Blood pressure is a measurement used in medicine.  In the body, the arteries carry blood away from the heart.  As blood travels through the arteries, it presses against the walls of the arteries.  Blood pressure measures how hard the blood is pushing against the walls of the arteries.

Usually, "blood pressure" measures the pressure in larger arteries delivering blood to body parts other than the lungs, like the brachial artery in the arm.  Blood pressure is usually measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg).

There are two numbers in a blood pressure.  The first is the systolic pressure.  It measures how hard the blood pushes against the walls of the arteries when the heart is in systole (beating and pushing out blood).  This is when the pressure against the walls of the arteries is highest.  The second number is the diastolic blood pressure.  It measures how hard the blood pushes against the walls of the arteries when the heart is in diastole (resting between beats and not pushing out any blood).  For example, in the picture on this page, the pressure on the walls of the arteries is 122 mmHg when the heart is beating, and 65 mmHg when the heart is resting.  This blood pressure would be written as "122/65" and read as "122 over 65."

Mean arterial pressure is a person's average blood pressure.  Pulse pressure is the difference between the systolic and diastolic pressures.

To measure blood pressure, doctors use a device called a sphygmomanometer.

Normal Blood Pressure

Blood pressure is usually lower for children and gets higher as a person gets older.

For healthy adult humans, the systolic blood pressure should be below 120, and the diastolic blood pressure should be below 80.  However, blood pressure can be very different for each person.  Blood pressure also changes naturally during the day (in a circadian rhythm).  It gets lower during sleep and gets higher when a person gets up.  It is lower when a person is resting and higher during activity.    Many other things - like stress, disease, drugs, and what a person eats - can change blood pressure.  Even the stress of having blood pressure taken can make it higher.  This is called "white coat hypertension."

Blood Pressure Problems
People can have health problems if their blood pressure is too high or too low.

High blood pressure
Main article: Hypertension

High blood pressure is called hypertension.  A person has hypertension if their blood pressure is high and stays high over time.  Hypertension is very common.  About one in every three adults in the United States has high blood pressure.  Hypertension is sometimes called "the silent killer" because it often causes no symptoms, so many people have high blood pressure without realizing that anything is wrong.  However, hypertension can hurt the heart, blood vessels, kidneys, and other parts of the body.  It can cause serious health problems like heart attack, stroke, and kidney failure.

Low blood pressure
Main article: Hypotension

Low blood pressure is called hypotension.  If the blood pressure is too low, the heart, brain, and other parts of the body do not get enough blood and oxygen.  Low blood pressure can cause problems like dizziness and fainting.  If a person's blood pressure is low enough, they can have seizures, lose consciousness, and even die.

Related pages
 Hypertension
 Hypotension
 Systole
 Diastole

References

Blood pressure


Kraków (Polish: Kraków; (pronounced: ); variant English spelling Cracow; in full Royal Capital City of Krakow, Polish: Królewskie Stołeczne Miasto Kraków) is one of the oldest and largest cities in Poland. In 2014 in Kraków lived 759,800 people. It is on the Vistula river. Krakow is the capital of Lesser Poland Voivodeship (województwo małopolskie); before that it was the capital of Kraków Voivodship (since 14th century).

During the mid-early 19th century, Krakow became an independent city-state, under the name of "The Free, Independent and Strictly Neutral City of Krakow". However, it was annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1846.

Pope John Paul II was raised in Krakow and was its archbishop from 1964 until he was elected as Pope in 1978. When it was later announced that the city will host World Youth Day in 2016, it will be a tribute to the late Pope who became a saint in 2014.

The current mayor of Krakow is Jacek Majchrowski.

During World War II, there was once a ghetto in the city which held mostly the Jews of Kraków. The ghetto was liquidated for the final time in March 1943, with most of it's inhabitants sent to the Treblinka extermination camp.

Sister cities
Kraków is twinned, or maintains close relations with:

Related pages
Trams in Kraków
 Buses in Kraków

Other websites
 www.e-krakow.pl

Kraków


Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith (February 9, 1897 - November 8, 1935) was a famous Australian airplane pilot. He is famous for being the first person to fly across the Pacific Ocean from the United States to Australia. He was also the first person to fly non-stop across the entire country of Australia. He made the first flight from Australia to New Zealand. In another famous flight, he flew from Australia to London, England, in ten and a half days, which was a new record at that time.

Early life
Smith was born on February 9, 1897, in Hamilton, Brisbane (the capital city of Queensland, a state in Australia). He went to school at St. Andrew's Cathedral Choir School and Sydney Technical High School. When he turned 16, Smith became an apprentice at Colonial Sugar Refining Co. Ltd., where he got training in engineering.

Military career
In 1915, Smith joined the 1st Australian Imperial Force (AIF), the main branch of the Australian Army that fought outside of Australia in World War I. In the AIF he was a sapper (someone who builds and repairs roads and bridges) and a motorcycle dispatch rider (someone who delivers important messages). In 1916 he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), where he became a pilot and a second lieutenant.

In 1917, Smith's plane was shot down during battle. He survived, but was injured and had to have part of his left foot amputated (removed by surgery). He received the Military Cross for his bravery in battle. Because of his injuries, Smith was made an RFC flying teacher.  He was also promoted to Captain.  In April 1918, Smith was assigned to the Royal Air Force, which had just been created.

After finishing his military service in 1919, Smith created Kingsford Smith, Maddocks Aeros Ltd., flying a joy-riding service (which sold plane rides to customers for entertainment). He flew mostly in the North of England.  Later, he worked in the United States as a barnstormer, entertaining people by doing tricks in his airplane.  In 1921, he returned to Australia.  There he kept working as a barnstormer and also flew airmail services (he delivered mail by airplane).

On June 2, 1921, Smith applied for a commercial pilot's license.  He became one of Australia's first airline pilots after he was hired to fly for the newly created West Australian Airways.

On June 6, 1923, Smith married Thelma Eileen Hope Corboy.

Famous Flights
Smith became famous for setting flying records. He was very famous for all of his flights around the world. His famous flights included:
 Flying around Australia in 10 days and 5 hours in 1926 with C T P Ulm. This was twice as fast as any other pilot had ever taken to fly around Australia.
 Flying over the Pacific Ocean with a team of three other people. The team started the first part of their journey in California and landed in Hawaii. Next they flew from Hawaii to Fiji. This part of the trip was the hardest because of very bad storms. Finally, they flew from Fiji to Brisbane. When they landed in Brisbane, there were 25,000 people to greet Smith and his team. After that they flew to Sydney, where 300,000 people greeted them.
 Completing the first-ever flight around the world. Smith and his team flew to England; then across the Atlantic to North America; then to California.
 Flying 10,000 miles by himself.
The same year as his 10,000-mile flight, Smith married Mary Powell. Together they had a son called Charles.

In 1935, Smith and a co-pilot, Tommy Pethybridge, left from England to fly to Australia. This was Smith's last flight. He died on November 8, 1935.

References

Other websites
 'Charles Kingsford Smith', http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/charles-kingsford-smith

1897 births
1935 deaths
Aviators
People from Queensland

Charles Kingsford Smith


The Battle of Vĩnh Yên () which occurred from 13 to 17 January 1951, was a major engagement in the First Indochina War between the French Union and the Việt Minh. The French Union forces, led by World War II hero Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, inflicted a decisive defeat on the Việt Minh forces, which were commanded by Võ Nguyên Giáp. The victory marked a turn in the tide of the war, which was previously characterized by a number of Việt Minh victories.

Prelude

By October 1950, the Việt Minh had seized the initiative from the French. Operating from bases in the People's Republic of China, Việt Minh troops under Giáp constantly raided French outposts along Route Coloniale 4. At the end of the attacks on October 17, the French had lost 6,000 troops, stunning the French government into action: the high commissioner for Indochina, Leon Pignon, and the commander-in-chief of the French Expeditionary Corps, General Marcel Carpentier, were both recalled. Paris replaced them with General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, widely considered one of the greatest French commanders after his spectacular leadership of the French First Army in World War II.

De Lattre came to Hanoi, Vietnam, on 17 December and assumed both military and political control of French Indochina. The French Far East Expeditionary Corps numbered some 190,000, including 10,000 serving in the French Air Force and 5,000 in the French Navy. The French occupied most of the country, but the Việt Minh held considerable portions of the countryside that allowed quick and easy access to various crucial points should the need arise. Giáp had five divisions, all armed and equipped by the Chinese, composed of about 10,000 troops each. Four of the five Vietnamese divisions were roughly 150 miles north of Hanoi, stationed around the Việt Bắc region near the Chinese border. The 320th Division was located southwest of the Red River Delta, which was controlled by the French.

The dawn of 1951 heralded tremendous prospects for Việt Minh success. Giáp and Communist Party strategists planned for a massive offensive which would drive the French out of their homeland. Giáp decided to strike straight for Hanoi and chose Vĩnh Yên, 30 miles northwest of the capitol and the tip of the French defensive triangle, for the main blow.

