Discworld MUD is a popular MUD, a text-based online role-playing game, set in the Discworld as depicted in the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett.

History
The MUD was founded in 1991 and opened to the public in 1992 (receiving continuous updates since then, now thirty years later). Originally containing a small section of the then rather loosely defined Ankh-Morpork, over time more locations have been added as the world has been further described in the book series, and laid out in the map supplements (such as The Streets of Ankh-Morpork and The Discworld Mapp).  It now consists of areas that attempt to simulate several big cities (Ankh-Morpork, Bes Pelargic, Genua and Djelibeybi) on two continents, a larger number of smaller towns, and more than a million rooms which form the land between the cities and towns, with markers designating canon cities yet to be built.

The MUD was founded in Perth, Western Australia,  by David "Pinkfish" Bennett, Craig "Furball" Richmond, Sean A. "Lynscar" Reith and Evan Scott.  It was an outgrowth of another MUD called Discworld II.  The MUD ran for a while on a machine in Melbourne before moving to run in the UK on a machine at Compulink where Gordon "DrGoon" was added to the administration team.

The MUD was later hosted for a time at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut by one of its undergraduates: Michael "Bastian" Hammill. "Bastian" served as chief administrator  of the game and "god" of Discworld (a character role), while "Pinkfish" continued in his capacity as head game developer. The school's IT administrator eventually ruled the project a hacking attempt due to multiple UNIX rlogin attempts from across the globe. This was actually just the game developers, or "creators", working as part of an international programming effort. The mistake cost the MUD another one of its homes.

Also of note, at the time "Bastian" was issued a cease and desist order by Terry Pratchett's attorney. The author's legal adviser thought the game was a for-profit effort and therefore a violation of Pratchett's copyright. "Bastian" assured both Pratchett and his attorney it was a fan-based effort and invited the author to visit "Pinkfish's" creation. Pratchett was assuaged. The Discworld project was allowed to continue.

After a while the game was moved to Seattle, running on a machine at one of the admin's workplace, Derek "Ceres" Harding, before again moving back to the UK to run at Jacqui "Sojan" Greenland's house.

Discworld has publicly released the code base under which it runs on a couple of occasions, allowing other MUDs to use the same base for writing their worlds.

Software
The MUD's software is divided into two sections — the mudlib and the driver.  The MUD is based on a from-scratch mudlib and runs on FluffOS, a fork of the MudOS driver, placing it in the LPMud family.  The driver is largely open-source, with new releases usually made available quickly, while cut-down versions of the mudlib including most of the underlying features are occasionally released (most recently in 2003), allowing the use of most of the basic object classes and tools of the MUD.

It is expected that players who wish to help with coding the game will apply to join the game's development team, rather than working independently and submitting patches. Developers are not automatically taken from players at a certain skill level, instead being recruited into a hierarchy from the player base with an application and interview system.  The underlying code is largely obscured from other players, with developers holding a policy of secrecy with actual game code and algorithms. Several useful algorithms such as that for determining experience costs have been either reverse-engineered or extracted from the released code by players, however, and can be generally found on various informational websites.

Before code is released live for general play, it is tested for bugs, typos, playability and ensuring the integrity of the theme by a group of beta tester players, aka Playtesters.  Often new items, areas, quests, and new spells or abilities are generated from ideas from this group of players.

Interface

The Discworld command system is a customized text parser allowing for flexible interactions with objects and a way to specify how the command is structured.  In addition to adjectives and properties attached to game objects, allows advanced semantic recognition to specify in-game objects (including 'living' things):
You are unburdened by:
Holding: a set of pearl prayer beads (left hand).
Wearing: a black backpack, a neat off-white linen robe and two silver rings.
(under) : a utility belt.
Carrying: a prayer book.

> locate leather things
The utility belt (worn) is in your inventory.
The black backpack (worn) is in your inventory.

> locate leather things except black things
The utility belt (worn) is in your inventory.

> glance at second worn thing
The neat off-white linen robe.

Other interface features include a basic in-game text editor, for editing in-game mail and other chunks of text, context-sensitive help, and optional sections of topological map (known as "lookmaps") to aid navigation.

One of the strongest development priorities in recent years has been on textual depth, providing rich descriptions and additional details, rather than on expanding the world or on providing higher-level content. Many interesting or useful details in descriptive text can be elaborated upon by applying more specific criteria to the "look" command.

Player Interaction

Chat
For purely message-based interaction, the MUD provides a talker system with a number of fixed channels, including general chat channels, channels for development organisation, and channels reserved for members of many in-game organisations. In addition to these, clubs can be formed which gain their own channels and optional electoral system. Some examples include Taxi (providing magical transportation around the game world), OOC (for roleplayers to chat and organise events out of character), and Begorrah (for Irish players to chat and organise meeting up in real life). World Cabbage Day sees several meet-ups in real life over the past decade on several continents, notably in the UK, US and Australia.

RP & PvP
Roleplaying is optional, and players can be observed playing in many different roles both in and out of character, from organisational, to social, to 'numberchasing' (grinding, especially for skills). Player versus player interaction is on an opt-in basis, with characters over two days of play old being allowed to remove their protected status. There are some notable exceptions to this — for example, the player councils can hire in-game, NPC (non-player character) assassins to kill a player who hasn't opted for PvP status.

Player councils
The game world includes several political regions. The cities of Ankh-Morpork and Djelibeybi are run by councils of elected player magistrates. These magistrates have the ability to develop player law, which they can also carry out.  In areas with no player council, no written player laws apply, and only the game's acceptable use policy, invariably referred to as "the rules", applies.

Ankh-Morpork has seven magistrates, while the Djelibeybi council has five. Elections are held every six months. The council system is based on the game Nomic.

Atmosphere
Taking the humorous aspect of Pratchett's work and running with it, the atmosphere on Discworld MUD is frequently whimsical, with a general fondness displayed for silliness and nonsense.  Frogs and wombles are often referred to.

Mechanics
The fundamental game mechanics of the MUD are based on a 'stat/skill' division, with a player's stats (statistics) relating to intrinsic properties, being semi-permanent, and skills (relating to aptitudes) increased by spending experience points to self-teach, or to learn from other player/non-player characters. Skill abilities are based on a diminishing returns system, in which a character's 'bonus', or ability to perform a certain task, is calculated on a logarithmic basis from the character's skill level and a geometric mean of related stats. Levels are uncapped, but also rise in experience point cost per level.

Experience points can be gained in a number of ways — in successful combat with NPCs, in the use of guild points (categorised action points), for exploration of areas, in the completion of quests, the accomplishment of in-game achievements, and simply by waiting — a very slow rate of 'idle XP' is given to players merely for being online.

The skill system contains a number of quirks and odd features; for example, some skills are used in unexpected ways, such as the skill "adventuring.movement.climbing.rock", which, while it is used for climbing rocks, is typically used to climb virtually any surface which isn't a tree or rope, such as a metal drainpipe. Because of the wide range of uses that skills are put to, individual skills are not documented, so working out what skill you need to perform a given task can sometimes be challenging — for example, the skill "adventuring.direction", typically used to avoid getting lost in extreme circumstances, is also the skill used in both reading and crafting maps.

Characters begin with seven lives, which can be replaced in-game.   A player who dies with no lives can only be revived by a magical rite that consumes expensive components and requires the cooperation of eight high level wizards. Most PvP deaths do not reduce your life total, but otherwise have the same effects. Before 2012, a player that ran out of lives could not be revived at all.

The majority of the game world is not persistent, resetting areas and objects invisibly, but players' inventories, the contents of rentable houses, and safe deposit box-like vaults are saved.

Guilds

A large part of the original intent for Discworld MUD was to move away from a restrictive class system, and to allow a player to do (almost) anything with enough effort and advancement.  Each character can join one of a selection of guilds, a combination of class and in-game organisation, and each guild has several unique abilities not shared with any other.  Many mundane attributes such as hit points, perceptiveness, and swimming skill are not affected by choice of guild.  While players can advance and benefit from any skill, players get extra bonuses and abilities within the skill set of their guild.

Broadly speaking, there are six classes: warrior, wizard, priest, witch, thief, and assassin.  Over several years these broad classes have split into more specialized guilds with regional and cultural flavour, and somewhat more specialized skills.

As of April 1st, 2019, the Fools' Guild and associated fool class were added to the game. This was done to coincide with April Fools', but has remained and grown as an actual guild.

Canon and divergence

Content has been worked upon continuously as the Discworld series of books has been growing, therefore there are smatterings of continuity taken from different books introduced in different regions. Additionally, some changes to the world have been made to allow a limited degree of player-control (such as player-elected administration for some of the in-world organisations) rather than using NPCs created from book characters.

The largest divergence from canon, however, is the addition of a range of divine magic not unlike that described in the Warhammer Fantasy or Dungeons & Dragons systems, mostly restricted to a small number of player-worshippable gods.

Reception
In April 1999, Discworld was selected as The Mud Connector's Mud of the Month.

In Total PC Gaming, UK edition, Discworld was 2nd of the Top Three MUDs in the MMO Supplement in issue 7, and received a special mention in the MMO Supplement in issue 15, in the "We Love" section.

References

Further reading

External links

 Community wiki

1991 video games
Fan fiction
Fantasy video games
MUD games
Video games based on Discworld

Discworld MUD


The Bush Doctrine is a term which many people use to describe several foreign policy and national defense decisions that President George W. Bush made.

The Bush Doctrine is usually used to describe how Bush invaded Iraq in what is known as pre-emptive war (which means to attack the enemy before they can attack you).

George W. Bush did not make up this term and he never said what he thought about the term.

There are other United States presidential doctrines also.

Foreign relations of the United States

Bush Doctrine


Kathleen Martin is an American small press publisher, book editor and actor. She is the co-founder of Wit's End Publishing and a senior editor of Point Blank Press, a crime fiction publisher.

Her early career, after receiving an academic scholarship to Brown University, centered on acting and theatre. She studied under Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, performed with the Boston Shakespeare Company and Harvard University Choir. Her acting included also work with David Mamet.

