Ohradzany

Ohradzany is a small village and municipality in Humenné District in the Prešov Region of eastern Slovakia.

History
In historical records the village was first mentioned in 1317.
The first archbishop of the Košice Episcopal see, Monsignor Alojz Tkáč, was born here in 1934. the current mayor is Valéria Melníková.

Geography
The municipality lies at an altitude of 170 metres and covers an area of 12.001 km².
It has a population of about 625 people.

External links
https://web.archive.org/web/20070927203415/http://www.statistics.sk/mosmis/eng/run.html

Category:Villages and municipalities in Humenné District
Category:Zemplín (region)


Geoff Elliott

Geoffrey ("Geoff") Michael Elliott (born 7 April 1931 in Ilford) is a retired male pole vaulter, shot putter and decathlete from England.

Athletics career
He represented Great Britain in both the pole vault and decathlon events at the 1952 Olympic games in Helsinki. He set his personal best in the pole vault (4.30 metres) on 28 August 1954 in Bern.

He represented England and won a gold medal in the pole vault at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Canada. Four years later, in Cardiff he repeated the success at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games. Just before those games, he was one of many signatories in a letter to The Times on 17 July 1958 opposing 'the policy of apartheid' in international sport and defending 'the principle of racial equality which is embodied in the Declaration of the Olympic Games'.

Achievements

References

 Brown, Geoff and Hogsbjerg, Christian. Apartheid is not a Game: Remembering the Stop the Seventy Tour campaign. London: Redwords, 2020. .
 British Olympic Committee

He also played rugby football at school, Wanstead County Grammar, as a fly half (No 10 these days) and as a 17 or 18 year old schoolboy performed at full-back for the men's Eastern Counties side with distinction. Many believe that had he not chosen athletics he could well have had a future in the England 15.

Category:1931 births
Category:Living people
Category:British decathletes
Category:British male pole vaulters
Category:British male shot putters
Category:English male pole vaulters
Category:Athletes (track and field) at the 1952 Summer Olympics
Category:Olympic athletes of Great Britain
Category:Athletes (track and field) at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games
Category:Athletes (track and field) at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games
Category:Commonwealth Games gold medallists for England
Category:European Athletics Championships medalists
Category:English male shot putters
Category:English decathletes
Category:People from Ilford
Category:Commonwealth Games medallists in athletics


Gagananga Yukala

Gagananga Yukala, the Prince Bijitprijakara (; ) was a prince of Siam (later Thailand He was a member of Siamese royal family and was a son of King Mongkut and  Phueng Indravimala

Life
Prince Gangananga Yukala was born on 29 October 1855 in Bangkok Siam (later Thailand) is a son of King Mongkut and Phueng Indravimala

Prince Gangananga Yukala died  on 13 March 1909 at the age 53.

Thai royal demoration
  Knight Grand Cordon with Chain of the Order of the Royal House of Chakri
  The Ancient and Auspicious of Order of the Nine Gems
  Knight Grand Cross (First Class) of The Most Illustrious Order of Chula Chom Klao
  King Rama IV Royal Cypher Medal (First Class)
  Chakrabarti Mala Medal (ร.จ.พ.)

References

Category:Thai male Phra Ong Chao
Category:1855 births
Category:1909 deaths
Category:Chakri dynasty


Novajidrány

Novajidrány is a country village in northern Hungary.

It was the boyhood home of Alfred James Vereb, a noted American ceramic artisan.

References

Category:Populated places in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County


Black Press

Black Press Group Ltd. is a Canadian publisher of prominent daily newspapers in Hawaii and Ohio, and numerous non-daily newspapers in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, and (via Sound Publishing) the U.S. state of Washington.

Black Press Media is headquartered in Surrey, British Columbia, and has regional offices in Victoria, Williams Lake, and Kelowna.

The company is administered and majority owned by David Holmes Black (no relation to Canadian-born media mogul Conrad Black). The company is 20% owned by Torstar, publisher of the Toronto Star, and David Black's former employer.

History
After working as a junior business analyst for the Toronto Star, Black purchased the Williams Lake Tribune of Williams Lake, British Columbia, from his father, Alan, in 1975. He bought a family-run newspaper in nearby Ashcroft in 1979, and his holdings expanded "exponentially" in the ensuing years.

Though Black Press has focused its acquisitions mainly on building a province-wide network of community newspapers in British Columbia, and a similar operation (called Sound Publishing) across the border in Washington, the company has also invested in individual marquee daily products. In 2000, Black purchased the Honolulu Star-Bulletin of Hawaii (later merged with the competing Honolulu Advertiser, which Black bought in 2010). In 2006, the company acquired the Akron Beacon Journal, the former Knight Ridder flagship in Northeast Ohio.

On June 27, 2007, Black Press announced a $405 million takeover offer for Osprey Media, putting it in competition with Quebecor Media for Osprey's assets. Quebecor put in a higher bid and won ownership of Osprey.

In 2011, David Black was one of several newspaper industry veterans who joined together as investors in the San Francisco Newspaper Company to buy the former Hearst flagship The San Francisco Examiner, now a free daily newspaper. Although the transaction had been reported as a purchase for Black Press, David Black participated as a private investor and holds his shares in the Examiner separately from Black Press.

In 2013 Black Press and Glacier Media Inc. exchanged four community newspapers in British Columbia. That led to the closure of Abbotsford Times. In 2014, Black Press negotiated deals with Glacier Media Inc. to take effect in March 2015 that would exchange a dozen British Columbia newspapers that consolidated ownership of competing community papers on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. Black Press obtained Harbour City Star, Cowichan Citizen, Parksville Oceanside Star, Tofino/Ucluelet Westerly News, Comox Valley Echo, Campbell River Courier, Surrey Now and Langley Advance.

In 2018, Black Press sold the Akron Beacon Journal to GateHouse Media and acquired the Juneau Empire and two other papers in Alaska from GateHouse.

Daily newspapers

Black Press owns two major metropolitan daily newspapers in the United States, and several dailies as part of its community newspaper chains in the Canadian and U.S. Pacific Northwest.

Major dailies
 Honolulu Star-Advertiser (Honolulu, Hawaii)
 The Herald (Everett, Washington)

Community dailies
 Cranbrook Daily Townsman of Cranbrook, British Columbia: part of BC Interior Division
 Kimberley Daily Bulletin of Kimberley, British Columbia: part of BC Interior Division
 Peninsula Daily News of Port Angeles, Washington: part of Sound Publishing
 Red Deer Advocate of Red Deer, Alberta: flagship of the Prairie Division
 Trail Daily Times of Trail, British Columbia: part of BC Interior Division
 The Garden Island of Lihue, Hawaii: part O'ahu Publications Incorporated
 Maple Ridge News, British Columbia

Defunct dailies
 Honolulu Advertiser: purchased February 2010, merged four months later into Star-Advertiser
 Honolulu Star-Bulletin: purchased 2001, merged with Advertiser in 2010
 King County Journal of Kent, Washington: purchased November 2006, closed two months later
 Nelson Daily News of Nelson, British Columbia: purchased July 2010, closed two weeks later
 Prince Rupert Daily News of Prince Rupert, British Columbia: purchased July 2010, closed two weeks later

Community newspapers
Black Press is the largest publisher of newspapers in British Columbia and in Washington state. It also owns several weeklies associated with its daily properties in Alberta and Hawaii.

Alberta
Black Press owns the daily Red Deer Advocate and several neighbouring weekly newspapers in Central Alberta, in addition to various local tourism and lifestyle publications. Newspapers in Black's Prairie Division are:

 Bashaw Star
 Castor Advance
 Eckville Echo

 Ponoka News
 Red Deer Advocate
 Red Deer Express

 Rimbey Review
 Stettler Independent
 Sylvan Lake News

British Columbia
Black's original acquisitions form the core of the 320,552-circulation BC Interior Division, whose holdings extend 1,360 km from Trail near the Washington border to Smithers near the southern tip of Alaska. The wine country publications Grapes to Wine and Wine Trails are also part of this group. Following is a list of the group's community newspapers, most of which are biweekly, weekly, semiweekly or thrice-weekly, although the group also includes three small daily newspapers in Trail, Cranbrook and Kimberley:

 100 Mile House Free Press
 Arrow Lakes News
 Ashcroft-Cache Creek Journal
 Barriere Star Journal
 Boundary Creek Times
 Burns Lake Lakes District News
 Caledonia Courier
 Cariboo Advisor
 Castlegar News
 Clearwater Times
 Coast Mountain News
 Cranbrook Daily Townsman
 Creston Valley Advance
 Eagle Valley News
 The Free Press
 Golden Star

 Grand Forks Gazette
 Houston Today
 Invermere Valley Echo
 Kamloops This Week
 Kelowna Capital News
 Keremeos Review
 Kimberley Daily Bulletin
 Kitimat Northern Sentinel
 Kootenay News Advertiser
 Lake Country Calendar
 Lakeshore News
 Merritt Herald
 Nelson Star
 The North Delta Reporter
 The Northern View
 Penticton Western News

 Prince George Free Press
 Quesnel Cariboo Observer
 Revelstoke Times Review
 Rossland News
 Salmon Arm Observer
 Similkameen Spotlight
 Smithers Interior News
 Summerland Review
 Terrace Standard
 Trail Daily Times
 The Valley
 Vanderhoof Omineca Express
 Vernon Morning Star
 West Kootenay Advertiser
 Williams Lake Tribune

Publications in Black's BC Lower Mainland Division circulate a total of 568,200 copies per week in the Vancouver area. This group includes the Chilliwack Progress, founded in 1891, which claims to be the oldest Canadian community newspaper continuously published under the same name. The group includes the lifestyle and real estate publications Indulge Magazine, New Home Living, New Local Home, North Shore Real Estate, and the following community newspapers:

 Abbotsford News
 Agassiz Harrison Observer
 Aldergrove Star
 Bowen Island Undercurrent
 Chilliwack Progress
 Chilliwack Times
 Cloverdale Reporter

 Hope Standard
 Langley Times
 Langley Advance
 Maple Ridge Times
 Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News
 Mission City Record
 North Shore Outlook

 Outlook North Vancouver
 Outlook West Vancouver
 Peace Arch News
 Richmond Review
 Surrey Now News-Leader

The BC Vancouver Island Division includes the entertainment weekly Where Magazine and Real Estate Victoria, both covering Victoria, British Columbia and vicinity, and the following community newspapers (including the daily Alberni Valley Times, the Cowichan News Leader Pictorial, and the Nanaimo Daily News, the first two of which were closed in 2015 followed by closure of the Nanaimo Daily News in 2016):

 Alberni Valley News
 Alberni Valley Times
 Campbell River Mirror
 Comox Valley Record
 Cowichan News Leader Pictorial
 Cowichan Valley Citizen
 Goldstream News Gazette
 Gulf Islands Driftwood

 Ladysmith Chronicle
 Lake Cowichan Gazette
 Monday Magazine
 Nanaimo Daily News
 Nanaimo News Bulletin
 North Island Gazette

 Oak Bay News
 Parksville Qualicum Beach News
 Peninsula News Review
 Saanich News
 Sooke News Mirror
 Tofino-Ucluelet Westerly News
 Victoria News

Hawaii and California
In addition to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the largest daily newspaper in Hawaii, Black Press' subsidiary Oahu Publications Inc. also community newspapers, the entertainment weekly MidWeek, HILuxury magazine, and prints military newspapers for U.S. bases in Hawaii. Oahu Publications Inc.  took full ownership of the San Francisco Media Company in 2014.