Battle

Dispositions
Vĩnh Yên was defended by two French mobile groups (GM) of 3,000 men each. GM 3 guarded the town itself whereas GM 1 held a series of key blocking positions to the east. Giáp hoped to drive a wedge between the two forces by pinning GM 3 against the Dam Vac lake to the south and then defeating the French in detail. In late December, Giáp had moved the 308th and 312th divisions from the Việt Bắc into position along the Tam Dao ridge. On January 13, 1951, he attacked.

The battle
The 308th Division made a diversionary attack on Bao Chuc, a small outpost about two miles north of Vĩnh Yên. GM 3 quickly moved north to relieve the beleaguered 50-man garrison, but they were ambushed by forces from the 312th Division at Dao Tu. A series of heavy air strikes and artillery barrages eventually allowed GM 3 to disengage and return to Vĩnh Yên, but not before it had lost an entire battalion and had another severely damaged. Việt Minh forces followed their success by taking a string of hills in front of Vĩnh Yên.

On 14 January, de Lattre arrived in Vĩnh Yên to take personal command of the fighting. He ordered GM 2 to come from Hanoi as a reserve, GM 1 to attack west and break through to the town, and also called for heavy air strikes along with more reinforcements. GM 1 managed to successfully advance along Route 2 and joined GM 3 for a number of attacks which drove the Việt Minh out of the hills they had recently captured. On 16 January, however, the Việt Minh launched a massive human-wave assault with the entire 308th division. De Lattre replied by ordering the largest French air strike of the entire war, in which napalm was used for the first time on a large scale. Giáp's troops initially fled, only to come back and continue fighting. In the early hours of 17 January, French soldiers on Hill 101 ran out of ammunition and withdrew, soon followed by the Việt Minh capture of Hill 47. Giáp now had control of the center while the French controlled hills 210 and 157 on the flanks. At dawn, the 308th Division attacked again.

De Lattre used GM 2, his last reserve, to support Hill 47 while GM 3 was sent to the isolated French position on Hill 210. More air and napalm strikes followed both attacks. Finally, French aerial forces proved decisive. The 308th Division began to retreat and the 312th launched one more desperate attack to reverse the decision, but it was too late. By noon on 17 January, both Việt Minh divisions scrambled for the mountains.

Aftermath
Although the impressive French victory did not provide any short-term reprieve—Giáp would try to breach the line again shortly—it was a morale booster for French forces and confirmed that Paris had made the right decision in picking de Lattre to lead the effort against the Việt Minh. Strategically, the battle meant that the war would go on and ultimate victory would not be easy for either side.

References

Bibliography

Vinh Yen
Vinh Yen
Vinh Yen
Conflicts in 1951
1951 in French Indochina
1951 in Vietnam
History of Vĩnh Phúc Province
January 1951 events in Asia

Battle of Vĩnh Yên


Trochodendron nastae is an extinct species of flowering plant in the family Trochodendraceae known from fossil leaves found in the early Eocene Ypresian stage Klondike Mountain Formation deposits of northern Washington state.  T. nastae is one of the oldest members of the genus Trochodendron, which includes the living species T. aralioides, native to Japan, southern Korea and Taiwan and the coeval extinct species T. drachukii from the McAbee Fossil Beds near Cache Creek, British Columbia.

Taxonomy
Description of the new species by Dr. Kathleen B. Pigg, Wesley Wehr, and Stefanie Ickert-Bond was based on the study of 11 complete and 55 partial compression fossil specimens with the holotype specimen, number "SR 98-02-01", being housed in the Stonerose Interpretive Center, Republic, Washington.  They published their 2001 type description of the species in the International Journal of Plant Sciences volume number 162. and named the species nastae in honor of Charlotte G. Nast for her work on extinct and living members of the Trochodendrales.

T. nastae has been placed in the genus Trochodendron based on the overall shape of the leaves, the secondary vein structure, which forms weak chevrons bracing primary veins, and the tertiary veins forming four to five sided cells.  However the primary veins are palmate in structure for T.nastae rather than being pinnate as in T. aralioides.

Trochodendron shares with Tetracentron the very unusual feature in angiosperms, of lacking vessel elements in its wood. This has long been considered a very primitive character, resulting in the classification of these two genera in a basal position in the angiosperms; however, genetic research by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group has shown it to be in a less basal position (early in the eudicots), suggesting that the absence of vessel elements is a secondarily evolved character, not a primitive one.

References

Trochodendrales
Plants described in 2001
Ypresian plants of North America
Extinct flora of North America
Fossil taxa described in 2001
Klondike Mountain Formation

Trochodendron nastae


Leishmania is a protist
organism which causes Leishmaniasis. It is a Trypanosomatid parasite in the Euglenozoa phylum.

It is spread by sandflies of the genus Phlebotomus in the Old World, and of the genus Lutzomyia in the New World.

Their primary hosts are vertebrates; Leishmania commonly infects hyraxes, canids, rodents, and humans. Leishmania currently affects 12 million people in 98 countries.
The parasite was named in 1903 after the Scottish pathologist William Boog Leishman.

Diseases
The parasite causes three kinds of disease. Each type of disease is caused by different species of the parasite.

Skin disease: the Oriental sore
Mucous membrane leishmaniasis: can be fatal
Visceral disease of the liver and spleen, and anaemia. So-called kala-azar

Structure
Leishmania have a lipophosphoglycan coat on the outside of the cell. This is a trigger for toll-like receptor 2, a signalling receptor which triggers an innate immune response in mammals. The parasite can withstand the counter-attack by the immune system. There are treatments, which consist in helping the immune system to respond.

Protista

Leishmania


Menes was a pharaoh of the first dynasty of ancient Egypt. He lived ca. 3100-3000 BC. He brought together Upper and Lower Egypt to make an empire. He wore the Pschent or double crown: the white crown of Upper Egypt and the red crown of Lower Egypt. He built the city of Memphis and made it the capital.

There is a lot of archeological evidence that there was a pharaoh named Narmer, but little evidence for a pharaoh named Menes.  It is now believed that Menes was either Narmer, the pharaoh before Narmer, or Hor-Aha, who ruled after him.

More than 2000 years later Manetho, an Egyptian historian, wrote that Menes ruled for 62 years and was killed by a hippopotamus.

An image of Menes holding an ankh is on the frieze on the south wall of the U.S. Supreme Court building.

References
 Kinnaer, Jacques. What is Really Known About the Narmer Palette?, KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Spring 2004.
Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt, Routledge, London/New York 1999, , 70-71

Notes

Other websites
Narmer: Titulary

4th-millennium BC pharaohs

Menes


William Colridge Thompson Jr. (born July 10, 1953) is an American politician who served as the 42nd Comptroller of New York City; sworn into office on January 1, 2002, he was reelected to serve a second term that began on January 1, 2006. He did not seek re-election in 2009. Instead he ran for mayor, and he was succeeded as comptroller by John Liu. On June 15, 2016, Thompson was appointed by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo as chairman of the board of trustees of The City University of New York; his term ended in June 2022.

Thompson ran unsuccessfully in the 2009 election for Mayor of New York as the nominee of the Democratic and Working Families parties, and he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in the 2013 election for mayor.

Early life and education
Thompson was born and raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.  He is the son of Elaine Thompson, a New York City public-school teacher, and William C. Thompson Sr., formerly a prominent Brooklyn Democratic Party leader, City Councilman, State Senator and judge on New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division. His grandparents immigrated to New York City from Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean.  Thompson attended Midwood High School, a public school in Brooklyn, and graduated from Tufts University in 1974.

Career
Upon his graduation from Tufts University in 1974, until 1982, Thompson served as the special assistant and chief of staff to former Brooklyn Democratic Rep. Fred Richmond, who pleaded guilty to income tax evasion, marijuana possession and making an illegal payment to a government employee and who resigned his seat pursuant to a plea agreement in 1982. Later, Thompson became the youngest Brooklyn Deputy Borough President. As deputy to Borough President Howard Golden, Thompson was Golden's designee to the New York City Board of Estimate. Following the Crown Heights riots, Thompson worked to fix the racial divide that had paralyzed Brooklyn. In 1993, Thompson moved to the private sector for one year, taking a position as senior vice president of the investment firm George K. Baum & Co.

As a member of the New York City Board of Education, from 1994 to 2001, and a five-term president, from 1996 until 2001, Thompson worked for centralized management of the public school system. Thompson also fought for better after-school programs, improved teacher quality, and an expanded arts curriculum.

While serving the board of education, Thompson also worked as a political consultant, the director of Keyspan Energy (now National Grid USA), and director of a financial firm headed by Michael. W. Geffrard, a former deputy city comptroller. Thompson resigned from the board of education in March 2001 to run for the office of Comptroller.

Thompson has also served on the boards of the American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Children's Museum, Queens Public Library, New York Wildlife Conservation Society and each New York City Business improvement district.