She worked behind the scenes in theatre by managing the young people's program at the Los Angeles Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and as the managing director of the Chicago Trinity Square Ensemble Theatre.

After founding Wit's End Publishing, she published and edited the Charles Willeford collection, The Second Half of the Double Feature, and the World Fantasy Award and International Horror Guild Award nominated Tainaron: Mail From Another City by Leena Krohn.

She voiced Janice Shriek in the short film adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's Shriek: An Afterword in 2007.

References

External links
Under the Bushel Weblog
Personal audio recordings
Point Blank Press Bio
LEO Weekly Article by Paul Kopasz
Courier-Journal Article by Bill Wolfe

Living people
American book publishers (people)
American book editors
Year of birth missing (living people)
Women book publishers (people)

Kathleen Martin


Plywood is a manufactured wood which is made by gluing several thin sheets of wood together with the grain alternately running along the sheet then across it.

The veneer is usually about 3 millimetres thick for each layer.  Interior layers of these boards are usually made from an inexpensive wood while the outer veneer layers are made from more expensive timber to give the board a nice wood grain appearance.  The glued layers are heated together to make the seal become better bonded.

A common reason for using plywood instead of plain wood is its resistance to cracking, shrinking and changing shape.  It is cheaper and stronger than most plain woods.

It is used to make a range of things from sheds, to cladding to cabinets. It is graded on the quality, from class A to class D, A being the best quality and D being the worst quality.

Different kinds of plywood are made for different purposes. Marine plywood, for example, is especially resistant to water. There is a world-wide industry making plywood for structural purposes. IKEA is well-known for using mostly plywood and chipboard in their indoor and outdoor furniture products.

Wood

Plywood


In mathematics and statistics, the mean is a kind of average. Besides the mean, there are other kinds of average, and there are also a few kinds of mean.

The most common mean is the arithmetic mean, which is calculated by adding all of the values together, then dividing by the number of values.

For example, if 1, 2, 2, 100, 100 is a set of numbers or scores. If we add all the numbers, the answer is 205.  By dividing this number by the number of numbers (5), we find that the mean is 41. The difficulty with this particular set of numbers is that no one in this group scored anything like a 41, and it does not tell us much about what kind of scores these numbers represent.

Calculation details
In general, to find the average of  numbers, the  numbers are added and the total is divided by .

In symbols, if the numbers are , , , ... , the total is:

The total is divided by  to make the average:

If , , , ...,  are all the numbers in a sample , then this average is also called the sample mean of , and represented by the symbol .

Examples

 Lucy is 5 years old. Tom is 6 years old. Emily is 7 years old. To find the average age:
Add the three numbers :

 The total is 18. Divide the total 18 by three:

 The average of the three numbers is 6.

Therefore, the average age of Lucy, Tom and Emily is 6 years.

Related calculations

The idea behind the mean is to represent a number of measurements, or values, by one value only. But there are different ways to calculate such a representing value.

The median is the number that divides all the samples in such a way that half of the samples are below it, and the other half above. Example: 1, 10, 50, 100, 100 is a set of numbers or scores. If we look at these scores, we discover that the number 50 falls in the middle of the range of numbers, which tells us that half the numbers or scores are above this number, and half the numbers and scores are below this number. This is more information, depending on what you are trying to find out about this group of numbers, to help you find out what you want to know. It is not always possible to make the higher and lower group each exactly half of the total (for example, the equal division fails for the list 1, 2, 2).

The modus or mode is the number that occurs most often. Example: 1, 2, 2, 100, 200 is a set of numbers or scores. If we look at the numbers we discover that the number 2 recurs most often and would tell us that the number or score of 2 is the most common score or number in the group.

The arithmetic mean is just the average, the value that is the sum of all values, divided by their number. This is what is most often referred to as mean.

The geometric mean is the root of the product of all values. For example, the geometric mean of 4, 6, and 9 is 6, because 4 times 6 times 9 is 216, and the cube root (because there are three values) of 216 is 6.

The harmonic mean is the reciprocal of the arithmetic mean of the reciprocals. It is often used when people want a mean of rates or percentages.

The root mean square (or quadratic mean) is the square root of the arithmetic mean of the squares of the values. The root mean square is at least as high as the arithmetic mean, and usually higher.

If people do many different measurements, they will get many different results. Those results have a certain distribution, and they can also be centered around an average value. This average value is what mathematicians call arithmetic mean.

Mean can also stand for expected value. For a random variable , this is represented by the symbol .

Related pages

 Standard deviation

References

Statistics
Arithmetics

Mean


The Universidade da Amazônia (English: University of Amazon; often abbreviated as UNAMA) is a Catholic, private university in the Brazilian state of Pará. Established in 1993, it was the first private university in the North of Brazil. The university has four campuses: three in the city of Belém ("Alcindo Cacela", "Quintino Bocaiúva", and "Senador Lemos") and one in the city of Ananindeua ("Campus BR").

History

UNAMA was formally established in 1993, but its history goes back to the 1970s. In 1974, a group of teachers creates the "Centro de Estudos Superiores do Estado do Pará" (CESEP), one of the first institutions of higher education in the state of Pará. At that same time, another project to establish a private college gave rise to the "Faculdades Integradas Colégio Moderno" (FICOM). In 1985, CESEP and FICOM began to run a joint specialization program. This union would last until 1987, when CESEP and FICOM finally merged and gave rise to the "União das Escolas Superiores do Pará" (UNESPA).

In 1993, the project to turn UNESPA into a university takes place. The new institution was called "Universidade da Amazônia" and became known by its abbreviation "UNAMA" since then. At the time of its founding, the campuses "Alcindo Cacela" and "Quintino Bocaiúva" were already built. The campuses "Senador Lemos" and "Campus BR" began to operate only in the 2000s.

Since its inception, the university has been maintained by União de Ensino Superior do Pará (abbreviated as "UNESPA"). Today, UNAMA runs a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs (specialist and master's degree) in the most diverse fields of knowledge.

Centers and institutions
 Center for Health and Biological Sciences (Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, CCBS)
 Center for Exact Sciences and Technology (Centro de Ciências Exatas e Tecnologia, CCET)
 Center for Applied Social Studies (, CESA)
 Center for Human and Education Sciences (Centro de Ciências Humanas e Educação, CCHE)
 Institute of Juridical Sciences (Instituto de Ciências Jurídicas, ICJ)

External links
 Website of Universidade da Amazônia

Catholic universities and colleges in Brazil
Universities and colleges in Pará
Educational institutions established in 1993
1993 establishments in Brazil

Universidade da Amazônia


Ana Miralles (born 16 December 1959; also spelled as Ana Mirallès) is a Spanish comic books artist, known particularly for her treatment of erotic subjects.

After a degree in fine arts, she became an illustrator for publishing houses Gregal, Teide and Bromera.  She later worked increasingly in bande dessinée comic books, first finding publication in 1982 with the Spanish adult comic magazine Rambla.  Her first black-and-white album, El Brillo de una Mirada, came out in 1990, written by Emilio Ruiz.  This was later coloured and released in France as Corps à corps.

Her first comic series was the Eva Médusa trilogy, set in Brazil in the 1920s, which she made with Antonio Segura; the first volume was published in 1991.  She worked again with Ruiz on A la Recherche de la Licorne from 1997 (an adaptation of Juan Eslava Galan's bestselling novel).  In 2001 she created Djinn with Jean Dufaux.

In June 2009, Miralles became the first woman to win the "Gran Premio del Salón" at the Barcelona Comics Festival (its highest honour).

References

External links
Short biographical sketch (in English)
Short biography (in French)
Interview (in French) about Djinn

Living people
1959 births
Artists from Madrid
Spanish comics artists
Spanish female comics artists
Spanish erotic artists

Ana Miralles


A structured investment vehicle (SIV) is a non-bank financial institution established to earn a credit spread between the longer-term assets held in its portfolio and the shorter-term liabilities it issues.  They are simple credit spread lenders, frequently "lending" by investing in securitizations, but also by investing in corporate bonds and funding by issuing commercial paper and medium term notes, which were usually rated AAA until the onset of the financial crisis.  They did not expose themselves to either interest rate or currency risk and typically held asset to maturity.  SIVs differ from asset-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations in that they are permanently capitalized and have an active management team.

They are generally established as offshore companies and so avoid paying tax and escape the regulation that banks and finance companies are normally subject to.  In addition, until changes in regulations around 2008, they could often be kept off the balance-sheet of the banks that set them up – like asset management activity – escaping even indirect restraints through regulation even though the sponsoring banks usually provided some level of guarantee to investors in the SIV. Due to their structure, the assets and liabilities of the SIV were more transparent than traditional banks for investors. SIVs were given the label by Standard & Poor's—Moody's called them "Limited Purpose Investment Companies" or "LiPICs". They are considered to be part of the non-bank financial system, which has two parts, the shadow banking system comprising the "bank sponsored" SIVs (which operated in the shadows of the bank sponsors' balance sheets) and the parallel banking system, made up from independent (i.e. non-bank-aligned) sponsors.

Invented by Citigroup in 1988, SIVs were large investors in securitization.  Some SIVs had significant concentrations in US subprime mortgages, while other SIV had no exposure to these products that are so linked to the financial crisis in 2008. After a slow start (there were only seven SIVs before 2000) the SIV sector tripled in assets between 2004 and 2007, and at their peak just before the financial crisis in mid 2007, there were about 36 SIVs with assets under management in excess of $400 billion. By October 2008, no SIVs remained active.

The strategy of SIVs is the same as traditional credit spread banking.  They raise capital and then lever that capital by issuing short-term securities, such as commercial paper and medium term notes and public bonds, at lower rates and then use that money to buy longer term securities at higher margins, earning the net credit spread for their investors. Long term assets could include, among other things, residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS), collateralized bond obligation, auto loans, student loans, credit cards securitizations, and bank and corporate bonds.

