950 deaths

James Walter Miller


José Canga Argüelles (17 July 1770 – 2 December 1843) was a Spanish statesman.

Biography
He took an active part in the Spanish resistance to Napoleon in a civil capacity and was an energetic member of the cortes of 1812. On the return of the Bourbon line in 1814, Canga-Argüelles was sent into exile in the province of Valencia.

On the restoration in 1820 of the constitution of 1812, he was appointed minister of finance. He continued at this post till the spring of 1821, distinguishing himself by the zeal and ability with which he sought to reform the finances of Spain. It was high time; for the annual deficit was greater than the entire revenue itself, and landed and other property was, to an unheard-of extent, monopolized by the priests.

The measures he proposed had been only partially enforced, when the action of the king with regard to the ministry, of which he was a member, obliged him to resign. Thereafter, as a member of the Moderate Liberal party, Canga-Argüelles advocated constitutional government and financial reform, till the overthrow of the constitution in 1823, when he fled to England. He did not return to Spain till 1829, and did not again appear in public life, being appointed keeper of the archives at Simancas.

Works
Canga-Argüelles is the author of three works:
Elementos de la Ciencia de Hacienda (Elements of the Science of Finance), London, 1825
Diccionario de Hacienda (Dictionary of Finance), London, 1827
Observaciones sobre la guerra de la Peninsula (Observations on the Peninsular War), in which he endeavoured to show that his countrymen had taken a far more effective part in the national struggle against the French than English historians were willing to admit.

1770 births
1843 deaths
Economy and finance ministers of Spain

José Canga Argüelles


Arthur Wharton (28 October 1865 – 12 December 1930) is widely considered to be the first black professional footballer in the world. Though not the first black player outright – the amateurs Robert Walker, of Queen's Park, and Scotland international player, Andrew Watson, predate him (possibly a professional before Arthur Wharton for Bootle F.C. in 1887) – Wharton may have been the first black professional and the first to play in the Football League.

Early life, ancestry and early career
Wharton was born in Jamestown, Gold Coast (now Accra, Ghana). His father Henry Wharton was a Grenadian missionary of Scottish and African descent, while his mother, Annie Florence Egyriba was a member of the Fante Ghanaian royalty. Wharton moved to England in 1882 at age 19, to train as a Methodist missionary, but soon abandoned this in favour of becoming a full-time athlete.

He was an all-round sportsman – in 1886, he equalled the amateur world record of 10 seconds for the 100-yard sprint in the AAA championship. He was also a keen cyclist and cricketer, playing for local teams in Yorkshire and Lancashire. However, Wharton is best remembered for his exploits as a footballer; while he was not the first mixed-heritage footballer in the United Kingdom — leading amateurs Robert Walker and Scotland international Andrew Watson predate him, however Wharton was the first mixed-heritage footballer to turn professional.

Football career

Wharton started as an amateur playing as a goalkeeper for Darlington, where he was spotted by Preston North End after playing against them. He joined them as an amateur, and was part of the team that reached FA Cup semi-finals in 1886–87. During the third round victory against Renton, Wharton's clean sheet was described by Athletic News as "one of the best exhibitions of goalkeeping I have seen for a long time." Though part of "The Invincibles" of the 1880s, he left Preston in 1888 to concentrate on his running, and thus was not part of the team that subsequently won the Double in 1888–89.

In 1888 the Sheffield Football Association agreed to give a testimonial to Sheffield Wednesday's Billy Mosforth, versus Preston North End. The meeting of both clubs in the FA Cup meant that the match was postponed until February, by which point the Olive Grove was snow covered and the match was switched to Bramall Lane. Arthur volunteered for the 'Sheffield Wednesday and District' team but despite both clubs being locked into a draw in the first half Preston ran away with the match, winning 8–1. It was reported that Wednesday's heavy loss was "in great measure owing to the wretched performance of Wharton, who utterly failed to uphold his high reputation as a goalkeeper" and that he "could not have stopped the ball had it been half as big as a balloon". It was reported that at times the Wednesday fans applauded every kick Arthur took and one fan angrily asked the Preston team where they had "brought him from" as it was well known that Arthur was a former Preston player. There were even fears that Arthur would be the victim of violence as he left the field. Arthur did have a connection to Sheffield Wednesday, through his trainer in Sheffield 'Billy' South, who amongst other noted Sheffield sporting icons of the day also trained Wednesday's Tommy Crawshaw.

Having failed to impress at Sheffield Wednesday he returned to football in 1889, joining Rotherham Town, signing as a professional. In 1890 he married Emma Lister (1866–1944) at Rotherham in Yorkshire. By 1891 he was the landlord of the Albert Tavern in Rotherham. In 1894 he moved to Sheffield United, though he was understudy to regular first-team goalkeeper William "Fatty" Foulke. During the 1894–95 season, Wharton played three games for Sheffield United, against Leicester Fosse, Linfield and Sunderland — the latter being a First Division game, making Wharton the first mixed-heritage player to play in the top flight. In 1895 he left for Stalybridge Rovers but after falling out with the management moved to Ashton North End in 1897, where he opened a tobacconist shop in Ashton-under-Lyne. Ashton North End went bankrupt in 1899, and he returned to Stalybridge Rovers, playing with a young Herbert Chapman, before seeing out his career playing for Stockport County of the Second Division in 1901–02. As well as playing in goal, he would also occasionally feature outfield as a winger.

Legacy

Having developed a drink problem, Wharton retired from football in 1902 and found employment as a colliery haulage worker at the Yorkshire Main Colliery in Edlington. By 1911 he was employed as a collier and living in Moor Thorpe, West Yorkshire, with wife Emma. When World War I began in 1914 Wharton joined the Volunteer Training Corps (roughly equivalent to the Home Guard of World War II), volunteering to give his life in defence of Britain if called upon. On his death in 1930 he was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave. The grave was given a headstone in 1997 after a campaign by anti-racism campaigners Football Unites, Racism Divides. In 2003 Wharton was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in recognition of the impact he made on the game. A campaign to have a statue erected in Darlington as well as in Rotherham to acknowledge Wharton's achievements has gained wide support within the professional game. In 2012, a small statue of Wharton was presented to Sepp Blatter at the headquarters of FIFA, where it will be on permanent display. On 16 October 2014, a statue honouring Wharton was unveiled at St George's Park National Football Centre.

In 2020, a mural was unveiled in Darlington on Arthur Wharton's 155th anniversary.