New York City comptroller (2002–2009)

In the role of City of New York's chief financial officer, Thompson led a team of 720 employees, managed a $66 million annual operating budget and the country's 5th largest pension fund, a multibillion-dollar fund that was rated among the top 20 in the world. As New York City Comptroller, Thompson was the custodian and investment advisor to the five boards of trustees of the Five New York City Pension Funds, which included the New York City Employee's Retirement System; the Teachers' Retirement System of the City of New York; the New York City Police Pension Fund; the New York City Fire Department Pension Fund; and the New York City Board of Education Retirement System.  Thompson worked to diversify the pension portfolio from primarily public equities into private equity, real estate and other asset classes, and since 2003, the funds grew at a pace of 12.33 percent a year, outperforming its actuarial return assumption of 8 percent. In addition, during Thompson's tenure, assets managed by minority-and-women-owned firms increased from less than $2 billion to over $6 billion.

Thompson called on American firms in the pension portfolio – including Halliburton and General Electric – to document the impact of their businesses on the environment. He advocated that companies doing business in Northern Ireland embrace the goal of equal opportunity employment and supported efforts to prohibit workplace discrimination based upon sexual orientation. Since, funds reinvested in New York City, leading to the creation and rehabilitation of more than 20,000 units of affordable housing, the development of thousands of square feet of commercial space, and investments related to creating clean and renewable sources of energy.

In 2003, Thompson led the effort to deposit $200 million in city funds to establish new bank branches in traditionally underserved neighborhoods, enabling more New Yorkers to open checking accounts and apply for business loans and mortgages. Thompson has developed a number of community service and education programs to help New Yorkers deal with the challenges of the economic crisis. These programs include consumer banking days (regular events that take place in every borough and feature workshops addressing savings and credit issues), predatory lending reforms and general investment strategies.

In an analysis of Thompson's use of the comptroller's office to audit city government, the on-line journal City Limits opined that "Thompson has not been a ferocious antagonist to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Instead, he has mostly praised the mayor's budgets, smiled on his economic policies and hailed Bloomberg's accomplishments with the city's schools." However, City Limits reported the Comptroller's office and the Bloomberg administration in fact engaged in hundreds of "low-level skirmishes" over the Comptroller's audits of city agencies and programs, although Thompson did not audited the mayor's office and mayoral agencies as often as his predecessor, Alan Hevesi, under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. City Limits concluded "the jury is still out on the impact Thompson's audits on city services."

2009 mayoral election

Thompson was opposed by Tony Avella, a New York City Councilman from Queens, for the Democratic nomination to run in November 2009 against incumbent mayor Michael Bloomberg. On September 15, 2009, Thompson overwhelmingly won the Democratic nomination, defeating Avella by 70 points.

On July 9, 2009, Thompson was endorsed by the Working Families Party.

On July 21, 2009, the Comptroller's office released a report suggesting the Bloomberg administration had falsely inflated graduation rates in city schools. Thompson's report did not demonstrate any conclusive evidence of manipulation, "saying only that a lack of oversight, coupled with intense pressure to push up the graduation rate, created the potential for abuse." Thompson also criticized Bloomberg's managerial style as creating incentives for schools to graduate unqualified students. The New York City Department of Education released a 38-page rebuttal to Thompson's allegations.  In addition on July 21, 2009, Thompson said on NY1 that School's Chancellor Joel Klein should be fired, referring to his Department of Education as "The Enron of American education. Showing the gains and hiding the losses.". It was reported that on October 29, 2009, the principal of Lehman High School was being investigated for granting students credits inappropriately and graduating students without them having completed the required course work. Thompson reiterated once again that the mayoral control of schools breeds abuse.

Thompson's 2009 mayoral candidacy received endorsements from President Barack Obama, both of New York's U.S. Senators (Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand), Governor David Paterson, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, U.S. Congressmen Anthony Weiner and Charlie Rangel, John Liu, Bill de Blasio, David Yassky, Rev. Al Sharpton, Fernando Ferrer, Ruben Diaz Jr. and former mayor David Dinkins, among others.

District Council 37, the city's largest union, endorsed Thompson on August 13, 2009, giving Thompson "crucial labor support" according to the New York Times. The union, representing 125,000 workers and 50,000 retirees, endorsed Bloomberg in 2005.  On June 19, 2013, the United Federation of Teachers delegates voted to support Thompson. Other unions that endorsed Thompson include the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union #3, FDNY-EMS Emergency Medical Technicians, Paramedics and Fire Inspectors Union Local 2507, the FDNY-EMS Officers Union Local 3621, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU, UFCW), Allied International Union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1056/1181, Local 891, International Union of Operating Engineers, Civil Service Employees Association Local 1000, Communications Workers of America (CWA) District 1, International Association of Machinists District 15, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 808, Local 94 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, The Associated Musicians of Greater New York, Local 802 AFM, and Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100.

As of October 6, 2009, Mayor Bloomberg's lead over Thompson had shrunk to 8%.

Thompson's mayoral campaign against Bloomberg in 2009 was close, but on November 3, 2009, Bloomberg won a third term by edging out Thompson by 4.6 percent.

Inter-mayoral election years 2010–2012
In 2010, Thompson joined Siebert Brandford Shank & Co., L.L.C. – the largest African-American, woman and Latino owned investment banking firm in the country, handling more than $2 trillion in infrastructure financing. He became a partner in 2015.

In 2010, New York State Governor David Paterson appointed Thompson chairman of the Board of The Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) – a Class A public-benefit corporation created by New York State in 1968 to redevelop outmoded and deteriorated piers, a project that has involved reclaiming the land and facilitating new construction of mixed commercial and residential community uses. Thompson held the position until 2012, previously serving on the New York State Gaming Facility Location Board, and, since 2011, he has chaired Governor Andrew Cuomo's MWBE Task Force.

2013 mayoral election

Thompson announced his intention to run again for mayor as a Democrat in 2013, when the seat will next be up for election.  Unlike his 2009 campaign, there was no incumbent in the race in 2013, as New York's term-limits law prohibited Mayor Bloomberg from running for a fourth term. New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch joined his campaign in April, as campaign chairwoman.

According to the New York City Campaign Finance Board's website, as of the March 2013 filing deadline Thompson had raised over $2.7 million in private funds, fourth among registered Democratic contenders, and fifth overall. According to a report in the New York Times, former New York Republican U.S. Senator Al D'Amato was Thompson's largest financial backer as of May 2013.

Thompson lost the Democratic primary election for mayoral candidate to Bill de Blasio, coming in second place with 26.2% of the vote.

Since 2015, Thompson has served as chairman of the New York State Housing Finance Agency, chairman of the State of New York Mortgage Agency, and since 2016, chairman of the City University of New York board of trustees. He is trustee emeritus of Tufts University (2003–2008) and KeySpan/Brooklyn Union Gas Company. Thompson was selected by the NYS Governor to head NYC's Battery Park City Authority.

Personal life
A lifelong Brooklyn resident, Thompson moved to Harlem in 2008 after marrying Elsie McCabe Thompson, a Harvard-trained lawyer and the former president of the Museum for African Art as well as former chief of staff to Mayor David Dinkins.

See also

 New York City Comptroller
 New York City mayoral election, 2009
 New York City mayoral election, 2013

References

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1953 births
2008 United States presidential electors
20th-century African-American politicians
20th-century American Episcopalians
21st-century African-American politicians
21st-century American politicians
African-American Episcopalians
African-American people in New York City politics
American people of Saint Kitts and Nevis descent
City University of New York
Living people
Midwood High School alumni
New York (state) Democrats
New York City Comptrollers
Politicians from Brooklyn
School board members in New York (state)
Tufts University alumni
People from Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn

Bill Thompson (New York politician)


Verity Nancy Burgmann  (born 17 September 1952) is Adjunct Professor of Politics in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University and Honorary Professorial Fellow in the eScholarship Research Centre at the University of Melbourne, where she is Director of the Reason in Revolt website. In 2013 she was Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack Visiting Professor of Australian Studies in the Institut für Englische Philologie at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Early life and education
Burgmann was born in Sydney, Australia, the daughter of Victor Burgmann and Lorna Bradbury. In 1971 she left home to attend the London School of Economics, where she completed a BSc (Econ) with a major in politics. In 1980 she completed her PhD, Revolutionaries and Racists: Australian Socialism and the Problem of Racism, at the Australian National University.

Career and research

During the 1970s, Burgmann became actively involved in 'radical' politics, most notably the anti-apartheid campaign, and the campaign for aboriginal land rights. In 1971, along with her sister Meredith, she was ejected from the Sydney Cricket Ground after disrupting play during the controversial 1971 Springbok tour of Australia. Burgmann's activism continued during her time in the United Kingdom, where she devoted her efforts to the International Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party (Britain).

She lived with Peter Hain, who was then leading the STST (Stop The Seventy Tour) campaign in Britain against the visits of racially selected sporting teams from South Africa. After moving to Melbourne in the early 1980s, she became involved in People for Nuclear Disarmament. During the 1990 federal election campaign, opposition leader Andrew Peacock visited her sons' creche for a photo opportunity where Burgmann greeted him with her middle son on her hip, holding a children's blackboard reading: "I don't want Mr Peacock to kiss my baby." The focus of Burgmann's recent activism has been the defence of public education (she is on the executive of the Public Education Group) and trade unionism.

