The Beretta M418 is an easily concealed Italian 6.35 mm (.25 ACP) pocket pistol. The earliest examples were made between 1919 and 1922. There are several versions, including the 1920 (V1 & V2), 1926, 1926 - 31 (V1 & V2), 1934, 318, and 418 models.

Early models
Uncertainty surrounds which year Beretta began producing their first .25 caliber pocket pistols. Dates suggested by various sources range between 1919 and 1922. Design work may have started before the First World War, however the company gave precedence to military requirements so work on the compact 6.35 mm only resumed at the end of the conflict. The first version of the gun was very similar to the Model 1922; nearly a scale model in fact, with the single important difference of a spring-loaded firing pin rather than an internal hammer. Mechanically this change was detrimental; it was probably made due to considerations of size. In every other way the two pistols are identical. They share the trigger mechanism fitted with an escaping disconnector, which is typical of all Beretta pistols of that period. A short time afterward a second version (Model 19) appeared, with an automatic grip safety fitted on the frame backstrap. Presumably the safety was added to make up for the reduced level of safety inherent in guns with a striker-type firing pin.

In 1926 a third version (sometimes known as Model 1926) was introduced, in which the firing mechanism was completely redesigned to incorporate a disconnector similar to that used in the Beretta M1923. This simple and economical modification contributed to the fame and commercial success of the 418. It involved a slight change to the left grip, and can easily be seen without dismantling the gun.

Apart from the 1926 alterations, production continued steadily from the beginning of the 1920s until the middle of the 1930s, when Beretta made further changes. Towards 1935 the appearance of the pistol was deemed outdated, and the handgrip was altered to be similar to the Beretta Model 1934. Later, a cocking indicator was also introduced: an extension of the firing pin protruding from the back of the slide. Otherwise, the so-called small Berettas remained more or less unchanged, in that most of the essential parts (barrel, magazine, etc.) were interchangeable. While changes to the gun during this time were minimal, the name was changed often. These various model numbers can be found only in the Beretta catalogues. All guns manufactured up to the mid-1930s are marked simply, IBREV. 1919.  Subsequent models until the end of the war are marked Brevettata. They included their date of manufacture in both the Julian Calendar and Fascist-era based Roman numerals. Similar guns produced immediately after the war can be marked Brevettata, but more often as Brevet.

Beretta Model 418
The 418 was the final model produced and very successful. Although considered by some underpowered for combat, it found favor with high ranking Italian officers during the Second World War. German command in Rome procured examples; these are distinguishable by a "4UT" proof stamp. The M418 remained in production until the middle of the 1950s, overlapping with production of more sophisticated guns Beretta had developed in the meantime. Towards the end of the 1940s a frame in light alloy was developed. Slight aesthetic modifications were also added shortly afterwards.

The 418 was marketed in the United States as the "Bantam" beginning sometime around 1952. From about 1958, it was marketed as the "Panther." The Panther featured improvements to the Bantam, but the parts are interchangeable.

The Beretta in fiction

James Bond used a Beretta in the first five novels of the series by Ian Fleming. Bond's pistol is described as "a very flat .25 Beretta (the model number is never specified by Fleming) automatic with a skeleton grip," (i.e. side grip panels removed – frame only), and a threaded barrel to support a suppressor. At the end of the fifth novel, From Russia, with Love, Bond is unable to draw the Beretta at a critical moment when its suppressor catches on the waistband of his trousers, and is very nearly killed as a result. This incident leads to an order from his superior officer, M, to start carrying a new duty weapon in the opening chapters of the sixth novel, Dr. No. Major Boothroyd, the MI6 armorer and "the greatest small-arms expert in the world" in M's opinion, insists that Bond trade it for a weapon with more stopping power. Bond is issued a 7.65mm Walther PPK, and a Smith & Wesson Centennial Airweight revolver for situations where he needs more power than the PPK can offer. He uses both guns during a mission in Jamaica for this novel, then relies on the PPK in subsequent stories. In the film adaptation of Dr. No, the first in the series, Boothroyd only offers the PPK and Bond reluctantly turns in his Beretta (a larger M34 standing in for the 418).

In reality, Ian Fleming received a fan letter in 1957 from Geoffrey Boothroyd, a Bond enthusiast and gun expert, criticizing the choice of firearm for Bond. Boothroyd called the Beretta "a lady's gun" and suggested several alternatives, one of which was the Walther. Fleming thanked Boothroyd by naming the MI6 armorer in Dr. No after him. In the film, "Boothroyd" references this when describing the Beretta with the line "nice and light, for a lady's handbag...".

Series numbers

References

External links
 BerettaWeb.com

418
.25 ACP semi-automatic pistols
Semi-automatic pistols of Italy

Beretta 418


Carnosaurs are a subgroup of the theropod dinosaurs. They are the clade Carnosauria. The term was once used very widely, but is now defined more narrowly. It is called by some authorities the Allosauroidea.

The group includes some of the main carnivores of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, such as Allosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus and Neovenator. Modern cladistic analysis defines Carnosauria (or Allosauroidea) as those tetanurans which share a more recent common ancestor with Allosaurus than with modern birds.

Carnosaurs are characterized by several features. Some features must have been adaptations to their large size, such as their open skull, made of struts rather than solid bone. They had
large eyes and a long, narrow skull. The femur ("thigh bone") is usually larger than the tibia ("shin bone"). This suggests close-to action was controlled by sight.

The legs are adapted for running, but not extremely so. They had strong arms, probably used to wrestle prey as the teeth bit in. The structure of an Allosaurus suggests a strongly-built general all-round predator. This is a different from a tyrannosaur like Albertosaurus, which was better adapted for running on open ground. Tyrannosaurs, with their small two-fingered hands, would use their heads for killing prey, and for head-butting rivals.

The idea that the group became extinct at the end of the Jurassic is refuted. It is now known that the Neovenatorid clade survived until the end of the Mesozoic. This group (see cladogram below) included  Aerosteon, Australovenator, Fukuiraptor and Neovenator.

Classification
Infraorder Carnosauria
Erectopus
Fukuiraptor
Gasosaurus?
Monolophosaurus
Siamotyrannus
Superfamily Allosauroidea
Becklespinax?
Megaraptor?
Family Allosauridae
Allosaurus
Antrodemus
Epanterias
Saurophaganax
Family Carcharodontosauridae
Acrocanthosaurus?
Carcharodontosaurus
Neovenator
Subfamily Giganotosaurinae
Giganotosaurus
Mapusaurus
Tyrannotitan
Family Sinraptoridae
Metriacanthosaurus
Sinraptor
Yangchuanosaurus

Cladogram
The cladogram presented here follows the 2010 analysis by Benson, Carrano and Brusatte.

References

Carnosaur


Stalactites is a solitaire card game which uses a deck of 52 playing cards. The game is similar to Freecell, but it is different because of the way building onto the foundations and the tableau.

Alternate names include Old Mole and Grampus. It has just two cells, and most games are winnable with good play.

Rules
The player deals four cards from the deck. These four cards form the foundations. They are turned sideways (although it is not necessary to do so).

The rest of the cards are dealt into eight columns of six cards each on the tableau. These cards can only be built up on the foundations regardless of suit and they cannot be built on each other.

Before the game starts, the player can decide on how the foundations should be built. Building can be either in ones (A-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-J-Q-K) or in twos (A-3-5-7-9-J-K-2-4-6-8-10-Q). Once the player makes up his mind, he begins building on the foundations from the cards on the tableau. The foundations are built, as already mentioned, up regardless of suit, and it goes round the corner, building from King to Ace (if building by ones) or from Queen to Ace (if building by twos) if necessary. The foundation cards turned sideways, though not necessarily be done, is a reminder of the last card's rank on each foundation.

The cards in the tableau should be placed in the foundations according to the building method the player decides to use. But when there are cards that cannot (or does not want to) be moved to the foundations, certain cards can be placed on a reserve. Any card can be placed on the reserve. But once a card is placed on the reserve, it must be built on a foundation; it should never return to the tableau. Furthermore, the reserve can only hold two cards.

The game is won when all cards are built onto the foundations, each having 13 cards. The four starting cards in the foundations don't have to be of the same rank; so results vary with each won game.

References

See also
 Freecell
 List of solitaire games
 Glossary of solitaire terms

Open builders
Single-deck patience card games
American card games

Stalactites (solitaire)


The Royal Brunei Armed Forces (RBAF) is the military of the sultanate nation of Brunei Darussalam.  In addition to the Royal Brunei Armed Forces, Brunei also hosts bases for the British Army and the Singapore Armed Forces.

Royal Brunei Armed Forces

The military of the sultanate nation of Brunei is known as the Royal Brunei Armed Forces, or  in Malay, often abbreviated ABDB.  It comprises the Land Forces, the Air Force, the Navy, Support Services, and the Training Institute.

Foreign military forces

British Garrison Brunei

A Gurkha Battalion of the British Forces Brunei (BFB) from the British Army has been maintained in Brunei at the request of the Sultan of Brunei subsequent to the 1962 Brunei Revolt. The battalion is centered on the outskirts of Seria in the west of the nation. Headquarters BFB and the Resident Infantry Battalion (RIB), which is presently the 2nd Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles, are located at Tuker Lines. The RIB rotates every three years with its sister Battalion in Shorncliffe, United Kingdom to maintain operational currency. It is the only completely acclimated jungle specialty Battalion in the British Army. The jungle provides a special setting for honing dismounted infantry training and skills, ranging from individual marksmanship, navigation, and survival training to the creation of doctrine for jungle combat at the Battle Group level.

Nearby, the British Army's Jungle Warfare Division (JWD) and the 1563 Flt RAF both call Medicina Lines home. During their exercises in Brunei, JWD, the RIB, and other units get aerial assistance from 1563 Flt. Given the complexity of the jungle and the difficulty of getting about without a vehicle, this feature, along with Brunei Boat Section, is essential. JWD offers training to certify troops from throughout the British Army and alliance partners as Operational Tracking Instructors and Jungle Warfare Instructors.

The Sultan has appointed the Gurkha Reserve Unit (GRU), an elite group of Nepalese troops, to guard the royal household, the populace, and important oil infrastructure. The majority of the 500 Gurkhas who work for the Brunei Reserve Unit are ex-members of the Singapore Police Force and British Army who joined the GRU as a second career.

