The Land Before Time XIV: Journey of the Brave is a 2016 American direct-to-video animated feature film and the fourteenth and final installment in The Land Before Time series. Its nine-year gap from 2007's The Wisdom of Friends marked the longest between two films in the series. The film was directed by Davis Doi and written by Cliff Ruby and Elana Lesser. It was made available on DVD and Digital HD on February 2, 2016, with the DVD version exclusive to Walmart stores in North America until May 10, when it became available in other stores. The film features the voices of Damon Wayans Jr. and country singer Reba McEntire, who performs the song "Look for the Light". Like all other The Land Before Time films, it is traditionally-animated.

Plot
Littlefoot is eagerly awaiting the arrival of his father Bron, who returns to the valley with his herd once a year. However, he soon learns from a Nothronychus member of his dad's troupe named Wild Arms that his father became stranded in the wilderness when the fire mountain erupted, leaving the rest of the herd to go on without him. They ask Wild Arms for help, but he belligerently says no. After worrying about his father, Littlefoot sets out alone. However, the others soon catch up with him. They do fine at first, but run into the earth divide. It is suggested that they follow the Long Valley instead, but Littlefoot says that that will take too long, and that they must cross there. Luckily, they are able to knock down a tree, and get across.

After two close encounters with a duo of Yutyrannus, night falls and the children go to sleep. Meanwhile, the elder dinosaurs learn about their children's trek, and decide to go after them with two younger ones - Chomper and Ruby. They attempt to have Wild Arms guide them back to where Bron was last seen, but he faints at the mere sight of Chomper, a sharptooth, and has to be carried, leaving Chomper to lead the way with his nose. The next morning, and a disagreement between Littlefoot and Cera on which path to take causes Littlefoot to decide to go ahead alone. A sand cloud (sandstorm) then occurs, and Littlefoot is trapped in a cave, where he meets a Pteranodon named Etta, who knows his father. Meanwhile, Cera, Ducky, and Spike lose Petrie, who comes across a tribe of diggers. They soon find him, and they soon leave the diggers, who elect themselves a new leader.

Meanwhile, Etta tells Littlefoot what happened to Bron, and that he may well be dead. She also says that it was because Bron had rescued Wild Arms that he got into that mess. After many failed attempts to dig their way out of the cave, they head deeper into the cave itself, she sings a song to lead him on his way. The rest of the kids, meanwhile, run into a Carnotaurus, though Etta is able to hit a hole through the cave ceiling and help them get away where they reunite with Littlefoot who makes up with Cera for the argument. Etta eventually leads Littlefoot and his friends out of the cave, and to the fire mountain where they find Bron. It looks hopeless as he is surrounded by lava, and Bron tells them to go so they do not get hurt, but Littlefoot refuses.

Later, the grownups, plus Chomper and Ruby, come across the Carnotaurus. Chomper smells it and they are able to hide from it, but are nearly discovered due to Wild Arms cowering in fear and making noise. Just before the sharptooth discovers them, it is distracted by a flock of Archaeornithomimus. Back at the fire mountain, Etta and the kids spring into action to save Bron. They are able to halt the Flowing Fire by sending water onto it, and use a tree to free Bron, though the flowing fire returns and Littlefoot and his father are trapped on the other side. Bron scoops him up, however, and jumps across the lava, and right after, the adults, Chomper, and Ruby, find them. Reunited with his father and the rest of the herd led by Chomper back home to the Valley, the group extol the virtues of working together, and finding bravery through companionship.

Voice cast

 Felix Avitia as Littlefoot
 Anndi McAfee as Cera and Petrie's Mother
 Aria Curzon as Ducky
 Jeff Bennett as Petrie
 Rob Paulsen as Spike
 Barry Bostwick as Grandpa Longneck (replacing Kenneth Mars)
 Miriam Flynn as Grandma Longneck
 George Ball as Mr. Topps (replacing John Ingle)
 Issac Brown as Chomper
 Meghan Strange as Ruby and Ducky and Spike's Mother
 Scott Whyte as Bron
 Tony Amendola as the Narrator (replacing John Ingle)
 Reba McEntire as Etta
 Damon Wayans Jr. as Wild Arms

Production
News of a new Land Before Time film was first revealed in a November 2014 Yahoo! Finance article detailing Universal Studios' future film plans, though no further information was given. An interview from January 2015 with child actor Felix Avitia revealed that he had been cast as Littlefoot in the tentatively-titled The Land Before Time XIV: Journey of the Heart, which was planned for release later that year. The following July, the first trailer for the film was released on Rotten Tomatoes, revealing the film's finalized title Journey of the Brave, along with a new release date on DVD and Digital HD on February 2, 2016. The North American DVD version was available exclusively at Walmart and Walmart.com, and was preceded by a Land Before Time compilation album featuring songs from the series on January 29 the same year by Back Lot Music.

Journey of the Brave was directed by series newcomer Davis Doi and written by fellow series newcomers Cliff Ruby and Elana Lesser, with music by Land Before Time series veteran Michael Tavera. It features four sing-along songs, including "Look for the Light" performed by country singer Reba McEntire, who also provides the voice for the Pteranodon character Etta. McEntire finished recording her dialogue in August 2015, and later remarked on how the cast of characters "remind me a lot of my friends when I was a kid". Actor Damon Wayans, Jr. was also cast as the character Wild Arms.

Reception

In its first week of release the film debuted at No. 11 on the top 20 Home Video titles. Common Sense Media rated the film 3 out of 5 stars: There's a gentle sweetness to this story which, when accompanied by four original upbeat songs, softens the danger and suspense that occur in the action sequences. Yes, the dinos do run into some fierce Sharpteeth creatures who chase them, and they do have mountains to climb and a sandstorm to outrun, and they find themselves on the brink of disaster several times, but for kids who are clear about the difference between make-believe and real, there is nothing truly scary or unsettling. The characters are original, quirky, and funny and have been well established in the earlier DVDs so that audiences, both old and new, will find them engaging. The addition of the voice talent of Reba McIntyre, who sings, and Damon Wayons, Jr., who jokes a lot, is another plus. A solid entry in the franchise.

See also
 List of films featuring dinosaurs

References

External links

 Official website

2010s American animated films
2016 direct-to-video films
2016 animated films
2016 films
Animated films about dinosaurs
Films about volcanoes
Direct-to-video sequel films
Films directed by Davis Doi
Films scored by Michael Tavera
The Land Before Time films
Universal Animation Studios animated films
Universal Pictures direct-to-video animated films
2010s children's animated films
2010s English-language films


Cimmeria was an ancient continent, or, rather, a string of microcontinents or terranes, that rifted from Gondwana in the Southern Hemisphere and was accreted to Eurasia in the Northern Hemisphere. It consisted of parts of present-day Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet, China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia.  Cimmeria rifted from the Gondwanan shores of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean during the Early Permian and as the Neo-Tethys Ocean opened behind it, during the Permian, the Paleo-Tethys closed in front of it. Because the different chunks of Cimmeria drifted northward at different rates, a Meso-Tethys Ocean formed between the different fragments during the Cisuralian. Cimmeria rifted off Gondwana from east to west, from Australia to the eastern Mediterranean.
It stretched across several latitudes and spanned a wide range of climatic zones.

History of the concept

First concepts
A "large, ancient Mediterranean Sea" was first proposed by Austrian palaeontologist Melchior Neumayr in 1883.  Studying the distribution of Jurassic faunas, he concluded that an equatorial ocean stretching from India to Central America must have separated a large continent in the northern hemisphere from one in the southern hemisphere.  Austrian geologist Eduard Suess named this Mesozoic ocean the Tethys, a mythical ocean which separated a mythical continent – Gondwanaland, home of the tongue-shaped flora – from a boreal continent. German geophysicist Alfred Wegener, in contrast, developed a concept of a single, global continent – the supercontinent Pangea – which, in his view, left no room for an equatorial ocean.  A wedge-shaped, east-facing Tethys within Pangea was, nevertheless, proposed by Australian geologist Samuel Warren Carey in 1958. This ocean was later identified as a succession of oceans separated by north-migrating terranes or continental blocks, one of which was Cimmeria.

Iranian microcontinent
In 1974, after extensive field work in the Middle East, Swiss geologist Jovan Stöcklin identified the northern foot of the Alborz Range in northern Iran as the suture which in the Paleozoic was the northern shore of Gondwana and the remains of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean.  Stöcklin also noted that an early Mesozoic or late Paleozoic rift separated the Iranian Plate from the Arabian Plate, and that another southern suture must be the remains of the Neo-Tethys Ocean. The opening of this later ocean, Stöcklin realized, must have transformed Iran into a microcontinent.  Those observations made Stöcklin the first to identify a small part of what would later be known as Cimmeria.

Stöcklin also noted that his proposal resembled the old concept of the world in which there were two continents, Angaraland in the north and Gondwana in the south, separated by an elongated ocean, the Tethys. Iran belonged to neither continent but was part of the realm of Tethys.
Stöcklin's southern suture was later confirmed by observations of the evolution of microflora in Iran, which had a Gondwanan affinity during the Carboniferous but a Eurasian affinity during the Late Triassic – Iran had clearly drifted from Gondwana to Laurasia.

Eurasian superterrane

In the 1980s Turkish geologist Celâl Şengör finally extended Stöcklin's Iranian microcontinent further west to Turkey and further east to Tibet and the Far East.  Şengör also reused the name introduced by Suess in 1901, the "Kimmerisches Gebirge" – the "Crimean" or "Cimmerian Mountains".

In the mountain range that now stretches from the Alps to Indonesia Şengör identified, using a simplified scheme, two distinct but superimposed orogenic systems containing a large number of anastomosing sutures: the older Cimmerides and the younger Alpides together forming what Şengör called the Tethysides super-orogenic system. These two orogenic systems are thus associated with two major periods of ocean closure: the earlier, northern, and much larger Cimmerides, and the later, southern, and smaller Alpides.  Cimmeria was the long continental "archipelago" that separated the two oceans before the Paleo-Tethys closed.

