Scottish Premier League (SPL) is the top-tier football league in Scotland.

Competition format

League
The SPL is in a league format – each team gains points by playing another team in the league. Three points are awarded to each team for a win and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss. Once all the games have been played, if two or more teams are equal on points, then the difference between goals scored and goals against is considered. The season runs from August until May each year. Each club will play each other at least three times before the table splits in half for the last part of the competition. Each club will then play five more games against clubs in their half of the table. Each team plays a total of 38 games.

Split
Once every team has played each other three times the league splits into two halves for another five games. This means that the top six teams play each other once, and the bottom six teams play each other once. Many people do not like the SPL splitting. Many managers such as Jim Jeffries, the manager of Hearts at the time, have publicly asked for the split to be removed. The man in charge of the SPL, the Chief Executive, said that 11 of the 12 SPL teams would need to agree and, of eight teams asked, five said they wanted the split kept.

Teams cannot move between the two splits, meaning that even if a team in seventh place has more points than the team in sixth or higher they will not move above them in the league. This happens often, for example in the 2005–06 season, the seventh-placed club, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, gained more points than the fourth-placed club, Hibernian, fifth-place Kilmarnock, and sixth place Aberdeen, but they finished the league in seventh.

Winter break
In the 2000–01 season, the SPL decided to stop the "winter break", forcing teams to play through January. This means that many games are stopped because of the damage to the pitch and very bad weather. Former Celtic manager Martin O'Neill, former Dundee manager Jim Duffy, and former Rangers manager Walter Smith are among those who have asked to start the winter break again. Former Rangers manager Alex McLeish accused the SPL of taking Scottish football "back to the Dark Ages" after its decision to stop the winter break, meaning that they were going back to an old, outdated system.

European qualification
A total of four clubs can qualify for European competitions. The teams who finish first in the SPL qualify for the UEFA Champions League. The second and third-placed team, and the winner of the Scottish Cup, qualify for the UEFA Europa League.

Rangers and Celtic have recently played in the final of the UEFA Cup, with neither club winning in the final match. In 2003 Celtic played FC Porto in Seville, Spain but Porto won 3– 2. More recently, in 2008 Rangers played FC Zenit St. Petersburg in Manchester, England, but lost 2– 0. More than 200,000 Rangers fans went to Manchester to watch the game on several large televisions.

Promotion and relegation

Normally, the team who finishes last in the SPL is relegated to the Scottish First Division and the team who finishes first in the First Division is promoted to the SPL. However, there are some criteria that the team must meet in order to be promoted. In 2003, Falkirk finished first in the Scottish First Division but their stadium did not meet the agreed criteria. Instead, they asked if they could share a stadium with Airdrie United while their own stadium was expanded. This caused arguments as the chairmen of the SPL clubs voted against this idea. Because Falkirk's stadium was too small, they were not promoted into the SPL, and the team who finished last in the SPL (Motherwell) was not relegated.

This situation almost happened again in 2004. There were many votes and threats of legal action from Partick Thistle, the team who finished last in the SPL. The situation was solved and Inverness Caledonian Thistle were allowed promotion, as long as they shared a stadium with their rivals Aberdeen at Pittodrie, a stadium over 100 miles (160 km) away.

In 2005, the stadium size criteria were reduced. A team playing in the SPL must now have at least 6,000 seats (down from 10,000). Standing room is not allowed on SPL grounds for safety reasons. This then allowed Inverness Caledonian Thistle to return to their home stadium during the 2005–06 season.

Players
In the SPL, there are no restrictions on clubs signing players. The only rule on signing players is with general Scottish employment law. There are no salary caps or age restrictions. There are no restrictions on the size of the playing squad or restrictions on the number of players from other countries.

The only rule is the "Under-21" rule. This means that every club must name at least three players under the age of 21 in their match day squad. They do not need to play. There has been some criticism over this rule. Walter Smith, Gus MacPherson and Jim Jeffries all showed their disapproval.

Media coverage and sponsorship

Television coverage
Between the 1998–99 season and the 2001–02 season, the right to show SPL matches on television was held by Sky Sports, with highlights being shown by STV's Scotsport. Sky Sports withdrew from the SPL when their offer of £45 million, to continue showing live games on TV, was declined by the SPL. The SPL asked for more money. Discussions began in 2002 for a new pay-per-view satellite television channel, called "SPL TV". However Rangers and Celtic did not like the idea, and rejected it. Because of this, the remaining 10 SPL clubs announced their intention to resign from the league.

Even though a two-year television deal had been agreed with BBC Scotland in July 2002 (for less than the money previously offered by Sky Sports), the 10 non-Old Firm clubs confirmed their resignation from the SPL in August 2002, because they were unhappy with how the league voted which allowed the Old Firm clubs to stop any attempts to change SPL rules. The ten clubs withdrew their resignations in January 2003 after an agreement was reached to change the voting rules and to change the way the money from TV was given out to the SPL teams.

With BBC Scotland's television contract due to expire after the 2003–04 season, the SPL agreed a new television deal with Irish company Setanta Sports in February 2004 in a four-year deal worth £54 million. In June 2008, it was announced that a further four-year deal would start for the 2010–11 season, with the deal worth £125 million. However, Setanta went bankrupt in June 2009. In July, Sky Sports and ESPN agreed a £65 million five-year deal with the SPL.

Radio
The right to broadcast SPL games on radio is currently held by BBC Radio Scotland, who have held the rights since the SPL started in the 1998–99 season. BBC Radio Scotland also provide internet webcasts to all Scottish Premier League matches, having became the first broadcaster to introduce such a service in June 2000.

Sponsorship
As with many sports competitions, the name of the SPL has been sold to a sponsor, currently the Clydesdale Bank, a Scottish Bank. The Clydesdale Bank bought the name in the 2007–08 season for £8 million, taking over from another Scottish bank, the Bank Of Scotland. The SPL is now known as the "Clydesdale Bank Premier League".

Teams

Old Firm

Until the start of the 2012-13 season, the two Glasgow football clubs known as the Old Firm played in the SPL, Rangers and Celtic. The Old Firm was criticised by some due to the fact that they held such a strong position in Scottish football. The amount of money they made was very large compared to the other teams in Scotland. In 2001 their income was £90 million, almost double the income of the other ten teams, whose income was £48 million combined. Every year since the SPL started one of the Old Firm has won the league. Only once, in the 2005–06 season, did the Old Firm clubs not come first and second in the SPL.

Rangers entered administration in 2012 because they owed money that they could not afford to repay. Some of this money was owed to HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) as Rangers had not paid the tax they should have. Rangers asked HMRC if they would take only some of the money owed to them, called a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) however HMRC demanded the full amount and Rangers were closed. The people who owned Rangers have set up a new company ('newco') and bought Ibrox stadium, the training buildings and other things. This 'newco' was forced out of the SPL and moved to the Scottish Third Division from the 2012-13 season.

Although the two teams had a strong position over other Scottish teams, they still cannot compete with other leagues for players because other leagues, particularly the English Premiership, have a lot more money to spend. There were rumours about the Old Firm splitting from the SPL, and joining the English Premiership, but this was stopped by FIFA.

Current teams
These teams play in the Scottish Premier League in the 2012–13 season:

Former SPL members
These are previous members of the SPL in reverse order of them losing membership.

Inverness Caley Thistle and St Mirren are the only clubs to have been promoted into the SPL twice. Dunfermline Athletic are the only club to have been relegated from the SPL twice.