History
In 1988 and 1989, two London bankers, Nicholas Sossidis and Stephen Partridge-Hicks launched the first two SIVs for Citigroup, called Alpha Finance Corp. and Beta Finance Corp. Alpha had a maximum leverage of 5 times its capital with each asset requiring 20% of capital irrespective of its credit quality.  Beta had leverage of up to 10 times capital but leverage was based on risk weightings of the assets.  In 1993, Sossidis and Partridge-Hicks left Citigroup to form their own management firm, Gordian Knot, located in London's Mayfair. "Alpha Finance was created in response to volatility in the capital markets at the time. Investors wanted a highly-rated vehicle that would yield more stable returns on their capital, said Henry Tabe, a managing director for Moody's Investors Service's London office." Henry Tabe provides further historical background in his book on how SIVs unravelled during the crisis and lessons that can be learned from the sector's extinction.

In 1999, Professor Frank Partnoy wrote, "certain types of so-called 'arbitrage vehicles' demonstrate that companies are purchasing credit ratings for something other than their informational value. One example is the credit arbitrage vehicle, also known as a Structured Investment Vehicle (SIV).  A typical SIV is a company which seeks to 'arbitrage' credit by issuing debt or debt-like liabilities and purchasing debt or debt-like assets, and earning the credit spread differential between its assets and liabilities. Much of an SIV's portfolio may consist of asset-backed securities."  However, Portnoy's quote is misleading, in reality there is no such "arbitrage", the SIV is acting like any old fashioned spread banker, seeking to earn a spread between its income on assets and cost of funds on liabilities. It earns this spread by accepting two types of risk: a credit transformation (lending to AA borrowers while issuing AAA liabilities) and a maturity transformation (borrowing short while lending long). The scale of both transformations were considerably less than traditional banks, and leverage was also typically half to a quarter of that used by banks, so the risks were less and the returns available were also much lower.

The introduction of Basel I regulations made holding bank capital and asset-backed securities (ABSs) expensive for a bank, depending on the ratings assigned by one of the Government sponsored ratings agencies. ABS's that were able to attain a rating of AA or AAA had capital requirements as low as 1.6% of the securities' size (8%x20%), allowing for higher leverage than would have been allowed otherwise. Bank capital securities, such as dated subordinated debt could be weighted as highly as to amount to a deduction from capital.  That is to say all the investment would be funded from capital.

A 'loophole' in the Basel accords meant that banks could provide a liquidity facility to the SIV of up to 360 days without holding capital against it so long as it was undrawn. However these facilities typically represented only between 10% and 20% of the total balance sheet of the SIV.

Partnoy then questioned the economic theory of SIVs:  "How is the SIV able to earn such an 'arbitrage' spread between its assets and liabilities?  If the SIV is simply a vehicle for purchasing financial assets, it should not be able to fund purchases of those assets at a lower rate than the rate on those assets. If it could, market participants with low funding rates would simply purchase the financial assets directly, and capture the spread for themselves. Put more simply, if a vehicle purchases $100 million of asset-backed bonds, priced at par, with a coupon of seven percent, and it seeks to fund that purchase by borrowing $100 million, it should not be able to borrow at a rate lower than seven percent."

Portnoy's theory misses the simple fact that the SIVs raised capital from third party investors with which to enhance the liabilities so these were not simple pass-through structures.  Those investors benefitted from the SIV raising funding on their behalf at lower rates than they could themselves due to the tight criteria required by the rating agencies.

Alpha's maximum leverage was five times. Beta's leverage was up to 10 times, depending upon the quality of its asset portfolio. Subsequent SIVs, such as Centauri and Dorada, raised the leverage to around 20 times. Typically banks are leveraged between 25 and 50 times, so most SIVs operated with leverage of approx half that of traditional banks. By 2004, Sedna was offering notes that were leveraged over 100 times that attempted to achieve a spread of 10% or more in the medium term.

At the end of 2004, there were 18 operational SIVs that managed assets then valued at a total of $147 billion. At the end of 2005, according to Standard & Poor's, SIVs represented more than $200 billion of assets under management.

As of September 2007, one paper reported:  "All SIVs to date have been established in either the Cayman Islands or Jersey so as to benefit from certain zero-tax regimes available in those jurisdictions. As mentioned, the SIV will usually also establish a subsidiary in Delaware to facilitate the issuance of debt in the US domestic market. The debt issued in the US will either be guaranteed by the offshore parent, or co-issued by the SIV and the subsidiary."

Overview
A SIV may be thought of as a very simple virtual non-bank financial institution (i.e. it does not accept deposits). Instead of gathering deposits from the public, it borrows cash from the money market by selling short maturity (often less than a year) instruments called commercial paper (CP), medium term notes (MTNs) and public bonds to professional investors. SIVs had the highest ratings of AAA/Aaa, as a result of their very high quality portfolio requirements, almost zero exposure to interest rate and FX risk and large capital base (compared to traditional banks).  This enabled them to borrow at interest rates close to the LIBOR, the rate at which banks lend to each other. The gathered funds are then used to purchase long term (longer than a year) bonds with credit ratings of between AAA and BBB. These assets earned higher interest rates, typically 0.25% to 0.50% higher than the cost of funding. The difference in interest rates represents the profit that the SIV pays to the capital note holders part of which return is shared with the investment manager.

Structure
The short-term securities that a SIV issues often contain two tiers of liabilities, junior and senior, with a leverage ratio ranging from 10 to 15 times. The senior debt is invariably rated AAA/Aaa/AAA and A-1+/P-1/F1 (usually by two rating agencies). The junior debt may or may not be rated, but when rated it is usually in the BBB area. There may be a mezzanine tranche rated A. The senior debt is a pari passu combination of medium-term notes (MTN) and commercial paper (CP). The junior debt traditionally comprises puttable, rolling 10-year bonds, but shorter maturities and bullet notes became more common.

In order to support their high senior ratings, SIVs were obliged to obtain significant capital and liquidity facilities (so-called back-stop facilities) from banks to cover some of the senior issuance. This helps to reduce investor exposure to market disruptions that might prevent the SIV from refinancing its CP debt. To the extent that the SIV invests in fixed rate assets, it hedges against interest-rate risk.

There are number of crucial difference between SIV and traditional banking. The type of financial service provided by traditional deposit banks is called intermediation, that is the banks become intermediate (middlemen) between primary lenders (depositor) and primary borrowers (individual, small to medium size business, mortgage holder, overdraft, credit card, etc.). SIVs do exactly the same, "in effect", providing funds for mortgage loans, credit cards, student loans through securitised bonds.

In more traditional deposit banking, bank deposits are often guaranteed by the government. Regulators assume that deposits are stable as a consequence.

On the other hand, the money market for CP is far more volatile. There are no government guarantees for these products in case of default, and both sellers and lenders have equal power at setting the rate. This explains why the borrowing side of SIV consists of fixed term (30 to 270 days) rather than on-demand (1 day) deposits; however, in extreme circumstances like the 2007-8 credit crunch, the worried usual buyers of CP, facing liquidity worries, might buy more secure bonds such as government bonds or simply put money in bank deposits instead and decline to buy CP. If this happens, facing maturity of short term CP which was sold previously, SIV might be forced to sell their assets to pay off the debts. If the price of asset in depressed market is not adequate to cover the debt, SIV will default.

On the lending side, traditional deposit banks directly deal with borrowers who seek business loans, mortgages, students loans, credit cards, overdrafts, etc. Each loan's credit risk are individually assessed and reviewed periodically. More crucially, the bank manager often maintains personal oversight over these borrowers. In contrast, SIV lending is conducted through the process known as securitization. Instead of assessing individual credit risk, loans (for example, mortgage or credit card) are bundled with thousands (or tens of thousands or more) of the same type of loans. According to the law of large numbers, bundling of loans creates statistical predictability. Credit agencies then allocate each bundle of loans into several risk categories and provide statistical risk assessment for each bundle in similar manner to how insurance companies assign risk. At this point, the bundle of small loans is transformed into a financial commodity and traded on the money market as if it were a share or bond. The bonds usually selected by a SIV are predominantly (70-80%) Aaa/AAA rated asset-backed securities (ABSs) and mortgage-backed securities (MBSs).  However, credit losses among the SIVs were very low until the last SIV entrants into the market invested in US Sub-prime.  Most SIVs experienced no credit losses.

Problems
The risks that arise are the same that Banks have always faced: First, the solvency of the SIV may be at risk if the value of the long-term security that the SIV has bought falls below that of the short-term securities that the SIV has sold. Banks typically avoid this risk by not marking to market their loan portfolios.  Second, there is a liquidity risk, as the SIV borrows short term and invests long term; i.e., outpayments become due before the inpayments are due. Unless the borrower can refinance short-term at favorable rates, he may be forced to sell the asset into a depressed market.

When a traditional deposit bank provide loans such as business lending, mortgage, overdraft or credit card, they are stuck with the borrowers for years or even decades. Therefore, they have incentive to assess the borrowers' credit risk and further monitor the borrowers finance through their branch managers. In securitised loan, those who originate the loan can immediately sell off the loan to SIVs and other institutional investors and these buyers of securitised loans are the ones who are stuck with credit risk. Therefore, in SIV intermediation, there is the same incentive to assess credit risk of borrowers, as they expect to hold the asset to maturity. However, the loan originators', typically a Bank's, reward is structured so that as more loans are made and sold wholesale, more commission will be earned. So there is little need for bank originators to monitor their borrowers' credit risk. The monitoring was the responsibility of the end investor in the securitised tranches and, theoretically, the rating agencies.  While most SIVs were able to make good credit decisions for their portfolios and did not experience any credit losses from securitisations, some invested in Sub prime US RMBS.

Upon review, it is evident that the credit risk assessment conducted by these forms of lending was far more inadequate than with the traditional lending done by deposit banks (although many large traditional Banks turned out to be over-exposed to mortgage risk both via loans and through their investments in securitisations). Some mortgage loans even turned up to be liar's loans with some borrowers essentially being NINJA (No Income, No Job or Assets). In traditional banking, when a downturn occurred, branch managers could individually review clients' financial condition, separate good borrowers from bad ones and provide individually tailored adjustments. SIVs, on the other hand, are staffed by investment managers, who assess the content of pools of securitized loans, but not the individual loans. The banks were exposed to first loss risks while the SIVs were only exposed to last loss risk.  The ratings on the most shaky types of sub prime securitisations were exposed when it turned out that complicated mathematical models, which is used to rate securitized loan, made fundamental assumptions that turned out to be wrong. The most significant among these assumptions were the trends in U.S. housing prices which declined far faster, deeper and broader than statistical model predicted.