This realm of Tethys thus covers most of Eurasia and a large time span (from north to south):
 Laurasia, Permian to Cretaceous
 Palaeo-Tethys, Early Carboniferous to Middle Jurassic
 Cimmeria, Triassic to Middle Jurassic
 Neo-Tethys, Permian or Triassic to Eocene, locally still extant
 Gondwana, Ordovician to Jurassic
This simple scheme, however, partly obscures the complex nature of the Tethyan cycles and terms such as "Eocimmerian" and "Neocimmerian" is often used for Late Triassic and Late Jurassic events respectively. Furthermore, a distinction is often made between two more recent Tethyan domains: the Alpine Tethys and the Neo-Tethys. The Alpine Tethys, the western domain in this scheme, separated south-western Europe from north-western Africa and was connected to the Central Atlantic. It is now completely closed and its suture encompasses the Maghrebids (stretching from Gibraltar to Sicily) as well as the Apennines and the Alps. The Neo-Tethys, the eastern domain, opened between Arabia and the Cimmerian terranes. The East Mediterranean Basin and the Gulf of Oman are considered relics of the Neo-Tethys which is thus still closing. These two domains were connected east of Sicily until the end of the Jurassic.

Tectonic history

In the Late Paleozoic, when the Cimmerian blocks were still located on the northern margin of Gondwana, they were far away from any active margins and orogenic belts, but they had been affected by thermal subsidence since the Siluran opening of Paleo-Tethys. Carboniferous to Permian ophiolites along suture zones in Tibet and north-eastern Iran indicate that the active margin of Paleo-Tethys was located here.
It was slab-pull forces in the Paleo-Tethys that detached Cimmeria from Gondwana and opened the Neo-Tethys. The mid-ocean ridge in the Paleo-Tethys subducted under Eurasia, as evidenced by Permian MORB (mid-ocean ridge basalt) in Iran.  Slab roll-back in the Paleo-Tethys opened a series of back-arc basins along the Eurasian margin and resulted in the collapse of the Variscan cordillera.  As the Paleo-Tethys subducted under the Eurasian southern margin, back-arc oceans formed from Austria to China.  Some of these back-arcs closed during the Cimmerian orogeny (e.g. the Karakaya-Küre sequence of back-arc oceans in Turkey), others remained open (e.g. the Meliata-Maliac-Pindos back-arc oceans in the eastern Mediterranean) leading to the formation of younger back-arc oceans.

Turkey

Turkey is an assemblage of continental blocks that during the Permian were part of the northern margin of Gondwana.  During the Permian-Triassic, as the Paleo-Tethys subducted under this margin (in what is today northern Turkey) a marginal sea opened and quickly filled with sediments (today the basement of the Sakarya Composite Terrane in the Pontides).  During the Late Triassic the Neo-Tethys began opening behind Cimmeria when the Eastern Mediterranean and its two eastern branches opened into the Bitlis-Zagros ocean (the southern branch of the Neo-Tethys).

During Early Jurassic Cimmeria began to disintegrate behind the Paleo-Tethyan volcanic arc.  This opened the northern branch in the Neo-Tethys — the Intra-Pontide, Izmh-Ankara, and the Inner Tauride oceans. The closure of the Paleo-Tethys in the Middle Jurassic reduced the Cimmerian archipelago in Anatolia.  South of the Cimmerian blocks there were now two branches of the Neo-Tethys, a northern, larger and more complex, and a southern, more reduced; the Anatolide-Tauride continent separated them, the small Sakarya continent was located within the northern branch.  The Apulian continent was connected to the Anatolide-Tauride continent.

These Neo-Tethyan branches reached their maximum width during the Early Cretaceous, after which subduction under Eurasia gradually consumed them.  During the Middle-Late Cretaceous this subduction opened a back-arc basin, the Western Black Sea Basin, which stretched west into the Balkans north of the Rhodope-Pontide island arc there. In the Cretaceous, this basin pushed the Istanbul terrane (near today's Istanbul) southward in front of it, from the Odesa Shelf in the north-western Black Sea.  In the Eocene, the terrane finally collided with Cimmeria thereby ending the extension in the western Black Sea.  Contemporaneously, the East Black Sea Basin opened when the East Black Sea Block was rotated counter-clockwise towards Caucasus.

In the late Cretaceous northwards intra-oceanic subduction within the Neotethys gave way to the obduction of ophiolitic nappes over the Arabian platform from Turkey to Oman region.  North of this subduction zone, remnants of the Neotethys ocean started to subduct northwards and led to the collision of Tauride Block with the Arabian plate during post-Oligocene times. North of these systems, the Tauride block collided with the southern margin of Eurasia by the end of the Cretaceous. Convergence continued until the end of  Oligocene. The Arabian-Eurasian collision in eastern Turkey during the Late Eocene closed the two basins.

During the Paleogene Neo-Tethyan oceanic crust attached to the African Plate subducted along the Crete and Cyprus trenches. The Anatolide-Tauride continent collided with the Pontide and Kırşehir blocks in the Late Paleocene-Early Eocene.  This closed the Ankara-Erzincan branches of the northern Neo-Tethys.  During this closure, slab roll-back and break-off in the Eocene resulted in inversion in the Pontides and widespread magmatism in northern Turkey.  Extension and upwelling followed, resulting in melting of lithospheric material beneath the Pontides.

In southern Turkey the northward subduction of the Neo-tethys along the Bitlis-Zagros subduction zone resulted in magmatism in the Maden-Helete arc (south-eastern Turkey) during the Late Cretaceous-Eocene and back-arc magmatism in the Taurides.  The Bitlis-Zagros subduction zone finally closed in the Miocene and throughout the Oligocene-Neogene and Quaternary volcanism became increasingly localised.  In the Late Oligocene, slab roll-back in the Hellenic Trench resulted in extension in the Aegean and western Turkey.

Iran

The subduction of western Neo-Tethys under Eurasia resulted in extensive magmatism in what is now northern Iran. In the Early Jurassic this magmatism had produced a slab pull force which contributed to the break-up of Pangea and the initial opening of the Atlantic.  During the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous the subduction of the Neo-Tethys mid-ocean ridge contributed to the break-up of Gondwana, including the detachment of the Argo-Burma terrane from Australia.
The Central-East Iranian Microcontinent (CEIM) sutured with Eurasia in the Late Triassic during the regional "Eocimmerian" orogenic event in northern Iran, but Iran is made of several continental blocks and the area must have seen a number of ocean closures in the Late Paleozoic and Early Mesozoic.

Caucasus
The Greater and Lesser Caucasus has a complicated geological history involving the accretion of a series of terranes and microcontinents from the Late Precambrian to the Jurassic within the Tethyan framework.  These include the Greater Caucasian, Black Sea-Central Transcaucasian, Baiburt-Sevanian, and Iran-Afghanistan terranes and island arcs.
In the Caucasus region remnants of the Paleo-Tethys suture can be found in the Dzirula Massif which outcrops Early Jurassic sequences in central Georgia.  It consists of Early Cambrian oceanic rocks and the possible remnants of a magmatic arc; their geometry suggests that suturing was followed by strike-slip faulting.  Ophiolites also outcrop in the Khrami Massif in southern Georgia and another possible segment of the suture is present in the Svanetia region.  The suture is older east of the Caucasus (northern Iran–Turkmenistan) but younger both west of the Caucasus and further east in Afghanistan and the northern Pamirs.

Sibumasu
The easternmost part of Cimmeria, the Sibumasu terrane, remained attached to north-western Australia until 295–290 Ma when it began to drift northward, as supported by paleomagnetic and biogeographic data.  The Qiangtang terrane was located west of Sibumasu and contiguous with it.  Lower Permian layers in Sibumasu contain glacial-marine diamictites and Gondwanan faunas and floras which then developed independently before Sibumasu docked with Cathaysia.  Sibumasu's rapid northern journey is especially evident in the development of brachiopods and fusulinids.

The Baoshan terrane in western Yunnan, China, forms the northern part of Sibumasu.  It is separated from the Burma Block by the Gaoligong Suture Zone to the west, and from the South China and Indochina continents in the east by the Chongshan Suture Zone and Changning-Menglian Belt.  Like other parts of eastern Cimmeria, it was highly deformed by the intra-continental strike-slip faulting that followed the India-Asia collision.

Paleomagnetic data indicate South China and Indochina moved from near Equator to 20°N from the Early Permian to Late Triassic.  Baoshan, in contrast, moved from 42°S in the Early Permian to 15°N in the Late Triassic.  These blocks and terranes occupied similar paleo-latitudes during Late Triassic to Jurassic which indicates that they probably collided in the Late Triassic.  This is also supported by geological evidence: 200–230 Ma granite in Lincang, near the Changning-Menglian suture, indicate a continent-continent collision occurred there in the Late Triassic; pelagic sediments in the Changning-Menglian-Inthanon ophiolite belt (between Sibumasu and Indochina) ranges in age from Middle Devonian to Middle Triassic, while, in the Inthanon suture, in contrast, Middle to Late Triassic rocks are non-pelagic with radiolarian cherts and turbidic clastics indicating the two blocks had at least approached each other by that time; volcanic sequences from the Lancangjiang igneous zone indicate a post-collisional setting had developed before the eruptions there around 210 Ma; and, the Sibumasu fauna developed from a non-marine peri-Gondwanan assemblage in the early Permian, to an endemic Sibumasu fauna in the Middle Permian, and to an Equatorial-Cathaysian in the Late Permian.

During the Early and Middle Palaeozoic Cimmeria was located at an Andean-style active margin.  Glacial deposits and paleomagnetic data indicate that Qiangtang and Shan Thai-Malaya were still located far south adjacent to Gondwana during the Carboniferous.  The equatorial fauna and flora of China indicate that it was separated from Gondwana during the Carboniferous.

Lhasa
The Lhasa terrane has been interpreted as part of Cimmeria and, if this is the case, must have rifted from Gondwana together with Sibumasu and Qiantang.  The timing of Lhasa's northward drift is still controversial, however, and paleomagnetic data is extremely scarce.  Sedimentological and stratigraphical evidence, for example, suggest that it separated from Gondwana in the Late Triassic when Qiantang was already being accreted to Eurasia.
This proposed Late Triassic rifting of Lhasa has also been documented along the north-western shelf of Australia where the Western Burma and Woyla terranes eventually separated from Gondwana in the Late Jurassic.

Today the Bangong suture separates the Lhasa terrane from the Qiangtang terrane.

