Bitumen (, ) is an immensely viscous constituent of petroleum. Depending on its exact composition it can be a sticky, black liquid or an apparently solid mass that behaves as a liquid over very large time scales. In the U.S., the material is commonly referred to as asphalt. Whether found in natural deposits or refined from petroleum, the substance is classed as a pitch. Prior to the 20th century the term asphaltum was in general use. The word derives from the ancient Greek ἄσφαλτος ásphaltos, which referred to natural bitumen or pitch. The largest natural deposit of bitumen in the world, estimated to contain 10 million tons, is the Pitch Lake of southwest Trinidad.

70% of annual bitumen production destined for road construction, its primary use. In this application bitumen is used to bind aggregate particles like gravel and forms a substance referred to as asphalt concrete, which is  colloquially termed asphalt. Its other main uses lie in bituminous waterproofing products, such as roofing felt and roof sealant.

In material sciences and engineering the terms "asphalt" and "bitumen" are often used interchangeably and refer both to natural and manufactured forms of the substance, although there is regional variation as to which term is most common. Worldwide, geologists tend to favor the term "bitumen" for the naturally occurring material. For the manufactured material, which is a refined residue from the distillation process of selected crude oils, "bitumen" is the prevalent term in much of the world; however, in American English, "asphalt" is more commonly used. To help avoid confusion, the phrases "liquid asphalt", "asphalt binder", or "asphalt cement" are used in the U.S. Colloquially, various forms of asphalt are sometimes referred to as "tar", as in the name of the La Brea Tar Pits.

Naturally occurring bitumen is sometimes specified by the term "crude bitumen". Its viscosity is similar to that of cold molasses while the material obtained from the fractional distillation of crude oil boiling at  is sometimes referred to as "refined bitumen". The Canadian province of Alberta has most of the world's reserves of natural bitumen in the Athabasca oil sands, which cover , an area larger than England.

Terminology

Etymology

The Latin word traces to the Proto-Indo-European root *gʷet- "pitch"; see that link for other cognates.

The expression "bitumen" originated in the Sanskrit, where we find the words "jatu", meaning "pitch", and "jatu-krit", meaning "pitch creating", "pitch producing" (referring to coniferous or resinous trees). The Latin equivalent is claimed by some to be originally "gwitu-men" (pertaining to pitch), and by others, "pixtumens" (exuding or bubbling pitch), which was subsequently shortened to "bitumen", thence passing via French into English. From the same root is derived the Anglo Saxon word "cwidu" (Mastix), the German word "Kitt" (cement or mastic) and the old Norse word "kvada".

The word "ašphalt" is claimed to have been derived from the Accadian term "asphaltu" or "sphallo," meaning "to split." It was later adopted by the Homeric Greeks in the form of the adjective ἄσφαλἤς, ἐς  signifying "firm," "stable," "secure," and the corresponding verb ἄσφαλίξω, ίσω meaning "to make firm or stable," "to secure".

The word "asphalt" is derived from the late Middle English, in turn from French asphalte, based on Late Latin asphalton, asphaltum, which is the latinisation of the Greek  (ásphaltos, ásphalton), a word meaning "asphalt/bitumen/pitch", which perhaps derives from , "not, without", i.e. the alpha privative, and  (sphallein), "to cause to fall, baffle, (in passive) err, (in passive) be balked of".

The first use of asphalt by the ancients was as a cement to secure or join various objects, and it thus seems likely that the name itself was expressive of this application. Specifically, Herodotus mentioned that bitumen was brought to Babylon to build its gigantic fortification wall.

From the Greek, the word passed into late Latin, and thence into French (asphalte) and English ("asphaltum" and "asphalt"). In French, the term asphalte is used for naturally occurring asphalt-soaked limestone deposits, and for specialised manufactured products with fewer voids or greater bitumen content than the "asphaltic concrete" used to pave roads.

Modern terminology
Bitumen mixed with clay was usually called "asphaltum", but the term is less commonly used today.

In American English, "asphalt" is equivalent to the British "bitumen". However, "asphalt" is also commonly used as a shortened form of "asphalt concrete" (therefore equivalent to the British "asphalt" or "tarmac").

In Canadian English, the word "bitumen" is used to refer to the vast Canadian deposits of extremely heavy crude oil, while "asphalt" is used for the oil refinery product. Diluted bitumen (diluted with naphtha to make it flow in pipelines) is known as "dilbit" in the Canadian petroleum industry, while bitumen "upgraded" to synthetic crude oil is known as "syncrude", and syncrude blended with bitumen is called "synbit".

"Bitumen" is still the preferred geological term for naturally occurring deposits of the solid or semi-solid form of petroleum. "Bituminous rock" is a form of sandstone impregnated with bitumen. The oil sands of Alberta, Canada are a similar material.

Neither of the terms "asphalt" or "bitumen" should be confused with tar or coal tars. Tar is the thick liquid product of the dry distillation and pyrolysis of organic hydrocarbons primarily sourced from vegetation masses, whether fossilized as with coal, or freshly harvested. The majority of bitumen, on the other hand, was formed naturally when vast quantities of organic animal materials were deposited by water and buried hundreds of metres deep at the diagenetic point, where the disorganized fatty hydrocarbon molecules joined in long chains in the absence of oxygen. Bitumen occurs as a solid or highly viscous liquid. It may even be mixed in with coal deposits. Bitumen, and coal using the Bergius process, can be refined into petrols such as gasoline, and bitumen may be distilled into tar, not the other way around.

Composition

Normal composition
The components of bitumen include four main classes of compounds:
 Naphthene aromatics (naphthalene), consisting of partially hydrogenated polycyclic aromatic compounds
 Polar aromatics, consisting of high molecular weight phenols and carboxylic acids produced by partial oxidation of the material
 Saturated hydrocarbons; the percentage of saturated compounds in asphalt correlates with its softening point
 Asphaltenes, consisting of high molecular weight phenols and heterocyclic compounds

Bitumen typically contains, elementally 80% by weight of carbon; 10% hydrogen; up to 6% sulfur; and molecularly, between 5 and 25% by weight of asphaltenes dispersed in 90% to 65% maltenes.  Most natural bitumens also contain organosulfur compounds,  Nickel and vanadium are found at <10 parts per million, as is typical of some petroleum.  The substance is soluble in carbon disulfide. It is commonly modelled as a colloid, with asphaltenes as the dispersed phase and maltenes as the continuous phase. "It is almost impossible to separate and identify all the different molecules of bitumen, because the number of molecules with different chemical structure is extremely large".

Asphalt may be confused with coal tar, which is a visually similar black, thermoplastic material produced by the destructive distillation of coal. During the early and mid-20th century, when town gas was produced, coal tar was a readily available byproduct and extensively used as the binder for road aggregates. The addition of coal tar to macadam roads led to the word "tarmac", which is now used in common parlance to refer to road-making materials. However, since the 1970s, when natural gas succeeded town gas, bitumen has completely overtaken the use of coal tar in these applications. Other examples of this confusion include La Brea Tar Pits and the Canadian oil sands, both of which actually contain natural bitumen rather than tar. "Pitch" is another term sometimes informally used at times to refer to asphalt, as in Pitch Lake.

Additives, mixtures and contaminants
For economic and other reasons, bitumen is sometimes sold combined with other materials, often without being labeled as anything other than simply "bitumen".

Of particular note is the use of re-refined engine oil bottoms – "REOB" or "REOBs"the residue of recycled automotive engine oil collected from the bottoms of re-refining vacuum distillation towers, in the manufacture of asphalt. REOB contains various elements and compounds found in recycled engine oil: additives to the original oil and materials accumulating from its circulation in the engine (typically iron and copper). Some research has indicated a correlation between this adulteration of bitumen and poorer-performing pavement.

Occurrence

The majority of bitumen used commercially is obtained from petroleum. Nonetheless, large amounts of bitumen occur in concentrated form in nature. Naturally occurring deposits of bitumen are formed from the remains of ancient, microscopic algae (diatoms) and other once-living things. These natural deposits of bitumen have been formed during the Carboniferous period, when giant swamp forests dominated many parts of the Earth. They were deposited in the mud on the bottom of the ocean or lake where the organisms lived. Under the heat (above 50 °C) and pressure of burial deep in the earth, the remains were transformed into materials such as bitumen, kerogen, or petroleum.

Natural deposits of bitumen include lakes such as the Pitch Lake in Trinidad and Tobago and Lake Bermudez in Venezuela. Natural seeps occur in the La Brea Tar Pits and the McKittrick Tar Pits in California, as well as in the Dead Sea.

Bitumen also occurs in unconsolidated sandstones known as "oil sands" in Alberta, Canada, and the similar "tar sands" in Utah, US.
The Canadian province of Alberta has most of the world's reserves, in three huge deposits covering , an area larger than England or New York state. These bituminous sands contain  of commercially established oil reserves, giving Canada the third largest oil reserves in the world. Although historically it was used without refining to pave roads, nearly all of the output is now used as raw material for oil refineries in Canada and the United States.

The world's largest deposit of natural bitumen, known as the Athabasca oil sands, is located in the McMurray Formation of Northern Alberta. This formation is from the early Cretaceous, and is composed of numerous lenses of oil-bearing sand with up to 20% oil. Isotopic studies show the oil deposits to be about 110 million years old. Two smaller but still very large formations occur in the Peace River oil sands and the Cold Lake oil sands, to the west and southeast of the Athabasca oil sands, respectively. Of the Alberta deposits, only parts of the Athabasca oil sands are shallow enough to be suitable for surface mining. The other 80% has to be produced by oil wells using enhanced oil recovery techniques like steam-assisted gravity drainage.

Much smaller heavy oil or bitumen deposits also occur in the Uinta Basin in Utah, US. The Tar Sand Triangle deposit, for example, is roughly 6% bitumen.

Bitumen may occur in hydrothermal veins. An example of this is within the Uinta Basin of Utah, in the US, where there is a swarm of laterally and vertically extensive veins composed of a solid hydrocarbon termed Gilsonite. These veins formed by the polymerization and solidification of hydrocarbons that were mobilized from the deeper oil shales of the Green River Formation during burial and diagenesis.