Verity Burgmann married Andrew Milner, the British-Australian cultural theorist and literary critic, in 1977. They have three sons.

Verity Burgmann began her academic career teaching British Government at South London College in 1975. Between 1978 and 1980 Burgmann worked at both the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney, before moving to the Political Science Department at the University of Melbourne in 1981. In 2003, she was appointed Professor of Political Science. Burgmann was Deputy Dean of the Arts faculty at the University of Melbourne between 2004 and 2006. She retired in 2013, taught in Berlin for a semester and was then appointed Adjunct Professor at Monash University.

She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 1999.

Burgmann's research interests are the history and politics of the Australian labour movement, radical political ideologies, contemporary protest movements, environmental politics, racism, anti-globalization and anti-corporate politics. She has established a significant reputation both as a labour historian and as a political scientist of social movements and social change.

Selected works

Writings
(with Meredith Burgmann) Green Bans, Red Union: The Saving of a City, 2nd edition, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2017.
Globalization and Labour in the Twenty-First Century, Routledge, London and New York, 2016.
(with Hans A. Baer) Climate Politics and the Climate Movement in Australia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2012.
Power, Profit & Protest: Australian Social Movements and Globalisation, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2003.
(with Meredith Burgmann) Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental Activism and the New South Wales Builders Labourers' Federation, University of NSW Press, Sydney, 1998.
Revolutionary Industrial Unionism. The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1995.
Power and Protest. Movements for Change in Australian Society, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993.
In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885-1905, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1985.

Edited works
Andrew Milner, Simon Sellars and Verity Burgmann, Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe, Arena Publications, Melbourne, 2011.
Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee, Staining the Wattle: A People's History of Australia since 1788, McPhee Gribble/Penguin, Melbourne, 1988.
Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee, Constructing a Culture: A People's History of Australia since 1788, McPhee Gribble/Penguin, Melbourne, 1988.
Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee, Making a Life: A People's History of Australia since 1788, McPhee Gribble/Penguin, Melbourne, 1988.
Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee, A Most Valuable Acquisition: A People's History of Australia since 1788, McPhee Gribble/Penguin, Melbourne, 1988.

References

External links

1952 births
Living people
Academic staff of Monash University
Australian activists
Socialist Workers Party (UK) members
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Non-fiction environmental writers
Academics from Sydney
Academics from Melbourne
Australian political scientists
Women political scientists
Fellows of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia

Verity Burgmann


Slime moulds, or slime molds, are forms of life which live on the rainforest floor, and many other parts of the world. They slither over ground and fallen tree trunks in search of food. They scatter spores, like plants, which grow into new slime moulds.

They are a way of life, or life-form, which has evolved a number of times. Because they are not a monophyletic group, they are put into several different phyla. They have some features of fungi and some features of protozoa. This was discussed by Anton de Bary in 1858.

They spend part of their lives as isolated cells, but come together when a chemical signal is released. Then together, they form a multicellular organism which reproduces and makes spores. So they are both single-celled and multicellular. That is not all: the multicellular form loses its cell walls, and becomes a syncytium. This is an organism with many nuclei, but few or no cell walls.

The single cells are amoeboid (amoeba-like) and haploid (one set of chromosomes, like our gametes). The multi-nuclear stage is called a plasmodium. It is diploid, formed from fusions between pairs of amoeboid cells. It gains nutrition by phagocytosing bacteria and food particles.

As the food supply fades, the plasmodium makes haploid cells by meiosis, and they form the basis of spores. The spores are kept and then distributed from a structure like a sporangium. This life-cycle is typical of the main group called Mycetozoa.

Taxonomy
Modern molecular biology has shown by sequence analysis that slime moulds are not a monophyletic group. They were once regarded as fungi, but now they are split into three different groups, and none of them are fungi. They are a form taxon, put together because they share some characteristics. Relationships between the groups are not yet understood.

Bikont
Bikonts are eukaryote cells with two flagellae. There are three groups, which have evolved slime mould form independently.

 Acrasidae: slime moulds which belong to the super group Excavata.
 Labyrinthulomycetes: slime nets which belong to the super group Chromalveolata. They are marine and form labyrinthine networks of tubes in which amoeba without pseudopods can travel.
 Phytomyxea: parasitic protists which belong to the super group Rhizaria. They also form cells with more than one nucleus, and are internal parasites of plants (e.g. Club root disease of cabbages).

Amoebozoa
 Mycetozoa belong to the supergroup Amoebozoa and include:
 Myxogastria: syncytial or plasmodial slime moulds, the most commonly encountered. A common slime mould which forms tiny brown tufts on rotting logs is Stemonitis. Another form which lives in rotting logs and is often used in research is Physarum polycephalum. In logs it has the appearance of a slimy web-work of yellow threads, up to a few feet in size. Fuligo forms yellow crusts in mulch.
 Dictyosteliida: unicellular slime moulds or dictyostelids. The Dictyosteliida, cellular slime moulds, are distantly related to the plasmodial slime moulds and have a very different lifestyle. Their amoebae do not form huge groups, and stay individual. They live in similar habitats and feed on microorganisms. When food runs out and they are ready to form sporangia, they do something radically different. They release signal molecules into their environment, by which they find each other and create swarms. These amoeba then join up into a tiny multicellular slug-like coordinated creature, which crawls to an open lit place and grows into a fruiting body. Some of the amoebae become spores to begin the next generation, but some of the amoebae sacrifice themselves to become a dead stalk, lifting the spores up into the air.
 Protostelids. The Protostelids have characters intermediate between the previous two groups, but they are much smaller, the fruiting bodies only forming one to a few spores.

Opisthokont
Fonticula is a cellular slime mould which forms a fruiting body in a volcano shape. Fonticula is not closely related to either the Dictyosteliida or the Acrasidae. A 2009 paper finds it to be related to Nuclearia, which in turn is related to fungi.

Related pages
 Mycorrhiza
 Mould
 Black_bread_mold
 Yeast
 Lichen
 Candida
 Fungus

References

Bonner, John Tyler 1959. The cellular slime moulds: investigations in the biological sciences. Princeton University Press, Princeton N.J.
Bonner, John Tyler 2009. The social amoebae: the biology of cellular slime molds. Princeton University Press, Princeton N.J.

Microbiology
Protista

Slime mould


Carlos M. Varsavsky (pol. Warszawski) (1933–1983) was an Argentine astrophysicist.

Early life

Varsavsky was born in Buenos Aires in 1933. After completing secondary studies in the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, he settled in the United States. In the US, Varsavsky graduated in physical engineering, in which he also obtained a master's degree from the University of Colorado. In 1959 he did his doctorate in astronomy at Harvard University. He was the younger brother of Argentinian mathematician and social scientist Oscar Varsavsky.

In Argentina
In 1960, Varsavsky returned to Argentina, where he joined the newly created group of Astrophysics at the University of Buenos Aires and worked as senior lecturer in physics until 1966. He was the founder and first director of the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy, founded in 1964, and president of the Association of Physics in Argentina. Furthermore, he participated in the construction of the largest radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, which is located in Villa Elisa, Buenos Aires.

During the Periodo de facto (the military juntas of 1966–1973 and 1976–1983) and in a university environment, Varsavsky maintained a consistent democratic attitude – even during the incident that is known as "la noche de los bastones largos" in which the military of Juan Carlos Onganía government attacked the Faculty of Mathematical and Natural Sciences of Buenos Aires. Students, graduates and professors were beaten with the aim of dismantling the reformist project of building a university of science of excellence.

In United States
In 1977, during the Dirty War (Guerra Sucia) that caused the kidnapping and brutal murder of his nephew, David Horacio Varsavsky, Carlos M. Varsavsky saw no choice but to leave Argentina. He emigrated with his family to the United States where Wassily Leontief, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner, made him the associate director of the Institute of Economic Analysis at New York University.

Varsavsky had two children: Paula Varsavsky, author and cultural journalist, and Martin Varsavsky, entrepreneur and founder of the Varsavsky Foundation. Varsavsky died in 1983, at the age of 49, when he was still working as associate director of the Institute of Economic Analysis at New York University.

Work and contributions

His doctoral thesis on atomic transitions has been a reference for many generations of students of astrophysics.  His predictions about abundant molecular hydrogen in clouds, though controversial at that time, have been verified with modern methods of observation.

Some of his working papers include:

 "Vida en el Universo" (Life in the Universe). Buenos Aires: CEAL, 1971.
 "Una Introducción al Universo" (An Introduction to the Universe). Buenos Aires: Estrada, 1973.
 "Astronomía Elemental" (Basics of Astronomy). Buenos Aires: Estrada, 1969.
 "Sobre la Posibilidad de Cambiar la Actual Semana de Siete Días" (On the Possibility of Changing the Present Seven-Day Week – unpublished), sponsored by the Ford Foundation in 1975.