Economic importance

The present remains of Cimmeria, as a result of the massive uplifting of its continental crust, are unusually rich in a number of rare chalcophile elements. Apart from the Altiplano in Bolivia, almost all the world's deposits of antimony as stibnite are found in Cimmeria, with the major mines being in Turkey, Yunnan and Thailand. The major deposits of tin are also found in Malaysia and Thailand, whilst Turkey also has major deposits of chromite ore.

See also

References

Notes

Sources

Historical continents
Carboniferous paleogeography
Permian paleogeography
Triassic paleogeography
Jurassic paleogeography
Natural history of Asia

Cimmeria (continent)


The Black Mask is a 1901 short story collection by E. W. Hornung. It was published in the UK by Grant Richards, London, and in the US by Scribner's, New York under the title Raffles: Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman. It is the second collection of stories in Hornung's series concerning A. J. Raffles, a gentleman thief in late Victorian London.

Several of the stories were adapted for the 1977 Raffles television series.

Overview

Following the events of the final story of the preceding short story collection, the reputations of A. J. Raffles and his companion Bunny Manders are ruined. Raffles is assumed to have drowned in the Mediterranean, and Bunny has faced eighteen months in prison and is struggling to get back on his feet.

The eight stories in this collection follow their remarkable reunion, and their joint return to crime, though as hardened criminals rather than respectable gentlemen. The stories are in chronological order, yet each is mostly independent and can be read separately.

Contents

The collection begins with a Narrator's Note, which explains that Raffles and Bunny are no longer the dapper gentlemen thieves they once were, but are now hardened, professional criminals.

 "No Sinecure" — Bunny, recently released from prison and struggling to survive as a writer, answers a curious advertisement seeking a male nurse of liberal education for an old, ailing man named Mr. Maturin.
 "A Jubilee Present" — When Raffles sets his heart on stealing a priceless gold cup from the British Museum, he and Bunny go to scope out the museum's security.
 "The Fate of Faustina" — Raffles tells Bunny of his time spent as a tramp in Italy for the two years after his supposed death in the Mediterranean, including the tragic tale of the beautiful woman he loved and lost.
 "The Last Laugh" — The Italians who Raffles antagonized while in Italy finally take their revenge against Raffles.
 "To Catch a Thief" — There's a new gentleman burglar in London, and Raffles suggests to Bunny that they make him their third partner.
 "An Old Flame" — After a woman from Raffles's past recognizes him, her unwelcome determination to rekindle their old relationship forces Raffles to take extreme measures.
 "The Wrong House" — From their new location in the suburbs, and in the midst of a series of their burglaries, Raffles and Bunny go out on their bicycles to burgle the vulnerable house of a stockbroker.
 "The Knees of the Gods" — Raffles and Bunny enlist in the British volunteer forces to fight in the Second Boer War.

References
Notes

Sources

External links

A. J. Raffles
1901 short story collections
British short story collections
Crime short story collections

The Black Mask


Space Master is a science fiction role-playing game produced by Iron Crown Enterprises, written by Kevin Barrett and developed by Kevin Barrett and Terry K. Amthor.

History
Iron Crown Enterprises published Spacemaster in 1985. ICE published their new Spacemaster: Privateers RPG (2000) while in chapter 11. ICE's last remaining role-playing lines - Rolemaster, Spacemaster and Shadow World – as well as the ICE brand itself were all that was left by 2001, and everything that was left was sold to John R. Seal of London for $78,000; those rights were then placed into Aurigas Aldebaron LLC, which is a holding company that takes on no debt and is solely intended to hold the ICE properties. Shortly after purchasing the ICE rights, Aurigas licensed them out to a company interested in continuing ICE's production: Phoenix LLC, which shortly after became Mjolnir LLC; although the original ICE was gone, Mjolnir began doing business as "ICE", using the company's IPs and brand. Mjolnir restarted the Spacemaster: Privateers line, which updated the Spacemaster mechanics to be more like the Rolemaster Standard System mechanics. As problems developed with the ICE brand, Aurigas Aldebaron decided to pull all of Mjolnir's ICE-related rights, and after recovering the ICE IPs from Mjolnir, Aurigas licensed the rights to HARP, Rolemaster and Spacemaster to Guild Companion Publications.

Publication history
Space Master was designed by Kevin Barrett and Terry K. Amthor, with a cover by Gail McIntosh and illustrations by Jason Waltrip and Dan Carroll, and was published by Iron Crown Enterprises in 1985 as a boxed set with two books (one 96 pages, one 88 pages), a 16-page pamphlet, three color maps, and a counter sheet. The second edition was published in 1986; a third edition with a cover by Walter Velez was published in 1988 as a boxed set which included three books (one 128 pages, one 96 pages, one 80 pages), and two color maps. There was also a second edition reprint in 1992 in a combined softcover book ( ICE2600 #9050).

Contents
Space Master is a science-fiction space-adventure system, fairly complex, and compatible with Cyberspace, Rolemaster, and to a lesser extent Middle-earth Role Playing. The first and second editions included the "Future Law" and "Tech Law" book, a booklet of spaceship plans, plus maps and counters for spaceship combat. The third edition (which the publisher calls the second edition) is revised and expanded, with three new booklets. The "Player Book" (128 pages) covers: character creation (a detailed class-and-level system); a complex and comprehensive combat system; skills and activity resolution; and extensive psionic powers rules. The "GM Book" (80 pages) covers: star system and planet creation; 40 pages of background data on the Empire, a far-future interstellar realm; guidelines for alternate milieus; how to run adventures and create encounters; and information on alien races. The "Tech Book" (96 pages) covers all sorts of futuristic equipment, including weapons, tools, armor, computers, robots, clones and cyborgs, vehicles, and spaceships (including deck plans for nine examples); also includes malfunction and repair rules and detailed charts of weapon effects. The third edition boxed set also includes a two-piece color star map of the Empire.

Description
Spacemaster is an adaptation of, and mostly compatible with, the Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying system, and as such any perceived failings/strengths of the latter also apply to Space Master. Spacemaster is available in two editions, namely Spacemaster 2nd Edition (analogous and broadly compatible with Rolemaster 2nd Edition and Rolemaster Classic) and Spacemaster Privateers (analogous and compatible with Rolemaster Standard System and Rolemaster Fantasy Role Playing).

Iron Crown Enterprises has published several expansions, including Space Master Companion I, Space Master Companion II and Aliens & Artifacts, as well as numerous adventure modules and setting sourcebooks. A cyberpunk adaptation of the system, called Cyberspace was also published, along with a smaller number of supplements.

Spacemaster 2

The Space Master System is usable in a variety of SF environments, from a black near future of post-holocaust Earth, to a culture of high-tech exploration, to a distant time where civilization has fallen to superstitious ruin. Spacemaster has 17 professions, dozens of sub-professions, over 120 skills and a rich selection of background options.

Spacemaster Trilogy:
 1. Space Master: The Role Playing Game is completely compatible with all Space Master Modules, and is the first part of a Science Fiction Gaming Trilogy.
 2. Space Master: Star Strike (Fall 1988), a fast-paced game of interplanetary ship combat, puts you in the gunner's chair as you face enemy starships.
 3. Space Master: Armored Assault (Winter 1988-89), moves the combat planetside, where Hovertanks, Powered Armor, and Aircraft vie for supremacy.
 Note: Space Master can also be integrated with Rolemaster; used together they set the stage for sweeping, coherent, science-fantasy campaigns.

The default setting for Spacemaster 2 is the classic Imperium setting, where a human empire spans the galaxy in a future thousands of years hence. Noble houses, megacorporations, and other organisations vie for influence and more in a setting rich in transhumans, robots, psionics, aliens, and other exotica.

Reception
The Games Machine reviewed Space Master - The Roleplaying Game and stated that "Not everyone will like Space Master. The rules make few concessions to ease of learning, and players without experience of other roles will have a really tough time. But as a detailed, flexible, science-fiction system it has a lot to commend it."

Reviews
Casus Belli #48
The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games

References

Iron Crown Enterprises games
Space opera role-playing games
Role-playing games introduced in 1985

Space Master


A pure play company focuses solely on a particular product or activity. Investing in a pure play company can be considered as investing in a particular commodity or product of a company.

Pure play firms either specialize in a specific niche, or have little to no vertical integration. For example, a coffee shop may call itself a "pure play" restaurant, and a factory that only produces goods (not designing or selling to consumers) may refer to itself as a pure play manufactory.

Companies that transact exclusively via e-commerce and have no brick and mortar retail spaces may be referred to as pure play online retailers.

Pure play method
In finance, the "pure play method" is an approach used to estimate the cost of equity capital  of private companies, which involves examining the  beta coefficient of other public and single focused companies. See also Hamada's equation.

Here,  when estimating a private company A's equity beta coefficient, the equity beta coefficient of a public company B is needed; the latter can be calculated by regressing the return on B's stock on the return on the relevant stock index. The following calculation is then applied to return the beta coefficient of company A.

Unlevered Beta of B = Equity Beta of B / (1 + DEB × (1 − Tax RateB))

Equity Beta A = Unlevered Beta of B × (1 + DEA × (1 − Tax RateA))

where DEA and DEB are the debt to equity ratios of company A and B respectively.

Pure play foundries
Pure play foundries, such as TSMC and GlobalFoundries, have no in-house design capabilities, and fabricate integrated circuits (ICs) for fabless semiconductor companies, such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, Xilinx, Nvidia, among others. Integrated device manufacturer (IDM) foundries, such as Intel, IBM, NEC, Texas Instruments and Samsung, provide both foundry design services and IC fabrication.

Pure play e-retailers
Compared to traditional retail stores, pure play e-retailers can serve a wider audience without physical boundaries and distance, and may target specific customer groups without the high cost of maintaining physical stores.

Compared to companies that integrate both offline and online, pure online internet retails do not have company brand recognition and reputation at the start-up stage, and customers are unable to touch, examine and test real products before buying them. The online shopping experience foregoes human contact with consumers.

See also
 Diversification (strategy)

Further reading

References

Types of business entity

Pure play


Diosdado Gabi, nicknamed Prince (born September 9, 1979 in Davao City, Philippines) is a retired Filipino professional boxer.

Personal life
Gabi is married and has a young son that he left back in the Philippines to fight overseas in the United States. "We come from a very poor family. My father is a fisherman. All we eat sometimes is what he catches. I try to send them as much money as often as I can".