The Garden Island
Hawaii Army Weekly
Hawaii Marine
Hawaii Tribune-Herald
Ho‘okele – Pearl Harbor-Hickam News
Honolulu Star-Advertiser
MidWeek
The San Francisco Examiner
SF Weekly
West Hawaii Today

Washington and Alaska

Sound Publishing Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press, is based in Everett, Washington and is the largest community news publisher by circulation in the state of Washington. The company's holdings include four daily newspapers, The Herald, the Peninsula Daily News, The Daily World and the Tacoma Daily Index government listings publication. All of Sound Publishing's products are printed at a central press plant in Everett, Washington. Sound Publishing acquired three newspapers in Alaska in 2018. Community newspapers owned by Sound Publishing are:

King County and Pierce County
 Auburn Reporter
 Bellevue Reporter
 Bothell/Kenmore Reporter
 The Courier-Herald
 Covington, Maple Valley & Black Diamond Reporter
 Eastside Scene Magazine
 Federal Way Mirror
 Issaquah-Sammamish Reporter
 Kent Reporter
 Kirkland Reporter
 Mercer Island Reporter
 Redmond Reporter
 Renton Reporter
 Seattle Weekly
 Snoqualmie Valley Record
 Tukwila Reporter
 Tacoma Daily Index
 Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber

Grays Harbor County
 The (Aberdeen) Daily World
 The Vidette
 North Coast News
 South Beach Bulletin

Okanogan County
 Okanogan Valley Gazette-Tribune

Olympic and Kitsap Peninsulas
 Bainbridge Island Review
 Central Kitsap Reporter
 Kingston Community News
 Kitsap Weekly
 North Kitsap Herald
 Port Orchard Independent
 Forks Forum
 Peninsula Daily News
 Sequim Gazette

San Juan Islands
 Islands' Sounder
 Islands' Weekly
 Journal of the San Juan Islands

Snohomish County
 The Arlington Times
 [[The Herald (Everett)|The (Everett) Herald]]
 Marysville Globe

Whidbey Island
 South Whidbey Record
 Whidbey Crosswind
 Whidbey Examiner
 Whidbey News-Times

Alaska
 Capital City Weekly
 Homer News
 Juneau Empire
 Peninsula Clarion

Online classifieds

Used.ca

In 2007 the Black Press purchased Used.ca a Canadian online classified website with popular sites in Victoria, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, and Ottawa, Ontario.

Controversies

Nisga'a Treaty editorials
In 1998,  company owner David Black instructed his British Columbia papers to publish a series of editorials opposing the Nisga'a Treaty, which was the first modern treaty in B.C. history, and not to publish editorials in favour of the treaty.

In January 1999, the NDP government filed a complaint to the B.C. Press Council against Black Press, arguing that its policy breached its duty to act in the public interest and violated the council's constitution. Black Press said that news coverage was not affected and editors were free to publish their opinions on their letters page.

The Press Council sided with Black Press based on finding that its newspapers "did in fact carry a diversity of opinion on the Nisga'a Treaty, including those of Premier Glen Clark, Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell, Reform Party President Bill Vander Zalm as well as those of ordinary British Columbians".

Advertiser concerns
In August 2007, a story in the Victoria News sparked a complaint from an advertiser and led to the firing/resignation of three senior Black Press employees.
Victoria News reporter Brennan Clarke quit the publication after a story he wrote about buying cheaper cars in the United States led to a complaint from Victoria car dealership Dave Wheaton Pontiac Buick GMC. Black Press claimed the article was not balanced, and said that reporters and editors should not purposely jeopardize advertising revenue with their stories, because that revenue pays their salaries. The company also fired the Victoria News long-time editor, Keith Norbury, in part because of the complaint, and Black Press's Vancouver Island Newsgroup regional editor, Brian Lepine, resigned in protest.

The Canadian Association of Journalists publicly questioned the credibility and independence of the Victoria News, wondering how many stories Black Press kills behind the scenes because of advertising concerns.

See also
List of newspapers in Canada

References

External links
 Black Press
 Sound Publishing - Black Press subsidiary in Washington state

Category:Newspaper companies of Canada
Category:Companies based in Victoria, British Columbia
Category:Publishing companies established in 1975
Category:1975 establishments in British Columbia


Zalesnaya

Zalesnaya () is a rural locality (a village) and the administrative center of Krasnosludskoye Rural Settlement, Dobryansky District, Perm Krai, Russia. The population was 419 as of 2010. There are 34  streets.

References

Category:Rural localities in Perm Krai


Polsgrove, Kentucky

Polsgrove is an unincorporated community within Franklin County, Kentucky, United States. Its post office is closed.

References

Category:Unincorporated communities in Franklin County, Kentucky
Category:Unincorporated communities in Kentucky


Hugo Pfaltz

Hugo Menzel Pfaltz Jr. (September 23, 1931 – August 31, 2019) was an American Republican Party politician who served two terms in the New Jersey General Assembly.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Pfaltz graduated from Millburn High School. He is a graduate of Hamilton College and Harvard Law School, and served in the United States Navy Reserve.

Pfaltz lived in Summit, New Jersey and practiced law there.  He was elected to the Assembly in 1967, running on a ticket with former Assemblyman Peter McDonough; they defeated former Assemblywoman Irene Griffin and Kenneth White.  Pfaltz beat White by 812 votes.  In the General Election, McDonough and Pfaltz defeated Democrats George Perselay and Joseph Gannon by wide margins. He was re-elected to a second term in 1969, this time running with incumbent Herbert Heilmann in a newly-drawn district; they defeated Democrats Michael Mehr and Peter Humanik by wide margins.  Pfaltz did not run again in 1971.

He married Marilyn Mildred Muir of Chappaqua, New York on September 30, 1956.  They have three children. Pfaltz died in Summit, New Jersey on August 31, 2019 at the age of 87.

References

Category:1931 births
Category:2019 deaths
Category:Hamilton College (New York) alumni
Category:Harvard Law School alumni
Category:Members of the New Jersey General Assembly
Category:Millburn High School alumni
Category:New Jersey Republicans
Category:Politicians from Newark, New Jersey
Category:Politicians from Summit, New Jersey


Rozhdestveno

Rozhdestveno:

 Rozhdestveno (Moscow Metro)
 Rozhdestveno Memorial Estate
 Rozhdestveno (military airport)
 Rozhdestveno - settlements in Russia


Lipki, West Pomeranian Voivodeship

Lipki  () is a settlement in the administrative district of Gmina Polanów, within Koszalin County, West Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-western Poland.

Before 1945 the area was part of Germany. For the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.

References

Lipki


Ohio State Route 369

State Route 369 (SR 369) is a short, two-lane north–south state highway in the western portion of the U.S. state of Ohio.  The southern terminus of SR 369 is at an interchange with SR 4 approximately  northeast of Enon. Its northern terminus is at U.S. Route 40 (US 40) nearly  east of Donnelsville. SR 369 was created in the mid-1930s.  In addition to serving as a connector between SR 4 and US 40 southwest of Springfield, it provides access to a county park named in honor of George Rogers Clark.

Route description
All of SR 369 is situated within Bethel Township in the southwestern quadrant of Clark County.  The route starts at an interchange with SR 4 approximately  northeast of Enon. SR 369 serves as a continuation of Lower Valley Pike, which enters the interchange from the   North of SR 4, the west side of SR 369 abuts a residential subdivision, while the east side of the route straddles the western portion of the county–maintained George Rogers Clark Park.  As the highway proceeds north of the park boundary, both sides of the highway are lined with houses, leading up to the point where it comes to an end at US 40 nearly  east of Donnelsville. Continuing to the north of the U.S. route following the terminus of SR 369 is Tecumseh Road.

SR 369 is maintained by the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT).  As a part of its duties in maintaining this highway, ODOT tracks the volume of traffic using it by a metric called the average annual daily traffic (AADT).  This measurement determines the amount of traffic utilizing a particular stretch of the roadway on a typical day of the year.  A 2008 AADT report shows that the busiest stretch of SR 369 is the portion in the vicinity of the SR 4 interchange, at the Lower Valley Pike transition, where typically 2,900 passenger vehicles and 220 commercial vehicles use the highway on a daily basis.  The AADT along the portion of SR 369 between SR 4 and US 40 was determined to be 1,580 passenger vehicles and 120 commercial vehicles. SR 369 is not included within the National Highway System.

History
SR 369 was first designated in 1934.  Originally, the route was a spur route off of US 40 that served George Rogers Clark Park.  In 1959, with the relocation of SR 4 onto a new freeway alignment along the north side of the Mad River through this vicinity, the southern terminus of SR 369 was reconfigured such that the highway met the new freeway at an interchange at the south end of the park.

Major intersections

References

External links

369
Category:Transportation in Clark County, Ohio


Kentucky Route 171

Kentucky Route 171 (KY 171) is a 28.702-mile (46.191 km) state highway in Kentucky that runs from Kentucky Route 106 northeast of Elkton to U.S. Route 62 in southeast Greenville.