Career statistics

References

Further reading
 Phil Vasili, The First Black Footballer, Arthur Wharton, 1865–1930: an absence of memory, Frank Cass, 1998 ()
 Phil Vasili Colouring Over the White Line. The History of Black Footballers in Britain ()

External links

 The History of Black Footballers
 Football Unites Racism Divides profile
 English Football Hall of Fame profile
 Article on Spartacus Educational

1865 births
1930 deaths
English men's footballers
Men's association football goalkeepers
Darlington F.C. players
Preston North End F.C. players
Rotherham Town F.C. (1878) players
Sheffield United F.C. players
Stalybridge Rovers F.C. players
Stockport County F.C. players
English sportspeople of Ghanaian descent
English people of Grenadian descent
Footballers from Accra
Black British sportsmen
English Football Hall of Fame inductees
Ashton North End F.C. players
Ghanaian people of Grenadian descent
Sportspeople from Gold Coast (British colony)

Arthur Wharton


Glastonbury Anthems is a DVD featuring live performances from the Glastonbury Festival from 1994 to 2004. The performances on the DVD were voted for by fans on the official festival website. Extras include A Visit to the Glastonbury Greenfields, Glastonbury by Air, a 1995 interview with Michael and Jean Eavis, a photo gallery and footage from the 1971 film Glastonbury Fayre

Producer: Ben Challis.  Co-producer: Caroline McGee.  Executive producers for EMI: Stefan Demetriou and Jo Brooks. Executive producers for the BBC: Mark Cooper and Alison Howe.  Artwork  Alex Creedy. Festival Organisers  Michael Eavis & Emily Eavis. Mastered and authored at Abbey Road Studios. Directors: Gavin Taylor (1994, 1995) Janet Fraser Crook (1997-2004), Declan Lowney (1994-2004) & Phil Heyes (2004). A Visit To The Glastonbury Greenfields directed and Produced by Dorian Williams. Released by EMI.

Performances
Franz Ferdinand, "The Dark of the Matinée" (2004)
Travis, "Driftwood" (2000)
Faithless, "We Come 1" (2002)
Manic Street Preachers, "A Design for Life" (1999)
Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad" (2000)
Robbie Williams, "Angels" (1998)
Supergrass, "Pumping On Your Stereo" (2003)
Ash, "Shining Light" (2002)
The Levellers, "One Way" (1994)
Primal Scream, "Rocks" (2003)
Elastica, "Connection" (1995)
The Chemical Brothers, "Hey Boy Hey Girl" (2000)
Basement Jaxx, "Good Luck" (2004)
Coldplay, "Yellow" (2002)
Fun Lovin' Criminals, "Scooby Snacks" (1999)
The Prodigy, "Breathe" (1997)
Blur, "This Is a Low" (1994)
Placebo, "The Crawl" (1998)
Radiohead, "Karma Police" (1997)
Paul McCartney, "Hey Jude" (2004)

See also
 Glastonbury (film)
 Glastonbury Fayre (film)
 Glastonbury the Movie

External links
Official Glastonbury Festival website
US website

Glastonbury Festival
2005 films
Documentary films about music festivals
2005 documentary films
2000s English-language films
2000s British films
British musical documentary films

Glastonbury Anthems


Food is a substance that can be consumed by organisms, especially by eating, in order to sustain life. It generally provides nutrition and acts as a fuel for the working of a body.

Food may also refer to:

Films
 Food (film) (1992), animated short film by Jan Švankmajer
 Food, Inc. (2009), documentary

Music
 Food (band), a jazz band initiated by Ian Bellamy and Thomas Strønen
 F.O.O.D. (album), (2005), by Danny!
 Food (Kelis album) (2014)
 Food (Zico Chain album) (2007)
 The Food Album (1993), by "Weird Al" Yankovic
 "The Food" (2004), a song by Common
 Food Records, a British record label
 Mm..Food, a 2004 album by MF Doom

Other uses
 FOOD, 1970s artist-run restaurant in SoHo, New York
 "Food", the 2nd episode of the Adult Swim television series, Off the Air
 "Food", a Series F episode of the television series QI (2009)
 Foods (journal)
 Foodstuffs (company), a New Zealand company

Food (disambiguation)


Detachment is a 2011 American drama film directed by Tony Kaye and written by Carl Lund. Its story follows Henry Barthes, a high-school substitute teacher who becomes a role model to his students and others. It stars Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, Christina Hendricks, William Petersen, Bryan Cranston, Tim Blake Nelson, Betty Kaye, Sami Gayle, Lucy Liu, Blythe Danner and James Caan.

Produced by Greg Shapiro, Carl Lund, Bingo Gubelmann, Austin Stark, Benji Kohn, and Chris Papavasiliou, the film was released on March 16, 2012 to mixed reviews.

Synopsis
Detachment is a chronicle of one month in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of a substitute teacher named Henry Barthes (Adrien Brody). Barthes' method of imparting vital knowledge to his temporary students is interrupted by the arrival of three women in his life—a damaged and naive sex worker, Erica (Sami Gayle), a fellow teacher, Sarah (Christina Hendricks), and a troubled teen named Meredith (Betty Kaye). These women all have profound effects on Barthes' life, forcing him to both re-discover aspects of his own personality, and to come to terms with both the tragic suicide of his mother and the impending death of his grandfather (Louis Zorich). The film is punctuated with flashbacks of scenes of Barthes' young childhood and his mother's suicide.

Sub-plots include the struggles of Dr. Parker (Lucy Liu) within her role as the school counselor and the painful torment of Principal Dearden (Marcia Gay Harden), who faces her dismissal as head of this deeply flawed school.

Plot
Substitute teacher Henry Barthes is called in for a one-month assignment, teaching English classes at a high school with many students performing at a low grade level.

On his first day, he assesses his students' writing skills with an essay regarding how they believe they will be remembered after they die. During this class, he observes many acts of hostility and antagonism, including a student yelling at him and threatening him physically, as well as two students verbally harassing pupil Meredith, with whom he becomes acquainted after class. Later that day, he witnesses more aggression, when the mother of a student who has been expelled for harassing teacher Sarah Madison confronts her.

After school, Henry is called in to the care facility to see his grandfather who is suffering from dementia, as he has locked himself in the bathroom and won't come out. On his way out, after his visit, Henry expresses his frustrations with a staff member, as he believes his grandfather isn't being taken care of properly.