Boxing career

Early career
On May 8, 2001, after building an undefeated record of 11-0, Gabi fought for the minor World Boxing Federation (WBF) super flyweight title against the then holder of the title, Samson Dutch Boy Gym (40-0) of Thailand. Gabi suffered his first loss as a professional, losing on points to Dutch Boy Gym, who later retired undefeated with a record of 43-0. After two wins following his loss to Dutch Boy Gym, he suffered yet another setback when he faced another undefeated Thai, Peesaddaeng Kiatsakthanee (11-0), whom he lost to by unanimous decision (UD) for the latter's WBC Asian Boxing Council Super Flyweight title.

Gabi won seven more bouts, and drew once (after his loss to Kiatsakthanee) before he was able to vie for the WBC International flyweight title, then held by compatriot, Randy Mangubat. Gabi won the belt by technical decision (TD) through twelve rounds, winning by scores of 116-111, 114-112, 116-110. After winning three more fights after his win against Mangubat, Gabi fought Eric Barcelona (whom he defeated six years ago, in 1999, in just his fourth pro fight). The result of the fight was just the same, Gabi defeated Barcelona by TD through 5 rounds, after an accidental headbutt caused the fight to be stopped.

First and Last World Title shot
On March 3, 2006, in Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez, California, in Gabi's second fight in the United States, he got his first (and last) shot at a world title. He fought the then undefeated IBO and IBF Flyweight World Champion, Vic Darchinyan (24-0). Unfortunately, Gabi was caught with a fierce left punch in the 8th round, resulting in an eight round technical knockout win for Darchinyan.

In an effort to help his fellow friend and fellow Filipino boxer Nonito Donaire prepare to fight Darchinyan, Gabi gave advice that the young fighter acknowledged after the bout. Donaire went on to knock out Darchinyan to become a world champion, something Gabi never accomplished, but he did help a friend, and that's what matters. Donaire said "Gabi taught me a little bit and told me what this guy (Darchinyan) did and he helped out a lot for this fight".

The Prince's Farewell
On March 15, 2008, after winning four more bouts after his loss to Darchinyan, Gabi faced the then WBO NABO Bantamweight Champion, Abner Mares for his title in the undercard of Manny Pacquiao's rematch with Juan Manuel Márquez. Mares, who was undefeated coming into the bout with 15 wins and 0 losses, stopped Gabi in his tracks in just two rounds. Gabi later retired from the sport following the loss.

Controversy
On August 17, 2007 Gabi was ordered arrested for breaching a contract with Cotabato Vice Governor, Emmanuel Piñol. MTC Judge Antonina Escovilla issued the warrant of arrest based on the complaint of Piñol who sought P4.8 million from Gabi.

References

External links

1979 births
Bantamweight boxers
Super-flyweight boxers
Flyweight boxers
Living people
Sportspeople from Davao City
Boxers from Davao del Sur
Southpaw boxers
Filipino male boxers

Diosdado Gabi


The cytoskeleton is a kind of scaffolding present in all cells. It is made of protein.

It keeps cell shape, protects the cell and enables cells to move (using structures such as flagella and cilia). It helps transport inside the cytoplasm (the movement of vesicles and organelles, for example), and in cell division. The concept and the term (cytosquelette, in French) was introduced by French embryologist Paul Wintrebert in 1931.

Eukaryote cells contain three main kinds of cytoskeletal filaments, which are microfilaments (actin filaments), intermediate filaments, and microtubules. They give the cell structure and shape. Cytoskeletal elements interact closely and often with the cell membrane and the endoplasmic reticulum.

References

Cell biology

Cytoskeleton


Carl Thomas Rowan (August 11, 1925 – September 23, 2000) was a prominent American journalist, author and government official who published columns syndicated across the U.S. and was at one point the highest ranking African American in the United States government.

Life and career
Carl Rowan was born in Ravenscroft, Tennessee, the son of Johnnie, a cook and cleaner, and Thomas Rowan, who stacked lumber. He was raised in McMinnville, Tennessee, during the Great Depression. Rowan was determined to get a good education. He graduated from Bernard High School in 1942 as class president and valedictorian. After graduating from high school, Rowan worked cleaning porches at a tuberculosis hospital in order to attend Tennessee State College in Nashville. He studied at Tennessee State University (1942–43) and Washburn University (1943–44). He was one of the first African Americans to serve as a commissioned officer in the United States Navy. Rowan was also a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. He was graduated from Oberlin College (1947) and was awarded a master's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota (1948). He began his career in journalism writing for the African-American newspapers Minneapolis Spokesman and St. Paul Recorder (now the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder). He went on to be a copywriter for The Minneapolis Tribune (1948–50), and later became a staff writer (1950–61), reporting extensively on the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1960, Rowan was denied membership to a club on the grounds that it was racially segregated; this subsequently inspired Joe Glazer to write the song "I Belong to a Private Club".

In a 1964 interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?, Rowan reflected on his reporting of the civil rights movement, as well as his opinions on the distinctions between the North and the South, prejudices and persecution, and African Americans' political power.

In 1961, Rowan was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of State by President John F. Kennedy. The following year, he served as a delegate to the United Nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Rowan became the U.S. Ambassador to Finland in 1963. In 1964, Rowan was appointed director of the United States Information Agency (USIA) by President Lyndon B. Johnson. In serving as director of the USIA, Rowan became the first African American to hold a seat on the National Security Council and the highest level African American in the United States government.

From 1966 to 1998, Rowan wrote a syndicated column for the Chicago Sun-Times and, from 1967 to 1996, was a panelist on a television program Agronsky & Company, later called Inside Washington; Rowan was a fair opponent whose arguments were persuasive and well-balanced - he always came across as the voice of reason.

His name appeared on the master list of Nixon political opponents. Rowan was a 1995 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his commentaries. He is the only journalist in history to win the Sigma Delta Chi medallion for journalistic excellence in three successive years.

Carl Rowan was a well known and highly decorated journalist. His columns were published in more than one hundred newspapers across the United States. In 1968 he received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College. In 1997, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.

Thurgood Marshall's only interview while serving on the Supreme Court of the United States was for Carl Rowan's 1988 documentary. The National Press Club gave Rowan its 1999 Fourth Estate Award for lifetime achievement. On January 9, 2001, United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright dedicated the press briefing room at the State Department as the Carl T. Rowan Briefing room.

Rowan died in Washington on Sept. 23, 2000, of heart and kidney ailments in the intensive care unit at Washington Hospital Center. Rowan was 75 and had diabetes prior to his death.

Rowan was survived by his wife, Vivien, and the three children they shared: two sons and one daughter. Rowan's two sons are Carl Jr., a lawyer; and Jeffrey, a clinical psychologist. His daughter, Barbara Rowan Jones, is a formal journalist like her father. Carl Rowan also is survived by four grandchildren.

Montgomery bus boycott
In the late 1950s, Rowan covered the burgeoning civil rights movement in the South, including the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama, resulting from Rosa Parks's refusal to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger. As the only black reporter covering the story for a national newspaper, Rowan struck a special friendship with the boycott's leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. When news of an unlikely compromise settlement of the boycott came to Rowan's attention across the Associated Press wire, he notified King, who made quick steps to discredit the story, which was about to appear in a Montgomery newspaper, thus ensuring the continuance of the boycott.

Project Excellence
Founded in 1987 by Rowan, Project Excellence was a college scholarship program for black high-school seniors who displayed outstanding writing and speaking skills. Rowan founded Project Excellence to combat negative peer pressure felt by black students and to reward students who rose above stereotypes and negative peer influence and excelled academically. Chaired by Rowan, a committee of journalists, community leaders, and school officials oversaw the program. Participants were African-American students in their senior year of high school from public, private, and parochial schools in the metropolitan Washington area, including the Virginia and Maryland suburbs. By 2000 the program had given out $26 million in scholarship money to over 1150 students.

Shooting controversy
Rowan gained public notoriety on June 14, 1988, when he shot an unarmed teenage trespasser, Ben Smith. "The interloper was a near-naked teenager who had been skinny-dipping with friends in Rowan's pool, and the columnist's weapon was an unregistered, and thus illegal, .22 caliber pistol."

From People magazine: "When Rowan heard the police arrive, he stepped outside to let them in. It was then, he says, that he was confronted by "a tall man who was smoking something that I absolutely was sure was marijuana." Rowan says he repeatedly warned the intruder that he was armed and would shoot. "My first words were: 'Freeze! Stay where you are!' " says Rowan. "Then I said, 'I have a gun.' " Rowan says the man kept coming and that he finally felt forced to shoot in self-defense. He says he aimed at the intruder's feet but hit him in the wrist when the man lunged forward.

The intruder, Chevy Chase, Maryland, teenager Benjamin Smith, 18, tells a different story. "I was in my underwear," he told a radio interviewer. "I just climbed out of the pool. It was pretty innocent. I never spoke with him. He just shot me and closed the door and went back hiding in his house. I mean, I guess I was trespassing. But that's no reason to shoot a person, is it? For swimming in their pool?"

Rowan was charged for firing a gun that he did not legally own. Rowan was arrested and tried. During the trial, he argued that he had the right to use whatever means necessary to protect himself and his family. He also said the pistol he used was exempt from the District's handgun prohibition law because it belonged to his older son, a former FBI agent. He was accused of hypocrisy, since Rowan was a strict gun control advocate. In a 1981 column, he advocated "a law that says anyone found in possession of a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail—period." In 1985, he called for "A complete and universal federal ban on the sale, manufacture, importation and possession of handguns (except for authorized police and military personnel).

Rowan was tried but the jury was deadlocked; the judge declared a mistrial and he was never retried. In his autobiography, Rowan said he still favors gun control, but admits being vulnerable to a charge of hypocrisy.

Bibliography

 South of Freedom (1952)
 The Pitiful and the Proud (1956)
 Go South to Sorrow (1957)
 Wait till Next Year: The Life Story of Jackie Robinson (1960)
 Just Between Us Blacks (1974)
 Breaking Barriers: A Memoir (1991)
 Growing up Black: From The Slave Days to the Present - 25 African-Americans Reveal the Trials and Triumphs of Their Childhoods (contributor, 1992)
 Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall (1993)
 The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-Up Call (1996)

Notes

External links

"Carl T. Rowan", Answers.com.