Bitumen is similar to the organic matter in carbonaceous meteorites. However, detailed studies have shown these materials to be distinct. The vast Alberta bitumen resources are considered to have started out as living material from marine plants and animals, mainly algae, that died millions of years ago when an ancient ocean covered Alberta. They were covered by mud, buried deeply over time, and gently cooked into oil by geothermal heat at a temperature of . Due to pressure from the rising of the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Alberta, 80 to 55 million years ago, the oil was driven northeast hundreds of kilometres and trapped into underground sand deposits left behind by ancient river beds and ocean beaches, thus forming the oil sands.

History

Ancient times
The use of natural bitumen for waterproofing, and as an adhesive dates at least to the fifth millennium BC, with a crop storage basket discovered in Mehrgarh, of the Indus Valley civilization, lined with it. By the 3rd millennium BC refined rock asphalt was in use in the region, and was used to waterproof the Great Bath in Mohenjo-daro.

In the ancient Near East, the Sumerians used natural bitumen deposits for mortar between bricks and stones, to cement parts of carvings, such as eyes, into place, for ship caulking, and for waterproofing. The Greek historian Herodotus said hot bitumen was used as mortar in the walls of Babylon.

The  long Euphrates Tunnel beneath the river Euphrates at Babylon in the time of Queen Semiramis () was reportedly constructed of burnt bricks covered with bitumen as a waterproofing agent.

Bitumen was used by ancient Egyptians to embalm mummies. The Persian word for asphalt is moom, which is related to the English word mummy. The Egyptians' primary source of bitumen was the Dead Sea, which the Romans knew as Palus Asphaltites (Asphalt Lake).

In approximately 40 AD, Dioscorides described the Dead Sea material as Judaicum bitumen, and noted other places in the region where it could be found. The Sidon bitumen is thought to refer to material found at Hasbeya in Lebanon. Pliny also refers to bitumen being found in Epirus. Bitumen was a valuable strategic resource. It was the object of the first known battle for a hydrocarbon deposit – between the Seleucids and the Nabateans in 312 BC.

In the ancient Far East, natural bitumen was slowly boiled to get rid of the higher fractions, leaving a thermoplastic material of higher molecular weight that, when layered on objects, became hard upon cooling. This was used to cover objects that needed waterproofing, such as scabbards and other items. Statuettes of household deities were also cast with this type of material in Japan, and probably also in China.

In North America, archaeological recovery has indicated that bitumen was sometimes used to adhere stone projectile points to wooden shafts. In Canada, aboriginal people used bitumen seeping out of the banks of the Athabasca and other rivers to waterproof birch bark canoes, and also heated it in smudge pots to ward off mosquitoes in the summer.

Continental Europe
In 1553, Pierre Belon described in his work Observations that pissasphalto, a mixture of pitch and bitumen, was used in the Republic of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia) for tarring of ships.

An 1838 edition of Mechanics Magazine cites an early use of asphalt in France. A pamphlet dated 1621, by "a certain Monsieur d'Eyrinys, states that he had discovered the existence (of asphaltum) in large quantities in the vicinity of Neufchatel", and that he proposed to use it in a variety of ways – "principally in the construction of air-proof granaries, and in protecting, by means of the arches, the water-courses in the city of Paris from the intrusion of dirt and filth", which at that time made the water unusable. "He expatiates also on the excellence of this material for forming level and durable terraces" in palaces, "the notion of forming such terraces in the streets not one likely to cross the brain of a Parisian of that generation".

But the substance was generally neglected in France until the revolution of 1830. In the 1830s there was a surge of interest, and asphalt became widely used "for pavements, flat roofs, and the lining of cisterns, and in England, some use of it had been made of it for similar purposes". Its rise in Europe was "a sudden phenomenon", after natural deposits were found "in France at Osbann (Bas-Rhin), the Parc (Ain) and the Puy-de-la-Poix (Puy-de-Dôme)", although it could also be made artificially. One of the earliest uses in France was the laying of about 24,000 square yards of Seyssel asphalt at the Place de la Concorde in 1835.

United Kingdom
Among the earlier uses of bitumen in the United Kingdom was for etching. William Salmon's Polygraphice (1673) provides a recipe for varnish used in etching, consisting of three ounces of virgin wax, two ounces of mastic, and one ounce of asphaltum. By the fifth edition in 1685, he had included more asphaltum recipes from other sources.

The first British patent for the use of asphalt was "Cassell's patent asphalte or bitumen" in 1834. Then on 25 November 1837, Richard Tappin Claridge patented the use of Seyssel asphalt (patent #7849), for use in asphalte pavement, having seen it employed in France and Belgium when visiting with Frederick Walter Simms, who worked with him on the introduction of asphalt to Britain. Dr T. Lamb Phipson writes that his father, Samuel Ryland Phipson, a friend of Claridge, was also "instrumental in introducing the asphalte pavement (in 1836)".

Claridge obtained a patent in Scotland on 27 March 1838, and obtained a patent in Ireland on 23 April 1838. In 1851, extensions for the 1837 patent and for both 1838 patents were sought by the trustees of a company previously formed by Claridge. Claridge's Patent Asphalte Companyformed in 1838 for the purpose of introducing to Britain "Asphalte in its natural state from the mine at Pyrimont Seysell in France","laid one of the first asphalt pavements in Whitehall". Trials were made of the pavement in 1838 on the footway in Whitehall, the stable at Knightsbridge Barracks, "and subsequently on the space at the bottom of the steps leading from Waterloo Place to St. James Park". "The formation in 1838 of Claridge's Patent Asphalte Company (with a distinguished list of aristocratic patrons, and Marc and Isambard Brunel as, respectively, a trustee and consulting engineer), gave an enormous impetus to the development of a British asphalt industry". "By the end of 1838, at least two other companies, Robinson's and the Bastenne company, were in production", with asphalt being laid as paving at Brighton, Herne Bay, Canterbury, Kensington, the Strand, and a large floor area in Bunhill-row, while meantime Claridge's Whitehall paving "continue(d) in good order". The Bonnington Chemical Works manufactured asphalt using coal tar and by 1839 had installed it in Bonnington.

In 1838, there was a flurry of entrepreneurial activity involving bitumen, which had uses beyond paving. For example, bitumen could also be used for flooring, damp proofing in buildings, and for waterproofing of various types of pools and baths, both of which were also proliferating in the 19th century. One of the earliest surviving examples of its use can be seen at Highgate Cemetery where it was used in 1839 to seal the roof of the terrace catacombs. On the London stockmarket, there were various claims as to the exclusivity of bitumen quality from France, Germany and England. And numerous patents were granted in France, with similar numbers of patent applications being denied in England due to their similarity to each other. In England, "Claridge's was the type most used in the 1840s and 50s".

In 1914, Claridge's Company entered into a joint venture to produce tar-bound macadam, with materials manufactured through a subsidiary company called Clarmac Roads Ltd. Two products resulted, namely Clarmac, and Clarphalte, with the former being manufactured by Clarmac Roads and the latter by Claridge's Patent Asphalte Co., although Clarmac was more widely used. However, the First World War ruined the Clarmac Company, which entered into liquidation in 1915. The failure of Clarmac Roads Ltd had a flow-on effect to Claridge's Company, which was itself compulsorily wound up, ceasing operations in 1917, having invested a substantial amount of funds into the new venture, both at the outset and in a subsequent attempt to save the Clarmac Company.

Bitumen was thought in 19th century Britain to contain chemicals with medicinal properties. Extracts from bitumen were used to treat catarrh and some forms of asthma and as a remedy against worms, especially the tapeworm.

United States
The first use of bitumen in the New World was by aboriginal peoples. On the west coast, as early as the 13th century, the Tongva, Luiseño and Chumash peoples collected the naturally occurring bitumen that seeped to the surface above underlying petroleum deposits. All three groups used the substance as an adhesive. It is found on many different artifacts of tools and ceremonial items. For example, it was used on rattles to adhere gourds or turtle shells to rattle handles. It was also used in decorations. Small round shell beads were often set in asphaltum to provide decorations. It was used as a sealant on baskets to make them watertight for carrying water, possibly poisoning those who drank the water. Asphalt was used also to seal the planks on ocean-going canoes.

Asphalt was first used to pave streets in the 1870s. At first naturally occurring "bituminous rock" was used, such as at Ritchie Mines in Macfarlan in Ritchie County, West Virginia from 1852 to 1873. In 1876, asphalt-based paving was used to pave Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, in time for the celebration of the national centennial.

In the horse-drawn era, US streets were mostly unpaved and covered with dirt or gravel. Especially where mud or trenching often made streets difficult to pass, pavements were sometimes made of diverse materials including wooden planks, cobble stones or other stone blocks, or bricks. Unpaved roads produced uneven wear and hazards for pedestrians. In the late 19th century with the rise of the popular bicycle, bicycle clubs were important in pushing for more general pavement of streets. Advocacy for pavement increased in the early 20th century with the rise of the automobile. Asphalt gradually became an ever more common method of paving. St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans was paved its whole length with asphalt by 1889.

In 1900, Manhattan alone had 130,000 horses, pulling streetcars, wagons, and carriages, and leaving their waste behind. They were not fast, and pedestrians could dodge and scramble their way across the crowded streets. Small towns continued to rely on dirt and gravel, but larger cities wanted much better streets. They looked to wood or granite blocks by the 1850s. In 1890, a third of Chicago's 2000 miles of streets were paved, chiefly with wooden blocks, which gave better traction than mud. Brick surfacing was a good compromise, but even better was asphalt paving, which was easy to install and to cut through to get at sewers. With London and Paris serving as models, Washington laid 400,000 square yards of asphalt paving by 1882; it became the model for Buffalo, Philadelphia and elsewhere. By the end of the century, American cities boasted 30 million square yards of asphalt paving, well ahead of brick. The streets became faster and more dangerous so electric traffic lights were installed. Electric trolleys (at 12 miles per hour) became the main transportation service for middle class shoppers and office workers until they bought automobiles after 1945 and commuted from more distant suburbs in privacy and comfort on asphalt highways.