On the bus ride home, Henry sees young sex worker, Erica, get hit by a man who refuses to pay her. Erica attempts to convince Henry to have sex with her, which he refuses.

The next day, Henry reads aloud to the class through the essays from earlier. After reading an anonymous essay (which is assumed to be Meredith's), he becomes aware of her struggles with suicidal ideation.

After visiting his grandfather, Henry again runs into Erica, who he invites up to his apartment. There, he feeds her, cleans the cuts and scrapes on her legs, and allows her to stay for the night. Over the next few nights, she is allowed to stay, though he informs her that she won't be able to stay forever.

At school, the staff have a memorial service for a teacher who has passed away, though none of them liked him, nor do they know how he died.

Later, a speaker gives a talk to the faculty, discussing how the low test scores are bringing down real-estate prices, outraging the exhausted teachers. It is revealed there that Principal Carol Dearden is being fired soon. After the talk, Sarah asks Henry back to her house for dinner. When Henry returns home late, Erica is still awake, waiting for him. She is upset that he went out without telling her, to which he informs her that she can't expect him to tell her such things. However, Henry believes that Erica is showing responsibility, since she went grocery shopping and prepared dinner, which he is pleased with.

Back at school, the counsellor Dr. Parker talks to a student, Missy, about her low grades and lack of ambition, to which she seems to lack any care about. Dr. Parker tries to tell Missy about the importance of education later in life, but she loses her composure as she expresses her frustrations over her own life, which has supposedly not gone how she wished.

Henry is later called into the care facility, where Erica has been waiting for him, because his grandfather has become gravely ill. Henry's grandfather is scared, as he believes he is responsible for the disquiet in Henry's life, and he feels that he cannot leave him. Henry tells his grandfather that he's done nothing wrong and he can let himself go if he wants to. After their visit, Henry and Erica go to the park, where Erica asks about Henry's mother. He details her suicide, the result of an overdose. He also implies that his grandfather had sexually abused his mother, but says that he never felt unsafe around either of them.

The next day at school, Meredith shows Henry an artwork that she made for him. After she mentions that Henry seems like he needs someone to talk to, Henry becomes concerned, as he believes she is referring to herself. When Meredith opens up about her struggles and becomes visibly upset, Henry tries to comfort her. She hugs him, now very upset, asking Henry to console her. Sarah walks in on them (causing Meredith to run away) and expresses her concern that Henry was acting inappropriately towards Meredith. Henry insists that he was just comforting her. However, becoming so horrified by even the mention of committing such acts himself, Henry panics and is overcome by memories of his mother and grandfather.

Later that day, Henry is informed that his grandfather has died. Feeling on-edge after all that's happened, Henry informs Erica he can no longer take care of her, and has social services take her to a foster home. She becomes very distraught, begging him to let her stay, but he reluctantly maintains his stance.

The next day at school, Meredith has set up a cupcake stall. Henry goes to talk to her about the day before, still trying to console her, but she seems reluctant to talk to him. She then eats one of her cupcakes, which she laced with poison, and dies by suicide.

Later, he decides to go visit Erica in the foster care facility. She euphorically embraces him.

On his last day of teaching, Henry reads to the class The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe.

Cast

Production
Filming took place in Mineola Middle School and Mineola High School on Long Island, New York.

In March 2012, cast member Bryan Cranston was asked about Detachment during an interview for Collider. The reporter told Cranston that he loved the movie and then started to ask his question. "Wait," Cranston said, "did you like 'Detachment'?" The reporter said again that he loved it, and Cranston seemed surprised. "I haven't seen it," he told the assembled press. "I'm surprised to hear that actually." When asked to clarify, he continued, "Because I felt that Carl Lund, the writer of 'Detachment,' wrote a really beautiful, haunting script. And I didn't feel that it was honored."
Shocked by Cranston's frankness, the reporters pushed him for more on that disagreement. "I was upset with that. I really was. And so I didn't see the movie." He sighed, resigned, and continued, after searching for the right way to phrase himself, "Tony Kaye is a very complicated… interesting fellow." He smiled as he chose his words carefully. "I don't believe that I'll be working with him again. I didn't not get along with him on a personal level. But I just honor the writing. I really think that writing is the most important element there is. It is the springboard. It is where everything starts. And if you don't honor that -- which I didn't feel it was -- then where are you?" He leaned in as if telling everyone a secret. "And I'm not the only actor on that film to feel that way."

In the same month, director Tony Kaye touched upon the issue in a separate interview. "My agent sent me this fantastic piece of writing by a guy called Carl Lund. A writer. One of the things that I felt was how real it was. And writing is really about research and speech and I thought this guy's really done his homework. In fact it turned out that he had been a teacher. So then it all became very clear. And then when it really began, if you like, really really began was when Adrien Brody sort of popped up and said I'll do this. A couple of weeks before we were supposed to start to shoot. And then I decided myself at that point I'm gonna hang the whole thing on you [Brody]. And try to build out your character of Henry much more and make it all everything about you. Just you." The interviewer then asks Kaye if he rebuilt the script at that point. Kaye responds, "Well I reinterpreted it, yeah. When Carl first wrote it, I believe it was a very vignette ensemble thing." "Carl's script was very impressionistic, and [a] part of what I do, sometimes, [is] very impressionistic storytelling. I used that to its full, here, to try and make sense of it all.... There's more [footage] of Marcia Gay Harden and Bryan Cranston [which] I've got in the hard drives, and I'm hoping to [get] it out, in maybe a longer cut."

ReleaseDetachment premiered on April 25, 2011, at the Tribeca Film Festival. Pretty Pictures acquired rights to distribute the film in France. In September 2011, Tribeca Film acquired U.S. distribution rights with Celluloid Dreams repping worldwide sales rights. Territories sold include Benelux (Wild Bunch), Italy (UBU), Middle East (Shooting Stars), Russia (CP Digital), Latin America (California), India (Pictureworks), Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam (PT Parkit) and Taiwan (Cineplex).

On September 9, 2011, Detachment screened in competition at the 37th Deauville American Film Festival in France. It won both the Revelations Prize and the International Critics' Award. On September 18, Detachment was announced as the Closing Night Film at the Woodstock Film Festival, where Kaye was the recipient of the Honorary Maverick Award.