1925 births
2000 deaths
American columnists
American male journalists
20th-century American memoirists
American political writers
Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award recipients
Tennessee State University alumni
Washburn University alumni
Oberlin College alumni
University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication alumni
American gun control activists
Spingarn Medal winners
People from White County, Tennessee
Star Tribune people
The Washington Post people
Ambassadors of the United States to Finland
United States Information Agency directors
African-American diplomats
African-American journalists
20th-century American male writers
People from McMinnville, Tennessee
20th-century African-American writers

Carl Rowan


Otto Bradfisch (10 May 1903 – 22 June 1994) was an economist, a jurist, an SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant colonel), leader of Einsatzkommando 8 of Einsatzgruppe B of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo) and the SD, and Commander of the Security Police in Litzmannstadt (Łódź) and Potsdam.

Early life and education
Dr. Otto Bradfisch was born in 1903 in Zweibrücken (then Palatinate district of Kingdom of Bavaria) as the second of grocery salesman Karl Bradfisch's four children. In Kaiserslautern he went to the Volksschule for four years and afterwards to the Gymnasium. In 1922, he did the school-leaving examination. At the Universities of Freiburg, Leipzig, Heidelberg, and Innsbruck Bradfisch studied economics. He ended his studies with a graduation to Dr. rer. pol. at the University of Innsbruck in 1926. Afterwards, Bradfisch studied law in Erlangen and Munich to improve his professional chances in difficult times. He sat for the state law examination on 17 February 1932, and the second on 20 September 1935.

Professional and political career
Engaged first as an Assessor in the Upper Bavarian government, he was transferred to the Bavarian State Ministry for the Interior as a Government Assessor. Already by 1 January 1931, Bradfisch had joined the NSDAP with membership number 405,869. At the time he was studying in Munich, he was working as the acting local group leader (Ortsgruppenleiter) in Munich-Freising. In 1936, he joined the National Socialist Motor Corps. On 26 September 1938, he joined the SS (membership no. 310,180) as an SS-Obersturmführer (First lieutenant).

At an acquaintance's urging, Bradfisch applied for service in the Gestapo, into which he was hired on 15 March 1937. He was also given the acting leadership of the State Police post at Neustadt an der Weinstraße. Appointed a government adviser on 4 November 1938, Bradfisch stayed there until his assignment as leader of Einsatzkommando (EK) 8, attached to Einsatzgruppe (EG) B of the Security Police and the Sicherheitsdienst in June 1941.

Leader of Einsatzkommando 8 of Einsatzgruppe B
Einsatzgruppe B was one of four Einsatzgruppen deployed for special operations during Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union. This Einsatzgruppe was led by SS-Brigadeführer (major general) Arthur Nebe, Chief of the Kripo, and was subdivided into Einsatzkommandos 8 and 9, and the Sonderkommandos 7a and 7b, as well as the Vorkommando Moskau. It was also attached to Army Group Middle.

The Einsatzgruppen tasks were established by oral Führer order and a written directive from Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) Chief Reinhard Heydrich on 2 July 1941, to secure areas to the advancing army's rear and the performance of standard police tasks until the establishment of a civil administration in the conquered eastern areas, and the "special handling of potential opponents", i.e. their elimination. Heydrich identified these in order: "all Comintern functionaries (all professional Communist politicians), the higher, middle and radical lower functionaries of the Party, the Central Committee and the regional and area committees, people's commissars, Jews in Party and state posts, various radical elements (saboteurs, propagandists, snipers, assassins, agitators, and so on)". This circle of persons was later expanded to all "politically intolerable elements" among prisoners of war and eventually all "racial inferiors" such as Jews, Gypsies, and "Asiatic elements".

Meant at first to take the job as staff consultant on Einsatzgruppe B's staff, Bradfisch took part in a major discussion at the Pretzsch Border Police School at which Heydrich and the Chief of RSHA Department IV (Gestapo), Heinrich Müller, explained to the Einsatzgruppe and Einsatzkommando leaders in all plainness their task. After the presentation of this instruction, which without doubt was recognized by all participants as wrongful and criminal, the originally foreseen leader of Einsatzkommando 8, the provisional leader of the Liegnitz State Police post Ernst Ehlers appealed to Einsatzgruppe B's leader Nebe with the wish to be released from this duty. Nebe complied with Ehlers's wish and appointed Bradfisch as his replacement. Bradfisch had no doubts about the work that lay ahead. The Einsatzkommando 8, led by Bradfisch from the beginning of the Russian Campaign onwards, consisted of six subdivisions varying in strength, each under an SS leader. The unit's total strength was about 60 to 80 men. In view of his official position as government adviser and Leader of the Neustadt an der Weinstraße State Police post, Bradfisch, as the EK 8 leader, was awarded the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major).

With the onset of the Russian Campaign on 22 June 1941, the EK 8 followed Army Group Middle through Białystok and Baranavičy in late 1941 to Minsk. On 9 September 1941 they reached Mahilyow where, given the slowdown that the German offensive had suffered, and the forthcoming winter, plans were made for a lengthy stay.

As to the ways of doing things whereby the EK 8 fulfilled the tasks that it was ordered to do, and which were more or less the same for every Einsatzkommando, the Munich State Court I in their ruling of 21 July 1961 at the Einsatzgruppe Trial portrayed them as follows:

In carrying out the order to annihilate the Jewish eastern population as well as other population groups considered to be racially inferior, and functionaries of the Russian CP, the EK 8, after crossing the demarcation line between the German Reich and the Soviet Union established in the year 1939, conducted ongoing shooting campaigns, in which mainly Jews were killed. (…) The gathering of the Jews in each of the effected places – as the usage of the time had it, the "maintenance" ("Überholung") – happened in such a way that the locality or street was surrounded by some members of the Einsatzkommando and then next the victims were driven together out of their houses and flats randomly by other Kommando members. The victims were then either transported right after being taken prisoner by truck to the shooting places already established beforehand, or held prisoner in suitable buildings (schools, factories) or other localities, until they were then shot the next day or a few days later. Already in these so-called "through-combing actions" ("Durchkämmungsaktionen") it came to bodily mishandling and in the odd case even to killing old and sick people who could not walk, and who were thus shot in their dwellings or right nearby.

The mass shootings took place in each case outside the "maintained" town or locality, where natural hollows, abandoned infantry and artillery posts, and above all armoured dugouts or mass graves dug by the victims themselves, served as execution places. At the executions that happened in the first few weeks of the Russian Campaign, only men aged about 18 to 65 were killed, whereas women and children were often spared at first. Beginning in August 1941 at the latest, however – already at the shootings in Minsk – they furthermore switched over to killing men and women of all ages, and even children. After completing the preparations, the victims, who were offloaded from the trucks right near the shooting pit and who had to sit on the ground awaiting the further events, were either brought forth to the pit by EK 8 members, or driven forth through laneways built by Kommando members to the pits, if needed with the help of blows. After they had first given up their things of value and pieces of clothing that were in good condition, unless this had already happened when they were taken prisoner, they then had to lay themselves with their faces to the ground, and were then killed with shots to the back of the head. In the earlier shooting campaigns (Białystok, Baranavičy, Minsk) but also occasionally even later on the occasion of major actions, execution squads were put together from Einsatzkommando members and policemen assigned to them, which in strength matched in each case the numbers of the groups of people driven to the shooting pit, or in the odd case even possessed twice the strength, so that in each case, one shooter or two shooters had to shoot at one victim. These shooting squads, which were armed with carbines(Karabiner 98kurz), were put together mostly from policemen and commanded by a platoon leader from the police unit put under him who was appropriate to the command given him by the EK 8 leadership. At these executions undertaken by shooting squads it occasionally came to pass that the victims had to put themselves at the edge of the pit, to be then "shot into" the pit.

In the course of the deployment, there was an ever greater changeover from shooting with rifle salvos to killing the intended people with single shots or machine pistols. The grounds for this lay in the claim that shooting with rifle salvos took a relatively long time, and moreover, the force of the shots delivered from the shortest distance was so violent that the shooting squad and sundry other persons participating in the action were sprayed with the killed people's blood and bits of brain, a circumstance which raised the mental burden of the men on the execution squad, which was already extraordinary anyway, that often there were misses and therefore the victims' suffering was prolonged.

The shootings with machine pistols were carried out as a rule in such a way that the Einsatzkommando members in the pit designated to carry out the execution went along the row of persons to be shot, killing one victim after another with shots to the back of the head. This method of execution inevitably led to some of the victims having to wait a longer time lying on badly or not at all buried dead bodies, with certain death before their eyes, until they themselves were given the death shot. In some cases, the killing of the victims was carried out in such a way that they were brought to the shooting place double-quick, thrust into the pit, and then, while they were falling, they were shot. While at the shootings in Białystok and Baranavičy, and partly still at the executions in Minsk, the dead bodies were more or less well covered with sand or earth before the next group were driven or led to the pit, such a covering only seldom took place in the later shooting campaigns, so that the victims that followed, if they were shot in the pit, each had to lay themselves down on the dead bodies of those who had just been killed. But also in cases in which the dead bodies had had sand or earth thrown over them lightly, the victims that followed noticed their killed fellow doomed people's bodies, whose parts often jutted out of the thin sand or earth covering. A doctor was not called in to the executions. If one of the victims still showed signs of life, he was administered an aftershot with a pistol by a Kommando member, usually a leader.

The execution places were each sealed off by Einsatzkommando members or police officials subordinate to them, so that for the people right near the shooting pit waiting for their deaths there was no possibility of escaping their doom. In fact, they had the opportunity – this circumstance demonstrates a particular intensification of their suffering – to hear the crack of rifle salvos or machine pistol shots and in the odd case to observe the shootings to which neighbours, friends and kin fell victim.

Given this ghastly fate, the victims often broke out in loud crying and moaning, prayed loudly and tried to reaffirm their innocence. Some, however, went quietly and calmly to their deaths.