Singapore Armed Forces
A tight and long-standing defense alliance exists between Singapore and Brunei. Both military cooperate through periodic bilateral exercises, business exchanges, visits, and cross-attendance of courses, in addition to the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF)'s ongoing training exercises in Brunei that have been going on for more than 40 years. Singapore also maintains a training establishment in Brunei, known as the Jalan Aman Camp and operates support helicopters mainly to transport the soldiers to Lakiun Camp in Temburong District for jungle training. The other Singapore military establishment in Brunei is the Lakiun Camp in Temburong.  This provides jungle training for the SAF in the interior of Temburong.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on 6 October 2017, during a visit to see jungle and survival training at Temburong, that SAF personnel take care to maintain the environment in excellent shape for future trainees even as they engage in realistic training there. For instance, Mr. Lee pointed us that the soldiers utilized pouches to store the blank round cartridges they used to fire from their machine guns and rifles. This was done to prevent them from leaving behind empty shells in the forest, which has served as a vital training ground for the SAF for more than 40 years.

Pakistan Armed Forces
A British Loan Service Medical Officer founded the RBAF' Medical Service in 1964. To meet the needs of the Royal Malay Regiment, the Medical Service was founded. The first Medical Reception Station, or MRS for short, was built in the Berakas Garrison at F13, Jalan Abu Bakar. The British Loan Service was discontinued in 2011 when additional regional medical officers joined the medical service. To allow local medical officers to advance professionally, Pakistani Army medical officers have been seconded since 2014. There are now 20 officers working with the Medical Service, including 10 local medical officers (four of them are female), four Pakistani Army medical officers who have been seconded, one administrative officer, and one training officer. There are 105 civilian employees and 142 military employees (98 men and 44 women).

References

External links
The British Army in Brunei — British Army official website

Military of Brunei
Military of Singapore
British Army deployments
Brunei–United Kingdom relations

Military forces based in Brunei


The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) is a global professional body for those working in the Built Environment, Construction, Land, Property and Real Estate.  The RICS was founded in London in 1868. It works at a cross-governmental level, and aims to promote and enforce the highest international standards in the valuation, management and development of land, real estate, construction and infrastructure.

Founded as the Institution of Surveyors, it received a royal charter in 1881, and in 1947 became the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. With a London HQ and regional offices across the United Kingdom, plus international offices, it serves a 134,000-strong membership distributed over nearly 150 countries. The RICS is linked to other national surveying institutions, collaborates with other professional bodies, and, in 2013, was a founder member of a coalition to develop the International Property Measurement Standards (IPMS). It also produces cost information and professional guidance on valuation and other activities.

In September 2021, an independent review exposed poor governance practices at the highest levels of the RICS organisation, prompting the resignations of the president, chief executive, interim chair of the governing council, and chair of the management board, in addition to the earlier resignation of the chief operating officer. The report was labelled an "appalling advert for our profession on the world stage". A subsequent review published in June 2022 demanded a "transformation of the institution carried out at pace".

History
RICS was founded in London, England, as the Institution of Surveyors after a meeting of 49 surveyors at the Westminster Palace Hotel on 15 June 1868. The inaugural president was John Clutton (who founded Cluttons, a property firm still in business today). The organisation has occupied headquarters on the corner of Great George Street and Little George Street since then. It received a Royal charter as The Surveyors' Institution on 26 August 1881, The charter required RICS to "promote the usefulness of the profession for the public advantage in the UK and in other parts of the world."

The Surveyors' Institution became the Chartered Surveyors' Institution in 1930. In 1946, George VI granted the title "Royal" and in 1947 the professional body became the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

The RICS (with the CIOB, CIBSE, IstructE and RIBA) was a founder member of the Building Industry Council, today the Construction Industry Council, in 1988.

International presence

RICS headquarters is in London with its main support functions in Birmingham. There are regional offices in the United Kingdom, across mainland Europe, in China, Singapore, Australia, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, North America and Brazil.

In 2018, there are RICS-qualified professionals in nearly 150 countries. RICS accredits 134,000 (as of September 2021) qualified and trainee professionals worldwide. The majority of accredited individuals are still based in the United Kingdom with large numbers also in mainland Europe, Australia and Hong Kong. There is now a strong growth globally, particularly in China, India and the Americas.

RICS has close links with many national surveying institutions and is a founding member association of the  International Federation of Surveyors (FIG). Within RICS the primary areas of practice represented at FIG are geomatics (land and hydrographic survey), environment, planning, construction and valuation.

RICS works in close collaboration with other professional bodies, central banks and international organisations such as The United Nations, World Bank and The European Union.

International standards

In 2013, RICS was a founder member of the coalition to develop International Property Measurement Standards, which launched its first standard – for measuring office space – in November 2014. It launched its second standard, for measuring residential buildings, in September 2016. In 2014 RICS was a founder member of the coalition to develop International Ethics Standards, standards designed to add greater consistency to developing and reinforcing professional ethics globally – these launched in December 2016.

To add greater consistency to the benchmarking, measuring, and reporting of construction project costs, International Construction Measurement Standards were published in July 2017. The coalition for International Land Measurement Standards – aiding consistency of interpretation and documentation of tenure – launched in June 2016. In each case, coalition member bodies are committed to implementing the new standards through training and guidance for professional practitioners.

The RICS is a founder member of the International Valuation Standards Committee.

Membership
Entry to membership of RICS is via four main routes: academic; graduate; technical; and senior professional. RICS has links with universities worldwide, with whom they have accredited approved courses which satisfy part of the qualification requirements to become trainee surveyors. RICS also offers expedited routes to membership for qualified professional members of some partner associations.

RICS requires members to update their knowledge and competence during their working life through Continuing Professional Development. Professionals holding RICS qualifications may use the following designations after their name:
AssocRICS (Associate); previously members at this level were known as Technical Members and used the designation "TechRICS"
MRICS (Member); previously members at this level were known as Professional Associates and used the designation "ARICS"
FRICS (Fellow)
HonRICS (Honorary members)
Those with the designation MRICS or FRICS are also known as Chartered Surveyors and variations such as "Chartered Building Surveyor", "Chartered Valuation Surveyor" or "Chartered Quantity Surveyor", depending on their chosen specialist qualifications and field of expertise.

Both AssocRICS and MRICS require the collation of a candidate's training and work experience to be assessed by RICS trained assessors,
although some may be eligible for direct entry based on international qualifications. MRICS has a higher technical bar to entry and there is an academic prerequisite which does not exist for AssocRICS.
MRICS applications are also subject to an Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) interview, held by a panel of Chartered Surveyors where the candidate's experience, knowledge and technical skill is assessed during the interview. FRICS is the highest accolade awarded and demonstrates the professional achievements of an individual. It is an honoured class of membership awarded and an international measure of excellence. Only those who hold the MRICS designation are eligible to apply for FRICS and they must meet the required number of professional characteristics.

Professional groups
RICS specifies areas of specialism, each with its own professional group, clustered into Land, Property and Construction. Within each professional group there may be further specialisms.

Specialist accreditations
RICS aims to cover, among its practising members, property and construction related expertise generally. Specialised areas of practice expertise for which accreditation is available include:

Building Information Modelling (BIM) Manager Certification
Building Conservation
Chartered Environmentalists
Dispute Resolution
ECO Assessor Certification
Fixed Charge Receivership Scheme
Valuer Registration.

RICS Matrics
The junior branch of RICS, known as Matrics (pronounced "matrix"), provides educational support, charitable and networking activities for surveying students, trainee surveyors (of any age) and Chartered Surveyors with ten years or less post-qualification experience. It comprises some 40 local groups across the United Kingdom. Established in 1889 as the Junior Committee, it became the "Junior Organisation" ("JO") in 1928 and was re-branded as "RICS Matrics" in 2003. It also has links with the Young Chartered Surveyors in the Republic of Ireland.

Governance
The RICS is governed by a governing council, to which report a management board, a standards and regulation board, and an audit committee.

2019-2021 governance review
In January 2021, the RICS reversed a decision to suppress a 2019 BDO report critical of the organisation's financial governance. According to the Sunday Times, four non-executive directors had expressed concerns about the report's findings, but were dismissed in November 2019 by then president Chris Brooke. Following a letter from four past presidents, the RICS initially rejected an independent review, but, after the ousted directors also wrote a letter, then said its governing council would "revisit" the issue, and on 22 January 2021 announced it would initiate an independent inquiry into the affair. In 2019, RICS finances were reported to have been in a difficult position, the organisation having made a pre-tax loss of £4.7m on £91.3m of income from fees and commercial activities. It subsequently made 140 people redundant. In February 2021, the RICS president Kathleen Fontana said that, in addition to the independent review into the audit report, the governing council was agreeing a strategic review into the institution's governance and member engagement. Building reported member views that expensive membership fees did not reflect the benefits they receive, and that RICS' international expansion had been "at the expense of its core UK membership, which feels disengaged and neglected".

In April 2021, Peter Oldham, the chair of the independent review of RICS's governance resigned "for professional reasons", to be replaced by Alison Levitt QC with completion delayed to June 2021 – later pushed back to mid-August 2021. On 4 June 2021, Building reported the "surprise" resignation and immediate departure of RICS' chief operating officer Violetta Parylo amid "a storm of calls" from members for reform. The RICS review of its purpose and relevance had been published in May 2021. Based on 9,000 responses, it reported members' trust in the RICS had plummeted by nearly a third, while satisfaction with membership had fallen to a historic low of 43%.

Levitt review
Levitt's governance review was delivered to the RICS in early August but not immediately made public, prompting calls for its full publication; the report was first reviewed by a five-strong subgroup of RICS's 26-member governing council. Property Week columnist Peter Bill said "a private tiff has ballooned into a crisis of confidence in the 130,000-member institution" with a defensive management facing a small but powerful group of disaffected members. After the August departure of RICS managing director Matthew Howell, RICS CEO Sean Tompkins resigned on 9 September 2021, when the full Levitt Review was published; Tompkins also forfeited a £190,000 bonus payment. In light of the Review findings, RICS president Kathleen Fontana, the interim chair of the governing council Chris Brooke, and management board chair Paul Marcuse also resigned, and RICS terminated its relationship with London law firm Fieldfisher, criticised by Levitt for being "demonstrably and inappropriately partisan."