Route description
KY 171 starts at a junction with KY 106 between Elkton and Claymour. It goes in a westerly path to intersect KY 181, and then turns north-northwest to Allegre where it intersects KY 507 (Pilot Rock Road)] It then goes further north to intersect KY 107 at Kirkmansville. The route then enters Muhlenberg County and traverses the community of Weir. It meets its end in the southern outskirts of Greenville at a junction with U.S. Route 62 (US 62).

Major intersections

References

0171
0171
171


Hanako Oku

is a pop singer famous in her native Japan for her piano ballads.  She rose to fame after performing the end-title track for the Madhouse film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in 2006. She was signed to a major record label the preceding year.

Biography
Oku's musical training began at age 5 with piano lessons, but by age 9 she was also learning the trumpet and was a member of her school's brass band.

In 2004, Oku began to perform on the streets of Tokyo, mainly in Shibuya ward, but once sold 402 CDs in four hours outside Kashiwa railway station. Later that same year she released her first mainstream single Fireworks and performed her debut one-woman show to an audience of 135. Approached by Chiba TV, she made an appearance on the show Chiba Fighting Spirit.

Over the next year she toured western Japan and self-produced two more CD singles before releasing an album in April 2005. Soon afterwards she was signed up by record company Pony Canyon.

In April 2006, the animated film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was released, with the theme songs "Garnet" and "Kawaranai Mono" sung by Oku.

Come spring 2007, Oku performed to a sell-out crowd at Shibuya C.C. Lemon Hall, and with the release of her album Time Note, she once again performed sold-out concerts there over three nights in July 2007.

Oku still occasionally busked in Tokyo railway stations in 2007, drawing a crowd, and selling her CDs there.

Since June 2005, Hanako Oku has hosted her KameKameHouse radio show on bayfm78 every Sunday night from 22:30 to 23:00. At the end of 2009, the show was renamed Lagan de Talk!. In 2010, Oku began hosting a new radio show E-Tracks Selection once a fortnight on FM OSAKA.  Starting January 12, the show airs from 21:00 to 21:30.

An animated music clip of the album version of Oku's song "Kimi no Egao" was released, through Pony Canyon's official YouTube channel, on May 7, 2017. Directed by Takuya Satō and titled Your Light: Kase-san and Morning Glories, the video is an adaptation of Hiromi Takashima's yuri manga Asagao to Kase-san. The album version of the song comes from Oku's sixth album, titled Good-Bye, released in 2012.

Discography

Albums

Singles

DVD

Blu-ray

References

External links
  (In Japanese)
 Hanako Oku's profile on Pony Canyon's website (In Japanese)
 Hanako Oku's personal blog (24 February 2010 to present) (In Japanese)
 Hanako Oku's personal blog (21 January 2008 to 24 February 2010) (In Japanese)
 Hanako Oku's personal blog (4 October 2004 to 22 January 2008) (In Japanese)
 KameKameHouse radio show blog (In Japanese)
 Your Light ～Kase-san and Morning Glories～ on Pony Canyon's YouTube channel

Category:Japanese female singer-songwriters
Category:Japanese female pop singers
Category:1978 births
Category:People from Funabashi
Category:Living people
Category:Pony Canyon artists
Category:Musicians from Chiba Prefecture
Category:21st-century Japanese singers
Category:21st-century women singers


Erythrophleum suaveolens

Erythrophleum suaveolens, also known as the ordeal tree, is a species of plant that can be found in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The species are  in height, and have a rough and blackish bark. The plants leaves have 2–3 pairs of pinnae, which carry 7–13 leaflets. The leaflets are , are green coloured and ovate. The flowers have fluffy spikes, and are creamy-yellow coloured. Fruits are hard, the pod of which is flat.

The bark of the tree has been used in Liberia to make a toxic concoction used for a form of trial by ordeal called "sassywood". This use has given it the common name of the "Ordeal Tree".

References

External links

suaveolens
Category:Plants described in 1832
Category:Flora of Africa


Tolo, Greece

Tolo (), in Katharevousa known as Tolon (Τολόν) is a small village in Greece on the Peloponnese peninsula. It is part of the municipal unit Asini, in Argolis.

History

The bay of Tolon (part of the Argolic Gulf) was first written about by Homer, as was Asini in the Iliad, named as one of the cities whose fleet took part in the Trojan War. In the centuries to come the bay of Tolon gave refuge to battle ships at various times and then during the Byzantine period was revived as an auxiliary port to Nafplio.

Following the Fourth Crusade and the break-up of the Byzantine Empire (1204 AD), along with the rest of the Peloponnese, the area came under Frankish rule until 1389 AD, when it was then taken over by the Venetians, and in 1540 AD to the Ottomans. In the 1680s, during the Morean War, the alliance between the Venetians, the Germans, and the Polish against the Ottoman Empire, the chief of the allied forces, Vice-admiral Francesco Morosini was ordered to capture the capital of the Peloponnese, Nafplio at that time, and the bay of Tolon was chosen as a place suitable as a base of operations for his expedition as it was the safest place in the region, while the shore was used for the army to camp. After the success of his expedition and until 1715 AD, when the area was again occupied by the Turks, Tolon was used as a secondary naval station for the Venetian fleet.

A monument of this time is the small church named Zoodochos Pigi, built in 1688, and the ruins of the fortress on the island of Daskaleio in the bay of Tolon. Fortifications, ruins of houses and reservoirs can also be found on Romvi island. Following the Greek Revolution, a number of ethnic-Greek refugees from Crete were resettled in Tolon.

After the establishment of the independent Kingdom of Greece, in 1834, by Royal Decree, a city was founded at the Port of Tolon and named Minoa after Minos the legendary king of Crete. After the liberation of Crete the remaining refugees in the area formed a fishing village which eventually became known as Tolon in 1916.

From the middle of the 20th century, Tolon saw the beginning of the tourist industry and evolved into a summer resort.

Transportation
There is frequent KTEL bus service every day from Nafplion.

See also
 Tolo Bay in Indonesia

References

External links

Category:Populated places in Argolis


Kwitajny

Kwitajny  () is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Pasłęk, within Elbląg County, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately  east of Pasłęk,  east of Elbląg, and  north-west of the regional capital Olsztyn.

The village of Quittainen was a part of East Prussia. The estate of the same name was held by the East Prussian noble family Dönhoff until 1945, when its last overseer, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, fled from the advancing Red Army on horseback. Ms. Dönhoff, who had been active in the conspiracy against Hitler, eventually became publisher of the liberal weekly Die Zeit.

The village, like the rest of southern East Prussia, was awarded by the winning coalition in World War II to Poland and taken from Germany following the Potsdam Conference, and its name was Polonized as Kwitajny. The village has a population of 253.

Notable residents
Marion Gräfin Dönhoff (1909-2002), lived here until 1945

References

Kwitajny


Sam Tochterman-Talbott

Sam Tochterman-Talbott (born 5 June 1995), also known as Sam Carson, is a United States international rugby league footballer who plays as a  forward for the Tweed Heads Seagulls in the Queensland Cup. He was selected to represent the United States in the 2017 Rugby League World Cup.

References

External links
2017 RLWC profile

Category:1995 births
Category:Australian rugby league players
Category:Australian people of American descent
Category:Indigenous Australian rugby league players
Category:United States national rugby league team players
Category:Tweed Heads Seagulls players
Category:Rugby league second-rows
Category:Living people


Interstate 69 in Louisiana

Interstate 69 (I-69) is a proposed Interstate Highway that will pass through the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Louisiana.

Route description
In Louisiana, I-69 will pass near Shongaloo, Haynesville, and Minden in north Louisiana. It will then turn southwest, intersecting I-20 near Haughton in Bossier Parish and then head south of Shreveport, skirting along the eastern and southern edges of Barksdale Air Force Base. I-69 will then turn more westerly, intersect I-49 near Stonewall in DeSoto Parish, north of Mansfield and head for the Texas state line. Among officials working for this route was Mayor Dennis Freeman of Logansport in DeSoto Parish, who served from 1984 until his death in 2007.

Sections
I-69 has been divided into a number of sections of independent utility (SIUs).

SIU 14
From I-20 near Haughton, Louisiana, I-69 will probably be built on a new alignment towards Haynesville. From Haynesville, the freeway will enter Arkansas and run northeast to U.S. Route 82 (US 82) west of El Dorado.

SIU 15
SIU 15 continues around the south and east sides of the Shreveport area, crossing I-49 and ending at I-20 near Haughton. The project would provide a divided, four-lane, limited-access highway on new location between US 171 near the Town of Stonewall in DeSoto Parish, and I-20 near the Town of Haughton in Bossier Parish, a distance of approximately . The project Study Area encompasses portions of Bossier, Caddo, and DeSoto parishes.

SIU 16
As well as covering the part in Texas northeast of Nacogdoches, SIU 16 also extends into Louisiana, ending at US 171 near Stonewall.  Texas is leading the environmental studies on Segment 16, with support from Louisiana for the portion within that state.  Originally envisioned to be incorporated into the Trans-Texas Corridors (TTC), the Tier I Environmental Impact Statement was approved and a Record of Decision was issued in 2010 favoring the "No-Build" option that abandoned the Trans-Texas Corridor concept in lieu of upgrading existing US and state routes in the corridor.  As a result of the Tier I "No-Build" Record of Decision issued for the TTC concept, a new environmental study will be required for Segment 16, which has not been started.

See also

References

External links

 Louisiana
69
69


Stirling cycle

The Stirling cycle is a thermodynamic cycle that describes the general class of Stirling devices.  This includes the original Stirling engine that was invented, developed and patented in 1816 by Robert Stirling with help from his brother, an engineer.

The ideal Otto and Diesel cycles are not totally reversible because they involve heat transfer through a finite temperature difference during the irreversible isochoric/isobaric heat-addition and heat-rejection processes. The irreversibility renders the thermal efficiency of these cycles less than that of a Carnot engine operating within the same limits of temperature. Another cycle that features isothermal heat-addition and heat-rejection processes is the Stirling cycle, which is an altered version of the Carnot cycle in which the two isentropic processes featured in the Carnot cycle are replaced by two constant-volume regeneration processes.

