Joliet ( ) is a city in Will and Kendall counties in the U.S. state of Illinois,  southwest of Chicago. It is the county seat of Will County. At the 2020 census, the city was the third-largest in Illinois, with a population of 150,362.

History
In 1673, Louis Jolliet, along with Father Jacques Marquette, paddled up the Des Plaines River and camped on a huge earthwork mound, a few miles south of present-day Joliet. Maps from Jolliet's exploration of the area showed a large hill or mound down river from Chicago, labeled Mont Joliet. The mound has since been flattened due to mining.

In 1833, following the Black Hawk War, Charles Reed built a cabin along the west side of the Des Plaines River. Across the river in 1834, James B. Campbell, treasurer of the canal commissioners, laid out the village of "Juliet", a corruption of "Joliet" that was also in use at the time. Just before the economic depression of 1837, Juliet incorporated as a village, but to cut tax expenses, Juliet residents soon petitioned the state to rescind that incorporation.

In 1845, local residents changed the community's name from "Juliet" to "Joliet", reflecting the original name. Joliet was reincorporated as a city in 1852. Cornelius Covenhoven Van Horne was active in getting the city its first charter, and because of this, he was elected Joliet's first mayor. When the city later built a new bridge, it was named the Van Horne Bridge.

Geography

According to the 2010 census, Joliet has a total area of , of which  (or 98.95%) are land and  (or 1.05%) is covered by water.  It has a sprawling, irregular shape that extends into nine different townships, more than any other Illinois city. They are: Joliet, Plainfield, Troy, New Lenox, Jackson, Channahon, and Lockport in Will County, and Na-Au-Say and Seward in Kendall County. Joliet developed along the Des Plaines River, and its downtown is located in the river valley.

Joliet has a "west side" and "east side", referring to areas in relation to the river.

With the construction of highways and suburban development to the west, many businesses moved from the downtown area to the expanding areas west of the river. Many stores relocated to the west side in new strip malls and shopping centers with more parking and easier access. These changes resulted in the decline of the downtown shopping district, which is still felt today. Today, Joliet has a "west side" and a "far west side" (which includes all city limits in Kendall County). This has given rise to a newly referenced "Central Joliet" portion of the city, which essentially is all land west of the Des Plaines River and east of Interstate 55. This new reference may soon change the current meaning of "west side" to west of I-55.

Climate
Joliet has a hot summer humid continental climate (Köppen Dfa) with hot, humid summers, and cold winters with moderate to heavy snowfall.

Demographics

2020 census

2010 census
As of the census of 2010, 147,433 people, 48,019 households, and 34,900 families were residing in the city. The population density was . The 51,285 housing units averaged 796 per square mile (307.3/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 67.48% White, 15.98% African American, 0.32% Native American, 1.93% Asian, 11.34% from other races, and 2.95% from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 27.84% of the population.

Of the 48,019 households, 30.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.1% were married couples living together, 14% had a female householder with no husband present, and 27.3% were not families. About 22.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.01, and the average family size was 3.56.

In the city, the population is 30.8% under the age of 18, 9.1% from 18 to 24, 31.6% from 25 to 44, 20.1% from 45 to 64, and 8.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31.7 years. For every 100 females, there were 97.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.8 males.

For 2015, the median income for a household in the city was $60,976, and for a family was $69,386. Full-time, year-round working males had a median income of $51,082 versus $39,235 for females. The per capita income for the city was $24,374. About 10.4% of families and 12.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.2% of those under age 18 and 8.4% of those age 65 or over.

From April 1, 2010, to July 1, 2011, Joliet was the fastest-growing city in the Midwestern United States and the 18th-fastest growing city in the United States among incorporated places with more than 100,000 people.

Religion
According to the official website for the city of Joliet:
 Joliet's diverse faith community represents over 60 denominations and offers residents services at more than 150 churches, synagogues, and houses of worship. Along with their spiritual offerings, these houses of worship enrich the Joliet area by providing some of the area's finest examples of Romanesque, Gothic, Byzantine, and Renaissance architecture. The spiritual community in Joliet welcomes newcomers with open arms, offering regular worship services and religious education.

Joliet holds a very large Catholic population, and many Catholic institutions, including Joliet Catholic Academy.

Economy
Like many Midwestern and East Coast cities dependent on manufacturing industries, Joliet has experienced past economic troubles. , the rate of unemployment in Joliet was around 8.6%. The city is evolving from a steel and manufacturing suburb to a commuter suburb in the Chicago metropolitan area. Some new migrants to the Chicago area are working in bordering Cook County (the nation's second-most populous county) and living in Joliet.

The downtown area of Joliet has slowly attracted new businesses to the area. The main attractions in Joliet's city center are the Harrah's Casino, Joliet Slammers baseball (Duly Health and Care Field), Hollywood Casino, and the Rialto Square Theatre, also known as the 'Jewel of Joliet', and has been called one of the world's 10 most beautiful theaters. The 1999 film Stir of Echoes starring Kevin Bacon had scenes shot on at the Rialto Square Theatre (the hypnotism scenes in which James saw the word "Dig" on the movie screen), at the corner of Scott Street and Washington, and at the old Menards that took over the Wieboldt's building at Jefferson Square Mall.

The Illinois Youth Center Joliet, a juvenile correctional facility of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, opened in April 1959.

Largest employers
According to the city's 2017 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the largest employers in the city are:

Arts and culture

The Rialto Square Theatre, a favorite haunt of Al Capone and filming location for scenes from Kevin Bacon's film Stir of Echoes, is on Chicago Street, downtown. Near the theatre, the Joliet Area Historical Museum commemorates the history of Joliet, especially its heritage as a stopping point on U.S. Route 66.Among local landmarks are the Chicagoland Speedway (NASCAR) and the Route 66 Raceway (NHRA).

The Auditorium Building is located at the northeast corner of Chicago and Clinton Streets. Designed by G. Julian Barnes and built of limestone in 1891, it was controversial as one of the first buildings to combine religious, civic, and commercial uses. Nonetheless, people such Theodore Roosevelt visited and spoke at the building. The building was originally built for the Universalist Unitarian Church of Joliet, but the church sold the building in 1993, and it is no longer home to the congregation.

The Jacob A. Henry Mansion, 20 South Eastern Avenue, is a three-story, red-brick, Second Empire/Italian Renaissance-style structure built on a Joliet limestone foundation in 1873 (completed in 1876). The structure is set on bedrock and the entire basement floor is made of Joliet limestone from the building owner's quarry. The walls of the structure are constructed of red Illinois sandstone and deep red brick specially fired in Ohio (wrapped individually and shipped by barge to Joliet). A commanding three-story tower is the focal point of the structure.  The structure has steel trim with slate shingles on a mansard roof. The front and side porches are single slabs of limestone. The largest stone ever quarried lies in the sidewalk under the front entry gate. The stone is 9×22×20 ft. In 1885, an immense Byzantine dome was added to the south façade.

The interior of the Jacob A. Henry Mansion has elaborate polished-walnut woodwork, massive, carved pocket doors, original wood mantles, and a solid-walnut staircase. The original owner, Mr. Henry, was a railroad magnate, building railroads in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. He had ownership in a local quarry and was a principal stockholder in Will County National Bank.  The mansion won the architecture award at the American Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia in 1876. The structure is a local landmark, part of the East Side National Register District and individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Joliet Prison is located near Joliet's downtown district on Collins Street. The prison has been featured in both television shows and movies. One such television series filmed there was Prison Break. The prison was also used for the opening scenes in the 1980 movie, The Blues Brothers, which starred John Belushi as "Joliet" Jake Blues and Dan Aykroyd as Elwood Blues.

The first Dairy Queen store opened in Joliet. The location is now occupied by Universal Church.

Two casinos originated as riverboat casino in Joliet: the Hollywood Casino near Channahon and a Harrah's hotel and casino downtown. Joliet is the only city in Illinois to have two casinos.

The Louis Joliet Mall is located near the intersection of I-55 and U.S. Route 30.

The former Joliet Arsenal (now the site of both the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery and the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie) is in nearby Elwood.

Sports

Joliet is home to three high schools that bear its name: Joliet Central, Joliet West, and Joliet Catholic Academy (JCA), in addition to the closed Joliet East, each of which has sports programs. JCA has been a major football powerhouse for many years and has won more state football titles than any other team in the state, with 15 as of 2023.

Joliet also is home to a minor-league baseball team, the Joliet Slammers of the independent Frontier League. Since the beginning of the 2011 season, they have played their home games at Duly Health and Care Field.  The Slammers replace the former Joliet JackHammers of the Northern League. The Joliet Slammers won the 2011 Frontier League Championship in their first season as a team.

Chicagoland Speedway hosts annual events from NASCAR. During major races, the large influx of fans means that the number of people in the city is double that of the official figure. Next door to the Speedway, the Route 66 Raceway features National Hot Rod Association events on its drag strip. Joliet Central has become actively involved in Route 66 by building an alternative fuel vehicle. Autobahn Country Club, also located in Joliet, has held the SCCA World Challenge, Atlantic Championship, and Star Mazda Championship races since 2009.

Parks and recreation

Golf courses
Three golf courses are located in the city of Joliet: Inwood Golf Course, Woodruff Golf Course, and Wedgewood Golf Course. Disc golf courses are available at Highland Park and West Park.

Family entertainment

The Pilcher Park Nature Center, located in Pilcher Park, hosts many youth and educational programs. Pilcher Park, one of Joliet's oldest parks, is home to over  of land that provide a habitat for abundant wildlife and outdoor recreation. Pilcher Park also contains Native American Indian remains and was the site of a Potowatami Indian village. A burial mound is just south of the entrance on Gougar Road, on the south side of the bridge, and a marked burial plot is inside the park grounds.

Hammel Woods is also located in Joliet with miles of hiking trails and even a seven-acre dog park.