Records
Updated on 28 October 2009; and partly on 07/10/12
 Most goals in a season: Celtic, 105 goals, 2003–04
 Fewest goals in a season: St. Johnstone, 23 goals, 2010–11
 Most points in one season: Celtic, 103 points, 2001–02
 Fewest points in a season: Gretna, 13 points, 2007–08
 Fewest goals conceded in one season: Celtic, 18 goals, 2001–02
 Most goals conceded in a season: Aberdeen, 83 goals, 1999–00 & Gretna, 83 goals, 2007–08
 Biggest goal difference in a season: Celtic, 80, 2003–04
 Biggest home win: Celtic 9-0 Aberdeen (2010-11) Celtic 7-0 Aberdeen (1999–00 and 2002–03); Rangers 8-0 Hamilton Academical (2020-21);Hibernian 7-0 Livingston (2005–06); Celtic 7-0 St Mirren (2008–09);
 'Biggest away win: St. Johnstone 0-7 Rangers (1998–99); Dunfermline Athletic 1-8 Celtic (2005–06)
 Highest scoring match: Motherwell 6-6 Hibernian (2009–2010)
 Most away wins in a season: Celtic, 13, 2000–01
 Fewest away wins in a season: Dunfermline, 0, 1998–99
 Most away defeats in a season: Livingston, 16, 2005–06
 Fewest home defeats in a season: Celtic, 0, 2001–02, 2002–03,
 Top goalscorer in a single season: Henrik Larsson, 35 goals, 2000–01 Celtic
 Player with most hat-tricks: Henrik Larsson, 12, 1998–2004
 Top goalscorer in any one game: Kenny Miller, 5, 4 November 2000, Rangers v St. Mirren; Kris Boyd, 5, 25 September 2004, Kilmarnock v Dundee United; Kris Boyd, 5, 30 December 2009, Rangers v Dundee United,
 Oldest player: Andy Millen, for St. Mirren vs Hearts, 42 years 279 days, 15 March 2008
 Youngest player: Scott Robinson, for Hearts vs Inverness CT, 16 years, 45 days
 Youngest goalscorer: Fraser Fyvie (Aberdeen) 16 years & 10 months, v Hearts 27/01/10.
 Fastest goalscorer: Anthony Stokes, for Hibernian v Rangers, 12.4 seconds
 Most consecutive clean-sheets: Robert Douglas, Celtic, 7 games, 16 December 2000 - 21 February 2001
 Most SPL appearances: Steven Pressley, 306 (correct to the end of the 2008–09 season)
 Highest attendance: 60,440, Celtic v St. Mirren, 7 April 2001
 Lowest attendance: 431, Gretna v Inverness CT, 5 April 2008
 Highest average attendance: 59,369, Celtic, 2000–01
 Lowest average attendance: 2,283, Gretna, 2007–08
 Highest transfer fee paid Tore André Flo, from Chelsea to Rangers, £12m, 23 November 2000
 Highest transfer fee received:
Craig Gordon, from Heart of Midlothian to Sunderland, £9m, 8 August 2007
Alan Hutton, from Rangers to Tottenham Hotspur, £9m, 30 January 2008
 Highest transfer fee between two SPL clubs: Scott Brown, from Hibernian to Celtic, £4.4m, 1 June 2007

Related pages
 Scottish Football League
 Scottish Football League First Division
 Scottish Football League Second Division
 Scottish Football League Third Division
 List of Scottish football teams

References

Notes

Other websites

Scottish Football League
1998 establishments in Scotland
2013 disestablishments in the United Kingdom

Scottish Premier League


Bernard Anthony McNally (born 17 February 1963) is a former Northern Ireland international footballer who played in midfield.

During his club career he played for Shrewsbury Town (1980–1989), West Bromwich Albion (1989–1995), Hednesford Town (1996–1998), and Telford United. He earned five caps for the Northern Ireland national football team from 1986 to 1988, and was included in the 1986 FIFA World Cup team.

Playing career

McNally grew up in the Ditherington area of Shrewsbury, and was a pupil at the Harlescott Grange School. He was signed as a professional by his hometown club Shrewsbury Town, on the eve of the 1981/82 season, and immediately established himself as a first team member in arguably one of the best ever Shrewsbury Town sides. McNally was one of the key Shrewsbury players during their spell in the old Second Division, as Shrewsbury established themselves as Second Division regulars during the mid-80s, and made a total of 284 Football League appearances for Shrewsbury, though it was once said he should be sold and someone else just as good should be bought.

In July 1989, McNally was sold for £385,000 (following a tribunal) to West Bromwich Albion, following talks with both Stoke City and Sunderland. McNally had a successful stint at West Brom, in only his first year at the club he was voted Supporter's Player of the season in 1989/90. Arguably the highlight of his time at The Hawthorns being a member of the squad that won the 1993 Second Division playoffs.

He was unable to command a regular first team place later in his West Brom career, and so made a switch to another West Midlands team, Hednesford Town, in 1996. Hednesford were enjoying a successful spell in the Football Conference, and the experienced Football League veteran was a hit with the Hednesford fans. Arguably the highlight of McNally's Hednesford career was the team's 1996/97 FA Cup run, in which the team reached the fourth round, facing Middlesbrough F.C. at the Riverside Stadium. After taking an early lead in front of a 28,000 crowd, Hednesford were unlucky to lose 3–2, with McNally playing an important role.

After playing for Hednesford, he played briefly at Telford United before retiring as a player

Managerial career

In 2004, one of McNally's former clubs Telford United, went bust following the demise of chairman Andy Shaw's business empire. Despite being unable to save the club, Telford supporters founded a new club, AFC Telford United, playing in the Northern Premier League's First Division. McNally was appointed as the club's first manager, and quickly built up a squad. Despite some early indifferent form, McNally's side soon rose up the table, eventually finishing third in the league and qualifying for the play-offs. Telford were to beat Kendal Town 2–1 in the playoff final, in front of a league record crowd of 4.215 at the New Bucks Head.

Telford struggled in their opening season in the Northern Premier League. With the club second from bottom midway through the season, and following considerable pressure from fans, McNally was sacked, later to be replaced by Willenhall's Rob Smith. Despite the setback, McNally stated in a later radio interview for BBC Radio Shropshire that whilst disappointed, he had no hard feelings towards the club, and was proud to have managed them.

McNally is currently involved in football coaching, and is still remembered with great affection by fans at Shrewsbury Town. To that effect he was invited to be part of the Shrewsbury Town 'Legends' who paraded the pitch at Gay Meadow prior to the ground's final League fixture against Grimsby Town on 5 May 2007.

McNally was appointed by Indian club, Pune FC as head coach in February 2008, a post he held until May 2008.

In September 2009 he was appointed as Caretaker Manager of Southern League Premier Division side Hednesford Town. The club had struggled in the first half of their season under former first team manager Simon Lines, therefore McNally had to work quickly to get the club back on track. Success saw the club finish 4th earning a playoff position. Hednesford Town lost in the play-off semi-finals to Chippenham Town. He was manager until September 2010.

In June 2011 he was appointed as manager by Welsh Premier League club Newtown In 2011/12 Newtown went to the league cup final, but lost the match on penalties. The 2012/13 season was mixed for McNally and Newtown, as they kept their league status for another season. That season Newtown beat Bangor City at home and beat The New Saints at Park Hall for the first time in 11 years. In the season of 2013/14, McNally saw his Newtown team play some great football, but it was announced that he was to leave the club to take a coaching roll at former club Shrewsbury Town F.C. McNally's final match was a 2–0 win against Port Talbot Town, which left Newtown in 5th place in the early season table. Bernie was given a very good send off from the club as the fans and staff were all grateful of the work he had done with a very small budget.

On 6 September 2015, it was announced that McNally would take over the managerial position at Hednesford Town FC.

References

Bernard McNally, Post War English & Scottish Football League A – Z Player's Database

1963 births
Living people
Men's association football midfielders
Men's association footballers from Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland men's international footballers
1986 FIFA World Cup players
Shrewsbury Town F.C. players
West Bromwich Albion F.C. players
English Football League players
Association football managers from Northern Ireland
AFC Telford United managers
Newtown A.F.C. managers
Pune FC managers
Telford United F.C. players
I-League managers
Cymru Premier managers
Expatriate football managers in India
Expatriate sportspeople from Northern Ireland in India

Bernard McNally


The Death Cure is a 2011 young adult dystopian science fiction novel written by American writer James Dashner and the third published in the Maze Runner series (the fifth and last in narrative order). It was published on 11 October 2011 by Delacorte Press and was preceded in publication order by The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials and followed by the series prequels, The Kill Order and The Fever Code.

Plot
After being held in solitary confinement, Thomas is eventually released by Janson (nicknamed the "Rat Man"), who is the assistant director of WICKED (World In Catastrophe Killzone Experiment Department). Janson tells the Gladers (Group A) and Group B that most of their number are immune to the Flare, but some, whose names he reads, are not immune, including Newt. The Gladers are offered the chance to remove the mind-control chips in their heads and restore their memories but at the cost of Thomas's ability to communicate telepathically with Teresa and Aris. Only Thomas, Minho, and Newt choose not to undergo the surgery, as they do not trust WICKED, and Thomas does not want to know who he was when he helped to create the maze. All three of them escape from WICKED with the help of Brenda and Jorge before their chips are removed.

Brenda and Jorge are revealed to be working for WICKED. Thomas initially feels betrayed, but Brenda reveals she only joined so she wouldn't be executed and reasons Teresa may have only betrayed him because of that too. Soon afterward, the Gladers discover that everyone who had undergone the memory restoration abandoned them. Newt gives Thomas a note and tells him to open it "when the time is right." The five then travel to Denver to find Hans, a former WICKED researcher who can remove their mind-control chips. There, a man in a black suit directs them to an address, where Gally is waiting for them. Gally has joined the rebel group the Right Arm and explains that WICKED is capturing every Immune that it can find to prepare another cycle of the Trials. He also reveals that in the decaying cities, many live who suffer from the Flare but take the illicit drug Bliss, which slows down the brain's functioning and helps to relieve the pain that Cranks feel from the Flare.