The cycle is reversible, meaning that if supplied with mechanical power, it can function as a heat pump for heating or cooling, and even for cryogenic cooling.  The cycle is defined as a closed regenerative cycle with a gaseous working fluid. "Closed cycle" means the working fluid is permanently contained within the thermodynamic system. This also categorizes the engine device as an external heat engine. "Regenerative" refers to the use of an internal heat exchanger called a regenerator which increases the device's thermal efficiency.

The cycle is the same as most other heat cycles in that there are four main processes: compression, heat addition, expansion, and heat removal.  However, these processes are not discrete, but rather the transitions overlap.

The Stirling cycle is a highly advanced subject that has defied analysis by many experts for over 190 years.  Highly advanced thermodynamics is required to describe the cycle.  Professor Israel Urieli writes: "...the various 'ideal' cycles (such as the Schmidt cycle) are neither physically realizable nor representative of the Stirling cycle".

The analytical problem of the regenerator (the central heat exchanger in the Stirling cycle) is judged by Jakob to rank "among the most difficult and involved that are encountered in engineering".

Idealized Stirling cycle thermodynamics

The idealized Stirling cycle consists of four thermodynamic processes acting on the working fluid (See diagram to right):

1-2 Isothermal heat addition (expansion).
2-3 Isochoric heat removal (constant volume).
3-4 Isothermal heat removal (compression).
4-1 Isochoric heat addition (constant volume).

Piston motion variations

Most thermodynamics textbooks describe a highly simplified form of Stirling cycle consisting of four processes.  This is known as an "ideal Stirling cycle", because it is an "idealized" model, and not necessarily an optimized cycle.  Theoretically, the "ideal cycle" does have high net work output, but it is rarely used in practical applications, in part because other cycles are simpler or reduce peak stresses on bearings and other components.  For convenience, the designer may elect to use piston motions dictated by system dynamics, such as mechanical linkage mechanisms.  At any rate, the efficiency and cycle power are nearly as good as an actual implementation of the idealized case.  A typical piston crank or linkage in a so named "kinematic" design often results in a near-sinusoidal piston motion.  Some designs will cause the piston to "dwell" at either extreme of travel.

Many kinematic linkages, such as the well known "Ross yoke", will exhibit near-sinusoidal motion.  However, other linkages, such as the "rhombic drive", will exhibit more non-sinusoidal motion.  To a lesser extent, the ideal cycle introduces complications, since it would require somewhat higher piston acceleration and higher viscous pumping losses of the working fluid.  The material stresses and pumping losses in an optimized engine, however, would only be intolerable when approaching the "ideal cycle" and/or at high cycle rates. Other issues include the time required for heat transfer, particularly for the isothermal processes.  In an engine with a cycle approaching the "ideal cycle", the cycle rate might have to be reduced to address these issues.

In the most basic model of a free piston device, the kinematics will result in simple harmonic motion.

Volume variations
In beta and gamma engines, generally the phase angle difference between the piston motions is not the same as the phase angle of the volume variations.  However, in the alpha Stirling, they are the same.  The rest of the article assumes sinusoidal volume variations, as in an alpha Stirling with co-linear pistons, so named an "opposed piston" alpha device.

caveat:   Among the many inaccuracies in this article, a co-linear alpha configuration is referenced, above.   Such a configuration would be beta.  Alternatively, it would be an alpha, that has an unacceptably inefficient linkage system.

Pressure-versus-volume graph
This type of plot is used to characterize almost all thermodynamic cycles.  The result of sinusoidal volume variations is the quasi-elliptical shaped cycle shown in Figure 1.  Compared to the idealized cycle, this cycle is a more realistic representation of most real Stirling engines.  The four points in the graph indicate the crank angle in degrees.

The adiabatic Stirling cycle is similar to the idealized Stirling cycle; however, the four thermodynamic processes are slightly different (see graph above):
 180° to 270°, pseudo-isothermal expansion.  The expansion space is heated externally, and the gas undergoes near-isothermal expansion.
 270° to 0°, near-constant-volume (or near-isometric or isochoric) heat removal.  The gas is passed through the regenerator, thus cooling the gas, and transferring heat to the regenerator for use in the next cycle.
 0° to 90°, pseudo-isothermal compression.  The compression space is intercooled, so the gas undergoes near-isothermal compression.
 90° to 180°, near-constant-volume (near-isometric or isochoric) heat addition.  The compressed air flows back through the regenerator and picks up heat on the way to the heated expansion space.

With the exception of a Stirling thermoacoustic engine, none of the gas particles actually flow through the complete cycle.  So this approach is not amenable to further analysis of the cycle.  However, it provides an overview and indicates the cycle work.

Particle/mass motion
Figure 2 shows the streaklines which indicate how gas flows through a real Stirling engine.  The vertical colored lines delineate the volumes of the engine.  From left to right, they are: the volume swept by the expansion (power) piston, the clearance volume (which prevents the piston from contacting the hot heat exchanger), the heater, the regenerator, the cooler, the cooler clearance volume, and the compression volume swept by the compression piston.

Heat-exchanger pressure drop
Also referred to as "pumping losses", the pressure drops shown in Figure 3 are caused by viscous flow through the heat exchangers.  The red line represents the heater, green is the regenerator, and blue is the cooler.  To properly design the heat exchangers, multivariate optimization is required to obtain sufficient heat transfer with acceptable flow losses.  The flow losses shown here are relatively low, and they are barely visible in the following image, which will show the overall pressure variations in the cycle.

Pressure versus crank angle
Figure 4 shows results from an "adiabatic simulation" with non-ideal heat exchangers.  Note that the pressure drop across the regenerator is very low compared to the overall pressure variation in the cycle.

Temperature versus crank angle

Figure 5 illustrates the adiabatic properties of a real heat exchanger. The straight lines represent the temperatures of the solid portion of the heat exchanger, and the curves are the gas temperatures of the respective spaces.  The gas temperature fluctuations are caused by the effects of compression and expansion in the engine, together with non-ideal heat exchangers which have a limited rate of heat transfer.  When the gas temperature deviates above and below the heat exchanger temperature, it causes thermodynamic losses known as "heat transfer losses" or "hysteresis losses".  However, the heat exchangers still work well enough to allow the real cycle to be effective, even if the actual thermal efficiency of the overall system is only about half of the theoretical limit.

Cumulative heat and work energy

Figure 6 shows a graph of the alpha-type Stirling engine data, where 'Q' denotes heat energy, and 'W' denotes work energy.  The blue dotted line shows the work output of the compression space. As the trace dips down, work is done on the gas as it is compressed.  During the expansion process of the cycle, some work is actually done on the compression piston, as reflected by the upward movement of the trace. At the end of the cycle, this value is negative, indicating that compression piston requires a net input of work. The blue solid line shows the heat flowing out of the cooler heat exchanger. The heat from the cooler and the work from the compression piston have the same cycle energy. This is consistent with the zero-net heat transfer of the regenerator (solid green line). As would be expected, the heater and the expansion space both have positive energy flow. The black dotted line shows the net work output of the cycle. On this trace, the cycle ends higher than it started, indicating that the heat engine converts energy from heat into work.

See also
 Pseudo Stirling cycle
 Stirling engine
 Stirling radioisotope generator

References

External links
 I. Urieli  Stirling Cycle Machine Analysis
 Polytropic cycle inside Stirling engine Stirling engine cycle

Category:Thermodynamic cycles
Category:Stirling engines

fr:Cycle de stirling


Mridangam

The mridangam is a percussion instrument of ancient origin. It is the primary rhythmic accompaniment in a Carnatic music ensemble, and in Dhrupad, where it is known as the pakhawaj.

During a percussion ensemble, the mridangam is often accompanied by the ghatam, kanjira, and morsing.

Etymology
The word "Mridangam" is Sandhi or union of the two Sanskrit words mŗt (clay or earth) and anga (limb), as early Mridangam were made of hardened clay.

Legend
In ancient Hindu sculpture, painting, and mythology, the mridangam is often depicted as the instrument of choice for a number of deities including Ganesha (the remover of obstacles) and Nandi, who is the vehicle and follower of Shiva.  Nandi is said to have played the mridangam during Shiva's primordial tandava dance, causing a divine rhythm to resound across the heavens.  The mridangam is thus also known as "deva vaadyam," or "Divine Instrument".

History
Over the years, the mridangam evolved to be made of different kinds of wood due to its increased durability, and today, its body is constructed from wood of the jackfruit tree.  It is widely believed that the tabla, the mridangam's Hindustani musical counterpart, was first constructed by splitting a mridangam in half.  With the development of the mridangam came the tala (rhythm) system.

Mridangam has a large role in Newa music.  One of the earliest Nepal Bhasa manuscripts on music is a treatise on this instrument called Mridanga anukaranam.  The importance of a beating has changed over the years.  In the old days, percussionists only used to accompany the lead player like the vocalist but this time their development is not restricted to accompaniment only but also to play one instrument shows.

Tamil culture

In Tamil culture, it is called a tannumai.  The earliest mention of the mridangam in Tamil literature is found perhaps in the Sangam literature where the instrument is known as 'tannumai'.  In later works like the Silappadikaram also we find detailed references to it as in the Natyasastra.  During the Sangam period, it was one of the principal percussion instruments to sound the beginning of war along with murasu , tudi and parai because it was believed that its holy sound will deflect enemy arrows and protect the King.  During the post-Sangam period, as mentioned in the epic Silappadikaram , it formed a part of the antarakoṭṭu  - a musical ensemble at the beginning of dramatic performances that would later develop into Bharathanatyam. The player of this instrument held the title tannumai aruntozhil mutalvan .

Construction

The mridangam is a double-sided drum whose body is usually made using a hollowed piece of jackfruit wood about an inch thick.  The two mouths or apertures of the drum are covered with a goatskin and laced to each other with leather straps around the circumference of the drum.  These straps are put into a state of high tension to stretch out the circular membranes on either side of the hull, allowing them to resonate when struck.  These two membranes are dissimilar in width to allow for the production of both bass and treble sounds from the same drum.

The bass aperture is known as the thoppi or eda bhaaga and the smaller aperture is known as the valanthalai or bala bhaaga.  The smaller membrane, when struck, produces higher pitched sounds with a metallic timbre.  The wider aperture produces lower pitched sounds.  The goat skin covering the smaller aperture is anointed in the center with a black disk made of rice flour, ferric oxide powder and starch.  This black tuning paste is known as the satham or karanai and gives the mridangam its distinct metallic timbre.