Canada

Canada has the world's largest deposit of natural bitumen in the Athabasca oil sands, and Canadian First Nations along the Athabasca River had long used it to waterproof their canoes. In 1719, a Cree named Wa-Pa-Su brought a sample for trade to Henry Kelsey of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was the first recorded European to see it. However, it wasn't until 1787 that fur trader and explorer Alexander MacKenzie saw the Athabasca oil sands and said, "At about 24 miles from the fork (of the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers) are some bituminous fountains into which a pole of 20 feet long may be inserted without the least resistance."

The value of the deposit was obvious from the start, but the means of extracting the bitumen was not. The nearest town, Fort McMurray, Alberta, was a small fur trading post, other markets were far away, and transportation costs were too high to ship the raw bituminous sand for paving. In 1915, Sidney Ells of the Federal Mines Branch experimented with separation techniques and used the product to pave 600 feet of road in Edmonton, Alberta. Other roads in Alberta were paved with material extracted from oil sands, but it was generally not economic. During the 1920s Dr. Karl A. Clark of the Alberta Research Council patented a hot water oil separation process and entrepreneur Robert C. Fitzsimmons built the Bitumount oil separation plant, which between 1925 and 1958 produced up to  per day of bitumen using Dr. Clark's method. Most of the bitumen was used for waterproofing roofs, but other uses included fuels, lubrication oils, printers ink, medicines, rust- and acid-proof paints, fireproof roofing, street paving, patent leather, and fence post preservatives. Eventually Fitzsimmons ran out of money and the plant was taken over by the Alberta government. Today the Bitumount plant is a Provincial Historic Site.

Photography and art
Bitumen was used in early photographic technology. In 1826, or 1827, it was used by French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce to make the oldest surviving photograph from nature. The bitumen was thinly coated onto a pewter plate which was then exposed in a camera. Exposure to light hardened the bitumen and made it insoluble, so that when it was subsequently rinsed with a solvent only the sufficiently light-struck areas remained. Many hours of exposure in the camera were required, making bitumen impractical for ordinary photography, but from the 1850s to the 1920s it was in common use as a photoresist in the production of printing plates for various photomechanical printing processes.

Bitumen was the nemesis of many artists during the 19th century. Although widely used for a time, it ultimately proved unstable for use in oil painting, especially when mixed with the most common diluents, such as linseed oil, varnish and turpentine. Unless thoroughly diluted, bitumen never fully solidifies and will in time corrupt the other pigments with which it comes into contact. The use of bitumen as a glaze to set in shadow or mixed with other colors to render a darker tone resulted in the eventual deterioration of many paintings, for instance those of Delacroix. Perhaps the most famous example of the destructiveness of bitumen is Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa (1818–1819), where his use of bitumen caused the brilliant colors to degenerate into dark greens and blacks and the paint and canvas to buckle.

Modern use

Global use
The vast majority of refined bitumen is used in construction: primarily as a constituent of products used in paving and roofing applications. According to the requirements of the end use, bitumen is produced to specification. This is achieved either by refining or blending. It is estimated that the current world use of bitumen is approximately 102 million tonnes per year. Approximately 85% of all the bitumen produced is used as the binder in asphalt concrete for roads. It is also used in other paved areas such as airport runways, car parks and footways. Typically, the production of asphalt concrete involves mixing fine and coarse aggregates such as sand, gravel and crushed rock with asphalt, which acts as the binding agent. Other materials, such as recycled polymers (e.g., rubber tyres), may be added to the bitumen to modify its properties according to the application for which the bitumen is ultimately intended.

A further 10% of global bitumen production is used in roofing applications, where its waterproofing qualities are invaluable.
The remaining 5% of bitumen is used mainly for sealing and insulating purposes in a variety of building materials, such as pipe coatings, carpet tile backing and paint. Bitumen is applied in the construction and maintenance of many structures, systems, and components, such as the following:

 Highways
 Airport runways
 Footways and pedestrian ways
 Car parks
 Racetracks
 Tennis courts
 Roofing
 Damp proofing
 Dams
 Reservoir and pool linings
 Soundproofing
 Pipe coatings
 Cable coatings
 Paints
 Building water proofing
 Tile underlying waterproofing
 Newspaper ink production
 and many other applications

Rolled asphalt concrete
The largest use of bitumen is for making asphalt concrete for road surfaces; this accounts for approximately 85% of the bitumen consumed in the United States. There are about 4,000 asphalt concrete mixing plants in the US, and a similar number in Europe.

Asphalt concrete pavement mixes are typically composed of 5% bitumen (known as asphalt cement in the US) and 95% aggregates (stone, sand, and gravel). Due to its highly viscous nature, bitumen must be heated so it can be mixed with the aggregates at the asphalt mixing facility. The temperature required varies depending upon characteristics of the bitumen and the aggregates, but warm-mix asphalt technologies allow producers to reduce the temperature required.

The weight of an asphalt pavement depends upon the aggregate type, the bitumen, and the air void content. An average example in the United States is about 112 pounds per square yard, per inch of pavement thickness.

When maintenance is performed on asphalt pavements, such as milling to remove a worn or damaged surface, the removed material can be returned to a facility for processing into new pavement mixtures. The bitumen in the removed material can be reactivated and put back to use in new pavement mixes. With some 95% of paved roads being constructed of or surfaced with asphalt, a substantial amount of asphalt pavement material is reclaimed each year. According to industry surveys conducted annually by the Federal Highway Administration and the National Asphalt Pavement Association, more than 99% of the bitumen removed each year from road surfaces during widening and resurfacing projects is reused as part of new pavements, roadbeds, shoulders and embankments or stockpiled for future use.

Asphalt concrete paving is widely used in airports around the world. Due to the sturdiness and ability to be repaired quickly, it is widely used for runways.

Mastic asphalt
Mastic asphalt is a type of asphalt that differs from dense graded asphalt (asphalt concrete) in that it has a higher bitumen (binder) content, usually around 7–10% of the whole aggregate mix, as opposed to rolled asphalt concrete, which has only around 5% asphalt. This thermoplastic substance is widely used in the building industry for waterproofing flat roofs and tanking underground. Mastic asphalt is heated to a temperature of  and is spread in layers to form an impervious barrier about  thick.

Bitumen emulsion

Bitumen emulsions are colloidal mixtures of bitumen and water. Due to the different surface tensions of the two liquids, stable emulsions cannot be created simply by mixing. Therefore, various emulsifiers and stabilizers are added. Emulsifiers are amphiphilic molecules that differ in the charge of their polar head group. They reduce the surface tension of the emulsion and thus prevent bitumen particles from fusing. The emulsifier charge defines the type of emulsion: anionic (negatively charged) and cationic (positively charged). The concentration of an emulsifier is a critical parameter affecting the size of the bitumen particles - higher concentrations lead to smaller bitumen particles. Thus, emulsifiers have a great impact on the stability, viscosity, breaking strength, and adhesion of the bitumen emulsion. The size of bitumen particles is usually between 0.1 and 50 µm with a main fraction between 1 µm and 10 µm. Laser diffraction techniques can be used to determine the particle size distribution quickly and easily. Cationic emulsifiers primarily include long-chain amines such as imidazolines, amido-amines, and diamines, which acquire a positive charge when an acid is added. Anionic emulsifiers are often fatty acids extracted from lignin, tall oil, or tree resin saponified with bases such as NaOH, which creates a negative charge.

During the storage of bitumen emulsions, bitumen particles sediment, agglomerate (flocculation), or fuse (coagulation), which leads to a certain instability of the bitumen emulsion. How fast this process occurs depends on the formulation of the bitumen emulsion but also storage conditions such as temperature and humidity. When emulsified bitumen gets into contact with aggregates, emulsifiers lose their effectiveness, the emulsion breaks down, and an adhering bitumen film is formed referred to as 'breaking'. Bitumen particles almost instantly create a continuous bitumen film by coagulating and separating from water which evaporates. Not each asphalt emulsion reacts as fast as the other when it gets into contact with aggregates. That enables a classification into Rapid-setting (R), Slow-setting (SS), and Medium-setting (MS) emulsions, but also an individual, application-specific optimization of the formulation and a wide field of application (1). For example, Slow-breaking emulsions ensure a longer processing time which is particularly advantageous for fine aggregates (1).

Adhesion problems are reported for anionic emulsions in contact with quartz-rich aggregates. They are substituted by cationic emulsions achieving better adhesion. The extensive range of bitumen emulsions is covered insufficiently by standardization. DIN EN 13808 for cationic asphalt emulsions has been existing since July 2005. Here, a classification of bitumen emulsions based on letters and numbers is described, considering charges, viscosities, and the type of bitumen. The production process of bitumen emulsions is very complex. Two methods are commonly used, the "Colloid mill" method and the "High Internal Phase Ratio (HIPR)" method. In the "Colloid mill" method, a rotor moves at high speed within a stator by adding bitumen and a water-emulsifier mixture. The resulting shear forces generate bitumen particles between 5 µm and 10 µm coated with emulsifiers. The "High Internal Phase Ratio (HIPR)" method is used for creating smaller bitumen particles, monomodal, narrow particle size distributions, and very high bitumen concentrations. Here, a highly concentrated bitumen emulsion is produced first by moderate stirring and diluted afterward. In contrast to the "Colloid-Mill" method, the aqueous phase is introduced into hot bitumen, enabling very high bitumen concentrations.

T The "High Internal Phase Ratio (HIPR)" method is used for creating smaller bitumen particles, monomodal, narrow particle size distributions, and very high bitumen concentrations. Here, a highly concentrated bitumen emulsion is produced first by moderate stirring and diluted afterward. In contrast to the "Colloid-Mill" method, the aqueous phase is introduced into hot bitumen, enabling very high bitumen concentrations (1).he "High Internal Phase Ratio (HIPR)" method is used for creating smaller bitumen particles, monomodal, narrow particle size distributions, and very high bitumen concentrations. Here, a highly concentrated bitumen emulsion is produced first by moderate stirring and diluted afterward. In contrast to the "Colloid-Mill" method, the aqueous phase is introduced into hot bitumen, enabling very high bitumen concentrations (1).