Louis Joliet Mall located on Route 30 in Joliet hosts a large Cinemark theatre

Bicycle trails
The Rock Run and Joliet Junction Trails are roughly north–south routes that begin at the Theodore Marsh in Crest Hill, Illinois, and have southern termini on the I&M Canal State Trail.  These three paths can be used as a 16-mile loop through western Joliet.  The I and M Canal State Trail stretches about 60 miles to Peru. The Wauponsee Glacial Trail also begins close to town.

Education

As of 2009, almost all public-school students in Joliet attend schools in Joliet Public Schools District 86, Joliet Township High School District 204, Troy Community Consolidated School District 30-C, and Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202.

Colleges and universities
 Joliet Junior College, the nation's first public community college
 University of St. Francis

High schools
School districts serving Joliet include Joliet Township High School District 204, Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202, Oswego Community Unit School District 308, and Minooka Community High School District 111.

Joliet area High Schools include Joliet Catholic Academy, Joliet Central High School, and Joliet West High School.

Elementary and middle schools

Elementary and middle school districts serving Joliet include:
 Joliet Public Schools District 86
 Troy Community Consolidated School District 30-C (Also serves neighboring communities of Plainfield, Illinois and Shorewood, Illinois)
Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202

Career training
Since the early 1980s, the Job Corps of the U.S. Department of Labor has operated the Joliet Job Corps Center on the campus of the former Joliet East High School.

Infrastructure

Transportation

Situated about  southwest of central Chicago, Joliet has long been a significant transportation hub. It lies on both sides of the Des Plaines River, a major waterway in Northern Illinois, and was one of the principal ports on the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The Chicago & Rock Island Railroad and Michigan Central came through in the 1850s, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and Chicago & Alton Railroad soon followed, with the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway and Milwaukee Road lines built around the turn of the century. U.S. Highways 6 (the Grand Army of the Republic Highway), 30 (the Lincoln Highway), 45, 52, and 66 (Route 66) all ran through the city. In the 1960s, Interstate 55 and Interstate 80 made their way through Joliet, linking up near Channahon just west of the city limits. The phrase "Crossroads of Mid-America", found on the Joliet seal, is an allusion to the intersection of I-80 and I-55 (and, historically, the intersection between the Lincoln Highway and Route 66).

Joliet Transportation Center is the final stop on the Metra rail lines from Chicago for the Heritage Corridor route from Chicago Union Station and the Rock Island District route from LaSalle Street Station. A third line, the STAR Line, would have also terminated at the station, but the project was shelved as of 2012. PACE provides local bus service six days a week (no service on Sundays) with buses leaving from a terminal in downtown Joliet once an hour. Amtrak serves Joliet Union Station daily via its Lincoln Service and Texas Eagle routes. Service consists of four Lincoln Service round-trips between Chicago and St. Louis, and one Texas Eagle round-trip between San Antonio and Chicago. Three days a week, the Eagle continues on to Los Angeles.

Airports
The Joliet Regional Airport is located off Jefferson Street near Interstate 55. Lewis University Airport is located to the north in the nearby village of Romeoville and is owned by the Joliet Regional Port District.

Major highways
Major highways in Joliet include:

Interstate Highways
 Interstate 55
 Interstate 80

US Highways
 US 6
 US 30
 US 52
 US 66

Illinois Highways
 Route 7
 Route 53
 Route 59
 Route 171

Hospitals
Joliet currently has one hospital within its city limits: Presence Saint Joseph Medical Center (also known as St. Joe's), located on the west side. Silver Cross Hospital, now located in neighboring New Lenox, was located on Joliet's east side. These were the only two hospitals in the history of the existence of Will County until AMITA Bolingbrook Adventist Hospital opened in January 2008. In September 2008, Silver Cross Hospital broke ground for a new facility on Maple Road (U.S. Route 6) in New Lenox, immediately west of Interstate 355.  All patients were transferred to the new hospital on February 26, 2012, and the old facility was completely vacated and later demolished.

Notable people

In popular culture
The 2019 American drama Working Man, was shot in Joliet. In the 1973 Academy Award-winning film, The Sting, the protagonist Johnny Hooker is from Joliet and the film begins with a title card reading "Joliet, Illinois / September 1936."

In The Blues Brothers, John Belushi's Jake Blues is nicknamed "Joliet Jake" as he was imprisoned at the now closed Joliet Correctional Center. The Joliet Prison has been a site for many other films and television shows, such as the film Let's Go to Prison, and the opening season of Fox's Prison Break was filmed predominately at the Joliet Prison, at which time part of the prison was still in use.

See also

 List of cities in Illinois
 List of Midwestern cities by size
 List of United States cities by population
 List of U.S. states' largest cities by population

References

External links

1834 establishments in Illinois
Cities in Illinois
Cities in Kendall County, Illinois
Cities in Will County, Illinois
County seats in Illinois
Populated places established in 1834
Majority-minority cities and towns in Will County, Illinois
Majority-minority cities and towns in Kendall County, Illinois

Joliet, Illinois


Dellums v. Bush, 752 F. Supp. 1141 (D.D.C. 1990), was a D.C. Federal District Court decision by United States District Judge Harold H. Greene, denying the plaintiffs, members of Congress, a preliminary injunction against President George H.W. Bush to stop implementation of his orders directing the United States military to fight in Iraq without first obtaining a declaration of war from Congress, the only branch Constitutionally mandated to declare war.

Fifty four members of Congress, including U.S. Representative Ron Dellums, sued George H.W. Bush in 1990 attempting to halt a preemptive military buildup in the Middle East in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The plaintiff members of Congress asserted that military action without a declaration of war would be unlawful under U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 11 of the United States Constitution. The District Court held that, although the plaintiff's claims were plausible, because the President had not yet initiated war-like actions and only 54 members of Congress (53 members of the House and one member of the Senate) were involved in the suit, and not a majority, the dispute was not ripe for adjudication at that time. Accordingly, the motion for preliminary injunction was denied.

Dellums is notable in that it is one of only a few cases in which the Federal Courts have considered whether the War Powers Clause of the U.S. Constitution is justiciable in the courts. The Court in Dellums indicated that, in that instance, it was, but because Congress had not yet acted as a majority, the lawsuit was premature.

The reasoning used in Dellums has not escaped criticism by some   authors as an intrusion on executive power.

References

External links

1990 in United States case law
United States District Court for the District of Columbia cases

Dellums v. Bush


Yaakov Amidror (; born 15 May 1948) is a former major general and National Security Advisor of Israel, and was also the head of the Research Department of Israeli military intelligence. Today, he is the Anne and Greg Rosshandler Senior Fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, a conservative security think tank.

Biography

Background
Amidror was born in Yad Eliyahu, Israel, on the day after the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His father, Leo, had enlisted in the British Army during World War II, and spent five years in German captivity after being taken prisoner in Greece. His mother, Tzila, was an Irgun member, active in the organization's finance department, who had been arrested by the British in 1941, and incarcerated at the Bethlehem Women's Prison.

Military career
Amidror was drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces in 1966. He volunteered as a paratrooper in the Paratroopers Brigade. He served as a soldier and a squad leader, and fought in the Gaza Strip during the Six-Day War. He became an infantry officer after completing Officer Candidate School and returned to the Paratroopers Brigade as a platoon leader. Afterwards he transferred to the Military Intelligence Directorate and served in various positions such as a regional brigade Intelligence officer during the War of Attrition, the 162nd Division Intelligence officer during the Yom Kippur War, the Northern Command Intelligence officer, and as the head of the Research Department. Amidror was considered a candidate to lead the Military Intelligence Directorate, but he was passed over after he controversially referred to non-religious Israelis as "Hebrew-speaking gentiles". Instead, he became president of Israel's National Defense College before retiring from his military career in 2002.

Political career
Amidror was selected to draw up the list of candidates for the Religious Zionist The Jewish Home party in the lead-up to the elections for the 18th Knesset. Amidror became enmeshed in internecine fighting within the party, and with competing right-wing factions. He clashed particularly with MK Uri Ariel, calling him a "liar" and a "cheater".

He was appointed to lead Israel's National Security Council in May 2011 and held the position until November 2013.

As Israel's national security advisor, he participated in high-level talks with U.S. officials about the Iranian nuclear program and led efforts to restore relations with Turkey after the Gaza flotilla raid incident.

Amidror is considered a hawk on security matters. He wrote an op-ed in The New York Times opposing the Geneva interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear program. However, he has also warned privately that Israel's settlement policy was isolating it from the international community.

In 2014, Amidror joined the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. In 2017, he became the Anne and Greg Rosshandler Senior Fellow at the  Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies.

In 2016, Amidror chaired an official panel charged with providing recommendations to improve the functioning of Israel's National Security Council and cabinet ministers during wartime.

In June 2020, Amidror cautioned against Netanyahu's plan to annex portions of the West Bank.

References

External links
  Columns written by Yaakov Amidror at Ynet

Israeli generals
1948 births
Living people
University of Haifa alumni
Tel Aviv University alumni

Yaakov Amidror


Voluntary hospitals were created from the eighteenth century in England. In America, Ireland, and Australia, voluntary hospitals were established later.  They can be distinguished from municipal hospitals, which were publicly owned, and private hospitals, which were run commercially.  They were initially financed by public subscription.  A voluntary hospital may also be a charitable hospital.

United Kingdom

By the middle of the 18th century there were five in London: St Barts, Guy's, St Thomas', Westminster and St George's. They provided free medical care to those who could not afford it.  They were "amongst the chief sources of the advancement of medical science".  They were the earliest teaching hospitals.

St Mary's Hospital, London was the last to be founded in England, in 1851.

The 1851 census recorded 7,619 patients in hospital in England and Wales. At that time those who could afford it were generally cared for in their own homes.  In 1901 there were 39,184 hospital patients.  Standards of care, and of nursing in particular had improved as formal training was established and staffing ratios improved.  Nursing was almost entirely by women. Even in 1937 there were less than 100 male nurses employed in the voluntary hospitals. In 1900 there were about 11,000 nurses working in voluntary hospitals, some of whom were sent out to do domiciliary nursing. In 1937 there were more than 33,000, mostly actually in the hospitals. They worked longer hours for less pay than nurses in the municipal hospitals.

