Baron Augustin-Marie d'Aboville (1776–1843) was a French artillery officer during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars, who rose to the rank of general of brigade. He was the son of General François-Marie d'Aboville (1730–1817) and younger brother of General Augustin Gabriel d'Aboville, both fellow artillery commanders.

Early career
Born on 20 April 1776 in La Fère, in a noble family from northern France, on 12 March 1792 he became a student in the artillery school and held the rank of sublieutenant. He graduated on 1 September with the rank of lieutenant in the 7th regiment of artillery. Seeing active service at the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, he took part to the campaign of 1792 and served in the French "Army of Italy", attaining the rank of captain. During the radical phase of the Revolution, he was suspended from his duties, because of his noble origins, but was quickly reinstated on 25 November 1794. He subsequently served in the "Army of the Rhine and Moselle" and in the "Army of Italy", seeing continuous active service from 1797 to 1800. Promoted to Battalion Commander on 2 October 1802, he became a Major of the 2nd regiment of horse artillery (22 May 1803). Between 1803 and 1804, his unit was integrated in the "Army of England", a force with which Napoleon intended to invade the United Kingdom. D'Aboville received the prestigious Legion of Honour in 1803.

Napoleonic Wars
The debut of the Napoleonic Wars saw d'Aboville join the expedition to Martinique, under the orders of General Lauriston. During the return trip of the expedition, d'Aboville was placed in command of the 36-pounder battery of the ship of the line Bucentaure, which was involved in the battle engaged by the French squadron with that of British Admiral Robert Calder. Returning to France in June 1804, he received orders to join the "Grande Armée". He took a conspicuous part to the War of the Fourth Coalition, during which he attained the rank of colonel and was given the distinction of Officer of the Legion of Honour (1807), for saving the artillery of the 6th Corps, which had been attacked by a numerous pulk of Cossacks, on the banks of the river Passarge.

Appointed at the command of the horse artillery of the Imperial Guard on 13 September 1808, he was particularly noted at the bloody Battle of Wagram, where he was at the head of a company of thirty pieces, and had his right arm torn by a cannonball, an injury which almost cost him his life. The Emperor made him a brigadier general on 9 July 1809 and gave him the command of the artillery school of  La Fère, as well as the title of Baron of the Empire. He did not see active service again until 1814, when he was called to command the artillery during the defense of Paris, where he stoutly checked the best efforts of the enemy, inflicting considerable losses in the process. Left without a command following Napoleon's abdication, he did benefit from the favours of the new regime, when King Louis XVIII granted him the Commander's Cross of the Order of Saint Louis (5 August 1814).

Hundred Days and beyond

Upon Napoleon's return to power during the Hundred Days, General d'Aboville was at La Flèche. There, on 20 March 1815, he resisted an attempt from Generals Lefebvre-Desnouettes and Lallemand to take the village. Lefebvre-Desnouettes and Lallemand had both joined Napoleon but d'Aboville remained loyal to the Bourbons and forced Napoleon's troops to withdraw. He eventually relinquished the position and obtained an audience with the Emperor in April 1815, following which he was given the mission to organise the coast defenses in Le Havre. After the Second Restoration, the King gave him the title of Commander of the Order of Saint-Louis, and, when he became eligible for retirement, on 6 October 1815, granted him a pension of 2,000 Francs. In 1816, General d'Aboville was a part of the war council which ruled against Counter Admiral Lenoir and Colonel Royer. Taking a brief part to the July Revolution of 1830, which saw the ousting of King Charles X, d'Aboville was then included in the reserve on 22 March 1831. He died July 20, 1843.

References

Sources

 Mullié, Charles – "Augustin Marie d'Aboville", in "Biographie des célébrités militaires des armées de terre et de mer de 1789 à 1850, 1852".

1776 births
1843 deaths
People from La Fère
Barons of the First French Empire
Legitimists
Members of the 3rd Chamber of Deputies of the Bourbon Restoration
Members of Parliament for Aisne
French military personnel of the French Revolutionary Wars
French commanders of the Napoleonic Wars
Commanders of the Order of Saint Louis
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery

Augustin-Marie d'Aboville


David Wohl (born September 22, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York City) is an American theater, television and film actor.  He is a long time character actor.

Selected filmography
Terms of Endearment (1983) as Phil
Revenge of the Nerds (1984) as Dean Ulich
Gotcha! (1985) as Professor
Beer (1985) as Stanley Dickler
Turk 182 (1985) as TV producer
D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) as Mr. Nesbit
Brewster's Millions (1985) as Eugene Provost
Badge of the Assassin (1985) as Ken Klein
Armed and Dangerous (1986) as Prosecutor
Like Father Like Son (1987) as Dr. Roger Hartwood
The Couch Trip (1988) as Dr. Smet
Troop Beverly Hills (1989) as Dr. Honigman
The War of the Roses (1989) as Dr. Gordon
Presumed Innocent (1990) as Morrie Dickerman
Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993) as Gerou
She Led Two Lives (1994) as Harvey Parnell
Rear Window (1998) as Dr. Schneider
Saving Private Ryan (1998) as Captain T.E. Sanders, Captain at the War Department
The Wackness (2008) as Mr. Shapiro

Television
Family Ties (1986), episode 81 "The Disciple", as Ralph Boswell
Hey Arnold! (1996–2004) as Principal Wartz and Jerry Berman
 Madam Secretary as Israeli Ambassador Dory

Broadway
 The Man Who Had All the Luck (2002) as Augie Belfast
 Dinner at Eight (2002–2003) as Mr. Fitch
 Fiddler on the Roof (2004–2006) as Lazar Wolf

Regional Theatre
 The Buddy System, Circle in the Square Downtown, New York City, 1981 as Arthur "Gruely" Gruelbacher
 The Man Who Came to Dinner, Cincinnati Playhouse, Cincinnati, OH, 1981
 Northern Lights, Cricket Theatre, Minneapolis, MN, 1981
 Awake and Sing!, Jewish Repertory Theatre, New York City, 1981
 Portrait of Jenny, New Federal Theatre, Harry DeJur Playhouse, New York City, 1982 as Gus
 Luna Park, in Delmore, Jewish Repertory Theatre, 1982 as Harry
 Shenandoah in Delmore, Jewish Repertory Theatre, 1982 as Walter
 Basement Tapes, Top of the Gate, New York City, 1983 as G. Gordon Liddy
 Isn't It Romantic?, Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York City, 1985 as Marty Sterling
 Ghetto, Center Theatre Group, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, 1986
 Down the Garden Paths, George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick, NJ, 1999 as Arthur

References

External links

1953 births
Male actors from New York (state)
American male film actors
American male stage actors
American male television actors
Living people
Male actors from Brooklyn
Jewish American male actors
21st-century American Jews

David Wohl (actor)


Curtis Anthony Anderson (born May 29, 1940) is a contemporary American philosopher, currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from University of California at Los Angeles in 1977, where he worked closely with the renowned logician Alonzo Church.  He also holds an M.S. in mathematics from the University of Houston (1965), where he earned his undergraduate degree in physics and mathematics (1964).

Anderson's work over the years has focused primarily in the philosophy of logic and the philosophy of language, although he also works in such areas as the philosophy of religion and has an interest in most areas of traditional philosophy.

Prior to his professorship at U.C. Santa Barbara, Anderson held posts notably at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, and the University of Texas at Austin.

Publications
The Paradox of the Knower, 1983.
Divine Omnipotence and Impossible Tasks: An Intensional Analysis, 1984.
Some Difficulties Concerning Russellian Intensional Logic, 1986.
Bealer's Quality and Concept, 1987.
Propositional Attitudes: The Role of Content in Logic, Language, and Mind, 1990.
Analyzing Analysis, 1993.