The combination of two inhomogeneous circular membranes allows for the production of unique and distinct harmonics.  Pioneering work on the mathematics of these harmonics was done by Nobel Prize–winning physicist C. V. Raman.

Methods of use
Immediately prior to use in a performance, the leather covering the wider aperture is made moist and a spot of paste made from semolina (rawa) and water is applied to the center, which lowers the pitch of the left membrane and gives it a very powerful resonating bass sound. Nowadays, rubber gum is also used to loosen the membrane helping in creating the bass sound, and its advantage is that unlike semolina, it will not stick on hands.  The artist tunes the instrument by varying the tension in the leather straps spanning the hull of the instrument.  This is achieved by placing the mridangam upright with its larger side facing down, and then striking the tension-bearing straps located along of circumference of the right membrane with a heavy object (such as a stone).  A wooden peg is sometimes placed between the stone and the mridangam during the tuning procedure to ensure that the force is exerted at precisely the point where it is needed.  Striking the periphery of the right membrane in the direction toward the hull raises the pitch, while striking the periphery from the opposite side (away from the hull) lowers the pitch.  The pitch must be uniform and balanced at all points along the circumference of the valanthalai for the sound to resonate perfectly.  The pitch can be balanced with the aid of a pitch pipe or a tambura.  The larger membrane can also be tuned in a similar manner, though it is not done as frequently.  Note that since the leather straps are interwoven between both the smaller and larger aperture, adjusting the tension on one side often can affect the tension on the other.

Posture

The mridangam is played resting it almost parallel to the floor.  A right-handed mridangam artist plays the smaller membrane with their right hand and the larger membrane with the left hand.

The mridangam rests above the right ankle (but not on it), the right leg being slightly extended, while the left leg is bent and rests against the hull of the drum and against the torso of the artist. It is extremely important that the two sides of the hips are level, to prevent a habitual lateral pelvic tilt. For a left-handed percussionist, the legs and hands are switched.

There have recently been reports of altered gait and in balance in those that play the mridangam for extended periods of time (more than several hours a day). This is likely due to the different coordination requirements between the two sides of the upper body within the muscles of the abdomen, thorax, back and upper limbs.
Issues may also be caused by the asymmetrical leg positions at the hip encouraging a lateral pelvic tilt. Musicians should also watch out for the torso leaning over to the dominant side to view the head of the drum more easily, which unfortunately causes uneven shoulders. It is recommended that the musician sits completely straight, with hips, spine and shoulders completely even. Wooden stands may help alleviate issues with scoliosis.

This can result in difficulty in walking and running efficiently therefore may affect the artists' ability to play sport in the future. It is not known whether all round strength training, or playing the drum with the contralateral side of the body may prevent or alleviate these problems. Therefore, it is strongly advised to notify minors and their parents of issues associated with the drum.

When played without care to posture, the miruthangam has the potential to have life long effects to one's posture, including even hips, shoulders and scoliosis.

Regular stretching, weight training and sports is also crucial for those that play regularly.

Physiotherapists are likely to struggle to treat issues because they are unfamiliar with the unusual nature of the drum. Research on the miruthangam and postural issues are yet to be done.

Strokes
Basic strokes on the mridangam:

Tha: Non-vibrating tone played on the left hand side with the whole palm.
Dhi: Non-vibrating tone played on the centre black portion of the right hand side using middle, ring and small fingers.
Thom: Vibrating tone played on the outer side of the left hand side.
Nam: Vibrating tone played on the outer layer of the right hand side using index finger, minimizing the black portion vibration with middle or ring finger- place the third finger in the gap in ring and the second finger hits the outer layer of the right hand side of the Mrudangam (called 'Saatham').

There is also a parallel set of rhythmic solfa passages (known as "solkattu") which is sounded by mouth to mimic the sounds of the mridangam.  Students of this art are required to learn and vigorously practice both the fingering strokes and solfa passages to achieve proficiency and accuracy in this art.

Advanced strokes:

Many other strokes are also taught as the training becomes more advanced, which are generally used as aesthetic embellishments while playing.  These notes include gumki (or gamakam), and chaapu.  The combination of these finger strokes produces complex mathematical patterns that have both aesthetic and theoretical appeal.  Increasingly complex calculations (kanakku) and metres (nadais) may be employed when the mridangam is played.

Ta: A sharp flat note played with the index finger in the middle of the black portion on the right side of the mridangam.
Gumukki: A variating bass tone produced by playing on the inner layer of the lower end of the left hand side .Sound is produced only when there is a special applied paste.
Full Chapu: It is a vibrating tone played with the small finger on the right hand side, between the black patch and the outer layer.  The sound is tuned to the tonic of the tambura.
Ara Chapu: A note similar to Chapu, but is an octave higher, and is played with the side of the hand and less of the pinky.
Dheem: A vibrational tone version of nam played on the black portion of the mridangam.

Classically, training is by dharmic apprenticeship and includes both the yoga of drum construction and an emphasis on the internal discipline of voicing mridangam tone and rhythm both syllabically and linguistically, in accordance with Rigveda, more than on mere performance.

Types of Talam, each with specific angas and aksharas:
dhruva thaalam
matyatalam
roopaka talam
jhampe talam
Ata talam
ek talam
triputa talam

Modern usage

Today the mridangam is most widely used in Carnatic music performances.  These performances take place all over Southern India and are now popular all over the world.  As the principal rhythmic accompaniment (pakkavadyam), the mridangam has a place of utmost importance, ensuring all of the other artists are keeping their timing in check while providing support to the main artist.  One of the highlights of a modern Carnatic music concert is the percussion solo (thani avarthanam), where the mridangam artist and other percussionists such as kanjira, morsing, and ghatam vidwans exchange various complex rhythmic patterns, culminating in a grand finale where the main artists resumes where he or she left off.

Mridangam is used as an accompanying instrument in Yakshagana Himmela (orchestra) where it is called the maddale.  However, the mridangam used in Yakshagana is markedly different in structure and acoustics from the ones used in Carnatic music.

Significant players of the mridangam in modern times are T. K. Murthy, T. V. Gopalakrishnan,  Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman, Vellore G. Ramabhadran,  T S Nandakumar, Karaikudi Mani, Trichy Sankaran, Mannargudi Easwaran, Yella Venkateswara Rao, and Thiruvarur Bakthavathsalam, who have been playing and advancing the technique for decades.

Mridangamela

Mridangamela is a synchronized performance of mridangam by a group of artists. The concept of Mridangamela was developed by Korambu Subrahmanian Namboodiri and is currently propagated by Korambu Vikraman Namboodiri. Mridangamela is designed to be easily performed and managed even when performed by a group of children. It is common that the age of artists can range from 3 years to above. Most Mridangamelas are performed by children soon after their initiation to learning mridangam. Teaching method developed to train for Mridangamela made this easy to be taught and contributed to its popularity. In Koodalmanikyam Temple, Irinjalakuda, it is a tradition that Mridangamela is held by children of the age group 3 years and above, as soon as the Utsavam is flagged off. This is performed as an offering to Lord Bharata, who is the deity of Koodalmanikyam Temple. In 2014, Mridangamela by 75 children was performed at Chembai Sangeetholsavam, which is the annual Carnatic music festival held in Guruvayur by the Guruvayur Devaswom. Mridangamela had been performed at Chembai Sangeetholsavam for the past 35 years orchestrated by Korambu Mridanga Kalari.

Players
Over the years and especially during the early 20th century, great maestros of mridangam also arose, inevitably defining "schools" of mridangam with distinct playing styles.  Examples include the Puddukottai school and the Thanjavur school. The virtuosos Palani Subramaniam Pillai, Palghat Mani Iyer and C.S. Murugabhupathy contributed so much to the art that they are often referred to as the Mridangam Trinity.

Past players

Current players
 T. K. Murthy
 Umayalpuram K Sivaraman
 T. V. Gopalakrishnan
 T S Nandakumar
 Karaikudi Mani
 Thanjavur R. Ramamoorthy
 Trichy Sankaran
 Guruvayur Dorai
 Thiruvarur Bakthavathsalam
 Yella Venkateswara Rao

See also

Khol
Thavil
Karatalas
Trống cơm- a similar Vietnamese instrument

References

External links
 Rhythmic Syllables article by Mannarkoil J Balaji

Category:Carnatic music instruments
Category:Hand drums
Category:Battle drums
Category:Pitched percussion
Category:Indian musical instruments
Category:Asian percussion instruments


List of protected heritage sites in Sprimont

This table shows an overview of the protected heritage sites in the Walloon town Sprimont. This list is part of Belgium's national heritage.

|}

See also
 List of protected heritage sites in Liège (province)
Sprimont

References
 Belgian heritage register: Direction générale opérationnelle - Aménagement du territoire, Logement, Patrimoine et Energie (DG4)
 www.dglive.be

Sprimont
Category:Sprimont


Rs6313

In genetics, rs6313 also called T102C or C102T is a gene variation—a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)—in the human HTR2A gene that codes for the 5-HT2A receptor.
The SNP is a synonymous substitution located in exon 1 of the gene where it is involved in coding the 34th amino acid as serine.

As 5-HT2A is a neuroreceptor the SNP has been investigated in connection with brain functions and neuropsychiatric disorders, and it is perhaps the most investigated SNP for its gene.
Two other SNPs in HTR2A have also received much attention: rs6311 and His452Tyr (rs6314).
The T102C polymorphism has been shown to be in complete linkage disequilibrium with the rs6311 (A-1438G).

A less well investigated SNP of this gene is rs7997012.

Meta-analyses seem to indicate that the SNP is not directly associated with schizophrenia,
not with Alzheimer's Disease,
and two initial studies seem to indicate that it is not associated with Parkinson's disease.

There have been multiple studies of the effect of this SNP on clozapine treatment response in schizophrenia.
A meta-analysis published in 1998 found an association.

Individual studies
Many individual studies have been done to investigate possible effects of the rs6313 polymorphism on phenotypes such as personality traits or disorders and their endophenotypes.

The C-allele has been associated with higher extraversion personality scores among borderline personality disorder
 patients and the presence of visual and auditory hallucinations in patients with Late-onset Alzheimer's Disease.