After the First World War the hospitals began to admit private paying patients and by 1921, 171 of the provincial hospitals had pay beds.

Public collections, Hospital Saturday Funds and flag days to support the  hospitals continued in the UK until the 1930s.

The voluntary hospitals of Manchester in 1929 were the Royal Infirmary, St Mary's Hospital, the Royal Eye Hospital, the Royal Children's Hospital, Ancoats Hospital, the Northern Hospital for Women and Children, the Ear Hospital, St John's Ear Hospital, the Hospital for Consumption, the Hospital for Diseases of the Skin, the Christie Cancer Pavilion, the Radium Institute, the Jewish Hospital, the Babies' Hospital and the Dental Hospital; the Salford voluntary hospitals were Salford Royal Hospital and Greengate Hospital.

The King's Fund supported the voluntary hospitals in London.

Ten of the largest and most influential former voluntary hospitals in England established the Shelford Group in 2011 to protect their common interests.

Australia
A similar business model applied to all general hospitals in New South Wales up to the 1950s.  Despite the charitable structure, much of the capital and half of the operating losses were being funded by state government by 1913.

Ireland

In Ireland the model is still in use.

References

Voluntary hospital


Andrew Ellis is a London-based football and property entrepreneur. The founder and director of successful commercial and residential estate agency Wilton Estates with successful developments in Zanzibar and Portugal, among others, Andrew currently sits on the board of Glasgow Rangers, is a former Director of QPR and was formerly Chairman of Northampton Town.

Football

In 2001, Ellis, was linked with a £9m takeover of Queens Park Rangers FC. Ellis' father, Peter Ellis, was QPR chairman during the mid-1990s.

2002 saw an Ellis-led consortium pay £500,000 for troubled Northampton Town FC, which was otherwise headed for liquidation. Ellis initially took over as chairman, later bringing brother-in-law David Cardoza in the role.

When Scottish businessman David Murray announced he was planning to sell Rangers F.C. in 2009, Ellis was one of the names linked with a bid. Speculation heightened in March 2010 when Rangers announced they had had discussions with Ellis. In June 2010, it was announced 'advanced talks' were taking place. Ellis joined the board of Rangers following the takeover of the club by Craig Whyte, he is a Director and 29% shareholder in the club.

In January 2012, Andrew Ellis told the BBC how he was "delighted to join the board at Rangers," stating his commitment to: "making sure Rangers remains the number one club in Scotland." When Rangers went into administration in February 2012 with an unpaid tax bill of £9 million, Ellis was the first board member to break ranks in apologising to the club's fans. He said: "I can only say I'm sorry to the Rangers fans. Bringing in Craig Whyte was done in good faith."

References

English businesspeople
Rangers F.C. non-playing staff
Living people
Year of birth uncertain
British estate agents (people)
Year of birth missing (living people)

Andrew Ellis (businessman)


Wrexham city centre is the administrative, cultural and historic city centre of Wrexham, in North Wales and is the area enclosed by the inner ring road of the city. It is the largest shopping area in north and mid Wales, and the administrative centre of Wrexham County Borough. Many of its streets are pedestrianised.

Geography
The area encompassed by the inner ring road is Grosvenor Road, Powell Road, Bodhyfryd, St. Georges Crescent (The Beast Market), Smithfield Road, Eagles Meadow, Salop Road, St Giles Way, Pen-Y-Bryn, Ruthin Road, Bradley Road and Watery Road. It is primarily urban in nature, with the exception of the city centre's largest green space at Belle-Vue Park. The area is predominantly non-residential, notable exceptions being Eagles Meadow and around Parciau.

History

The city centre is Wrexham's medieval core, and as such contains most of its history. The city centre expands outwards from the hill top St. Giles Church, which itself is surrounded by a number of small medieval streets and alleyways.

Areas
Whilst the term 'City Centre' can be used quite liberally in Wrexham, it can be split into a number of smaller distinct areas, which have their own character and purpose within the city. Some of these are officially recognised by Wrexham Council, others are more a description of distinct areas.

The High Street and St. Giles

This is Wrexham's original city centre, beginning at the church of St Giles. This area was once the traditional High Street of the city containing most of its traditional shops and markets. It is now home to most of Wrexham's night-life including clubs, bars and restaurants. During the day the main attractions are the area's cafes and the historic 'Butchers Market' hall situated on High Street. The church of St Giles is one of the Seven Wonders of Wales and often noted as the finest example of Gothic architecture in Wales. It is also home to the tomb of Elihu Yale.

Eagles Meadow

Eagle's Meadow is an open-air shopping centre in the south-east of the city centre. Opened in 2008, the complex is situated between Yorke Street and the inner ring road at Smithfield. The area incorporates a number of new buildings and public spaces, and includes a bridge to Yorke Street and an entrance in the style of the 'Spanish Steps' in Rome. Eagle's Meadow holds many top highstreet chain stores over two levels, alongside an 8-screen cinema and 24-lane 10 pin bowling alley. It occupies the site of a former car-park and Asda superstore.

Civic Centre
Formerly known as the Civic Centre this quarter of the city centre can be thought of as everything north of Holt and Lampbit Street and east of Rhosddu Road. The area is bisected north to south by Chester Street. The area consists almost entirely of public services, arts and media centres. It is home to Wrexham County Borough Council HQ, North Wales Police (Eastern Division) HQ, BBC Wales (Wrexham) Studios, ITV Wales (Wrexham Bureau), Library and Arts Centre, Yale College of Wrexham, Wrexham Waterworld and a number of criminal and civil law courts. The area is also home to Llwyn Isaf, one of the city centre's largest green areas.

Island Green

Formerly an industrial area the location was home to the Island Green Brewery and Wrexham Central railway station. It is now a shopping area, developed in the late 1990s. The old oast houses used in the Brewery are now converted into apartments aside the River Gwenfro, which cuts through the shopping area. During re-development the railway station was moved 500 yards west, and the station now sits inside the shopping area. Trains run from Wrexham Central to local suburban stations, Deeside, the Wirral and Wrexham General for connections onto inter-city services.

Main shopping area
The main arteries of the city centre link all previous areas. Running in an easterly direction from Grosvenor Road, Regent Street and Hope Street are the main shopping streets within the city, terminating at the base of St Giles' Church on High Street. Leading off these streets are a number of other streets, including Queen Street. The majority of this area is pedestrianised, and contains a number of notable landmarks including the thatched 'Horse & Jockey' pub and mock Tudor architecture at Hope St/Queen St.

Queens Square

The square is the focal point in the city centre. It plays host to daily events, Christmas celebrations and weekly markets. The square merges with Llwyn Isaf.

Parciau (Including Pen-y-Bryn)

Parciau is the name given to the southernmost area of the city centre. Much of the area is covered by Belle Vue Park, Wrexham, a substantial Victorian park built to commemorate the Jubilee of Wrexham's charter. The park is known for its bowl, which holds many summer musical events. Bridge Street, Pen-y-Bryn and Ruthin road all come under the Parciau area.

References

Areas of Wrexham
Central business districts in the United Kingdom

Wrexham city centre


Don Quixote is a 1976 sculpture by Aurelio Teno located at the northeast corner of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The sculpture of Don Quixote and his horse Rocinante was a gift from Spain for the United States Bicentennial.

In 1993, the Smithsonian Institution's Save Outdoor Sculpture! program surveyed and assessed the work and found that it needed treatment.

Description

Don Quixote depicts a bronze and stone figure of Don Quixote wearing a full suit of armor riding his horse Rocinante which emerges from a jagged piece of stone. The jagged stone is Colmenar stone from Pamplona.  Only the front portion of Don Quixote and his horse are visible. The horse appears to be charging forward out of the stone with his head raised, mouth open, and hooves kicking. The left foot of the horse is not formed, intentionally, by Teno. In Don Quixote's hand is a  lance of steel. Both figures are loosely modeled and the figures and stone rest on a  oval base measuring  which was cut into three pieces for transport by ship to the United States.

An inscription on the sculpture reads SCULPTOR / A. TENO / MADRID / ESPAÑA – 1976.

Acquisition

King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía presented the sculpture June 3, 1976, on behalf of Spain to the United States in honor of its bicentennial.

About the artist

Spanish artist Aurelio Teno started his professional sculpture career at age eight.  He described Don Quixote as his life's work, having devoted his career to creating art about the subject.

See also
 List of public art in Washington, D.C., Ward 2
 Statues of the Liberators

References

External links
 Don Quixote from dcMemorials.

1976 sculptures
Artworks in the collection of the National Park Service
Bronze sculptures in Washington, D.C.
Equestrian statues in Washington, D.C.
Sculptures of men in Washington, D.C.
Stone sculptures in Washington, D.C.
Works based on Don Quixote
1976 establishments in Washington, D.C.
Statues of fictional characters

Don Quixote (Kennedy Center sculpture)


Digital Trends is a Portland, Oregon-based tech news, lifestyle, and information website that publishes news, reviews, guides, how-to articles, descriptive videos and podcasts about technology and consumer electronics products. With offices in Portland, Oregon, New York City, Chicago and other locations, Digital Trends is operated by Digital Trends Media Group, a media company that also publishes Digital Trends Español, focusing on Spanish speakers worldwide, and a men's lifestyle site The Manual.

The site offers reviews and information on a wide array of products that have been shaped by technology. That includes consumer electronics products such as smartphones, video games and systems, laptops, PCs and peripherals, televisions, home theater systems, digital cameras, video cameras, tablets, and more.

According to third-party web analytics provider SimilarWeb, the site received over 40 million visits per month . From 2014 to 2021, Digital Trends' editorial team was led by Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Kaplan and guided by Co-Founders Ian Bell and Dan Gaul. Kaplan left the site in May of 2021. The website's About Us page lists former Mobile Section Editor Andrew Martonik as "interim editor in chief."

