Canonization

Canonization, in its most exact historical sense, refers to a papal declaration that the Catholic faithful may venerate a particular deceased member of the church. Popes began making such decrees in the tenth century. Up to that point, the local bishops governed the veneration of holy men and women within their own dioceses; and there may have been, for any particular saint, no formal decree at all. In subsequent centuries, the procedures became increasingly regularized and the popes began restricting to themselves the right to declare someone a Catholic saint. In contemporary usage, the term is understood to refer to the act by which any Christian church declares that a person who has died is a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the list of recognized saints, called the "canon." Today, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion speak of "canonized" saints, in addition to the Roman Catholic Church.

Historical development
The Roman Rite's Canon of the Mass contains only the names of martyrs, along with that of the Blessed Virgin Mary and, since 1962, that of Saint Joseph her spouse.

By the fourth century, however, "confessors"—people who had confessed their faith not by dying but by word and life—began to be venerated publicly. Examples of such people are Saint Hilarion and Saint Ephrem the Syrian in the East, and Saint Martin of Tours and Saint Hilary of Poitiers in the West. Their names were inserted in the diptychs, the lists of saints explicitly venerated in the liturgy, and their tombs were honoured in like manner as those of the martyrs. Since the witness of their lives was not as unequivocal as that of the martyrs, they were venerated publicly only with the approval by the local bishop. This process is often referred to as "local canonization".

This approval was required even for veneration of a reputed martyr. In his history of the Donatist heresy, Saint Optatus recounts that at Carthage a Catholic matron, named Lucilla, incurred the censures of the Church for having kissed the relics of a reputed martyr whose claims to martyrdom had not been juridically proved. And Saint Cyprian (died 258) recommended that the utmost diligence be observed in investigating the claims of those who were said to have died for the faith. All the circumstances accompanying the martyrdom were to be inquired into; the faith of those who suffered, and the motives that animated them were to be rigorously examined, in order to prevent the recognition of undeserving persons. Evidence was sought from the court records of the trials or from people who had been present at the trials.

Augustine of Hippo (died 430) tells of the procedure which was followed in his day for the recognition of a martyr. The bishop of the diocese in which the martyrdom took place set up a canonical process for conducting the inquiry with the utmost severity. The acts of the process were sent either to the metropolitan or primate, who carefully examined the cause, and, after consultation with the suffragan bishops, declared whether the deceased was worthy of the name of 'martyr' and public veneration.

Though not "canonizations" in the narrow sense, acts of formal recognition, such as the erection of an altar over the saint's tomb or transferring the saint's relics to a church, were preceded by formal inquiries into the sanctity of the person's life and the miracles attributed to that person's intercession.

Such acts of recognition of a saint were authoritative, in the strict sense, only for the diocese or ecclesiastical province for which they were issued, but with the spread of the fame of a saint, were often accepted elsewhere also.

Anglican Communion

The Church of England, the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion, canonized Charles I as a saint, in the Convocations of Canterbury and York of 1660.

Catholic Church

Nature
In the Catholic Church, both Latin and constituent Eastern churches, the act of canonization is reserved to the Apostolic See and occurs at the conclusion of a long process requiring extensive proof that the candidate for canonization lived and died in such an exemplary and holy way that they are worthy to be recognized as a saint. The Church's official recognition of sanctity implies that the person is now in Heaven and that they may be publicly invoked and mentioned officially in the liturgy of the Church, including in the Litany of the Saints.

In the Catholic Church, canonization is a decree that allows universal veneration of the saint in the liturgy. For permission to venerate merely locally, only beatification is needed.

Procedure prior to reservation to the Apostolic See

For several centuries the Bishops, or in some places only the Primates and Patriarchs, could grant martyrs and confessors public ecclesiastical honor; such honor, however, was always decreed only for the local territory of which the grantors had jurisdiction. Only acceptance of the cultus by the Pope made the cultus universal, because he alone can rule the universal Catholic Church. Abuses, however, crept into this discipline, due as well to indiscretions of popular fervor as to the negligence of some bishops in inquiring into the lives of those whom they permitted to be honoured as saints.

In the Medieval West, the Apostolic See was asked to intervene in the question of canonizations so as to ensure more authoritative decisions. The canonization of Saint Udalric, Bishop of Augsburg by Pope John XV in 993 was the first undoubted example of papal canonization of a saint from outside of Rome being declared worthy of liturgical veneration for the entire church. Some historians maintain further that the first papal canonization was of St. Swibert by Pope Leo III in 804.

Thereafter, recourse to the judgment of the Pope was had more frequently. Toward the end of the eleventh century the Popes began asserting their exclusive right to authorize the veneration of a saint against the older rights of bishops to do so for their dioceses and regions. Popes therefore decreed that the virtues and miracles of persons proposed for public veneration should be examined in councils, more specifically in general councils. Pope Urban II, Pope Calixtus II, and Pope Eugene III conformed to this discipline.

Exclusive reservation to the Apostolic See
Hugh de Boves, Archbishop of Rouen, canonized Walter of Pontoise, or St. Gaultier, in 1153, the final saint in Western Europe to be canonized by an authority other than the Pope: "The last case of canonization by a metropolitan is said to have been that of St. Gaultier, or Gaucher, [A]bbot of Pontoise, by the Archbishop of Rouen. A decree of Pope Alexander III [in] 1170 gave the prerogative to the [P]ope thenceforth, so far as the Western Church was concerned." In a decretal of 1173, Pope Alexander III reprimanded some bishops for permitting veneration of a man who was merely killed while intoxicated, prohibited veneration of the man, and most significantly decreed that "you shall not therefore presume to honor him in the future; for, even if miracles were worked through him, it is not lawful for you to venerate him as a saint without the authority of the Catholic Church." Theologians disagree as to the full import of the decretal of Pope Alexander III: either a new law was instituted, in which case the Pope then for the first time reserved the right of beatification to himself, or an existing law was confirmed.