The group finds Hans, who removes Minho's control chip. However, WICKED uses Thomas's chip to force him to resist the procedure. Brenda, Jorge, and Minho must hold him down so that Hans can perform the surgery. Afterward, the group visits a café, where a security guard apprehends Thomas to sell him to bounty hunters, who will take him to WICKED. Janson intervenes in a holographic, sends a police vehicle to rescue Thomas, and tells him that he must return to WICKED "to save Newt." Thomas and his friends find out in a note that Newt has been taken to the Cranks. Minho convinces them to go to the Denver Crank Palace to rescue Newt, where they bribe the guards to get in. When they meet Newt, he angrily orders them to leave, and the other Cranks chase them out. Thomas then remembers Newt's note, reads it, and discovers that he had begged Thomas to kill him. Thomas despairs over not having read the note earlier.

After returning to Denver, Thomas sees that Newt has succumbed to the Flare. Thomas answers Newt's pleas by shooting him in the head as an act of mercy. The group then discovers that Teresa and the other Immunes have been captured. After knocking out the guards, they discover that the guards were led by Vince, the leader of the Right Arm, who explains that they are infiltrating WICKED's headquarters. Inside, Thomas discovers how Janson tried to use his attempt "to save Newt" to compile data for the cure by examining the physical structure of Thomas's brain, which would kill him. Thomas is forced to begin the deadly brain surgery but manages to plant a device that disables WICKED's weapons, which allows the Right Arm to begin storming the facility.

Thomas wakes up to find a note from Chancellor Ava Paige, the head of WICKED, who explains there are already enough resources from the Trials to make a blueprint for the cure and so his brain is not needed after all. Paige reveals the location of the Immunes "sold" by the Right Arm to gain access to WICKED, and she gives directions to a "safe place" where Thomas should take all of them. Thomas and his friends re-enter the Maze and find the captured Immunes. However, they learn the Right Arm intends to destroy, rather than occupy, WICKED headquarters. Explosions rock the Maze, and falling debris kills some of the Immunes who are inside. Triggered by the commotion, the Grievers come out of storage, but Teresa shows Thomas how to shut them down. Thomas finds a back-door; which turns out to be a Flat Trans. They start herding the Immune kids through the Flat Trans but before Thomas and his friends can escape, Janson and the security guards corner them. They start a fight which ends when Thomas strangles Janson to death. However, Teresa also dies from falling debris to save Thomas's life. Fleeing the building, the Immunes escape through the Flat Trans that leads to a lush paradise. Minho becomes the technical leader, Brenda and Thomas start a relationship and the Immunes resolve to wait until everyone is dead so they can return to the old world.

The epilogue is narrated by Paige. She reveals that after the catastrophic solar flares, the Flare was deliberately created and released by the government as a form of population control. However, the government and WICKED found themselves unable to control the plague. Paige came to realize that they would never be able to find a cure for the Flare and that WICKED's efforts were futile. She realized that the only hope of preventing humanity's extinction was for Immunes to start their society, away from the rest of the world. She devised a plan with Brenda and Jorge to send them to a safe place where they could restore human civilization and so she stated, "WICKED is good."

Characters
 Thomas (Named after Thomas Edison): The main protagonist of the series. He is a teenage boy who was a Runner of Group A (the Gladers) before escaping the Maze with his fellow Gladers in The Maze Runner. He continued this by crossing the Scorch in The Scorch Trials, in which he was continuously manipulated by almost everyone, making it hard for him to trust other people again. Thomas escapes from having his memories restored in WICKED's headquarters and becomes entangled in the conflict between WICKED and the Right Arm – a rebel organization that opposes it. During the events in The Death Cure he loses several friends, including Newt, one of his best friends.
 Teresa (Named after Mother Teresa): A friend of Thomas. The only female Glader of Group A. In The Scorch Trials she betrays Thomas on WICKED's orders, causing him to distrust her. She volunteers for her memories to be restored and moves with the other Gladers to Denver. She eventually turns against WICKED. She dies after saving Thomas from being crushed by falling debris.
 Newt (Named after Isaac Newton): Newt goes through the most out of all the other characters. He took upon the role of the leader of Group A after their previous leader, Alby, died in The Maze Runner. He is Thomas' closest companion, alongside Minho. The book reveals that Newt is not immune to the Flare virus and is slowly succumbing to its influence. Eventually, he begs his best friend, Thomas, to save him from the virus inside him via euthanasia, which Thomas does.
 Minho: A Glader, and the former Keeper of the Runners of Group A. He was Thomas' fellow Runner back in the Glade and throughout the series becomes one of Thomas' best friends throughout their Trials, joining him to escape WICKED's attempt to restore their memories and save the Immunes from the Maze.
 Brenda: A Canadian girl, was part of a group of rebels in The Scorch Trials before being separated and having to navigate her way through the Scorch. She shares a mutual attraction with Thomas.
 Jorge: The leader of a group of rebels the Gladers met in The Scorch Trials. He has a close relationship with Brenda. Brenda described their relationship as Jorge being "like an uncle" to her. He was revealed to be working for WICKED but helps Thomas, Minho, and Newt escape from WICKED's headquarters and remove their chips.
 Aris (Named after Aristotle): The only male member of Group B. He met Thomas in The Scorch Trials. Aris, Thomas, and Teresa are close friends in The Scorch Trials.
 Janson (Rat Man): The Assistant Director of WICKED and the book's main antagonist. He is succumbing to the Flare virus, which explains his desperation for a cure. He arranges for the Group A and Group B survivors' memories to be restored, but wants to make them go through the Trials again. Eventually, Thomas kills him by strangling him, after Janson and other WICKED members try to recapture the surviving Immunes.
 Gally (Named after Galileo): A Glader of Group A who strictly followed the rules of the Glade and thus became Thomas' adversary in The Maze Runner. He indirectly caused Chuck's death when Chuck intercepted a knife Gally had thrown at Thomas. In this book, he reunites with Thomas and reveals he has been working with the Right Arm, an organization determined to stop WICKED. However, after discovering the Right Arm's true purpose, he left with Thomas and the Gladers to rescue the Immunes in the Maze.
 Vince: The leader of the Right Arm, an organization opposed to WICKED. He is Gally's boss. He recruits Thomas to infiltrate the WICKED headquarters and plant a device inside that disables the WICKED's weapons, and then leads the Right Arm's invasion of WICKED. He is strictly dedicated to his cause and brands Thomas and Gally traitors when they attempt to save hundreds of Immunes hidden in the Maze, which is about to be destroyed by the Right Arm.
 Lawrence: Vince's assistant, who captures Thomas, Minho, Brenda, and Jorge and delivers them to a safe house. After their demands to see "the boss" Lawrence took them to Vince. He later drops off Thomas near the WICKED headquarters for his plan to plant the explosive device.
 Hans: A former WICKED scientist whom Thomas, Minho, Brenda, and Jorge, meet in Denver to help remove the chips from Thomas and Minho.
 Ava Paige: The Chancellor of WICKED and the person responsible for managing and organizing the search for a cure of the Flare, including sending teenagers into the Maze to study the minds of Immunes. However, she disagreed with the consequence that the teenagers were being killed. Her character serves as the omniscient voice in the books' Epilogues. She was never seen in the series, but every Epilogue of the three books in the main series, plus The Fever Code, includes an email she writes to her associates. She states a cure for the Flare virus will never be found, that the Immunes are humanity's last hope to restore the dying world, and that WICKED's actions of sending them for Trials are threatening that hope. She serves as an ex-machina in the narrative, saving Thomas from a fatal brain experiment at the last minute after he was sedated; She instigates and secretly orchestrates his rescue of hundreds of Immunes from the attack on the Maze. She also promises and delivers a paradisaical safe haven for the Immunes.

Reception
Critical reception for The Death Cure was mixed. Common Sense Media gave the book three out of five stars, commenting that the book's oppressiveness kept it from being more memorable than they wanted it to be. The Deseret News also commented on the book's bleak nature, but praised it as being "both conclusive and satisfying". The Horn Book Guide and Kirkus Reviews both gave positive reviews, with the Horn Book Guide opining that the book's conclusion was "thought-provoking".

Film adaptation

Wes Ball, who directed the previous films in the series, confirmed that, if he returned to direct, the final novel would not be split into two films. In March 2015, T.S. Nowlin was confirmed to write the script. On 9 July 2015 Defy Media revealed that filming was set to begin in February 2016. On 16 September 2015 Variety confirmed that Ball would return to direct the third film. The film began principal photography on 14 March 2016 in Cache Creek, British Columbia. On 19 March 2016, Maze Runner star Dylan O'Brien was critically injured on-set when he was struck by a car during a stunt sequence. On 20 March 2016, director Wes Ball announced production was shut down to allow O'Brien time to recuperate from his injuries.  On 22 April 2017, the studio again delayed the release in order to allow more time for post-production.  Maze Runner: The Death Cure was released on January 26, 2018.

References

External links

2011 American novels
Books by James Dashner
The Maze Runner
Dystopian novels
American young adult novels
Delacorte Press books

The Death Cure


Servant of the Bones (1996) is a historical horror novel by Anne Rice.