Bitumen emulsions are used in a wide variety of applications. They are used in road construction and building protection and primarily include the application in cold recycling mixtures, adhesive coating, and surface treatment (1). Due to the lower viscosity in comparison to hot bitumen, processing requires less energy and is associated with significantly less risk of fire and burns. Chipseal involves spraying the road surface with bitumen emulsion followed by a layer of crushed rock, gravel or crushed slag. Slurry seal is a mixture of bitumen emulsion and fine crushed aggregate that is spread on the surface of a road. Cold-mixed asphalt can also be made from bitumen emulsion to create pavements similar to hot-mixed asphalt, several inches in depth, and bitumen emulsions are also blended into recycled hot-mix asphalt to create low-cost pavements. Bitumen emulsion based techniques are known to be useful for all classes of roads, their use may also be possible in the following applications: 1. Asphalts for heavily trafficked roads (based on the use of polymer modified emulsions) 2. Warm emulsion based mixtures, to improve both their maturation time and mechanical properties 3. Half-warm technology, in which aggregates are heated up to 100 degrees, producing mixtures with similar properties to those of hot asphalts 4. High performance surface dressing.

Synthetic crude oil

Synthetic crude oil, also known as syncrude, is the output from a bitumen upgrader facility used in connection with oil sand production in Canada. Bituminous sands are mined using enormous (100-ton capacity) power shovels and loaded into even larger (400-ton capacity) dump trucks for movement to an upgrading facility. The process used to extract the bitumen from the sand is a hot water process originally developed by Dr. Karl Clark of the University of Alberta during the 1920s. After extraction from the sand, the bitumen is fed into a bitumen upgrader which converts it into a light crude oil equivalent. This synthetic substance is fluid enough to be transferred through conventional oil pipelines and can be fed into conventional oil refineries without any further treatment. By 2015 Canadian bitumen upgraders were producing over  per day of synthetic crude oil, of which 75% was exported to oil refineries in the United States.

In Alberta, five bitumen upgraders produce synthetic crude oil and a variety of other products: The Suncor Energy upgrader near Fort McMurray, Alberta produces synthetic crude oil plus diesel fuel; the Syncrude Canada, Canadian Natural Resources, and Nexen upgraders near Fort McMurray produce synthetic crude oil; and the Shell Scotford Upgrader near Edmonton produces synthetic crude oil plus an intermediate feedstock for the nearby Shell Oil Refinery. A sixth upgrader, under construction in 2015 near Redwater, Alberta, will upgrade half of its crude bitumen directly to diesel fuel, with the remainder of the output being sold as feedstock to nearby oil refineries and petrochemical plants.

Non-upgraded crude bitumen

Canadian bitumen does not differ substantially from oils such as Venezuelan extra-heavy and Mexican heavy oil in chemical composition, and the real difficulty is moving the extremely viscous bitumen through oil pipelines to the refinery. Many modern oil refineries are extremely sophisticated and can process non-upgraded bitumen directly into products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, and refined asphalt without any preprocessing. This is particularly common in areas such as the US Gulf coast, where refineries were designed to process Venezuelan and Mexican oil, and in areas such as the US Midwest where refineries were rebuilt to process heavy oil as domestic light oil production declined. Given the choice, such heavy oil refineries usually prefer to buy bitumen rather than synthetic oil because the cost is lower, and in some cases because they prefer to produce more diesel fuel and less gasoline. By 2015 Canadian production and exports of non-upgraded bitumen exceeded that of synthetic crude oil at over  per day, of which about 65% was exported to the United States.

Because of the difficulty of moving crude bitumen through pipelines, non-upgraded bitumen is usually diluted with natural-gas condensate in a form called dilbit or with synthetic crude oil, called synbit. However, to meet international competition, much non-upgraded bitumen is now sold as a blend of multiple grades of bitumen, conventional crude oil, synthetic crude oil, and condensate in a standardized benchmark product such as Western Canadian Select. This sour, heavy crude oil blend is designed to have uniform refining characteristics to compete with internationally marketed heavy oils such as Mexican Mayan or Arabian Dubai Crude.

Radioactive waste encapsulation matrix
Bitumen was used starting in the 1960s as a hydrophobic matrix aiming to encapsulate radioactive waste such as medium-activity salts (mainly soluble sodium nitrate and sodium sulfate) produced by the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels or radioactive sludges from sedimentation ponds. Bituminised radioactive waste containing highly radiotoxic alpha-emitting transuranic elements from nuclear reprocessing plants have been produced at industrial scale in France, Belgium and Japan, but this type of waste conditioning has been abandoned because operational safety issues (risks of fire, as occurred in a bituminisation plant at Tokai Works in Japan) and long-term stability problems related to their geological disposal in deep rock formations. One of the main problems is the swelling of bitumen exposed to radiation and to water. Bitumen swelling is first induced by radiation because of the presence of hydrogen gas bubbles generated by alpha and gamma radiolysis. A second mechanism is the matrix swelling when the encapsulated hygroscopic salts exposed to water or moisture start to rehydrate and to dissolve. The high concentration of salt in the pore solution inside the bituminised matrix is then responsible for osmotic effects inside the bituminised matrix. The water moves in the direction of the concentrated salts, the bitumen acting as a semi-permeable membrane. This also causes the matrix to swell. The swelling pressure due to osmotic effect under constant volume can be as high as 200 bar. If not properly managed, this high pressure can cause fractures in the near field of a disposal gallery of bituminised medium-level waste. When the bituminised matrix has been altered by swelling, encapsulated radionuclides are easily leached by the contact of ground water and released in the geosphere. The high ionic strength of the concentrated saline solution also favours the migration of radionuclides in clay host rocks. The presence of chemically reactive nitrate can also affect the redox conditions prevailing in the host rock by establishing oxidizing conditions, preventing the reduction of redox-sensitive radionuclides. Under their higher valences, radionuclides of elements such as selenium, technetium, uranium, neptunium and plutonium have a higher solubility and are also often present in water as non-retarded anions. This makes the disposal of medium-level bituminised waste very challenging.

Different types of bitumen have been used: blown bitumen (partly oxidized with air oxygen at high temperature after distillation, and harder) and direct distillation bitumen (softer). Blown bitumens like Mexphalte, with a high content of saturated hydrocarbons, are more easily biodegraded by microorganisms than direct distillation bitumen, with a low content of saturated hydrocarbons and a high content of aromatic hydrocarbons.

Concrete encapsulation of radwaste is presently considered a safer alternative by the nuclear industry and the waste management organisations.

Other uses
Roofing shingles and roll roofing account for most of the remaining bitumen consumption. Other uses include cattle sprays, fence-post treatments, and waterproofing for fabrics. Bitumen is used to make Japan black, a lacquer known especially for its use on iron and steel, and it is also used in paint and marker inks by some exterior paint supply companies to increase the weather resistance and permanence of the paint or ink, and to make the color darker. Bitumen is also used to seal some alkaline batteries during the manufacturing process.

Production

About 40,000,000 tons were produced in 1984. It is obtained as the "heavy" (i.e., difficult to distill) fraction. Material with a boiling point greater than around 500 °C is considered asphalt. Vacuum distillation separates it from the other components in crude oil (such as naphtha, gasoline and diesel). The resulting material is typically further treated to extract small but valuable amounts of lubricants and to adjust the properties of the material to suit applications. In a de-asphalting unit, the crude bitumen is treated with either propane or butane in a supercritical phase to extract the lighter molecules, which are then separated. Further processing is possible by "blowing" the product: namely reacting it with oxygen. This step makes the product harder and more viscous.

Bitumen is typically stored and transported at temperatures around . Sometimes diesel oil or kerosene are mixed in before shipping to retain liquidity; upon delivery, these lighter materials are separated out of the mixture. This mixture is often called "bitumen feedstock", or BFS. Some dump trucks route the hot engine exhaust through pipes in the dump body to keep the material warm. The backs of tippers carrying asphalt, as well as some handling equipment, are also commonly sprayed with a releasing agent before filling to aid release. Diesel oil is no longer used as a release agent due to environmental concerns.

Oil sands

Naturally occurring crude bitumen impregnated in sedimentary rock is the prime feed stock for petroleum production from "oil sands", currently under development in Alberta, Canada. Canada has most of the world's supply of natural bitumen, covering 140,000 square kilometres (an area larger than England), giving it the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world. The Athabasca oil sands are the largest bitumen deposit in Canada and the only one accessible to surface mining, although recent technological breakthroughs have resulted in deeper deposits becoming producible by in situ methods. Because of oil price increases after 2003, producing bitumen became highly profitable, but as a result of the decline after 2014 it became uneconomic to build new plants again. By 2014, Canadian crude bitumen production averaged about  per day and was projected to rise to  per day by 2020. The total amount of crude bitumen in Alberta that could be extracted is estimated to be about , which at a rate of  would last about 200 years.

Alternatives and bioasphalt

Although uncompetitive economically, bitumen can be made from nonpetroleum-based renewable resources such as sugar, molasses and rice, corn and potato starches. Bitumen can also be made from waste material by fractional distillation of used motor oil, which is sometimes otherwise disposed of by burning or dumping into landfills. Use of motor oil may cause premature cracking in colder climates, resulting in roads that need to be repaved more frequently.

Nonpetroleum-based asphalt binders can be made light-colored. Lighter-colored roads absorb less heat from solar radiation, reducing their contribution to the urban heat island effect. Parking lots that use bitumen alternatives are called green parking lots.

Albanian deposits
Selenizza is a naturally occurring solid hydrocarbon bitumen found in native deposits in Selenice, in Albania, the only European asphalt mine still in use. The bitumen is found in the form of veins, filling cracks in a more or less horizontal direction. The bitumen content varies from 83% to 92% (soluble in carbon disulphide), with a penetration value near to zero and a softening point (ring and ball) around 120 °C. The insoluble matter, consisting mainly of silica ore, ranges from 8% to 17%.

Albanian bitumen extraction has a long history and was practiced in an organized way by the Romans. After centuries of silence, the first mentions of Albanian bitumen appeared only in 1868, when the Frenchman Coquand published the first geological description of the deposits of Albanian bitumen. In 1875, the exploitation rights were granted to the Ottoman government and in 1912, they were transferred to the Italian company Simsa. Since 1945, the mine was exploited by the Albanian government and from 2001 to date, the management passed to a French company, which organized the mining process for the manufacture of the natural bitumen on an industrial scale.