History

Ian Bell and Dan Gaul founded Digital Trends in June 2006 in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

In May 2009, Digital Trends moved its headquarters from Lake Oswego into the US Bancorp Tower in Downtown Portland, Oregon. The company opened a second office in New York City in 2012. Digital Trends is a privately funded and owned corporation. Digital Trends en Español, a Spanish-language version of the site that offers original reporting focusing on the spanish speaking consumers worldwide, was launched in December 2014. Editor-in-Chief Juan Garcia leads an international team, among them Milenka Pena, an Emmy Award nominee and Silver Done Award recipient, who works as the News Editor for the  Spanish site.

Digital Trends saw a surge in popularity in recent years; the site claimed a 100-percent increase in traffic in September 2015, reaching over 24 million unique readers globally and more than 13 million U.S. readers. It currently reaches approximately 30 million readers per month who view over 100 million pages.

In addition to growth, 2015 saw a series of changes for Digital Trends. The site expanded its awards program to include several international trade shows, including Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and IFA in Berlin. It also launched its first car of the year awards and Smart Home awards, underscoring the site's growing investment in these areas. The company also launched DT Design, an in-house creative ad agency, to focus on branded content and high-impact advertising units.

In late summer of 2016,  Re/Code reported on a deal with Conde Nast to acquire Digital Trends for $120 million, noting that the site is expected to generate $30 million in revenue this year and around $6 million in profit. Bell denied that his company was in talks, but acknowledged that the company "is periodically approached by would-be buyers." Digiday wrote about the deal as well, comparing the site's traffic to "such properties as the Purch network, CNET and The Verge, and ahead of USA Today Tech, Yahoo! Tech, and Business Insider's Tech Insider." In 2018, Facebook executive Bob Gruters joined Digital Trends as its CRO. In June 2020, as Digital Trends posted Black Lives Matter support statements, employees observed racial bias at a "Gin and Juice" party in 2018 and harassment at a 2017 holiday party. CEO Ian Bell noted "I'm not a proponent of  cancel culture." In 2020, Gresham, Oregon Mayor Travis Stovall joined Digital Trends' board of directors.

As of 2021, Digital Trends built its advertising business around data, including intent-based audience segmentation. The company partnered with Valnet, the parent of Screen Rant, to pool resources and target larger news audiences.

See also
 List of companies based in Oregon

References

American companies established in 2001
American technology news websites
Computing websites
Companies based in Portland, Oregon
Mass media companies based in New York City
2001 establishments in Oregon
Internet properties established in 2006

Digital Trends


The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States is a treaty. Today, it is part of customary international law. The treaty was signed at Montevideo, Uruguay, on December 26, 1933, at the Seventh International Conference of American States.  At this conference, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull declared the so-called Good Neighbor Policy which opposed U.S. armed intervention in inter-American affairs. Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to reverse the perception of "Yankee imperialism" with this treaty.  The view of Yankee imperialism was brought about by policies instituted (largely) by his predecessor, President Herbert Hoover. The convention was signed by 19 states, three with reservations (Brazil, Peru and the United States).

The convention is about what a state is and what rights and duties a state has.  The most well-known is article 1, which sets out the four criteria for statehood that have sometimes been recognized as an accurate statement of customary international law:

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

In addition, the first sentence of article 3 states explicitly that "The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states." This is known as the declarative theory of statehood.

Some have questioned whether these criteria are enough, as they allow less-recognized entities like the Republic of China (Taiwan) or under- or unrepresented entities like the Principality of Sealand, Somaliland or Liberland to claim full status as states. According to the alternative constitutive theory of statehood, a state exists only insofar as it is recognized by other states. It should not be confused with the Estrada doctrine.

Some people have attempted make the definition of statehood broader, although they have less support. Founders of non-territorial micronations often say that the requirement in the Montevideo Convention of a defined territory is unjust. Some non-territorial entities, notably the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, are considered subjects of international law, but they do not aspire to be states.

Signatories
The states that signed this agreement are: Honduras, United States of America, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Cuba.
The Montevideo Convention only codified existing norms, there is nothing new in the convention. For this reason, it does not only apply to those who signed it, but to all subjects of international law as a whole.

The European Union, in the principal statement of its Badinter Committee, follows the Montevideo Convention in its definition of a state: by having a territory, a population, and a political authority. The committee also found that the existence of states was a question of fact, while the recognition by other states was purely declaratory and not a determinative factor of statehood.

Switzerland, although not a member of the European Union, adheres to the same principle, stating that "neither a political unit needs to be recognized to become a state, nor does a state have the obligation to recognize another one. At the same time, neither recognition is enough to create a state, nor does its absence abolish it."

Related pages
 Sovereignty
 Dollar diplomacy

References

1933 in the United States
International law
Montevideo
1930s treaties

Montevideo Convention


Tour-en-Bessin Airfield is a now-abandoned World War II military airfield near the commune of Tour-en-Bessin in  the Normandy region of northern France.

The United States Army Air Force established a temporary airfield on 12 July 1944, shortly after the Allied landings in France. It was constructed by the IX Engineering Command, 833rd and 846th Engineer Aviation Battalions.

History
Known as Advanced Landing Ground "A-13", the airfield consisted of a main 5000 foot long (1500 m) pierced steel planking (PSP) runway aligned 12/30 and a secondary 5000 foot PSP runway aligned 01/19. Tents were used for billeting and support facilities. An access road was built to the existing road infrastructure, as were a dump for supplies, ammunition, and gasoline drums, along with a potable water and electrical power for communications and station lighting.

The 373rd and 406th Fighter Groups flew P-47 Thunderbolts from Tour en Bessin. The fighters flew support missions during the Allied push into France, patrolling roads, strafing German military vehicles and bombing gun emplacements, anti-aircraft artillery, and concentrations of German troops in Normandy and Brittany. The B-26 Marauder 394th Bombardment Group also was assigned to the airfield.

After US forces moved east into central France with the advancing Allied armies, the airfield was used as a resupply and casualty evacuation airfield for several months, before being closed on 2 December 1944. The land returned to agricultural use.

Major units assigned
 373rd Fighter Group 19 July - 19 August 1944
 410th (R3), 411th (U9), 412th (V5) Fighter Squadrons (P-47)
 406th Fighter Group 30 July - 17 August 1944
 512th (L3), 513th (4P), 514th (O7) Fighter Squadrons (P-47)
 394th Bombardment Group 25 August - 18 September 1944
 584th (K5), 585th (4T), 586th (H9), 587th (SW) Bombardment Squadrons (B-26)

Current use
Today there is little or no physical evidence of the airfield's existence, although the south end of the 01/19 runway is visible by the curvature of some fields, and some slight ground disturbance in a field to the east probably is from the 12/30 runway.

A memorial to the men and units that were stationed at Tour-en-Bessin was placed on the D613 (former N13) between Vaucelles and Tour-en-Bessin.

References

External links

  Monument to Tour-en-Bessin Airfield
 A-13 Memorial

World War II airfields in France
Airfields of the United States Army Air Forces in France
Airports established in 1944

Tour-en-Bessin Airfield


The 1990 German motorcycle Grand Prix was the fifth round of the 1990 Grand Prix motorcycle racing season. It took place on the weekend of 25–27 May 1990 at the Nürburgring race track.

500 cc race report
Though recovering from injury, Wayne Gardner refuses to stay off the bike, and breaks his foot badly in practice. In qualifying, Wayne Rainey falls off and breaks a finger, but makes the start.

Through the first turn it's Kevin Schwantz, Mick Doohan and Pierfrancesco Chili. Rainey is down at 6th.

After a few laps it's Schwantz, Doohan and Chili, then a small gap to Christian Sarron, Sito Pons and Rainey. In a bizarre accident, Doohan and Chili, without touching, have simultaneous highsides. Doohan's crash is messy, his bike riding him off the track.

Schwantz is safely away, and Rainey takes the lead in the new fight for second. Rainey leaves the group, and the fight for third is split three-ways between Mackenzie, Sarron and Pons.

500 cc classification

References

German motorcycle Grand Prix
German
Motorcycle Grand Prix
Sport in Rhineland-Palatinate

1990 German motorcycle Grand Prix


Taiwan Baptist Theological Seminary ( is a private Baptist seminary in Taipei, Taiwan, associated with the Chinese Baptist Convention.

History
The seminary was established in 1952 for the training of national workers. Until recently the seminary had faced problems from the authorities as it was an unrecognized institution and had faced accusations of awarding fraudulent academic degrees in the past. In 2005, the Legislative Yuan passed a resolution to provide for the framework of recognition of religious academic institutions and seminaries allowing the seminary to initiate the procedure of gaining full recognition from the authorities. In 2010, the Ministry of Education accredited the seminary and gave it the ability to grant degrees recognized by the government.

References

External links
Official site

Baptist Christianity in Taiwan
Universities and colleges established in 1952
Baptist seminaries and theological colleges

Taiwan Baptist Theological Seminary


Monte Generoso (also known as Calvagione) is a mountain of the Lugano Prealps, located on the border between Switzerland and Italy and between Lake Lugano and Lake Como. The western and southern flanks of the mountain lie in the Swiss canton of Ticino, whilst the north-eastern flanks are in the Italian region of Lombardy.

The view from the summit of the mountain encompasses the lakes of Lugano, Como, Varese and Maggiore. To the north are the Alps, stretching from the Matterhorn via the Jungfrau and the Saint-Gotthard Massif to the Bernina Range. To the south are the Lombardy Plains and the Po Valley, with the city of Milan and the Apennine Mountains visible on a clear day.

The summit can be approached by the Monte Generoso Railway, a rack railway that starts from Capolago in Switzerland, and climbs via the western flank of the mountain. The summit station includes a panoramic terrace and buffet, a restaurant and a hotel. The new restaurant Fiore di pietra (stone flower) designed by the architect Mario Botta was inaugurated on 29 March 2017. A paved path links the railway's summit station to the summit proper, a distance of approximately  and a difference in altitude of about .