See also
American philosophy
List of American philosophers

External links
C.A. Anderson's faculty page at UCSB

1940 births
Living people
Philosophers from California
Philosophers from Minnesota
Philosophers from Texas
University of Houston alumni
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
University of Minnesota faculty
University of Texas at Austin faculty
University of California, Santa Barbara faculty
Christian philosophers

C. Anthony Anderson


Gheorghe Cristescu (October 10, 1882 in Copaciu, Giurgiu County – November 29, 1973 in Timișoara) was a Romanian socialist and, for a part of his life, communist militant. Nicknamed "Plăpumarul" ("The Blanket Maker"), he is also occasionally referred to as "Omul cu lavaliera roșie" ("The man with the red four-in-hand necktie"), after the most notable of his accessories.

Biography

Early activism
Born in Copaciu (at the time part of Ilfov County, presently in Giurgiu County), Cristescu trained as a blanket-maker and became the owner of a blanket-making shop. Active in socialist circles as early as 1898, he soon became a leading member of the Romanian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (up to 1899, when the Party disbanded). In 1900, he joined the leadership of the only surviving group of the Party, its Bucharest socialist circle, România Muncitoare (led by Christian Rakovsky).

Up until the creation of a Social Democratic Party of Romania (PSDR) on January 31, 1910, Cristescu was one of the leaders of the short-lived Socialist Union of Romania. Soon after a Romanian Railways employee named Stoenescu attempted to assassinate Premier Ion I. C. Brătianu on December 9, 1909, Cristescu, alongside other România Muncitoare activists (including I. C. Frimu and Dimitrie Marinescu), was arrested and interrogated on suspicion of having inspired the action. From 1910 to 1916, he was one of the PSDR's leaders; in 1908-1920, he was active in the trade union movement.

In 1916, the Party was banned for its activities in support of the Zimmerwald Conference at a time when Romania entered World War I on the Entente side. After the Central Powers offensive (see Romanian Campaign), he remained active in enemy-occupied Bucharest, and kept contacts with Social Democratic Party of Germany with the help of German soldiers who sympathized with the latter. In 1918, when Romanian authorities resumed control, Cristescu and many other leaders of the PSDR (Ecaterina Arbore, Constantin Popovici, Ilie Moscovici, and Constantin Titel Petrescu among them) were arrested on charges of collaboration.

The PSDR re-emerged in November 1918, as the Socialist Party of Romania, with Cristescu becoming one of its representatives in Parliament after the elections of 1919. In this capacity, he became noted in debates over the imprisonment of Mihai Gheorghiu Bujor, a Romanian citizen who had joined the Russian Red Army in Bessarabia during the October Revolution, and who had been tried for treason. Constantin Argetoianu, who negotiated a failed merger of the Socialist Party into the People's League in late 1919, stated that Moscovici voiced criticism of his party's far left wing, where, as Argetoianu formulated it, "the blanket-maker Cristescu and others were agitating".

In the early elections of 1920, Cristescu, together with Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea and Boris Stefanov, was not validated into Parliament, despite having carried the popular vote. He was eventually confirmed for office.

Communism
Although he had originally voted against Vladimir Lenin's thesis as a delegate of the socialists to the Comintern World Congresses in Moscow (with Eugen Rozvan, Constantin Popovici, Ioan Flueraș, David Fabian, and Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea), and despite Rozvan's suspicions that he had maintained a "minimalist position", he became more and more radical, supporting the transformation of the Party along Bolshevik lines, but showed himself opposed to control from Russia. In deliberations for the 1920 vote, he expressed his opposition to Comintern control over local parties, and subsequently met with Lenin. Cristescu later claimed that the Russian leader had accepted his dissent and had offered some "non-political" concessions to the Romanian socialists (the claim was partly backed by a testimony of Dobrogeanu-Gherea). During the Congress, both Cristescu and Dobrogeanu-Gherea were ridiculed at home by the non-communist press (their bourgeois status, in contrast to their activism, was highlighted in the nicknames "Cristescu-Blanket Maker" and "Dobrogeanu-Restaurant", the latter of which alluded to the business Dobrogeanu-Gherea was managing in Ploiești).

Cristescu led the faction that separated itself after the Party's Congress of 8–12 May 1921, and was elected as the first general secretary of the newly formed Socialist-Communist Party (soon to be the Romanian Communist Party). Those maximalists who had designated themselves as "communists" (including Gheorghe Cristescu) were arrested and indicted in the Dealul Spirii Trial: Romanian authorities attempted to connect them with Max Goldstein, a terrorist of uncertain affiliation who had detonated a bomb inside the Romanian Senate on December 8, 1920. The charge against the communists was based on their rejection of Greater Romania as a concept, and their commitment to "world revolution" and the Comintern, which raised suspicion that they were trying to overthrow the existing order through actions such as that of Goldstein. Constantin Argetoianu, Interior Minister in the second Alexandru Averescu cabinet and main instigator of the arrest, later admitted that his order lacked legal grounds, and stated that he had given Cristescu approval to hold congress with the knowledge that Comintern policies were to be submitted to a vote, thus causing the faction to incriminate itself.

Most of the accused were acquitted, an important reason for this being Cristescu's convincing testimony (alongside a hunger strike endured by most on the bench, as well as the absence of sufficient evidence). Cristescu depicted Goldstein as an anarchist, and declared most of the witnesses who had connected the terrorist with the Party to be spies for the Siguranța Statului secret police.

Dissidence
Cristescu started questioning his Party's policies after the decision taken by the Balkan Communist Federation during its 1923 Vienna Conference. The Federation had adopted the official Soviet policy recommending that Bessarabia, Bukovina, Transylvania and Southern Dobruja (or all of Dobruja) be given the right to secede from Romania. Due to the ethnic composition of these regions, he could not accept that minorities be given self-determination (especially since this implied not autonomy or independence, but rather satisfaction of territorial demands that other nations had on Romania). Cristescu allegedly called for the party to revise its program in respect to these points, and thus resume legal activities.

Notably clashing with his nominal subordinate Marcel Pauker over such issues, he did all in his power to prevent the Party from adopting a clear point of view: when his attitude was investigated by the Balkan Communist Federation (1924), he had to resign his position, being excluded from the Party in 1926. According to Vladimir Tismăneanu, Cristescu's marginalization inside the Workers and Peasants' Bloc (created as an umbrella group for the outlawed Communist faction) was a major factor in his conflict with other activists.

1930s, persecution, and rehabilitation

After creating his own minor group, the Socialist Party of Workers (later known as Independent Socialist Party), in 1928, Cristescu joined the minor Unitary Socialist Party in 1932 (a Marxist group led by Leon Ghelerter, Ștefan Voitec, and Constantin Popovici, it eventually dissolved itself under pressure from the Communist Party in 1944). He retired from politics in 1936.

His daughter Tita Cristescu, a former Miss Romania who had become the mistress of Liviu Ciulei (a famous lawyer and father of the director Liviu Ciulei), died in mysterious circumstances in 1936. Ciulei, arrested on charges that he had poisoned her, was acquitted later in the same year. A theory in circulation indicates Maria Suciu, Tita's maid, as the killer.

During the first years of Communist Romania, he was severely persecuted for his political views, being arrested and imprisoned in the Danube-Black Sea Canal labour camps from 1950 to 1954. Released through the first amnesty of political prisoners (occurring very soon after Joseph Stalin's death), Cristescu spent his remaining years in relative anonymity. While his name was cleared by Nicolae Ceaușescu's rehabilitation policies, his uncomfortable opinions were censored and he was subject to Securitate surveillance until his death. Although occasionally hailed up as an anti-Comintern communist during a time when the Ceaușescu regime developed a nationalist discourse, Cristescu avoided being associated with the party he had helped to found.