Today the mine is predominantly exploited in an open pit quarry but several of the many underground mines (deep and extending over several km) still remain viable. Selenizza is produced primarily in granular form, after melting the bitumen pieces selected in the mine.

Selenizza is mainly used as an additive in the road construction sector. It is mixed with traditional bitumen to improve both the viscoelastic properties and the resistance to ageing. It may be blended with the hot bitumen in tanks, but its granular form allows it to be fed in the mixer or in the recycling ring of normal asphalt plants. Other typical applications include the production of mastic asphalts for sidewalks, bridges, car-parks and urban roads as well as drilling fluid additives for the oil and gas industry. Selenizza is available in powder or in granular material of various particle sizes and is packaged in sacks or in thermal fusible polyethylene bags.

A life-cycle assessment study of the natural selenizza compared with petroleum bitumen has shown that the environmental impact of the selenizza is about half the impact of the road asphalt produced in oil refineries in terms of carbon dioxide emission.

Recycling
Bitumen is a commonly recycled material in the construction industry. The two most common recycled materials that contain bitumen are reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) and reclaimed asphalt shingles (RAS). RAP is recycled at a greater rate than any other material in the United States, and typically contains approximately 5–6% bitumen binder. Asphalt shingles typically contain 20–40% bitumen binder.

Bitumen naturally becomes stiffer over time due to oxidation, evaporation, exudation, and physical hardening. For this reason, recycled asphalt is typically combined with virgin asphalt, softening agents, and/or rejuvenating additives to restore its physical and chemical properties.

For information on the processing and performance of RAP and RAS, see Asphalt Concrete.

For information on the different types of RAS and associated health and safety concerns, see Asphalt Shingles.

For information on in-place recycling methods used to restore pavements and roadways, see Road Surface.

Economics
Although bitumen typically makes up only 4 to 5 percent (by weight) of the pavement mixture, as the pavement's binder, it is also the most expensive part of the cost of the road-paving material.

During bitumen's early use in modern paving, oil refiners gave it away. However, bitumen is a highly traded commodity today. Its prices increased substantially in the early 21st Century. A U.S. government report states:
"In 2002, asphalt sold for approximately $160 per ton. By the end of 2006, the cost had doubled to approximately $320 per ton, and then it almost doubled again in 2012 to approximately $610 per ton."

The report indicates that an "average" 1-mile (1.6-kilometer)-long, four-lane highway would include "300 tons of asphalt," which, "in 2002 would have cost around $48,000. By 2006 this would have increased to $96,000 and by 2012 to $183,000... an increase of about $135,000 for every mile of highway in just 10 years."

Health and safety

People can be exposed to bitumen in the workplace by breathing in fumes or skin absorption. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit of 5 mg/m3 over a 15-minute period.

Bitumen is basically an inert material that must be heated or diluted to a point where it becomes workable for the production of materials for paving, roofing, and other applications. In examining the potential health hazards associated with bitumen, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) determined that it is the application parameters, predominantly temperature, that affect occupational exposure and the potential bioavailable carcinogenic hazard/risk of the bitumen emissions. In particular, temperatures greater than 199 °C (390 °F), were shown to produce a greater exposure risk than when bitumen was heated to lower temperatures, such as those typically used in asphalt pavement mix production and placement. IARC has classified paving asphalt fumes as a Class 2B possible carcinogen, indicating inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity in humans.

In 2020, scientists reported that bitumen currently is a significant and largely overlooked source of air pollution in urban areas, especially during hot and sunny periods.

A bitumen-like substance found in the Himalayas and known as shilajit is sometimes used as an Ayurveda medicine, but is not in fact a tar, resin or bitumen.

See also

 Asphalt plant
 Asphaltene
 Bioasphalt
 Bitumen-based fuel
 Bituminous rocks
 Blacktop
 Cariphalte
 Duxit
 Macadam
 Oil sands
 Pitch drop experiment
 Pitch (resin)
 Road surface
 Tar
 Tarmac
 Sealcoat
 Stamped asphalt

Notes

References

Sources
 Barth, Edwin J. (1962), Asphalt: Science and Technology, Gordon and Breach. .

External links

 Pavement Interactive – Asphalt
 CSU Sacramento, The World Famous Asphalt Museum!
 National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health – Asphalt Fumes
Scientific American, "Asphalt", 20-Aug-1881, pp. 121

Amorphous solids
Building materials
Chemical mixtures
IARC Group 2B carcinogens
Pavements
Petroleum products
Road construction materials

Bitumen


Deer Lodge is a city in Montana in the United States. It is the county seat of Powell County. About 3,100 people lived there in 2010.

Deer Lodge is home to the Montana State Prison. Grant–Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site is also nearby.

Cities in Montana
County seats in Montana

Deer Lodge, Montana


Numerous religious traditions have taken a stance on abortion but few are absolute. These stances span a broad spectrum, based on numerous teachings, deities, or religious print, and some of those views are highlighted below.

Bahá'í Faith
Abortion, merely for the purpose of eliminating an unwanted child, is strongly deprecated in the Bahá'í Faith, though medical reasons may warrant it. Among the possible reasons for terminating a pregnancy are rape, incest, lack of viability of the fetus, and health of the mother. Though Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, considered the intentional termination of a pregnancy as the ending of a life, there are no specific teachings in the Bahá'í sacred texts addressing it; the Universal House of Justice has thus concluded that it is not quite the same as murder and therefore within the purview of the Universal House of Justice to legislate on it, at a future date, if it so decides.   At present, Bahá'ís are encouraged to decide based on their own conscience in light of general guidance found in Bahá'í writings and medical advice.

Buddhism

There is no single Buddhist view concerning abortion. Some traditional sources, including some Buddhist monastic codes, hold that life begins at conception, and that abortion, which would then involve the deliberate destruction of life, should be rejected. Complicating the issue is the Buddhist belief that "life is a continuum with no discernible starting point". Among Buddhists, there is no official or preferred viewpoint regarding abortion.

The Dalai Lama has said that abortion is "negative", but there are exceptions. He said, "I think abortion should be approved or disapproved according to each circumstance."

Inducing or otherwise causing an abortion is regarded as a serious matter in the monastic rules followed by both Theravada and Vajrayana monks; monks and nuns must be expelled for assisting a woman in procuring an abortion. Traditional sources do not recognize a distinction between early- and late-term abortion, but in Sri Lanka and Thailand the "moral stigma" associated with an abortion grows with the development of the foetus. While traditional sources do not seem to be aware of the possibility of abortion as relevant to the health of the mother, modern Buddhist teachers from many traditions – and abortion laws in many Buddhist countries – recognize a threat to the life or physical health of the mother as an acceptable justification for abortion as a practical matter, though it may still be seen as a deed with negative moral or karmic consequences.

Christianity

There is scholarly disagreement on how early Christians felt about abortion, and whether explicit prohibitions of abortion exist in either the Old Testament or New Testament books of the Christian Bible. Some scholars have concluded that early Christians took a nuanced stance on what is now called abortion, and that at different times, and in separate places, early Christians have taken different stances. Other scholars have concluded that early Christians considered abortion a sin at all stages; although there is disagreement over their thoughts on what type of sin it was, and how grave a sin it was held to be, it was seen as at least as grave as sexual immorality. Some early Christians believed that the embryo did not have a soul from conception, and consequently, opinion was divided as to whether or not early abortion was murder or ethically equivalent to murder.

Early church councils punished women for abortions that were combined with other sexual crimes, as well as makers of abortifacient drugs, but, like some early Church Fathers such as Basil of Caesarea, did not make distinction between "formed" and "unformed" foetuses. While Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor held that human life already began at conception, Augustine of Hippo affirmed Aristotle's concepts of ensoulment occurring some time after conception, after which point abortion was to be considered homicide, while still maintaining the condemnation of abortion at any time from conception onward. Aquinas reiterated Aristotle's views of successive souls: vegetative, animal, and rational. This would be the Catholic Church's position until 1869, when the limitation of automatic excommunication to abortion of a formed foetus was removed, a change that has been interpreted as an implicit declaration that conception was the moment of ensoulment. Most early penitentials imposed equal penances for abortion whether early-term or late-term, but later penitentials in the Middle Ages normally distinguished between the two, imposing heavier penances for late-term abortions and a less severe penance was imposed for the sin of abortion "before [the foetus] has life".

Contemporary Christian denominations have nuanced positions, thoughts, and teachings about abortion, especially in extenuating circumstances. The Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and most evangelical Protestants oppose deliberate abortion as immoral, while allowing what is sometimes called indirect abortion, namely, an action that does not seek the death of the foetus as an end or a means, but that is followed by the death as a side effect. Some mainline Protestant denominations such as the Methodist Church, Episcopal Church (United States), United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church (USA), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, among others, are more permissive of abortion. More generally, some Christian denominations can be considered anti-abortion, while others may favor abortion rights. Additionally, there are sizable minorities in some denominations that disagree with their denomination's stance on abortion.

Hinduism

Most classical Hindu texts strongly condemn abortion, although the Sushruta Samhita recommends it if the fetus is defective. The British Broadcasting Corporation writes, "When considering abortion, the Hindu way is to choose the action that will do least harm to all involved: the mother and father, the foetus and society." The BBC goes on to state, "In practice, however, abortion is practiced in India, because the religious ban on abortion is sometimes overruled by the cultural preference for sons. This can lead to abortion to prevent the birth of girl babies, which is called 'female foeticide'." Hindu scholars and women's rights advocates have supported bans on sex-selective abortions. Some Hindus support abortion in cases where the mother's life is at imminent risk or when the foetus has a life-threatening developmental anomaly.

Some Hindu theologians and Brahma Kumaris believe personhood begins at three months and develops through to five months of gestation, possibly implying permitting abortion up to the third month and considering any abortion past the third month to be destruction of the soul's current incarnate body.