On October 12, 2011, Detachment screened in competition at the Valenciennes International Festival of Action and Adventure Films in France, where it won the Grand Prize and the Audience Award. Later, on October 26, the film screened in competition at the 24th Tokyo International Film Festival. It received the award for Best Artistic Contribution, sharing honors with the film Kora.Detachment also screened in competition at the 35th São Paulo International Film Festival and won the Audience Award for Best Foreign Language Film, sharing honors with Chicken with Plums. On November 16, Detachment screened at the 53rd Muestra Internacional de Cine in Mexico.

In January 2012, Detachment won Best Picture at the Ramdam Film Festival in Tournai, Belgium.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of  based on  reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads: "Detachments heart is in the right place, but overall it doesn't offer any solutions to its passionate ranting." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 52% based on reviews from 20 critics.

Peter Travers from Rolling Stone awarded the film three out of four stars, praising the performances of Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden and Lucy Liu. "Detachment gets to you. It hits hard", he wrote.

A reviewer for Student Handouts, which reviews books and films for those working in education, said: "It easily makes Dangerous Minds'' look like a pandering Lifetime made-for-TV movie."

References

External links

2011 films
2011 independent films
Films about educators
Films about suicide
2011 comedy-drama films
Films shot in New York (state)
Films directed by Tony Kaye (director)
Films scored by the Newton Brothers
American comedy-drama films
Appian Way Productions films
2010s English-language films
2010s American films

Detachment (film)


Alberte Pullman (née Bucher, 26 August 1920  – 7 January 2011) was a French theoretical and quantum chemist. She studied at the Sorbonne starting in 1938. During her studies she worked on calculations at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). From 1943 she worked with Raymond Daudel. She completed her doctorate in 1946. On his return from war service in 1946, she married Bernard Pullman. She and her husband worked together until his death in 1996. Together they wrote several books including Quantum Biochemistry, Interscience Publishers, 1963. Their work in the 1950s and 1960s was the beginning of the new field of Quantum Biochemistry. They pioneered the application of quantum chemistry to predicting the carcinogenic properties of aromatic hydrocarbons.

Pullman was born in Nantes, France. She was a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and a member and former President of  The International Society of Quantum Biology and Pharmacology.

References

External links
An interview with Mme Prof. Dr. Alberte Pullman

1920 births
20th-century French chemists
2011 deaths
University of Paris alumni
Members of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science
Theoretical chemists
Scientists from Nantes

Alberte Pullman


Bjørn Hansen (born 12 October 1938) is a Norwegian journalist. In Norway, he is well known as an experienced news presenter and correspondent, having worked for the Norwegian state-owned radio and television public broadcasting company, Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.

Career
Hansen was born in Tromsø and started as a newspaper journalist in Nordlys (1957–1960 and 1961–1963), Halden Arbeiderblad (1960–1961) and Arbeiderbladet. For the latter he was a foreign correspondent in London. He was employed in the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation in 1978.

He was a correspondent for NRK in Washington, D.C., from 1991 to 1995. He presided over election debates and has also appeared several times on CNN as well as other international news channels. From 2002 to 2007, he was the host for the Thursday night foreign news program Urix.

In 2009 Bjørn Hansen was awarded the lifetime achievement award at Gullruten (the Norwegian television awards).

Bjørn Hansen currently lives in his seaside house in Nesodden with his wife.

External links

1938 births
Living people
Writers from Tromsø
People from Nesodden
University of Oslo alumni
Norwegian journalists
NRK people
Norwegian newspaper reporters and correspondents
Norwegian television reporters and correspondents
Norwegian expatriates in England
Norwegian expatriates in the United States
Norwegian broadcast news analysts
Norwegian television presenters

Bjørn Hansen (journalist)


Clearview, also known as Clearview Hwy, is the name of a humanist sans-serif typeface family for guide signs used on roads in the United States, Canada, Indonesia, the Philippines, Israel, Brazil and Sri Lanka. It was developed by independent researchers with the help of the Texas Transportation Institute and the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, under the supervision of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). It was once expected to replace the FHWA typefaces in many applications, although newer studies of its effectiveness have called its benefits into question.

Initial testing indicated that Clearview was 2 to 8 percent more legible in both day- and night-time viewing than the then-dominant Series E (Modified) on overhead signs, particularly benefiting older drivers, with a 6 percent increase in legibility distance. A design goal of Clearview was the reduction of irradiation effects of retroreflective sign materials. Reduced nighttime overglow or haloing was expected also to improve recognition rates for computer road sign detection. However, these tests also compared new signs in Clearview to existing, weathered signs in the existing Highway Gothic font. The new font's apparent legibility "was more due to the fact that older, worn signs were being replaced with nice, fresh, clean signs which were, naturally, more legible." Better testing also revealed that legibility was worse for negative contrast signs (dark lettering on light backgrounds) such as on speed limit and yellow warning signs.

History

The standard FHWA typefaces, developed in the 1940s, were designed to work with a system of highway signs in which almost all words are capitalized; its standard mixed-case form (Series E Modified) was designed to be most visible under the now-obsolete reflector system of button copy, which has since been superseded by retroreflective sheeting. The designers of Clearview sought to create a typeface adapted for mixed-case signage, initially expecting it would be based on an existing European sans-serif typeface. Instead, using a similar weight to the FHWA fonts, a new font was created from scratch. Two key differences are much larger counter spaces, the enclosed spaces in letters like the lower case "e" or "a", and a higher x-height, the relative height of the lower case "x" to the upper case "X". Smaller counter spaces in the FHWA fonts reduced legibility, particularly when the letters glowed from headlight illumination at night.

Official acceptance

Clearview was granted interim approval by the FHWA for use on positive-contrast road signs (light legend on dark background, such as white on black, green, blue, brown, purple or red) on September 2, 2004, though not on negative-contrast road signs (dark legend on light background, such as black on white, yellow or orange), given its inferior legibility to the existing FHWA typefaces in these applications. The FHWA also refused to add Clearview to the 2009 MUTCD, citing lack of testing on Clearview's numerals, symbols, and narrower typefaces. In April 2014, FHWA indicated it expected to rescind Interim Approval to use Clearview in the future, eventually doing so in January 2016. Congress ordered the FHWA to reinstate the interim approval on March 28, 2018.

Outside the US, Clearview has been adopted in Canada where it has been the standard typeface for signs in British Columbia since 2006 and used for street signs in Toronto. Clearview has been adopted as the standard typeface for road signs in Indonesia since 2014. Since 2016, Ontario's Ministry of Transportation has started using Clearview on some signs on the Queen Elizabeth Way.