References

Notes
 110 ani de social-democraţie în România ("110 Years of Social Democracy in Romania"), Social Democratic Party, the Ovidiu Șincai Social Democratic Institute, Bucharest, July 9, 2003
Dosarele Istoriei, 10/1998
Constantin Argetoianu, "Memorii" ("Memoirs"; fragment), in Magazin Istoric, March 1968
Adrian Cioroianu, Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc ("On the Shoulders of Marx. An Incursion into the History of Romanian Communism"), Editura Curtea Veche, Bucharest, 2005
Ion Constantinescu, "Dr. N. Lupu: «Dacă și d-ta ai fi fost bătut...»" ("Dr. N. Lupu: «If You Yourself Had Been Beaten...»"), in Magazin Istoric, August 1971
Florin Constantiniu, "Cristescu, Gheorghe", in Biographical Dictionary of European Labor Leaders, Greenwood Press, Oxford, 1995, p. 229
 Cristina Diac,
"La «kilometrul 0» al comunismului românesc. «S-a terminat definitiv cu comunismul in România!»" ("At «Kilometer 0» in Romanian Communism. «Communism in Romania Is Definitely Over!»"), in Jurnalul Național, October 6, 2004
"Delegații socialiști români la Moscova" ("Romanian Socialist Delegates in Moscow"), in Jurnalul Național, October 7, 2004
Victor Frunză, Istoria stalinismului în România ("The History of Stalinism in Romania"), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990
Z. Ornea, Viața lui C. Stere ("The Life of C. Stere"), Vol. I, Cartea Românească, Bucharest, 1989
 Stelian Tănase, "Procesul din Dealul Spirei" ("The Dealul Spirii Trial"), in Magazin Istoric
 Traian Tandin, "Istoria crimelor pasionale: Cazul Liviu Ciulei" ("The History of Crimes of Passion: the Liviu Ciulei Case"), in Jurnalul Naţional, September 17, 2005
Vladimir Tismăneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003
 Ilarion Țiu, "Aliatul lui Stalin" ("Stalin's Ally"), in Jurnalul Național, June 7, 2005

Dealul Spirii Trial
General Secretaries of the Romanian Communist Party
Social Democratic Party of Romania (1910–1918) politicians
Romanian Social Democratic Party (1927–1948) politicians
Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Romania)
People from Giurgiu County
Inmates of the Danube–Black Sea Canal
Romanian trade unionists
Romanian people of World War I
1882 births
1973 deaths
Socialist Republic of Romania rehabilitations

Gheorghe Cristescu


Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner (1702 in Ebbs, Tirol - 7 September 1761 in Augsburg) was an Austrian-German Rococo painter.

Life
He was born Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner in Tyrol and he learned glass painting in Salzburg. He moved to Augsburg and worked as a glass painter. The ceiling painting in the Sanctuary of the Holy Cross of the former Klosters Mountains is considered as his largest and most important work.

Works
Ceiling frescoes of the Sanctuary of St. Mary of Mount Carmel in Baitenhausen in Meersburg on Lake Constance, 1760
 Ceiling frescoes in the nave of the Sanctuary of St. Maria Loreto in Westheim
  The Martyrdom of St. Venantius of Camerino
  Daily edification of a true Christian
  Mark the Evangelist writing
  The Holy. John I. and the Gothic King Theodoric
 Drawings of Bible pictures in  Historia veteris (ac novi) Testamenti Iconibus Expressa

References

Further reading
 Bruno Bushart, Friedrich Kaess:  monastery Bergen Neuburg an der Donau and its frescoes by Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner . 1981
 Peter Stoll and Heide-Maria Krauthauf: "Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner and the 'Holy Albert of Trapani' in the former Carmelite Schongauer". In:  The Welf: Yearbook of the Historical Society Schongau - town and country  10 (2008/09), S. 177-194.
 Peter Stoll:  Anton Winter Gerst copied Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner ''. University Library, Augsburg 2013 (full text)

External links

Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner

1702 births
1761 deaths
18th-century German painters
18th-century German male artists
German male painters

Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner


Maria Catherina Swanenburg (Leiden 9 September 1839 - Gorinchem 11 Apryle 1915) wis a Dutch serial killer, who murthert at least 27, an wis suspectit o killin mair nor 90 fowk.

Swanenburg wis the dochter o Clemens Swanenburg an Johanna Dingjan. Efter her first twa dochters dee'd at a young age, she marriet Johannes van der Linden on 13 Mey 1868. The result o this marriage wis five sons an twa dochters. The marriage lastit till 29 Januar 1886. Her elk-name wis Goeie Mie, spelt as Goede Mie in modren Dutch an aw (which translates as Good Mee) which she got for takkin care o childer an ill fowk in the poor neebourheid o Leiden in which she livit.

It wis established wi certainty she pushiont at least 102 fowk wi arsenic o which 27 dee'd atween 1880 an 1883. The investigation includit mair nor ninety suspicious daiths. Fowerty-five o the survivors sustained chronic heal problems efter ingestin the pushion. Swanenburg's motive wis the money she wad receive aither throu the victims' insurance or thair inheritance. She haed secured maist o the insurance policies hersel. Her first victim wis her awn mither in 1880; shortly efter this, she killed her faither too. She wis caucht when tryin tae pushion the Frankhuizen faimily in December 1883. Her trial began on 23 Aprile 1885. Maria Swanenburg wis foond guilty o murther o her last three victims an sentencit tae live in a correctional facility for the rest o her life. She dee'd thare in 1915.

References
J.H.H. Gaute an Robin Odell, The New Murderer's Who's Who, 1996, Harrap Beuks, Lunnon
Lennaert Nijgh, Moord en Doodslag, 1990, Schoort

Freemit airtins
Biografie o Maria Catherina Swanenburg
VK Archive:

1839 births
1915 daiths
1880 creemes
Female serial killers
Pushioners
Dutch serial killers
Fowk frae Leiden
Dutch female murtherers
Preesoners sentencit tae life impreesonment bi the Netherlands
Dutch preesoners sentencit tae life impreesonment
Dutch fowk convictit o murther
Fowk convictit o murther bi the Netherlands
Dutch fowk who dee'd in preeson custody
Preesoners who dee'd in Dutch detention
Murtherers for insurance money
Patricides
Matricides

Maria Swanenburg


Mains electricity is a type of electric power supply. In American English it is also called utility power, power grid, domestic power, and wall power. It is the form of electrical power that is delivered to homes and businesses through electrical infrastructure in many parts of the world. People use this electricity to power everyday items, including televisions and lamps, by plugging them into a wall outlet.

Electricity

Mains electricity


The term social order can be used in two ways:

It may mean a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social orders.

Secondly, social order is the opposite of social chaos or disorder. It refers to a stable society where the existing social structure is supported by its members.

The problem of order (the Hobbesian problem} is central to much of sociology, political science and political philosophy. It asks how and why social orders should exist at all.

Sociology
Thomas Hobbes was the first to clearly formulate the problem. He answered with the notion of a social contract.

Social theorists (such as Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and Jürgen Habermas) have proposed different explanations for what a social order consists of, and what its real basis is.

Related pages
Social control

Sociology

Social order


Nutrition and pregnancy refers to the nutrient intake, and dietary planning that is undertaken before, during and after pregnancy. Nutrition of the fetus begins at conception. For this reason, the nutrition of the mother is important from before conception (probably several months before) as well as throughout pregnancy and breastfeeding. An ever-increasing number of studies have shown that the nutrition of the mother will have an effect on the child, up to and including the risk for cancer, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and diabetes throughout life.

An inadequate or excessive amount of some nutrients may cause malformations or medical problems in the fetus, and neurological disorders and handicaps are a risk that is run by mothers who are malnourished. An estimated 24% of babies worldwide are born with lower than optimal weights at birth due to lack of proper nutrition. Personal habits such as consumption of alcohol or large amounts of caffeine can negatively and irreversibly affect the development of the baby, which happens in the early stages of pregnancy.

Caffeine consumption during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of pregnancy loss. The available research favors the notion that the benefits of fish consumption during pregnancy outweigh the risks; however, the type of fish is important. Folic acid, which is the synthetic form of the vitamin folate, is critical both in pre-and peri-conception.

Nutrition before pregnancy

As with most diets, there are chances of over-supplementing, however, as general advice, both state and medical recommendations are that mothers follow instructions listed on particular vitamin packaging as to the correct or recommended daily allowance (RDA). Daily prenatal use of iron substantially improves birth weight, potentially reducing the risk of low birth weight.