Six-day week
Varsavsky  noted that there are astronomical reasons for determining the relative  lengths of  a day, a month or a year, but there are no astronomical reasons for the week to be seven days, when a lunar cycle is not 28 days but about 29½ days. An astronomically closer but still imperfect division would be to have five weeks of six days.

He hypothesized that it should be possible to have everyone to work one day less, yet maintain their global production (or national GDP) If the population was split into three approximately equal groups (he called them Red, Blue and White to appeal to  the French, British and American readers) and everyone in the same family were to work  the same week, then each group is ready to work and rest at overlapping times, but not simultaneously (as at present). Society would have one third of its people working the red week, another third the blue week and the third the white week. Every day throughout the year there would be two groups working their four occupational days of the week and one resting for their two-day weekend.

The GDP would stay the same, or perhaps improve, because all the fixed investment of society would be used every day instead if five or six seventh of the time available. Every school, factory, office, shop, home,  road that the public invests in  building would be used every day of the year, but not by the same people.

Carlos M. Varsavsky Award

The Argentine Astronomical Society (Asociación Argentina de Astronomía), together with the Varsavsky Foundation, gives every 2 years the Carlos M. Varsavsky Award to the best PhD thesis in Astronomy.

References

External links
  Varsavsky Foundation
 Paula Varsavsky (Spanish)
 David Horacio Varsavsky (Spanish)
 Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía (Spanish)
 Asociación Argentina de Astronomía - AAA (Spanish)

1933 births
1983 deaths
20th-century Argentine astronomers
Argentine astrophysicists
Argentine Jews
Jewish physicists
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Carlos Varsavsky


Manistee Ranch was founded in 1897 by Herbert W. Hamilton, a native of Wisconsin. The ranch, located in the town of Glendale, Arizona, was rich in citrus fruits and dates. The ranch has all of its historical structures restored. It is administered by the Parks and Recreation Department of Glendale.

On April 9, 1998, Manistee Ranch was listed in the National Register of Historical Places.

Ranch history

Hamilton era (1897 - 1907)
Herbert W. Hamilton was a wealthy lumber baron from Wisconsin who homesteaded lands in what was to become the future the City of Glendale founded by William John Murphy. What made an investment attractive was the completion of the Arizona Canal in 1885. The canal allowed 100,000 acres (40468.564 hec or 40468 hec (hectare) and 5642.2 m²) of desert land to be opened up to homesteading and irrigation farming. The Homestead Act was a United States federal law that gave an applicant ownership at no cost of farmland called a "homestead."

By 1897, Hamilton had under his control 320 (129.499 hectares or 129 hec and 4994.0 m²) of farmland in Glendale. He established a farm where he planted large citrus orchards and dates. Hamilton built a home for his family, unlike any of the typical Arizona farm houses of the time. It was a Queen Anne Victorian style house with a "Sky Parlor," a square windowed tower rising above the building's center.

Sands era (1907 - 1996)
In 1907, Hamilton sold the farm to Louis M. Sands, a native of Manistee, Michigan. Sands, a prominent Arizona businessman and rancher, named the farm "Manistee Ranch" after his hometown. Sands developed techniques in his ranch for rotating cattle pastures to work within the limits of the land. Besides harvesting feed for the livestock, which included cattle, sheep, horses, ducks and chickens, the farm workers also harvested dates which at the time were sold for 25¢ a pound. Over 11 different species of palm trees were planted. Currently there are some palm trees on the property which are over 100 years old.

National Register of Historic Places

Eventually most of the farm land, with the exception of four acres (1.61874 hectares or 1 hec and 6187.4 m²), was sold to land developers. The four acres of the farm land continued under the ownership of the Sands family until 1996, when the family decided to sell the land to the Glendale Historical Society.

The Glendale Historical Society restored the historical buildings in the property which consists of a garage, office, barn and the main house. The basement of the main house has a collection of photographs and Glendale grammar school items. On the main grounds there is an exhibit of old farm equipment that was used on the ranch.

The ranch, which is located at 5127 W. Northern Ave., was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 9, 1998,.

Gallery of historical Manistee Ranch

See also

Glendale, Arizona
Adobe Mountain Desert Park
Sahuaro Ranch
National Register of Historic Places listings in Maricopa County, Arizona

References

External links

 Glendale Parks and Recreation.gov: Manistee Ranch Park

Buildings and structures in Glendale, Arizona
Museums in Glendale, Arizona
Farm museums in the United States
Houses in Maricopa County, Arizona
Open-air museums in Arizona
Parks in Maricopa County, Arizona
National Register of Historic Places in Maricopa County, Arizona
Ranches on the National Register of Historic Places in Arizona

Manistee Ranch


Kingower is a locality in Victoria, Australia, located on Inglewood-Rheola Road, in the Shire of Loddon.

History
The Kingower goldfield was discovered in August 1853 by Captain John Mechosk and his party of 11 hired men.  The discovery resulted in a rush of about 4000 diggers as the field became famous for unearthing monster nuggets.

In August 1857, Robert and James Ambrose and Samuel and Charles Napier discovered the Blanche Barkly nugget, at that time the world's largest gold nugget, weighing in at 1743 ounces.  The Blanche Barkly remains the third largest gold nugget ever discovered to this day.

The discovery of the nearby Inglewood goldfield drained Kingower of most of its population in 1859.  From then onward, only a small number of diggers continued "working the field," despite large nuggets still being unearthed from time to time.

In 1980, Kevin Hillier was fossicking in the forest behind the old Kingower school house when he came across the 875 ounce 'Hand of Faith' nugget.  The nugget was sold to the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas for over US$1 million and remains the largest nugget still in existence in the world today, and the largest ever found with a metal detector.

The Locality Today

The area has made a name for itself as a wine region, with 4 wineries calling Kingower home.

The locality is bordered by Kooyoora State Park, home of rare Box-Ironbark forest, scenic granite outcrops and significant aboriginal sites.  Melville's Caves, a collection of granite tors which form fissures (loosely called 'caves'), is the jewel in the Park's crown and a popular picnic and recreation spot.  The bushranger Captain Melville is rumoured to have used the caves as a hideout in the 1850s.

Historic buildings that remain in Kingower include the Bridge Hotel, Kingower Schoolhouse, St Mary's Church and Glenalbyn Grange, the original homestead for the Glenalbyn pastoral run.  On the old Cobb & Co route from Dunolly to Wedderburn remain an historic bridge, the earliest civil construction remaining in the area, and water wells used for refreshing thirsty Cobb & Co horses.  Across the track are the workings of the old Union Reef Mine.

A picturesque bush cricket ground is the home of the Kingower Cricket Club.

Towns in Victoria (state)
Shire of Loddon

Kingower, Victoria


An astatic system comprises two equal and parallel magnetic needles, but with their polarities reversed. This arrangement protects the system from the influence of the terrestrial magnetic field, as the magnetisms of the two needles cancel each other out. Because of this phenomenon, astatic needles were often used in galvanometers.

References

Galvanometers
Historical scientific instruments

Astatic needles


Shulamith Shahar (Hebrew: שולמית שחר; born 1928) is an Israeli historian. Shahar's 1981 study Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages was the first to specifically examine the role of women in the medieval period. The book is used as a text for gender studies and medieval history classes. This, and her subsequent books, have been published in both Hebrew and English. She has written historical articles in these languages as well as French, and has translated three books from Latin to Hebrew.

Biography
Shulamith Shahar was born in Latvia in 1928, the youngest of three daughters of industrialist Moshe Weinstock and his wife Deborah.  In 1933, the family emigrated to Mandate Palestine, moving to Haifa. At the time, Shahar spoke only Russian.  Her middle sister, Dina, died in the early 1940s during a German massacre of Jews outside Riga.

In high school, Shahar served in the Haganah, a defence force, where she was in charge of an arms depot.  After graduating, she attended Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she soon earned her bachelor's degree in history.  At age 19, Shahar married Yitzhak Cohen.  They had one child, Evyatar, and divorced when he was two.  Shahar then returned to Jerusalem to pursue a master's degree. To support herself, Shahar taught at a high school.

In 1954, Shahar met writer David Shahar at a Purim Party.  They lived together for two years before marrying. The couple had two children, a boy and a girl.  The day after the birth of their daughter, Shulamith's son Evyatar was killed in an army training accident.

After her second marriage, Shulamith Shahar continued her education, and received a scholarship to the Sorbonne.  She wrote her doctoral dissertation while living in Paris.  On her return to Israel, Shahar became a professor at Tel Aviv University, eventually becoming department head.  She retired at age 64 to pursue the career she had always wanted: social work.  Shahar is now chairman of a non-profit association which manages a home for battered wives in Jerusalem.

David Shahar died in 1997.  For the last few years of his life, he divided his time between Israel and Paris; Shulamith Shahar remained in Israel, in the home they shared for decades.

Academic career
In 1981, Shahar published a groundbreaking study, Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages.  The study was published in book form in 1983, and subsequently translated into English. "The first historical work that dealt with history and way of life of women in an era that was always told from a male perspective", Fourth Estate is often used in gender studies and medieval history courses. Her work has made Shahar a feminist role model, although she claims to be uninterested in the theory of feminism. In an interview, Shahar explained: "I always preferred to study things that interest me personally. To produce good writing one needs genuine emotion, and there can be no such emotion if the writer does not identify deeply with the subject of the writing."