However, the procedure initiated by the decretal of Pope Alexander III was confirmed by a bull of Pope Innocent III issued on the occasion of the canonization of Cunigunde of Luxembourg in 1200. The bull of Pope Innocent III resulted in increasingly elaborate inquiries to the Apostolic See concerning canonizations. Because the decretal of Pope Alexander III did not end all controversy and some bishops did not obey it in so far as it regarded beatification, the right of which they had certainly possessed hitherto, Pope Urban VIII issued the Apostolic letter Caelestis Hierusalem cives of 5 July 1634 that exclusively reserved to the Apostolic See both its immemorial right of canonization and that of beatification. He further regulated both of these acts by issuing his Decreta servanda in beatificatione et canonizatione Sanctorum on 12 March 1642.

Procedure from 1734 to 1738 to 1983
In his De Servorum Dei beatificatione et de Beatorum canonizatione of five volumes the eminent canonist Prospero Lambertini (1675–1758), who later became Pope Benedict XIV, elaborated on the procedural norms of Pope Urban VIII's Apostolic letter Caelestis Hierusalem cives of 1634 and Decreta servanda in beatificatione et canonizatione Sanctorum of 1642, and on the conventional practice of the time. His work published from 1734 to 1738 governed the proceedings until 1917. The article "Beatification and canonization process in 1914" describes the procedures followed until the promulgation of the Codex of 1917. The substance of De Servorum Dei beatifιcatione et de Beatorum canonizatione was incorporated into the Codex Iuris Canonici (Code of Canon Law) of 1917, which governed until the promulgation of the revised Codex Iuris Canonici in 1983 by Pope John Paul II. Prior to promulgation of the revised Codex in 1983, Pope St. Paul VI initiated a simplification of the procedures.

Since 1983
The Apostolic constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister of Pope John Paul II of 25 January 1983 and the norms issued by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on 7 February 1983 to implement the constitution in dioceses, continued the simplification of the process initiated by Pope Paul VI. Contrary to popular belief, the reforms did not eliminate the office of the Promoter of the Faith (Latin: Promotor Fidei), popularly known as the "Devil's advocate", whose office is to question the material presented in favor of canonization. The reforms were intended to reduce the adversarial nature of the process. In November 2012 Pope Benedict XVI appointed Monsignor Carmello Pellegrino as Promoter of the Faith.

Candidates for canonization undergo the following process:

 "Servant of God" ("Servus Dei"): The process of canonization commences at the diocesan level. A bishop with jurisdiction, usually the bishop of the place where the candidate died or is buried, although another ordinary can be given this authority, gives permission to open an investigation into the virtues of the individual in response to a petition of members of the faithful, either actually or pro forma. This investigation usually commences no sooner than five years after the death of the person being investigated. The Pope, qua Bishop of Rome, may also open a process and has the authority to waive the waiting period of five years, e. g., as was done for St. Teresa of Calcutta by Pope John Paul II, and for Lúcia Santos and for Pope John Paul II himself by Pope Benedict XVI. Normally, an association to promote the cause of the candidate is instituted, an exhaustive search of the candidate's writings, speeches, and sermons is undertaken, a detailed biography is written, and eyewitness accounts are collected. When sufficient evidence has been collected, the local bishop presents the investigation of the candidate, who is titled "Servant of God" (Latin: "Servus Dei"), to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints of the Roman Curia, where the cause is assigned a postulator, whose office is to collect further evidence of the life of the Servant of God. Religious orders that regularly deal with the Congregation often designate their own Postulator General. At some time, permission is then granted for the body of the Servant of God to be exhumed and examined. A certification "non-cultus" is made that no superstitious or heretical worship, or improper cult of the Servant of God or his tomb has emerged, and relics are taken and preserved.
 "Venerable" ("Venerabilis"; abbreviated "Ven.") or "Heroic in Virtue": When sufficient evidence has been collected, the Congregation recommends to the Pope that he proclaim the heroic virtue of the Servant of God; that is, that the Servant of God exercised to a heroic degree the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. From this time the one said to be "heroic in virtue" is entitled "Venerable" (Latin: "Venerabilis"). A Venerable does not yet have a feast day, permission to erect churches in his honor has not yet been granted, and the Church does not yet issue a statement on his probable or certain presence in Heaven, but prayer cards and other materials may be printed to encourage the faithful to pray for a miracle wrought by his intercession as a sign of God's will that the person be canonized.
 "Blessed" ("Beatus" or "Beata"; abbreviated "Bl."): Beatification is a statement of the Church that it is "worthy of belief" that the Venerable is in Heaven and saved. Attaining this grade depends on whether the Venerable is a martyr:
 For a martyr, the Pope has only to make a declaration of martyrdom, which is a certification that the Venerable gave his life voluntarily as a witness of the Faith or in an act of heroic charity for others.
 For a non-martyr, all of them being denominated "confessors" because they "confessed", i. e., bore witness to the Faith by how they lived, proof is required of the occurrence of a miracle through the intercession of the Venerable; that is, that God granted a sign that the person is enjoying the Beatific Vision by performing a miracle for which the Venerable interceded. Presently, these miracles are almost always miraculous cures of infirmity, because these are the easiest to judge given the Church's evidentiary requirements for miracles; e. g., a patient was sick with an illness for which no cure was known; prayers were directed to the Venerable; the patient was cured; the cure was spontaneous, instantaneous, complete, and enduring; and physicians cannot discover any natural explanation for the cure.