Variants
In addition to its appearance on road signage, a customized version of the ClearviewText typeface was adopted by AT&T for corporate use, including advertising, used from 2006 to 2016. Since 2018, Toyota has used another variant of ClearviewText in its advertisements. ClearviewText and ClearviewADA are versions of the typeface intended for use in general graphic design and ADA-compliant signage.  An example of ClearviewADA in use is signage at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Adoption

United States
Between 20 and 30 states have adopted the use of the typeface as of 2013. It was not the official font recommended for use by the FHWA and states were required to request interim approval from the Federal Highway Administration to use the font.

On January 25, 2016, the Federal Highway Administration issued a notice in the Federal Register of the agency's intent to rescind interim approval for use of the Clearview font in 30 days. FHWA discussed the current state of road signage research and concluded that "the consistent finding among all the research evaluations is that the brightness of the retroreflective sheeting is the primary factor in nighttime legibility." Even worse, significant misunderstandings and misapplications of the interim approval for Clearview were resulting in badly designed non-uniform signs that violated the uniformity central to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Accordingly, the notice concluded, "FHWA does not intend to pursue further consideration, development, or support of an alternative letter style." The rescission of the interim approval drew negative response from government officials as well as one of the typeface's designers.

The FHWA reinstated the interim approval on March 28, 2018, per Division L, Title I, Section 125 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018.

Canada
The Transportation Association of Canada's MUTCD for Canada allows the use of Clearview, and the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario uses it for positive contrast guide signs. Toronto has been replacing its black-on-white street signs with newer white-on-blue signs that use Clearview since 2004, with exceptions for certain older neighborhoods. British Columbia has been switching to Clearview for all signage, including regulatory and guide signage.

Indonesia
The Ministry of Transportation promulgated a regulation in 2014 to introduce new road signs that would use the Clearview typeface. This new regulation was intended to meet ASEAN Economic Community standards starting in 2015. Previously, road signs in Indonesia had traditionally used FHWA Series fonts since 1993.

Philippines
Signage in the Philippines uses Clearview on newer signs. The numbered shields in the Philippine highway network use Clearview.

See also
 Public signage typefaces
 Highway Gothic

References

External links

 FHWA page about the Clearview typeface
 Official site

Government typefaces
Humanist sans-serif typefaces
Road signs in the United States
Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2004
Typefaces designed by James Montalbano

Clearview (typeface)


Membrane bioreactors are combinations of some membrane processes like microfiltration or ultrafiltration with a biological wastewater treatment process, the activated sludge process. These technologies are now widely used for municipal and industrial wastewater treatment. The two basic membrane bioreactor configurations are the submerged membrane bioreactor and the side stream membrane bioreactor. In the submerged configuration, the membrane is located inside the biological reactor and submerged in the wastewater, while in a side stream membrane bioreactor, the membrane is located outside the reactor as an additional step after biological treatment.

Overview
Water scarcity has prompted efforts to reuse waste water once it has been properly treated, known as "water reclamation" (also called wastewater reuse, water reuse, or water recycling). Among the treatment technologies available to reclaim wastewater, membrane processes stand out for their capacity to retain solids and salts and even to disinfect water, producing water suitable for reuse in irrigation and other applications.

A semipermeable membrane is a material that allows the selective flow of certain substances.
In the case of water purification or regeneration, the aim is to allow the water to flow through the membrane whilst retaining undesirable particles on the originating side. By varying the type of membrane, it is possible to get better pollutant retention of different kinds. Some of the required characteristics in a membrane for wastewater treatment are chemical and mechanical resistance for five years of operation and capacity to operate stably over a wide pH range.

There are two main types of membrane materials available on the market: organic-based polymeric membranes and ceramic membranes. Polymeric membranes are the most commonly used materials in water and wastewater treatment. In particular, polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) is the most prevalent material due to its long lifetime and chemical and mechanical resistance.

When used with domestic wastewater, membrane bioreactor processes can produce effluent of high enough quality for discharge into the oceans, surfaces, brackish bodies, or urban irrigation waterways. Other advantages of membrane bioreactors over conventional processes include reduced footprints and simpler retrofitting.

It is possible to operate membrane bioreactor processes at higher mixed liquor suspended solids concentrations compared to conventional settlement separation systems, thus reducing the reactor volume to achieve the same loading rate.

Recent technical innovation and significant membrane cost reduction have enabled membrane bioreactors to become an established process option to treat wastewater. Membrane bioreactors have become an attractive option for the treatment and reuse of industrial and municipal wastewater, as evidenced by their consistently rising numbers and capacity. The current membrane bioreactor market was estimated to be worth around US $216 million in 2006 and US$838.2 million in 2011, grounding projections that the market for membrane bioreactors was growing at an average rate of 22.4% and would reach a market size of US $3.44 billion in 2018.

The global membrane bioreactor market is expected to grow in the near future due to various driving forces, for instance increasing scarcity of water worldwide which makes wastewater reclamation more profitable; this will likely be further aggravated by continuing climate change. Growing environmental concerns over industrial wastewater disposal along with declining freshwater resources across developing economies also account for increasing demand for membrane bioreactor technology. Population growth, urbanization, and industrialization will further complicate the business outlook.

However, high initial investments and operational expenditure may hamper the global membrane bioreactor market. In addition, technological limitations, particularly the recurrent costs of membrane fouling, are likely to hinder production adoption. Ongoing research and development progress toward increasing output and minimizing sludge formation are anticipated to fuel industry growth.

Membrane bioreactors can be used to reduce the footprint of an activated sludge sewage treatment system by removing some of the liquid components of the mixed liquor. This leaves a concentrated waste product that is then treated using the activated sludge process.

Recent studies show the opportunity to use nanomaterials for the realization of more efficient and sustainable membrane bioreactors for wastewater treatment.

History and basic operating parameters
Membrane bioreactors were introduced in the late 1960s, shortly after commercial-scale ultrafiltration and microfiltration membranes became available. The original designs were introduced by Dorr-Oliver Inc. and combined the use of an activated sludge bioreactor with a cross-flow membrane filtration loop. The flat sheet membranes used in this process were polymeric and featured pore sizes ranging from 0.003 to 0.01 μm. Although the idea of replacing the settling tank of the conventional activated sludge process was attractive, it was difficult to justify the use of such a process because of the high cost of membranes, the low economic value of the product (tertiary effluent) and sometimes rapid losses of performance due to membrane fouling. As a result, the initial design focus was on the attainment of high fluxes, and it was, therefore, necessary to pump the mixed liquor and its suspended solids at high cross-flow velocity at significant energy demand (of the order 10 kWh/m3 product) to reduce fouling. Because of the poor economics of the first-generation devices, they only found applications in niche areas with special needs such as isolated trailer parks or ski resorts.