Islam

The Quran and Hadith describe God's creation of man in the womb and condemn infanticide. A verse in the Quran refers to pregnant women who abort their pregnancies upon the day of judgment. Each of the four Sunni Islam schools of thought—Hanafi, Shafi'i, Hanbali and Maliki— have their own reservations on if and when abortions are permissible in Islam. The Maliki madhhab holds "that the fetus is ensouled at the moment of conception" and thus "most Malikis do not permit abortion at any point, seeing God's hand as actively forming the fetus at every stage of development." On the other hand, some Hanafi scholars believe that abortion before the hundred twenty day period is over is permitted, though some Hanafi scholars teach that an abortion within 120 days is makruh (disapproved, i.e. discouraged). The other Islamic schools of thought agree abortion is recommended when the mother's life is in danger,  because the mother's life is paramount.

Muslim scholars differ as to when fetus is given a soul: some say 40 days after conception, while others say 120 days. Nevertheless Muslim scholars also assert an embryo's right to be respected starting at conception, even if it is not yet regarded as human life. Before 120 days some scholars permit abortion in cases of "great" fetal deformity. Mauritania prohibits abortion under any circumstance. In Shia Islam, abortion is "forbidden after implantation of the fertilised ovum." The leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolution,  Ayatollah Khomeini declared that  shari'a forbids  abortion
without any reason "even at the earliest possible stage". Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei permitted abortion at 10 weeks in cases of thalassemia. Abortion before 120 days was allowed in cases of rape during the Bosnian war.

After 120 days the fetus is believed to be human life, yet it is still permissible to abort it to save the life of the mother. This is because a fetus will die anyway if the mother dies, and the mother is part of a family and she has responsibilities.

Judaism

Orthodox Jewish teaching allows abortion if necessary to safeguard the life of the pregnant woman. While the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative movements openly advocate for the right to a safe and accessible abortion, the Orthodox movement is less unified on the issue. Many Orthodox Jews oppose abortion, except when it is necessary to save a woman's life (or, according to some, the woman's health).

In Judaism, views on abortion draw primarily upon the legal and ethical teachings of the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the case-by-case decisions of responsa, and other rabbinic literature. Generally speaking, Orthodox Jews oppose abortion after the 40th day, with health-related exceptions, and reform Jews tend to allow greater latitude for abortion. There are rulings that often appear conflicting on the matter. The Talmud states that a foetus is not legally a person until it is delivered. The Torah contains the law that, "When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman, and a miscarriage results, but no other misfortune, the one responsible shall be fined...but if other misfortune ensues, the penalty shall be life (nefesh) for life (nefesh)." (). That is, causing a woman to miscarry is a crime, but not a capital crime, because the fetus is not considered a person.

Jeremiah 1:5 states that, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." For some, this verse, while talking specifically about Jeremiah, is an indication that God is aware of the identity of "developing unborn human beings even before they enter the womb", or that for everyone, God has a plan that abortion might be seen as frustrating. Others say that this interpretation is incorrect, and that the verse is not related to personhood or abortion, as Jeremiah is asserting his prophetic status as distinct and special.

The Hebrew Bible has a few references to abortion; Exodus 21:22-25 addresses miscarriage by way of another's actions, which it describes as a non-capital offense punishable through a fine. The Book of Numbers in the Hebrew Bible describes the Ordeal of the bitter water (sotah) to be administered by a priest to a wife whose husband thinks she was unfaithful. Some scholars interpret the text as involving an abortifacient potion or otherwise that induces a miscarriage if the woman is pregnant with another man's child. Rabbinical scholar Arnold Ehrlich interprets the ordeal such that it ends either harmlessly if the woman is faithful, or with an induced abortion: "the embryo falls".

Sikhism
The Sikh Sikh Rehat Maryada (code of conduct) does not deal directly with abortion.  However, it does explicitly prohibit the practice of 'kuri-mar', a Punjabi term which literally means "girl killing" but also encompasses female foeticide.

The Guru Granth Sahib (primary scripture and source of Sikh religious guidance for Sikhs), does not provide any specific dictate on abortion. Many Sikhs will therefore interpret certain parts of texts and make a personal decision when confronted with a clearly abnormal fetus.

However, while there is no explicit prohibition in the Guru Granth Sahib or the Sikh Rehat Maryada, abortion is generally viewed by some Sikhs as forbidden because it is said to interfere with the creative work of God. Despite this theoretical viewpoint, abortion is not uncommon among the Sikh community in India, and there is growing concern that female foetuses are being aborted because of the cultural preference for sons.

Unitarian Universalism
The Unitarian Universalist Church strongly supports abortion rights. In 1978, the Unitarian Universalist Association passed a resolution that declared, "...[the] right to choice on contraception and abortion are important aspects of the right of privacy, respect for human life, and freedom of conscience of women and their families". The Association had released earlier statements in 1963 and 1968 favoring the reform of restrictive abortion laws.

Wicca
Although views differ, most Wiccans consider abortion to be a spiritual decision that should be free from interference by the state or politicians.

See also
 Abortion debate
 Abortion law
 Religious views on birth control
 Separation of church and state

References

Abortion
Abortion
Abortion

Religion and abortion


Officer Creek is a watercourse in the north-west of South Australia, on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands. It is normally mostly dry except for periods of very high rainfall. It runs from the Musgrave Ranges southward into the Great Victoria Desert. The only major community on Officer Creek is Kaltjiti.

The land around Officer Creek is part of the traditional homeland of the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara. In September 1873, the explorer Ernest Giles and his team came to the creek during his second trip into the centre of Australia. At Kaltjiti, they encountered a large group of Aboriginal men. The Europeans fired shots from their rifles, allegedly because the Aboriginal people were throwing spears at them. Giles' group escaped unharmed, but did not report whether any of the Aboriginal men were hurt. He later acknowledged that aggression from the locals toward White people was usually due to them trespassing on sacred land. Giles may have interrupted an initiation or another kind of ceremony. Giles named the river "The Officer", and it was known by this name until the 1930s when it was renamed Officer Creek.

Other websites
Officer Creek on Bonzle, Digital Atlas of Australia

Rivers of South Australia

Officer Creek


Damien Escobar (born 1986), also known as Dame Esco, is an American violinist. He was previously in the duo Nuttin' But Stringz with his brother Tourie, but has been a solo artist since 2012. His "crossover violin" musical style consists of a mix of classical, jazz, pop, R&B, and hip hop.

Early life and education
Escobar was born in 1986 in the Jamaica, Queens neighborhood in New York City. He lived with his single mother and older brother Tourie. He began playing the violin at the age of eight. At the age of ten, Escobar became the youngest student accepted into the Juilliard School of Music. He graduated from Juilliard at 13. He also studied at the Bloomingdale School of Music.

Career
As kids, Damien and Tourie worked as street musicians, playing at Grand Central Station and on the New York City subways. In 2003, they began playing professionally under the name Nuttin' But Stringz. In 2005, Nuttin' But Stringz won a talent contest at the Apollo Theater. In 2006, Escobar appeared in the film Step Up. Nuttin' But Stringz took third place in the 2008 season of America's Got Talent. They performed at the First inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009 and won two Emmys. In 2012, Nuttin' But Stringz separated. Escobar returned to school and got his real estate license.

After a short career as a real estate broker, Escobar returned to music as a solo act. His first solo performance was on the French TV show Taratata. He also played at the Indy Car 2012 Championship Awards Banquet, Russell Simmon's Hip Hop Inaugural Ball and the 2013 Food & Wine event in New York City. In 2013, Escobar went on the I Am Me tour in order to promote his comeback. He released his first solo album "Sensual Melodies" in 2014.

In 2014, he authored an autobiographical children's book titled "The Sound of Strings." The same year he performed at Oprah's "The Life You Want" weekend tour. Escobar released his first pop single "Freedom" in September 2015, which premiered at #15 on the iTunes chart.

He released his second solo album, Boundless, in 2017, which was nominated for the 49th NAACP Image Awards in 2018 for the Outstanding Jazz Album category. The album includes eleven songs. Then, after a year's break, he released another solo album, Songs from a Breakthrough, followed by 25 Days of Christmas in 2020.

Escobar started the "Life Out Loud" tour in 2022, which he performed across the United States. The theme of the tour was to encourage the audience to live a real life without regrets. As of 2022, he is working on his upcoming album, which he will release in 2023.

Discography

Philanthropy
In 2007, Escobar founded the Violins Against Violence foundation. Escobar also works with the VH1 Save the Music Foundation, UNICEF and Kennedy's Cause, a charity that benefits children with lymphatic malformation. He is also on the Board of Directors for the Jamaica YMCA. In 2013, he hosted an event that raised over $50,000 for the Jamaica YMCA. In 2014, Escobar performed a rendition of We Shall Overcome in honor of Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin and his friend Sean Bell.

References

External links
Official site

Living people
1986 births
Musicians from Jamaica, Queens
American male violinists
Hip hop violinists
America's Got Talent contestants
21st-century American violinists
21st-century American male musicians

Damien Escobar


Japan ( Nippon  or Nihon ; formally   or Nihon-koku, meanin "State o Japan") is a sovereign island naition in Eastren Asie. Locatit in the Paceefic Ocean, it lies off the eastren coast o the Asie Mainland (east o Cheenae, Korea, Roushie) an stretches frae the Sea o Okhotsk in the north tae the East Cheenae Sea an Taiwan in the soothwast.

The kanji that mak up Japan's name mean "sun origin". 日 can be rade as ni an means sun while 本 can be rade as  hon, or pon an means origin. Japan is eften referred tae in the Wast bi the famous epithet "Laund o the Risin Sun" in reference tae its Japanese name.

Japan is a stratovolcanic airchipelago conseestin o aboot 6,852 islands. The fower lairgest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu an Shikoku, which mak up aboot ninety-seiven percent o Japan's laund aurie an eften are referred tae as hame islands. The kintra is dividit intae 47 prefecturs in aicht regions. Hokkaido bein the normaist prefectur an Okinawa bein the soothmaist yin. The population o 127 million is the warld's tent lairgest. Japanese fowk mak up 98.5% o Japan's tot population. Aboot 9.1 million fowk bide in the core ceety o Tokyo, the caipital o Japan.

Airchaeological resairch indicates that Japan wis inhaibitit as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention o Japan is in Cheenese history texts frae the 1st century AD. Influence frae ither regions, mainly Cheenae, follaed bi periods o isolation, pairteecularly frae Wastren Europe, haes chairacterised Japan's history. Frae the 12t yearhunner tae 1868, Japan wis ruled bi successive feudal militar shoguns wha ruled in the name o the Emperor.