Criminal actions
Bradfisch was as leader of the EK 8 responsible for all measures and executions. To some extent, he led the executions, and in the odd case even shot with his own hand. Some examples follow:

Białystok, two shooting campaigns of at least 1100 Jews and Bolshevist functionaries
Baranavičy, two shooting campaigns of at least 381 Jews
Minsk, seven Jew shootings of at least 2000 people
Mahilyow, eight shooting campaigns of at least 4100 Jewish men, women and children as well as Russian prisoners of war
Babruysk, major action, in which at least 5000 Jewish men, women and children were shot.

About his Einsatzkommando's activities, Bradfisch had to report to the higher-ranking Einsatzgruppe B, who sent the RSHA these reports compiled with those from the other Einsatzkommandos. There, the individual reports were condensed into the so-called event reports by Office IV A.

Security Police and SD Commander
Bradfisch was active as EK 8 leader until 1 April 1942. On 26 April 1942 he was transferred to Łódź – which the Nazis called Litzmannstadt – and appointed chief of the State Police post there. In this function he was also responsible for deporting Jews to the Chełmno extermination camp. He became the area Commander of the Security Police and the SD in summer 1942. In autumn of the same year came his provisional appointment as Łódź's mayor. In this capacity he was also promoted to high government adviser and SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant colonel) on 25 January 1943.

War's end
After the city's evacuation due to the war in December 1944, Bradfisch worked as Commander of the Security Police and the SD in Potsdam for the last few months of the war. As the Red Army closed in, Bradfisch managed to escape westwards, procuring for himself a Wehrmacht pay book with junior officer Karl Evers's name on it. He first found himself in American custody as a prisoner of war, but was then transferred to British custody, and by August 1945, he was released.

Post war
Until 1953, Bradfisch managed to hide his true identity by using the name Karl Evers. He worked first in farming and later in mining. When Bradfisch became an insurance agent in Kaiserslautern, eventually for Hamburg-Mannheimer as a regional director, he once again began using his true name. On 21 April 1958, Bradfisch was temporarily seized and sentenced by the Munich State Court I on 21 July 1961 to 10 years in labour prison (Zuchthaus) for the crime, committed with Bradfisch as part of a group, of abetting collaborative murder in 15,000 cases. In 1963, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Bradfisch and his wife, who were married on 23 November 1932, had three children, the youngest of whom, a girl born in Łódź, died as they were fleeing the Soviet army advance.

Bradfisch was released from prison in July 1969. He died in Seeshaupt in 1994, aged 91.

Literature
Krausnick, Helmut und Wilhelm, Hans-Heinrich: Die Truppe des Weltanschauungkrieges. Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1938 - 1942, Stuttgart 1981, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,
Klein, Peter (publisher): Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/42. Die Tätigkeits- und Lageberichte des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1997

References

External links
 Biography and picture of Bradfisch (in Italian)

1903 births
1994 deaths
Einsatzgruppen personnel
Gestapo personnel
Heidelberg University alumni
Holocaust perpetrators in Belarus
Jurists from Rhineland-Palatinate
Lawyers in the Nazi Party
Leipzig University alumni
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni
Mayors of Łódź
National Socialist Motor Corps members
Nazi Party officials
Nazis convicted of war crimes
People from Zweibrücken
SS-Obersturmbannführer
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg alumni
University of Freiburg alumni
University of Innsbruck alumni
German prisoners of war in World War II held by the United States
German prisoners of war in World War II held by the United Kingdom
German mass murderers

Otto Bradfisch


Alison L. Boden is the Dean of Religious Life and the Dean of the Chapel at Princeton University. She received an A.B. from Vassar, an M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from the University of Bradford (UK). Her writing and teaching interests have focused on such topics as human rights and religion, religion and violence, religion in the academy, and a variety of social justice issues. She is the author of Women's Rights and Religious Practice and is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

Boden was previously Dean of Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago from 1995 to 2007.

References

20th-century births
Year of birth missing (living people)
Place of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Vassar College alumni

Alison Boden


R v Hundal [1993] 1 S.C.R. 867, is one of several landmark Supreme Court of Canada cases where the court showed its first signs of moving away from the strict requirement for subjectively proven mens rea in criminal offences.

Background
The accused, Mr. Hundal, was driving an overloaded dump truck above the speed limit through downtown Vancouver. When Mr. Hundal entered an intersection on a red light he collided with a car that had also just entered the intersection on a green light, killing the driver.

The accused claimed that he entered the intersection on a yellow and did not have time to stop. However, the trial judge rejected this based on the evidence of several eyewitnesses. Mr. Hundal was convicted of dangerous driving causing death under s.249(1) of the Criminal Code. His appeal to the British Columbia Court of Appeal was dismissed.

Reasoning
Justice Peter Cory, writing for the majority, recognised that mens rea could be proven subjectively or objectively depending on the offence. The offence at issue should be assessed objectively within the context of all the surrounding events. "The trier of fact must be satisfied that the conduct amounted to a marked departure from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the accused's situation." [emphasis added] On this modified objective standard it was found that Mr. Hundal was driving in a manner that was dangerous to public safety.

Analysis
A truck driver negligently drove through a red light killing the driver of another car. The facts of the case are not important, only in that they invoke the Supreme Court to assess whether the charge of dangerous driving, found under sec. 249(1) of the CC, should be assessed objectively or subjective. The Justices were unanimous in their agreement that it should be assessed objectively, but differed as to why they had reached that decision.

The majority (six justices), headed by Justice Sopinka, were of this opinion: the nature of driving offences suggests that a modified objective test is appropriate. They listed the following reasons:

 The licensing requirement – each driver demonstrates that they are mentally and physically capable of driving before they are licensed. Moreover, it serves to confirm that those who drive are familiar with the standards of care required by all drivers. Additionally, drivers choose to engage in the activity of driving, and thus, place themselves in a position of responsibility. As a result, a consideration of the personal factors, so essential in determining the subjective intent, is not necessary in light of the fixed standards that must be met by licensed drivers.
 Automatic and reflexive nature of driving – the nature of driving itself is often so routine and automatic that it is almost impossible to determine a particular state of mind of a driver at any given moment. It would, thus, be a denial of common sense for a driver, whose conduct was objectively dangerous, to be acquitted on the ground that he was not thinking of his manner of driving at the time of the accident
 Statistics – the statistics which demonstrate that all too many tragic deaths and disabling injuries flow from the operation of motor vehicles indicate the need to control the conduct of drivers. There is, therefore, a compelling need for effective legislation which strives to regulate the manner of driving, and the objective test is essential for that.

To mitigate the harshness of the objective test, the justices suggested its institution through, what they termed, the modified objective test – which Justice William McIntyre had suggested in R v Tutton. The test must not be applied in a vacuum, but rather, in the context of the events surrounding the incident. This enables the court to take into account the sudden and unexpected onset of disease and similar human frailties as well as the objective demonstration of dangerous driving. Thus, the trier of fact may convict if satisfied that, viewed objectively, the accused was, in the words of the section, driving in a manner that was "dangerous to the public..." In making the assessment, the trier of fact should be satisfied that the conduct amounted to a marked departure from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the accused's situation. If an explanation is offered by the accused, such as a sudden and unexpected onset of illness, then in order to convict, the trier of fact must be satisfied that a reasonable person in similar circumstances ought to have been aware of the risk and of the danger involved in the conduct manifested by the accused.

Justice McLachlin (Lamer concurring) agrees with the above justice's approach to a modified objective test but differs as to the process. She agrees that all relevant circumstances, including those personal to the accused should be considered, such as any unexpected heart attacks or epileptic seizures. However, she believes that the better analysis of someone who is unable to control their motor vehicle because of the onset of some disease (or something beyond their control) should be that the actus reus element is not established. She argues that the onset of the disease and the subsequent erratic driving amounts to an involuntary act. The actus reus of the offence cannot be established unless the act is voluntary. Thus we need not reach the question of what a reasonable person would have been thinking or adverting to as the car goes off the road, much less what the accused was in fact thinking or not thinking.

See also
 R v DeSousa
 R v Tutton

References

External links

Supreme Court of Canada cases
1993 in Canadian case law
Canadian criminal case law

R v Hundal


, also known as , was an aristocratic Confucian scholar and Buddhist monk in late Heian period Japan. He was one of the chief advisors to Emperor Nijō, and one of the chief allies of Taira no Kiyomori, particularly during the Heiji Rebellion of 1159.

As the head of the leading faction at Court, Shinzei enjoyed access to the emperor and other privileges which his rival Fujiwara no Nobuyori envied. In early 1160, Shinzei's ally Taira no Kiyomori left the capital with much of his family, thus providing Nobuyori's faction (and his allies, the Minamoto clan) to make a move for power. Some believe this may have been intentional on Kiyomori's part, laying a trap for the Minamoto.

Nobuyori and the Minamoto set fire to the Sanjō Palace and abducted both Emperor Nijō and the cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa. They then turned on Shinzei's home, destroying it and killing all those inside, with the exception of Shinzei himself, who escaped only to be captured in the mountains near Kyoto and decapitated soon afterward.

References

Reischauer, Edwin O., and Joseph K. Yamagiwa, eds. and trans. (1951). Translations from Early Japanese Literature.  Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.  Includes a partial translation of Heiji monogatari, an account of the Heiji Rebellion.

1106 births
1160 deaths
Fujiwara clan
People of Heian-period Japan
Heian period Buddhist clergy

Fujiwara no Michinori


A wave is a movement of the hand that people use to greet each other or say goodbye. People wave by raising their hand and moving it from side to side. They can also wave by moving their hand up and down. The way that people wave generally depends on their culture.

Non-verbal communication

Wave (gesture)


Daniel Afedzi Akyeampong  (24 November 1938 – 7 March 2015) was a Ghanaian academic. He was the first Ghanaian to attain full professorship status in mathematics at the University of Ghana, Legon. In 1966, Daniel Akyeampong and Francis Allotey became the first Ghanaians to obtain a doctorate in mathematical sciences. He was the Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana from 1983 to 1985.