The satisfaction of the applicable conditions permits beatification, which then bestows on the Venerable the title of "Blessed" (Latin: "Beatus" or "Beata"). A feast day will be designated, but its observance is ordinarily only permitted for the Blessed's home diocese, to specific locations associated with them, or to the churches or houses of the Blessed's religious order if they belonged to one. Parishes may not normally be named in honor of beati.

 "Saint" ("Sanctus" or "Sancta"; abbreviated "St." or "S."): To be canonized as a saint, ordinarily at least two miracles must have been performed through the intercession of the Blessed after their death, but for beati confessors, i. e., beati who were not declared martyrs, only one miracle is required, ordinarily being additional to that upon which beatification was premised. Very rarely, a pope may waive the requirement for a second miracle after beatification if they, the Sacred College of Cardinals, and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints all agree that the Blessed lived a life of great merit proven by certain actions. This extraordinary procedure was used in Pope Francis' canonization of Pope John XXIII, who convoked the first part of the Second Vatican Council.

Canonization is a statement of the Church that the person certainly enjoys the Beatific Vision of Heaven. The title of "Saint" (Latin: "Sanctus" or "Sancta") is then proper, reflecting that the Saint is a refulgence of the holiness (sanctitas) of God Himself, which alone comes from God's gift. The Saint is assigned a feast day which may be celebrated anywhere in the universal Church, although it is not necessarily added to the General Roman Calendar or local calendars as an "obligatory" feast; parish churches may be erected in his honor; and the faithful may freely celebrate and honor the Saint.

Although recognition of sainthood by the Pope does not directly concern a fact of Divine revelation, nonetheless it must be "definitively held" by the faithful as infallible pursuant to, at the least, the Universal Magisterium of the Church, because it is a truth related to revelation by historical necessity.

Regarding the Eastern Catholic Churches, individual sui juris churches have the right to "glorify" saints for their own jurisdictions, though this has rarely happened.

Equipollent canonization

Popes have several times permitted to the universal Church, without executing the ordinary judicial process of canonization described above, the veneration as a saint, the "cultus" of one long venerated as such locally. This act of a pope is denominated "equipollent" or "equivalent canonization" and "confirmation of cultus". According to the rules Pope Benedict XIV (regnat 17 August 1740 – 3 May 1758) instituted, there are three conditions for an equipollent canonization: (1) existence of an ancient cultus of the person, (2) a general and constant attestation to the virtues or martyrdom of the person by credible historians, and (3) uninterrupted fame of the person as a worker of miracles.

As examples, prior to his pontificate, of this mode of canonization, Pope Benedict XIV himself enumerated the equipollent canonizations of Saints:
 Romuald - 9 July 1595
 Norbert- 7 September 1621
 Bruno - 6 October 1623
 Peter Nolasco - 20 October 1655
 Raymond Nonnatus - 10 March 1681
 King Stephen of Hungary - 28 November 1686
 Queen Margaret of Scotland - 15 September 1691
 John of Matha and Felix of Valois - 19 March 1694
 Pope Gregory VII - 25 September 1728
 Duke Wenceslaus of Bohemia - 14 March 1729
 Gertrude of Helfta - 20 July 1738.

Later equipollent canonizations include those of Saints:
 Peter Damian - 1 October 1828
 Cyril and Methodius - 30 September 1880
 Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Justin Martyr and Augustine of Canterbury - 28 July 1882
 John of Damascus and Sylvester Gozzolini - 29 August 1890
 Bede the Venerable - 25 May 1899
 Boniface - 4 May 1919
 Ephrem the Syrian - 5 October 1920
 Albert the Great - 15 December 1931
 John Fisher and Thomas More - 19 May 1935
 Margaret of Hungary - 19 November 1943
 Gregorio Barbarigo - 26 May 1960
 John of Ávila - 31 May 1970
 Nikola Tavelić and his three companion martyrs - 21 June 1970
 Meinhard of Livonia - 1993
 Marko Krizin, István Pongrácz, and Melchior Grodziecki - 2 July 1995
 Hildegard of Bingen - 10 May 2012

Pope Francis added Saints:
 Angela of Foligno - 9 October 2013
 Peter Faber - 17 December 2013
 José de Anchieta, Marie of the Incarnation, and Francis-Xavier de Montmorency-Laval - 3 April 2014
 Bartholomew of Braga - 5 July 2019

Eastern Orthodox Church

The following terms are used for canonization by the autocephalous national Orthodox Churches: канонизация or прославление "glorification" (Russian Orthodox Church), კანონიზაცია kanonizats’ia (Georgian Orthodox Church), канонизација (Serbian Orthodox Church), canonizare (Romanian Orthodox Church), and Канонизация (Bulgarian Orthodox Church). The following terms are used for canonization by other autocephalous Orthodox Churches: αγιοκατάταξη (Katharevousa: ἁγιοκατάταξις) agiokatataxi/agiokatataxis, "ranking among saints" (Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, Church of Cyprus, Church of Greece), kanonizim (Albanian Orthodox Church), kanonizacja (Polish Orthodox Church), and kanonizace/kanonizácia (Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church).

The Orthodox Church in America, an Eastern Orthodox Church partly recognized as autocephalous, uses the term "glorification" for granting official recognition to someone as a saint—see glorification.