Japan entered intae a lang period o isolation in the early 17t century, which wis endit in 1853 when a Unitit States fleet pressured Japan tae open tae the Wast. Efter nearly twa decades o internal conflict an insurrection, the Imperial Coort regained its poleetical pouer in 1868 throu the help o several clans frae Chōshū an Satsuma, an the Empire o Japan wis established. In the late 19t an early 20t centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War an Warld War I alloued Japan tae stend its empire during a period o increasin militarism.

The Seicont Sino-Japanese War in 1937 stendit tae pairt o World War II in 1941, which came tae an end in 1945 follaein the atomic bombins o Hiroshima an Nagasaki an the Japanese surrender. Efter adoptin its revised constitution on the 3rd Mey 1947 durin the occupation bi the SCAP, Japan haes maineened a unitar pairlamentary constitutional monarchy wi an Emperor an an electit legislatur cried the Naitional Diet.

Japan is a member o the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, an the G20 an is seen as a great pouer. The kintra haes the warld's third maist muckle economy bi nominal GDP an the warld's fowert maist muckle economy bi purchasin pouer parity. It is an aa the waarld's fowert maist muckle exporter an fowert maist muckle importer. The kintra benefits frae a heichly skilled wirkforce an is amang the maist heichly eddicatit kintras in the warld, wi ane o the heichest percentages o its ceetizens hauldin a tertiary eddication degree.

Awtho Japan haes offeecially taen back its richt tae declare war, it mainteens a modren militar wi the warld's aicht maist muckle militar budget, uised for sel-defence an peacekeepin roles. Japan is a developit kintra wi a very heich staundart o bidin an Human Development Index. Its population injoys the heichest life expectancy an the third lawest infant mortality rate in the warld.

Public organisations
 Japan Sel-Defence Forces
 Kyoto Varsity
 National Diet Library
 NHK - public TV
 Varsity o Tokyo

Companies
 Capcom
 Hitachi
 Nintendo
 Sega
 Sony

References

East Asie kintras
Member states o the Unitit Naitions
G8 naitions
G20 naitions
Constitutional monarchies
Kintras borderin the Paceefic Ocean
Kintras borderin the Philippine Sea
Island kintras
Leeberal democracies
States an territories established in 660 BC

Japan


The Devil May Cry series is a hack and slash video game series where the player fights demons using both melee weapons and firearms. The video game series has five main games and one reboot game.

For most of the series, the player plays as Dante, a demon-hunter who is half-human and half-demon. The player earns upgrades, learns new moves, and buys items using Red Orbs, a pickup the player gets by exploring the level and killing enemies. The player gets more Red Orbs from enemies by getting a higher Combo Ranking. The player increases their Combo Ranking by killing multiple enemies quickly without getting hurt and by using many different attacks in a short amount of time.

Interestingly enough, the first Devil May Cry game was supposed to be Resident Evil 4. However, the game became so different from earlier Resident Evil games that the development team decided that the game should be a new IP instead of a Resident Evil game. The first Devil May Cry game sold well and got good reviews. Due to the game's popularity, it had several sequels and inspired other hack and slash games like Bayonetta.

Despite the first game getting good reviews, the sequel, Devil May Cry 2, got poor reviews. Nonetheless, since the second game sold well there was enough money to make Devil May Cry 3, which got many good reviews, although it got some criticisms for being such a difficult game. Devil May Cry 4 also got good reviews, and the difficulty was made a little easier so that more people could enjoy it, but it was criticized for reusing levels instead of making more levels. Worried that the game series could lose its appeal to video game players if it did not change the game series much, Capcom hired a British game developer named Ninja Theory to reboot the game series with DmC: Devil May Cry. The game was loosely based on the story of the earlier games, but the game had a much darker tone and Dante's look and personality was changed a lot. While the game got positive reviews from professional critics, it was criticized very heavily by fans of the series, who did not like Dante's new look and personality. Due to harsh criticisms from the fans, Capcom decided to continue the original series by making Devil May Cry 5.

Mass media franchises introduced in 2001

Devil May Cry


Jobst I, Count of Hoya ( – 6 January 1507) was the ruling Count of Upper Hoya from 1466 to 1503 and Count of  Hoya from 1503 until his death.

Life
Jobst was a son of Count John V of Hoya and Elizabeth of Diepholz. Since his father married fairly late, Jobst was not yet old enough to govern the county when he inherited it in 1466.
His uncle Albert Jobst, Bishop of Minden to up the regency.

Jobst had two brothers, Eric and John.  They did not reach adulthood.

During his reign, the branch of the House of Hoya with ruled Lower Hoya died out in the male line.  This led to a dispute between Jobst and the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg about who should inherit.  In 1504, Jobst had to his imperial immediacy and accept the County of Hoya as a fief from the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg.  He had to pay a large sum of money to receive this fief.  This debt burdened the Counts of Hoya for the rest of the 16th century and caused the financial decline of the family.

Marriage and issue
In 1488, Jobst married Ermengarda of Lippe.  They had six children:
 Jobst II (1493–1545), succeeded Jobst I as Count of Hoya
 John VII, (d. 1535), a commander in the Swedish army
 Eric IV, (d. 1547), ruler of Hoya-Stolzenau
 Anna, canoness in Vreden Abbey
 Elisabeth, abbess in Essen Abbey
 Mary, married Jodok of Bronckhorst and Boekelo

References
 Heinrich Gade: Historisch-geographisch-statistische Beschreibung der Grafschaften Hoya und Diepholz, Nienburg, 1901
 Wilhelm Hodenberg (ed.): Hoyer Urkundenbuch, Hannover, 1848–1856
 Bernd Ulrich Hucker: Die Grafen von Hoya, Hoya, 1993
 Museum Nienburg: Die Grafschaften Bruchhausen, Diepholz, Hoya und Wölpe, Nienburg, 2000

Counts of Hoya
1460 births
1507 deaths
15th-century German people

Jobst I, Count of Hoya


Schangnau is a municipality in the administrative district of Emmental in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.

History

Schangnau is first mentioned in 1306 as Schoengowe.

By the 14th century the Ministerialis (unfree knights in the service of a feudal overlord) family of Sumiswald, in service to the Kyburgs, owned most of the village.  Between 1363 and 1389 they sold their land and rights to the local nobleman Jost von Wald.  His descendants sold the village to the city of Bern in 1420.  By the second half of the 15th century both Bern and Lucerne claimed the village as they attempted to expand their borders to the detriment of the other.  In 1470 a border treaty established Bernese ownership over Schangnau.

Originally Schangnau and the nearby village of Marbach, today a part of Escholzmatt-Marbach in the Canton of Lucerne, formed part of the parish of Trub.  In 1524 the two villages broke away from Trub to form the parish of Marbach-Schangnau.  A few years later, in 1528, Bern adopted the new faith of the Protestant Reformation and the village converted.  A Reformed church was built in Schangnau in 1536 and in 1594 it separated from Marbach to form a parish.  The village church was replaced with a new building in 1618.  In the 17th century, as religious tension increased in Switzerland, Schangnau's location on the border with Catholic Lucerne became important.  After the first First War of Villmergen in 1656, Bern made Protestant Schangnau into a market town to offset the nearby Catholic market town of Escholzmatt.

Historically the local economy was based on raising crops on the valley floor, seasonal alpine herding and transporting timber down the Emme River.  The Bubenalp alpine meadow appears in a record in 1281, earlier than the village itself.  By the 15th century, much of the mountain forest had been cleared to provide pastures for cattle.  A small glass factory opened in the village in 1720, but was overshadowed by the larger factory in Entlebuch.  Following the 1798 French invasion, Schangnau became part of the Helvetic Republic district of Oberemmental.  With the collapse of the Republic and the 1803 Act of Mediation it became part of the Signau district, where it remained until the district was dissolved in 2009.

In the 19th century the Wiggen, Eggiswil and Schallenberg Pass roads connected the village with the rest of the country.  The completion of a station on the Bern-Luzern Railroad in 1875 made it even easier to travel.  However, very little industry settled in the municipality and agriculture and the dairy industry provided the majority of jobs.  Even in 2005, over half of all jobs in Schangnau were in agriculture, while only 14% were in industry.  The Kemmeribodenbad Inn at the foot of the Hohgant opened in 1835 and provided the start of a small tourism industry.

Geography

Schangnau has an area of .  As of 2012, a total of  or 53.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while  or 35.8% is forested.   The rest of the municipality is  or 2.1% is settled (buildings or roads),  or 1.1% is either rivers or lakes and  or 8.0% is unproductive land.

During the same year, housing and buildings made up 1.3% and transportation infrastructure made up 0.7%.  A total of 31.0% of the total land area is heavily forested and 4.0% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees.  Of the agricultural land, 26.3% is pasturage and 26.1% is used for alpine pastures.  All the water in the municipality is flowing water.  Of the unproductive areas, 3.7% is unproductive vegetation and 4.3% is too rocky for vegetation.

The municipality has the highest elevation of any in the Emmental.  It is located around the source of the Emme River, which gives the valley (Emmental) its name.  The municipality includes the village of Schangnau (at ) and the hamlet of Wald as well as individual houses in the valley.

On 31 December 2009 Amtsbezirk Signau, the municipality's former district, was dissolved.  On the following day, 1 January 2010, it joined the newly created Verwaltungskreis Emmental.

Coat of arms
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules a Bar wavy Argent overall a Fir Tree Vert trunked and eradicated Or surrounded in chief with three Mullets of the last.

Demographics
Schangnau has a population () of .  , 2.5% of the population are resident foreign nationals.  Between the last 2 years (2010-2012) the population changed at a rate of -2.2%.  Migration accounted for -0.5%, while births and deaths accounted for -1.0%.

Most of the population () speaks German (897 or 98.6%) as their first language, Serbo-Croatian is the second most common (10 or 1.1%) and French is the third (1 or 0.1%).