The next breakthrough for the membrane bioreactor came in 1989 with the introduction of submerged membrane bioreactor configurations. Until then, membrane bioreactors were designed with a separation device located external to the reactor (side stream membrane bioreactors) and relied on high trans-membrane pressure to maintain filtration. The submerged configuration takes advantage of coarse bubble aeration to produce mixing and limit fouling. The energy demand of the submerged system can be up to 2 orders of magnitude lower than that of the side stream systems and submerged systems operate at a lower flux, demanding more membrane area. In submerged configurations, aeration is considered as one of the major parameters in process performance both hydraulic and biological. Aeration maintains solids in suspension, scours the membrane surface, and provides oxygen to the biomass, leading to better biodegradability and cell synthesis. Submerged membrane bioreactor systems became preferred to side stream configurations, especially for domestic wastewater treatment.

The next key steps in membrane bioreactor development were the acceptance of modest fluxes (25 percent or less of those in the first generation) and the idea to use two-phase (bubbly) flow to control fouling. The lower operating cost obtained with the submerged configuration along with the steady decrease in the membrane cost led to an exponential increase in membrane bioreactor plant installations from the mid-1990s. Since then, further improvements in membrane bioreactor design and operation have been introduced and incorporated into larger plants. While earlier devices were operated at solid retention times as high as 100 days with mixed liquor suspended solids up to 30 g/L, the recent trend is to apply lower solid retention times (around 10–20 days), resulting in more manageable suspended solids levels (10 to 15 g/L). Thanks to these new operating conditions, the oxygen transfer and the pumping cost in the reactors have tended to decrease and the overall maintenance has been simplified. There is now a range of membrane bioreactor systems available commercially, most of which use submerged membranes although some side stream modules are available; these side stream systems also use two-phase flow for fouling control. Typical hydraulic retention times range between 3 and 10 hours. For the most part, hollow fiber and flat sheet membrane configurations are utilized in membrane bioreactor applications.

Despite the more favorable energy usage of submerged membranes, there continued to be a market for the side stream configuration, particularly in smaller flow industrial applications. For ease of maintenance, side stream configurations can be installed on a lower level in a plant building, and thus membrane replacement can be undertaken without specialized lifting equipment. As a result, research and development has continued to improve the side stream configurations, and this has culminated in recent years with the development of low energy systems which incorporate more sophisticated control of the operating parameters coupled with periodic backwashes, which enable sustainable operation at energy usage as low as 0.3 kWh/m3 of product.

Configurations

Internal/submerged/immersed

In the immersed Membrane Bioreactor (iMBR) configuration, the filtration element is installed in either the main bioreactor vessel or in a separate tank. The modules are positioned above the aeration system, fulfilling two functions, the supply of oxygen and the cleaning of the membranes. The membranes can be a flat sheet or tubular or a combination of both and can incorporate an online backwash system which reduces membrane surface fouling by pumping membrane permeate back through the membrane. In systems where the membranes are in a separate tank from the bioreactor, individual trains of membranes can be isolated to undertake cleaning regimes incorporating membrane soaks, however, the biomass must be continuously pumped back to the main reactor to limit mixed liquor suspended solids concentration increases. Additional aeration is also required to provide air scouring to reduce fouling. Where the membranes are installed in the main reactor, membrane modules are removed from the vessel and transferred to an offline cleaning tank. Usually, the internal/submerged configuration is used for larger-scale lower strength applications. To optimize the reactor volume and minimize the production of sludge, submerged membrane bioreactor systems typically operate with mixed liquor suspended solids concentrations comprised between 12000 mg/L and 20000 mg/L, hence they offer good flexibility in the selection of the design Sludge retention time. It is mandatory to take into account that an excessively high content of mixed liquor suspended solids may render the aeration system less effective; the classical solution to this optimization problem is to ensure a concentration of mixed liquor suspended solids which approaches 10.000 mg/L to guarantee a good mass transfer of oxygen with a good permeation flux. This type of solution is widely accepted in larger-scale units, where the internal/submerged configuration is typically used, because of the higher relative cost of the membrane compared to the additional tank volume required.

Immersed MBR has been the preferred configuration due to its low energy consumption level, high biodegradation efficiency, and low fouling rate compared to side stream membrane bioreactors. In addition, iMBR systems can handle higher suspended solids concentrations, while traditional systems work only with suspended solids concentrations between 2.5-3.5, iMBR can handle concentrations between 4-12 g/L, an increase in range of 300%. This type of configuration is adopted in industrial sectors including textile, food & beverage, oil & gas, mining, power generation, pulp & paper.

External/side stream
In side stream membrane bioreactor technology, the filtration modules are outside the aerobic tank, hence the name side-stream configuration. Like the immersed or submerged configuration, the aeration system is also used to clean and supply oxygen to the bacteria that degrade the organic compounds. The biomass is either pumped directly through several membrane modules in series and back to the bioreactor or the biomass is pumped to a bank of modules, from which a second pump circulates the biomass through the modules in series. Cleaning and soaking of the membranes can be undertaken in situ with the use of an installed cleaning tank, pump, and pipework. The quality of the final product is such that it can be reused in process applications due to the filtration capacity of the micro- and ultrafiltration membranes.

Usually, the external/side stream configuration is used for smaller scale and higher strength applications; the main advantage that the external/side stream configuration shows is the possibility to design and size the tank and the membrane separately, with practical advantages for the operation and the maintenance of the unit. As in other membrane processes, a shear over the membrane surface is needed to prevent or limit fouling; the external/side stream configuration provides this shear using a pumping system, while the internal/submerged configuration provides the shear through aeration in the bioreactor, and there is an energy requirement to promote the shear by pumping. In this configuration fouling is more consistent due to the higher fluxes involved.

Major considerations

Fouling and fouling control
Membrane bioreactor filtration performance inevitably decreases with filtration time due to the deposition of soluble and particulate materials onto and into the membrane, attributable to the interactions between activated sludge components and the membrane. This major drawback and process limitation has been under investigation since the earliest membrane bioreactors and remains one of the most challenging issues facing further development.