These complex statistical analyses were supposed to function as a good substitute for risk monitoring provided by individual branch bank managers. Had the model been correct, these inadequately assessed loans would have been rated as high risk resulting in a lower price for the bond. However, when housing prices were constantly increasing, borrowers with inadequate income could cover mortgage repayments by borrowing further money against increased value of their house. This somewhat fictitious good payment record, which may be obvious if it was monitored by a bank manager, fed into the mathematical model of rating agencies whose weakness was exposed when the housing market start to tank. The credibility of credit assessment provided by rating agencies was further eroded when it was revealed that they took a cut in the sales of securitised bonds which they themselves rated. When the entire spectrum of bundled loans from sub prime to premium AAA start to under-perform against statistical expectations, the valuation of assets held by SIVs became suspect. SIVs suddenly found it difficult to sell commercial paper while their previously sold commercial paper neared maturity. Moreover, their supposedly prime rated assets could be sold only at a heavy discount. In effect, this preciptaed a run on the entire non-bank system and since the banks relied on the SIVs and other non-banks for funding this also created a huge pressure on the banking system.

Though the assumption of ever increasing housing prices was the fundamental problem, there were other mathematical / statistical problems too. This is particularly important to prevent such things from happening again. There was an error in estimating the aggregate probability of default from components as the interaction effects could not be estimated with similar accuracy as the independent effect. For example, if an SIV had mortgage as well as auto loans the probability of default in the mortgage part or auto part could be estimated more accurately with the law of large numbers and past data with few assumptions like "the future will be similar to past". But to estimate the likelihood of mortgage default triggering defaults in auto loans is extremely difficult as past data points will miss that largely. So even if we assume some interaction effect was taken into consideration while pricing the SIV, it was far from accurate even mathematically from the beginning.

2007 Subprime mortgage crisis

In 2007, the sub-prime crisis caused a widespread liquidity crunch in the CP market. Because SIVs rely on short-dated CP to fund longer-dated assets, they need to roll over their liabilities, just like Banks do. Unlike standard asset backed commercial paper conduits, SIVs do not have liquidity facilities that cover 100% of their outstanding CP. Instead, a SIV's safeguard against being unable to issue new CP to repay maturing paper is being able to sell their assets, which were until then both highly rated and liquid.

In August 2007, CP yield spreads widened to as much as 100bp (basis points), and by the start of September the market was almost completely illiquid. That showed how risk-averse CP investors had become even though SIVs contain minimal sub-prime exposure and as yet had suffered no losses through bad bonds. It's a matter of debate, however, whether this risk aversion was a matter of prudence or misunderstanding by the CP market or contamination by a few SIVs that had Sub Prime exposure of the many that had little or no Sub Prime risk.

Several SIVs—most notably Cheyne—have fallen victim to the liquidity crisis. Others are believed to be receiving support from their sponsoring banks. It is notable that even among "failed" SIVs there have still been no losses to CP investors.

In October 2007 the U.S. government announced that it would initiate (but not fund) a Super SIV bailout fund (see also Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit). This plan was abandoned in December 2007 and served to contaminate the entire sector. Instead, banks such as Citibank announced they would rescue the SIVs they had sponsored and would consolidate them onto the banks' balance sheets. On 11 February 2008, Standard Chartered Bank reversed its pledge to support the Whistlejacket SIV. Deloitte & Touche announced that it had been appointed receiver for the failing fund. Orange County, California has $80 million invested in Whistlejacket.

Developments in 2008
On 14 January 2008, SIV Victoria Finance defaulted on its maturing CP. Standard & Poor's downrated debt to "D".

Bank of America's fourth-quarter 2007 earnings fell 95% due to SIV investments. SunTrust Banks' earnings fell 98% during the same quarter.

Northern Rock, which in August 2007 became the first UK bank to have substantial problems from being unable to issue mortgage securitisations to fund itself, was nationalized by the British government in February 2008. At the same time, U.S. banks began borrowing extensively from the Term auction facility (TAF), a special arrangement set up by the Federal Reserve Bank in December 2007 to help ease the credit crunch. It is reported that the banks have borrowed nearly $50 billion of one-month funds collateralized by "garbage collateral nobody else wants to take". The Fed continued to conduct the TAF twice a month to ensure market liquidity. In February 2008, the Fed made an additional $200 billion available.

In 2008, Cullinan Finance, a HSBC subsidiary which had been one of the six largest SIVs in 2007, went into liquidation.

Central banks failed to heed Bagehot's dictum "to lend to all, against good collateral but at a penal rate" and to provide funding to the SIV during the liquidity crisis. They mistakenly believed that the SIVs were funded by the banks, not that the SIVs were a core part of funding the banking system by investing in the senior tranches of securitization and bank capital securities.  This exacerbated the liquidity crisis.

On 2 October 2008 the Financial Times reported that Sigma Finance, the last surviving and oldest of the SIVs has collapsed and entered liquidation. Note that Sigma Finance actually disclaimed the SIV label and referred to itself as a "Limited Purpose Finance Company".

The US Government's Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF), created under the TARP legislation became available to CP borrowers on 27 October 2008. However, by this time there were no SIVs left to rescue.

List of Structured Investments Vehicles (SIVs)

See also
Collateralized debt obligation
Shadow banking system
Asset-backed commercial paper program
Special-purpose entity

References

External links
 http://www2.standardandpoors.com/portal/site/sp/en/us/page.article_print/2,1,1,0,1031342466642.html

Structured finance

Structured investment vehicle


Hugh Cholmondeley, 1st Earl of Cholmondeley, PC (1662 – 18 January 1725), styled The Honourable from birth until 1681 and then known as Viscount Cholmondeley to 1706, was an English peer and politician.

Cholmondeley was the eldest son of Robert Cholmondeley, 1st Viscount Cholmondeley, and Elizabeth Cradock, and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1681 he succeeded his father as second Viscount Cholmondeley, but as this was an Irish peerage it did not entitle him to a seat in the English House of Lords. He supported the claim of William and Mary to the English throne, and after their accession in 1689 he was rewarded when he was made Baron Cholmondeley, of Namptwich in the County of Chester, in the Peerage of England (which gave him a seat in the House of Lords). The peerage was created with remainder to his younger brother George. In 1706 he was admitted to the Privy Council and made Viscount Malpas, in the County of Chester, and Earl of Cholmondeley, in the County of Chester, with similar remainder.

Lord Cholmondeley was appointed Comptroller of the Household by Queen Anne in 1708. He held this post only until October of the same year, when he was made Treasurer of the Household. He was stripped of this office in 1713 but restored when George I became king in 1714. He also served as Lord Lieutenant of Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Merionethshire and Montgomeryshire from 1702 to 1713 and from 1714 to 1725 and of Cheshire between 1703 and 1713 and 1714 and 1725.

Lord Cholmondeley died in January 1725. He never married and was succeeded in his titles by his younger brother George, who had already been elevated to the peerage in his own right as Baron Newborough.

See also
List of deserters from James II to William of Orange

References

Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990.

www.thepeerage.com

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1662 births
1725 deaths
Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford
Lord-Lieutenants of Anglesey
Lord-Lieutenants of Caernarvonshire
Lord-Lieutenants of Cheshire
Lord-Lieutenants of Flintshire
Lord-Lieutenants of Denbighshire
Lord-Lieutenants of Merionethshire
Lord-Lieutenants of Montgomeryshire
Members of the Privy Council of Great Britain
Treasurers of the Household
Hugh
1
Peers of England created by William III


Kameido Tenjin Shrine is a Japanese Tenman-gu shrine located in Kameido, Koto Ward, Tokyo. The shrine is dedicated to Sugawara no Michizane, a 9th-century Japanese scholar.

Description
The Kameido shrine was built in honor of Sugawara no Michizane, a prominent Japanese politician and scholar. Despite a long and successful career serving multiple Japanese emperors, Michizane was eventually demoted from his position in the imperial court by the political machinations of Fujiwara no Tokihira. Upon Michizane's death several years later, a series of natural disasters struck Japan; some attributed these events to the ghost of Michizane. To placate the departed scholar's spirit, a number of shrines were built (including one in Kyoto, then the imperial capital) in his honor, with many shrines portraying Michizane as a kami; even after the disasters subsided, this tradition of honoring Michizane's skill continued and many more shrines were built in his name.

The Kameido Tenjin Shrine was built in Tokyo in 1646. Tokyo was at time a port city of some importance, but was not yet the capital of Japan. Regardless, many people from Tokyo paid homage to Michizane at the shrine between 1646 and 1945. The original Kameido shrine, built out of wood, was destroyed during World War II when the United States Air Force conducted a firebombing campaign against Tokyo; these bombings resulted in the destruction of large parts of the city. In the years after the war, the shrine was rebuilt with more modern materials, such as concrete. The restored shrine is famous for a number of its prominent features; the shrine's grounds contain a number of ponds bridged by drum bridges, and compound also has an abundance of plum trees.

Every year on 25 January, the custodians of the shrine present a carved good luck charm to a visitor. Between April and May, the Fuji Matsuri festival is held at the shrine. The festival entails the celebration of flowers, namely the-then in bloom Wisteria.

Gallery

References

Tenjin (kami)
Shinto shrines in Tokyo
1646 establishments in Japan
Sugawara no Michizane
Tokyo Ten Shrines

Kameido Tenjin Shrine


The Jablanica (, ) is an  river in southern Serbia. A left tributary of the South (or Južna) Morava river, it gives its name to the region of Jablanica and to modern Serbia's Jablanica District, with the region contributing about one third of the district's area.

Origin
The Jablanica originates from the Goljak mountain, near the village of Grbavce, Medveđa. The area is rich in thermal springs, so several spas are located near the river: Stara Banja, Ravna Banja and Sijarina with popular Sijarinska Banja. At the village of Maćedonce Retkocersko the Jablanica receives the left tributary Čokotinska reka (Cyrillic: Чокотинска река), turns southeast and the region of Jablanica begins from that point.