There is road access from Mendrisio in Switzerland to Bellavista, some  from the summit and an intermediate station on the railway. Hiking trails reach the summit from different starting points, including Bellavista, Capolago and Mendrisio.

The Monte Generoso Observatory is located adjacent to the railway's summit station, and is operated by the Monte Generoso Insubrica Astronomy Group. Also nearby is a small chapel dating from the 20th century.

The area is included in the Federal Inventory of Landscapes and Natural Monuments. The mountain slopes are home to a herd of between 300 and 350 chamois.

The artist and author Edward Lear spent summers from 1878 to 1883 on the mountain. His oil painting The Plains of Lombardy from Monte Generoso is in the Ashmolean Museum in the English city of Oxford.

See also
 Monte Generoso railway
List of mountains of Switzerland accessible by public transport

References

External links

 Monte Generoso Railway website
 Monte Generoso on Hikr
 Monte Generoso on Summitpost

Mountains of Lombardy
Mountains of Ticino
Mountains of the Alps
Tourist attractions in Switzerland
Italy–Switzerland border
International mountains of Europe
One-thousanders of Italy
Mountains of Switzerland
One-thousanders of Switzerland
Lugano Prealps

Monte Generoso


Reginald N. Webster (February 7, 1898 – February 8, 1983) was an American businessman and Thoroughbred racehorse owner.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, Reginald Webster's family emigrated to the United States when he was a small boy. Pursuing a career in business, he was president of  precision parts manufacturer Standard-Thomson Corp. of Waltham, Massachusetts. Following the company's 1974 takeover by Allegheny International Inc., he retired.

Thoroughbred horse racing
Reginald Webster became involved in Thoroughbred racing in 1945. In 1947 he hired Lucien Laurin to oversee the conditioning of his horses. With the future Hall of Fame trainer, Webster had his best successes in American racing when in 1966 they won the Belmont Stakes.

Webster also raced horses in England and Ireland. His Irish-bred colt Martial, trained by legendary Irish horseman Paddy Prendergast, won the 1960 2,000 Guineas at England's Newmarket Racecourse making Webster one of only a few Americans to ever win both an American Classic and a British Classic race.

Reginald Webster's notable horses included:
 Quill - filly who was voted the 1958 U.S. Champion 2-year-old Filly and whose wins included the Matron, Acorn and Mother Goose Stakes
 Martial - son of Kentucky Derby winner Hill Gail, he won the  2,000 Guineas, Coventry Stakes
 Traffic - won the 1963 Hopeful Stakes
 National - won the 1964 Ohio Derby, 1965 Roseben Handicap
 Amberoid - won the 1966 Wood Memorial, Belmont Stakes
 Artfully - won the 1976 Maskette Handicap
 Pearl Necklace - won the 1978 New York Handicap and Maskette Handicap

Reginald Webster was a member of The Jockey Club and served as president of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association. He was living in Palm Beach, Florida when he died at age eighty-five of heart failure.

References
 The New York Times obituary for Reginald N. Webster

American manufacturing businesspeople
1898 births
1983 deaths
American racehorse owners and breeders
Irish emigrants to the United States

Reginald N. Webster


Melquicedec Torres (born May 27, 1977 in San Pedro de Macorís, Dominican Republic) is a former professional baseball pitcher. He played one year for the Hyundai Unicorns of the Korea Baseball Organization. He is the younger brother of pitcher Salomón Torres.

Minor league career
Torres was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Seattle Mariners in the . He began his career in American baseball in  with their Rookie League AZL Mariners. He advanced to the Class A (Short Season) Everett AquaSox in  and to the Class A Wisconsin Timber Rattlers in . He began  in Wisconsin, but was later promoted to the Class A-Advanced Lancaster JetHawks and then the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers. He returned to the Mariners' new Class-A Advanced team, the San Bernardino Stampede, . In 2002, Torres pitched in Hyundai Unicorns, Korea.

He signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization in , and was assigned to their Class A-Advanced Lynchburg Hillcats. He was granted free agency following the season. Though he signed a minor league contract with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in , he was released prior to the start of the season. He later signed a minor league contract with the Baltimore Orioles in . That season, he played with their Class-A Advanced Frederick Keys and Double-A Bowie Baysox.

In , Torres played for the Vaqueros Laguna and Piratas de Campeche of the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol. In January , he was signed to a minor league contract by the Milwaukee Brewers organization and was assigned to their Triple-A Nashville Sounds.

References

External links

1977 births
Living people
Arizona League Mariners players
Bowie Baysox players
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in Mexico
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in South Korea
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in the United States
Everett AquaSox players
Frederick Keys players
Huntsville Stars players
Hyundai Unicorns players
KBO League pitchers
Lancaster JetHawks players
Lynchburg Hillcats players
Mexican League baseball pitchers
Nashville Sounds players
Piratas de Campeche players
San Bernardino Stampede players
Tacoma Rainiers players
Vaqueros Laguna players
Wisconsin Timber Rattlers players

Melqui Torres


Lakhon Ki Baat is a 1984 Indian Bollywood film produced and directed by Basu Chatterjee. It stars Sanjeev Kumar, Farooq Shaikh and Anita Raj in pivotal roles. The movie has the Same plot as in The Fortune Cookie (1966).

Cast
 Sanjeev Kumar as Advocate Prem Sagar
 Farooq Shaikh as Alok Prakash
 Anita Raj as Shobha Prakash
 Utpal Dutt as Maganbhai
 Pinchoo Kapoor as Rongta Seth
 Dinesh Hingoo as Advocate Desai
 Anjali Sen as Neela Kaul

Soundtrack
The music of the film was composed by Manas Mukherjee, while lyrics were penned by Yogesh.

"Ek Tum Ho Jaise" - Anuradha Paudwal
"Jeevan Ki Rahon Me" - Alka Yagnik
"Jeevan Ki Rahon Me (Duet)" - Shabbir Kumar, Chandrani Mukherjee
"Reshmi Gul Zara Kijiye" - Anuradha Paudwal
"Lakhon Ki Hai Baat" - Alka Yagnik, Shakti Thakur

Plot
Sports photographer Alok Prakash (Farooq Shaikh) is shooting a female field hockey game when he's hit with a stray ball. Prakash is hospitalized but only suffers from minor injuries, though his enterprising brother-in-law, Prem Sagar (Sanjeev Kumar), sees an opportunity to make some easy money. Sagar, a lawyer, asks Prakash to exaggerate his injury so he can file a lawsuit and they can live off the settlement. Soon, the whole family is involved, and Prakash and Sagar find the ruse hard to keep up.

External links

1980s Hindi-language films
1984 films
Films directed by Basu Chatterjee

Lakhon Ki Baat


How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria? was a British reality television talent show that documented the search for an undiscovered musical theatre performer to play the role of Maria von Trapp in the 2006 Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Ian stage production of The Sound of Music.

The series was originally devised by the then in-house development team at BBC Entertainment Events and was announced by the BBC in April 2006. BBC One broadcast the programme, which was hosted by Graham Norton, on Saturday evenings from 29 July through 16 September 2006.

The title derives from the refrain of "Maria", a song from the first act of The Sound of Music.

Connie Fisher won the final public vote, and with it a six-month contract to play Maria in the West End production.

Format

Creation
The lead role of Maria von Trapp in the new West End production of The Sound of Music, to be staged by Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Ian, was to be played by American actress Scarlett Johansson. Negotiations fell through, and after a four-year search for an actress to fill the role, it was revealed in November 2005 that Lloyd Webber had approached the BBC to allow the public to cast the role through a Popstars-style talent search, the first time that such a format had been used.

This was the first programme to allow the public to cast a leading role in a West End show, and it was initially criticised. However, it won International Emmy and Royal Television Society awards and became the first of a series of collaborations between the BBC and Lloyd Webber, including Any Dream Will Do, I'd Do Anything, and Over the Rainbow. The series also led to versions and similar series abroad.

Expert panel

To assess and train the potential Marias and judge them during the live shows, an expert panel was chosen. The panel comprised:
Andrew Lloyd Webber – musical theatre composer and producer, co-producer of the new stage production
David Ian – theatre producer, co-producer of the new stage production
John Barrowman – musical performer, dancer, singer and actor
Zoe Tyler – voice coach, singer and performer, vocal coach to the finalists

Lloyd Webber also asked Denise van Outen to participate in the series, but she turned him down, saying that she "felt uncomfortable about being on the panel and giving my criticism". She later became a judge on follow-up series, Any Dream Will Do.

Auditions
Open auditions were held around the UK in April and May 2006, open to both professionals and amateurs over the age of 17. The top 200 made it through to the London callbacks where they performed for Ian, Barrowman and Tyler to secure one of 50 places at Lloyd Webber's "Maria School", where over four days they would receive vocal and drama training from the expert panel.

Several additional performers were selected over this fifty contestant limit; one being Briony, who had been rejected initially due to nerves hampering her performance, but who returned for a second chance and was allowed in by Ian. A further four, whom the panel had rejected, were contacted by Lloyd Webber himself as he personally believed them to be potential Marias.

During "Maria School", contestants were eliminated to leave twenty, who were then taken to Lloyd Webber's house, where they performed for fifty people from the entertainment business. Ten finalists were then chosen by the panel and taken through to the live studio finals.

The series started on Saturday 29 July 2006, and the first two programmes followed the audition stages of the competition before revealing the final ten at the end of the second programme.

Live finals
The final ten contestants then competed in the live studio finals held on Saturday nights over six weeks. Each week the contestants sang and performed during the live show, receiving comments from the judges following their performance. The public then got a chance to vote for their favourite Maria, and the two contestants with the fewest votes performed a sing-off in front of Lloyd Webber, who then decided which Maria to keep in the contest. This was repeated with the top ten, the top nine and the top eight. With the top seven and top five, two were voted off in the program, and there were two different sing-offs.

Lloyd Webber had no say in the final casting decision, when in the concluding edition of the series it was left to the public to choose who should play Maria out of the final two contenders, Connie Fisher and Helena Blackman. After more than 2 million votes were cast, the winning entrant was revealed as Fisher, who won a six-month contract to play Maria in the West End production, performing six out of the eight weekly shows.