Plot introduction
Servant of the Bones is an account of the creation and subsequent existence of a genie, Azriel. It is a story told as a fireside chat and includes historical accounts of Azriel's life as a displaced Jewish merchant's son in Babylon at the time of its conquest by Cyrus the Persian. There are also glimpses of life in ancient Miletus, in Strasbourg during a pogrom, and New York City of the 1990s.

Explanation of the novel's title
Throughout the novel, Azriel is struggling to understand whether he is a ghost, a demon, or an angel. He is trying to understand why God has denied him the Stairway to Heaven by allowing him to be made into an immortal spirit who is bound to the gold-encased bones of his mortal body. As a genie, he must obey the Master of those bones (whoever has them at the moment) and become the Master's Servant, whether for good or evil. Thus the title, Servant of the Bones.

Plot summary

Azriel is telling the story of his transformation into and subsequent existence as an immortal genii who is forced to obey the Master who calls him. Over centuries, Azriel becomes less obedient to the Masters and a warning is placed on the casket of his bones that he is not to be summoned lest his evil be loosed upon the undeserving world.

After many centuries of rest, Azriel finds himself awake and in New York City, a dazed witness to the murder of a young woman, Esther Belkin. He becomes inexplicably obsessed with the desire to avenge her death and to find out who called him into the physical world in time to see Esther die but not in time to save her. This quest leads him to the girl's stepfather, Gregory Belkin, who would pay any price to fulfill his messianic dream via his immense worldwide religious organization, the Temple of the Mind of God.

As his quest approaches its climax, he risks his supernatural powers to forestall an attempt to destroy the world thus redeeming what was denied him for so long: his own eternal human soul.

Characters
Azriel: formerly a mortal young man of Babylon in 539 BC, now a spirit bound to obey whoever possesses his gold-encased mortal bones.
Jonathan Ben Isaac: the history professor whom Azriel seeks to hear and write his tale.

In Babylon
Aseneth: the witch who betrays Azriel and kills him in order to turn him into the Servant of the Bones. She dies before she is able to complete the ritual.
Cyrus the Great or Cyrus the Persian: the man who conquered Babylon. Made a deal with Azriel that if Azriel became the new Marduk statue, all his people could return to the Holy Land and rebuild their temple.
Marduk: a spirit who is worshiped as a Babylonian god. He befriends the mortal Azriel, and becomes his 'personal god' throughout his mortal existence. Sadly, Azriel's stunning resemblance to the statue of Marduk causes him to be chosen for the ceremony to create a new statue every one hundred years, thus inadvertently turning him into the Servant of the Bones.
 Nabonidus: the diseased king of Babylon

In Miletus
Zurvan: the magus who becomes Azriel's first master and teacher. Azriel does not remember his time with Zurvan until 2000 years has passed and he awakes in New York, Zurvan's teachings of kindness and virtues stay with him throughout the centuries.

In France
Samuel: a wealthy Jewish merchant. He made a deal with some Gentiles that he would give Azriel's bones to them to do what he pleased if they would bring his daughters to safety. Whether Azriel truly loved him in the end or not is a matter of debate, because the scene begins with Azriel begging Samuel to fly him away from the oncoming pogrom, but ends on a sad note with Azriel being forced back into the bones cursing his master for being a martyr. This begins Azriel's onslaught of all his subsequent masters.

In New York City
Avram the Rebbe: Gregory's estranged Grandfather; a Jewish holy man and keeper of the Bones (although he never called upon Azriel).
Esther Belkin: the girl who was assassinated on Gregory—her stepfather's—orders. Azriel is there to witness this, and for reasons he can't explain wants to get revenge for the girl he knew for only a few seconds.
Gregory Belkin: founder and leader of the Temple of the Mind of God. Also owns a considerable commercial and merchanting empire. Uses Esther as a ploy to begin a worldwide genocide to bring world peace, with his Temple as the new world government. Although he likens himself to be the Messiah, Azriel groups him with Hitler and Stalin, saying he is an insane murderer. His idol is Alexander the Great.
Rachel Belkin: Gregory's wife; dying of a terminal illness, she claims Gregory is poisoning her and begs Azriel to fly with her to Miami so she may die in her own home. Last few minutes of her life are spent having intercourse with Azriel.
Billy Joel Eval: Eldest of the three Eval brothers who are the paid assassins of Esther.
Nathan: Gregory's estranged identical twin is a diamond merchant in New York City; he met Esther by chance and told her of his familial connection to her stepfather, Gregory.

Allusions/references to actual history
As a work of historical fiction, this novel has several characters who were real or from ancient mythologies: Alexander the Great, Cyrus, Marduk, Nabonidus, Pharaoh.

Comic book adaptation
From 2011 to 2012, Servant of the Bones was adapted as a six-issue comic book miniseries by IDW Publishing, entitled Anne Rice's Servant of the Bones. The novel was adapted by writer Mariah McCourt.

References

External links
The official Anne Rice website

1996 American novels
American historical novels
American horror novels
Novels by Anne Rice
Miletus
Alfred A. Knopf books

Servant of the Bones


An abugida is a writing system that is neither a syllabic nor alphabetic script, but somewhere in between. It has sequences of consonants and vowels that are written together as a unit, each of which is based on the consonant letter. Vowels must be written down as well, but they are secondary and do not act the same way as consonants.

Syllables are built up of consonants, each of which has an inherent vowel. That means a vowel must be pronounced in a syllable even if it is not written down. For example, in Thai, the syllable written as the consonant-vowel pair หา is pronounced haa, but the syllable just written as a consonant ห is pronounced hɔ.

Diacritic symbols may be used to change or mute the inherent vowel, and separate vowel letters may be used when vowels occur at the beginning of a syllable or on their own.

In some abugidas, certain vowels can be written to the right, to the left, on top, or below the consonant that is spoken before it, even if the reading order all of the consonants is left-to-right or right-to-left. An example uses the Thai consonant ก to show where the following vowels must be written.

This is different from a truly alphabetic script in which the vowels and consonants have the same status, and an abjad, whose vowels can be left out. Ethiopic, most scripts of the Indian subcontinent, mainland Southeast Asia, some scripts of Maritime Southeast Asia, and Canadian syllabics are abugidas.

The oldest known abugida is the Brahmi script, a writing system that was invented in modern-day India. Most abugidas that exist today, including Devanagari, Khmer, and Thai, were based on the Brahmi script. Abugidas based on Brahmi spread along with the Indian religions throughout the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, especially Buddhism and Hinduism.

Some forms of shorthand also employ diacritics to indicate vowels.

The name 'abugida' is derived from the first four letters of the Ge'ez (Ethiopic) alphasyllabary writing system.

Some abugidas allow for consonant strings to be written down in a single consonant space. For example, in Khmer script, unlike in Thai script, consonants can be written on top of each other, with most consonants having normal and subscript forms. For example, the Khmer word phnom ភ្នំ as in Phnom Penh is written in one consonant space with three consonants, with ភ being ph, ្ន being the subscript form of ន n, and ំbeing the final -m to be pronounced after the vowel. Even though the word is written as phnm, the vowel o is the inherent vowel, thus it should be pronounced phnom. An example of a word with stacked consonants and a vowel is sri ស្រី, in which ស is s, ្រ is the subscript form of រ r, and ី being the vowel i.

Writing systems

Abugida


Storm spotting is a form of weather spotting in which observers watch for the approach of severe weather, monitor its development and progression, and actively relay their findings to local authorities.

History
Storm spotting developed in the United States during the early 1940s. A joint project between the military and the weather bureau saw the deployment of trained military and aviation lightning spotters in areas where ammunitions for the war were manufactured. During 1942, a serious tornado struck a key operations center in Oklahoma and another tornado on May 15, 1943 destroyed parts of the Fort Riley military base located in Kansas. After these two events and a string of other tornado outbreaks, spotter networks became commonplace, and it is estimated that there were over 200 networks by 1945. Their mandate had also changed to include reporting all types of active or severe weather; this included giving snow depth and other reports during the winter as well as fire reports in the summer, along with the more typical severe weather reports associated with thunderstorms. However, spotting was still mainly carried out by trained individuals in either the military, aviation, or law enforcement fields of service. It was not until 1947 that volunteer spotting, as it exists today, was born.

After a series of vicious tornado outbreaks hit the state of Texas in 1947, the state placed special emphasis on volunteer spotting, and the local weather offices began to offer basic training classes to the general public. Spotting required the delivery of timely information so that warnings could be issued as quickly as possible, thus civilian landline phone calls and amateur radio operators provided the most efficient and fastest means of communication. While phone lines were reliable to a degree, a common problem was the loss of service when an approaching storm damaged phone lines in its path. This eventually led to amateur radio becoming the predominant means of communication and resulted in the installation of special amateur radio work zones within local weather offices. Volunteer spotters would come into the local office and run a radio net from within, directly relaying information to meteorologists.