Levitt said the RICS had made it "as difficult as possible" for people to contact the review; "RICS management and others on occasion" gave an "impression of reluctant acquiescence" during her investigations, she said. Her 467-page report concluded that the four non-executive board members had been wrongly dismissed and that sound governance principles were not followed. The CEO and COO thus operated with little effective scrutiny and become resistant to challenge amid "a power struggle". Levitt recommended "a wide-ranging external review of purpose, governance and strategy, led by an independent reviewer", plus interim recommendations relating to governance, executive remuneration, whistle-blowing and legal advice. The RICS governing council committed to apologise to the dismissed non-executive directors, and to implement all the report's recommendations. On 30 September 2021, Building reported on a "grovelling public apology" from the RICS to the wrongfully dismissed non-executive directors, and said an external review of the institution's future purpose was set to start within weeks. The ousted non-executive directors welcomed the formal apology but said it was "difficult to accept it as a statement of genuine contrition".

Gleeds chairman and Building columnist Richard Steer called the governance scandal an "appalling advert for our profession on the world stage" and said RICS needed to undergo a "complete restructuring". Paul Roberts, MD of global law firm Secretariat, said all 21 members of the RICS's governing council should be removed and replaced with new blood elected by the RICS membership.

In October 2021, the RICS refused a request by 40 former and current employees to launch an investigation into how the institution selected staff to be furloughed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The employees group alleged that some staff were furloughed as RICS had considered them too supportive of the institution's membership, and sought a review of RICS's human resource procedures, but RICS refused, considering the matter closed.

The Cabinet Office provided advice on suitable individuals to lead the review of the RICS's future purpose. In December 2021, the RICS announced former senior civil servant Michael Bichard would lead a six-month review into its governance and future purpose, with three objectives set by the RICS's governing council: to "create clarity" about the RICS' purpose, to propose how the organisation could be a "beacon for best practice" in governance, transparency and accountability, and to ensure that governance is "fit for today" and could remain relevant in future.

Bichard review
The 68-page Bichard review, recommending sweeping reforms, was published on 21 June 2022. It said the future success of the organisation would "require nothing less than a transformation of the institution carried out at pace"; the need for change was "urgent" and "unarguable". Bichard's recommendations included: a renewed and increased focus on the public interest remit of RICS, including amending the Royal Charter and creating a public interest panel to advise the RICS's Governing Council; maintaining self-regulation, through greater independence for regulatory functions; increased focus on diversity and inclusion; empowering and enabling members through greater support for regional boards, alongside increased member engagement, with renewed focus on younger members; an independent review of RICS's governance and effectiveness at delivering against its Charter for the public advantage once every five years; a new simplified, clear, accountable governance structure; and greater leadership on major society issues such as sustainability and climate change. Bichard also said the RICS should seek to continue to increase its influence overseas - a policy that was "very contentious" among the institution's 140,000 members.

Bichard said: "My aim has been to help create a new sense of purpose and direction so that RICS can once more stand tall as an exemplar professional institution, capable of tackling the challenges which will shape the way we all live our lives in the years to come. Issues such as climate change and sustainability, improving the built environment and building safety all sit within the remit of RICS and will benefit from the contribution which a revitalised RICS could make."

Nick Maclean, interim chair of RICS's governing council, said: "The Bichard RICS Review represents a watershed moment for the institution, and a key point in time which sets out a path for permanent improvement. Implementation of the recommendations will provide a solid accountable structure to effectively support our professionals and work in the public interest. RICS governing council strongly endorses the recommendations, and will implement these proposals." McLean was set to stand down on 5 October 2022, his role being abolished as part of Bichard's recommendations; the chief executive role would also be replaced by a new director general.

In August 2022, Bichard was appointed as interim senior independent governor through to 31 December 2023, responsible for scrutinising the actions of the RICS' governing council and committees. In December 2022, the RICS announced the establishment of a new board to oversee day-to-day operations and deliver the governing council's strategic plan. It is to be chaired by former CBRE Group director Martin Samworth. He will also review proposed changes to constitutional documents, including the RICS's Royal Charter, recommended in Bichard's review.

Governance review over fire safety
In January 2022, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities was reporting to be planning legislation to enable regular reviews of the RICS's governance. Ministers were said to be frustrated by a RICS decision in December 2021 to maintain its valuation advice requiring External Wall System forms (EWS1s) on blocks under 18m high. Richard Collins, the RICS's interim CEO, publicly questioned the need for the proposed new law to monitor RICS's governance.

Presidents
The first president was John Clutton, who was elected in 1868. The first female president was Louise Brooke-Smith, who was elected in 2014.

Guidance

BCIS

BCIS, the Building Cost Information Service, was established in 1962 and provides independent cost and price information to the construction industry and others needing comprehensive, accurate and independent data. It was spun out of RICS in 2022, becoming an independent company.

Isurv

Isurv is an online information service for expertise in natural and built environments. Launched by the RICS in September 2003, it provides insight from verified legal experts and industry practitioners relating to construction.

Rental valuation of public houses, bars, restaurants and nightclubs in England and Wales
The primary RICS professional guidance on this subject is covered at VPGA 4 Valuation. It provides practical assistance to valuers dealing with public houses which are valued and assessed in a completely different way other commercial businesses.

Public houses are valued by the profits method of valuation, often referred to as Fair Maintainable Trade Or Turnover (FMT). The FMT method applies to tens of thousands of commercial properties in England and Wales and is the basis of rateable valuation by the Valuation Office Agency, who also follow this method. RICS guidance ('The Red Book') emphasises that a valuer specialising in such valuations are regularly involved in the market, as practical knowledge of the factors affecting the market is essential to analysis of comparable transactions.

SMM
The Standard Method of Measurement (SMM) published by the RICS consisted of classification tables and rules of measurement, allowing use of a uniform basis for measuring building works. It was first published in 1922, superseding a Scottish Standard Method of Measurement which had been published in 1915. Its seventh edition (SMM7) was first published in 1988 and revised in 1998. SMM7 was replaced by the New Rules of Measurement, volume 2 (NRM2), which were published in April 2012 by the RICS Quantity Surveying and Construction Professional Group and became operational on 1 January 2013. NRM2 has been in general use since July 2013.

SMM7 was accompanied by the Code of Procedure for the Measurement of Building Works (the SMM7 Measurement Code). Whilst SMM7 could have a contractual status within a project, for example in the JCT Standard form of Building Contract), the Measurement Code was not mandatory.

NRM2 Is the second of three component parts within the NRM suite:
 NRM1 – Order of cost estimating and cost planning for capital building works
 NRM2 – Detailed measurement for building works
 NRM3 – Order of cost estimating and cost planning for building maintenance works.

Charitable works
Lionheart is the benevolent fund for past and present RICS members and their families. The charity was established in 1899 and provides financial support, health and well-being packages, and work-related counselling and befriending support. RICS also supports the Chartered Surveyors Training Trust, which helps young people enter the profession through apprenticeships; Charity Property Help, which provides property advice to charities and voluntary organisations, and The Chartered Surveyors' Voluntary Service (CSVS), a registered charity providing free property advice to people who would otherwise struggle to access professional assistance.

See also
Chartered Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors
Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society

Notes

References

External links
 RICS website
 AIQS website

1868 establishments in the United Kingdom
Construction industry of the United Kingdom
Housing in the United Kingdom
Interested parties in planning in the United Kingdom
Organisations based in London with royal patronage
Organisations based in the City of Westminster
Organizations established in 1868
Chartered Surveyors
Professional valuation organizations
Real estate valuation
Real estate-related professional associations
Surveying organizations
Grade II listed buildings in the City of Westminster
Home inspection


John Guzlowski (born 1948) is a Polish-American author.

Personal life
John Guzlowski was born the son of parents who met in a Nazi slave labor camp in Germany.

His mother Tekla Hanczarek came from a small community west of Lwów in what was then Poland (modern Lviv, Ukraine) where her father was a forest warden. John's father, Jan, was born in a farming community north of Poznań. John was born Zbigniew Guzlowski in a Displaced Persons camp in Vienenburg, Germany in 1948, and changed his name to John when he was naturalized as an American citizen in 1968.

His parents, his sister Donna, and he came to the US as DPs in 1951.  After working on farms in western New York State to pay off their passage to America, they eventually settled in Chicago in the city's old Polish Downtown in the vicinity of St. Fidelis Parish in Humboldt Park.

After attending the University of Illinois in Chicago, he completed a Ph.D. in American literature at Purdue University.  He taught literature and creative writing at Eastern Illinois University and retired in 2005.

He lives in Lynchburg, VA, with his wife Linda Calendrillo and his daughter Lillian Guzlowski and granddaughter Lucy Guzlowski.

Literature
Growing up in Chicago's immigrant and displaced person neighborhoods, Guzlowski regularly interacted "with Jewish hardware store clerks with Auschwitz tattoos on their wrists, Polish Cavalry officers who still mourned for their dead horses, and women who walked from Siberia to Iran to escape the Soviets." Guzlowski would later write that his written work was composed to "try to remember them and their voices."

Guzlowski earned his Ph.D. in English at Purdue University in 1980, and is now retired from Eastern Illinois University, where he taught contemporary American literature and poetry writing. His poems deal with his parents' experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany. He has authored three books about his parents' experiences:  Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded (Aquila Polonica), Lightning and Ashes (Steel Toe Books), and Third Winter of War: Buchenwald (Finishing Line Press). These books continue the story of his parents that began in his chapbook Language of Mules which was republished as Język Mułów i Inne Wiersze, a Polish-English edition of this chapbook and other poems, and published by Biblioteka Śląska in Katowice, Poland. His poem "What My Father Believed" was read by Garrison Keillor on the Writers Almanac program.  Other poems have appeared in a number of periodicals in the US, Poland, Italy, India, and Hungary, including North American Review, Rattle, Atticus Review, Salon, Margie, Nimrod, Poetry East, Atlanta Review, Crab Orchard Review, Chattahoochee Review, Slask, and Ackent.

Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz, in a review of the bilingual edition of Language of Mules, wrote that Guzlowki's work "astonished" him and revealed an "enormous ability for grasping reality."

Professor Thomas Napierkowski has written that "John Guzlowski is arguably the most accomplished Polish-American poet on the contemporary scene, a writer who will figure prominently in any history of Polish-American literature; and 'Lightning and Ashes' firmly establishes Guzlowski's artistic standing not just in Polonia but in the world of American letters."

His essays on contemporary American and Polish authors can be found in such journals as Modern Fiction Studies, Shofar, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Polish American Studies, Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, Studies in Jewish American Literature, and The Polish Review.

John Guzlowski received the Benjamin Franklin Award for Poetry from the Independent Book Publishers Association and the Eric Hoffer Foundation's Montaigne Award for Thought Provoking writing for his memoir in prose and poetry Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded.  He also received an Illinois Arts Council Award in 2001.  In 2012, he received the Polish American Historical Association Creative Arts Award for his writing and contribution to Polish American Letters.