Multiple studies have found that individuals with schizophrenia who are homozygous for the C-allele tend to do worse on working memory tasks than do individuals with a T-allele.

Rs6313 has also been shown to be associated with novelty seeking among Italian mood disorder patients
 and reward dependence in a German population.
 The SNP may also be associated with rheumatoid arthritis.

One study found no association between the SNP and suicidal behavior in a Chinese population,
 and another found no association with fibromyalgia syndrome.

References

Category:SNPs on chromosome 13


Shibli Sadique

Shibli Sadique is a Bangladesh Awami League politician and the incumbent Member of Parliament from Dinajpur-6. His father Md. Mostafizur Rahman Fizu also represented Dinajpur-6 in the Jatiya Sangsad.

Career
Sadique was elected to Parliament on 5 January 2014 from Dinajpur-6 as a Bangladesh Awami League candidate. In September 2018, local Awami League politicians in Dinajpur declared him unwanted in the district.

Personal life
Sadique married folk singer Salma Akhter on 25 January 2011. They divorced in 2016.

References

Category:Bangladesh Awami League politicians
Category:Living people
Category:10th Jatiya Sangsad members
Category:11th Jatiya Sangsad members
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:People from Dinajpur District, Bangladesh


Shrivardhan Fort

Shrivardhan Fort is one of the two hill forts that constitute the Rajmachi fortification, the other being Manaranjan Fort. It is located in Rajmachi village which 8.5 km from Lonavala in the Sahyadris mountain range. At 900 m(3000 feet) above sea level it was the taller of the two peaks and was named after Shrivardhan Ganpatrao Patwardhan. Other than a rampart there is no visible construction. It was probably used at a watchtower for the Sahyadri region. There are two water tanks at the top of the hill but one of them has an iron pillar in it.

How to reach
There are two ways to reach the fort
1) Lonavla Tungarli way- It is an easy path which takes about 1 hour to reach the base village Udhewadi
2) Karjat-kondivade way- it requires a trekking up the hill for 2-hour. This route passes through dense forest area through the Ulhas river valley.

References

See also
 List of forts in Maharashtra
 List of forts in India
 Shivaji Maharaj
 Marathi people
 List of Maratha dynasties and states
 Maratha War of Independence
 Battles involving the Maratha Empire
 Maratha Army
 Maratha titles
 Military history of India
 List of people involved in the Maratha Empire
 Kondana Caves

Category:Buildings and structures of the Maratha Empire
Category:Forts in Pune district
Category:16th-century forts in India
Category:Buildings and structures in Maharashtra
Category:Caves of Maharashtra
Category:Tourist attractions in Pune district
Category:Former populated places in India
Category:Hiking trails in India

*
Category:Hiking


European Southern Observatory

The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is a 16-nation intergovernmental research organisation for ground-based astronomy. Created in 1962, ESO has provided astronomers with state-of-the-art research facilities and access to the southern sky. The organisation employs about 730 staff members and receives annual member state contributions of approximately €162 million. Its observatories are located in northern Chile.

ESO has built and operated some of the largest and most technologically advanced telescopes. These include the 3.6 m New Technology Telescope, an early pioneer in the use of active optics, and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which consists of four individual 8.2 m telescopes and four smaller auxiliary telescopes which can all work together or separately. The Atacama Large Millimeter Array observes the universe in the millimetre and submillimetre wavelength ranges, and is the world's largest ground-based astronomy project to date. It was completed in March 2013 in an international collaboration by Europe (represented by ESO), North America, East Asia and Chile.

Currently under construction is the Extremely Large Telescope. It will use a 39.3-metre-diameter segmented mirror, and become the world's largest optical reflecting telescope when operational in 2024. Its light-gathering power will allow detailed studies of planets around other stars, the first objects in the universe, supermassive black holes, and the nature and distribution of the dark matter and dark energy which dominate the universe.

ESO's observing facilities have made astronomical discoveries and produced several astronomical catalogues. Its findings include the discovery of the most distant gamma-ray burst and evidence for a black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. In 2004, the VLT allowed astronomers to obtain the first picture of an extrasolar planet (2M1207b) orbiting a brown dwarf 173 light-years away. The High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument installed on the older ESO 3.6 m telescope led to the discovery of extrasolar planets, including Gliese 581c—one of the smallest planets seen outside the solar system.

History

The idea that European astronomers should establish a common large observatory was broached by Walter Baade and Jan Oort at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands in spring 1953. It was pursued by Oort, who gathered a group of astronomers in Leiden to consider it on June 21 that year. Immediately thereafter, the subject was further discussed at the Groningen conference in the Netherlands. On January 26, 1954, an ESO declaration was signed by astronomers from six European countries expressing the wish that a joint European observatory be established in the southern hemisphere.

At the time, all reflector telescopes with an aperture of 2 metres or more were located in the northern hemisphere. The decision to build the observatory in the southern hemisphere resulted from the necessity of observing the southern sky; some research subjects (such as the central parts of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds) were accessible only from the southern hemisphere.

Although it was initially planned to set up telescopes in South Africa (where several European observatories were located), tests from 1955 to 1963 demonstrated that a site in the Andes was preferable. On November 15, 1963 Chile was chosen as the site for ESO's observatory. The decision was preceded by the ESO Convention, signed 5 October 1962 by Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Sweden. Otto Heckmann was nominated as the organisation's first director general on 1 November 1962.

A preliminary proposal for a convention of astronomy organisations in these five countries was drafted in 1954. Although some amendments were made in the initial document, the convention proceeded slowly until 1960 when it was discussed during that year's committee meeting. The new draft was examined in detail, and a council member of CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) highlighted the need for a convention between governments (in addition to organisations).

The convention and government involvement became pressing due to rapidly rising costs of site-testing expeditions. The final 1962 version was largely adopted from the CERN convention, due to similarities between the organisations and the dual membership of some members.

In 1966, the first ESO telescope at the La Silla site in Chile began operating. Because CERN (like ESO) had sophisticated instrumentation, the astronomy organisation frequently turned to the nuclear-research body for advice and a collaborative agreement between ESO and CERN was signed in 1970. Several months later, ESO's telescope division moved into a CERN building in Geneva and ESO's Sky Atlas Laboratory was established on CERN property. ESO's European departments moved into the new ESO headquarters in Garching (near Munich), Germany in 1980.

Member states

Chilean observation sites

Although ESO is headquartered in Germany, its telescopes and observatories are in northern Chile, where the organisation operates advanced ground-based astronomical facilities:
 La Silla, which hosts the New Technology Telescope (NTT)
 Paranal, where the Very Large Telescope (VLT) is located
 Llano de Chajnantor, which hosts the APEX (Atacama Pathfinder Experiment) submillimetre telescope and where ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is located

These are among the best locations for astronomical observations in the southern hemisphere. An ESO project is the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), a 40-metre-class telescope based on a five-mirror design and the formerly planned Overwhelmingly Large Telescope. The ELT will be the largest visible and near-infrared telescope in the world. ESO began its design in early 2006, and aimed to begin construction in 2012. Construction work at the ELT site started in June 2014. As decided by the ESO council on 26 April 2010, a fourth site (Cerro Armazones) is to be home to ELT.

Each year about 2,000 requests are made for the use of ESO telescopes, for four to six times more nights than are available. Observations made with these instruments appear in a number of peer-reviewed publications annually; in 2017, more than 1,000 reviewed papers based on ESO data were published.

ESO telescopes generate large amounts of data at a high rate, which are stored in a permanent archive facility at ESO headquarters. The archive contains more than 1.5 million images (or spectra) with a total volume of about 65 terabytes (65,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data.

La Silla

La Silla, located in the southern Atacama Desert  north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of , is the home of ESO's original observation site. Like other observatories in the area, La Silla is far from sources of light pollution and has one of the darkest night skies on Earth. In La Silla, ESO operates three telescopes: a 3.6-metre telescope, the New Technology Telescope (NTT) and the 2.2-metre Max-Planck-ESO Telescope.

The observatory hosts visitor instruments, attached to a telescope for the duration of an observational run and then removed. La Silla also hosts national telescopes, such as the 1.2-metre Swiss and the 1.5-metre Danish telescopes.

About 300 reviewed publications annually are attributable to the work of the observatory. Discoveries made with La Silla telescopes include the HARPS-spectrograph detection of the planets orbiting within the Gliese 581 planetary system, which contains the first known rocky planet in a habitable zone outside the solar system. Several telescopes at La Silla played a role in linking gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic explosions in the universe since the Big Bang, with the explosions of massive stars. The ESO La Silla Observatory also played a role in the study of supernova SN 1987A.

ESO 3.6-metre telescope

The ESO 3.6-metre telescope began operations in 1977. It has been upgraded, including the installation of a new secondary mirror. The conventionally designed horseshoe-mount telescope was primarily used for infrared spectroscopy; it now hosts the HARPS spectrograph, used in search of extra-solar planets and for asteroseismology. The telescope was designed for very high long-term radial velocity accuracy (on the order of 1 m/s).

New Technology Telescope

The New Technology Telescope (NTT) is an altazimuth, 3.58-metre Ritchey–Chrétien telescope, inaugurated in 1989 and the first in the world with a computer-controlled main mirror. The flexible mirror's shape is adjusted during observation to preserve optimal image quality. The secondary mirror position is also adjustable in three directions. This technology (developed by ESO and known as active optics) is now applied to all major telescopes, including the VLT and the future ELT.

The design of the octagonal enclosure housing the NTT is innovative. The telescope dome is relatively small and ventilated by a system of flaps directing airflow smoothly across the mirror, reducing turbulence and resulting in sharper images.

MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope

The 2.2-metre telescope has been in operation at La Silla since early 1984, and is on indefinite loan to ESO from the Max Planck Society (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften, or MPG, in German). Telescope time is shared between MPG and ESO observing programmes, while operation and maintenance of the telescope are ESO's responsibility.

Its instrumentation includes a 67-million-pixel wide-field imager (WFI) with a field of view as large as the full moon, which has taken many images of celestial objects. Other instruments used are GROND (Gamma-Ray Burst Optical Near-Infrared Detector), which seeks the afterglow of gamma-ray bursts—the most powerful explosions in the universe, and the high-resolution spectrograph FEROS (Fiber-fed Extended Range Optical Spectrograph), used to make detailed studies of stars.