The 1950s saw the deployment of the first dedicated weather radars in the United States, and by this time, civilian spotter networks were commonplace. The new reflectivity-only radars provided meteorologists with basic information and helped identify potentially severe storms, but due to the nature of weather radar, most precipitation was detected at a height of 1 kilometer or more above the ground. Ultimately, the radar cannot see what exactly occurs at the surface of the earth, and storm spotters now correlated ground truthing with radar signatures. This early conventional radar showed intensity of echoes, inferring precipitation intensity and types, and the horizontal and vertical distributions provided information about storm structures and processes. The hook echo was a major method used as an indicator for potential for tornadic activity during the first decades of weather radar. During the 1990s in the US, Doppler weather radar was deployed, providing velocity data on echoes flowing toward and away from the radar location, which enabled inferences about storm rotation, such as mesocyclones, and other dynamics, as well as data on downbursts (and wind shear aloft). The 2010s brought polarization radar in the US, which enabled confirmation of the presence of stronger tornadoes by discerning nonmeteorological echoes colocated with rotation in velocity data, which indicates the presence of lofted debris. However, radar is still limited by factors such as not capturing near surface environment and limitations on spatial and temporal resolution. Therefore, ground truth information remains important.

New spotter technologies and training techniques have been developing since the 1960s. Prior to the 1960s, the vast majority of amateur radio communication relied on AM-modulated signals and the use of simplex. It was not uncommon for spotters to hear the distant net control station and not hear other mobile or base stations which were much closer. After 1960, amateurs adopted the use of FM repeaters which operated in the VHF spectrum. The use of FM repeaters was a huge advancement for storm spotters; spotters could now hear each other regularly. The low noise floor and greatly improved audio quality meant much better signal reception for all stations. By the 1970s, nearly all spotter radio activity consisted of half-duplex FM repeater use. The next major technology to aid spotters was the development of the cell phone in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was then possible for non-amateur radio operators to directly report severe weather.

Storm spotting became more popular with the public during the late 1980s and early 1990s. During this period, a number of NSSL (National Severe Storms Laboratory) projects were carried out, some of which were documented and broadcast on television in a number of specials. Spotters and their actions were believed to have saved lives while also aiding university research groups, which dropped sensors such as TOTO in the path of tornadoes and at times fired rocketsondes directly at or very close to tornadoes. At about the same time, early storm chasers were popularized and associated with spotters. It is believed this association is what has led many in the present era to associate storm chasers and storm spotters as carrying out the same actions or having the same goals.

Present
Technological advances such as the Internet, weather radio, pagers, and cell phones have made spotter activation quick and efficient; however, the basic goal of spotting has remained relatively unchanged to this day. In making these reports, spotters use a specialized set of jargon and slang to describe their observations.

The primary group responsible for storm spotting in the U.S. is known as Skywarn. Many individuals hold Skywarn certification and/or amateur radio licenses. Other spotters are part of organized and highly trained local spotter groups, reporting their observations to the local emergency management office or National Weather Service office responsible for that area. A Skywarn group is either directly or indirectly affiliated or associated with the local weather office, and in many cases other agencies responsible for the well-being of individuals. Today, amateur radio still plays a key role, as most spotters opt to attain their radio licenses; however, cell phones are an ever increasingly popular means to directly relay information, along with other on-line spotter reporting protocols such as The Spotter Network.

Other spotters groups have formed in various countries. Canwarn is the Canadian spotter program run by Environment Canada and similarly the Australian Bureau of Meteorology runs the ASP (Australian Storm Spotters) program in Australia. In the United Kingdom, the TORRO has operated a network of observers since the 1970s. Since the 2000s, about a dozen European countries (including the UK) operate autonomous storm spotting organizations under the auspices of Skywarn Europe.

Controversy
While there is no question that storm spotting has saved many lives and aided weather agencies greatly, there is concern that storm spotting may actually put individuals in danger. It is a common practice for many spotters to leave their vehicles or places of shelter to better observe, but this also places spotters in a situation where they can be harmed or killed by lightning. Most spotting groups do not recommend that individuals leave their vehicles or places of safety.

Although incidents of near misses and tornado, hail, wind, and lightning impacts occurred, there were no known spotter fatalities caused by weather until May 4, 2007 when a wedge tornado near Greensburg, Kansas killed sheriff's deputy Robert "Tim" Buckman. On May 31, 2013, engineer Tim Samaras, his photographer son Paul, and meteorologist Carl Young, of the TWISTEX project, became the first known storm chaser or meteorologist deaths when a violent tornado struck near El Reno, Oklahoma. Other chasers were also struck and injured and at least one member of the public following the storm also died.

There have also been recent complaints that mobile spotters are a danger to others on the road. One potential danger posed by mobile spotters is distracted driving. Spotters can be distracted while monitoring radar while driving. Another cause for concern is that mobile spotters commonly park their vehicles on the shoulder for a short time while they observe, causing congestion along the roadway. In some areas, parking on the shoulder is only allowed in emergency situations, and it is also believed that spotters pose a distraction to others driving. Most spotter groups do support parking on the shoulder as long as it can be safely done and there is no other alternative. Many spotters have found ways to stay off the roadway altogether by parking in parking lots, driveways (when allowed), or field roads.

The use of amber lights to alert drivers that a spotter vehicle is parked is controversial. Light bars and strobe lights have been becoming increasingly popular with storm spotters and storm chasers since, proponents claim, both groups often travel in less than ideal weather conditions where visibility may be limited. However, in recent years, some spotters and chasers have been seen using red, blue, white, and/or green lighting devices, apparently imitating emergency vehicles. Such actions are illegal in most areas and are highly condemned by both the spotter and storm chaser communities. Said Chuck Doswell, "flashing light bars added to your chase vehicle (similar to those used by law enforcement) may be illegal in some places and their use to imply some sort of official status to your chasing is probably going to get you in trouble". Chris Novy, a trainer of storm spotters throughout the US and a veteran storm chaser, also notes that lights distract and can even unconsciously attract other drivers and that lights may encourage people to drive aggressively or to park in situations they would otherwise avoid and thus increase danger to themselves and to other drivers.

Spotters versus chasers
A storm spotter is volunteer or a paid county or municipal employee who is spotting as a community service. Most spotters work as part of an organized network and are in communication with their community or organization, which is in turn in communication with the National Weather Service. Some spotters are "mobile" spotters in vehicles, but most spot from fixed, strategic locations around the community or county. The purpose of spotting is to alert community officials and the NWS and assist them in warning the public. Schools, hospitals, and other facilities are encouraged to have spotters to alert people in their care of impending severe weather.

Storm chasing involves following a developing thunderstorm to view or photograph severe weather phenomena. Chasing may be done for educational purposes or scientific research but is mostly done for personal fulfillment.

See also
 Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP)
 Convective storm detection
 Local storm report

References

External links
 Canwarn
 U.S. Skywarn homepage
 Australian Storm Spotters' Guide (Australian BOM)
 Storm Spotting and Public Awareness Since the First Tornado Forecasts of 1948 (Doswell, et al.)

Storm chasing
Emergency communication
Disaster preparedness in the United States
National Weather Service
Meteorological data and networks

Storm spotting


Jackson Gregory Marx, known as Jack Marx, is an Australian journalist and author. He was born in Maitland, New South Wales.

Career
Marx moved to Sydney in his late teens to pursue a career in music with the rock band I Spartacus (previously known as 'A Dog for Jonathon'), from Newcastle. By his own account, the band was less than successful, Marx becoming "the type of shocking wanker that today I can't stomach ... a guy who thought his destiny was to thrill the world on the rock and roll stage". When I Spartacus disbanded in 1990 – the dissolution due, in part, to Marx's own "spiral into drug and alcohol dependence" – Marx began writing reviews and articles for the free Sydney music press and was soon employed by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian edition of Rolling Stone as a freelance music correspondent. He became notable for reviewing albums while openly admitting he had not listened to them, choosing instead to search the packaging and liner notes for "the tell-tale signs that you're in for an hour of crap".

In 1994, Marx worked as a reporter for the Melbourne tabloid newspaper The Truth, before being employed by Australian Consolidated Press as a senior writer for men's titles such as The Picture and Ralph. In 1999, he became editor of Australian Style, causing controversy when he assigned accused anti-Semite author Helen Darville to interview British Holocaust denier David Irving.

In 2004, Marx won Best Feature Article at the Australian Business and Specialist Publication Awards for his investigation into the history of Henry Leighton Jones, the Australian doctor purported to have engaged in the transplantation of monkey glands into humans.

Marx was author of the Fairfax news blog The Daily Truth until he was dismissed on 20 August 2007, following his publication of a satirical piece on the Australian Labor Party leader, and former prime minister, Kevin Rudd's visit to a New York strip club.

Marx has written three non-fiction books to date: The Damage Done - Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison (1997), which he co-authored with Warren Fellows; the controversial Sorry- the Wretched Tale of Little Stevie Wright (1999); and Australian Tragic (2009).