Fouling is the process by which the particles (colloidal particles, solute macromolecules) are deposited or adsorbed onto the membrane surface or pores by physical and chemical interactions or mechanical action. This produces a reduction in size or blockage of membrane pores.

Membrane fouling can cause severe flux drops and affects the quality of the water produced. Severe fouling may require intense chemical cleaning or membrane replacement. This increases the operating costs of a treatment plant. Membrane fouling has traditionally been thought to occur through four mechanisms: 1) complete pore blocking, 2) standard blocking, 3) intermediate blocking, and 4) cake layer formation. There are various types of foulants: biological (bacteria, fungi), colloidal (clays, flocs), scaling (mineral precipitates), and organic (oils, polyelectrolytes, (humics).

Membrane fouling can be accommodated either by allowing a decrease in permeation flux while holding transmembrane pressure constant or by increasing transmembrane pressure to maintain constant flux. Most wastewater treatment plants are operated in constant flux mode, and hence fouling phenomena are generally tracked via the variation of transmembrane pressure with time. In recent reviews covering membrane applications to bioreactors, it has been shown that, as with other membrane separation processes, membrane fouling is the most serious problem affecting system performance. Fouling leads to a significant increase in hydraulic resistance, manifested as permeate flux declines or transmembrane pressure increases when the process is operated under constant-transmembrane-pressure or constant-flux conditions respectively. In systems where flux is maintained by increasing transmembrane pressure, the energy required to achieve filtration increases. Frequent membrane cleaning is an alternative that significantly increases operating costs as a result of added cleaning agent costs, added production downtime, and more frequent membrane replacement.

Membrane fouling results from the interaction between a membrane material and the components of the activated sludge liquor, which include biological flocs formed by a large range of living or dead microorganisms along with soluble and colloidal compounds. The suspended biomass has no fixed composition and varies with feed water composition and reactor operating conditions. Thus, though many investigations of membrane fouling have been published, the diverse range of operating conditions and feedwater matrices employed, the different analytical methods used, and the limited information reported in most studies on the suspended biomass composition, have made it difficult to establish any generic behavior pertaining to membrane fouling in membrane bioreactors specifically.

Air-induced cross flow in submerged membrane bioreactors can efficiently remove or at least reduce the fouling layer on the membrane surface. A recent review reports the latest findings on applications of aeration in submerged membrane configuration and describes the performance benefits of gas bubbling. The choice of aeration rate is a key parameter in submerged membrane bioreactor design, as there is generally an optimal air flow rate beyond which further increases in aeration have no benefits for preventing fouling.

Many other antifouling strategies can be applied in membrane bioreactor applications. They include, for example:
 Intermittent permeation or relaxation, where the filtration is stopped at regular time intervals before being resumed. Particles deposited on the membrane surface tend to diffuse back to the reactor; this phenomenon will be increased by the continuous aeration applied during this resting period.
 Membrane backwashing, where permeate water is pumped back to the membrane and flows through the pores to the feed channel, dislodging internal and external foulants.
 Air backwashing, where pressurized air in the membrane's permeate side builds up and releases a significant pressure within a very short period of time. Membrane modules, therefore, need to be in a pressurized vessel coupled to a vent system. Air usually does not go through the membrane. If it did, the air would dry the membrane and a re-wet step would be necessary, accomplished by pressurizing the feed side of the membrane.
 Proprietary antifouling products, such as Nalco's Membrane Performance Enhancer Technology.

In addition, different types and intensities of chemical cleaning may also be recommended on typical schedules:
 Chemically enhanced backwash (daily);
 Maintenance cleaning with higher chemical concentration (weekly);
 Intensive chemical cleaning (once or twice a year).

Intensive cleaning may also be carried out when further filtration cannot be sustained because of an elevated transmembrane pressure. Each of the four membrane bioreactor suppliers Kubota, Evoqua, Mitsubishi and GE Water have their own chemical cleaning recipes; these differ mainly in terms of concentration and methods (see Table 1). Under normal conditions, the prevalent cleaning agents are NaOCl (sodium hypochlorite) and citric acid. It is common for membrane bioreactor suppliers to adapt specific protocols for chemical cleanings (i.e. chemical concentrations and cleaning frequencies) for individual facilities.

Biological performances/kinetics

Chemical oxygen demand removal and sludge yield
Simply due to the high number of microorganisms in membrane bioreactors, pollutant uptake rates can be increased. This leads to better degradation in a given time span or to smaller required reactor volumes. In comparison to conventional activated sludge process treatments which typically achieve 95 percent removal, removal can be increased to 96 to 99 percent in membrane bioreactors (see table,). Chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biological oxygen demand (BOD5) removal is found to increase with mixed liquor suspended solids concentration. Above 15 g/L, COD removal becomes almost independent of biomass concentration at >96 percent. Arbitrary high suspended solids concentrations are not employed, however, lest oxygen transfer be impeded due to higher viscosity and non-Newtonian viscosity effects. Kinetics may also differ due to easier substrate access. In typical activated sludge process treatment, flocs may reach several 100 μm in size. This means that the substrate can reach the active sites only by diffusion which causes an additional resistance and limits the overall reaction rate (diffusion-controlled). Hydrodynamic stress in membrane bioreactors reduces floc size (to 3.5 μm in side stream configurations) and thereby increases the effective reaction rate. Like in the conventional activated sludge process, sludge yield is decreased at higher solids retention times or biomass concentrations. Little or no sludge is produced at sludge loading rates of 0.01 kgCOD/(kgMLSS d). Because of the imposed biomass concentration limit, such low loading rates would result in enormous tank sizes or long hydrodynamic residence times in conventional activated sludge processes.

Nutrient removal
Nutrient removal is one of the main concerns in modern wastewater treatment, especially, in areas that are sensitive to eutrophication. Nitrogen (N) is a pollutant present in wastewater that must be eliminated for multiple reasons: it reduces dissolved oxygen in surface waters, is toxic to the aquatic ecosystem, poses a risk to public health, and together with phosphorus (P), are responsible for the excessive growth of photosynthetic organisms like algae. All these factors make its reduction focus on wastewater treatment. In wastewater, nitrogen can be present in multiple forms.
Like in the conventional activated sludge process, currently, the most widely applied technology for N-removal from municipal wastewater is nitrification combined with denitrification, carried out by bacteria nitrifying and the involvement of facultative organisms.
Besides phosphorus precipitation, enhanced biological phosphorus removal can be implemented which requires an additional anaerobic process step. Some characteristics for membrane bioreactor technology render enhanced biological phosphorus removal in combination with post-denitrification an attractive alternative that achieves very low nutrient effluent concentrations.
For this, a membrane bioreactor improves the retention of solids, which provides a better biotreatment, supporting the development of slower-growing microorganisms, especially nitrifying ones, so that it makes them especially effective in the elimination of N (nitrification).