The profits from the telephone votes went to a bursary for young performers. Lloyd Webber also donated his fee to the bursary.

Finalists
Ten potential Marias were selected as finalists who would appear on the live shows. Abi Finley and Aoife Mulholland auditioned together having known each other from college, and both made it to the finals. One of the original 10 finalists, Emilie Alford, withdrew from the competition after deciding it was not for her. She was replaced by Siobhan Dillon, who lost a place in the final ten following a sing-off against Alford and Laura Sicurello in front of Lloyd Webber. This earned her the nickname "Second Chance Maria".

*As of start of series

Results summary
Colour key

Live shows
The live shows saw the finalists eliminated one by one following both individual and group performances. Once eliminated, the leaving contestant ended the programme by leading a performance of "So Long, Farewell" from The Sound of Music with the remaining contestants.

Week 1
Following the first week of competition. The show performances were:

Group performances:
"How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" (from The Sound of Music)
"I Have Confidence" (from The Sound of Music)

Guest performance: "Iris"  (Ronan Keating)
Panel's verdict on who was Maria
John Barrowman: Connie
Zoe Tyler: Leanne
David Ian: Connie

Sing-Off

Notes
It was revealed during the results show that Connie received the highest number of votes

Week 2
As the mission for this week, the potential Marias performed a scene from the musical with an actor as Captain Von Trapp.

The show performances were:

Group performances:
"My Favorite Things" (from The Sound of Music)
"Don't Rain on My Parade" (Barbra Streisand from Funny Girl)

Guest performance: "You Can't Stop a River"  (Duncan James)

Sing-Off

Week 3
During the week, David Ian talked to the girls about fitness and stamina, and Claire Sweeney advised the singers on looking after themselves and their voices. The mission was a fitness test, with Olympic athlete Iwan Thomas, requiring the Marias to complete an assault course. The Marias also attended the première of the film You, Me and Dupree in Leicester Square.

The show performances were:

Group performances:
"The Lonely Goatherd" (from The Sound of Music)
"Don't Stop Me Now" (Queen)

Guest performance: "Something About You"  (Jamelia)
Panel's verdict on who was Maria
John Barrowman: Aoife
Zoe Tyler: Abi
David Ian: Abi

Sing-Off

Week 4
Ahead of Saturday night, Lloyd Webber made a surprise visit to the contestants and worked with each to improve their performance.  Lloyd Webber also watched them on how well they interact with kids.

The show performances were:

Group performances:
"Do-Re-Mi" (from The Sound of Music)

Guest performance: "It's Not That Easy"  (Lemar)
Panel's verdict on who was Maria
John Barrowman: Helena
Zoe Tyler: Siobhan
David Ian: Siobhan

First sing-off:

Performance with children: Siobhan: "Truly Scrumptious" from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Second sing-off:

Week 5
This week, the mission was a chemistry test with John Barrowman, which involved his giving the Marias a surprise kiss.

The show performances were:

Group performances:
"I Have Confidence" (from The Sound of Music)
With John Barrowman: "Have You Met Miss Jones?" (from I'd Rather Be Right)

Guest performance: "Oh What a Girl"  (Simply Red)
Panel's verdict on who was Maria
John Barrowman: Connie
Zoe Tyler: Helena
David Ian: Connie

First sing-off:

Second sing Off

Week 6

In the run-up to the final, the three finalists and Lloyd Webber visited Salzburg to visit some of the locations made famous by The Sound of Music, including Leopoldskron Palace and Nonnberg Abbey, to give the finalists a chance to understand the real Maria von Trapp.

Group performance:
Finalists and former Marias: "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" (from The Sound of Music)
Connie and Helena: "The Sound of Music" (from The Sound of Music)
Former Marias: "Edelweiss" (from The Sound of Music)

Panel's verdict on who was Maria
John Barrowman: Connie
Zoe Tyler: Helena
David Ian: Connie
Andrew Lloyd Webber: Connie
After being announced as the series winner, Connie concluded the series with a performance of "The Sound of Music".

Winner
Following a public telephone vote, 23-year-old Connie Fisher was chosen as Maria and performed the role in the West End from November 2006 to February 2008. The series also helped the careers of the other finalists, some of whom later took leading roles in West End shows. Semi-finalist Aoife Mulholland also took up the role of Maria in April 2007 for two shows a week, after Fisher was advised to reduce her performances to six per week.

After the series
Following the final, Lloyd Webber was criticised after it was revealed that actress Emma Williams had been hired to perform the two performances per week that Fisher would not. Prior to The Sound of Music opening Williams "withdrew her services", reportedly because her role had been downgraded from four shows per week to two, leaving Fisher to perform all eight shows unless indisposed.

The £4 million production opened at the London Palladium on 15 November 2006 to positive reviews, leading to a £1.1 million increase in ticket sales in one day. In January 2007, Fisher was chosen by the London Critics' Circle to win their award for best newcomer, sharing the prize with Andrew Garfield. Reducing her performances to six per week in March 2007 following an order to rest her voice, her run in the show was extended until 23 February 2008, when actress Summer Strallen took over the role following a tie-in with the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks. Fisher has also made numerous appearances on stage and on television, released two albums, and performed the lead role in the ITV1 drama Caught in a Trap on 26 December 2008. She reprised her role as Maria in a UK tour of the production in July 2009.

Several of the other final ten contestants have taken on leading roles in musicals following the series. Aoife Mulholland was cast in December 2006 as Roxie Hart in the West End musical Chicago, and took on the role of Maria in the West End production for two shows per week in April 2007 after Fisher's reduction in performances. In July 2007 Siobhan Dillon started in the role of Patty Simcox in the musical Grease and later went on to play the lead role of Sandy in January 2010. Fellow finalist Helena Blackman played Nellie Forbush in a UK tour of South Pacific. Mulholland originated the role of Brooke Wyndham in the West End production of Legally Blonde, and Dillon took over the role of Vivienne Kensington in October 2010.
In June 2008, Leanne Dobinson took over in the role of Cosette in the West End cast of Les Misérables at the Queens Theatre.

A follow-up programme How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? – Connie's Story aired on 27 December 2006 and followed Fisher during rehearsals for her new role up to and including the opening night. Fisher and several other finalists appeared in a special programme on 24 December 2007 with the winner and finalists from Any Dream Will Do titled When Joseph Met Maria.

Reception
Lloyd Webber and the BBC were criticised by the actors union Equity. They stated that they believed their members would find the series "demeaning to their profession" and that it was not a "proper way" to choose a performer.

The series opened to mostly negative reviews from the press. In response to the criticism, Lloyd Webber told The Times:
This programme is providing a platform for musical theatre that it has never had before. The only people upset with Maria are a few precious luvvies who think things should be done a certain way.

Lloyd Webber and the BBC were also criticised for giving the production "11 hours of free publicity on prime-time television" and that the series could be "considered commercial advertising". The BBC Trust's Editorial Standards Committee disagreed, saying that the corporation retained "editorial control of the programme" and avoided "disproportionate prominence for Lloyd Webber and the production".

The first programme attracted 5.1 million viewers with a 32% audience share, with 4.9 million viewers (30% share) watching the first of the live finals, and 4.7 million (23% share) viewing the results programme. The series dropped to a low of 4.4 million viewers (24% share) against the third series of The X Factor on ITV1, which started the week before. The X Factor continued to gain higher viewing figures as the weeks progressed, with the final of Maria? attracting 5.5 million viewers (28% share) for the main show and 7.7 million (35% share) for the results show.

Following the conclusion of the series on a ratings high and positive reviews for Fisher following her opening night, the series was followed by a number of similar series from both the BBC and other broadcasters in the UK and abroad. It was credited with helping London theatres reach record ticket sales and attendances in 2007 and, according to The Independent, for "persuading a new, younger audience to see the shows in the flesh".

The series was shown on BBC America in the United States from June 2009. It was described as being "refreshing in its simplicity" in a "landscape that lately seems dominated by audition-heavy musical competitions" by Los Angeles Times critic Mary McNamara, but Brian Lowry of Variety did not feel that it would be successful in the U.S.

Awards
The series won three awards, and received nominations for another two:
2007 International Emmy Awards: winner – non-scripted entertainment
2006 Royal Television Society Awards: winner – best entertainment programme
2007 Broadcast Awards: winner – best entertainment programme
2007 British Academy Television Awards: nominated – best entertainment programme
 2007 Broadcasting Press Guild Awards: nominated – best comedy/entertainment

Ratings

Follow-up and international series
The success of the series led to its becoming the first in a series of West End themed talent contests produced by the BBC in collaboration with Lloyd Webber. 2007 saw Any Dream Will Do search for a new male lead to play Joseph for a production of Lloyd Webber's and Tim Rice's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. This was followed in 2008 by I'd Do Anything, which sought a lead to play Nancy and three young performers to play the lead in a production of the musical Oliver!. In 2010, Over the Rainbow cast Dorothy and a dog to play Toto in the forthcoming stage production of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The BBC also collaborated with Lloyd Webber to find a performer for Britain's entry into the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 through Eurovision: Your Country Needs You.

On 20 August 2006, it was reported that Lloyd Webber had taken legal action against David Ian. Lloyd Webber reportedly wanted to take the format to the United States to cast a Broadway theatre production of Grease. Lloyd Webber discovered that Ian had already brought the idea to NBC, who announced they will look for unknowns to play Sandy Dumbrowski and Danny Zuko, via reality TV show Grease: You're the One that I Want! with Ian and BBC Worldwide, leaving Lloyd Webber furious. Ian said "I don't understand the problem. Andrew has no connection with the stage show Grease, which I have successfully produced in the UK. There is a new production of Grease on Broadway in the spring of 2007, that's why I've been asked to judge on You're The One That We Want." This was followed in the UK with the ITV1 series Grease Is the Word, with Ian as a judge. It aired against Any Dream Will Do in 2007.