Shahar's second book, Childhood and the Middle Ages, was published in 1990 and released in both English and Hebrew. It was translated in German in 1991. According to Shahar, her research disproved the previously popular notion that medieval infant mortality rates caused parents of the time to love their children less than modern parents do. Her third book, Growing Old in the Middle Ages: Winter Clothes Us in Shadow and Pain (1995) was also published in Hebrew and English. Both have proved very popular in Israel.  She has also published dozens of articles in Hebrew, French, and English.

In addition to her original works, Shahar translated The Letters of Abelard and Heloise into Hebrew from Latin.  She has also translated into Hebrew 2 twelfth-century autobiographies, one by a Catholic monk and one by a Jew who converted to Christianity.

Awards
In 2003, Shahar was awarded the Israel Prize, for general history.

See also
List of Israel Prize recipients

References

1928 births
Living people
Latvian Jews
Latvian emigrants to Mandatory Palestine
Jews from Mandatory Palestine
Israeli Jews
Israeli historians
Israeli women historians
Israeli medievalists
Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni
University of Paris alumni
Academic staff of Tel Aviv University
Israel Prize in history recipients
Israel Prize women recipients
Women medievalists
Israeli schoolteachers
Israeli translators
Latin–Hebrew translators
Jewish translators
Jewish women writers

Shulamith Shahar


Dieter Cunz (August 4, 1910 – February 17, 1969) was an emigre from Nazi Germany first to Switzerland and then to the U.S. who taught German language and literature as a professor at the University of Maryland from 1939 to 1957 and at Ohio State University from 1957 until his death in 1969. He authored a number of fictional and non-fictional works.

Youth in Germany
Cunz was born to Hedwig (née Silbersiepe) and Paul Cunz in remote Höchstenbach (in the Westerwald). In 1917 the family moved to Schierstein, adjacent to Wiesbaden, where he attended a humanities-focused gymnasium from 1920 to 1929. As a young man, he was at loggerheads with his father, an Evangelical Lutheran pastor who admired Adolf Hitler and hoisted the swastika flag at his church well prior to the Nazi takeover in 1933. Cunz began his peripatetic university studies at Munich for one semester in 1929, before transferring to Leipzig, where he enrolled for three semesters and studied political and diplomatic history, the history of religion, and German literature, attending courses taught by Erich Brandenburg, Hans Driesch, Theodor Litt, H. A. Korff and Georg Witkowski. He studied next at the University of Königsberg in the spring of 1931 (where he heard the historian Hans Rothfels) before finally transferring to the University of Frankfurt. Here in the fall of 1931 he met two gay Jewish students of German literature, Richard Plaut and Oskar Koplowitz, and Koplowitz became his life partner. In the closing years of the Weimar Republic, Cunz, Koplowitz, and Plaut sympathized with the leftist student political group that was increasingly forced onto the defensive by the growing Nazi Students League.

Life in Switzerland
Shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933, Koplowitz and Plaut left Germany and enrolled at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Cunz chose to remain in Frankfurt to complete his Ph.D. dissertation on Johann Casimir of Simmern, a staunch Calvinist who was a leader of mercenary troops in the religious wars of the sixteenth century, including the Dutch Revolt. His dissertation director was Walter Platzhoff (1881–1969), a Nazi stalwart who advanced to head the entire university from 1934 to 1945. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1934, Cunz moved from Frankfurt to Königshütte, where Koplowitz's parents lived, and then in 1935 to Switzerland to join Koplowitz, who completed a Ph.D. in German literature in 1936. The two soon relocated from Basel to Lausanne. Hard pressed financially and unable to seek employment under the terms of their Swiss student visas, Koplowitz and Plaut relied on writing under pseudonyms as their primary source of income. Plaut adopted the alias Plant, and Koplowitz made use of the nom de plume Seidlin. In addition, under the collective pen name Stefan Brockhoff, they coauthored with Cunz three detective novels that were published in Nazi Germany. Because he had enrolled in the Nazi Writers' Association () in 1934, Cunz was able to use his own name when he published in Germany a study of European constitutional history, Europäische Verfassungsgeschichte der Neuzeit (1936). This was followed a year later by a monograph on the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli, published in Switzerland. His Um uns herum. Märchen aus dem Alltag also appeared in Switzerland in 1938. Whereas Cunz was tolerated by the Swiss authorities and was entitled to work as a freelance journalist, Plaut and Koplowitz found it increasingly difficult to remain in Switzerland after their student visas expired with the completion of their doctorates.

Career in the United States
In 1938 Cunz, Koplowitz, and Plaut emigrated to the U.S., where within a year their paths diverged. While Plaut, who officially changed his name to Plant, remained in New York, Koplowitz, who changed his name to Seidlin, moved to Massachusetts in 1939 to take up a teaching position at Smith College. Cunz, who arrived in New York in August 1938, relocated to Maryland in October 1939 with funding from the Ferdinand Meyer Fund to work up a historical study of the German-Americans settled in the state of Maryland, published in 1940, a precursor to his magisterial The Maryland Germans: A History (1948). His research on the Maryland Germans was also supported by the Oberlaender Trust of the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation. Cunz was among the early specialists in German-American studies and authored numerous articles on German immigrants between the colonial period and the Civil War, such as the explorer Johann Lederer and the radical abolitionist Karl Follen.

In 1939, Cunz was expelled from the Nazi Writers' Association and appointed to an instructorship at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he advanced to an assistant professorship in 1942. In 1944 he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1947 and to full professor in 1949, and he served as chair of the German Department. In addition to teaching language and literature courses, he taught a historical survey entitled "From Arminius to Adenauer: A Course in German Civilization".

In 1957, Cunz accepted an offer to chair the German Department at Ohio State University following the departure of Bernhard Blume for Harvard University. Here he joined his partner Seidlin, who had been teaching at Ohio State since 1946, and the two contracted to have a house built in the suburb Worthington. Ohio State's German Department burgeoned during the twelve years of Cunz's chairmanship, albeit largely in response to national demographic and political trends (the baby boomer wave paired with the National Defense Education Act), but also in part thanks to Cunz's administrative acumen. He expected all departmental colleagues, including the literature specialists such as Seidlin, to shoulder their fair share of "service" courses, i.e., language instruction. With Curtis C. D. Vail (1903–1957) of the University of Washington, Cunz coauthored German for Beginners (1958), a textbook that was widely adopted throughout the U.S. It advanced beyond the traditional "grammar-translation" approach to the more communicative  audio-lingual method and made use of language lab tapes. A second edition (1965) was coauthored with his junior colleague Ulrich A. Groenke (1924–2013), a Scandinavian linguist. Cunz edited an abridged version of Ricarda Huch's Der letzte Sommer, a "novel in letters set during the fight of the Russian anarchists against the Czarist regime", for use in German language instruction. He also edited Heinrich Jung-Stilling's autobiography (1777–78), a canonical precursor of the Bildungsroman and a classic document of German Pietism. To the genre of young readers' literature belongs his They Came from Germany: The Stories of Famous German-Americans, published in 1966.

Cunz and Seidlin enjoyed summer vacations in the company of Richard Plant in Manomet, Massachusetts, and Mallnitz, Austria. Plant described Cunz in these terms:

In 1959 he was awarded the Officer's Cross by the Federal Republic of Germany "in recognition of his efforts on behalf of German language instruction in the United States and his scholarly contributions in the field of German American immigration history". In 1961 the Arts College Student Council of Ohio State University awarded him its Good Teaching Award, and in 1964 he received the Alfred J. Wright Award for "dedicated service to student activities and student organizations".
With tongue firmly in cheek, Cunz described himself in these terms in late December 1968, just a few weeks before his death:

Cunz was in declining health during his final years, suffering from high blood pressure and a heart valve defect. Even so, his death following a heart attack on February 17, 1969, at the age of 58, was unexpected and plunged Seidlin into a deep depression. In a signal honor, Ohio State University in 1969 named its new building for foreign languages and literatures after him (Dieter Cunz Hall of Languages, at 1841 Millikin Road, Columbus, Ohio). Following Seidlin's death in 1984, his remains were interred alongside those of Cunz at the Walnut Grove Cemetery in Worthington.

References

External links
 List of Cunz's publications
 Cunz's Ohio State University personnel file
 Dieter Cunz papers at Ohio State University Library
 Chronicle of Cunz's chairmanship at Ohio State University
 Photo of Dieter Cunz (at right) with Oskar Koplowitz (left) and Richard Plaut (center) at the Gornergrat, ca. 1935
 Photo of the Dieter Cunz / Oskar Seidlin tombstone in Worthington, Ohio
 "Tributes and Memories"

See also
 Richard Plant
 Oskar Seidlin

1910 births
1969 deaths
20th-century American historians
20th-century German novelists
20th-century German male writers
American children's writers
American male non-fiction writers
American male novelists
Emigrants from Nazi Germany to Switzerland
Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States
American gay writers
German crime fiction writers
German male novelists
Germanists
Historians of Germany
Historians of Switzerland
German gay writers
Novelists from Maryland
Novelists from Ohio
Ohio State University faculty
University of Maryland, College Park faculty
Professors of German in the United States
Gay academics
People with acquired American citizenship
20th-century American male writers
20th-century German LGBT people

Dieter Cunz


InformationWeek is a digital magazine which conducts corresponding face-to-face events, virtual events, and research. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California and was first published in 1985 by CMP Media, later called Informa. The print edition of the magazine has ceased, with the last issue published on June 24, 2013.