 Folic acid supplementation is recommended prior to conception, to prevent development of spina bifida and other neural tube defects. It should be taken as at least 0.4 mg/day throughout the first trimester of pregnancy, 0.6 mg/day through the pregnancy, and 0.5 mg/day while breastfeeding in  addition to eating foods rich in folic acid such as green leafy vegetables.
 Iodine levels are frequently too low in pregnant women, and iodine is necessary for normal thyroid function and mental development of the fetus, even cretinism. Pregnant women should take prenatal vitamins containing iodine.
 Vitamin D levels vary with exposure to sunlight. While it was assumed that supplementation was necessary only in areas of high latitudes, recent studies of Vitamin D levels throughout the United States and many other countries have shown a large number of women with low levels. For this reason, there is a growing movement to recommend supplementation with 1000 IU of Vitamin D daily throughout pregnancy.
 A large number of pregnant women have been found to have low levels of  vitamin B12, but supplementation has not yet been shown to improve pregnancy outcome or the health of the newborn.
Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, specifically docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), are beneficial for fetal development. Several studies have shown lower risk of preterm delivery and low birth weight in mothers with higher intakes.
 Iron is needed for the healthy growth of the fetus and placenta, especially during the second and third trimesters. It is recommended that the first and third trimester retain concentrations greater than 11 grams/deciliter and that the second trimester has levels above 10.5 grams per deciliter. It is also essential before pregnancy for the production of hemoglobin. There is no evidence that a hemoglobin level of 7 grams/100 ml or higher is detrimental to pregnancy, but it must be acknowledged that maternal hemorrhage is a major source of maternal mortality worldwide, and a reserve capacity to carry oxygen is desirable. According to the Cochrane review conclusions iron supplementation reduces the risk of maternal anaemia and iron deficiency in pregnancy but the positive effect on other maternal and infant outcomes is less clear.

Nutrition during pregnancy
The United States and the European Union have established vitamin and mineral recommendations for during pregnancy and lactation. The amounts in the table below are the higher of the two. The citations separately list recommendations for pregnancy and lactation. Recommendations (RDAs = Recommended Dietary Allowances and PRIs = Population Reference Intakes) are set higher than what has been determined to be average requirements so as to address women who have above average needs. For some nutrients there is not enough information to set a recommendation, so the term Adequate Intake (AI) is used based on what appears to be sufficient.

*Adequate Intake
†Not established. EU has not identified an AI for sodium or chloride, and does not consider chromium to be an essential mineral nutrient.

Vitamin and mineral supplements
Multiple micronutrient supplements taken with iron and folic acid may improve birth outcomes for women in low income countries. These supplements reduce numbers of low birth weight babies, small for gestational age babies and stillbirths in women who may not have many micronutrients in their usual diets. Undernourished women can benefit from having dietary education sessions and, balanced energy and protein supplements. A review showed that dietary education increased the mother's protein intake and helped the baby grow more inside the womb. The balanced protein and energy supplement lowered risk of stillbirth and small babies and increased weight gain for both the mother and baby. Although more research is needed into the longer term effects on the mothers' and infants' health, the short term effects look promising. A review conducted in 2018 found that there was a slight benefit for lipid-based nutritional supplements (LNS) for newborn birth weight, length, small for gestational age and stunting when compared with iron-folic acid (IFA). In the same study IFA and multiple micro-nutrients (MMN) reduced maternal anemia better than LNS but care is advised in interpreting and applying the results due to review limitations.

Prenatal vitamins typically contain increased amounts of folic acid, iodine, iron, vitamin A, vitamin D, zinc, and calcium over the amounts found in standard multi-vitamins. Currently there is insufficient evidence that zinc supplements during pregnancy result in improved neonatal or maternal outcomes. The World Health Organization does not routinely recommend zinc supplementation for all pregnant women.

Approximately  of calcium is accumulated during pregnancy, almost all of it in the fetal skeleton (25 g). For women with low calcium diets, there is low quality evidence to suggest that calcium supplementation during pregnancy may reduce the risk of preeclampsia. Low-quality evidence also suggests that calcium supplementation may reduce the risk of the mother having the baby before 37th week of pregnancy (preterm birth). The protective effect of calcium supplementation is not clear and there is not enough good quality to research to suggest best doses and timing of calcium supplementation.

A mother's nutritional intake during pregnancy is believed to influence and possibly offer protective effects against the development of allergenic diseases and asthma in children. Maternal intake of vitamin D, vitamin E, and zinc have all been associated with a lower likelihood of wheezing in childhood, suggesting a protective effect. Additionally, maternal intake of omega-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 LC-PUFAs) has been associated with a reduced risk of development of eczema in childhood and reduced likelihood to for infants exhibit sensitivity to foods in the first year of life.

Folic acid
Folic acid, which is the synthetic form of the vitamin folate, is critical both in pre-and peri-conception. Deficiencies in folic acid may cause neural tube defects (NTDs). Women who had 0.4 mg of folic acid in their systems due to supplementing 3 months before childbirth significantly reduced the risk of NTDs. More than 80 countries use fortification of certain foods with folic acid as a measure to decrease the rate of NTDs.

Vitamins C and E
The combination of vitamin E and vitamin C supplemented to pregnant women does not appear to be efficacious for reducing risk of stillbirth, neonatal death, preterm birth, preeclampsia or any other maternal or infant outcomes, either in healthy women or those considered at risk for pregnancy complications. Antioxidant vitamins as dietary supplements had been proposed as having benefits if consumed during pregnancy. For the combination of vitamin E with vitamin C supplemented to pregnant women, a Cochrane review of 21 clinical trials concluded that the data do not support vitamin E supplementation – majority of trials alpha-tocopherol at 400 IU/day plus vitamin C at 1000 mg/day – as being efficacious for reducing risk of stillbirth, neonatal death, preterm birth, preeclampsia or any other maternal or infant outcomes, either in healthy women or those considered at risk for pregnancy complications. The review identified only three small trials in which vitamin E was supplemented without co-supplementation with vitamin C. None of these trials reported any clinically meaningful information. A second Cochrane review of 29 trials, published same year, reported on the same combination trials but added analysis of trials with vitamin C alone. The conclusion was that the data do not support routine vitamin C supplementation alone or in combination with other supplements for the prevention of fetal or neonatal death, poor fetal growth, preterm birth or preeclampsia.

Vitamin B12
For vitamin B12, the U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for pregnancy is 2.6 µg/day, for lactation 2.8 µg/day. Determination of these values was based on RDA of 2.4 µg/day for non-pregnant women plus what will be transferred to the fetus during pregnancy and what will be delivered in breast milk. However, looking at the same scientific evidence, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) sets adequate intake (AI) at 4.5μg/day for pregnancy and 5.0 μg/day for lactation. Low maternal vitamin B12, defined as serum concentration less than 148 pmol/L, increases the risk of miscarriage, newborn low birth weight and preterm birth. During pregnancy the placenta concentrates B12, so that newborn infants have a higher serum concentration than their mothers. What the mother-to-be consumes during the pregnancy is more important than her liver tissue stores, as it is recently absorbed vitamin content that more effectively reaches the placenta. Women who consume a small percentage of their diet from animal-sourced foods or who by choice consume a vegetarian or vegan diet are at higher risk than those consuming higher amounts of animal-sourced foods for becoming vitamin depleted during pregnancy, which can lead to anemia, and also an increased risk that their breastfed infants become vitamin deficient.

Food safety
Pregnant women are advised to pay attention to the foods they eat during pregnancy in order to reduce the risk of exposure to substances or bacteria that may be harmful to the developing fetus. This can include potentially harmful pathogens such as listeria, toxoplasmosis, and salmonella. Intake of large amounts of retinol has been linked to birth defects and abnormalities.

Water
During pregnancy, a woman's mass increases by about 12 kg (26 lb). The European Food Safety Authority recommends an increase of 300 mL per day compared to the normal intake for non-pregnant women, taking the total adequate water intake (from food and fluids) to 2,300 mL, or approximately 1,850 mL/ day from fluids alone.