Jablanica region
The upper Jablanica region is made of narrow river valley on the southern slopes of the Majdan and Radan mountains, in the westernmost corner of Jablanica District and near the border of the District of Priština in Kosovo. The river flows eastward, passing regional center of Medveđa and the villages of Rujkovac and Šilovo, before reaching the town of Lebane where the Jablanica enters the lower part of its valley and flows for the next 48 km in the low Field of Leskovac, part of the depression of Leskovac, which itself is part of the composite valley of the Južna Morava. In the region, near Lebane, a famed archeological find of Justiniana Prima (Caričin grad) is located.

The Jablanica flows next to the villages of Ždeglovo, Vranovce, Bošnjace, Turekovac and Stopanje, reaches Vinarce, the northern suburb of the city of Leskovac, and turns north. First it flows parallel to the Veternica river, to which it is connected by a canal at the village of Zalužnje, then parallel to the Južna Morava. After the villages of Dupljane and Pečenjevce it turns east and flows into the Južna Morava. From Pečenjevce, a parallel flow (canal) begins, connecting the Jablanica and Toplica rivers, some 15 km to the north.

Through Južna Morava, the Jablanica belongs to the Black Sea drainage basin, draining an area of  itself. It's not navigable and has an average discharge of 6 m³/s, which in rainy years grows much higher, so the river floods its valley causing much material damage. The name of the river, Jablanica, in Serbian means the Poplar river.

References

Further reading
 Mala Prosvetina Enciklopedija, Third edition (1985); Prosveta;
 Jovan Đ. Marković (1990): Enciklopedijski geografski leksikon Jugoslavije; Svjetlost-Sarajevo;

Rivers of Serbia

Jablanica (river)


Omweso (sometimes shortened to Mweso) is the traditional mancala game of the Ugandan people. The game was supposedly introduced by the Bachwezi people of the ancient Bunyoro-kitara empire of Uganda. Nowadays the game is dominated by Ugandan villagers. It is a very hard and fast game said to keep one's mind high and ever excited, which can make it addictive. The equipment needed for the game is essentially the same as that of the Bao game (found in Tanzania and neighbouring countries). Omweso is strictly related to a wide family of mancalas found in eastern and southern Africa; these include Coro in the Lango region of Uganda, Aweet in Sudan, ǁHus in Namibia, Kombe in Lamu (Kenya), Mongale in Mombasa (Kenya), Mongola in Congo, Igisoro in Rwanda, and Kiela in Angola.

The name "Omweso" is derived from Swahili word michezo, which means "game".

Rules

Equipment

Omweso requires a board of 32 pits, arranged with eight pits lengthwise towards the players, and four pits deep.  Each player's territory is the 16 pits on their side of the board.  In addition, 64 undifferentiated seeds are needed. This equipment is the same used for many variants of Omweso as well as for the Bao game from Zanzibar and Tanzania. Unlike Bao boards, Omweso boards have no special pit (nyumba).

Object
The normal way to win the game is to be the last player to be able to make a legal move, possible by capturing all an opponent's stones or reducing the opponent to no more than one seed in each pit.  Alternatively, a player can win by capturing on both ends of the board in one turn.

Setup
Before the game, four (4) seeds are placed in each of the eight pits closest to a player to ensure that both players have exactly 32 seeds.  The first player is chosen by lot.  This player arranges all owned seeds on their side of the board according to preference (The arrangement should be strategic).  Then, the second player also arranges their seeds.  The first player then makes the first sowing move.

Sowing

Play consists of turns, each move may involve several laps.  A player moves by selecting a pit with at least two seeds, and sowing them one by one around their side of the board in a counter-clockwise direction from the starting pit.  The player may only sow from one of the sixteen pits in their territory, and the sowing proceeds around this territory, not directly involving the opponent's side.

Although in the past it was common for players to spend much time in thought, in modern tournaments only three seconds of thought is allowed per turn.  The referee counts emu, bbiri, and if the turn is not started the other player may steal it.

Relay sowing
If the last sowed seed lands in an occupied pit (without resulting in a capture, see below), then all seeds in that pit, including the one just placed, are immediately sown, before the opponent's turn.  This continues until the last sowing ends in an empty pit.

Capturing
If the last seed sown lands in one of the player's eight inner pits, which is occupied, and furthermore both the opponent's pits in this same column are occupied, then all seeds from these two pits are captured and sown starting from the pit where this capturing lap began (i.e., from the last pit scooped, NOT from the original hole from the very beginning of the turn).

Reverse capturing
Instead of sowing in a counter-clockwise direction, a player may sow clockwise from any of their four leftmost pits if this results in a capture.  Upon re-entering these reverse-captured seeds, the player may sow them clockwise again, if and only if this play results in a direct capture.  The player may also choose to sow reverse-captured seeds in the usual counter-clockwise manner, and there is no compulsion to play one direction or the other when the choice is available.  During a relay-sowing move, one lap of which ends at one of the four leftmost pits, a player may also change direction and begin sowing the next leg of the move clockwise, if and only if this play results in a direct capture.

Alternate victory conditions
The normal way to win the game is to be the last player left with a legal move.  However, there are two additional victory conditions:

Emitwe-ebiri During the same move, a player can win by capturing opponent's seeds on both ends of the board.
Akakyala In some tournaments, a player may win by capturing in each of two separate moves, before the opponent has captured their first seed.

In addition, a special win called akawumbi occurs when a player captures seeds from each of an opponent's pits in one turn.  In a tournament, this may be weighted several times a more mundane victory.

Never ending moves

It is possible for a move to lead to a never-ending sowing sequence.  In tournament play, a player is allowed up to three minutes to finish his move - if this cannot be done, the game is annulled.

Never ending omweso moves have been of some mathematical interest.  The Mayer Test can be used to determine whether a position can lead to a never-ending sowing.

See also
List of mancala games
Igisoro
Kisolo

External links
James S. Coleman, Play in Uganda: Omweso a Game People, UCLA African Studies Center, 1970
Article on Omweso rules and society in East Africa.
R.S. Shackell, Mweso – The Board Game, Uganda Journal II/1 July 1934
R.S. Shackell, More about Mweso, Uganda Journal III/2 October 1935

Ugandan culture
Traditional mancala games

Omweso


Ronald Craig Arkin (born 1949) is an American roboticist and roboethicist, and a Regents' Professor in the School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is known for the motor schema technique in robot navigation and for his book Behavior-Based Robotics.

Biography

Education
Ronald Arkin received a B.S. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1971 and an M.S. from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1977. He was a faculty member of Hawthorne College in Antrim, New Hampshire from 1977 to 1989, serving as the Computer Science Depart Chair from 1986 to 1989. In 1985, he joined the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics and VISIONS groups at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and received a Ph.D. in 1987. His doctoral thesis Towards Cosmopolitan Robots: Intelligent Navigation in Extended Man-Made Environments was supervised by Edward M. Riseman.

Career
Shortly after receiving his Ph.D., Ronald Arkin joined the School of Information and Computer Science (now College of Computing) at the Georgia Institute of Technology and founded the Mobile Robot Laboratory. He became a Regents' Professor in 2002 and was the first person to hold such honor in the College of Computing's history. From August, 1997 to August, 1998, Arkin was a STINT Visiting Professor at the Centre for Autonomous Systems, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. He served as the Sabbatical Chair for the Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratory, Tokyo, Japan, from June, 2005 to October, 2005, and was also a member of the Laboratory for analysis and architecture of systems at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Toulouse, France.

In 2006, the United States Department of Defense contracted Arkin to conduct a study to determine if military robots could be made to operate ethically. The goal is to create a robot with an "artificial conscience" such that, for example, it might refrain from firing weaponry when children were detected, or to even understand the laws of war and apply them in battle. "My intention in designing this is that robots will make less mistakes—hopefully far less mistakes—than humans do in the battlefield," Arkin says.

Research
 Mobile robots and unmanned aerial vehicles
 Behavior-based reactive control
 Action-oriented perception
 Hybrid deliberative/reactive software architectures
 Robot survivability
 Multiagent robotic systems
 Biorobotics
 Human-robot interaction
 Roboethics
 Learning in autonomous systems.

Students
 Robin Murphy (Summer, 1992). Thesis: An Architecture for Intelligent Sensor Fusion. Founder of rescue robot and currently a professor at the Texas A&M University, College Station, TX.
 Erika Rogers (Fall, 1992). Thesis: Visual Interaction: A Link Between Perception and Problem-Solving. Currently a professor at the California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, California.
 Douglas MacKenzie (Spring 1997). Thesis: A Design Methodology for the Configuration of Behavior-based Mobile Robots. President and Founder of Mobile Intelligence Co.
 Tucker Balch (Fall, 1998). Thesis: Behavioral Diversity in Learning Robot Teams. Currently an associate professor at the College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology.
 Khaled Ali (Spring, 1999). Thesis: Multiagent Robotics: Relating Systems to Tasks.  Currently a Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
 Alexander Stoytchev (Summer, 2007). Thesis: Robot Tool Behavior: A Developmental Approach to Autonomous Tool Use. Currently an assistant professor at the Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.
 Eric Martinson (Fall 2007). Thesis: Acoustical Awareness for Intelligent Robotic Action.
 Alan Wagner (Fall 2010). Thesis: The Role of Trust and Relationships in Human-Robot Social Interaction. Currently an associate professor at The Pennsylvania State University and a research associate with the Rock Ethics Institute.
 Zsolt Kira (Spring 2010). Thesis: Communication and Alignment of Grounded Symbolic Knowledge Among Heterogeneous Robots. Currently an assistant professor at the School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology.

Books

Papers

References

External links
 Home Page
 Mathematics Genealogy Project profile
 Mobile Robot Laboratory

1949 births
Artificial intelligence researchers
Control theorists
Living people
Georgia Tech faculty
American roboticists
University of Michigan alumni

Ronald C. Arkin


"Working on a Dream" is the title song to, and first single from, Bruce Springsteen's 2009 album Working on a Dream. At the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, it won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo.