Oriental Orthodox Church
Within the Armenian Apostolic Church, part of Oriental Orthodoxy, there had been discussions since the 1980s about canonizing the victims of the Armenian Genocide. On April 23, 2015, all of the victims of the genocide were canonized.

United Methodist Church
The General Conference of the United Methodist Church has formally declared individuals martyrs, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer (in 2008) and Martin Luther King Jr. (in 2012).

Universal Life Church
The Universal Life Church canonizes Saints for demonstrating three values:

Faith
Hope
Charity

A certificate is issued following a donation if the application for Sainthood is accepted and is then entered into the church's official records.

See also

 Beatification
 Devil's advocate
 Glorification
 List of canonizations
 List of Christian saints after A.D. 450 (incomplete list)
 List of Christian saints before A.D. 450
 Litany of the Saints

Notes

References

External links

Catholic Church
 Divinus Perfectionis Magister – Apostolic Constitution of Pope John Paul II (English)
 Congregation for the Causes of Saints – Vatican Website
 Historical Sketch of Canonization – Friarsminor.org

Category:Saints days
Category:Christian terminology
Category:Posthumous recognitions
Category:Christian behaviour and experience
Category:Christian saints
Category:Canon law


Toyota K platform

The Toyota K platform, informally known as the Toyota Camry platform, is a front-wheel drive automobile platform (also adaptable to four-wheel drive) that has underpinned various Toyota and Lexus models from the mid-size category upwards since September 1999, starting with the Avalon (XX20).   Besides the Camry, the K platform was used on minivans, crossovers and luxury sedans.  This platform was larger than the front-wheel-drive MC and New MC platforms, but less upscale than the N and New N platforms designed for rear-wheel drive luxury applications. Starting with the XV70 Toyota Camry (2017), the K platform is part of the Toyota New Global Architecture.

Features
 It is a front-wheel drive platform, with optional four-wheel drive.
 Four-wheel drive variants use either:
 V-Flex II system, which is a viscous-coupling torque-on-demand unit (on most models); or
 Symmetric full-time four-wheel drive (on Lexus RX and Highlander)
 e-FOUR system (rear wheels are driven by electric motors) on hybrid models.
 Engines are mounted transversely.
 MacPherson struts are used in suspension at all four corners with the exception of the Sienna, which uses a twist-beam rear suspension.

Applications
 Toyota Aurion — XV40 (2006–2011), XV50 (2011–2017)
 Toyota Avalon — XX20 (1999–2004), XX30 (2005–2012), XX40 (2012–2018)
 Toyota Pronard — XX20 (2000–2004)
 Toyota Camry — XV30 (2001–2006), XV40 (2006–2011), XV50 (2011–2017)
 Toyota Camry Solara — XV30 (2003–2009)
 Toyota Highlander — XU20 (2000–2007), XU40 (2007–2013), XU50 (2013–2019)
 Toyota Previa — XR30, XR40 (2000–2005)
 Toyota Alphard — AH10 (2002–2008)
 Toyota Sienna — XL20 (2003–2009), XL30 (2010–present)
 Toyota Venza — AV10 (2008–2017)
 Toyota Windom — XV30 (2001–2006)
 Lexus ES — XV30 (2001–2006), XV40 (2006–2012), XV60 (2012–2018)
 Lexus RX — XU30 (2003–2008), AL10 (2008–2015), AL20 (2015-present)

References

K


Little Red Riding Hood (1995 film)

Little Red Riding Hood is a 48-minute direct-to-video animated film produced by Jetlag Productions.  It was distributed by GoodTimes Entertainment and originally released on VHS on July 31, 1995.  The film was produced by Mark Taylor and directed by Toshiyuki Hiruma Takashi.  Writer George Arthur Bloom adapted the script from Charles Perrault's version of the story of "Little Red Riding Hood".  Though it has been released on DVD in many European countries, the film has never been released in that format in the United States.  It is the only Jetlag Productions animated film to not have been released on DVD in that country.

Plot
Little Red Riding Hood, named so because of the red riding hood she wears, loves her grandmother. She's asked by her kind mother to take a basket of cakes and jam to her ill grandmother, who lives at the other side of the big woods. Her mother warns her to be careful and not to talk to strangers, and to walk straight to her grandmother's house without any distractions; the young girl promises to obey her mother and is on her way. However, Little Red Riding Hood has a hard time obeying her mother when she first hears the crying of a sad deer in the forest. The small creature had forgotten his mother's birthday and was very disappointed. Little Red Riding Hood gives her new friend a suggestion to make his mother a lovely bouquet of wild flowers, which he does happily. As she continues walking through the forest, the young girl meets another new friend, a pretty bird who is very talented at singing, but whose wing is wounded. Little Red Riding Hood encourages the bird not to be afraid, and when he finds the ability to fly without being scared and thus returns to his family, the grateful bird rewards the girl by teaching her how to whistle, telling her to do so should she ever be in danger. Finally, Little Red Hood meets a large family of beavers that are trying to build a dam but lack organization skills. Little Red  Hood offers to help, and though she is first turned away, the beavers finally accept. Working together, they learn about teamwork and their dam is finished in no time. The young girl bids her new friends farewell, and they too promise to return the favor someday. Little Red Riding Hood's friends come to her rescue when upon reaching her grandmother's house, she meets the terrible wolf that she had been told was wandering around in the woods. Working together once again, the girl and her animal friends manage to defeat the wolf, and rescue the grandmother, who'd been put away in order to be served as dessert, learning many valuable lessons from the experience.