Caffeine
Caffeine consumption during pregnancy is associated with increased risk of pregnancy loss and increased risk of low birth weight, defined as below 2500 grams (5.5 pounds). The European Food Safety Authority and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists concur that habitual caffeine consumption up to 200 mg per day by pregnant women does not give rise to safety concerns for the fetus. The United Kingdom Food Standards Agency had recommended that pregnant women should limit their caffeine intake to less than 300 mg of caffeine a day, but in 2009 revised that downward to less than 200 mg of caffeine a day.

High doses of caffeine intake during pregnancy may increase the risk of miscarriage and some major negative pregnancy outcomes, such as stillbirth or low birth weight.

A 2020 review called into question the safe levels proposed by the European Food Safety Authority, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the National Health Service, and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. It found that the current scientific evidence does not support moderate caffeine consumption during pregnancy as safe, and advised pregnant women and women contemplating pregnancy to avoid caffeine.

Alcohol

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are a group of conditions that can occur in a person whose mother drank alcohol during pregnancy. The most severe form of the condition is known as fetal alcohol syndrome. Problems may include an abnormal appearance, short height, low body weight, small head size, poor coordination, low intelligence, behavior problems, hearing loss and vision problems. Those affected are more likely to have trouble in school, legal problems, participate in high-risk behaviors, and have trouble with alcohol and recreational drug use. Fetal alcohol syndrome usually occurs when a pregnant woman has more than four drinks per day. Milder symptoms have been found with two drinks per day during the early part of pregnancy. Evidence of harm from less than two drinks per day or 10 drinks per week is not clear.

The American Academy of Pediatrics established a conservative set of recommendations in 2015: "During pregnancy:no amount of alcohol intake should be considered safe; there is no safe trimester to drink alcohol; all forms of alcohol, such as beer, wine, and liquor, pose similar risk; and binge drinking poses dose-related risk to the developing fetus." The World Health Organization recommends that alcohol should be avoided entirely during pregnancy, given the relatively unknown effects of even small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy.

Fish and omega-3 fatty acids
Fish consumption during pregnancy is encouraged by European, Australian, and American guidelines. The reason given is that fat-containing fish such as salmon and tuna contain eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). These are termed long chain, omega-3, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and are considered as important for fetal neurodevelopment. Additionally, fish are good sources of vitamins A, D, and B12, as well as the mineral iodine.

Due to risks of heavy-metal toxicity on fetal neurodevelopment, many mothers are concerned about eating fish during pregnancy. Overall, current research favors the notion that the benefits of fish consumption during pregnancy outweigh the risks; however, the type of fish is important. Current research suggests that 2-3 servings of low-methylmercury containing fish per week in pregnancy is both safe and beneficial. Mercury accumulates in fish through their own diet (bioaccumulation). A general rule of thumb is that fish higher up on the food chain, and with longer life spans will contain higher levels of mercury. Fish lower on the food chain and with shorter life spans will have lower metal content. However, it is important to note that the bioaccumulation of metals in fish is also dependent on geographical location, so it is hard to make global recommendations on specific fish species. An alternative to consuming fish is to use fish oil dietary supplements containing both EPA and DHA, or algae-derived DHA-only oils. The New York Times reported on a laboratory evaluation of 30 popular fish oil supplements. Some of those had less than the label claimed amounts of DHA. As for safety, "All of the products tested contained only very low levels of mercury, ranging from one to six parts per billion per serving. That range is far below the upper safety limit of 100 parts per billion set by the Global Organization for EPA and DHA Omega-3s, an industry trade group."

Nutrition after pregnancy
Proper nutrition is important after delivery to help the mother recover, and to provide enough food energy and nutrients for a woman to breastfeed her child. Women having serum ferritin less than 70 µg/L may need iron supplements to prevent iron deficiency anaemia during pregnancy and postpartum.

During lactation, water intake may need to be increased. Human milk is made of 88% water, and the IOM recommends that breastfeeding women increase their water intake by about 300 mL/day to a total volume of 3000 mL/day (from food and drink), approximately 2,400 mL/day from fluids.

See also
 Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder
 Prenatal nutrition
 Smoking and pregnancy

References

Further reading

 Health Education Authority (1996) Folic acid - what all women should know (leaflet) London:HEA

Nutrition
Health issues in pregnancy

Nutrition and pregnancy


The British Library (BL) is the national library of the United Kingdom.  It is on the north side of Euston Road in St Pancras, London, between Euston railway station and St Pancras railway station. The Library is a public institution and is one of the world's largest research libraries. Since 2000 the Chief Executive of the British Library has been Lynne Brindley.

The British Library contains over 170 million items in every language that is known. It has around 25 million books, more than any other library. It has manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 300 BC. There are books, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings and much more.

The British Library, by the law of the United Kingdom, receives copies of every book that is published in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, including all foreign books that are sold in the UK. It also buys many books which are only published outside Britain and Ireland. The British Library adds about three million items to its collection every year. The British Library has about 388 miles (625 km) of shelves.

History

The British Library, before it got its present name, started out as a group of collections made by several people in the 18th century and then given as part of a national library. The collectors were King George III,  Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Hans Sloane, and Robert Harley. The national library was part of the British Museum and was kept at various places, with some of the most important items always being on public display in the museum.

The British Library was created in 1973 by the British Library Act 1972.  Since 1997 the main collection has been housed in a single new building on Euston Road next to St. Pancras railway station. In the middle of the building is a four-storey glass tower containing the ''King's Library'', with 65,000 printed volumes along with other pamphlets, manuscripts and maps collected by King George III between 1763 and 1820.

Not all of the collection is kept in this new building. Part of the collection is at the Document Supply Centre in Yorkshire and all the newspapers from before 1800 are kept at the newspaper library at Colindale, north-west London.

In December 2009 a new storage building at Boston Spa was opened. It cost £26million and will house seven million items, stored in more than 140,000 bar-coded containers, which are retrieved by robots, from the 262 kilometres of temperature- and humidity-controlled storage space.

Highlights of the collections

 The Stein collection from Central Asia.
 The Diamond Sutra, the world's earliest dated printed book printed in 868 during the Tang Dynasty
 The Lindisfarne Gospels, a famous illuminated manuscript
 Two Gutenberg Bibles, two of the earliest Bibles to be made on a printing press with movable type
 Two 1215 copies of Magna Carta, one of the most important documents in the history of England
 The Egerton Gospel
 The only ancient copy of the poem Beowulf 347 leaves of the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest Bible in the world
 Codex Alexandrinus
 The Codex Arundel, one of  Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.
 William Tyndale's 1534 English translation New Testament, the personal copy of Anne Boleyn.
 Working manuscripts by J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart, Arthur Sullivan, Gustav Mahler,  Benjamin Britten and the Beatles.
 My Ladye Nevells Booke of Virginal Musick by William Byrd, one of the two surviving collections of 16th century music for the virginal.
 Manuscript (Carroll's handwriting) of Alice's Adventures Under Ground'' by Lewis Carroll, which given to the British Library by a group of American book-collectors to honour the courage of the British people in World War II

References

Other websites
YouTube page

National libraries in Europe
1973 establishments in the United Kingdom
1970s establishments in England
Libraries in the United Kingdom
Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Camden

British Library


The Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO)  is a space telescope launched by NASA on July 23, 1999.

Chandra is sensitive to X-ray sources 100 times fainter than any previous X-ray telescope. This is done by the high angular resolution of its mirrors. Since the Earth's atmosphere absorbs the vast majority of X-rays, Earth-based telescopes cannot detect them. Space-based telescopes are needed to make these observations. Chandra is an Earth satellite in a 64-hour orbit, and its mission is ongoing as of 2021.

Chandra is one of the Great Observatories, with the Hubble Space Telescope, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (1991–2000), and the Spitzer Space Telescope.  The telescope is named after Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

References

Space telescopes

Chandra X-ray Observatory


Paul Allan Schneider (born April 30, 1944, Brooklyn, New York) is a former United States Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. He had previously served as the Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Management. He was responsible for all the department's budget, appropriations, expenditure of funds, accounting and finance; procurement; human resources and personnel; information technology systems; facilities, property, equipment, and other material resources; and identification and tracking of performance measurements.