History
The song's sunny lyric develops what Rolling Stone called "a rare and timely moment of unabashed optimism" for Springsteen, possibly connected to the impending arrival of the Barack Obama administration:

I'm working on a dream,
Though sometimes it feels so far away ...
I'm working on a dream,
And I know it will be mine someday.

The title phrase is present in both the verses and chorus, and occurs some twenty times altogether in the song.  The arrangement is mid-tempo, propelled by an acoustic guitar with organ and electric guitar washes throughout; the glossy Brendan O'Brien production also features partly submerged "la-la" backing vocals.  The instrumental break features Springsteen whistling against a bari sax line.

"Working on a Dream" was first performed during Springsteen's November 2, 2008 appearance in Cleveland for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, in an acoustic performance accompanied by Patti Scialfa.  A chopped-up airing of the recorded version first appeared during the November 16 NBC Sunday Night Football broadcast at halftime.

The intact "Working on a Dream" began airing on radio stations and their websites on November 21, 2008, and was made available for free download via iTunes and the Sony BMG website on November 24. The track entered the UK Singles Chart at position 195 the following week.  A music video appeared on some foreign sites showing the recording of the song.  The song was a big hit on the American Triple-A Charts, peaking at No. 2, blocked only by "Get On Your Boots" by U2.

"Working on a Dream" had its first E Street Band performance on February 1, 2009, when it was included as part of Springsteen's halftime show during Super Bowl XLIII.  This abbreviated rendition featured a full choir backing Springsteen, Scialfa, and Steve Van Zandt delivering the vocals from a pit stage in front of the main stage.  Days later, during the Grammy Awards of 2009, Coldplay singer Chris Martin dropped the title phrase into the group's performance of "Viva La Vida".

When the 2009 Working on a Dream Tour began, the song became one of the surprisingly few selections from the album to be included into the show.  Augmenting-for-the-tour backing vocalists Curtis King and Cindy Mizelle (two veterans of the Sessions Band Tour) had a significant role to play in the vocal layering, and saxophonist Clarence Clemons performed the whistling break in the middle of the song.  Three minutes in, Springsteen inserted a modified version of this "Build a House" stage rap that had been developed during the prior Magic Tour.

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References

External links
 Lyrics at official Springsteen site
 "Working on a Dream" official music video on YouTube

2008 singles
Bruce Springsteen songs
Songs written by Bruce Springsteen
Song recordings produced by Brendan O'Brien (record producer)
Columbia Records singles
Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance
2008 songs

Working on a Dream (song)


Oakland Memorial Chapel is a historic church and academic building on the campus of Alcorn State University in rural southwestern Claiborne County, Mississippi. Built in 1838 as part of Oakland College, it is one of the oldest surviving buildings at Alcorn State, which took over that defunct school's campus after the American Civil War.  Alcorn State was the first land grant university established specifically for the education of African Americans.  The chapel was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and was designated a Mississippi Landmark in 1985.

Description and history
The Oakland Memorial Chapel occupies a prominent position on the campus of Alcorn State University, on the southwest side of ASU Drive, one of the rural campus' circulation roads.  It is a three-story brick building with a gabled roof.  Its ground floor functions as a raised basement, with a colonnade of brick piers supporting a six-column Greek temple portico.  The columns are of the Tuscan order, and support an entablature and full gabled pediment.  A two-stage square wood-frame tower rises above the roof ridge, with an elaborate second stage featuring fluted Doric columns, and an entablature with trighlyphs, metopes, and mutules.  It is crowned by a low balustrade.

Oakland College was founded in 1828 by Reverend Jeremiah Chamberlain as part of a Presbyterian mission to educate the white children of the region.  In 1851 Chamberlain, an abolitionist, was assassinated by a supporter of slavery, and the school was closed during the American Civil War.  It failed to recover after the war, and closed again soon after reopening.  Its assets were sold to the state in 1871.  That same year the state established Alcorn State, as the first land grant university specifically for the education of African Americans.  It is also believed to be the first state-supported school in the nation to graduate a black woman.

At the time the state acquired the campus, three buildings were standing from the Oakland College period.  Of these, the chapel is the best preserved and architecturally most sophisticated.

See also
List of National Historic Landmarks in Mississippi
National Register of Historic Places listings in Claiborne County, Mississippi

References

National Historic Landmarks in Mississippi
Properties of religious function on the National Register of Historic Places in Mississippi
Churches in Claiborne County, Mississippi
Churches completed in 1838
19th-century churches in the United States
Alcorn State University buildings
University and college chapels in the United States
Clock towers in Mississippi
Towers in Mississippi
Monuments and memorials on the National Register of Historic Places in Mississippi
Mississippi Landmarks
National Register of Historic Places in Claiborne County, Mississippi
Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Mississippi
University and college buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Mississippi
Greek Revival architecture in Mississippi

Oakland Memorial Chapel


Baldan Bereeven Monastery () is a Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) Buddhist monastery located in the Baruun Jargalant River valley Ömnödelger district, Khentii Province, Mongolia.  First established in 1654, the monastery grew to be one of the largest and most important in Mongolia at its height in the mid 19th century, housing up to 8000 monks. The monastery and temple complex were destroyed by Mongolia's communist regime in 1937.

Monastery grounds and location

Baldan Bereeven is the Mongolian translation of the Tibetan "Drepung ()", "pile of rice", and the monastery was initially modeled after Drepung Monasteries in Tibet and India. Although the original temple complex was demolished during the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s, today three temples have been restored and grounds include the remains of nearly 50 temples, stupas and other religious edifices.

The monastery grounds are surrounded by scenic and sacred mountains including Munkh Ulziit, Arvan  Gurvan Sansar, Bayan Baraat, and Bayan Khangai, all part of the Khentii mountain range. The four mountains are said to resemble animals: a lion on the east; a dragon on the south; a tiger on the west; and a Garuda on the north. The monastery itself is backed by the steep cliff of Munkh Ulziit mountain where many cliff carvings, stone carvings with different images of Buddhist gods, inscriptions of religious mantras, and a large Soyombo symbol can be found.

History

Founding

Baldan Bereeven Monastery was founded in 1654 by the lama Tsevendorj with an initial monastic community of around 1500 lamas. According to tradition, Tsevendorj had studied with Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia, in Tibet.  Tsevendorj endeavored to create  a site similar to  Lumbini, the birthplace of the  Buddha, in Mongolia to accommodate Mongolian pilgrims who could not travel far.  The main temple, called Dash Tsepel Ling, was built in the mid 1700s and was completed in 1776. The Tsogchin Dugan (great hall) Temple was completed in 1813. Architecturally resembling the famous Kumbum Monastery in Tibet.  The Tsogchin Dugan was one of the largest buildings in all of Mongolia measuring almost 30 meters by 30 meters and almost 12 meters tall.

By 1850 when its main temple was remodeled, Baldan Bereeven reached its peak as a teaching monastery.  It contained four separate colleges and more than twenty temples with a monastic population reaching nearly 8000.  Around the year 1900 an epidemic wiped out half of the monastic community leaving between 2000-3000 monks.

Destruction

The monastery's fortunes suffered further with the establishment of Mongolia's communist regime in 1921.  Many monks were driven from the monastery when large scale persecution of the Buddhist church began in the 1930s.  The government expropriated church property, legislated away the church's independence, and levied high taxes on monasteries.  Finally, the monastery was completely razed during Stalinist purges under Mongolia's strongman Khorloogiin Choibalsan in 1937.  Many of the remaining monks were forcibly removed, shot, and buried in mass graves while others were forcibly laicized and sent to labor camps.  Younger monks were returned to their families. The monastery's precious relics were melted down and delivered to the Soviet Union for use during World War II.

Restoration

Baldan Bereeven remained off-limits for nearly six decades. Following the democratic revolution in 1990 a handful of older monks who were removed from Baldan Bereevan as young boys in the 1930s returned to the monastery. Restoration efforts for several of the monasteries main temples began in 1999.

In 2012 Baldan Bereeven Monastery and the surrounding area were placed on the tentative list to be nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

References

Gelug monasteries and temples
Buddhist monasteries in Mongolia
Khentii Province

Baldan Bereeven Monastery


Armand Frédéric Charles Valère Abel was a Belgian academic and Islamic scholar.

Biography
Abel was born in Uccle, Brussels, on 11 June 1903. In 1924, he completed studies of classical philology at the Free University of Brussels.  He then accompanied one of his masters to Egypt and his meeting with the Islamic world would determine his future course: the study of Islam.

He initially taught at the Athénée de Schaerbeek high school from 1928 to 1953, although he also taught Arabic and Islamic studies for the Institute of Advanced Studies in Belgium. Having honed his knowledge of the language and the Muslim world in Paris (École Normale Superieure, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, and École Pratique des Hautes Études), he also began teaching at the Free University of Brussels after a thesis of agrégation of higher education.

He created in Brussels but also for Ghent University, a comprehensive education program of Islamic studies and directed several research centers on contemporary Islam.  He was also a member of numerous professional societies including the illustrious Accademia dei Lincei and participated for more than twenty years in all major international conferences on Islamic studies.

He died on 31 May 1973 in Aywaille, Belgium.

Sources
 Annette l'Estrée, Abel, Armand, in Nouvelle Biographie Nationale (New National Biography), Volume 1, Royal Academy of Belgium, Brussels, 1988, p. 13-14 (ISSN 0776-3948)

1903 births
1973 deaths
Academic staff of the Free University of Brussels (1834–1969)
Free University of Brussels (1834–1969) alumni
People from Uccle

Armand Abel


Audrey Juliet Arnott (1901–1974) was a medical illustrator who worked with the neurosurgeon Hugh Cairns at the London Hospital and followed him to Oxford when he was appointed Nuffield Professor of Surgery in 1939. She founded the Medical Artists Association of Great Britain from her home in Wolvercote in 1949.