Other telescopes

La Silla also hosts several national and project telescopes not operated by ESO. Among them are the Swiss Euler Telescope, the Danish National Telescope and the REM, TRAPPIST and TAROT telescopes.
 The Euler Telescope is a 1.2-metre telescope built and operated by the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. It is used to conduct high-precision radial velocity measurements primarily used in the search for large extrasolar planets in the southern celestial hemisphere. Its first discovery was a planet orbiting Gliese 86. Other observing programmes focus on variable stars, asteroseismology, gamma-ray bursts, monitoring active galactic nuclei (AGN) and gravitational lenses.
 The 1.54-metre Danish National Telescope was built by Grubb-Parsons and has been in use at La Silla since 1979. The telescope has an off-axis mount, and the optics are a Ritchey-Chrétien design. Because of the telescope's mount and limited space inside the dome, it has significant pointing restrictions.

 The Rapid Eye Mount telescope is a small rapid-reaction automatic telescope with a primary  mirror. The telescope, in an altazimuth mount, began operation in October 2002. The primary purpose of the telescope is to follow the afterglow of the GRBs detected by the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission satellite.
 The Belgian TRAPPIST is a joint venture between the University of Liège and Geneva Observatory. The 0.60-metre telescope is specialised in comets, exoplanets, and was one of the few telescopes that observed a stellar occultation of the dwarf planet Eris, revealing that it may be smaller than Pluto.
 The Quick-action telescope for transient objects, TAROT, is a very fast-moving optical robotic telescope able to observe a gamma-ray burst from its beginning. Satellites detecting GRBs send signals to TAROT, which can provide a sub-arc second position to the astronomical community. Data from the TAROT telescope is also useful in studying the evolution of GRBs, the physics of a fireball and its surrounding material. It is operated from the Haute-Provence Observatory in France.

Paranal

The Paranal Observatory is located atop Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Cerro Paranal is a  mountain about  south of Antofagasta and  from the Pacific coast.

The observatory has seven major telescopes operating in visible and infrared light: the four  telescopes of the Very Large Telescope, the  VLT Survey Telescope (VST) and the  Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy. In addition, there are four  auxiliary telescopes forming an array used for interferometric observations. In March 2008, Paranal was the location for several scenes of the 22nd James Bond film, Quantum of Solace.

Very Large Telescope

The main facility at Paranal is the VLT, which consists of four nearly identical  unit telescopes (UTs), each hosting two or three instruments. These large telescopes can also work together in groups of two or three as a giant interferometer. The ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) allows astronomers to see details up to 25 times finer than those seen with the individual telescopes. The light beams are combined in the VLTI with a complex system of mirrors in tunnels, where the light paths must diverge less than 1/1000 mm over 100 metres. The VLTI can achieve an angular resolution of milliarcseconds, equivalent to the ability to see the headlights of a car on the moon.

The first of the UTs had its first light in May 1998, and was offered to the astronomical community on 1 April 1999. The other telescopes followed suit in 1999 and 2000, making the VLT fully operational. Four 1.8-metre auxiliary telescopes (ATs), installed between 2004 and 2007, have been added to the VLTI for accessibility when the UTs are used for other projects.

Data from the VLT have led to the publication of an average of more than one peer-reviewed scientific paper per day; in 2017, over 600 reviewed scientific papers were published based on VLT data. The VLT's scientific discoveries include imaging an extrasolar planet, tracking individual stars moving around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way and observing the afterglow of the furthest known gamma-ray burst.

At the Paranal inauguration in March 1999, names of celestial objects in the Mapuche language were chosen to replace the technical designations of the four VLT Unit Telescopes (UT1–UT4). An essay contest was prior arranged for schoolchildren in the region concerning the meaning of these names which attracted many entries dealing with the cultural heritage of ESO's host country. A 17-year-old adolescent from Chuquicamata, near Calama, submitted the winning essay and was awarded an amateur telescope during the inauguration. The four unit telescopes, UT1, UT2, UT3 and UT4, are since known as Antu (sun), Kueyen (moon), Melipal (Southern Cross), and Yepun (Evening Star), with the latter having been originally mistranslated as "Sirius", instead of "Venus".

Survey telescopes

Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) is housed on the peak adjacent to the one hosting the VLT, sharing observational conditions. VISTA's main mirror is  across, a highly curved mirror for its size and quality. Its deviations from a perfect surface are less than a few thousandths the thickness of a human hair, and its construction and polishing presented a challenge.

VISTA was conceived and developed by a consortium of 18 universities in the United Kingdom led by Queen Mary, University of London, and it became an in-kind contribution to ESO as part of the UK's ratification agreement. The telescope's design and construction were managed by the Science and Technology Facilities Council's UK Astronomy Technology Centre (STFC, UK ATC). Provisional acceptance of VISTA was formally granted by ESO at the December 2009 ceremony at ESO headquarters in Garching, which was attended by representatives of Queen Mary, University of London and STFC. Since then the telescope has been operated by ESO, capturing quality images since it began operation.

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) is a state-of-the-art,  telescope equipped with OmegaCAM, a 268-megapixel CCD camera with a field of view four times the area of the full moon. It complements VISTA by surveying the sky in visible light. The VST (which became operational in 2011) is the result of a joint venture between ESO and the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte (Naples), a research centre at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics INAF.

The scientific goals of both surveys range from the nature of dark energy to assessing near-Earth objects. Teams of European astronomers will conduct the surveys; some will cover most of the southern sky, while others will focus on smaller areas. VISTA and the VST are expected to produce large amounts of data; a single picture taken by VISTA has 67 megapixels, and images from OmegaCam (on the VST) will have 268 megapixels. The two survey telescopes collect more data every night than all the other instruments on the VLT combined. The VST and VISTA produce more than 100 terabytes of data per year.

Llano de Chajnantor

The Llano de Chajnantor is a  plateau in the Atacama Desert, about  east of San Pedro de Atacama. The site is  higher than the Mauna Kea Observatory and  higher than the VLT in Cerro Paranal. It is dry and inhospitable to humans, but a good site for submillimetre astronomy; because water vapour molecules in Earth's atmosphere absorb and attenuate submillimetre radiation, a dry site is required for this type of radio astronomy. The telescopes are:
 Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT; not operated by ESO)
 Atacama Pathfinder Experiment
 Atacama Large Millimeter Array
 Q/U Imaging Experiment (QUIET; not operated by ESO)
 POLARBEAR (on the Huan Tran Telescope; not operated by ESO)

APEX and ALMA are telescopes designed for millimetre and submillimetre astronomy. This type of astronomy is a relatively unexplored frontier, revealing a universe which cannot be seen in more-familiar visible or infrared light and ideal for studying the "cold universe"; light at these wavelengths shines from vast cold clouds in interstellar space at temperatures only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero. Astronomers use this light to study the chemical and physical conditions in these molecular clouds, the dense regions of gas and cosmic dust where new stars are being born. Seen in visible light, these regions of the universe are often dark and obscure due to dust; however, they shine brightly in the millimetre and submillimetre portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. This wavelength range is also ideal for studying some of the earliest (and most distant) galaxies in the universe, whose light has been redshifted into longer wavelengths from the expansion of the universe.

Atacama Pathfinder Experiment

The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope is operated by ESO in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany and the Onsala Space Observatory in Onsala, Sweden. It is a -diameter telescope operating at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths, the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere. APEX is a precursor of ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter Array), an astronomical interferometer which ESO and its international partners is building on the Chajnantor plateau. APEX is based on a prototype ALMA antenna that is modified to be operated as single dish radio telescope.

Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

ALMA is an astronomical interferometer of innovative design, initially composed of 66 high-precision antennas and operating at wavelengths of 0.3 to 3.6 mm. Its main array will have 50  antennas acting as a single interferometer. An additional compact array of four 12-metre and twelve  antennas is also planned. The antennas can be arranged across the desert plateau over distances from 150 metres to , which will give ALMA a variable "zoom". The array will be able to probe the universe at millimetre and submillimeter wavelengths with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, with vision up to ten times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope. These images will complement those made with the VLT Interferometer. ALMA is a collaboration between East Asia (Japan and Taiwan), Europe (ESO), North America (USA and Canada) and Chile.

The scientific goals of ALMA include studying the origin and formation of stars, galaxies, and planets with observations of molecular gas and dust, studying distant galaxies towards the edge of the observable universe and studying relic radiation from the Big Bang. A call for ALMA science proposals was issued on 31 March 2011, and early observations began on 3 October.

ESO telescopes: research and discoveries

Search for extrasolar planets

"Is there life elsewhere in the universe?" is one of humankind's most profound unanswered questions. A step in the attempt to answer this question is the search for planets outside the Solar System. ESO's observatories are equipped with an arsenal of instruments for finding, studying, and monitoring extrasolar planets. In 2004, the Very Large Telescope detected a faint glow from an apparent planet orbiting a star about 200 light-years from earth. A year later, this detection was confirmed as the first picture of an exoplanet ever recorded. Although the planet is large (five times more massive than Jupiter), this observation is a first step toward identifying the physical structure and chemical composition of exoplanets.

Despite the fact that planets seem very common in the universe they are tiny, faint objects at cosmic scales; this makes their detection difficult with current technology. For this reason, most exoplanets have been detected with indirect methods. Of these, the most successful has been the radial velocity method. HARPS (the High Accuracy Radial-velocity Planet Searcher) has allowed the discovery of a number of planets with masses below that of Neptune orbiting nearby stars. However, few of these planets are among the smallest ever discovered, or reside in its star's habitable zone. The possibility exists that one of these planets is covered by oceans; this discovery is an encouraging result in the search for planets which could support life.

The Danish 1.54-metre telescope at La Silla participated in the discovery of one of the most Earth-like planets found to date. The planet, detected using the microlensing technique and about five times as massive as Earth, circles its parent star in about 10 years and most certainly has a rocky and icy surface.

In 2017, Breakthrough Initiatives and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) entered a collaboration to enable and implement a search for habitable planets in the nearby star system, Alpha Centauri. The agreement involves Breakthrough Initiatives providing funding for an upgrade to the VISIR (VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared) instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. This upgrade will greatly increase the likelihood of planet detection in the system.