In 2012, Marx was nominated by Rolling Stone magazine as "Male of the Year", for his contribution to Australian literary culture.

Stevie Wright biography
It was during his time as a music journalist that Marx went in search of his childhood rock and roll idol, Stevie Wright, of the Australian 1960s band, The Easybeats. He found Wright allegedly living as a drug-addicted recluse in a small coastal town in southern New South Wales and Wright's life story, along with Marx's near-disastrous attempts to extract it from him, was documented in Sorry: The Wretched Tale of Little Stevie Wright (1999). The book was critically applauded by many reviewers - Australian music historian Clinton Walker calling it "gonzo journalism at its best", while The Bulletin later referred to Sorry as "one of the most harrowing rock books ever written".

Nevertheless, Sorry earned the disdain of its subject, Wright's many fans and some critics, including Internet reviewer Ken Grady (Luna Cafe, 1999), who described Marx as "a self serving hypocrite" and concluded his review by observing: "The only thing that Marx has achieved is to depict himself as a very unlikeable, morally bankrupt leech."

Russell Crowe's "stooge"
In 2005, Marx was approached by Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe, who sought to employ Marx as a "guerilla publicist". Their six-month relationship ended badly and, in June 2006, Marx published an online account of the experience entitled "I Was Russell Crowe's Stooge". Though the ethically ambiguous piece instantly outraged many fans and media commentators, it made Australian media history by becoming the first story to leap from the digital arena to print, serialised over two days in both Fairfax broadsheets, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and subsequently won Marx Australia's premier prize for journalism, the Walkley Award, for newspaper feature writing.

References

External links

The Daily Truth blog by Jack Marx

Walkley Award winners
1965 births
Living people
People from Maitland, New South Wales
Australian freelance journalists

Jack Marx


The German Commission for Electrotechnical, Electronic & Information Technologies of DIN and VDE (), abbreviated DKE, is the German organisation responsible for the development and adoption of standards and safety specifications in the areas of electrical engineering, electronics and information technologies.

DKE constitutes a joint organisation of DIN (the organisation for general standards in Germany) and VDE (a technical-scientific association), the juridical responsibility for running the DKE being in the hands of the VDE.

The DKE is the German member within European standardisation organisations such as CENELEC and ETSI, and international organisations such as IEC.

A standard may be first proposed by individual members of the VDE. Then when it has achieved national status the standard then becomes sanctioned by DKE. If further the standard is adopted at an international level, it can become an IEC standard.

References

External links
DKE website
VDE website

Electrical safety standards organizations
Standards organisations in Germany

German Commission for Electrotechnical, Electronic, and Information Technologies of DIN and VDE


The Sharps-Borchardt Model 1878 is a single-shot hammerless falling-block action rifle designed by Hugo Borchardt and made by the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company. It closely resembles older Sharps Rifles but has a firing mechanism that uses a hammerless striker rather than a hammer and firing pin like the old Sharps Rifle. This hammerless dropping-block breech-loader was based on a patent granted to Hugo Borchardt in 1877.  It was the last of the Sharps single-shot rifles, and the Borchardt did not sell very well. According to company records 8,700 rifles were made in all models from 1878 until the Sharps Rifle Co. closed down in 1881. Although it was designed for the huge black powder "buffalo" cartridges of the day, it came too late, at the very end of the great bison slaughter.

Several variants were produced: Carbine, Military, Short Range, Mid Range, Long Range, Hunter, Business, Sporting, and Express. The Military Sharps-Borchardt was made only in .45-70 with 32" round barrels and was purchased by the militias of the states of Michigan, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. The other models were manufactured in a variety of calibers, barrel types, sights, stocks, engraving, etc. and were designed for varying purposes. The Hunters variation was the most affordable.

Notwithstanding its lack of commercial success the Sharps-Borchardt is admired for its strength and accuracy: reputed to be one of the strongest if not the strongest rifle action ever built before the latter 20th century. The gun was revolutionary at its time for its use of coil springs as opposed to flat springs.  These guns were popular among long-range shooters and Creedmore Match competitors. Many were rechambered for use as small bore varmint rifles. Surviving guns are highly prized by collectors, especially unmodified examples chambered for heavy .45 and .50-caliber Sharps big-game cartridges.

A company known as Borchardt Rifle Corporation  has started fabrication of reproduction M1878 Borchardt rifles.

See also
Farquharson rifle
Ruger No. 1

Footnotes

External links
 Remodeling an 1878 Sharps Military Rifle into a Midrange Target

Early rifles
Falling-block rifles
Guns of the American West
Hunting rifles
Rifles of Germany
Rifles of the United States

Sharps-Borchardt Model 1878


For the article about a mathematical concept, see Ring (mathematics)

A ring is a piece of jewelry that is usually worn on the finger.

It is usually made of metal such as gold, silver, platinum, but can be made of other things, for example, bone or glass. Many rings have gemstones on them, for beauty and decoration on your finger. It is a fashion accessory and sometimes a sign of importance (status). The Lord Chancellors of England were given a ring when taking office, and returned it when leaving the position. The ring identified them as the second most important person in the kingdom.
In most religions, senior clergy have rings of their office. It is standard practice for members of a church to kneel and kiss the ring as a sign of faith and obedience.

Engagement and wedding rings
Rings have been used for engagements and weddings since prehistoric times.The engagement ring is meant to be a sign of luck and happiness. Both men and women used to wear an engagement ring to show that they were going to be married, but more recently only women have worn them. A diamond ring is seen as being especially lucky, as the sparkle of the diamond is said to come from the fires of love. A pearl in a ring is unlucky, as the pearl is a sign of tears. Because the ring is round and does not have an end, it is seen as a symbol of love which never ends. These are, of course, superstitions. However, a wedding ring is a public symbol of a legal relationship, and in many societies rings have that kind of function.

References

Gallery

Basic English 850 words
Jewelry

Ring


Namaste or Namaskar is a neutral greeting used a lot in many East Asian countries. It is used when Hello and Hi are used in English, though it has a very different meaning.

Namaste is kind of like a praise to the person receiving the namaste.

The word's meaning is "I bow to the divine in you." Namaste is a traditional Indian greeting of respect and thank you, with spiritual and symbolic meaning, This is more traditional to do it to your elders.

Hinduism

Namaste


Darshan Singh Canadian (born Darshan A. Sangha in 1917, in Langeri, Punjab, India – 25 September 1986) was a Sikh trade union activist and communist organizer in Canada and India.

Canada
Darshan Singh Canadian immigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1937. Upon his arrival, his uncle attempted to get him a job at Dominion Sawmills resulting in the uncle being fired and Sangha being hired at five cents less pay an hour. He became active in the Labor-Progressive Party (as the Communist Party of Canada was known). He was one of the founders of the  International Woodworkers of America and served as one of the union's organizers as well as its general secretary from 1942 to 1946. He led striking woodworkers on a march on the provincial capital of Victoria in 1946. He fought for the rights of B.C.'s East Indian woodworkers.

Return to India
Darshan Singh Canadian returned to India upon its independence in 1947 and adopted "Canadian" as his surname.

He became active in the Communist Party of India becoming party secretary in Punjab. Canadian was a powerful speaker, and addressed several meetings and mass rallies. He also served as the secretary of Punjab Kisan Sabha. He opposed the Khalistani separatists among the NRI Sikhs, and actively campaigned against them through his articles and speeches. He represented Garhshanker, Hoshiarpur district as member of Punjab State Legislature for three terms until his assassination in 1986, in retaliation for his comments against Khalistani militants.

Darshan Singh married Harbans, the daughter of Baba Lal Singh, a Ghadar veteran from Jandiala in Jalandhar district. His two daughters settled in Britain and Canada. In his last years, he suffered from spondylitis and other health problems, and once went to USSR for treatment.

Assassination
On the afternoon of 25 September, Darshan Singh was killed by Sikh militants. Within two hours of his death, about a thousand demonstrators gathered at the police station at Mahilapur, and blocked the way to Hoshiarpur. They protested against police inactivity, and even accused the police of complicity in the crime.

On 26 September, a huge march was organized from his native village Langeri to Mahilapur. The people shouted slogans as "Darshan Singh Canadian Amar Rahe" (Long Live Darshan Singh Canadian), "Canadian aman ekta da shahid" (Canadian was a martyr to peace and unity), "Na Hindu Raj na Khalistan, jug jug jive Hindustan" (Neither Hindu Raj nor Khalistan, long live India), "Hindu Sikh noon jo ladaye, oh desh da vairi hai" (he who makes Hindus and Sikhs fight, is an enemy of the nation), "atvad wakhwad murdabad" (down with extremism and secessionism), "Lokan da ekta zindabad" (Long live public unity), "Hindu Sikh ekta zindabad" (Long live Hindu-Sikh unity), and "CPI zindabad" (Long live CPI). From Mahilapur, the procession came back to Langeri. A 20,000-strong rally was held in the village school ground, where Canadian's body lay. Thousands of Sikh youth participated in the rally, denouncing the extremist killers.