Training
When Audrey Arnott graduated from the Royal College of Art, she was employed by Hugh Cairns as an artist. The surgeon arranged for Arnott to be trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig as a medical illustrator under Max Brödel, founder of the first 'Department of Art as Applied to Medicine' at Johns Hopkins University in 1911. Brödel taught Arnott the technique of drawing on Ross-board with carbon dust, a method which Arnott later passed onto other British medical illustrators. As Arnott was the only British student of Brödel, she is credited with introducing the technique to United Kingdom.

Career
Arnott accompanied Cairns to the University of Oxford when he opened the neurosurgical department there in 1939. During her time there she produced a number of neurosurgical illustrations for Hugh Cairns, using the Ross-board and carbon dust technique taught to her by Brödel. Her illustrations have been regarded as showing the clarity of black and white photography, intricate in their anatomical, surgical, and pathological detail whilst maintaining a unique artistic style.

Influence
Within the United Kingdom, Arnott was highly influential in the field of medical illustration, training numerous artists in the Ross-board technique, including Margaret McLarty (medical artist for the anaesthetic department). McLarty's later publication Illustrating Medicine and Surgery became a core text for medical illustrators. Arnott and McLarty, with two other illustrators, founded the Medical Artists Association of Great Britain on 2 April 1949. The foundation acts as a professional body for medical artists and raise the standard of medical art through training, education and examinations.

References

1901 births
1974 deaths
Alumni of the Royal College of Art
Medical illustrators

Audrey Arnott


George Washington Hill (October 22, 1884, Philadelphia – September 13, 1946, Matapédia, Quebec) became President of American Tobacco Co. (1925–1946) after his father Percival Hill. He hired public relations expert Edward Bernays to reverse the taboo against women smoking in public, which he did successfully by his advertisement campaigns.

Early life
Hill started his education at Williams College, but left during 1904 before graduating. His father was vice president of the American Tobacco Company and as such George also worked there. After the company acquired the brand of Pall Mall cigarettes, George was responsible for sales and under his management the cigarettes became the most popular among Turkish tobaccos. As a result of an antitrust lawsuit the company was divided into four competing companies in 1911. Senior Hill was the president of the new American Tobacco Company and his son was assigned to be a sales manager. The Lucky Strike brand was introduced five years later by the company and George was in charge of the new brand, designing its advertising and marketing campaigns largely by himself.

Presidency
In 1925 George Hill's father died and he became the new president of the company. A year later Lucky Strike accounted for one fifth of U.S. cigarette sales, and the brand was among the five best-selling US-consumed cigarettes. In 1927 he began directing his marketing efforts toward women, which was a first. The success of the advertising campaign, which used movie actors and singers to promote the brand, can be attributed to Albert Lasker of the Lord & Thomas agency, and  Edward Bernays, both of whom were hired by Hill. Lucky Strike soon accounted for 38 percent of U.S. cigarette sales. During the Great Depression the company remained successful and Hill's salary exceeded $2,000,000. He made a substantial investment in advertising and sponsored Your Hit Parade and the Jack Benny Show. He also sponsored Frank Sinatra, Ethel Smith and Lawrence Tibbett.

Death
George Washington Hill died in 1946 at age 61, in Canada's Quebec province. He is interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow, New York).

References

Further reading
 Beard, F. and A. Klyueva. "George Washington Hill and the 'Reach for a Lucky...' campaign", Journal of Historical Research in Marketing (2010) 2#2 pp. 148-165. doi.org/10.1108/17557501011042524

 Stump, Tyler S. "More than luck: Lucky Strike advertising during the George Washington Hill years: 1926-1946" (PhD Diss. University of Maryland, College Park, 2015).

1884 births
1946 deaths
Williams College alumni
20th-century American businesspeople
Germantown Academy alumni
Burials at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

George Washington Hill


Felix Angel Solis (born September 17, 1971) is an American actor, film director, and film producer. Born on the Upper West Side and raised in Chelsea/Greenwich Village area of New York City, to parents that were both born in Puerto Rico, Felix considers himself a Nuyorican.

Career
Solis first started working on shows set in NYC such as New York Undercover, NYPD Blue, Third Watch and the film Empire (starring opposite John Leguizamo and Peter Sarsgaard). He then appeared in acclaimed television shows such as The West Wing, OZ, Law & Order: SVU, The Sopranos, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Damages and Fringe, and Ozark; and numerous films such as The Forgotten (opposite Julianne Moore), Wes Craven's My Soul to Take, Man on a Ledge (opposite Sam Worthington and Ed Harris), and Arbitrage (opposite Tim Roth).

With his roots in theatre, Felix has also continued to work on stage receiving the HOLA 2013 Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor for the production of Basilica at New York's prestigious Cherry Lane Theatre; a Connecticut Critics Circle Award in 2008 for Boleros for the Disenchanted and a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Passion Play in 2006. As a stage director, Solis helmed Raúl Castillo's Knives and Other Sharp Objects at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in 2009.

Solis has originated parts in In Arabia We'd All Be Kings and Our Lady of 121st Street, both written by Stephen Adly Guirgis with direction by Philip Seymour Hoffman. He performed at the Cherry Lane Theater's stage in Havana Is Waiting by Eduardo Machado. Solis has also been a member of The Actors Studio since 2001, where he has appeared in plays including Salome starring Dianne Wiest and Al Pacino.

Al Pacino wrote him to thank him for his performance in the original production of Our Lady Of 121st Street with the LAByrinth Theater Company, of which he has been a member since 1999.

Solis has appeared in over 18 films including The Forgotten, Taking Chance, The International, My Soul to Take, and Gun Hill Road (winner of the 2011 Grand Jury Nominee at the Sundance Film Festival). Solis' television appearances include The Following, The Good Wife, Made in Jersey, NYC 22, Weekends at Bellevue, Criminal Minds, Army Wives, ATF-The Line, Damages, Fringe, The Sopranos, Oz, The West Wing, Third Watch, NYPD Blue, New York Undercover, and Blue Bloods.

In 2013 Solis co-created a film production company called Subway Token Films with his partner, actress Liza Fernandez. Their first short film, Tinto, shot on location in the Maipo Valley wine region of Chile, South America, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014, getting nominated for Best Short Narrative. It also screened at the Shnit Worldwide Short Film Festival in 2015. Their next short film, iHeart (which Solis directed), made its world premiere at the Hoboken International Film Festival; it won the Award of Merit at One-Reeler Short Film Competition, and continues its way through the festival circuit. His next short film, Going Down, was shot in Los Angeles in June and is in post-production. He is an active volunteer at the 52nd Street Project, a non-profit group that matches inner-city kids with professional theatre artists to introduce them to the business and craft of theatre production. He is also a supporter of the ASPCA and WSPA.

Solis had a recurring role on The Following. He was a regular on the CBS TV series Made in Jersey starring Kyle MacLachlan, and Janet Montgomery. On the same network he played Sgt. Terry Howard on NYC 22, produced by Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro, as well as a recurring role on The Good Wife as the "No-Nonsense" Det. Kevin Rodriguez. Solis also landed a role on USA's Colony playing Geronimo, and ABC's The Family playing Editor-in-Chief Gus Flores. Felix was recently cast in the series regular in ABC's Ten Days in the Valley as Commander Gomez that premiered in October 2017.

Filmography

Film

Television

Videogames

References

External links

1971 births
Living people
American male film actors
American actors of Puerto Rican descent
Hispanic and Latino American male actors
Male actors from New York City

Felix Solis


Wettenhausen Abbey (German: Kloster Wettenhausen, Reichsabtei Wettenhausen) was an Imperial Abbey of Augustinian Canons until its secularization in 1802–1803. Being one of the 40-odd self-ruling Imperial Abbeys of the Holy Roman Empire, Wettenhaussen Abbey was a virtually independent state. Its abbot had seat and voice in the Imperial Diet, where he sat on the Bench of the Prelates of Swabia. At the time of secularization, the Abbey's territory covered 56 square kilometers and it had about 5,400 subjects.

It is now a Dominican convent. The abbey is in Wettenhausen in the municipality of Kammeltal in Bavaria.

History

Augustinian Canons

The abbey, dedicated to Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint George, was founded in 1130 by Countess Gertrud of Roggenstein and her two sons for the salvation of their soul. According to an ancient chronicle, the Countess told her two sons that she would endow the new monastery with as much land as she could plow in a day. She then mounted a horse around whose neck she hung a good luck charm and succeeded in plowing a vast area. The exact date when the Abbey obtained the coveted status of Imperial Abbey is uncertain.

Wettenhaussen Abbey was dissolved in the course of the secularization of 1803 and its territory annexed to Bavaria. The library of 7,000 volumes was transferred to the library at Dillingen. The premises were thereafter used for a rent office.

Dominican sisters
In 1864 the buildings were acquired by the Dominican Sisters of St Ursula's in Augsburg, who established a school here, which today is a Gymnasium (secondary school) specialising in music and the sciences.

Abbey church
The former abbey church of the Assumption is now a parish church. It was built in the 12th century and altered in the 17th in the Baroque style by Michael Thumb.

References

Bibliography
Wüst, Wolfgang, 1983. Das Reichsstift Wettenhausen: Besitz, Herrschaftsorganisation und Landeshoheit, in: Kloster Wettenhausen. Beiträge aus Geschichte und Gegenwart im Rückblick auf sein tausendjähriges Bestehen 982–1982 (Günzburger Hefte 19), pp29–45. Weißenhorn.
Wüst, Wolfgang, 2001. Die Suche nach dem irdischen Reich in schwäbischen Gotteshäusern. Herrschaftliche Souveränität als Thema der Klosterchronistik. Wettenhausen und Kaisheim im Vergleich, in: Suevia Sacra. Zur Geschichte der ostschwäbischen Reichsstifte im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (Augsburger Beiträge zur Landesgeschichte Bayerisch-Schwabens 8 — Festschrift für Pankraz Fried zum 70. Geburtstag) (ed. Wilhelm Liebhart and Ulrich Faust), pp115–132. Sigmaringen.

External links

  Wettenhausen Abbey on Klöster in Bayern

Augustinian monasteries in Germany
Dominican convents
Monasteries in Bavaria
1130s establishments in the Holy Roman Empire
1130 establishments in Europe
Religious organizations established in the 1130s
Christian monasteries established in the 12th century
Günzburg (district)
Imperial abbeys disestablished in 1802–03

Wettenhausen Abbey


The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale is a story that is a part of The Canterbury Tales by English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer.