In August 2016, the European Southern Observatory announced the detection of a planet orbiting the third star in the Alpha Centauri system, Proxima Centauri. The planet, called Proxima Centauri b, could be a potential target for one of the projects of Breakthrough Initiatives.

Breakthrough Starshot is a proof of concept mission to send a fleet of ultra-fast light-driven nanocraft to explore the Alpha Centauri star system, which could pave the way for a first launch within the next generation. An objective of the mission would be to make a fly-by of and possibly photograph any Earth-like worlds that might exist in the system.

In March 2019, ESO astronomers, employing the GRAVITY instrument on their Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), announced the first direct detection of an exoplanet, HR 8799 e, using optical interferometry.

Age of the universe

With the Very Large Telescope, astronomers have made an independent determination of the age of the universe and shed new light on the earliest stages of the Milky Way. For the first time, they measured the amount of the radioactive isotope uranium-238 in a star born when the Milky Way was still forming.

Like carbon dating over longer timescales, the uranium clock measures the age of a star. It shows that this star is 12.5 billion years old. Because the star cannot be older than the universe itself, the universe must be older than this. This agrees with known cosmology, which gives an age of the universe of 13.8 billion years. The star (and the Milky Way) must have formed soon after the Big Bang.

Another result is the first measurement of the beryllium content of two stars in a Milky Way globular cluster. With this measurement, astronomers found that the first generation of stars in our galaxy must have formed soon after the end of the 200-million-year "Dark Age" following the Big Bang.

Milky Way black hole

Astronomers long suspected that a black hole exists at the center of the Milky Way, but their theory was unproven. Conclusive evidence was obtained after 16 years of monitoring the Galactic Center with ESO telescopes at the La Silla and Paranal observatories.

Stars at the centre of the Milky Way are so densely packed that special imaging techniques (such as adaptive optics) were needed to boost the resolution of the VLT. Thanks to these techniques, astronomers were able to watch individual stars with unprecedented accuracy as they circled the Galactic Center. Their paths conclusively demonstrated that they were orbiting in the immense gravitational grip of a supermassive black hole nearly three million times more massive than the sun. The VLT observations also revealed flashes of infrared light emerging from the region at regular intervals. While the cause of this phenomenon is unknown, observers have suggested that the black hole may be spinning rapidly.

The VLT has also peered into the centre of galaxies beyond our own, where clear signs of activity produced by supermassive black holes are found. In the active galaxy NGC 1097, a complex network of filaments spiraling from the main part of the galaxy to its centre was seen in great detail.

Gamma-ray bursts

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are bursts of highly energetic gamma rays lasting from less than one second to several minutes. They are known to occur at great distances from earth, near the limits of the observable universe.

The VLT has observed the afterglow of the farthest known gamma-ray burst. With a measured redshift of 8.2, the light from this very remote astronomical source has taken more than 13 billion years to reach the earth. It occurred when the universe was less than 600 million years old (less than five percent of its present age), and released 300 times as much energy in a few seconds as the sun will in its entire lifetime (more than 10 billion years).

The nature of these explosions has long been a mystery. Observations show that GRBs are one of two types: short- (less than a few seconds) and long-duration. Until 2003, it was suspected that two different types of cosmic event caused them. In 2003, ESO telescopes followed the aftermath of an explosion for one month. Their data showed that the light had similar properties to that of a supernova, and allowed astronomers to link long-duration GRBs with the ultimate explosions of massive stars (hypernovae). In 2005, ESO telescopes detected visible light after a short-duration burst and tracked this light for three weeks. The conclusion was that short-duration bursts could not be caused by a hypernova; instead, it is thought that they originate in the violent merges of neutron stars or black holes.
Observations of gamma-ray-burst afterglows were coordinated between the VLT and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) to identify the possible counterpart (and its decay) at submillimeter wavelengths.

Digital archives

The Science Archive Operation Group receives and redistributes ESO data and provides archival support. About 200 Terabytes (TB) of public data are distributed per year through the ESO archive. The archive is about 1.01 Petabytes (PB), with an input rate of about 131 TB per year; this is being increased by a factor of 10 or so due to the survey telescopes' data-production rate.

Breakthroughs in telescope, detector and computer technology now allow astronomical surveys to produce large numbers of images, spectra and catalogues. These data sets cover the sky at all wavelengths, from gamma- and X-rays through optical, infrared and radio waves. Astronomers are developing ways to make the large amount of data easily accessible. These techniques use the grid paradigm of distributed computing with seamless, transparent access to data through virtual observatories (VOs). As a physical observatory has telescopes with unique astronomical instruments, a VO consists of data centres with unique collections of astronomical data, software systems and processing capabilities. This global, community-based initiative is being developed under the International Virtual Observatory Alliance and in Europe as part of the EURO-VO project.

VOs have proven their effectiveness in a number of ways, including discovering 31 optically faint, obscured quasar candidates in existing Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey(GOODS) fields (quadrupling the number previously found). The discovery means that surveys of supermassive black holes have underestimated their numbers by a factor of two to five.

Major discoveries

 Proxima Centauri b, the closest potentially habitable exoplanet
 An ESO team led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé found Proxima Centauri b. The discovery was reported in Nature on 24 August 2016.
 Stars orbiting Milky Way black hole
 Several of ESO telescopes were used in a 16-year study to obtain the most detailed view to date of the surroundings of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy.
 Accelerating universe
 Two independent research teams have shown that the universe's expansion is accelerating, based on exploding-star observations with astronomical telescopes at La Silla. The research teams were awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery.
 Oldest known Milky Way star
 Using ESO's VLT, astronomers have measured the age of the oldest known star in the Milky Way. At 13.2 billion years, the star was born in the universe's earliest era of star formation. However, the oldest star seems to be 13.6 billion years old, and the Methuselah star might be even older.
 Measuring exoplanet spectra and atmosphere
 The atmosphere around an exoplanet has been analysed for the first time with the VLT. The planet, GJ 1214b, was studied as it passed in front of its parent star and starlight passed through the planet's atmosphere.
 First image of exoplanet
 The VLT has obtained the first image of a planet outside the Solar System. The 5-Jupiter-mass planet orbits a failed star—a brown dwarf—at a distance of 55 times the mean Earth-Sun distance.
 Rich planetary system
 Astronomers using HARPS have discovered a planetary system (with at least five planets) orbiting a sunlike star, HD 10180. Two other planets may be present, one of which would have the lowest mass ever found.
 Supermassive black hole flares at Milky Way centre
 The VLT and APEX collaborated to study violent flares from the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, revealing material stretched as it orbits in the intense gravitational field near the central black hole.
 Gamma-ray bursts
 ESO telescopes have provided proof that long gamma-ray bursts are linked with the explosion of massive stars; short gamma-ray bursts seem to be produced by merging neutron stars.
 Milky Way stellar motion
 After more than 1,000 nights of observation at La Silla over a 15-year period, astronomers have determined the motion of more than 14,000 sunlike stars in the vicinity of the sun (demonstrating that the Milky Way is more turbulent and chaotic than previously thought).
 Cosmic-temperature measurements
 The VLT has detected, for the first time, carbon-monoxide molecules in a galaxy located almost 11 billion light-years away. This has allowed astronomers to obtain a precise measurement of cosmic temperature at such a remote location.

Outreach

Outreach activities are carried out by the ESO education and Public Outreach Department (ePOD). These include a range of programs and products that aim to meet the requirements of media, science communicators and the public, such as press releases, images, videos and printed material.
Events such as the 2009 International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) (with IAU and UNESCO), VLT First Light, Astronomy Online and the Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 impact, have been reported by the Department. ePOD organises exhibitions and educational campaigns, such as Venus Transit, Science on Stage and Science in School.

ePOD also manages the ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre, an astronomy centre located at the site of the ESO Headquarters in Garching bei München, which was inaugurated 26 April 2018.

A collection of photos and videos can be found in the ESO Public Image Gallery and Video Library. Products from educational material to press kits may be downloaded from the ePOD website or ordered in physical form.

As part of the Department, European outreach for the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides comprehensive information about the telescope and its scientific discoveries. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) Press Office is also hosted by ePOD.

Publications

The ESO Annual Report details activities across the organisation and outlines scientific, technical and organisational highlights. All issues dating back to the first report in 1964 are available for download.

ESO press releases describe scientific, technical and organisational developments and achievements and results obtained by scientists with ESO facilities. The organisation publishes three types of press releases. Science releases describe results (usually appearing in a peer-reviewed journal) involving data from ESO observatories or staff. Organisational releases cover a range of themes related to ESO operations, including news on current and future observatories, new astronomical instruments and announcements of exhibitions worldwide. ESO also selects its best astronomical images, and presents them publicly in periodic photo releases. All press releases (dating back to 1985) are available online. There are child-friendly versions and press releases translated into the languages of ESO's member countries.

The Messenger is a quarterly journal which has presented ESO's activities to the public since May 1974. All back copies are available for download. ESO also publishes announcements and Pictures of the Week on its website. Announcements are shorter than press releases (typically less than 200 words) highlighting stories and events of interest to the community. Pictures of the Week show beautiful (or interesting) photos from ESO telescopes, and may highlight recent events or archival photos. All former entries are available on the website. ESO also publishes  several newsletters aimed at scientists and the general public; these are available upon subscription.

The ESOcast is a video-podcast series dedicated to reporting news and research from ESO.

In 2013, the IMAX documentary Hidden Universe 3D was produced in co-operation of Cinema Productions, Film Victoria, Swinburne University of Technology, and the European Southern Observatory.

Video gallery

Image gallery

These images are from ESO's top-100 list.

See also

 Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, U.S. main site in Chile
 Extremely Large Telescope, ESO's largest telescope under construction
 European Northern Observatory
 Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, telescopes on the Canary Islands, Spain
 Teide Observatory, telescopes on the Canary Islands, Spain
 CERN

References

Bibliography

External links

 Atacama Large Millimeter Array
 APEX telescope
 ESO
 ESO Top 100 Images
 Webpage for the ESO telescopes at La Silla Observatory
 Paranal Observatory
 James Bond at Paranal
 ESOcast
 ESO Media on Youtube
 ESO Vimeo channel
 2011 video explaining the current and planned work of ESO

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