He is also the author of three mystery novels set in a Polish-American neighborhood in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s: Suitcase Charlie and Little Altar Boys and Murdertown (all from Kasva Press). He has also written Retreat: A Love Story, a novel about two German Lovers separated during World War II.

He recently published three books of poems, True Confessions and Mad Monk Ikkyu and Small Talk . The first book is a collection of memoir poems that trace his life from the 60s to the present.  It is published by Darkhouse Books. The second book follows the adventures of a real zen Buddhist monk as he journeys from the sea to a temple in the mountains of Japan. Finishing Line Press publishes it. His most recent book is the award-winning Small Talk: Poems about God and Writing and Me, published by Snake Nation Press. A collection of his poems, translated into Hindi (Hindi title: यातना शिविर में साथिनें) by Devesh Path Sariya, was published in India in 2023.

Since 2018, Guzlowski has been a columnist for the Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish daily newspaper in America.

References
 Language of Mules.  Charleston, IL: DP Press, 1999.
 Lightning and Ashes.  Bowling Green, KY: Steel Toe Books, 2007.
 Język Mułów i Inne Wiersze.  Katowice, Poland, Biblioteka Śląska, 2002.
 Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded.  Los Angeles: Aquila Polonica Press, 2016.
 Little Schoolboys: A Hank and Marv Mystery.  Ravenswood Press, 2017.
 Suitcase Charlie: A Hank and Marv Mystery.  Kasva Press, 2018.
 Little Altar Boy: A Hank and Marvin Mystery. Kasva Press, 2019.
 True Confessions: 1965 to Now.  Darkhouse Press, 2019.
 Retreat — A Love Story. Kasva Press, 2021.
 Mad Monk Ikkyu.  Finishing Line Press, 2021.
 Small Talk — poems about God, Writing and Me. Snake Nation Press, 2022.
 Milosz, Czeslaw, "A Son of Prisoners," Review of Bilingual Edition of Language of Mules/Język Mułów i Inne Wiersze.  The Sarmatian Review, Issue no. 3, 2004. <http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~sarmatia/904/243milosz.html>.
 Napierkowski, Thomas, Lightning and Ashes: The Poetry of John Guzlowski. Polish American Studies 65.1 (2008): 25 pars. 8 Jul. 2011 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/pas/65.1/napierkowski.html>.
 Guzlowski is also a columnist for the Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish daily newspaper in America. <http://dziennikzwiazkowy.com/category/guzlowski/.

External links
 Article about Lightning and Ashes
 New York Times Review of Suitcase Charlie
 Wall Street Journal Review of Suitcase Charlie
 Guzlowski's personal blog - about his parents and their experiences

American male poets
1948 births
Living people
Purdue University alumni
Poets from Virginia
Polish emigrants to the United States
Polish-American culture in Chicago

John Guzlowski


Corrugated plastic or corriboard – also known under the trade names of Biplex, Cartonplast, Polyflute, Coroplast, FlutePlast, IntePro, Proplex, Correx, Twinplast, Corriflute and Corflute – refers to a wide range of extruded twin-wall plastic-sheet products produced from high-impact polypropylene resin with a similar make-up to corrugated fiberboard. It is a light-weight tough material which can easily be cut with a utility knife. Manufacturers typically offer a wide variety of colors, thicknesses (quite commonly 3, 4, 5 mm), and weight (measured in grams per square meter, or GSM).

Chemically, the sheet is inert, with a neutral pH factor. At regular temperatures most oils, solvents and water have no effect, allowing it to perform under adverse weather conditions or as a product component exposed to harsh chemicals.  Standard sheets can be modified with additives, which are melt-blended into the sheet to meet specific needs of the end-user. Special products that require additives include: ultra-violet protection, anti-static, flame retardant, custom colors, corrosive inhibitors, static-dissipative, among others.

Applications
Corrugated plastic is commonly used to erect commercial, political or other types of signs and for constructing plastic containers and reusable packaging. It is widely used in the signwriting industry for making signs for real estate sales, construction sites and promotions.

The last decade has found its increasing use among guinea pig, rabbit, domesticated hedgehog and other small pet enthusiasts as components of DIY cages.  Additionally, it is used by members of the remote-controlled aircraft community to build nearly indestructible SPAD model aircraft.

At least one manufacturer of air-to-air heat exchangers (used in heat recovery ventilation) uses a fused stack of sheets of this material alternating with spacers made of the same material as the heat-exchange medium.  One air stream passes through the corrugated channels in the interior of the sheets, while the other passes between the exterior layers of the stacked sheets.

Recycling
Corrugated plastic is usually made from polypropylene which is capable of being recycled. Resin identification code 5 applies: .

See also
Packaging
Plastic recycling

References

Further reading
 Yam, K. L., Encyclopedia of Packaging Technology, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, .

External links
 Typical Technical Properties of Corrugated Plastic

Corrugation
Plastics
Packaging materials

Corrugated plastic


La Junta Municipal Airport  is three miles north of La Junta, in Otero County, Colorado, United States. The National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011–2015 categorized it as a general aviation facility.

Many U.S. airports use the same three-letter location identifier for the FAA and IATA, but this airport is LHX to the FAA and has no IATA code.

History
The history of the airport began in 1935 with initial development by the Civil Aeronautics Authority. In 1940 the War Department leased the facility for civil pilot training of British RAF and Royal Canadian Air Force pilots in four-engine aircraft.

In 1942 the airport was taken over by the United States Army Air Forces and assigned to the Western Flying Training Command (WFTC) and the airfield was expanded to accommodate a large number of aircraft and training flights. Three asphalt runways were constructed in a triangle layout, 8000x150 (NE/SW), 8000x150 (E/W), 8000x150 (NW/SE) along with a large aircraft parking apron, taxiways, landing aids and several large aircraft hangars. In addition, four auxiliary airfields were constructed to accommodate training flights and emergency landings:
 Rocky Ford Aux #1
 Las Animas Aux #2
 La Junta Aux #3
 Arlington Aux #4

La Junta Army Airfield was activated on November 2, 1942 and was designated as an advanced twin-engine flying school under the jurisdiction of the 83d Flying Training Wing (Advanced, Twin-Engine), Douglas Army Airfield, Arizona.  It operated B-25 Mitchell twin-engine bombers and Cessna AT-17, Curtiss AT-9 twin-engine, and BT-15 Valiant and BT-13 Valiant single-engined trainers.

In March 1944 the Advanced Twin Engine School was re-designated as the 402d Army Air Force Base Unit.  In March 1945, the unit was re-designated as the 249th Army Air Forces Base Unit (Army Air Forces Pilot School, Specialized Four Engine) and jurisdiction was transferred to Second Air Force in June.  The mission of La Junta AAF then became the training of replacement heavy bomber pilots in AT-17 Flying Fortress trainers for eventual assignment to B-17 Flying Fortress bombers.

The 50th and 358th Fighter groups were assigned to La Junta in late 1945 (August - November) for inactivation.

La Junta AAF received notice from Second Air Force that it would be inactivated on 28 February 1946, and it was returned to the local government for civil use.

Historical airline service

La Junta received service by Continental Airlines with Douglas DC-3 aircraft from 1944 through 1957. The airport was one of several stops on a route between Denver and Tulsa which included stops at Colorado Springs, Pueblo, and Wichita.

More airport, city, and county history can be obtained from the Otero Museum and the Otero County Historical Society.

The airport was used as a filming location for the 1973 film by Terrence Malick titled Badlands.

Facilities
The airport covers 4,200 acres (1,700 ha) at an elevation of 4,229 feet (1,289 m). It has two runways: 8/26 is 6,849 by 75 feet (2,088 x 23 m) and 12/30 is 5,803 by 60 feet (1,769 x 18 m). It has one helipad, H1, 145 by 145 feet (44 x 44 m).

In 2010 the airport had 6,900 aircraft operations, average 18 per day: 95% general aviation and 5% military. 15 single-engine aircraft were then based at the airport.

See also

 List of airports in Colorado

References

Bibliography
 Manning, Thomas A. (2005), History of Air Education and Training Command, 1942–2002.  Office of History and Research, Headquarters, AETC, Randolph AFB, Texas
 Shaw, Frederick J. (2004), Locating Air Force Base Sites, History's Legacy, Air Force History and Museums Program, United States Air Force, Washington DC.
 Thole, Lou (1999), Forgotten Fields of America : World War II Bases and Training, Then and Now – Vol. 2.  Publisher: Pictorial Histories Pub,

External links

 La Junta Airport at City of La Junta website
 La Junta Municipal Airport (LHX) at Colorado DOT airport directory
 Aerial image as of June 1998 from USGS The National Map

 Historic links
 Freeman: Abandon Airfields of Colorado
 Colorado AvAr Site Investigations of La Junta, Las Animas, Rocky Ford and Arlington Airfields''

Airports in Colorado
Transportation buildings and structures in Otero County, Colorado
Airfields of the United States Army Air Forces in Colorado
Airports established in 1942
1942 establishments in Colorado

La Junta Municipal Airport


The 1983 Holiday Bowl was a college football bowl game played December 23, 1983, in San Diego, California. It was part of the 1983 NCAA Division I-A football season. It featured the unranked Missouri Tigers, and the ninth ranked BYU Cougars.

Scoring summary
Missouri scored first with a 2-yard touchdown run from running back Eric Drain giving the Tigers an early 7–0 lead. In the second quarter, BYU quarterback Steve Young scored on a 10-yard touchdown run to tie the game at 7–7. Missouri's Brad Burditt kicked a 37-yard field goal, as Missouri took a 10–7 lead into halftime.

In the third quarter, BYU came up on top, thanks to a 33-yard touchdown pass from Steve Young to Eddie Stinnett giving BYU a 14–10 lead. In the fourth quarter, Eric Drain scored on his second rushing touchdown of the game, a 2-yarder, for the Tigers to take a 17–14 lead. With just 23 seconds left, Young gave a handoff to Eddie Stinnett. Stinnett then turned around and passed it back to Young, who caught it and ran in for a touchdown, giving BYU a 21–17 win.

Young achieved a rare feat in college football: one touchdown pass, one touchdown run, and one touchdown reception all in a single game.  For his efforts, he was named offensive MVP.  Missouri's Bobby Bell was awarded the defensive MVP. BYU had 42 rushing yards, 328 passing yards, 71 return yards, and 22:53 possession time with five turnovers. Missouri had 252 rushing yards, 86 passing yards, 22 return yards, and 37:07 possession time with four turnovers.