History
The print edition began in 1985 using the name Information Week.
 April 1999 - Information Week began its 14th international edition: Brazil.
 May 1997 through 2000 – The worldwide regional publications of LAN Magazine were renamed to the already existing Network Magazine. Networkmagazine.com and lanmag.com now redirect to informationweek.com
 September 2005 – Network Magazine (networkmagazine.com) was renamed IT Architect (itarchitect.com). The offline publication was shut down after the March 2006 issue. itarchitect.com now redirects to InformationWeek.
 June 2006 – The company announced that offline publication of Network Computing would be merged with Information Week.  Online, Network Computing (networkcomputing.com) would provide technical content, whereas informationweek.com would provide news. UBM renamed CMP Media to CMP Technology.
 2008 – CMP Technology was restructured into four independent operating divisions under the common banner of UBM.
 2013 – The printed Information Week magazine ceased publication. It had 220,000 print magazine subscribers (many of whom received free promotional subscriptions).
 2018 - InformationWeek owner UBM (since 2008) merged with Informa.

Mission
InformationWeek's stated mission is "the business value of technology". The InformationWeek website features news, an array of proprietary InformationWeek research, analysis on IT trends, a whitepaper library, and editorial content.

InformationWeek Research identifies and interprets business technology trends and issues, producing more than 100 studies each year. Among its studies and reports are:
 The annual InformationWeek 500 (a listing of the nation's top users of information technology)
 The National IT Salary Survey (IT employee-based compensation and benefits study)
 The Global Information Security Study (6 languages, more than 15 countries participate)

InformationWeek runs events such as the InformationWeek 500 Conference & Gala Awards.

The BrainYard
The BrainYard is a news and commentary website focused on social business produced by InformationWeek and the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. It covers the business uses of social media and collaboration technologies, including enterprise social networks for internal collaboration, social communities for customer support, and the sales, marketing, and customer support uses of public social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The site also covers other enterprise collaboration technologies, such as videoconferencing and unified communications, particularly to the extent these are converging with social software.

The website was launched in April 2011. A year later, The BrainYard was named the winner of the min's Best of the Web Award for the best new business-to-business publication website.

See also
 Omniture

References

External links

Business magazines published in the United States
Defunct magazines published in the United States
Informa brands
Magazines established in 1979
Magazines disestablished in 2013
Magazines published in San Francisco
Online magazines with defunct print editions
Monthly magazines published in the United States
Online magazines published in the United States
Science and technology magazines published in the United States

InformationWeek


The infinite monkey theorem says that a monkey randomly hitting keys on a typewriter will eventually type out one of William Shakespeare's works. When people talk about the infinite monkey theorem, the "monkey" is not always a real monkey. Instead, it is an example of a device that produces random letters. However, the chances of a monkey actually typing a text, like Shakespeare's Hamlet, are very small.

The "Monkey" does not need to type Shakespeare's work. It states that a monkey can type anything in an infinite amount of time.

Simplified Proof
For example, let it be that Shakespeare wrote "Wikipedia is the best website in the world". If the monkey does not have extra characters like numbers (example: 4, 2) and symbols (example: #, ~) then the monkey will only have 53 things on his keyboard to press. Those are: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, and the spacebar.

Since there are only 53 buttons the monkey is allowed to press, eventually, he will hit the "W" button. This is because the monkey has infinite time to press the buttons and has a 1 in 53 chance of pressing the W button. Then, he will probably hit another button and not type the sentence "Wikipedia is the best website in the world".

But, the monkey has infinite time. That means, in total, he will press the "W" button infinity times. After every time the monkey presses the "W" button, he has a 1 in 53 chance of pressing the "i" button. But, since the "W" button will be pressed infinite times, the word "Wi" will appear infinite times too. This is because the chance of "i" following "W" is equal to the chance of "W" which is 1/53 multiplied by the chance of "i" following it which is 1/53. That is 1/2809. That is really small, but since "W" and "i" appear an infinite amount of times in the monkey's words it becomes certain. Meaning there is a 100% chance that eventually, the word "Wi" will appear. However, since "W" and "i" both will be pressed by the monkey an infinite amount of time, "Wi" will actually appear an infinite amount of times too.

This goes on and on. Eventually, after even longer time, there will be the word "Wik" because "Wi" appears infinite times and "k" has a 1 in 53 chance of following it. Now, since "Wik" appears infinite times, we know that "Wiki" will eventually appear too. Not only that, we know "Wiki" will appear an infinite amount of times.

Following this logic, we will see "Wikip" and "Wikipe" and "Wikiped" and "Wikipedi" all the way until we will see "Wikipedia is the best website in the world". Not only that, but we will see it infinite times.

Since the sentence "Wikipedia is the best website in the world" was just any sentence, by using the proof above, one can know anything appears an infinite amount of times. Therefore, we know that all of Shakespeare's things will appear. Even the things he threw away, even the thoughts he had at night, and even Hamlet.

This is like how you can find any combination of numbers (example:1829192) in the number pi since it has an infinite amount of random numbers.

The above proof was an example of a Proof by induction.

Related pages
 Law of truly large numbers
 Randomness
 Law of large numbers
 Probability
 Infinity

References

Other websites
 The Million Monkey Room , an essay by D.R. Belz from The Baltimore Examiner
 RFC 2795 - The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)

Mathematics

Infinite monkey theorem


ClearTalk is a controlled natural language—a kind of a formal language for expressing information that is designed to be both human-readable (being based on English) and easily processed by a computer.

Anyone who can read English can immediately read ClearTalk, and the people who write ClearTalk learn to write it while using it. The ClearTalk system itself does most of the training through use: the restrictions are shown by menus and templates and are enforced by immediate syntactic checks. By consistently using ClearTalk for its output, a system reinforces the acceptable syntactic forms.

It is used by the experimental knowledge management software Ikarus and by a knowledge base management system Fact Guru.

See also
 Attempto Controlled English
 Newspeak
 xTalk

References

Knowledge representation languages
Controlled English

ClearTalk


The .30-06 Springfield cartridge, pronounced "thirty-aught-six", is a bullet used for guns made in the United States. It was first used for the M1903 Springfield rifle.

The ".30" means that the bullet is .30 inches (7.62 millimeters) in diameter, and the "06" means it was first used in the US military in the year 1906

The .30-06 is known for having high stopping power (meaning it does a lot of damage to a human or animal body), high penetration power (it can pierce through thick layers), and a long effective range (it is accurate for a long distance).

In the US military, it was the main bullet used for rifles and light machine guns for the first half of the 20th century. Guns that shot the .30-06 include the M1903 Springfield, the M1 Garand, the M1917, the M1919 Browning machine gun, and the BAR.

However, when the US created NATO, it replaced all the .30-06 military weapons with those that used the 7.62 x 51mm NATO bullet. This is because NATO requires the militaries of all its member countries to use the same kinds of ammunition.

However, there are still many American hunting and sporting rifles made today that fire the .30-06 because it is still very popular with hunters and competitive shooters.

References

Ammunition

.30-06 Springfield


Creatures of Habit is an illustrated novel based on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series.

Story description

A new clubbing experience is emerging in Sunnydale. DJs are mixing up music, drugs, and blood. One of Spike's old friends is encouraging teens in Sunnydale at some underground raves. He hopes to transform the way vampires can experience the joys of blood-drinking. Buffy and the Scooby Gang try to stop this euphoric feeding, before it is too late for Dawn and others.

Continuity

Supposed to be in Buffy season 6, before Withdrawal. Takes place after the TV episode "Life Serial" and before the episode "Once More, With Feeling".  Buffy has recently come back to life, Giles has returned upon learning this, and Spike is the only one aware that Buffy had been in some kind of heaven, not hell, dimension prior to being brought back by the Scooby Gang.

Canonical issues

Buffy comics such as this one are not usually considered by fans as canonical. Some fans consider them stories from the imaginations of authors and artists, while other fans consider them as taking place in an alternative fictional reality. However unlike fan fiction, overviews summarising their story, written early in the writing process, were 'approved' by both Fox and Joss Whedon (or his office), and the books were therefore later published as officially Buffy merchandise.