Schneider served as Deputy Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security from June 5, 2008 to February 11, 2009.

Prior to coming to DHS, Schneider served as a defense and aerospace consultant where he led a congressionally directed study for NASA on the costs, risks and benefits of human space flight and a study of open architectures for the U.S. Navy. He led an independent review of the presidential helicopter replacement program, played a role in the administration's effort to develop the plan for the Next Generation Air Transportation System and led reviews of Defense network-centric warfare and interoperability programs. Schneider served as the Senior Acquisition Executive of the National Security Agency (NSA) from October 2002 to September 2003, where he was responsible for oversight and execution of signals intelligence and information security development and acquisition programs.

Schneider served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition from July 1998 to September 2002. He was responsible for the oversight and execution of Navy and Marine Corps research, development and acquisition programs with an annual budget in excess of $30 billion. During the administration transition he served as Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition from January 21, 2001 to July 16, 2001. From October 1994 to June 1998 Schneider served as the executive director and senior civilian of the Naval Sea Systems Command, the Navy's largest shore organization. In this position, he was responsible for the day-to-day operations of an $18 billion per year, 70,000-person organization, including shipyards, laboratories, and engineering and test facilities.

Schneider began his career in 1965 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, as a project engineer in the Submarine Propulsion and Auxiliary Machinery systems branch. From 1966 to 1981 he served in several positions in submarine design, construction and overhaul programs. His last assignment was managing the Trident ship design and the integration of weapons and combat systems. He also served as program manager for a Submarine Advanced Technology Program. He was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 1981, when he served as the Deputy Director of NAVSEA'S Auxiliary Systems Sub-Group in the Engineering Directorate. From March 1986 to March 1981, he was the executive director of the Amphibious, Auxiliary, Mine and Sealift Ships Directorate, responsible for ship design, acquisition, maintenance, modernization and life cycle support of these ships. During this period, he also served as program manager for two classified programs. From March 1991 to October 1994, he was the executive director of the Surface Ship Directorate with expanded responsibilities to include aircraft carriers and in-service surface combatants, combat systems, security assistance and foreign military sales and the Navy's diving and salvage program.

Schneider holds a Bachelor of Science degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and is a member of the American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE), the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA), the Association of Scientists and Engineers (ASE), the Navy League, the Association of Old Crows and the Naval Institute.

Awards
During his service with the federal government, Schneider has been the recipient of the Department of the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award and the Distinguished Civilian Service Award; the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award (twice); and the President's Award for Distinguished Civilian Service. He also received three Presidential Rank Awards.

External links

References

1944 births
George W. Bush administration personnel
Living people
United States Assistant Secretaries of the Navy
United States Department of Homeland Security officials
United States Deputy Secretaries of Homeland Security
University of Massachusetts Lowell alumni

Paul A. Schneider


Walter Wardlaw (died ) was a 14th-century bishop of Glasgow in Scotland.

Biography
Wardlaw was the son of a Sir Henry Wardlaw of Torry, a middling knight of Fife. Before becoming bishop, Walter was a canon of Glasgow, a Master of Theology and archdeacon of Lothian. He was at the University of Paris, and a roll of the year 1349 has one "Master William de Wardlaw" in the English Nation. By this stage, he was already a canon of Glasgow, with a prebend in Glasgow and another in the diocese of St Andrews. Yet a petition of 1349 to the papacy has Walter requesting the church of "Dunenach" in the diocese of Aberdeen. By 1359, he is rector of Erol and archdeacon of Lothian.

After the death on 27 January 1367 of William Rae, Bishop of Glasgow, Pope Urban V, who had previously reserved the see for his own appointment, advanced Walter as bishop. The canons of Glasgow had already elected him, but the pope declared the election void before himself providing the same man to the bishopric. On 23 December 1383, during the Western Schism in which the Kingdom of Scotland sided with the Avignon Papacy, Avignon Pope Clement VII made Walter a cardinal priest (without title, that is, title to any church in Rome to which he would have been theoretically attached). In the following year, on 24 November 1384, the same pope granted Wardlaw with the powers of a legate in Scotland and Ireland. At this point in time, cardinals had to "vacate" their bishoprics upon becoming a cardinal, and so Wardlaw ceased using the title "Bishop of Glasgow". However, after a papal grant he retained administration of the diocese and continued to use his Glaswegian episcopal seal. Walter was frequently used as a diplomat for the Scottish crown in its relations with the Kingdom of England. For instance, in June, 1369, Walter was ambassador in England, and in 1384, he was one of the plenipotentiaries involved in negotiating the truce of 1384. Henry Wardlaw, future Bishop of St Andrews, was Walter's nephew. Henry was one of three nephews to whom Walter offered patronage and assistance gaining benefices.

Wardlaw probably died in September 1387.

References

Dowden, John, The Bishops of Scotland, ed. J. Maitland Thomson, (Glasgow, 1912)

14th-century births
Wardlaw, Walter
Wardlaw, Walter
Wardlaw, Walter
14th-century Scottish Roman Catholic bishops
Wardlaw, Walter
14th-century cardinals

Walter Wardlaw


The Muslim Banjara or Turka Lambadi are a Muslim community found in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh in India. Many members of this community migrated to Pakistan in 1947, and have settled in Karachi and Sindh. They are also known as the Makrani, especially in Uttar Pradesh, and they use Mikrani as their surname. The Muslim Banjara speak Banjari, also called Lambadi.

Present circumstances
The Turka Banjara have a caste council (biradari panchayat), which settles criminal offences like adultery and rape. The caste council is headed by a naik, and consists of fifteen members. They also have set up the All India Banjara Muslim Federation, which is an India-wide caste association. The community has been campaigning to obtain scheduled tribe status, a privilege already granted to the Hindu Banjara.

References

Social groups of Pakistan
Muslim communities of Uttar Pradesh
Social groups of Uttarakhand
Social groups of Madhya Pradesh
Muslim communities of Gujarat
Banjara people

Banjara (Muslim)


The derde (derda, derdai, dardai) is the title held by the highest religious and political authority among the Toubou Teda of the Tibesti, in north-western Chad. He is elected among the three most prominent families of the Tomagra clan, and at the death of the derde the title never passes to the son of the deceased, but to a member of the other two families.

The derde exercises judicial rather than executive power, arbitrating conflict and levying sanctions based on a code of compensations. He is assisted in the exercise of his role by a council of nobles.

It appears that already in the 17th century the derde of the Tomagra had already established its preeminence over much of the Tibesti, through the lines of succession still valid today. The Teda of the Tibesti in the 17th and 18th centuries distinguished themselves for their raids from the Fezzan to the north and to Borno to the south.

In 1842 century Tibesti found itself attacked by the Awlad Sulayman Arabs, who had been expelled from the Fezzan by the Ottoman forces in Libya; but the key event of the century for the Teda of the Tibesti was the birth of the Senussi, a Muslim political-religious order. They were invited by the derde, and with his encouragement at the end of the 19th century a Senussi zaouia was established in Bardaï, the most strategically situated oasis in Tibesti. This brought to the full Islamization of the Toubou, that until then had been quite superficial.

When the French colonial forces in 1907 made the first raids in northern Chad, the derde asked for the help of the Ottomans, who responded by establishing a few garrisons in Tibesti; but they were evacuated when the Ottomans were forced to cede Libya to Italy. The first French troops arrived later in 1914, but a moderate degree of control was exercised only from the 1930s. The derde collaborated with the French, retaining or even increasing this way their political and religious authority.

Chad became independent in 1960, and in 1965 the Chadian administration settled itself in Tibesti. The derde, Oueddei Kichidemi, saw himself stripped of his powers by the new government, provoking him in going in exile in 1966, an event considered the signal of the start of the Chadian Civil War in the north. The derde became now for the first time a national symbol through his opposition to the government, a role that after 1975, when the derde returned in Chad, was never to be recovered again.