Voices
Andrea Libman — Little Red Riding Hood
Terry Klassen — Thrush, Beaver
Ellen Kennedy — Grandmother

Songs
As a common rule in Jetlag Productions' films, Little Red Riding Hood featured a total of three original songs sung by off-screen voices:

 "Made With Love" ("Little Red Riding Hood"): The film's opening and ending song; Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother is the persona for this tune, who sings about her especial bond with her granddaughter.
 "Whistle And I'll Be There": Thrush's song; he sings this song to Little Red Riding Hood explaining to her to whistle if she is ever in trouble and needs help.
 "We're A Team": The beavers' song about teamwork during the construction of the dam.

References

External links

Category:1995 animated films
Category:Direct-to-video animated films
Category:GoodTimes Entertainment
Category:Films based on Little Red Riding Hood
Category:1995 films
Category:1995 anime films
Category:American films
Category:Japanese films
Category:1990s American animated films


Crown Regency Hotel and Towers

The Crown Regency Hotel and Towers is a hotel complex in Cebu City, Philippines. The main building, the 45-storey Fuente Tower 1, is one of the taller hotel buildings in the country at about . It used to be the country's tallest building outside of Metro Manila and the tallest building in Cebu City until it was eclipsed in 2015 by the first tower of Horizons 101, also in Cebu City.

The top 38th of the hotel tower feature an amusement facility which includes a roller coaster that runs around the edge of the building, and a stroll around the edge of the building with the protection of safety harnesses. There is also an elevator going from the 18th floor (Sky Lobby) all the way to the 38th floor and providing a great view of Barangay Capitol Site, Cebu City.

Project team
The Crown Regency Hotel and Towers was designed by local architectural firm T.I. Vasquez Architects & Planners Inc.,  while the structural design was made by G. E. Origenes Consulting Engineers.

Other members of the design team are CMA Engineering Consultants (Sanitary, Mechanical, and Fire Safety Works); lraido T. Legaspi, Jr. & Associates  (Electrical Works); and E.O. Bataclan & Associates (Interior Design).

The General Contractor that built the tower was ASEC Development and Construction Corporation.

Height increase
Construction has started on the roof level to increase the height of the building in order to add new rides and attractions to the Sky Extreme Adventures facilities. Initial reports indicate at least an  structure is to be added.

See also
 List of tallest buildings in the Philippines

References

External links
 Crown Regency Cebu
 Sky Experience Adventure

Category:Skyscraper hotels in the Philippines
Category:Hotels in Cebu


The first pilgrimage

The first pilgrimage or Umrah of Dhu'l-Qada (Pilgrimage of the 11th month) was the first pilgrimage that Muhammad and the Muslims made after the Migration to Medina. It took place on the morning of the fourth day of Dhu al-Qi'dah 7 AH (629 CE), after the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah 6 AH (628 CE). The entire event was three days long.

A pilgrimage that occurs during the month of Dhu al-Hijjah is named a "major pilgrimage", or just "pilgrimage" (, Ḥajj), while pilgrimages of all other months are called "minor pilgrimage" (, ‘Umrah).

History
Muhammad, a Meccan merchant, had reported that from the age of 40, he was receiving revelations from God. He and his followers, called Muslims, were persecuted by the ruling clan of Mecca, the Quraysh, and forced to leave to the northern city of Medina. Several armed confrontations followed, along with the Muslims attempting a return pilgrimage to Mecca in 628, as directed by one of the revelations. They were rejected by the Quraysh, but the Meccans did agree to a truce, and the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah had a provision that the Muslims could return peacefully to Mecca for a pilgrimage in 629.

Pilgrimage
Ar-Raḥīq Al-Makhtūm (, "The Sealed Nectar"), in the chapter The Compensatory ‘Umrah (Lesser Pilgrimage) the event is described as follows:

See also
The Farewell Pilgrimage

References

Category:Life of Muhammad
Category:Islamic terminology


National Library Board

The National Library Board (Abbreviation: NLB; ; Malay: Lembaga Perpustakaan Negara;  Tēciya nūlaka vāriyam) is a statutory board of the Ministry of Communications and Information, Singapore. Tasked to manage the public libraries and to lead them into the Information Age where non-print resources are making their mark, the NLB is aimed towards the creation of "borderless libraries," an initiative aimed at bringing the libraries closer to Singaporeans, and to connect Singaporeans with the outside world.

The National libraries of Singapore house books in all four official languages of Singapore: English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. Other than paper books, the libraries also loans CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, VCDs, video cassettes, audiobooks on CDs, magazines and periodicals, DVD-videos, Blu-rays and music CDs (the last two at the Esplanade outlet). Its flagship institution, the National Library, Singapore, has moved to its new premises at Victoria Street since 22 July 2005.

History
Although the NLB was formed  on 1 September 1995 only, its history began way back in the 1820s when Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of modern Singapore, first proposed the idea of establishing a public library in the thriving colony. This library was to evolve into the National Library of Singapore in 1960, before expanding into the suburbs with the setting up of branch libraries in the various new towns.

Library 2000
In 1995, when the NLB took over the duties of the National Library of Singapore, it was also entrusted with bringing to reality the findings of the Library 2000 Review Committee, set up in June 1992 to review the public library system. This committee, headed by Dr Tan Chin Nam, considered the role of information technology in contemporary library services for the next decade, with the aims of

Establishing Singapore as an international information hub;
Preserving and promoting Singapore's literary heritage;
Providing for education, knowledge and research;
And promoting a well-read and well-informed society.