Op zoek naar Evita (Looking for Evita) was produced in The Netherlands in 2007, followed by Op zoek naar Joseph (Looking for Joseph) in 2008, Op zoek naar Mary Poppins (Looking for Mary Poppins) in 2009, Op zoek naar Zorro (Looking for Zorro) in 2011, Op zoek naar Annie (Looking for Annie) in 2012 and most recently Op zoek naar Maria (Looking for Maria) in 2021 and Op zoek naar Danny & Sandy (Looking for Danny & Sandy) in 2022.

In 2008 a Canadian version of the show with the same title, searched for a Maria for an upcoming Toronto production of The Sound of Music; this show was initiated by Lloyd Webber, and was aired on CBC Television. John Barrowman was part of the judging panel along with Simon Lee and Canadian vocal coach Elaine Overholt.  Lloyd Webber filled in for Lee in the final weeks of the series. This was followed by Over the Rainbow in 2012, with Lloyd Webber serving as a judge.

In 2009 Vtm aired a Flemish version titled  (Looking for Maria). A Dutch version of Op zoek naar Maria came out in 2021.

References

External links

2006 British television series debuts
2006 British television series endings
BBC Television shows
British reality television series
International Emmy Award for Best Non-Scripted Entertainment winners
Singing talent shows
The Sound of Music

How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?


Patti Astor (born ca. 1950) is an American performer who was a key actress in New York City underground films of the 1970s, and the East Village art scene of the 1980s, and involved in the early popularizing of hip hop. She co-founded the instrumental contemporary art gallery, Fun Gallery.

Biography
Patti Astor grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio where she was a charter member of the Cincinnati Civic Ballet. Her adventurous spirit however took her to New York City at the age of eighteen (in 1968) to Barnard College but she soon dropped out to take a leadership role in the anti-Vietnam war group SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). She spent two and a half years as a young revolutionary. At the end of that war she traveled the United States and Europe with her dance act, A Diamond As Big As The Ritz.

Music
Returning to New York in 1975 Astor was in the midst of the storm in New York's legendary East Village, from punk rock at CBGB's, the new wave at the Mudd Club and independent films such as Underground U.S.A. (1980) with directors such as Jim Jarmusch and Eric Mitchell. In 1978, she married Steven Kramer, and artist and a keyboardist for a band called the Contortions.

Actress
Astor had studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute. A queen of the downtown scene, she appeared in over a dozen experimental and low-budget films. Her entry into this genre was Amos Poe's underground "Unmade Beds" (1976), a black and white 16mm remake of Godard's Breathless which she acted in alongside filmmaker Eric Mitchell, Blondie singer Debbie Harry, and artist Duncan Hannah. She also appeared in such low-budget and low-audience films as Rome '78, The Long Island Four, and Snakewoman. Perhaps the best remembered of these was Eric Mitchell's Underground U.S.A (1980), which she starred in alongside poet Rene Ricard, but none of these films were commercially successful. Her best known roles was as Virginia, the roving reporter, in Charles Ahearn's legendary hip-hop epic, Wild Style. Virginia in Wild Style is a blonde bombshell who encounters the rap and graffiti culture uptown, and introduces it to the downtown art world, a role Patti went on to perform in real life.

These films are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Wild Style was voted "one of the ten best rock and roll movies of all time".)

Gallery owner
Astor went on to co-found the Fun Gallery in 1981 with partner Bill Stelling. This tenement storefront gallery, was the first of the 1980s East Village galleries, and specialized in showing graffiti artists, like Fab 5 Freddy, Lee Quiñones, Zephyr, Dondi, Lady Pink, and Futura 2000. It also gave important shows to Kenny Scharf (in 1981), Jean-Michel Basquiat (November 1982), and Keith Haring (February, 1983), artists with a street background who showed elsewhere. For a while the mix of worlds was unique, with the FUN crew of downtown artists and hipsters, beat-boys, rock, movie and rap stars mixing with both neighborhood kids and the official art world: museum directors, art historians and uptown collectors in their mink coats and limos. The gallery closed in 1985, by which time many other East Village galleries had opened, the interest in graffiti painters in the art world has subsided, and rents in the East Village were rising dramatically.

Later years
After closing Fun Gallery, Astor moved to Hollywood where she acted in, wrote and produced Get Tux'd starring Ice-T in one of his first movie roles and Assault of the Killer Bimbos awarded by People magazine "Trash Pick of The Week".

Bibliography
 "The True Story of Patti Astor" in Johnny Walker, Janette Beckman, Patti Astor, Peter Beste, No Sleep 'til Brooklyn Perseus Distribution Services. .
 Dan Cameron, Liza Kirwin, Alan Moore, Penny Arcade, Patti Astor. East Village USA New Museum of Contemporary Art, 0915557886.

Filmography

References

External links
Interview with Patti Astor
No Sleep 'til Brooklyn: A powerHouse Hip Hop Retrospective

  promotional clip (8:40) for documentary "Patti Astor's FUN Gallery," Robert David Films, Inc.
 Interview with Patti Astor on Fun Gallery, 149th St. website

1950 births
Living people
American film actresses
20th-century American actresses
Actresses from Cincinnati
Actresses from New York City
Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute alumni
Barnard College alumni
21st-century American women

Patti Astor


The Rainbow flag has been the symbol of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community since its creation in 1978. It is also called the 'Pride Flag.' The flag was created by Gilbert Baker of San Francisco, California in 1978.

History
The flag was first used at a LGBT pride parade in San Francisco in 1978, at that time it had eight colors. The next year it was changed to six colors, so it could be easier to make.

The flag was first made by Gilbert Baker, to be used instead of the pink triangle symbol used before. The pink triangle was used by Nazis to show who was homosexual. Homosexual people were sent to concentration camps in Nazi Germany, where they made homosexual men wear a pink triangle. This was like the yellow Star of David that Jews had to wear to show who was Jewish. LGBT people were not ashamed of the pink triangle, but they wanted a more positive, happier symbol.

Meaning

In the LGBT version of the rainbow flag, each color has a different meaning
Pink = Sexuality
Red = Life
Orange = Healing
Yellow = Sunlight
Green = Nature
Turquoise = Magic/Art
Royal Blue = Serenity/Harmony
Violet = Spirit
It used to have a pink stripe, which meant sexuality, but was removed because the pink cloth was unable to be mass produced.It also had a Turquoise stripe as well, but it was removed.

See also
 Bisexual flag
 International Bear Brotherhood Flag
 Pansexual flag
 Pride flag
 Rainbow flag
 Transgender flag

References

Other websites

Unsung Heroes of the Gay World: Vexillographer Gilbert Baker
How Did Gay Pride Flag Originate?  KPIX-TV (CBS 5), December 1, 2006
Gilbert Baker speaks about the Pride flag

LGBT flags
San Francisco
1978 establishments in California

Rainbow flag (LGBT)


Surface-mount technology (SMT) component placement systems, commonly called pick-and-place machines or P&Ps, are robotic machines which are used to place surface-mount devices (SMDs) onto a printed circuit board (PCB). They are used for high speed, high precision placing of a broad range of electronic components, for example capacitors, resistors, integrated circuits onto the PCBs which are in turn used in computers, consumer electronics as well as industrial, medical, automotive, military and telecommunications equipment. Similar equipment exists for through-hole components.
This type of equipment is sometimes used to package microchips using the flip chip method.

History

1980s and 1990s
During this time, a typical SMT assembly line employed two different types of pick-and-place (P&P) machines arranged in sequence.

The unpopulated board was fed into a rapid placement machine. These machines, sometimes called chip shooters, place mainly low-precision, simple package components such as resistors and capacitors. These high-speed P&P machines were built around a single turret design capable of mounting up to two dozen stations. As the turret spins, the stations passing the back of the machine pick up parts from tape feeders mounted on a moving carriage. As the station proceeds around the turret, it passes an optical station that calculates the angle at which the part was picked up, allowing the machine to compensate for drift. Then, as the station reaches the front of the turret, the board is moved into the proper position, the nozzle is spun to put the part in proper angular orientation, and the part is placed on the board. Typical chip shooters can, under optimal conditions, place up to 53,000 parts per hour, or almost 15 parts per second.

Because the PCB is moved rather than the turret, only lightweight parts that will not be shaken loose by the violent motion of the PCB can be placed this way.

From the high speed machine, the board transits to a precision placement machine. These pick-and-place machines often use high resolution verification cameras and fine adjustment systems via high precision linear encoders on each axis to place parts more accurately than the high-speed machines. Furthermore, the precision placement machines are capable of handling larger or more irregularly shaped parts such as large package integrated circuits or packaged inductor coils and trimpots. Unlike the rapid placers, precision placers generally do not use turret mounted nozzles and instead rely on a gantry-supported moving head. These precision placers rely upon placement heads with relatively few pickup nozzles. The head sometimes has a laser identifier that scans a reflective marker on the PC board to orient the head to the board. Parts are picked up from tape feeders or trays, scanned by a camera (on some machines), and then placed in the proper position on the board. Some machines also center the parts on the head with two arms that close to center the part; the head then rotates 90 degrees and the arms close again to center the part once more. The margin of error for some components is, in many cases, less than half a millimeter (less than 0.02 inches).

2000 to present
Due to the huge cost of having two separate machines to place parts, the speed limitations of the chip shooters, and the inflexibility of the machines, the electronic component machine manufacturers abandoned the technique.  To overcome these limitations they moved to an all-in-one modular, multi-headed, and multi-gantry machines that could have heads quickly swapped on different modules depending on the product being built to machines with multiple mini turrets capable of placing the whole spectrum of components with theoretical speeds of 136,000 components an hour. The fastest machines can have speeds of up to 200,000 CPH (components per hour).