References

 J. Brachet & J. Scheele (2015). "Fleeting Glory in a Wasteland: Wealth, Politics, and Autonomy in Northern Chad". Comparative Studies in Society and History, 57(3), 723-752. doi:10.1017/S0010417515000262
A. Zaborski, "Tubu" in Encyclopaedia of Islam

Positions of authority
Titles
Society of Chad
Toubou people

Derde


Umerkot is a town in Umerkot district of Sindh Province in Pakistan. The town is famous because the great Mughal emperor Akbar the Great born here in 14 October 1542 when Emperor Humayun fled to escape from Sher Shah Suri. The excellent artistic tourist spot of Umerkot Fort where Emperor Akbar born is here. The town is well connected with Karachi and Hyderabad.
Towns in Sindh
Umerkot District

Umerkot


EMPRETEC is a United Nations programme established by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to promote the creation of sustainable, innovative, and internationally competitive small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Programme
EMPRETEC is an integrated capacity building programme of UNCTAD in the area of SMEs and entrepreneurial skills promotion. It is dedicated to helping promising entrepreneurs put their ideas into action and fledgling businesses to grow. The programme is part of UNCTAD's mandate on enhancing productive capacity and international competitiveness for the benefit of economic development, poverty eradication and equal participation of developing countries and transition economies in the world economy.

The name EMPRETEC - the Spanish acronym for emprendedores (entrepreneurs) and tecnología (technology) - was first introduced in Argentina in 1988. Since its inception, the EMPRETEC programme has been initiated in 36 countries. Early counties were Brazil, Venezuela, Chile and Uruguay in South America and Ghana, Nigeria and Zimbabwe in Africa.

EMPRETEC's core product, the Entrepreneurship Training Workshop, is based on the research conducted by a psychologist from Harvard University, Professor David McClelland, who had done extensive work on entrepreneurship since the late 1950s. His Need theory proposes that everyone is driven by three needs. The participants in the programme are selected through focused interviews on the basis of both their personal proven entrepreneurial competencies and innovative approach to business. The EMPRETEC programme has a capacity to address other target groups of entrepreneurs (ranging from business leaders and public sectors to entrepreneurs with limited literacym as well as women entrepreneurs). This can be done through a range of customized products that are available upon request.

UNCTAD installs the programme at the requests of its member States and in cooperation with the national public and private sector organizations that are responsible for and contributing to SME development in the country. Although the implementation of the EMPRETEC programme depends on the needs of the beneficiary country, there are several necessary steps to take toward the implementation of the EMPRETEC programme. After the implementation of an EMPRETEC Centre's sustainability through the provision of revenue generating activities such as Business Development Services (BDS) and UNCTAD's Business Linkages programme.

Awards
Since 2006 the programme has resulted in the Women in Business Awards which are given every two years to the leading woman who has achieved success after EMPRETEC training.

References

External links

United Nations General Assembly subsidiary organs

EMPRETEC


A capsule neural network (CapsNet) is a machine learning system that is a type of artificial neural network (ANN) that can be used to better model hierarchical relationships. The approach is an attempt to more closely mimic biological neural organization.

The idea is to add structures called "capsules" to a convolutional neural network (CNN), and to reuse output from several of those capsules to form more stable (with respect to various perturbations) representations for higher capsules. The output is a vector consisting of the probability of an observation, and a pose for that observation. This vector is similar to what is done for example when doing classification with localization in CNNs.

Among other benefits, capsnets address the "Picasso problem" in image recognition: images that have all the right parts but that are not in the correct spatial relationship (e.g., in a "face", the positions of the mouth and one eye are switched). For image recognition, capsnets exploit the fact that while viewpoint changes have nonlinear effects at the pixel level, they have linear effects at the part/object level. This can be compared to inverting the rendering of an object of multiple parts.

History
In 2000, Geoffrey Hinton et al. described an imaging system that combined segmentation and recognition into a single inference process using parse trees. So-called credibility networks described the joint distribution over the latent variables and over the possible parse trees. That system proved useful on the MNIST handwritten digit database.

A dynamic routing mechanism for capsule networks was introduced by Hinton and his team in 2017. The approach was claimed to reduce error rates on MNIST and to reduce training set sizes. Results were claimed to be considerably better than a CNN on highly overlapped digits.

In Hinton's original idea one minicolumn would represent and detect one multidimensional entity.

Transformations
An invariant is an object property that does not change as a result of some transformation. For example, the area of a circle does not change if the circle is shifted to the left.

Informally, an equivariant is a property that changes predictably under transformation. For example, the center of a circle moves by the same amount as the circle when shifted.

A nonequivariant is a property whose value does not change predictably under a transformation. For example, transforming a circle into an ellipse means that its perimeter can no longer be computed as π times the diameter.

In computer vision, the class of an object is expected to be an invariant over many transformations. I.e., a cat is still a cat if it is shifted, turned upside down or shrunken in size. However, many other properties are instead equivariant. The volume of a cat changes when it is scaled.

Equivariant properties such as a spatial relationship are captured in a pose, data that describes an object's translation, rotation, scale and reflection. Translation is a change in location in one or more dimensions. Rotation is a change in orientation. Scale is a change in size. Reflection is a mirror image.

Unsupervised capsnets learn a global linear manifold between an object and its pose as a matrix of weights. In other words, capsnets can identify an object independent of its pose, rather than having to learn to recognize the object while including its spatial relationships as part of the object. In capsnets, the pose can incorporate properties other than spatial relationships, e.g., color (cats can be of various colors).

Multiplying the object by the manifold poses the object (for an object, in space).

Pooling
Capsnets reject the pooling layer strategy of conventional CNNs that reduces the amount of detail to be processed at the next higher layer. Pooling allows a degree of translational invariance (it can recognize the same object in a somewhat different location) and allows a larger number of feature types to be represented. Capsnet proponents argue that pooling:
 violates biological shape perception in that it has no intrinsic coordinate frame;
 provides invariance (discarding positional information) instead of equivariance (disentangling that information);
 ignores the linear manifold that underlies many variations among images;
 routes statically instead of communicating a potential "find" to the feature that can appreciate it;
 damages nearby feature detectors, by deleting the information they rely upon.

Capsules
A capsule is a set of neurons that individually activate for various properties of a type of object, such as position, size and hue. Formally, a capsule is a set of neurons that collectively produce an activity vector with one element for each neuron to hold that neuron's instantiation value (e.g., hue). Graphics programs use instantiation value to draw an object. Capsnets attempt to derive these from their input. The probability of the entity's presence in a specific input is the vector's length, while the vector's orientation quantifies the capsule's properties.

Artificial neurons traditionally output a scalar, real-valued activation that loosely represents the probability of an observation. Capsnets replace scalar-output feature detectors with vector-output capsules and max-pooling with routing-by-agreement.

Because capsules are independent, when multiple capsules agree, the probability of correct detection is much higher. A minimal cluster of two capsules considering a six-dimensional entity would agree within 10% by chance only once in a million trials. As the number of dimensions increase, the likelihood of a chance agreement across a larger cluster with higher dimensions decreases exponentially.

Capsules in higher layers take outputs from capsules at lower layers, and accept those whose outputs cluster. A cluster causes the higher capsule to output a high probability of observation that an entity is present and also output a high-dimensional (20-50+) pose.

Higher-level capsules ignore outliers, concentrating on clusters. This is similar to the Hough transform, the RHT and RANSAC from classic digital image processing.

Routing by agreement
The outputs from one capsule (child) are routed to capsules in the next layer (parent) according to the child's ability to predict the parents' outputs. Over the course of a few iterations, each parents' outputs may converge with the predictions of some children and diverge from those of others, meaning that that parent is present or absent from the scene.

For each possible parent, each child computes a prediction vector by multiplying its output by a weight matrix (trained by backpropagation). Next the output of the parent is computed as the scalar product of a prediction with a coefficient representing the probability that this child belongs to that parent. A child whose predictions are relatively close to the resulting output successively increases the coefficient between that parent and child and decreases it for parents that it matches less well. This increases the contribution that that child makes to that parent, thus increasing the scalar product of the capsule's prediction with the parent's output. After a few iterations, the coefficients strongly connect a parent to its most likely children, indicating that the presence of the children imply the presence of the parent in the scene. The more children whose predictions are close to a parent's output, the more quickly the coefficients grow, driving convergence. The pose of the parent (reflected in its output) progressively becomes compatible with that of its children.