Legacy
The game was placed in NCAA Football video games as a "College Classic", challenging players to recreate the ending.  The challenge begins the Cougars' final scoring drive of the game, with the player attempting to score the go-ahead touchdown.

References

Holiday Bowl
Holiday Bowl
Missouri Tigers football bowl games
BYU Cougars football bowl games
December 1983 sports events in the United States
1983 in sports in California

1983 Holiday Bowl


Sir Benjamin Chilley Campbell Pine (1809–1891) was at various times administrator of Natal, the Gold Coast, Antigua, the Leeward Islands and Western Australia.

Life
Born in 1809 in London, Benjamin Pine was educated in Brighton and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a career officer in the British Colonial Service.  From 1850 to 1855, he was Lieutenant-Governor of Natal Colony, and from March 1857 until 17 April 1858 was Governor of the Gold Coast.

On 30 July 1868, Pine was appointed by letters patent to the position of Governor of Western Australia.  Shortly afterwards, however, a vacancy occurred for the position of Governor of the Leeward Islands, and it was decided that he should fill that position instead.  He never arrived in Western Australia, and six months passed before the colony received news that he would not be coming.

Pine served as Governor of the Leeward Islands from  1869 until 1871.  His title then became Governor of Antigua until 1873, but the Leeward Islands continued under his governorship.  He died in 1891.

The city of Pinetown, in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, is named after him.

There is also a Primary school called Benjamin Pine Primary School named after him in Pinetown as well as the Pinetown High Schools (Boys and Girls) Honouring his name by the Pine Cones on the Badges.

He is buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery. His grave (no.29309) has no headstone or marker.

Status as Governor of Western Australia
In Burt (1996), Sir Francis Burt, who was a lawyer, a judge and himself a former Governor of Western Australia, analysed the question whether Pine should be considered to have served as Governor of Western Australia.  He concluded that the appointment by letters patent, together with the publication of that appointment in the newspapers of the colony, legally implied that Pine was Governor of Western Australia, even though he never arrived at the colony and was never sworn in.

The person who actually administered the colony during the period of Pine's formal tenure (2 November 1868–29 September 1869) was Lieut Col John Bruce.

References

|-

1809 births
1891 deaths
Burials at Highgate Cemetery
Governors of the Gold Coast (British colony)
Governors of Western Australia
Governors of the Leeward Islands
History of South Africa
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
Governors of Natal
Colony of Western Australia people
Governors of British Saint Christopher
Governors of Antigua and Barbuda

Benjamin Pine


Komitée für das Frauenstimmrecht ("Committee for Women's Suffrage" ), was a women's rights organization in Liechtenstein, founded in 1969. It was the first women's suffrage organization in Liechtenstein, and one of the main organizations working to introduce Women's suffrage in Liechtenstein.

After the 1968 Liechtenstein referendums resulted in a defeat for the suggestion to introduce women's suffrage, the Komitée für das Frauenstimmrecht was founded to actively work for the issue. It was the first women's suffrage organization in the nation. It was founded on 7 November 1969.

It was founded by a group of women suffragists, among them Bernadette Brunhart and Elfriede Winiger, secretaries in the state administration. The Liechtenstein suffragists initially kept their distance from fighting in the style of the internationally known British suffragettes. The committee tried to promote a positive change through discussion evenings and active participation in the political parties.

Women's suffrage was finally approved in the 1984 Liechtenstein women's suffrage referendum.

References

 Thomas Ernst Wanger: Vom Frauenstudium zum Frauenwahlrecht in der Schweiz und in Liechtenstein. In: Internationaler Verein für Geschichte des Bodensees und seiner Umgebung (Hrsg.): Schriften des Vereins für Geschichte des Bodensees und seiner Umgebung. Band 122. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2004, ISBN 3-7995-1710-3

Feminist organizations in Europe
1969 establishments in Liechtenstein
Political organizations based in Liechtenstein
Women's suffrage in Liechtenstein
Organizations established in 1969
Voter rights and suffrage organizations
1969 in women's history

Komitée für das Frauenstimmrecht


The Column of Constantine (; ; ) is a monumental column built for Roman emperor Constantine the Great to commemorate the dedication of Constantinople on 11 May 330 AD. Built , it is the oldest Constantinian monument to survive in Istanbul and stood in the centre of the Forum of Constantine. It occupies the second-highest hill of the seven hills of Constantine's Nova Roma, the erstwhile Byzantium, and was midway along the Mese odos, the ancient city's main thoroughfare.

The Turkish name Çemberlitaş, from  'hooped' and  'stone', was applied after repairs by the Ottomans in c. 1515, who added iron reinforcing hoops to the shaft, and came to refer to the surrounding area.

The column stands at the point where Yeniçeriler Caddesi ('Street of the Janissaries') joined the Divan Yolu ('Road to the Divan'), the two streets connecting Sultanahmet Square with Beyazıt Square and roughly following the course of the old Mese odos. The Roman street led eastward to the Augustaion, the Hippodrome, Hagia Sophia, the Baths of Zeuxippus, and the Chalke Gate of the Great Palace. To the west it led through the Forum of Theodosius to the Philadelphion and the walls of Constantinople. In Constantine's Forum itself the emperor established the original home of the Byzantine Senate.

The column stands right beside the Çemberlitaş stop on the T1 tramline.

Description

The column shaft is composed of very large porphyry column drums set on a white marble pedestal that is no longer visible.

Its top is 34.8 m above the present-day ground level. Estimates of the original height of the column, without the statue that stood on the top, vary between 37 and 40 m; the monument as a whole would have been nearly 50 m tall. It may have been the largest Roman honorific column of all, rivalled only by the later Column of Theodosius in Constantinople, now demolished. Constantine's Column was taller than Trajan's Column and the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome; its size approached or exceeded the height of the Colosseum (48 m) and the internal height of the Pantheon (43 m) in Rome.

Today the column is held together with metal bands and popular as a place to perch with local pigeons.

History

The column was dedicated on May 11, 330 AD, with a mixture of Christian and pagan ceremonies.

In Constantine's day the column was at the centre of the Forum of Constantine (today known as Çemberlitaş Square), an oval forum situated outside the city walls in the vicinity of what may have been the west gate of Antoninia. On its erection, the column was 50 meters tall, constructed of several cylindrical porphyry blocks. The exact number of porphyry blocks is disputed, but common figures range from seven, up to as many as eleven.

The column was surmounted by a statue of Constantine, probably nude, wearing a seven-point radiate crown and holding a spear and orb.  Its appearance probably referred to the Colossus of Rhodes and to the Colossus of Nero in Rome; all resembled the solar deities Helios or Apollo. The orb was said to contain a fragment of the True Cross. At the foot of the column was a sanctuary which contained relics allegedly from the crosses of the two thieves who were crucified with Jesus Christ at Calvary, the baskets from the loaves and fishes miracle, an alabaster ointment jar belonging to Mary Magdalene and used by her for anointing the head and feet of Jesus, and the palladium of ancient Rome (a wooden statue of Pallas Athena from Troy).

Bronze reinforcements had to be added the column as early as 416 and it sustained fire damage in the 5th and 6th centuries.

A strong gale in 1106 AD felled the statue and three of the upper cylinders of the column. Some years later, Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos (reigned 1143–1180) placed a cross on top in place of the original statue and added a commemorative inscription that read "Faithful Manuel invigorated this holy work of art, which has been damaged by time". Bronze wreaths once covered the joints between the drums, but these were stolen by the Latin Crusaders who plundered the city during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The cross was removed by the Ottoman Turks after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Earthquakes and a fire in 1779 destroyed the neighbourhood surrounding the column, leaving it with black scorch marks and earning it the name 'Burnt Column' (or, according to Gibbon, 'Burned Pillar'). The column was restored by Abdülhamid I, who had the present masonry base added. The base was strengthened in 1779. The original platform of the column is 2.5 meters (about 8 feet) below ground.

Restoration work has taken place intermittently since 1955. Cracks in the porphyry were filled and metal brackets renewed in 1972. Further restoration work took place in the years leading up to 2010.

Since 1985, the monuments of the historic areas of Istanbul, including the Column, have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

See also
 Roman architecture
 List of museums and monuments in Istanbul

References

Bibliography

External links

 Reconstruction of the Forum of Constantine in Istanbul
 The Burnt Column, Constantinople, Turkey

4th-century establishments in the Byzantine Empire
Monumental columns in Istanbul
Constantine
Fatih
Cultural depictions of Constantine the Great
Buildings and structures completed in the 4th century
4th-century Roman sculptures
Colossus of Rhodes
Outdoor sculptures in Turkey
328 establishments

Column of Constantine


Carl-Henrik "C.-H." Hermansson (14 December 1917 – 26 July 2016) was a Swedish politician. He was born in Bollnäs, Sweden. He was chairman of the Communist Party of Sweden (during his leadership renamed to the Left Party – Communists) from 1964 to 1975 and member of parliament from 1963 to 1985. He was a major force in redirecting the Left Party Communists policies away from Moscow loyalism towards Eurocommunism and Scandinavian Popular Socialism.

At the time of Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, Hermansson heaped praise on Stalin's greatness in a few speeches, something he was regularly reminded of by journalists and political opponents, even though he repeatedly made public his regret for the things said.

Hermansson died on 26 July 2016 at the age of 98.

References

1917 births
2016 deaths
Swedish politicians
Swedish writers
Communists

Carl-Henrik Hermansson


Kingsbury Aviation was an English aircraft manufacturer and engineering business based at Kingsbury Aerodrome, Kingsbury, London from 1916.

From 1915 the engineering company Barningham Limited used a building near Kingsbury House to manufacture equipment in support of the war effort.  In 1916 it purchased the 109-acre Kingsury House estate and with planning permission for two hangars it created Kingsbury Aerodrome and formed a new company Kingsbury Aviation.

Kingsbury Aviation had a contract to build 150 Airco DH.6 training biplanes for the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and by mid-1918 it employed 800 people on the site. The company had a contract to build 20 Vickers Vimy biplane bombers but with the end of the First World War the government contracts were cancelled. The company designed and built a motor scooter and a light car but they were not a success and they went into liquidation in 1921. After a few years of being empty the aerodrome and hangars were purchased by Vanden Plas to build motor car bodies.

References

Defunct aircraft manufacturers of the United Kingdom
Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of England
1916 establishments in England
British companies established in 1916
Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1916
Vehicle manufacture in London

Kingsbury Aviation


Leslie William Dodds (2 February 1903 – 1975) was an English international bridge player and, by profession, an import-export merchant, from London. He was a member of the British team which won the Bermuda Bowl in 1955. In his youth he was a chess player, and famous for feats of memory and mental calculations.