, the population was 50.3% male and 49.7% female.  The population was made up of 451 Swiss men (48.9% of the population) and 13 (1.4%) non-Swiss men.  There were 450 Swiss women (48.8%) and 9 (1.0%) non-Swiss women.  Of the population in the municipality, 586 or about 64.4% were born in Schangnau and lived there in 2000.  There were 202 or 22.2% who were born in the same canton, while 72 or 7.9% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 26 or 2.9% were born outside of Switzerland.

, children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 22.8% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 60.0% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 17.2%.

, there were 396 people who were single and never married in the municipality.  There were 440 married individuals, 60 widows or widowers and 14 individuals who are divorced.

, there were 90 households that consist of only one person and 41 households with five or more people.  , a total of 307 apartments (79.3% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 58 apartments (15.0%) were seasonally occupied and 22 apartments (5.7%) were empty.  The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 0.7%.  In 2011, single family homes made up 21.8% of the total housing in the municipality.

The historical population is given in the following chart:

Economy

, Schangnau had an unemployment rate of 0.7%.  , there were a total of 522 people employed in the municipality.  Of these, there were 258 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 85 businesses involved in this sector.  100 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 28 businesses in this sector.  165 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 38 businesses in this sector.  There were 472 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 37.1% of the workforce.

 there were a total of 338 full-time equivalent jobs.  The number of jobs in the primary sector was 174, of which 173 were in agriculture and 1 was in forestry or lumber production.  The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 60 of which 34 or (56.7%) were in manufacturing and 26 (43.3%) were in construction.  The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 104.  In the tertiary sector; 40 or 38.5% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 22 or 21.2% were in the movement and storage of goods, 30 or 28.8% were in a hotel or restaurant and 7 or 6.7% were in education.

, there were 49 workers who commuted into the municipality and 120 workers who commuted away.  The municipality is a net exporter of workers, with about 2.4 workers leaving the municipality for every one entering.  A total of 352 workers (87.8% of the 401 total workers in the municipality) both lived and worked in Schangnau.  Of the working population, 7.6% used public transportation to get to work, and 39.4% used a private car.

In 2012 the average local and cantonal tax rate on a married resident, with two children, of Schangnau making 150,000 CHF was 13%, while an unmarried resident's rate was 19.5%.  For comparison, the average rate for the entire canton in 2011, was 14.2% and 22.0%, while the nationwide average was 12.3% and 21.1% respectively.

In 2009 there were a total of 336 tax payers in the municipality.  Of that total, 45 made over 75,000 CHF per year.  There were 2 people who made between 15,000 and 20,000 per year.  The greatest number of workers, 94, made between 50,000 and 75,000 CHF per year.  The average income of the over 75,000 CHF group in Schangnau was 98,409 CHF, while the average across all of Switzerland was 130,478 CHF.

In 2011 a total of 1.5% of the population received direct financial assistance from the government.

Heritage sites of national significance

The Krämer House is listed as a Swiss heritage site of national significance.

Politics
In the 2011 federal election the most popular party was the Swiss People's Party (SVP) which received 74.6% of the vote.  The next three most popular parties were the Conservative Democratic Party (BDP) (13.4%), the Social Democratic Party (SP) (2.8%) and the Green Party (2.8%).  In the federal election, a total of 457 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 59.6%.

Religion

From the , 814 or 89.5% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church, while 34 or 3.7% were Roman Catholic.  Of the rest of the population, there were 19 members of an Orthodox church (or about 2.09% of the population), and there were 6 individuals (or about 0.66% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church.  There was 1 person who was Hindu.  15 (or about 1.65% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 21 individuals (or about 2.31% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Schangnau about 52% of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 7.6% have completed additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule).  Of the 41 who had completed some form of tertiary schooling listed in the census, 75.6% were Swiss men, 22.0% were Swiss women.

The Canton of Bern school system provides one year of non-obligatory Kindergarten, followed by six years of Primary school.  This is followed by three years of obligatory lower Secondary school where the students are separated according to ability and aptitude.  Following the lower Secondary students may attend additional schooling or they may enter an apprenticeship.

During the 2012-13 school year, there were a total of 114 students attending classes in Schangnau.  There were a total of 25 students in the German language kindergarten classes in the municipality.  The municipality's primary school had 60 students in German language classes.  Of the primary students, 3.3% were permanent or temporary residents of Switzerland (not citizens) and 5.0% have a different mother language than the classroom language.  During the same year, the lower secondary school had a total of 29 students.  There were 3.4% who were permanent or temporary residents of Switzerland (not citizens) and 3.4% have a different mother language than the classroom language.

, there were a total of 161 students attending any school in the municipality.  Of those, 145 both lived and attended school in the municipality, while 16 students came from another municipality.  During the same year, 7 residents attended schools outside the municipality.

References

External links

Municipalities of the canton of Bern
Cultural property of national significance in the canton of Bern

Schangnau


Antony Claud Frederick Lambton (10 July 1922 – 30 December 2006), also known as Lord Lambton, was a British aristocrat who served as a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1951 to 1973. Styled as Viscount Lambton from 1941 to 1970, he became the 6th Earl of Durham in February 1970 but disclaimed the title soon after. As a result of a sex scandal in 1973, he resigned from Parliament and ministerial office. He was a cousin of Alec Douglas-Home, who was Prime Minister for a year from 1963 to 1964.

Early life
Lambton was born in Compton, Sussex, the second son of Diana Mary (née Farquhar) and John Lambton, 5th Earl of Durham. He grew up on the family estates centred around Lambton Castle near Washington in County Durham, actually living at the nearby Biddick Hall. He was educated at Harrow School and served in the Royal Hampshire Regiment during the Second World War, before being invalided out. He then did war work in a Wallsend factory.

Marriage and children
On 10 August 1942, Lambton married Belinda Bridget "Bindy" Blew-Jones (23 December 1921 – 13 February 2003). She was the daughter of Major Douglas Holden Blew-Jones and his wife Violet Hilda Margaret Birkin, sister of Freda Dudley Ward.

They had five daughters and one son:
 Lady Lucinda Lambton (born 10 May 1943)
 Lady Beatrix Mary Lambton (born 23 July 1949)
 Lady Rose Diana Lambton (26 November 1952 - 5 April 2022)
 Lady Anne Mary Gabrielle Lambton (born 4 July 1954)
 Lady Isabella Lambton (born 17 May 1958), married to Sir Philip Naylor-Leyland, 4th Baronet
 Edward Richard Lambton, 7th Earl of Durham (born 19 October 1961)

Political career

Member of Parliament
Lambton first stood for Parliament at the 1945 general election in the safe Labour seat of Chester-le-Street, then Bishop Auckland in 1950. He was elected to Durham City Council and to Durham County Council in 1947, serving for two years. He was elected Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1951, where he served until 1973.

Under-Secretary of State
In 1970, Lambton was made a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (RAF). He succeeded to the Earldom of Durham upon his father's death on 4 February 1970 but disclaimed it on 23 February to continue as an MP and Government Minister. He nonetheless insisted on being addressed as 'Lord Lambton', the form of address appropriate to his former courtesy title. However, a ruling of the Committee for Privileges said that he should not do so in the House of Commons, since he had renounced his peerage titles. Contradictory rulings from two Speakers, Horace King and Selwyn Lloyd, then left the point unresolved.

Resignation
In 1973, Lambton's liaisons with prostitutes were revealed in the Sunday tabloid The News of the World. The husband of one of the prostitutes, Norma Levy, had secretly taken photographs of Lambton in bed with Levy and had attempted to sell the photographs to Fleet Street tabloids. As well, a police search of Lambton's home found a small amount of cannabis. On 22 May, Lambton resigned from both his office and Parliament; this caused a by-election for his seat which was won by Alan Beith for the Liberal Party. Shortly after, the name Jellicoe emerged in connection to a rendezvous for one of Norma's girls at a Somers Town mansion block which had been named Jellicoe House, after the earl's kinsman Basil Jellicoe (1899–1935), the housing reformer and priest from Magdalen College (Oxford). There was a confusion and Lord Jellicoe, the Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords, admitted 'casual affairs' with prostitutes from a Mayfair escort agency but denied knowing Norma Levy.

A security inquiry on the prostitution scandal concluded that there had been "nothing in (Lambton's) conduct to suggest that the risk of indiscretions on these occasions was other than negligible". Lambton stated that he had never taken his red state boxes of government documents with him when he visited Norma Levy. The security inquiry was held due to fears that the prostitution scandal may have involved an actual or potential breach of national security (as had occurred in the Profumo scandal in the 1960s).

When Lambton was interviewed by MI5 officer Charles Elwell, Lambton first claimed that the pressure of his job as a minister was what drove him to procure the prostitutes. Later, Lambton stated that his sense of "the futility of the job" and lack of demanding tasks as a junior minister were reasons he went to prostitutes. Finally, Lambton claimed that his judgment was faulty when he went to the prostitutes due to his obsession with the battle over the use of an aristocratic title that had been used by his father; Lambton claimed that he sought to soothe this obsession by engaging in frantic activities such as gardening and debauchery.

Later years

Following the scandal, Lambton retired, separated from his wife and bought Villa Cetinale, a 17th-century villa in Tuscany, where he lived with Claire Ward (born Claire Leonora Baring), mother of actress Rachel Ward and daughter of the cricketer Giles Baring. He never divorced his wife Bindy, who died in 2003.

In 1991, Lambton made an extended appearance on the TV discussion programme After Dark, chaired by Helena Kennedy, alongside Duncan Campbell, Jane Moore, Clare Short, Anthony Howard and others.

Despite renouncing his peerage titles in 1970, he continued to use his former courtesy title of Viscount Lambton. However, since it was now a title that had passed by courtesy to his only son, it was argued by Sir Anthony Wagner and others that it was incorrect of Lambton to use the title.

On 30 December 2006, Lambton died in hospital in Siena, Italy.

References

External links

1922 births
2006 deaths
British Army personnel of World War II
Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
Councillors in County Durham
Durham, Antony Lambton, 6th Earl of
Antony
People educated at Harrow School
People from Berwick-upon-Tweed
Politics of Northumberland
Royal Hampshire Regiment officers
UK MPs 1951–1955
UK MPs 1955–1959
UK MPs 1959–1964
UK MPs 1964–1966
UK MPs 1966–1970
UK MPs 1970–1974
Durham, E6

Antony Lambton