About the Pardoner
The Pardoner went on a journey to the town of Canterbury from Rouncivalle with his friend the Summoner.

Appearance
The Pardoner had hair as yellow as wax which fell on his head smoothly wisp by wisp.  He has piercing black eyes and his face was as smooth as he had just shaved. He had a thin and feeble voice yet he was hardly an old spiritual man.

Failures
Although the Pardoner was a priest he lived a life that was far from the word of Jesus Christ. He often broke many of the seven deadly sins including greed, gluttony, and pride.  He earned a living through preaching and selling fake relics to his supporters.  He lies to people and promises them salvation and prosperity for a price.  He has even taken money from a poor widow with starving children in order buy himself more luxuries.
The tale describes him getting money from the crowd as he cared more about money than a holy life.

The Tale Begins
The host asks the Pardoner to tell a happy story after the sad tale that the Franklin told.  The other people object to this and hope that he will tell a tale that is rich in morals.

The tale
He starts his tale by talking about three young men who, like him, do sinful things like drink alcohol and sleep with young women.  The Pardoner goes on to talk about the sins of the men in detail especially gambling, drunkenness, and gluttony. These three young men are rioters from the town of Flanders.

One night the three drunken men were at a tavern when they saw a corpse being carried to a grave.  They ask who had died and find out it is one of their friends who has been killed by a murderous thief named "Death". The three men plan to avenge their friend's death and kill Death themselves.

On their way to find Death they see an old man that says Death will not take him even in his old age and suffering.  The man says that he had left Death under an oak tree and that he was sure to still be there.  They run to the tree and instead of seeing Death, they see lots of gold under the tree.  They want to bring the gold back under the cover of night so that nobody will think they have stolen it. They sat down and sent the youngest to fetch 3 pies and 3 bottles of wine.

The remaining two come up with a plan to kill the third when he comes back so that the money could be split between only the two of them. At the same time the third man has the same thoughts as the other two and wants to have all of the money for himself. So he went and bought poison and poured it between the two bottles making sure he kept an un-poisoned bottle for himself. When he got back the other two men jumped out and killed the third man. But in celebration they decide to drink the wine unknowing that the poison was still in the wine, the choked to death due to the poison.

So in the end the moral to this story is that, the gold was the Death that the old man said was beneath the tree and due to their greed and gluttony they all died with nothing.

Moral
The love of money is the root of all evil, but also the divide between right and wrong.

Irony
The irony in this story has to do with the person telling it. The pardoner himself is a greedy man, but he goes on saying that greed is the root of all evil.

Other websites
A drawing of the Pardoner

The Canterbury Tales

The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale


In mathematics, closure describes the case when the results of a mathematical operation are always defined. For example, in ordinary arithmetic, addition on real numbers has closure: whenever one adds two numbers, the answer is a number. The same is true of multiplication. Division does not have closure, because division by 0 is not defined. In the natural numbers, subtraction does not have closure, but in the integers, subtraction does have closure. Subtraction of two numbers can produce a negative number, which is not a natural number, but is an integer.

One can sometimes make closure of a mathematical object by including new elements to it. The integers are a closure of the natural numbers by including negative numbers. The real numbers are a closure of the rational numbers by including square roots of positive numbers. The complex numbers are a closure of the real numbers by including square roots of negative numbers. Since every non-zero polynomial has a root in the complex numbers, the complex numbers are also the algebraic closure of the real numbers. One can express this relationship as .

Sometimes, if one includes an element to make closure, it makes more changes. For example, if one includes infinity,  (that is, closure of division), the laws of addition and subtraction are changed. There is no inversion of addition for .

Ordinary closure is called finite closure. There is also infinite closure. The definition of a topological space mentions infinite closure. Open spaces have (finite) closure of intersection. Open sets have infinite closure of union. That is, in mathematical notation, if A0, and A1 and ... An ... are open sets, then B and C are open sets:

In point-set topology, given a set S, the set containing all points of S along with its limit points is called the topological closure of S. This is sometimes written as . The closure of S is also the smallest closed set containing S.

Related pages

 Group (mathematics)

References

Mathematics

Closure (mathematics)


Ginette Garcin (4 January 1928 – 10 June 2010) was a French actress of stage, film and television.

Biography
She lived in Audresselles, Pas-de-Calais. Ginette Garcin made her musical debut with Jacques Hélian and his orchestra in 1946. She then worked with Loulou Gasté and went on to appear in Strélesky's absurdist theatre revues in Rouen. Her portrayal of Charlot to the music of Deux petits chaussons was very well received. She collaborated with Colette Vudal (who later adopted the name Colette Monroy in Paris) Mona Monick and Robert Thomas, author of some successful detective plays.

Garcin was one of the first to perform and record the songs of Boby Lapointe and Jean Yanne in the 1960s. In the 1970s, she embarked on a career in film and theatre, with guidance from Audiard, Lelouch, Yanne, Boisset and Tacchella. She appeared in the television series Marc et Sophie. In 1990, she wrote the critically acclaimed Le clan des veuves in which she starred alongside Jackie Sardou for four years. In 1997, she had an acting and singing role in Le passe-muraille, a musical comedy by Marcel Aymé with Didier van Cauwelaert and Michel Legrand.

In her final decade, Ginette Garcin played a character in the television series Famille d'accueil as well as appearing in the films La Beuze and Les Dalton. A new version of Le clan des veuves was staged at the Bouffes-Parisiens theatre in 2006.

Also in her later years she appeared in Raphaël Mezrahi's play, Monique est demandée en caisse 12.

Death
She died on 10 June 2010 at age 82 of breast cancer.

Filmography

Theatre

References

External links

  Fiche Bide et Musique

1928 births
2010 deaths
Deaths from cancer in France
French film actresses
French stage actresses
French television actresses
Actresses from Marseille
20th-century French actresses
21st-century French actresses
Deaths from breast cancer

Ginette Garcin


Lucien Marie Le Cam (November 18, 1924 – April 25, 2000) was a mathematician and statistician.

Biography
Le Cam was born November 18, 1924 in Croze, France. His parents were farmers, and unable to afford higher education for him; his father died when he was 13. After graduating from a Catholic school in 1942, he began studying at a seminary in Limoges, but immediately quit upon learning that he would not be allowed to study chemistry there. Instead he continued his studies at a lycée, which did not teach chemistry but did teach mathematics. In May 1944 he joined an underground group, and then went into hiding, returning to his school the following November but soon afterwards moving to Paris, where he began studying at the University of Paris. He graduated in 1945 with the degree Licence ès Sciences.

Le Cam then worked for a hydroelectric utility for five years, while meeting at the University of Paris for a weekly seminar in statistics. In 1950, he was invited to become an instructor at the University of California, Berkeley; he arrived that fall, with his original plan being to stay there a year on leave from his utility position. By the spring of 1951, he had met his future wife (Louise Romig, the daughter of statistician Harry Romig), decided to stay longer, and been admitted to the Ph.D. program. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1952, was appointed Assistant Professor in 1953 and continued working at Berkeley (except for a year in Montreal) beyond his retirement in 1991 until his death.

Contributions
Le Cam was the major figure during the period 1950 – 1990 in the development of abstract general asymptotic theory in mathematical statistics.  He is best known for the general concepts of local asymptotic normality and contiguity, and for developing a metric theory of statistical experiments, recounted in his 1986 magnum opus Asymptotic Methods in Statistical Decision Theory.

Selected publications

References

Further reading

External links
 In Memory of Lucien Le Cam
 Oberwolfach Photo Collection, 1973
 Lucien Le Cam, Portraits of Statisticians

Presidents of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics
French statisticians
Probability theorists
University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty
20th-century French mathematicians
1924 births
2000 deaths
University of Paris alumni
Mathematical statisticians
People from Creuse

Lucien Le Cam


St. Michael is an oil painting by Italian artist Raphael. Also called the Little St. Michael to distinguish it from a larger, later treatment of the same theme, St. Michael Vanquishing Satan, it is now in the Louvre in Paris. The work depicts the Archangel Michael in combat with the demons of Hell, while the damned suffer behind him. Along with St. George, it represents the first of Raphael's works on martial subjects.

History
An early work of the artist, the painting was executed for Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, in 1504 or 1505 on the back of a draughtboard, possibly commissioned to express appreciation to Louis XII of France for conferring the Order of Saint Michael on Francesco Maria I della Rovere, Guidobaldo's nephew and heir. Whatever the impetus for its creation, by 1548 it hung in the collection at the Palace of Fontainebleau.

In 2006's Early Work of Raphael, Julia Cartwright suggests it may betray the influence of Timoteo Viti in the gold tinting to the green wings of Michael, while the sinners in the background suggest that Raphael may have consulted an illustrated volume of Dante's Inferno. The punishments depicted reflect Dante's treatment of hypocrites and thieves.

A little more than a decade after completing the little St. Michael, Raphael was commissioned to revisit the theme, producing St. Michael Vanquishing Satan for Pope Leo X in 1518.

See also
List of paintings by Raphael

References

External links

Paintings by Raphael
Paintings in the Louvre by Italian artists
1505 paintings
Paintings depicting Michael (archangel)
Angels in art

St. Michael (Raphael)


Exploitation means using things that are available in order to benefit from it. It is usually used in a bad sense, although it can be used in a good sense as well.

If a person exploits a situation it means that they realize that they can use it to do something which will be good for them. Very often this also means that it will be bad for other people. So the first person exploits the situation and also exploits the other people.

People, especially unskilled workers, can be exploited through a sweatshop. This means that someone else uses the people's knowledge or skills in order to make them do something for them. Socialists (or communists) often talked about the "exploitation of the masses" when they were saying that Capitalism was bad. They meant that a few rich people were using all the working people to do hard work for them but paying them very little. The employers then sold the products for more money and kept the extra as profits so that they themselves could become rich.

Exploiting people still goes on today.

Related pages
Das Kapital
Human trafficking

Vocabulary

Exploitation