Bridge career
Dodds' first partner in post-World War II top events was Eddie Raynes, who became, by royal warrant, shoe-maker to the Queen. Then he partnered Kenneth Konstam: together they formed one of the finest partnerships in British bridge. They played in the British Bermuda Bowl victory of 1955, and in the European Championship victories of 1948, 1949, 1950 and 1954. Dodds also represented Britain in the first Bermuda Bowl (1950), and the European Championships of 1952, 1953 and 1955; won the Gold Cup in 1938, 1949, 1956, 1960 and 1961 and the Master Pairs in 1955.

His bidding system was CAB, one of half-a-dozen natural systems developed in Britain during the 1930s. CAB, invented by G.G.J. Walshe, was further developed by Dodds, who became its 'prophet'. The system featured ace-showing in response to the artificial game-forcing 2C opener plus Blackwood and strong 1NT openers. Jump raises and 2NT responses were forcing except in competition, opening three bids in minor suits invited 3NT (solid suit or near-solid with outside entry). The general tenor of the system was closer to the Standard American of the day than to Acol; The CAB system, rarely played today, was the 'house' bidding system of the Hamilton Club, one of the high-class London rubber bridge clubs at the time. According to Mollo, Dodds used to win some £4,000 a year at the Hamilton, a huge sum in the 1950s.

His bridge career was cut short by a cerebral haemorrhage (stroke) in 1961.

Schapiro's opinion

In 1951, Boris Schapiro gave this view of Dodds:
"Brilliant dummy player and defender. The writer personally does not agree with his bidding methods. Very difficult to play against but concentration is bad."

References

1903 births
1975 deaths
British and Irish contract bridge players
English contract bridge players
Bridge players from London
Place of birth missing
Date of death missing

Leslie Dodds


Ángel Roffo (December 30, 1882 – July 23, 1947) was an Argentine medical doctor who dedicated his medical career to the study and treatment of cancer.

Roffo was born in the city of Buenos Aires and went on to study at the University of Buenos Aires, he graduated in 1909 with the thesis A contribution to the study of Cancer.

He became chief of practical work in the department of urology at UBA, then between 1912 and 1915 he was assigned professor of Anatomical Pathology. Between 1915 and 1931 he worked as attached professor in Anatomical Pathology.

In 1912 Daniel Cranwell presented a paper called Cáncer experimental to the Argentine National Academy of Medicine which detailed the results of his experiments on laboratory animals. This work influenced the creation of an institute for the study and treatment of cancer. In 1922 it was succeeded by the Instituto de Medicina Experimental directed by Roffo. He had become the leading cancer specialist in Latin America.

During the 1920s Roffo made numerous trips to Europe, where he met a number of leading scientists. One of these was Marie Curie, with whom he discussed the utilization of radiotherapy.

Roffo was one of the first scientists to demonstrate the link between tobacco tars and the production of tumours ". By the end of the 1920s he was certain that there was a link between smoking and cancer, he went on to produce a number of papers on the subject of tobacco carcinogenesis in the 1930s. Robert N Proctor of Stanford University claimed that Roffo arguably represented the single greatest scientific threat to the tobacco industry prior to the 1950s.

Roffo received a number of awards for his contribution to science, from institutions in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Germany.

Ángel Roffo died on July 23, 1947, and the Institute of Oncology (Instituto de Oncología) at UBA was renamed in his honour.

References

External links
Instituto de Oncología Ángel Roffo
Roffo and Tobacco Carcinogenesis

1882 births
1947 deaths
Physicians from Buenos Aires
Argentine oncologists
Burials at La Recoleta Cemetery

Ángel Roffo


Moonchildren (originally titled Cancer) is a play by Brooklyn-based playwright Michael Weller.  The play chronicles a year in the life of the "moonchildren" referred to in the title: eight college students living communally together in an off-campus attic in the mid-1960s.

Productions
The work was first performed in 1970 with the title Cancer in London at the Royal Court Theater under the direction of Martin Rosen. Weller changed the name to Moonchildren shortly thereafter for the work's American premiere at the Arena Stage (Washington, DC) in November 1971, which was directed by Alan Schneider.

The Arena Stage production moved to the Royale Theatre on Broadway the following year, giving its first of 28 performances on February 11, 1972. The cast included Kevin Conway as Mike, Maureen Anderman as Ruth, Edward Herrmann as Cootie, Christopher Guest as Norman, Stephen Collins as Dick, Jill Eikenberry as Kathy, James Woods as Bob Rettie, Cara Duff-MacCormick as Shelly, Donegan Smith as Ralph, Robert Prosky as Mr. Willis, Ron McLarty as Lucky, Louis Zorich as Bream, Peter Alzado as Effing, Salem Ludwig as Uncle Murry, George Curley as Cootie's Father, and Michael Tucker as Milkman. Duff-MacCormick garnered a Tony Award nomination for best Featured Actress in a play and Weller won a Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright. Anderman, Duff-MacCormick, and Woods all won Theatre World Awards for their portrayals.

Reviews
The play has been deemed a "seminal work" for Weller and is according to one reviewer:
a stunning work, one that has weathered the years to become that rarity, a contemporary play that, while rooted in the era in which it was written, remains contemporary because its underlying themes are universal and unchanging.
According to a review in The New York Times, Weller wrote this play about the generation that came of age during the Vietnam War "with a discerning eye and a journalist's detachment".

References

External links

1971 plays
Broadway plays
American plays

Moonchildren


Hypothenemus hampei, the coffee berry borer or coffee borer beetle, is a small beetle native to Africa. It is among the most harmful pests to coffee crops across the world where coffee is cultivated. Spanish common names of the insect include barrenador del café (coffee borer), gorgojo del café (coffee weevil), and broca del café (coffee drill).

Description
The female Hypothenemus hampei have two larval stages, while the males only have one; each larval phase lasts 10 to 26 days. The adults are small black beetles with strong mandibles. The females can be anywhere from 1.4–1.8 millimeters long, with the males being slightly smaller at around 1.2–1.6 millimeters long. Female beetles can fly short distances, while the males cannot, as they have less developed wings compared to the females..  H. hampei is sometimes mistaken for the false coffee berry borers (H. obscurus and H. seriatus) and Xylosandrus (Scolytidae), but these species do not enter the coffee bean endosperm.

Life cycle
The maturation of the insect from egg to adult lasts anywhere from 24 to 45 days, varying according to the weather. Usually, the female drills the berry through the central disc, although it can enter through the side walls if the fruit is dry. Two days after penetration, the beetle lays 35–50 eggs, which produce 13 females for each male. The average lifespan for females is anywhere from 35 to 190 days, while males last for a consistent 40 days. The new insects mate inside the seed, with the females then spreading either to other coffee plants or further along the same plant. The males never leave the fruit.

The same plant can host three to five generations of beetles, with up to 100 beetles being found in a single fruit. The insect is very sensitive to desiccation, and waits for the rains to leave the fruit. The most affected areas in the crops are places exposed to the least sunlight and the most moisture.

Colonisation

The main host of H. hampei is Coffea arabica, but other coffee species have been affected in some cases. The female beetles attack the fruits from 8 weeks past the flowering to 32 weeks. When the insect enters, it builds galleries in the endosperm where the eggs are deposited.

Distribution
The insect is endemic to central Africa and has now spread to most coffee-producing countries through the accidental introduction of contaminated seeds. The first report in the American continent were in Brazil (1926). In the 1970s, it affected Guatemala and Mexico. The beetle entered Colombia during the late 1980s. It entered the Dominican Republic in the 1990s. It was detected in Puerto Rico in August 2007.  It was discovered in Kona (Big Island), Hawaii in August 2010.

Genome and caffeine detoxification
The draft genome of the coffee berry borer consists of ca. 163 million base pairs (Vega et al. 2015 . Caffeine demethylase has been shown to be responsible for caffeine breakdown in the alimentary canal of the insect (Ceja-Navarro et al. 2015 .

Pest management
The presence of the insect affects the economy of over 20 million families that depend on the coffee harvest. Due to the losses in yield and quality caused by the insect, growers end up losing significant amounts of income. The main pest management strategies involve different components, including monitoring, controlled harvest, and the use of biological control agents.

Prevention
Prevention is based in the careful inspection of the coffee beans before leaving the coffee farms to avoid spreading of the insects. Also, a number of border controls has been established in countries with coffee crops.

Chemical control
Insecticides are useful only before the female beetle penetrates the berry.  Resistance to endosulfan, which has been banned in many countries, has been reported in New Caledonia.

Biological control
Biological control methods use the natural enemies of the coffee berry borer to reduce the population. Pest management through biological control can utilize predators, parasites and diseases that attack the larvae or adult beetles.

Birds
During the time when beetle offspring emerge from each commercially ruined berry to disperse, they are vulnerable to predation. The yellow warbler, rufous-capped warbler, and other insectivorous birds have been shown to reduce by 50% the number of coffee berry borers in Costa Rican coffee plantations.

Parasitoids
The parasitoids used to control the borer beetle are Hymenoptera (wasps) native to Africa. Although they have a low impact in the beetle population, the use of biological controls allows the product to qualify as organic food.

Bethylid parasitoids (Bethylidae): Cephalonomia stephanoderis Betrem and Prorops nasuta Waterston were introduced in some Latin American countries from Africa during the 1980s and 1990s with low success. In the late 1990s, the C. hyalinipennis native of North America was described as attacking the borer beetle in Chiapas, south of Mexico. This species preys on the eggs of H. hampei. Another useful betylid is Sclerodermus cadavericus Benoit, but its management is difficult, since it is an aggressive wasp and can cause severe dermatitis.
'Eulophid parasitoids (Eulophidae): Phymastichus coffea was discovered in Togo in 1987. It attacks the adult beetle, and mass-rearing in Colombia has been successful. It has a capacity to stay in the coffee crops for a long time.
Braconid parasitoids (Braconidae): Heterospilus coffeicola Schmiedeknecht was observed in Uganda, but its reproduction in laboratories has been unsuccessful.