Early life and education
Akyeampong was born on 24 November 1938 at Senya Beraku in the Gold Coast colony (now Ghana). He was the youngest child of his father, Peter Napoleon Akyeampong, and his mother, Charity Afful. He was a pupil at the Senya Beraku Local Council School in 1945 when he was six years old and completed in 1953. In 1954, he entered Mfantsipim School, Cape Coast for his secondary education and was a member of Balmer-Acquah House. Upon matriculating at Mfantsipim, his intellect became apparent after only a few weeks - he skipped his first year entirely and was quickly promoted to the second year. Akyeampong received prizes in Mathematics and Physical Sciences upon his graduation in 1959. The following year, he gained admission to study at the University of Ghana, where he was a resident of the all-male Commonwealth Hall. He graduated in 1963 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics. After his undergraduate studies, Akyeampong proceeded to the United Kingdom and enrolled at the University of London for his postgraduate research. He was admitted to Imperial College London in 1963 to complete the foundational diploma course in Mathematical Physics prior to his doctoral work. He later recalled the unexpected turns in his academic journey: "Professor Abdus Salam taught the class in group theory. His lectures were very popular and one had to go early to find a seat. Following my successful completion of the coursework in the summer of 1964, he invited me to his office one day, and told me about a new international centre for theoretical physics to be established in Trieste, Italy, which he was going to direct in the autumn of the same year, and the reason why he expected me to join him there. That was how in October 1964, Jimmy Boyce, Ray Rivers and myself became the first postgraduate students of Salam in Trieste, and so had the honour of joining the post doctoral colleagues Bob Delbourgo and John Strathdee to become members of the group that was christened by Ms. Jean Bouckley and Ms Miriam Lewis as "the Salam Boys"."In 1965, Akyeampong became one of the first Fellows of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste. About the vibrant scholarly culture at the Trieste institution, Akyeampong recounted:"Salam worked hard to get the Centre known world-wide and we were naturally infected by his ceaseless dedication. We had our lunches together at the Mensa dei Ferrovieri with him at the table head, John and Ray at one side of the table and Bob and Jimmy on the other, with me deciding when to sit next to Ray or to Jimmy. These became physics working lunches - with paper napkins serving as writing equipment - and each session usually ended with several suggestions from Salam or Bob or John for us graduate students to pursue later. The excitement and enthusiasm Salam displayed were infectious; and later when I had the privilege to collaborate with Delbourgo, who was my unofficial supervisor, it became clear that he was indeed a chip off the old block."In September 1966, Akyeampong returned to London and a month later, the University of London awarded him a doctorate in Mathematical Physics. His thesis was entitled, Applications of higher symmetry groups to particle physics. His secondary advisor was the University of London-based theoretical physicist, Paul Taunton Matthews. He was also awarded a Diploma of Imperial College(DIC) in Mathematical Physics in November 1966.

Career
Akyeampong returned to Ghana and joined the University of Ghana's Department of Mathematics as lecturer in December 1966. While he was on the faculty, he became an Associate (1967–75) of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, from 1967 to 1975 and later a Senior Associate (1976–93). In 1972, he became a Senior Lecturer in 1972 and an associate professor in 1976.

That same year, he was appointed Head of the Mathematics Department. He worked in this capacity until 1983 and two years later, his was reappointed to hold this office for three more years. In 1994, he was reappointed to this position for a third time and this time he served for five years. In 1982, while serving as the departmental chairman, he was promoted to the rank of full Professor of Mathematics - the first Ghanaian to achieve that distinction at the university. Prior to his second tenure as the mathematics departmental head, he served as the university's Pro-Vice Chancellor. This was during the period between his first and second appointment as Head of department.

Committees and Boards
He held several concurrent appointments outside the university:

 Between 1972 and 1980, he was a Member of the National Council for Higher Education
 He also served as a Member of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research from 1975 to 1978 and from 1992 to 1997
 He was also the Honorary Secretary of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1975 to 1978 and between 1995 and 1998, he served as the vice-president of the academy
 He was the President of the Mathematical Association of Ghana from 1988 to 1994
 Between 1989 and 1992, he became a member of the National Implementation Committee on Tertiary Education Reforms until 1992 when
He was made a Representative of University of Ghana on the Ghana National Committee of the West African Examinations Council from 1992 to 1996
 From 1993 to 2004, he was a member of the National Council for Tertiary Education and the Chairman of the National Accreditation Board from 1994 to 2004
 In 1998, became the Chairman of the Committee on Evaluation of National Policy Objectives on Tertiary Education, Ministry of Education.
 He was the Chairman of the committee to Review the Grading System for the Basic Education Certificate Examination in 1999, and the Chairman of the Country Selection Committee for the Ford Foundation International Fellowship Program from 2000 to 2002
 In 2002, he was made the Chairman of West African Examinations Council Committee to examine malpractice, specifically the leakage of the 2002 Basic Education Certificate Examination.
 That same year, he was made a member of the President's Committee of the Review of Education Reforms in Ghana, and from 2002 to 2003, a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Ghana Education Trust Fund.

A member of the African Mathematical Union, he served as an assistant editor of its journal, Afrika Matematica. He was on the editorial board of a journal of the African Academy of Sciences, Discovery and Innovation. From 1993 to 1999 he served as a member of the executive board of the International Council for Science, Paris, France, where he was elected the body's vice president in 1996 and serving in that capacity until 1999. Due to his contributions to theoretical physics, symmetry groups in physics, and grand unified theories, he was also elected to the Mathematical Sciences Section of the World Academy of Sciences in 1991.

Publications
Akyeampong published about 26 papers in leading journals and conference proceedings, and also published the book which was the text of his speech at the silver jubilee edition of the J. B. Danquah Memorial Lectures: The Two Cultures Revisited: Interactions of Science and Culture, published by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Personal life
Akyeampong married Charlotte Sally Newton on 11 April 1970. Together, they had two sons and one daughter.

Death
On Sunday 21 December 2014, Akyeampong sustained an injury leading to surgery at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital . He was successfully treated and released on the 1 January 2015. He suffered a septic shock and was admitted once again to Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital. Akyeampong died a month and a half later, on 7 March 2015, aged 76. He was survived by his wife, three children and nine grandchildren.

References

1938 births
2015 deaths
20th-century Ghanaian educators
Akan people
Alumni of Imperial College London
Fante people
Ghanaian educators
Ghanaian mathematicians
Ghanaian Methodists
Ghanaian physicists
20th-century Ghanaian scientists
Mfantsipim School alumni
University of Ghana alumni
Academic staff of the University of Ghana
Fellows of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences

Daniel Afedzi Akyeampong


The Metropolitan area of Puebla or Greater Puebla is the fourth largest agglomeration in Mexico with a population of 3.199 million. This agglomeration includes 10 municipalities of the state of Puebla, and 13 municipalities of the state of Tlaxcala. It does not include the city of Tlaxcala.

According to the National Institute of Statistics, Geography, and Data Processing (INEGI), it consists of the following municipalities of the State of Puebla:

Amozoc
Coronango
Cuautlancingo
Juan C. Bonilla
Ocoyucan
Puebla
San Andrés Cholula
San Gregorio Atzompa
San Miguel Xoxtla
San Pedro Cholula
and the following municipalities of the State of Tlaxcala:
 Mazatecochco de José María Morelos
 Acuamanala de Miguel Hidalgo
 San Pablo del Monte
 Tenancingo
 Teolocholco
 Tepeyanco
 Papalotla de Xicohténcatl
 Xicohtzinco
 Zacatelco
 San Juan Huactzinco
 San Lorenzo Axocomanitla
 Santa Catarina Ayometla
 Santa Cruz Quilehtla

It may be considered one of the oldest inhabited areas in the world, as it includes the city of Cholula, the oldest still-inhabited city in America.

References

Metropolitan areas of Mexico

Metropolitan area of Puebla


Plurality voting is an electoral seestem in whilk ilka voter is alloued tae vote fur anerly the ae candidate, an the candidate wha gains the maist votes amang thair marraes (a plurality) is electit. In a seestem based on single-member districts, it mey be cried first-past-the-post (FPTP), single-choice votin, simple plurality or relative/simple majority. In a system based on multi-memmer districts, it mey be referred to as bloc votin. The seestem is aften uised fur tae elect memmers o a legislative assemmly or executive officers. It is the maist common form o the seestem, and is uised in Canadae, the laicher house (Lok Sabha) in Indie, maist elections in the Unitit Kinrick (ootwi some Scots and Northren Irish elections), an maist Unitit States elections.

Electoral seestems

Plurality votin seestem


Suhail Chandhok is an Indian television presenter and commentator with Star Sports, having presented for various sports such as cricket, hockey, kabaddi and football amongst others. He also made a brief stint as an actor with the Tamil film Veeram alongside Ajith Kumar. Suhail is the son of Vicky Chandhok, multiple Indian rallying champion and President of the Federation of Motor Sports Club of India. He is the younger brother of Karun Chandhok, one of the two Formula 1 racing drivers from India.

Career
Suhail completed his schooling from Sishya School in Chennai. He then moved on to Australia and attained a Double Major Degree in Management and Marketing (Commerce) at the University of Adelaide. He went on to become the University's first Indian Cricket recipient of the Oxford-Cambridge Half Blue Award.

Hailing from a family of sports-enthusiasts, Suhail became a cricketer in the Royal Challengers Bangalore team for the Indian Premier League for two years. His career however, was short-lived, owing to acute knee-injuries & multiple surgeries. His passion towards acting led him to make short films under the alias of "Johnny Vetrivel" which garnered quite some attention on YouTube, including that of South Indian actor, Ajith Kumar.

He had a role in the Tamil film Veeram, playing one of Ajith Kumar's younger brothers. He then went on to become a Sports Presenter and Commentator with Star Sports. He is now associated with sports like Cricket, Football, Hockey and Pro Kabaddi among others. He has hosted and presented the ICC World Cup 2015, ICC T20 WC 2016, ICC Champions Trophy 2017 for Star Sports and the IPL on Hotstar as far as cricket is concerned. He has also been a presenter and commentator on properties such as the Hero Indian Super League Football and the Celebrity Classico Football. He has been the English commentator for the Hero Hockey India League and for the Pro Kabaddi League.

He has also worked at an international level for events such as the Rio Olympics 2016, the global FIA Formula E Series and the French Open.

Apart from being a commentator, Suhail is a public speaker on several platforms for corporates, industries, events and organisations that includes MRF, CII, Nubia Mobiles, PUMA, Arsenal Football Club, Standard Chartered, Golf India and Business Awards, TATA Motors, GQ India, Govt. of Australia and Premier Futsal. He has also been writing for several publications on various topics on sports.