The coefficients' initial logits are the log prior probabilities that a child belongs to a parent. The priors can be trained discriminatively along with the weights. The priors depend on the location and type of the child and parent capsules, but not on the current input. At each iteration, the coefficients are adjusted via a "routing" softmax so that they continue to sum to 1 (to express the probability that a given capsule is the parent of a given child.) Softmax amplifies larger values and diminishes smaller values beyond their proportion of the total. Similarly, the probability that a feature is present in the input is exaggerated by a nonlinear "squashing" function that reduces values (smaller ones drastically and larger ones such that they are less than 1).

This dynamic routing mechanism provides the necessary deprecation of alternatives ("explaining away") that is needed for segmenting overlapped objects.

This learned routing of signals has no clear biological equivalent. Some operations can be found in cortical layers, but they do not seem to relate this technique.

Math/code
The pose vector  is rotated and translated by a matrix  into a vector  that predicts the output of the parent capsule.

Capsules  in the next higher level are fed the sum of the predictions from all capsules in the lower layer, each with a coupling coefficient

Procedure softmax
The coupling coefficients from a capsule  in layer  to all capsules in layer  sum to one, and are defined by a "routing softmax". The initial logits  are prior log probabilities for the routing. That is the prior probability that capsule  in layer  should connect to capsule  in layer . Normalization of the coupling coefficients:

For this procedure to be optimum it would have to memorize several values, and reset those values on each iteration. That is if the vector  changes, then the memorized values must be updated. It is not shown how this should be done. Neither memorizing the divisor is shown.

Procedure squash
Because the length of the vectors represents probabilities they should be between zero and one, and to do that a squashing function is applied:

A vector squashed to zero has a vanishing gradient.

Procedure routing
One approach to routing is the following

At line 8, the softmax function can be replaced by any type of winner-take-all network. Biologically this somewhat resembles chandelier cells, but they can also be involved in calculation of coupling coefficients (line 9) or calculation of agreements (line 11).

At line 9, the weight matrix for the coupling coefficients and the hidden prediction matrix are shown. The structure in layer I and II is somewhat similar to  the cerebral cortex if stellate cells are assumed to be involved in transposing input vectors. Whether both types of stellate cells have the same function is not clear, as layer I has excitatory spiny cells and layer II has inhibitory aspiny cells. The latter indicates a much different network.

At line 10, the squash function can be replaced by other functions and network topologies that retain the vector direction.

The procedure conducts  iterations, usually 4–5, with  the index for the source capsule layer or primary layer, where the routing goes from, and the capsule layer  the next higher layer.

Training
Learning is supervised. The network is trained by minimizing the euclidean distance between the image and the output of a CNN that reconstructs the input from the output of the terminal capsules.

The network is discriminatively trained, using iterative routing-by-agreement.

The activity vectors of all but the correct parent are masked.

Margin loss
The length of the instantiation vector represents the probability that a capsule's entity is present in the scene. A top-level capsule has a long vector if and only if its associated entity is present. To allow for multiple entities, a separate margin loss is computed for each capsule. Downweighting the loss for absent entities stops the learning from shrinking activity vector lengths for all entities. The total loss is the sum of the losses of all entities. In Hinton's example the loss function is:

This type of loss function is common in ANNs. The parameters  and  are set so the length does not max out or collapse,  and . Down-weighting of initial weights for absent classes are controlled by , with  as a reasonable choice.

Reconstruction loss
An additional reconstruction loss encourages entities to encode their inputs' instantiation parameters. The final activity vector is then used to reconstruct the input image via a CNN decoder consisting of 3 fully connected layers. The reconstruction minimizes the sum of squared differences between the outputs of the logistic units and the pixel intensities. This reconstruction loss is scaled down by 0.0005 so that it does not dominate the margin loss during training.

Example configuration

The first convolutional layers perform feature extraction. For the 28x28 pixel MNIST image test an initial 256 9x9 pixel convolutional kernels (using stride 1 and rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation, defining 20x20 receptive fields) convert the pixel input into 1D feature activations and induce nonlinearity.

The primary (lowest) capsule layer divides the 256 kernels into 32 capsules of 8 9x9 kernels each (using stride 2, defining 6x6 receptive fields). Capsule activations effectively invert the graphics rendering process, going from pixels to features. A single weight matrix is used by each capsule across all receptive fields. Each primary capsule sees all of the lower-layer outputs whose fields overlap with the center of the field in the primary layer. Each primary capsule output (for a particular field) is an 8-dimensional vector.

A second, digit capsule layer has one 16-dimensional capsule for each digit (0-9). Dynamic routing connects (only) primary and digit capsule layers. A [32x6x6] x 10 weight matrix controls the mapping between layers.

Capsnets are hierarchical, in that each lower-level capsule contributes significantly to only one higher-level capsule.

However, replicating learned knowledge remains valuable. To achieve this, a capsnet's lower layers are convolutional, including hidden capsule layers. Higher layers thus cover larger regions, while retaining information about the precise position of each object within the region. For low level capsules, location information is "place-coded" according to which capsule is active. Higher up, more and more of the positional information is rate-coded in the capsule's output vector. This shift from place-coding to rate-coding, combined with the fact that higher-level capsules represent more complex objects with more degrees of freedom, suggests that capsule dimensionality increases with level.

Human vision
Human vision examines a sequence of focal points (directed by saccades), processing only a fraction of the scene at its highest resolution. Capsnets build on inspirations from cortical minicolumns (also called cortical microcolumns) in the cerebral cortex. A minicolumn is a structure containing 80-120 neurons, with a diameter of about 28-40 µm, spanning all layers in the cerebral cortex. All neurons in the larger minicolumns have the same receptive field, and they output their activations as action potentials or spikes. Neurons within the microcolumn receive common inputs, have common outputs, are interconnected and may constitute a fundamental computational unit of the cerebral cortex.

Capsnets explore the intuition that the human visual system creates a tree-like structure for each focal point and coordinates these trees to recognize objects. However, with capsnets each tree is "carved" from a fixed network (by adjusting coefficients) rather than assembled on the fly.

Alternatives
CapsNets are claimed to have four major conceptual advantages over convolutional neural networks (CNN):
 Viewpoint invariance: the use of pose matrices allows capsule networks to recognize objects regardless of the perspective from which they are viewed.
 Fewer parameters: Because capsules group neurons, the connections between layers require fewer parameters.
 Better generalization to new viewpoints: CNNs, when trained to understand rotations, often learn that an object can be viewed similarly from several different rotations. However, capsule networks generalize better to new viewpoints because pose matrices can capture these characteristics as linear transformations.
 Defense against white-box adversarial attacks: the Fast Gradient Sign Method (FGSM) is a typical method for attacking CNNs. It evaluates the gradient of each pixel against the loss of the network, and changes each pixel by at most epsilon (the error term) to maximize the loss. Although this method can drop the accuracy of CNNs dramatically (e.g.: to below 20%), capsule networks maintain accuracy above 70%.

Purely convolutional nets cannot generalize to unlearned viewpoints (other than translation). For other affine transformations, either feature detectors must be repeated on a grid that grows exponentially with the number of transformation dimensions, or the size of the labelled training set must (exponentially) expand to encompass those viewpoints. These exponential explosions make them unsuitable for larger problems.

Capsnet's transformation matrices learn the (viewpoint independent) spatial relationship between a part and a whole, allowing the latter to be recognized based on such relationships. However, capsnets assume that each location displays at most one instance of a capsule's object. This assumption allows a capsule to use a distributed representation (its activity vector) of an object to represent that object at that location.

Capsnets use neural activities that vary with viewpoint. They do not have to normalize objects (as in spatial transformer networks) and can even recognize multiply transformed objects. Capsnets can also process segmented objects.

See also
 Convolutional neural network
 Geoffrey Hinton
 MNIST database

Notes

References

External links

Artificial neural networks

Capsule neural network