Insect predators
Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) have been reported as predators of H. hamper but they do not control the insect. Research at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones de Café (Cenicafé, Colombia) reported other insect families as predators: Anthocoridae (Hemiptera) and Cucujidae (Coleoptera). The following are the genus and species that have been reported to attack the borer beetle:

Formicidae: Solenopsis, Pheidole, Wasmannia, Paratrechina, Crematogaster, Brachymyrmex and Prenolepis
Anthocoridae: Calliodes and Scoloposcelis
Cucujidae: Cathartus quadricollis (Guérin-Méneville)

Nematodes
Metaparasitylenchus hypothenemi (Nematoda: Allantonematidae) has been reported in Mexico.  A Panagrolaimus sp. has been reported in the field in India.  In laboratory experiments, Heterorhabditis sp. and Steinernema feltiae have been shown to infect the insect.

Fungal entomopathogens
Beauveria bassiana infection causes high mortality of the insect and products have been developed in Colombia and elsewhere. Other fungi recorded to attack CBB include: Hirsutella eleutheratorum, Isaria sp. (previously placed in the genus Paecilomyces),  and Metarhizium sp.

References

Further reading
Barrera JF, Parra M El café en Chiapas y la investigación en Ecosur. Ecosur pp. 6 (formerly available as http://www.ecosur.mx/Difusi%F3n/ecofronteras/ecofrontera/ecofront12/cafe%20en%20chiapas.pdf)
Borbón, O (1991) La broca del fruto del cafeto: programa cooperativo ICAFE-MAG. ICAFE. San José, Costa Rica. 50 pp
Bustillo AE, Cardenas R, Posada FJ (2002) Natural enemies and competitors of Hypothenemus hampei (Ferrari) (Coleoptera: Scolytidae) in Colombia. Neotrop Entomol 31:635-639 available
Camilo JE, Olivares FF, Jiménez HA (2003) Fenología de la broca del café (Hypothenemus hampei Ferrari) durante el desarrollo del fruto. Agronomía Mesoamericana 14: 59-63 available
Ceja-Navarro JA, Vega FE, Karaoz U, Hao S, Jenkins S, Lim HC, Kosina P, Infante F, Northen TR, Brodie EL (2015) Gut microbiota mediate caffeine detoxification in the primary insect pest of coffee. Nature Communications 6:7618.
Corbett, GH (1933) Some preliminary observations on the coffee berry beetle borer, Stephanoderes (Cryphalus) hampei Ferr. J Malayan Agric 21:8-22.
Jaramillo J, Borgemeister C, Baker P (2006) Coffee berry borer Hypothenemus hampei (Coleoptera: Curculionidae): searching for sustainable control strategies. Bulletin of Entomological Research 96:223-233.
Rojas MG, Morales-Ramos JA, Harrington TC (1999) Association between Hypothenemus hampei (Coleoptera : Scolytidae) and Fusarium solani (Moniliales : Tuberculariaceae). Ann Entomol Soc Am 92:98-100 available
Vega FE, Brown SM, Chen H, Shen E, Nair MB, Ceja-Navarro JA, Brodie EL, Infante F, Dowd PF, Pain A (2015) Draft genome of the most devastating insect pest of coffee worldwide: the coffee berry borer: Hypothenemus hampei. Scientific Reports 5:12525.

Scolytinae
Beetles of Africa
Agricultural pest insects
Woodboring beetles
Agriculture in Colombia
Beetles described in 1867

Hypothenemus hampei


2001 QR322 is a minor planet and the first Neptune trojan discovered on 21 August 2001, by the Deep Ecliptic Survey at the Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile. It orbits ahead of Neptune at its L4 Lagrangian point.

Other Neptune trojans have been discovered since. A study by American astronomers Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo from the Carnegie Institution suggests that Neptune could possibly have twenty times more trojans than Jupiter.

Trojan asteroids
Neptune

2001 QR322


Edward Shenderovich (born January 7, 1976) is an American entrepreneur of Russian origin.  He is a co-founder and former chairman of Knotel, a flexible real estate service, now owned by Newmark Group. He is also the founder of Kite Ventures, a venture investment company behind Darberry (acquired by Groupon), Fyber, Delivery Hero, Plated and Tradeshift.  Prior to Kite Ventures, Shenderovich was a founding executive and the Head of Strategic Development at SUP, a Moscow-based Internet company. He also co-founded Quantum Art, a content management software provider and Merchantry (acquired by Tradeshift).

Business
Shenderovich was born in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia) and came to the United States in 1990. He went to Mira Mesa High School and graduated from University of California at Berkeley.

In 2006, Shenderovich became a founding executive of SUP and oversaw the company's strategic development, including the development of LiveJournal in Russia.

Poetry
Shenderovich writes and publishes poetry in Russian.  He has been published by many Russian journals and included in ''Ulysses Released: Contemporary Russian Poets Abroad (In Russian:2004)'' edited by Dmitry Kuzmin.  In December 2010, Samokat Publishing House released a collection of Shenderovich's children's poems.  A new collection came out in January 2014. Translators of his poetry into English include Richard Wayne Chambliss.

In September 2015, Shenderovich's collection entitled "About One, Two, 3, 4 and 5" received an award at Biennial of Illustration Bratislava.

MiNE
In 2000, Shenderovich became a professor of business modeling at Universitá Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Piacenza, Italy, and was named Fellow of the MiNE  program in 2004.

References

External links
 Merchantry
 Knotel

1976 births
Russian emigrants to the United States
21st-century Russian poets
Russian male poets
Living people
21st-century male writers
Russian media executives

Edward Shenderovich


"A Christmas Eve" is a short story by Camillo Boito which appeared in his anthology of decadence and perversity titled Tales of Vanity (sometimes translated as Vain Tales), which also featured his more famous work, the novella Senso.

The story deals with a young man who is sexually obsessed with his recently deceased twin sister. Deeply depressed on Christmas Eve, he picks up a prostitute that bears a striking similarity to his dead sibling, but spending the night with her only sends him further into complete madness.

This short story is known for bearing a similarity to one of Edgar Allan Poe's lesser known works, Berenice.

Plot

Like Senso, the story is framed in the form of the protagonist's secret manuscript. Maria, the main character's nurse, to her horror comes across this document and narrates its disturbing contents to the reader.

Giorgio is a disturbed young man from Turin, vacationing in Milan in hopes of finally coping with the death of his twin sister Emelia, with whom he has shared a close bond. But by Christmas Eve, his condition only worsens and he starts suffering from horrific stomach pains, unable to eat or drink.

By night fall, he comes across the residence of a young prostitute, whom he appears to have been stalking for days. In his mind, she is the spitting image of his deceased sister. Giorgio invites her to his hotel room. At first, the girl refuses, claiming that she is waiting for her husband, but finally gives in after Giorgio promises to reward her presence.

They arrive at his suite and Giorgio orders all the delicacies off the menu and, to the young prostitute's delight, a bottle of champagne. They eat and drink. Eventually, her company soothes Giorgio's nerves and his stomach pains subside.

When the girl smiles during dinner, Giorgio becomes fascinated with the girl's perfect white teeth. He asks if he could have one of her teeth in exchange for 500 lire. The girl laughs and agrees almost immediately, saying that she could easily get a prosthetic for 40 lire and keep the rest.

As the evening progresses, the prostitute entices Giorgio into sex games. He complies hesitantly, slowly realizing that her likeness to Emelia was only in his head and the girl is nothing but a trashy whore.

Eventually, the girl passes out from all the alcohol she consumed. Giorgio looks at her in disgust. Then, after brief hesitation, he grabs a butter knife and knocks a tooth out of her mouth. He takes it with him as he flees the inn, giving the innkeeper an envelope with 500 lire for the girl when she awakens.

This is where Giorgio's confession ends. Maria then finishes narrating the tale; Giorgio returns home from Milan and his condition quickly worsens. Soon, the depression and the stomach pains leave him bed ridden. Maria realizes that he has only a few days left to live.

As Giorgio lies on his deathbed, Maria receives an unexpected visitor in the form of a coarse city girl, who angrily announces that Giorgio still owes her for her services.

Ignoring Maria's protests, she storms into Giorgio's room. Upon seeing her, the dying man smiles weakly and whispers Emelia's name. He then takes out a necklace he has given his twin sister shortly before she died and places it on the young woman's bare chest. She takes a look at her new trinket and smiles broadly, revealing a hideous hole in her pearly white teeth. Upon seeing this, Giorgio screams in terror and dies.

Themes

Like most of Boito's works, the story deals heavily with the exploration of vanity, this time the vanity of a trashy prostitute and a young man obsessed with his dead sibling.

And sharing a similarity with Boito's earlier work The Body, the tale delves heavily into necrophilia, made only more disturbing with the connotations of incest, since Giorgio's obsession with Emelia is sexual.

Since Giorgio is psychologically disturbed and suffering from a painful illness and delusional fantasies, A Christmas Eve can also be described an example of a short story with an unreliable narrator.

Short film adaptation
A short film adaptation, updated to 1945 and titled Christmas Eve '45 (in the vein of Tinto Brass' re-imagining of Boito's Senso) premiered on October 13, 2012 at the PollyGrind Film Festival.

References

External links
IMDb link for the film adaptation
 Trailer for the film version

Italian short stories
Christmas short stories
Sexuality in short stories
Short stories adapted into films
Fiction about necrophilia
Incest in fiction
Twins in fiction
Prostitution in literature

A Christmas Eve


The European wildcat (Felis silvestris) is a small wildcat species native to continental Europe, Scotland, Turkey and the Caucasus. It inhabits forests from the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, Central and Eastern Europe to the Caucasus. Its fur is brownish to grey with stripes on the forehead and on the sides and has a bushy tail with a black tip. It reaches a head-to-body length of up to  with a  long tail, and weighs up to .

In France and Italy, the European wildcat is predominantly nocturnal, but also active in the daytime when undisturbed by human activities. It preys foremost on small mammals such as lagomorphs and rodents, but also on ground-dwelling birds.

Taxonomy

Felis (catus) silvestris was the scientific name proposed in 1778 by Johann von Schreber when he described a wild cat based on texts from the early 18th century and before.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, several wildcat type specimens were described and proposed as subspecies, including:
Felis silvestris caucasica proposed by Konstantin Satunin in 1905 was a skin of a female cat collected near Borjomi in Georgia.
Felis grampia proposed by Gerrit Smith Miller Jr. in 1907 was a skin and a skull of a male wildcat from Invermoriston in Scotland. Miller revised his classification in 1912, proposing Felis silvestris grampia after reviewing more wildcat skins from Scotland.
Felis tartessia also proposed by Miller in 1907 was a skin and a skull of a male wildcat from Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain. The wildcats north of the Douro and Ebro Rivers are said to be smaller than in the rest of the region. The disputed "Tartessian" wildcat has kept the same size and proportions as the form that was found in mainland Europe during the Pleistocene Ice Ages.