His body was cremated after several leaders, including the SGPC President, paid their tributes to him.

See also
 Achhar Singh Chhina
 Baldev Singh Mann
 Deepak Dhawan
 Gursharan Singh (theatre director)
 Jaimal Singh Padda
 Nidhan Singh Gudhan
 Pash
 Teja Singh Swatantar
 Punjab insurgency

References

External links
 The History of Metropolitan Vancouver's HALL OF FAME
 Hansard, Vol. 2, No. 2, page 672 (Friday 10 April 1992)
 Works of Darshan Singh Canadian
 Darshan Singh Canadian: Ten Years in Canada

1917 births
1986 deaths
1986 murders in India
Punjabi people
Assassinated Indian politicians
Members of the Communist Party of Canada
Trade unionists from British Columbia
Communist Party of India politicians from Punjab, India
Indian Sikhs
Canadian Sikhs
People murdered in India
Canadian people murdered abroad
Indian emigrants to Canada
Victims of Sikh terrorism
International Woodworkers of America people
1980s assassinated politicians
20th-century assassinated Indian politicians

Darshan Singh Canadian


A  transposable element  is often called a transposon. It is a sequence of DNA that can move to new positions in the genome of a single cell. The press sometimes call them jumping genes, but it is not correct to call them 'genes'.

Transposons were first found by Barbara McClintock while working on maize in the 1930s to 1950s. She discovered transposition in maize, but it took years before her work was understood. She received a Nobel Prize for her work in 1983.

Transposition can create significant mutations and alter the cell's genome size.

Types

Transposons are only one of several types of mobile genetic elements.
Transposons themselves are of two types according to their mechanism, which can be either "copy and paste" (class I) or "cut and paste" (class II).

Class I (Retrotransposons, aka retoposons):
They copy themselves in two stages, first from DNA to RNA by transcription, then from RNA back to DNA by reverse transcription. The DNA copy is then inserted into the genome in a new position. Retrotransposons behave very similarly to retroviruses, such as HIV.

Class II (DNA transposons):
By contrast, the cut-and-paste transposition mechanisms of class II transposons do not involve an RNA intermediate.

As causes of disease
Transposons are mutagens. They can damage the genome of their host cell in different ways:
 A transposon or a retroposon that inserts itself into a functional gene will most likely disable that gene.
 After a transposon leaves a gene, the resulting gap will probably not be repaired correctly.
 Multiple copies of the same sequence, such as Alu sequences can hinder precise chromosomal pairing during mitosis and meiosis, resulting in unequal crossovers, one of the main reasons for chromosome duplication.

Use
Transposons can carry accessory genes, such as antibiotic resistance genes. They can be used to put a gene into the DNA of an organism. This has been done with fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) by putting the transposon into the embryo.

Examples
 The first transposons were discovered in maize (Zea mays), by Barbara McClintock in 1948, for which she was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1983. She noticed chromosome mutations caused by these transposons. About 50% of the total genome of maize consists of transposons. The Ac/Ds system McClintock described are class II transposons.
 One family of transposons in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster are called P elements. They seem to have first appeared in the species only in the middle of the twentieth century. Within 50 years, they have spread through every population of the species. Artificial P elements are used to insert genes into Drosophila by injecting the embryo.
 The most common form of transposon in humans is the Alu sequence. It is approximately 300 bases long and can be found between 300,000 and a million times in the human genome.
Mariner-like elements are another prominent class of transposons found in multiple species including humans. The Mariner transposon was first discovered by Jacobson and Hartl in Drosophila. This Class II transposable element is known for its uncanny ability to be transmitted horizontally in many species. There are an estimated 14 thousand copies of Mariner in the human genome comprising 2.6 million base pairs.

Evolution
Transposons are found in many forms of life. They may have arisen independently many times, or perhaps just once and then spread to other kingdoms by horizontal gene transfer.

While some transposons may confer benefits on their hosts, most are regarded as selfish DNA parasites. In this way, they are similar to viruses. Various viruses and transposons also share features in their genome structures and biochemical abilities, leading to speculation that they share a common ancestor.

Excessive transposon activity can destroy a genome, which is lethal. Many organisms have developed mechanisms to inhibit them. Bacteria may delete transposons and viruses from their genomes; eukaryotic organisms use RNA interference (RNAi) to inhibit transposon activity.

In vertebrate animal cells nearly all the 100,000+ DNA transposons in a genome code for inactive polypeptides. In humans, all of the Class I-like transposons are inactive. The first DNA transposon used as a tool for genetic purposes, the Sleeping Beauty transposon system, was a transposon which was resurrected from a long evolutionary sleep.

Role in the immune system
Transposons may have been co-opted by the vertebrate immune system as a means of producing antibody diversity: The V(D)J recombination system operates by a mechanism similar to that of transposons. This is a system of three genes which get rearranged in the production of vertebrate lymphocytes. The system diversely encode proteins to match antigens from bacteria, viruses, parasites, dysfunctional cells such as tumor cells, and pollens.

The final DNA sequence, and thus the sequence of the antibody, is highly variable, even when the same two V, D, or J segments are joined. This great diversity allows VDJ recombination to generate antibodies even to microbes that neither the organism nor its ancestors have ever previously encountered.

References

DNA
Evolutionary biology

Transposable element


An electronic game is either a game console that can connect to a TV to play a video game or a game that be played in someone's hand. Electronic games are often bought by younger people including kids, teenagers and people who have special needs as people with special needs particular autism like games with repetitive sound.

Electronic games were most common being sold in the 1990's when it was the best time in the world to make them, manufacturer and sell them.

In the 1980's, a game called Simon was released by Milton Bradley which also had a 'Super' variant called the Super Simon.

In the 90's there were 2 major games being sold - Bop It and Brain Warp, as well as a second edition of Bop It called the Bop It Extreme which was released in 1999 by Hasbro voiced by Scott Parkin. There was a game called Brain Shift that wasn't popular, but a rare low pitched unit was discovered in 2003 which lasted until 2009. Bop It was re-released again in 2008 as Bop It! and Simon was also re-released 3 years later by Hasbro and then KID Group made Simon Swipe.

Electronic games require batteries to run and the manufacture adds a hidden 'test mode' on which the user can use to capture samples to make another game. Although the samples themselves won't be as good as the original studio quality samples, they can be good quality enough to be re-used in another game.

Electronic game


Gîsca (meaning "[The] goose" in Romanian; ) is a village near in Căușeni District, Moldova, composed of a single village with the same name, population 4,841 at the 2004 Census. The locality, although situated on the right (western) bank of the river Dniester, immediately to the south-west of the city of Tighina (Bender), in the Bessarabian, not Transnistrian part of Moldova, is under the control of the breakaway Transnistrian authorities.

The village is located around a creek named Gîrla, which flows into the Dniester. The creek is small and not navigable, but it is the habitat of ducks and geese, which gave the name to the locality. The road south-west from the city of Tighina (Bender) follows into the Moldovan-controlled area immediately as the village of Gîsca ends, and the next village of Fîrlădeni starts.

At the census organized by the Transnistrian authorities in 2004, there were 4,841 inhabitants in Gîsca, including 819 (16.91%) ethnic Moldovans, 2,956 (61.06%) ethnic Russians, 719 (14.85%) ethnic Ukrainians, 168 (3.47%) ethnic Bulgarians, 91 (1.88%) ethnic Gagauzians, 22 (0.45%) ethnic Germans, 8 (0.17%) ethnic Belarusians, 7 (0.14%) ethnic Jews, 0 to 16 (0.17%) Armenians, 0 to 12 (0.12%) Poles, 0 to 5 (0.04%) Gypsies, and 13 to 44 (0.60%) others and non-declared.

In June 1992, during the War of Transnistria the village was the scene of alleged human rights abuses by Moldovans. According to a report of the Russian human rights organisation, "Memorial", members of the local armed Transnistrian paramilitary unit were killed in this village during a gun-battle with Moldovan forces. The Moldovan troops were said to have been finishing off the wounded. At least three villagers were killed by stray bullets and fragments of shells. Two more villagers were beaten by Moldovan volunteers, mopping up the village. On several occasions unprovoked fire was opened at the houses of villagers (there were no victims).

References

Villages of Căușeni District
Populated places under Transnistrian control
Bessarabia Governorate

Gîsca


George Brodie (1786?–1867) was a Scottish lawyer and historian.

Life
Brodie was born  on 6 September 1785 in East Lothian, where his father was a farmer on a large scale, and a contributor to the improvement of Scottish husbandry. Educated at Edinburgh High School and the University of Edinburgh, he became in 1811 a member of the Faculty of Advocates. He seems to have done little at the bar.