Comics based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Creatures of Habit (Buffy comic)


Template may mean:
 Template, a stencil, pattern or overlay used in graphic arts (drawing, painting, etc.) and sewing to replicate letters, shapes or designs
 a pre-developed page layout in electronic or paper media used to make new pages with a similar design, pattern, or style
 in a press release, a predefined letter which retains its primary intent when individually customised with variable data or text

Computer science and information technology
 Template (file format), a standardized non-executable file type used by computer software as a pre-formatted example on which to base other files, especially documents
 Template (C++), a tool for generic programming especially in the C++ language
 Template metaprogramming, a programming technique used by a compiler to generate temporary source code
 Template method, an object-oriented design pattern
 Template processor, a system that combines a template with data to produce an output.
 Template (word processing),  a standard document containing layout and styles used to configure word processing software
 Style sheet (web development) or master page on which you can globally edit and format graphic elements and text common to each page of a document
 Web template or web template system, a master page used to produce web pages
 A main document from which mail merge documents are created

Manufacturing
 Mechanical template, used to cut and shape a product, such as:
 a die (manufacturing)
 a mold

Molecular genetics
 a strand of DNA which sets the genetic sequence of new strands
 a strand of RNA which translates genes into proteins

Other uses
 Template (racing), a device used in car racing to ensure that the body of the race vehicle adheres to specifications
 Template (novel), a novel by Matthew Hughes

Template (disambiguation)


Charax (, gen.: Χάρακος) is the largest Roman military settlement excavated in the Crimea. It was sited on a four-hectare area at the western ridge of Ai-Todor, close to the modern tourist attraction of Swallow's Nest.

The military camp was founded under Vespasian with the intention of protecting Chersonesus and other Bosporean trade emporiums from the Scythians. By the end of the 1st century AD, the Roman forces were evacuated from the peninsula. Several decades later the camp was restored by a vexillatio of the Legio I Italica; it hosted a detachment of the Legio XI Claudia at the end of the 2nd century. The camp was abandoned by the Romans in the mid-3rd century.

The ruins of the camp were discovered by Peter Keppen in 1837; he estimated the length of the defensive wall at 185 sazhens (395 metres). Keppen identified the site with Charax (from the Greek word for "fortification"), the only Roman camp recorded in Crimea. Although there is no evidence that Charax was situated near Ai-Todor, the name stuck. Intrigued by Keppen's publication, Count Shuvalov funded the first (and rather amateurish) excavations of the site in 1849.

In 1896, excavations were resumed under the supervision of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia, who had his summer dacha constructed in the immediate vicitinity of the ruins and the 1865 lighthouse. The excavations lasted for fifteen years and yielded a great number of Roman coins and bronze artifacts. Michael Rostovtzeff, who oversaw the excavations on behalf of the St. Petersburg University, classed Charax as an "entire Roman city", rather than just a fort, as was previously thought. A museum of archaeological finds was opened at Charax in 1907.

Further exploration of the site, undertaken by Vladimir Blavatsky in 1931-35, revealed remains of two public water basins, thermae, and an aqueduct. There were also a gymnasium and a sanctuary outside the walls. Blavatsky and his followers lent their support to Rostovtzeff's theory that the most ancient line of cyclopean walls at Charax was erected by the Tauri before the arrival of Romans, a theory which since lost much of its popularity. They also hypothesized that the castrum had been slighted by retreating Roman soldiers, in order to avoid its seizure and use by the enemy.

References

External links
 The Roman site at Charax
Lost Roman City
Roman Ukraine

1st-century establishments
Archaeological sites in Ukraine
Tourist attractions in Crimea
Forts in Ukraine
Ruins in Ukraine
Buildings and structures in Crimea
Roman legionary fortresses in Ukraine
Cultural heritage monuments of federal significance in Crimea

Charax, Crimea


Patrick Egan (13 August 1841 – 30 September 1919) was an Irish and American political leader.

Early life
Egan was born in Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland. His family later moved to Dublin, and at the age of fourteen, he entered the office of an extensive grain and milling firm, the North City Milling Company. Before he was twenty, he had been promoted to the post of chief bookkeeper and confidential man. Later, he was elected managing director of the firm, as a stock company, it being the most extensive one in Ireland. He was, at the same time, senior partner in the most extensive bakery establishment in the county. He had been an industrious learner before going into business, and took evening classes from various instructors, particularly a brilliant young Episcopal minister named Porte.

Irish Nationalism
Egan became involved with the Irish Republican Brotherhood soon after its establishment. In 1873, he was treasurer of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and with the IRB's supported, participated in the establishment of the Home Rule League with fellow IRB Supreme Council members John O'Connor Power, Joseph Biggar and John Barry. In 1877, he and others, including Power, Biggar and Barry, resigned from the Brotherhood over the condemnation by its leaders of the use of politics within a revolutionary organisation.

At its foundation in 1879, Egan was elected treasurer of the Irish Land League. He was a close associate of Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell. At the end of 1880, he, with twelve others, including Parnell, Dillon, Bigger, Sexton, Sullivan, Sheridan, and Matt Harris, were singled out by the government for prosecution for alleged conspiracy. After a costly trial of sixteen days, the jury convicted two and acquitted ten. The government did not dare arraign them again, but brought in a bill to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and to permit the arrest of any one obnoxious to the government, intending to proscribe all members of the League.

Following the arrest of Parnell, Egan signed the No Rent Manifesto of 18 October 1881, in his function as treasurer of the Land League. That led to the proscription of the League by the British government. Egan fled to Paris with the organisation's funds in order to prevent their confiscation by the authorities. He remained in Paris from February 1881 to the end of 1882.

Between 1880 and 1882, Egan was nominated a number of times for election to parliament, and was twice unanimously nominated, once for Queen's County and again for Meath. However, he declined because he would not take the oath of allegiance to the Crown required by the government.

In the United States
Learning that the government was conspiring to arrest him and colleagues, and make him the victim of a show trial, he quietly fled to the Netherlands, and later to the United States, settling in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he continued to work strenuously for the Irish Land League and Irish home rule. In 1881, he was elected president of the National Executive Committee of the Irish National League of America, at its convention in Boston.

Egan was instrumental in exposing the Piggott forgeries. He gave an interview to The New York Times in October 1888, predicting that the case against Parnell being prosecuted in The Times of London would be demolished:

Nothing new has developed yet to talk about. What has been said so far is simply a rehash of charges, without proof, that has been made for the last five years. But wait until the evidence for Parnell is produced. The whole Times''' case will be exploded and indisputable evidence produced which will show Parnell guiltless and the true character of the allegations against him. You may expect some sensational testimony ... I have no doubt of the complete vindication of Parnell and all his associates and this will greatly injure the government.

Egan subsequently became involved in American politics and was a minor power in the Republican Party, until he became a supporter of William Jennings Bryan and the Democratic Party in 1896.

As United States Ambassador to Chile from 1889 to 1893, he represented the US when relations became strained during the revolt against President José Manuel Balmaceda. He caused the Baltimore Crisis, and sought to provoke the United States into a war of colonisation against Chile. The general Chilean attitude was probably best expressed by Eduardo Phillips, chief of the Diplomatic Section of the Ministry of Foreign Relations who, in a letter to a newspaper, described Egan as a person "utterly lacking in all elements of culture and courtesy, and ever-ready to descend to the level of invective and calumny".

Egan supported John Redmond and the Irish Volunteers in his final years. In an interview with the New York Times, following the executions of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, he declared:

Ninety-eight per cent of all Irishmen were not in sympathy with the revolt, and England had nothing to gain by shooting people after it is over ... If anyone were shot it should have been John Devoy who hatched the whole nefarious scheme here in New York and was personally responsible for it.

Egan was the father of fourteen children, nine of whom survived childhood. His residence in Lincoln was located at 1447 Q street.

In literature"In gay Paree he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by any save me.  Making his day's stations, the dingy printing case, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair, rue de la Goutte d'Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the gone." From James Joyce's, Ulysses''.

References

External links

1841 births
1919 deaths
19th-century American diplomats
Ambassadors of the United States to Chile
Irish emigrants to the United States
Irish land reform activists
History of the foreign relations of Chile
Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood
Politicians from County Longford
Georgist politicians
People from Ballymahon

Patrick Egan (activist)


"Things Have Gone to Pieces" is a song written by Leon Payne and originally recorded by country music artist George Jones.  It was Jones' first single after signing with the Musicor label and spent a total of twenty-one weeks on the Billboard survey, peaking at #9 in 1965.  It was a solo that Jones released on his 1965 album with Gene Pitney, For the First Time! Two Great Stars - George Jones and Gene Pitney.

The song lists a litany of negative events that have befallen the narrator since his lover has left him.  Despite its comically melodramatic premise, Jones delivers one of his most bluesy, soulful vocals that give the words resonance.  In his 2016 Jones memoir The Grand Tour, biographer Rich Kienzle asserts, "George's peerless approach elevated this simple ballad to a masterpiece that became his first solo hit on Musicor in the spring of 1965.  Today it remains a high point of his six years with the label." Merle Haggard would record the song for the second Jones/Haggard duet album Kickin' Out the Footlights...Again in 2006.

References

1965 songs
Songs written by Leon Payne
Musicor Records singles
Song recordings produced by Pappy Daily
George Jones songs

Things Have Gone to Pieces