The committee also took into consideration the library needs of public library users in general, the linguistic needs of an increasingly bilingual populace, the catering to the needs of professions who require extensive information databases, and the establishment of the library as a nucleus of national culture and heritage. After a year-long review, the Committee published their findings on 5 March 1994, which calls for six "strategic thrusts", which are

An Adaptive Public Library System
A Network of Borderless Libraries
A Coordinated National Collection Strategy
Quality Service Through Market Orientation
Symbiotic Linkages With Business And Community
A Global Knowledge Arbitrage

In addition, the report also speaks of three "key enablers" to bring about these changes, which are

the setting up of a new statutory board
staff development, and the
exploiting of new technology.

The NLB was thus formed as a result of this Report. The NLB implements initiatives arising from the Report's recommendations, to help Singapore stay competitive in the global knowledge economy and become "a more gracious society".

Membership

Basic membership

For Singapore citizens, the registration for basic membership is free. It allows borrowers to loan up to 16 library materials for 21 days, at any one time.
For permanent residents, there would be a one-time registration fee of S$10.50.

Partner membership

Partner membership is applicable only to PAssion Card holders. Basic library members with PAssion cards can also upgrade their membership accounts.
Members can loan up to 24 library materials for 21 days, at any one time.

Membership for Foreigners

Foreigners are eligible to sign up for library membership in Singapore. It costs S$53.30, which includes a registration fee of S$10.50. It allows borrowers
to loan up to 16 library materials for 21 days, at any one time.

Controversy
In July 2014, the NLB announced that it was pulping three children's books, And Tango Makes Three, The White Swan Express, and Who's In My Family?, following a user's complaint that the books' homosexual themes did not promote family values. In protest, several poets and writers resigned from the Singapore Writers Festival and the Singapore Literature Prize, while several boycotted a panel discussion hosted by the NLB. A petition was signed by 3,800 signatories to reinstate the books or relocate the books to a different section, while another petition supporting the NLB's decision was signed by 26,000. A group supporting the reinstating of the affected books organised an event called "Let's Read Together" at the atrium of the National Library, where members of the public could bring books of any content to read along with a penguin stuffed toy, drawing 250 people on 13 July 2014. Communications and Information Minister Yaacob Ibrahim later instructed the NLB to place And Tango Makes Three and The White Swan Express in the adult section instead of pulping them; Who's In My Family? had already been pulped. The NLB also later announced that book selection and review processes would be refined.

See also
List of libraries in Singapore
Asian Children's Festival

References

External links
Official site

Category:Statutory boards of the Singapore Government
Category:1995 establishments in Singapore
Category:Government agencies established in 1995


Elbow, Texas

Elbow is an unincorporated community in Howard County, Texas, United States.  It lies  by road south of Big Spring.

Geography
Elbow is located at 32°9’37” North, 101°30’43” West (32.1604012, -101.5120686).

The elevation is .

Education
Elbow is served by the Forsan Independent School District.

References

External links
History:  The History of Forsan  Elbow is mentioned in Joyce Baggett's research paper.
Forsan Independent School District Click on the "Elementary Campus" link for Elbow Elementary.

Category:Unincorporated communities in Howard County, Texas
Category:Unincorporated communities in Texas


NGFS

NGFS may refer to:
Naval gunfire support
New Garden Friends School
Network for Greening the Financial System


Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1792–1862)

Prince Carl Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (30 May 1792 – 31 July 1862) was a distinguished soldier, who, in 1815, after the congress of Vienna, became colonel of a regiment in the service of the king of the Netherlands. He fought at the Battle of Quatre Bras and the Battle of Waterloo where he commanded the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Dutch Division and became a Chief Commander of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army

Early life
Prince Bernhard, the seventh child of Charles Augustus, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, was born on 30 May 1792 in Weimar. He enlisted in the Prussian army and in 1806 he fought in the army of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen. By 1809 he had enlisted in the Saxon army and he fought under Marshal Bernadotte at Wagram.

Waterloo campaign
Prince Bernhard's 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Dutch Division (Sedlnitsky) was the first of the Duke of Wellington's forces to arrive at the cross roads of Quatre Bras. Prince Bernhard's brigade (joined later by the 1st Brigade,) held the cross roads at Quatre Bras for almost 24 hours from the late afternoon of 15 June 1815, until about 3 p.m. on the 16 June, preventing Marshal Michel Ney with the left wing  of the French L'Armée du Nord from taking the cross roads before the Duke of Wellington and substantial allied forces arrived to reinforce the 2nd Division and fight the Battle of Quatre Bras. The successful holding action by the two brigades of the Dutch 2nd Division was one of the most important actions by any of the coalition brigades in the whole of the Waterloo Campaign.

At the Battle of Waterloo Prince Bernhard commanded the allied forces holding the farms of Papelotte, Frischermont and La Haie on the extreme left of the Duke of Wellington's line of battle. They were strategically important, not just because if the forces holding these positions gave way then the French could out flank Wellington, but because it was from that direction that Wellington expected and received Prussian support. Though in the course of the battle Durutte’s 4th French Division obtained a temporary foothold in Papelotte, it was never captured

Commander Dutch East Indies Army
Bernhard was appointed commander of the Dutch East Indies Army on December 6, 1848 and arrived on April 14, 1849 in Java. Barely a few weeks after his arrival, the commander of the third Balinese expedition, General Andreas Victor Michiels was killed at Kasumba; and Van Saxony-Weimar offered to the Governor-General to take over the leadership of the expedition, acting according to the rules that had been given to General Michiels. In the winter of 1849 he was promoted to general of the  infantry and three years later (1852) he returned to the Netherlands, for his health, after many improvements and having accomplished to restore the East Indies army. He received on October 5, 1853 an honorable retirement.