Anaerobic MBRs
Anaerobic membrane bioreactors (sometimes abbreviated AnMBR) were introduced in the 1980s in South Africa. However, anaerobic processes are normally used when a low-cost treatment is required that enables energy recovery but does not achieve advanced treatment (low carbon removal, no nutrients removal). In contrast, membrane-based technologies enable advanced treatment (disinfection), but at a high energy cost. Therefore, the combination of both can only be economically viable if a compact process for energy recovery is desired, or when disinfection is required after anaerobic treatment (cases of water reuse with nutrients). If maximal energy recovery is desired, a single anaerobic process will always be superior to a combination with a membrane process.

Recently, anaerobic membrane bioreactors have seen successful full-scale application to the treatment of some types of industrial wastewaters—typically high-strength wastes. Example applications include the treatment of alcohol stillage wastewater in Japan and the treatment of salad dressing/barbecue sauce wastewater in the United States.

Mixing and hydrodynamics
Like in any other reactors, the hydrodynamics (or mixing) within a membrane bioreactor plays an important role in determining the pollutant removal and fouling control within the system. It has a substantial effect on energy usage and size requirements, and therefore the whole life cost of a membrane bioreactor is high.

The removal of pollutants is greatly influenced by the length of time fluid elements spend in the membrane bioreactor (i.e. the residence time distribution). The residence time distribution is a description of the hydrodynamics of mixing in the system and it is determined by the design of the reactor (e.g. size, inlet/recycle flowrates, wall/baffle/mixer/aerator positioning, mixing energy input). An example of the effect of mixing is that a continuous stirred-tank reactor will not have as high pollutant conversion per unit volume of reactor as a plug flow reactor.

The control of fouling, as previously mentioned, is primarily achieved via coarse bubble aeration. The distribution of bubbles around the membranes, the shear at the membrane surface for cake removal and the size of the bubble are greatly influenced by the hydrodynamics of the system. The mixing within the system can also influence the production of possible foulants. For example, vessels not completely mixed (i.e. plug flow reactors) are more susceptible to the effects of shock loads which may cause cell lysis and release of soluble microbial products.

Many factors affect the hydrodynamics of wastewater processes and hence membrane bioreactors. These range from physical properties (e.g. mixture rheology and gas/liquid/solid density etc.) to fluid boundary conditions (e.g. inlet/outlet/recycle flow rates, baffle/mixer position etc.). However, some factors are peculiar to membrane bioreactors and these include the filtration tank design (e.g. membrane type, multiple outlets attributed to membranes, membrane packing density, membrane orientation, etc.) and its operation (e.g. membrane relaxation, membrane backflush, etc.).

The mixing modeling and design techniques applied to membrane bioreactors are very similar to those used for conventional activated sludge systems. They include the relatively quick and easy compartmental modelling technique which will only derive the residence time distribution of a process (e.g. the reactor) or a process unit (e.g. the membrane filtration vessel) and which relies on broad assumptions of the mixing properties of each sub-unit. Computational fluid dynamics modeling, on the other hand, does not rely on broad assumptions about the mixing characteristics and instead attempts to predict the hydrodynamics from a fundamental level. It is applicable to all scales of fluid flow and can reveal much information about the mixing in a process, ranging from the residence time distribution to the shear profile on a membrane surface. A visualization of such modeling results is shown in the image.

Investigations of membrane bioreactor hydrodynamics have occurred at many different scales ranging from examination of shear stress at the membrane surface to residence time distribution analysis for a complete membrane bioreactor. Cui et al. (2003) investigated the movement of Taylor bubbles through tubular membranes. Khosravi, M. (2007) examined an entire membrane filtration vessel using CFD and velocity measurements. Brannock et al. (2007) examined an entire MBR system using tracer study experiments and RTD analysis.

Advantages
Some of the advantages provided by membrane bioreactors are as follows.
 High quality effluent: given the small size of the membrane's pores, the effluent is clear and pathogen free.
 Independent control of solids retention time and hydraulic retention time: As all the biological solids are contained in the bioreactor, the solids retention time can be controlled independently from the hydrodynamic retention time.
 Small footprint: thanks to the membrane filtration, there is a high biomass concentration contained in a small volume.
 Robust to load variations: membrane bioreactors can be operated with a broad range of operation conditions.
 Compact process: compared to the conventional activated sludge process, membrane bioreactors are more compact.

Market framework

Regional insights
The market for membrane bioreactors is segmented based on end-user type, such as municipal and industrial users, and end-user geography, for instance Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Asia-Pacific (APAC), and the Americas.

In this line, in 2016, some studies and reports showed that the APAC region took the lead in terms of market share, owning 41.90%. On the other hand, the EMEA region's market share is approximately 31.34% and the Americas constitute 26.67% of the market.

APAC has the largest membrane bioreactors market. Developing economies such as India, China, Indonesia, and the Philippines are major contributors to growth in this market region. APAC is considered one of the most disaster-prone regions in the world: in 2013, thousands of people died from water-related disasters in the region, accounting for nine-tenth of the water-related deaths, globally. In addition to this, the public water supply system in the region is not as developed when compared to other countries such as the US, Canada, the countries in Europe, etc.

The membrane bioreactors market in the EMEA region has witnessed stable growth. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Algeria, Turkey, and Spain are major contributors to that growth rate. Scarcity of clean and fresh water is the key driver for the increasing demand for efficient water treatment technologies. In this regard, increased awareness about water treatment and safe drinking water is also driving the growth.

Ultimately, the Americas region has been witnessing major demand from countries including the US, Canada, Antigua, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. The membrane bioreactor market has grown on account of stringent regulatory enforcement towards the safe discharge of wastewater. The demand for this emerging technology comes mainly from the pharmaceuticals, food & beverages, automotive, and chemicals industries.

See also

 List of waste-water treatment technologies
 Activated sludge model
 Membrane fouling
 Hollow fiber membrane

References

Sewerage
Environmental engineering
Bioreactors
Membrane technology
Water treatment

it:Processo a membrana#Applicazioni della tecnologia MBR al trattamento delle acque reflue

Membrane bioreactor