He conceived and executed India's first Periscope TV Chat Show, "OnTheBall with Suhail" featuring stalwarts from across the film and sports industry. He has also been an Ambassador for brands like Castrol Activ, StudyAdelaide, SportsNut App and Omologato Watches.

In 2018, he covered the Indian Premier League auctions on Star Sports and was also guest host on the MTV's UCypher, India's first gaming reality show.

Personal life
Suhail is the son of Vicky Chandhok (former racing and rally driver and the president of the FIA Asia-Pacific Rally Championship) and Chitra Chandhok. He is the younger brother of former F1 driver and commentator Karun Chandhok. Suhail married Trishya Screwvala, daughter of Ronnie Screwvala on 19 January 2017. The private wedding was held at the TAJ Mahal Palace in Mumbai followed by a reception at the Bombay Turf Club. It was attended by a number of celebrities and industrialists.

Filmography
 Veeram (2014)

Awards
Suhail is the first Indian to have been lauded with the Oxford Cambridge Half-Blue award from the University of Adelaide of Cricketing Excellence. He has also been awarded the Australian Alumni Excellence Award 2015 for Sports, Art & Culture.

References

Living people
Indian television presenters
1987 births
Male actors from Chennai
Cricketers from Chennai
University of Adelaide alumni
Indian sports journalists

Suhail Chandhok


Federico Kurtz, also known as Fritz (1854–1920), was a German-Argentine botanist.

Biography
Fritz Kurtz was born in Berlin and earned his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1879. He relocated to Córdoba, Argentina, and in 1884, took over the chair of botany at the National University of Córdoba. Building on the performance studies and research begun under his predecessor, Dr. Paul Lorentz, Kurtz expanded the school's collections and published key works in the study of botany and paleobotany in Argentina.

He directed the university's Museum of Botany and was an active member of the National Academy of Sciences of Córdoba, initiating the exchange of research and material with similar institutions from around the world. His tenure at the Department of Botany influenced numerous younger Argentine naturalists, notably Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg and Juan Domíguez.

Kurtz retired from his post in 1915, and died in Córdoba in 1921. His private herbarium and library were acquired by the National University of Córdoba and were incorporated into the Museum of Botany.

The Kurtz nomenclature is used for the citation of the numerous species he classified in his career.

References

1854 births
1921 deaths
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Emigrants from the German Empire to Argentina
20th-century Argentine botanists
19th-century Argentine botanists

Federico Kurtz


Evi (formerly True Knowledge) is a technology company in Cambridge, England, founded by William Tunstall-Pedoe, which specialises in knowledge base and semantic search engine software. Its first product was an answer engine that aimed to directly answer questions on any subject posed in plain English text, which is accomplished using a database of discrete facts. The True Knowledge Answer engine was launched for private beta testing and development on 7 November 2007.

In January 2012 True Knowledge launched a major new product Evi (pronounced ee-vee), an artificial intelligence program which can be communicated with using natural language via an app on iPhone and Android.

The company changed its name from True Knowledge to Evi in June 2012.

In October 2012, Evi was acquired by Amazon and is now part of the Amazon group of companies. The technology and team became a key part of Amazon Alexa assistant (debuting with the Amazon Echo).

Core technology premise
The True Knowledge Answer Engine attempts to comprehend posed questions by  disambiguating from all possible meanings of the words in the question to find the most likely meaning of the question being asked. It does this by drawing upon its database of knowledge of discrete facts. As these facts are stored in a form that the computer can understand, the answer engine attempts to produce an answer to what it comprehends to be the question by logically deducing from them.

For example, if one were to type in "What is the birth date of George W. Bush?", True Knowledge would reason from the facts "George W. Bush is a president", "George W. Bush is a human being", "A president is a subclass of human being", "Date of creation is a more general form for birth date", and "the 6th of July is the date of creation for George W. Bush", to produce the simple answer, "the 6th of July". True Knowledge differs from competitors like Freebase and DBpedia in that they offer natural language access. Unlike the others however, users who post information to True Knowledge granted the company a "non-exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual licence to use such information to operate this website and for any other purposes".

Knowledge accumulation and verification

Evi gathers information for its database in two ways: importing it from "credible" external databases (which for them includes Wikipedia) and from user submission following a consistent format and detailed process for input. True Knowledge strives to monitor this user submitted knowledge in multiple ways.

One method involves a system of checks and balances in some ways similar to Wikipedia's, allowing users to modify or "agree"/"disagree" with information presented by True Knowledge. The system itself also assesses submitted information due to the fact that the information is submitted as discrete facts that computers can understand. The system is able to reject any facts that are semantically incompatible with other approved knowledge. On 21 November 2008, True Knowledge announced on its official blog that over 100,000 facts had been added by beta users and as of August 2010, the True Knowledge database overall contained 283,511,156 facts about 9,237,091 things.

In November 2010, True Knowledge used some 300 million facts to calculate that Sunday, 11 April 1954, was the most boring day since 1900.

Financing
On 7 May 2007, True Knowledge Ltd. announced it would be "actively seeking investments following several years of internally-funded development". Then, on 17 September 2007, Octopus Ventures, a British venture capitalist firm, announced its investment of more than $1.2 million into True Knowledge, the first significant investment into the company, allowing it to further develop its website and achieve critical milestones towards bringing the True Knowledge Answer Engine to market. On 30 July 2008, True Knowledge announced it had raised another $4 million in a second round of funding from Octopus Ventures and other investors that would be used towards expanding its staff, developing new products, and moving towards a rollout within 12 months.

Evi app
Evi was launched to the public in January 2012 through the iTunes App Store and Android Marketplace (Now rebranded as Google Play).

Evi is a cloud-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) which builds upon the core semantic search technology developed by the company and adds conversation, external APIs, location sensitivity and other features. Users can talk to Evi via an iPhone and Android app. Voice is supported. The company calls this "conversational search".

In May an update was released on both Android and iOS that introduced voice controls for phone, SMS, and Email. This was announced as the first phase of phone control updates which will add further functionality and deeper integration with device features.

See also
 Cortana
Cyber Chess
Cyc
IVONA
 Siri
Wolfram Alpha
YAGO (database)
Yap (company)

References

External links
 Evi

Amazon (company) acquisitions
Knowledge bases
Semantic Web companies
Software companies of the United Kingdom
Software companies established in 2007
British companies established in 2007
Companies based in Cambridge
2007 establishments in England
IOS software
Android (operating system) software

Evi (software)


Lake Louisa (French: Lac Louisa) is a lake located in the Argenteuil region of Quebec, Canada, mostly in the Township of Wentworth. However, the southwestern part of the lake is located in the Les Pays-d'en-Haut region of Quebec. The lake is home to ten islands including one very small island nicknamed "Peanut Island". Other islands include Griffith Island, Malibu Island, MacBurny Island and others. The lake is approximately 5.1 kilometres long and 2.3 kilometres wide, with a perimeter of 16.9 kilometres, and holds 73.2 million cubic meters of water. The maximal depth of the lake is 56.6 m, according to a 2011 GPS survey.

The community of Louisa is located near the lake. The town has a church called St. Aidan's and a community center for resident to rent. A social club on the lake runs activities such as swimming lessons in summer months, and a property owner's association is active on the lake to manage the impact of human activities on the lake's health.

Approximately eight hundred people live at Lake Louisa during the summer, and less than a hundred live there year-round.

References

Lakes of Laurentides

Lake Louisa (Quebec)


Charles Frederick Davey (27 August 1886 – 7 October 1964) was a British racing cyclist who rode in the Olympic Games, the world championship and the marathon Bol d'Or race.

Career
Davey originally played football. He also tried athletics. At 17 he came third in a 12-mile walk promoted by tradesmen in Addiscombe, Surrey. He competed for East Surrey Harriers. He started cycling when his brothers persuaded him to try racing on a grass track in another event run by the tradesmen. He won five prizes.

In 1910. he joined the Vegetarian Cycling and Athletic Club, moving to the Addiscombe CC, a club he founded in 1906. His first win on the road was for the Addiscombe club in the Olympian CC 50-mile time trial, held between Crawley and Godstone, which he won by eight minutes in 2h 35m 0s.

In 1911. he finished third in the Anerley 12-hour time-trial. That qualified him to ride for Britain in the 1912 Olympic Games road race in Stockholm. The race was run over 200 miles around lake Mälaren. The organisation was chaotic, riders bunching together instead of being separated, cars impeding the competitors and errors in the time-keeping.

Davey won his first record when in 1914 he partnered Harry Paul to beat the Southern Road Records Association 50-mile time, followed two weeks later by London-Worthing-London.

War interrupted his career and he became a petty officer in the Royal Naval Air Service, forerunner of the Royal Air Force. He was stationed in the Orkney Islands, where he swam two miles to a buoy in Scapa Flow and back again.

In 1920 Davey he won seven track events, the Balham 50-mile time trial, the Anerley 12-hour and the Lincolnshire championships at 25, 50 and 100 miles. He was selected for the Olympic Games in Antwerp as a reserve. He waited until the complete team had arrived at the ferry port in Harwich, then rode the Anerley 12-hour to finish second to Maurice Selbach.

His best year was 1921, the year of the first cycling world road race championship. Davey was 34.

Britain ran the world championship in 1922, again run as a time trial, in Shropshire. The winner was Dave Marsh of Britain. Davey came third and Britain won a gold medal as best team.

Davey turned professional the following year for the New Hudson bicycle company. He beat the Land's End to London record by 1hr 55m, then the 24-hour record with 402 miles and Land's End to London again in 17h 29m. He went to Paris to ride the Bol d'Or marathon race on the Buffalo velodrome. He finished sixth, the winner being Oscar Egg after 550 miles.

Davey's last year was when he was 40. He beat the London to Portsmouth and back record by 12 minutes and set the London to Bath and back record at 11h 47m 52s. In retirement he managed other riders' record attempts and arranged or scheduled many rides between 1926 and 1960.

Addiscombe Cycling Club gave him a gold-plated spanner in 1959 for his work for the club.

He was celebrated in Golden Book of Cycling in 1959.

References

External links

1886 births
1964 deaths
Olympic cyclists for Great Britain
English male cyclists
Cyclists at the 1912 Summer Olympics
Sportspeople from Croydon
Cyclists from Greater London

Charlie Davey (cyclist)