2010 onwards

Swapping heads onboard  placement machines required more inventory of heads and related spare parts for different heads to minimize the downtime. Placement machines have an all-in-one head that can place components ranging from 0.4 mm × 0.2 mm to 50 mm × 40 mm.
In addition to this there was a new concept wherein the user could borrow performance during peak periods.
There is a big change in the industry approach these days with more focus on software applications for the process. With new applications like POP and wafer placement on substrate the industry is moving beyond conventional component placement.
There is a big difference in the needs of SMT users. For many, the high speed machines are not suitable due to cost and speed. With recent changes in the economic climate the requirement for SMT placement becomes focused on the machine's versatility to deal with short runs and fast changeover. This means that lower cost machines with vision systems provide an affordable option for SMT users.  There are more users of low end and mid-range machines than the ultra fast placement systems.

SMT pick and place machine manufacturers include:
 Juki
 Fuji
 Panasonic
 Yamaha (bought I-Pulse, however they were marketed to the US and Europe as Assembleon. Yamaha was marketed to primarily Asia, until the acquisition of Assembleon by K&S.)
 Hanwha Precision Machinery (formerly Hanwha Techwin after the acquisition of Samsung Techwin by Hanwha Holdings.)
 Kulicke & Soffa (K&S) (former Philips and later Assembleon)
 Sony (Now Juki)
 ASM Assembly Systems (former SIEMENS / SIPLACE and DEK)
 Universal Instruments
 Mycronic
 Europlacer
 Essemtec
 Nordson (Bought Dima)
 Hitachi (Former Sanyo, SMT division sold to Yamaha)
 DDM Novastar
 Opulo

Operation
The placement equipment is part of a larger overall machine that carries out specific programmed steps to create a PCB assembly. Several sub-systems work together to pick up and correctly place the components onto the PCB. These systems normally use pneumatic suction cups, attached to a plotter-like device to allow the cup to be accurately manipulated in three dimensions.  Additionally, each nozzle can be rotated independently.

Component feeds
Surface mount components are placed along the front (and often back) faces of the machine. Most components are supplied on paper or plastic tape, in tape reels that are loaded onto feeders mounted to the machine. Larger integrated circuits (ICs) are sometimes supplied arranged in trays which are stacked in a compartment. More commonly used ICs will be provided in tapes rather than trays or sticks. Improvements in feeder technology mean that tape format is becoming the preferred method of presenting parts on an SMT machine.

Early feeder heads were much bulkier, and as a result it was not designed to be the mobile part of the system. Rather, the PCB itself was mounted on a moving platform that aligned the areas of the board to be populated with the feeder head above.

Conveyor belt
Through the middle of the machine there is a conveyor belt, along which blank PCBs travel, and a PCB clamp in the center of the machine. The PCB is clamped, and the nozzles pick up individual components from the feeders/trays, rotate them to the correct orientation and then place them on the appropriate pads on the PCB with high precision. High-end machines can have multiple conveyors to produce multiple same or different kinds of products simultaneously.

Inspection and visual system
The part being carried from the part feeders on either side of the conveyor belt to the PCB, it is photographed from below by using  high resolution camera and lighting system. Its silhouette is inspected to see if it is damaged or missing (was not picked up), and the inevitable registration errors in pickup are measured and compensated for when the part is placed.  For example, if the part was shifted 0.25 mm and rotated 10° when picked up, the pickup head will adjust the placement position to place the part in the correct location.

Some machines have these optical systems on the robot arm and can carry out the optical calculations without losing time, thereby achieving a lower derating factor.
The high-end optical systems mounted on the heads can also be used to capture details of the non-standard type components and save them to a database for future use. In addition to this, advanced software is available for monitoring the production and interconnect database — of the production floor to that of supply chain — in real-time. ASM provides an optional feature for increasing accuracy while placing LED  components on a high end product where in the optical center of the LED is critical rather than the calculated mechanical center based on the component's lead structure. The special camera system measures both physical and optical center and makes the necessary adjustments before placement. It also can acquire the images in either single field of view multiple field of view modes.

A separate camera on the pick-and-place head photographs fiducial marks on the PCB to measure its position on the conveyor belt accurately. Two fiducial marks, measured in two dimensions each, usually placed diagonally, let the PCB's orientation and thermal expansion be measured and compensated for as well. Some machines are also able to measure the PCB shear by measuring a third fiducial mark on the PCB.

Variations
To minimize the distance the pickup gantry must travel, it is common to have multiple nozzles with separate vertical motion on a single gantry. This can pick up multiple parts with one trip to the feeders. Also, advanced software in the newer generation machines allows different robotic heads to work independently of each other to further increase the throughput.

The components may be temporarily adhered to the PCB using the wet solder paste itself, or by using small blobs of a separate adhesive, applied by a glue-dispensing machine that can be incorporated on to the pick and place machine. The glue is added before component placement. It is dispensed by nozzles or by using jet dispensing. Jet dispensing dispenses material by shooting it towards the target, which in this case, is the circuit board.

See also
Component placement
Insertion mount machine

References

Printed circuit board manufacturing

Pick-and-place machine


Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are proteins which act in the innate immune system and the digestive system. They are membrane-spanning, that is, they reach from the outside of the cell to the inside.

TLRs recognize molecules which come from microbes. Once microbes get through physical barriers such as the skin or intestinal tract mucosa, they are recognized by TLRs. The TLRs set up an immune cell response.

TLR signalling leads to the induction or suppression of genes that orchestrate the inflammatory response. In all, thousands of genes are activated by TLR signalling, and the TLRs are one of the most important means of gene modulation.

Toll-like receptors have also been shown to be an important link between innate and adaptive immunity through their presence in dendritic cells.

Extended family
Most mammalian species have between ten and fifteen types of Toll-like receptors. Thirteen TLRs (TLR1 to TLR13) have been identified in humans and mice, and similar ones have been found in other mammalian species. TLRs are not identical in all mammals. For example, a gene coding for a protein like TLR10 in humans is present in mice, but seems to have been damaged at some time by a retrovirus.  On the other hand, mice express TLRs 11, 12, and 13, none of which is present in humans.  Other mammals may express TLRs that are not found in humans.  Non-mammalian species may have TLRs different from mammals.

History
They got their name from their similarity to the protein coded by the Toll gene identified in Drosophila in 1985 by Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. The gene in question, when mutated, makes the Drosophila flies look unusual. The researchers were so surprised that they spontaneously shouted out in German "Das ist ja toll!" which translates as "That's great!".

Toll-like receptors are now counted among the key molecules that alert the immune system to the presence of microbial infections. In 1996, Toll was found by Jules A. Hoffmann and his colleagues to have an essential role in the fly's immunity to fungal infection. It worked by activating the synthesis of antimicrobial peptides. Plant homologues were discovered in 1995 (rice XA21), and 2000 (Arabidopsis FLS2).

TLR 4 function as a lipopolysaccharide (LPS) sensing receptor was discovered by Bruce A. Beutler and colleagues. These workers proved that mice which could not respond to LPS had mutations which abolished the function of TLR4. This identified TLR4 as one of the key components of the receptor for LPS.

References

Cell biology

Toll-like receptor


Augusto de Carvalho Rodrigues dos Anjos (April 20, 1884 – November 12, 1914) was a Brazilian poet and professor. His poems speak mostly of sickness and death, and are considered the forerunners of Modernism in Brazil.

He is the patron of the first chair of the Paraiban Academy of Letters.

Biography
Augusto dos Anjos was born in 1884, in an engenho named Pau d'Arco, at the city of Cruz do Espírito Santo, in the Brazilian state of Paraíba. (Nowadays, the engenho is located in Sapé, also in Paraíba.) He was initially homeschooled by his father, until he was admitted at the Lyceu Paraibano, where he would become a teacher in 1908. Augusto wrote poems since he was 7 years old.

In 1903 he was admitted at Law course at the Faculdade de Direito do Recife, graduating in 1907. In 1910 he married Ester Fialho.

Starting a career as a magistrate, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he served as teacher for many educational institutions and started to publish his poems in periodicals and newspapers. In 1912 he published his first and only poetry book, Eu (in ), that received mixed reviews by the time it was published. (Órris Soares, lifelong friend of Augusto dos Anjos, would republish Eu in 1919, adding then-unpublished poems to it and re-releasing it under the title Eu e Outras Poesias, and since then the book has received better reviews.)

As he was serving as a headmaster at a school in the city of Leopoldina, Minas Gerais, he died on November 12, 1914, a victim of pneumonia.

Work
Augusto dos Anjos published only one book during his lifetime, named Eu. The themes of its poems, that are impregnated with a heavily scatological medical, scientific and philosophical vocabulary, are mostly sickness, death, heavy morbidity and pessimism.

Literary critics are not sure to which literary movement Augusto dos Anjos belong: some say he was a Symbolist and some say he was a Parnassian, although Ferreira Gullar classifies him as being a Pre-Modernist.

Trivia
 A recurring character in most of his poems is a tamarind tree, that exists to this day at the remains of the engenho Pau d'Arco.
 According to Órris Soares, Augusto dos Anjos used to make his poems in his head, walking around, gesticulating and saying its verses out loud, before putting them into paper.
 Eudes Barros told that, while living with his sister in Rio de Janeiro, he used to make up poems by sitting in his house's yard and screaming the verses, a habit that made his sister think he was mentally ill.
 It is believed that he had asthma.

References

External links

 Article about Augusto dos Anjos

1884 births
1914 deaths
Brazilian male poets
People from Paraíba
Deaths from pneumonia in Minas Gerais
20th-century Brazilian poets
20th-century Brazilian male writers
People from Leopoldina, Minas Gerais

Augusto dos Anjos


A civil flag is a version of the national flag that is flown by civilians on nongovernmental installations or craft. The use of civil flags was more common in the past to denote buildings or ships not crewed by the military.

In some countries, the civil flag is the same as the state flag but without the coat of arms, such as in the case of flags from Peru, Serbia and Spain. In others, it is an alteration of the war flag.

In Scandinavia, state and war flags can be double and triple-tailed variants of the Nordic Cross flag. Many countries, particularly those with a British heritage, still have distinctive civil flags (technically civil ensigns) for use at sea, many based on the Red Ensign.

References

Further reading

Types of flags

Civil flag