Later life and family
Prince Bernhard traveled extensively in the United States in 1825-26. A heavily edited account of his travels, Reise sr. Hoheit des Herzogs Bernhard zu Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach durch Nord-Amerika, was published by the historian Heinrich Luden in 1828. The work was translated into English and published in Philadelphia, also in 1828, as Travels through North America, during the Years 1825 and 1826. A critical edition of the original manuscript became available in 2017.

In the years after Waterloo, Bernhard distinguished himself as commander of a Dutch Division in the Belgian campaign of 1831 (the Ten Days Campaign), and from 1847 to 1850 held the command of the forces in the Dutch East Indies. He died 21 July 1862 in Liebenstein.

He married Princess Ida of Saxe-Meiningen, daughter of Georg I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, on 30 May 1816 in Meiningen.
Prince Bernhard's son, William Augustus Edward, known as Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar (b. 1823 - d. 1902), entered the British army, served with much distinction in the Crimean War, became colonel of the 1st Life Guards, and later a British Field Marshal.

His daughter Amalia married Prince Henry of the Netherlands.

His granddaughter Pauline of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (through his son Prince Hermann) married Charles Augustus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

Ancestry

References

Further reading
 Pierre de Wite
 june/qb.1.pdf The prince of Orange at Quatre Bras and the order of battle of the 2nd Dutch division gives a description of Prince Bernhard's actions at Quatre Bras

 Karl-Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach. Herzog Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach: Das Tagebuch der Reise durch Nord-Amerika in den Jahren 1825 und 1826, edited by Walter Hinderer and Alexander Rosenbaum. Stiftung für Romantikforschung LX. Königshausen und Neumann, 2017.

Category:1792 births
Category:1862 deaths
Category:People from Weimar
Category:House of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Category:People from Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Category:Knights Grand Cross of the Military Order of William
Category:Knights Commander of the Military Order of William
Category:Honorary Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Category:German military personnel of the Napoleonic Wars
Category:Dutch military commanders of the Napoleonic Wars


Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis

"Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" is an article by Joan Wallach Scott first published in the American Historical Review (AHR) in 1986. It is one of the most cited papers in the history of the AHR and was reprinted as part of Scott's 1989 book Gender and the Politics of History. In 2008, the AHR focused its December issue on the paper, featuring six articles on the paper, including one by Scott herself.  At that time, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" was the most-visited AHR article on JSTOR, having been accessed more than 38,000 times since 1997 – more than 16,000 more views than the next most popular of that journal's articles.

Argument
The paper begins by discussing three existing theoretical approaches to gender.  Scott then provides her own definition of gender in two parts: gender is based on the perceived differences between the sexes, but is also a way of signifying power differentials.  This second part of the definition is, according to William Sewell, "important and contentious", making a claim for the importance of gender in all areas of history.  The paper argues that the field of gender history should focus on social and political construction of gender.  It is, according to Dyan Elliott, a manifesto for the use of gender as a way of looking at the history of "male institutions".  The paper was influenced by the French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, and Scott was influenced by the linguistic turn in history.

Reception
Many of the initial reactions to Scott's paper were highly negative.  She has said that when she first presented it at a seminar in 1985, the audience "were, to a man, appalled".  Joanne Meyerowitz comments that an early critic accused Scott's paper of "nihilism, presentism, ahistoricism, obfuscation, elitism, obeisance to patriarchy, ethnocentrism, irrelevance, and possibly racism".  Other critics were more positive.  Linda Kerber called the paper "dazzling", while William Sewell called it an "instant classic".

Legacy
Scott's 1986 paper had a significant longer-term impact.  It was reprinted in 1988 as part of Gender and the Politics of History, a collection of Scott's essays on gender history, which was reissued in 1999 in a revised edition.  Scott herself has published two papers responding to it: "Unanswered Questions" in 2008 and "Gender: Still a Useful Category of Analysis?" in 2010.  It has been translated into several other languages, and Lola Sanchez called the Spanish translation of the paper "one of the most important texts of the past twenty-five years" for feminist scholars in Spain.

In 2008, Joanne Meyerowitz wrote that it had "no discernible date of expiration".  By that time, it was required reading for "dozens of syllabi". It was described as "canonical" by the American Historical Review and was the journal's most-accessed article on JSTOR. Meyerowitz credits the paper with a "significant part in the broader shift from social to cultural history".

References

Bibliography

Category:Academic journal articles
Category:Historiography
Category:Gender studies publications
Category:1986 documents
Category:1986 in women's history


The Warren Brothers

The Warren Brothers is an American country music duo composed of brothers Brett Warren (lead vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica, mandolin, piano) and Brad Warren (background vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar). The duo has released three studio albums: Beautiful Day in the Cold Cruel World (1998) and King of Nothing (2000) on BNA Records, as well as Well Deserved Obscurity (2004) on Sig/429 and a 2005 compilation album, Barely Famous Hits. These four albums have produced nine charting singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, with the highest being "Move On" at No. 17 in late 2000-early 2001. Brad and Brett have also co-written singles for Dierks Bentley, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, and Martina McBride.

History
Brad and Brett Warren grew up in Tampa, Florida. They previously headlined local Christian heavy metal bands including a Christian rock heavy metal band called St. Warren. They moved from Florida to Nashville in 1995.