As of 2017, two subspecies are recognised as valid taxa:
F. s. silvestris in continental Europe, Scotland and Sicily
F. s. caucasica in Turkey and the Caucasus.

Zoological specimens of cats that originated on Mediterranean islands are not considered native but introduced, including:
Felis lybica var sarda proposed in 1885 by Fernand Lataste was a skin and a skull of a male cat from Sarrabus in Sardinia.
Felis reyi proposed in 1929 by Louis Lavauden who described a skin and a skull of a specimen from Biguglia.
F. s. cretensis proposed in 1953 by Theodor Haltenorth who described two cat skins that were purchased in a bazaar in Chania.

Phylogeny
Phylogenetic analysis of the nuclear DNA in tissue samples from all Felidae species revealed that the evolutionary radiation of the Felidae began in Asia in the Miocene around . Analysis of mitochondrial DNA of all Felidae species indicates a radiation at around .

The European wildcat is part of an evolutionary lineage that is estimated to have genetically diverged from the common ancestor of the Felis species around , based on analysis of their nuclear DNA. Analysis of their mitochondrial DNA indicates a genetic divergence from Felis at around . Both models agree in the jungle cat (F. chaus) having been the first Felis species that diverged, followed by the black-footed cat (F. nigripes), the sand cat (F. margarita), the African wildcat (F. lybica) and then the European wildcat.

Fossil remains of small wild cats found in Europe indicate that the European wildcat probably descended from Felis lunensis in the Villafranchian more than , a transition that was completed by the Holstein interglacial about 340,000 to 325,000 years ago.

Characteristics

The European wildcat's fur varies in colour from brownish to grey with paler contour hairs. It has five stripes on the forehead, which are broken up into small spots. A dark stripe behind the shoulders expands into a spinal stripe running up to the base of the tail. On the sides, it has irregular dark stripes, which break up on the hind legs, thus forming a blotched pattern. Its tail is bushy with two to three black, transverse rings and rounded at the black tip.

The top of the head and the forehead bear four well-developed dark bands that split into small spots. Two short and narrow stripes are usually present in the shoulder region, in front of the dorsal band. Some individuals have a few light spots on the throat, between the forelegs, or in the inguinal region. The dorsal surface of the neck and head are the same colour as that of the trunk, but is lighter grey around the eyes, lips, cheeks, and chin. A slight ochreous shade is visible on the undersides of the flanks.

A black and narrow dorsal band starts on the shoulders, and runs along the back up to the base of the tail. In some animals, the summer coat is ashen coloured. The patterns on the head and neck are as well-developed as those on the tail, though the patterns on the flanks are almost imperceptible. Guard hairs measure , the tip hairs , and the underfur . Corresponding measurements in the summer are , , and .

Large males in Spain reach  in length, with a  long tail, and weigh up to . They also have a less diffuse stripe pattern, proportionally larger teeth, and feed more often on rabbits than the wildcats north of the Douro-Ebro, which are more dependent on small rodents.

The European wildcat is on average bigger and stouter than the domestic cat, has longer fur and a shorter non-tapering bushy tail. It has striped fur and a dark dorsal band. Males average a weight of  up to , and females . Their weight fluctuates seasonally up to .

European wildcats have proportionately shorter cheek tooth rows with smaller teeth, but a broader muzzle than African wildcats.
Since European wildcats and domestic cats opportunistically interbreed, it is difficult to distinguish wildcats and striped hybrids correctly on the basis of only morphological characteristics.

Distribution and habitat

The European wildcat lives primarily in broad-leaved and mixed forests. It avoids intensively cultivated areas and settlements.
The northernmost population lives in northern and eastern Scotland. It has been extirpated in England and Wales.

There are two disconnected populations in France. The one in the Ardennes in the country's north-east extends to Luxembourg, Germany and Belgium. The other in southern France may be connected via the Pyrenees to populations in Spain and Portugal.

In the Netherlands, European wildcats were recorded in 1999 near Nijmegen and in 2004 in North Brabant; these individuals had possibly dispersed from Germany. In Germany, the Rhine is a major barrier between the population in Eifel and Hunsrück mountains west of the river and populations east of the river, where a six-lane highway hampers dispersal.

In Switzerland, European wildcats are present in the Jura Mountains.
Three fragmented populations in Italy comprise one in the country's central and southern part, one in the eastern Alps that may be connected to populations in Slovenia and Croatia. The Sicilian population is the only Mediterranean insular population that has not been introduced.

The population in the Polish Carpathian Mountains extends to northern Slovakia and western Ukraine.

Behaviour and ecology
In France and Italy, the European wildcat is active foremost at night; in undisturbed sites, it is also active by day.

In Sicily, an individual was photographed in 2009 and again in 2018 at about the same location. It was probably at least 10 years old at the time of recapture.

Hunting and diet
In Western Europe, the wildcat feeds on hamsters, brown rats, dormice, water voles, voles, and wood mice. From time to time, it also preys on small carnivores like martens, European polecat, stoat, and least weasel (Mustela nivalis), as well as fawns of red deer (Cervus elaphus), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), and chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra). In the Carpathians, the wildcat feeds primarily on yellow-necked mouse (Apodemus flavicollis), northern red-backed vole (Myodes rutilus), Tatra pine vole (Microtus tatricus), and occasionally also European hare (Lepus europaeus). In Transcarpathia, the wildcat's diet consists of mouse-like rodents, galliformes, and squirrels. In the Dnestr swamps, it preys on Microtus, water voles, and birds, while those living in the Prut swamps primarily target water vole, brown rat, and muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus).

Birds taken by Prut wildcats include warblers, ferruginous duck, Eurasian coot, spotted crake, and gadwall. In Moldavia, the wildcat's winter diet consists primarily of rodents, while it preys on birds, fish, and crayfish in summer. Brown rats and water voles, as well as muskrats and waterfowl are the main sources of food for wildcats in the Kuban River delta. Wildcats in the northern Caucasus feed on mouse-like rodents and edible dormice, as well as birds, young chamois and roe deer on rare occasions. Wildcats on the Black Sea coast are thought to feed on small birds, shrews, and hares. On one occasion, the feathers of a white-tailed eagle and the skull of a kid were found at a den site. In Transcaucasia, the wildcat's diet consists of gerbils, voles, birds, and reptiles in the summer, and birds, mouse-like rodents, and hares in winter.

The Scottish wildcat mainly preys on European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), field vole (Microtus agrestis), bank vole (Myodes glareolus), wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), and birds.

Threats
In most European countries, European wildcats have become rare. Although legally protected, they are still shot by some people mistaking them for feral cats. In the Scottish Highlands, where approximately 400 were thought to remain in the wild in 2004, interbreeding with feral cats is a significant threat to the wild population's distinctiveness. The population in Portugal and Spain is also threatened by interbreeding with feral cats and loss of habitat. The extent of hybridization is low in Germany, Italy and Luxembourg.

In the 1990s, the easternmost population in Ukraine, Moldova, and the Caucasus was threatened by destruction of broad-leaved forests, entailing a reduction of their range. Only small numbers occur in protected areas.

Conservation efforts

The European wildcat is protected in most European range countries. It is listed in CITES Appendix II, in Appendix II of the Berne Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats and in the European Union's Habitats and Species Directive.

Germany
In 2004, the Friends of the Earth Germany initiated the project "Safety Net for the European Wildcat". This project aimed at relinking Germany's forests by planting bushes and trees between areas inhabited by and suitable for European wildcat, and which are larger than . They developed the "Wildcat Routing Map", a map depicting the  long network of corridors.
An Action Plan for the Protection of the European Wildcat in Germany was developed in 2009, aiming at doubling the area inhabited by European wildcat and linking populations within Germany and with neighbouring countries until 2019.

Scotland

In 2013, the Scottish Wildcat Conservation Action Group developed the Scottish Wildcat Conservation Action Plan. With this plan, the group set national action priorities and defined responsibilities of agencies and funding priorities for conservation efforts between 2013 and 2019. Its implementation is coordinated by Scottish Natural Heritage (now NatureScot). However, the population has been deemed no longer viable.

In 2023 a license was approved by NatureScot to release captive-bred wildcats into the Cairngorms region in June of that year. 22 cats were released in early June 2023, with a further 40 expected to follow in 2024 and 2025.

England
Conservationists plan to start a captive breeding programme in 2019 with the aim to reintroduce cats into the wild by 2022.

In 2023, it was announced that beginning in 2024 wildcats would be reintroduced in Devon and Cornwall for the first time in 500 years as part of a conservation project.

Switzerland
The European wildcat population has been protected since 1963. After a period of population decline, it appears to be increasing or stabilizing once again. It is unknown whether it was truly on the verge of extinction, if it has returned from France, or if it was reintroduced by private individuals or official services.

In the 21st century, it has appeared in new locations, such as the shores of Lake Neuchâtel. Its distribution and population size is assessed using hair traps: stakes coated with Valerian are placed in potential habitats, and the collected hairs are sorted and analyzed. Out of 655 hair samples, 525 were from cats, including 136 from wild cats. Photos also contribute to the investigation, with 716 portraits, including 268 of wild cats or their look-alikes. These results highlight the challenge of close coexistence between populations of wild cats and domestic cats, and the resulting hybridization. It is estimated that 15 to 20% of Jura cats are hybrids.

France
In mainland France, the wildcat species used to be widespread from ancient times until the Middle Ages. However, its populations began to decline during that period. Although it almost disappeared in the 20th century, there has been a slow resurgence in recent years.

As of 2012, the presence of wildcats has been confirmed in 44 departments across metropolitan France. However, they are considered rare in 9 of those departments. In the Vosges and Jura departments, they are slightly more commonly found. In mainland France, as of 2012, wildcats inhabit two distinct areas: the northeastern region of the country and the Pyrenean region. They are primarily observed in the foothills and can be found at altitudes of up to 1,700-1,800 meters. This population extends further south into Spain and Portugal.

A small remaining population of wildcats is believed to survive in the Var department, particularly in the Esterel Massif. In 2022, there was a notable reappearance of wildcats in the Bauges Massif (Savoie department) after being absent for a century.

In captivity
The European wildcat has the reputation for being effectively impossible to raise as a pet. Naturalist Frances Pitt wrote "there was a time when I did not believe this ... my optimism was daunted" by trying to keep a wildcat she named Beelzebina.

References

External links

Felis
Wildcats
Mammals described in 1777
Fauna of Albania
Felids of Europe
Taxa named by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber

European wildcat