He was an ardent whig, and his political creed partly inspired the one work by which he is known, his History of the British Empire. In the Scottish agitation for the first Reform Bill, Brodie presided at a very numerous gathering of the working-men of Edinburgh held on Arthur's Seat in November 1831 against the rejection of the bill by the peers. In 1836 he was appointed historiographer of Scotland, with a salary of £180 a year.

Brodie died in London on 22 January 1867.

Works
Brodie's major work was History of the British Empire from the accession of Charles the First to the Restoration, with an introduction tracing the progress of society and of the Constitution from the feudal times to the opening of the history, and including a particular examination of Mr. Hume's statements relative to the character of the English government. The 'statements' which Brodie undertook to refute were chiefly those in which David Hume found precedents for the claims of the Stuarts in the action of the Tudor sovereigns. Brodie's history was by far the most elaborate assault on the Stuarts and their apologists, especially Hume and Clarendon, and the most thoroughgoing vindication of the puritans, that had then appeared. It was not of high historical value. It was reviewed in the 'Edinburgh Review' for March 1824, probably by John Allen of Holland House celebrity (see Lord Jeffrey's letter to him in Lord Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey, 2nd ed. 1852, ii. 217). While generally laudatory, the reviewer censured Brodie's indiscriminating partisanship. Guizot has expressed his surprise that so passionate a partisan should have written with so little animation (Preface to the Histoire de la Revolution d'Angleterre, 4th ed. 1860, i. 15). In 1866 appeared a second edition of his History, with the original title slightly expanded into A Constitutional History of the British Empire.

Besides the History, Brodie published an edition of Stair's Institutes of the Law of Scotland, with commentaries and a supplement as to mercantile law. Lord Cockburn says of it and him (Journal, 1874, ii. 113): "His edition of Stair is a deep and difficult legal book. His style is bad, and his method not good.'"

Brodie was also author of a pamphlet entitled Strictures on the Appellate Jurisdiction of the House of Lords, 1856.

References

Attribution

1786 births
1867 deaths
19th-century Scottish historians
People from East Lothian

George Brodie (historian)


The Royal Canadian Air Force Ensign is the official flag which is used to represent the Royal Canadian Air Force.  The Ensign has an air force blue field defaced with the Canadian Flag in the canton and the current Royal Canadian Air Force roundel in the fly.

History
In 1921, one year after the Canadian Air Force was founded, permission was granted for the Canadian Air Force to use the Royal Air Force Ensign.  In February 1921 the Air Officer Commanding the Canadian Air Force Air Commodore Arthur Tylee turned his attention to the matter of what might make a suitable flag for the Air Force.  In a note he wrote to the Inspector-General of the Canadian Air Force, Air Vice-Marshal Sir Willoughby Gwatkin, Tylee proposed that the RAF Ensign be adopted with a maple leaf at the centre of the roundel.  Gwatkin in turn applied to Air Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard, the British Chief of the Air Staff, who rejected the proposal on the basis that "the sentiment of unity between the Air Services of the Empire" ought to be maintained.

During World War II the question of a specifically Canadian air force flag was raised again and in July 1940 the Royal Canadian Air Force adopted its own ensign by replacing the red disc at the centre of the RAF Ensign with a red maple leaf. This design remained as the Royal Canadian Air Force Ensign until the Canadian Red Ensign was superseded by the new Canadian National Flag in 1965 and the RCAF ensign ceased to be used officially.

In 1982 the then Canadian Forces Air Command adopted the current flag.
The ensign has a field of air force blue like the original RCAF Ensign but the Union Flag was replaced with the Canadian Maple Leaf Flag in the canton and the roundel featured a more stylized maple leaf than the original roundel.

References

Flags of Canada
Royal Canadian Air Force
Air Force ensigns
Light blue ensigns

Royal Canadian Air Force Ensign


Adile Sultan Palace () is the former royal residence of Ottoman princess Adile Sultan. It was donated to the state by Adile Sultan to be used as a school building for the Kandilli Anatolian High School for Girls and is today a cultural center. It is located in the Kandilli neighbourhood of Istanbul, Turkey.

History
The palace was built for the Ottoman princess Adile Sultan (1826–1899), the daughter of Sultan Mahmud II (1789–1839) and the sister of the Sultans Abdülmecid I (1823–1861) and Abdülaziz (1830–1876), and designed by the court architect Sarkis Balyan. It was erected on the same place of a kiosk, which was presented to her by Sultan Abdülmecid in 1856. The palace was commissioned by Sultan Abdülaziz and built by Balyan in 1861. It stands at one of the most prominent places in Istanbul, upon a hill, which is a headland in the middle of Bosphorus on the Asian shore. This location enables a panoramic view of Bosphorus, reaching from the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, seen out of all the rooms in three sides of the building. The palace with has 55 rooms and is on a ground of 17,000 m2.

Adile Sultan, a great and the only Turkish royal female poet having a Diwan, lived here until the death of her husband Mehmet Ali Pasha in 1868. She donated her residence to the state to be used as a high school for girls after her death in February 1899. Before it was used as determined, the palace came a short while under the control of Ministry of War during World War I.

Only in 1916 was the building turned into a secondary school for girls, the Adile Sultan İnas Mekteb-i Sultanisi ("Adile Sultan Imperial Girls School"), and the first graduates left the school in 1920. The school was named 1924 after its location, Kandilli Secondary School. In 1931, the school became the Kandilli High School for Girls, a respected educational institution since then. The classes of the high school moved to a new building in 1969. The old palace was used as dormitory for boarding girls of the school until 1986, when it was burned down due to an electrical short-circuit. The historic building became a ruin consisting of only four walls.

Some alumni of Kandilli High School established soon a foundation, and raised funds to rebuild the palace. However, the cost of the restoration exceeded their extent. With the huge financial support of the late billionaire businessman and philanthropist Sakıp Sabancı and the Governor of Istanbul Muammer Güler, the restoration work could continue. The lacking funds to accomplish the long-lasting and painstaking restoration works were donated again by Sakıp Sabancı in his sickbed three days before his death in 2004. Adile Sultan Palace was rebuilt in ten years at a cost of 9.5 million YTL, and it revived after twenty years by reopening with a ceremony, which took place on June 28, 2006.

The building is named "Sakıp Sabancı Kandilli Education and Culture Center". The palace covers an area of 5,625 m2, which accommodates an oval hall for meeting and banqueting of 500 people, another two meeting halls for 200 people each, a 1,300 m2 hall for cocktails and exhibitions, 20 seminar rooms with 30-40 seats, a museum, a dining hall for 150 people and a cafeteria for 60 people. The palace garden offers place for 2,000 people.

See also
 Ottoman architecture

References

 Newspaper Radikal
 Newspaper Sabah
 Focus on Travel News
 News bulletin

Ottoman palaces in Istanbul
Sarkis Balyan buildings
Houses completed in 1861
Redevelopment projects in Istanbul
Buildings and structures completed in 2006
Bosphorus
Üsküdar
1861 establishments in the Ottoman Empire
19th-century architecture in Turkey
21st-century architecture in Turkey

Adile Sultan Palace


The Couesnon River () is a river. It starts in the département of Mayenne in north-western France. It forms an estuary at Mont-Saint-Michel. Its last stretch is the border between the historical duchies of Normandy and Brittany. In the past, its course changed often between two beds. They are on the north and south of the Mont Saint-Michel. In the end, it settled to the south bed. This created (made) the saying "The Couesnon's madness placed Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy" (in french, "le couesnon en sa folie mit le Mont en Normandie"), as the mount is just to the Norman side of the river's mouth, now.  However, the administrative boundary which separates the two regions does not depend on the course of the river. The border is about six kilometres west of the mount.

Geography
The Couesnon, the Sée and the Sélune form part of the complex water system of the bay of Mont Saint-Michel. On one side, the tide brings lots of sediment. This causes large sandbars within the river. On the other side, the three rivers bring the sediment back to sea.

In the 20th century, the Couesnon was made into a canal. This to reduced the erosion of its banks. In 1969, a dam was built. These changes, and the causeway linking Mont Saint-Michel to the mainland, have made mudflats. The French built a bridge to replace the causeway. It was finished in 2013. This helped to remove the silt.

During spring tides, a tidal bore — a wave caused by the tide rising — can be seen going up the river.

The Couesnon flows through the following departments and towns:
Ille-et-Vilaine: Fougères, Antrain
Manche: Pontorson

Hydrology and water quality
In the summer, the water flow is typically in the range of . The pH has been measured at 8.26 (Hogan, 2006). The temperature of the water is 19 degrees Celsius in summer, in the area of the mouth.  Water turbidity is moderate with a Secchi disc reading of 14 centimetres.  Electrical conductivity at the mouth is high.

Gallery

References
 Hogan, C Michael, Water quality of freshwater bodies in France, Lumina Tech. Press, Aberdeen (2006)
http://www.geoportail.fr
The Couesnon at the Sandre database

Other websites
 The public works project
 The Couesnon on the site sandre.eaufrance.fr

Rivers of Pays de la Loire
Rivers of Brittany

Couesnon