The duo signed to BNA Records in 1997 and released its debut album, Beautiful Day in the Cold Cruel World, in late 1998. This album produced three singles: "Guilty," "Better Man", and "She Wants to Rock," all of which charted within the Top 40 on the Billboard country singles charts. Pemberton Roach of Allmusic rated the album four stars out of five, comparing its sound to that of "slick, roots-influenced pop artists like Bruce Hornsby, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Glenn Frey" and saying that such a sound "avoid[s] any trace of Nashville clichés in favor of honest, straightforward lyrics and energetic, polished playing." Following the release of this album, The Warren Brothers toured with Tim McGraw and his wife, Faith Hill.

In September 2000, the duo released its second album, King of Nothing. Its first single release was the No. 22 "That's the Beat of a Heart," which featured a guest vocal from Sara Evans and was included on the soundtrack to the 2000 film Where the Heart Is. The second single from King of Nothing was the duo's highest-peaking single, the No. 17 "Move On," and finishing off the single releases was the No. 33 "Where Does It Hurt."

A seventh single, "Hey Mr. President", was released in 2003, peaking at No. 28. Following it were the non-album single "Break the Record" and two separate releases of "Sell a Lot of Beer," on which McGraw sang backing vocals. This latter song was included on the duo's third studio album, 2004's Well Deserved Obscurity. A compilation entitled Barely Famous Hits followed in 2005, and the same year, CMT signed the brothers to their own reality television series called Barely Famous: The Warren Brothers. They were also dropped from BNA in 2005. The brothers served as judges for one season of the talent competition Nashville Star as well.

Songwriting careers
In the latter half of the 2000s, the duo began writing songs for other artists. Hill released two of the duo's co-writes as singles: "The Lucky One" in 2006, and "Red Umbrella" in 2007. Also that year, McGraw performed "If You're Reading This" at the Academy of Country Music awards, and released that song as a single after radio stations began playing a telecast of the song.

Martina McBride released two Warren Brothers co-writes from her 2007 album Waking Up Laughing: "Anyway" and "How I Feel," the former of which was also the first co-writer's credit of her career. McBride released a third Warren Brothers song, "Wrong Baby Wrong," in January 2010. Brad and Brett collaborated with Robert Ellis Orrall and Love and Theft member Stephen Barker Liles on this song. The brothers co-wrote McBride's 2011 single "Teenage Daughters".

In early 2009, Dierks Bentley had a Number One hit with the song "Feel That Fire," which he and the Warrens wrote with Brett Beavers. The Warren Brothers, along with Brett Beavers and his brother Jim Beavers, co-wrote both Tim McGraw's late-2010 single "Felt Good on My Lips", Toby Keith's late-2011 single "Red Solo Cup", and Keith Urban's 2013 single "Little Bit of Everything". In 2013 the duo won a Daytime Emmy for co-writing "Good Afternoon America" with Little Big Town.

Discography

Albums

Singles

Music videos

References

External links
Official site

Category:American country music groups
Category:BNA Records artists
Category:Country music duos
Category:Daytime Emmy Award winners
Category:Musical groups from Tampa, Florida
Category:Sibling musical duos
Category:Musical groups established in 1998
Category:People from Nashville, Tennessee
Category:1998 establishments in Florida
Category:Songwriting duos


Mineralogy

Mineralogy is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical) properties of minerals and mineralized artifacts. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, as well as their utilization.

History

Early writing on mineralogy, especially on gemstones, comes from ancient Babylonia, the ancient Greco-Roman world, ancient and medieval China, and Sanskrit texts from ancient India and the ancient Islamic World. Books on the subject included the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, which not only described many different minerals but also explained many of their properties, and Kitab al Jawahir (Book of Precious Stones) by Persian scientist Al-Biruni.  The German Renaissance specialist Georgius Agricola wrote works such as De re metallica (On Metals, 1556) and De Natura Fossilium (On the Nature of Rocks, 1546) which began the scientific approach to the subject.  Systematic scientific studies of minerals and rocks developed in post-Renaissance Europe. The modern study of mineralogy was founded on the principles of crystallography (the origins of geometric crystallography, itself, can be traced back to the mineralogy practiced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and to the microscopic study of rock sections with the invention of the microscope in the 17th century.

Nicholas Steno first observed the law of constancy of interfacial angles (also known as the first law of crystallography) in quartz crystals in 1669. This was later generalized and established experimentally by Jean-Baptiste L. Romé de l'Islee in 1783. René Just Haüy, the "father of modern crystallography", showed that crystals are periodic and established that the orientations of crystal faces can be expressed in terms of rational numbers, as later encoded in the Miller indices. In 1814, Jöns Jacob Berzelius introduced a classification of minerals based on their chemistry rather than their crystal structure. William Nicol developed the Nicol prism, which polarizes light, in 1827–1828 while studying fossilized wood; Henry Clifton Sorby showed that thin sections of minerals could be identified by their optical properties using a polarizing microscope. James D. Dana published his first edition of A System of Mineralogy in 1837, and in a later edition introduced a chemical classification that is still the standard. X-ray diffraction was demonstrated by Max von Laue in 1912, and developed into a tool for analyzing the crystal structure of minerals by the father/son team of William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg.

More recently, driven by advances in experimental technique (such as neutron diffraction) and available computational power, the latter of which has enabled extremely accurate atomic-scale simulations of the behaviour of crystals, the science has branched out to consider more general problems in the fields of inorganic chemistry and solid-state physics. It, however, retains a focus on the crystal structures commonly encountered in rock-forming minerals (such as the perovskites, clay minerals and framework silicates). In particular, the field has made great advances in the understanding of the relationship between the atomic-scale structure of minerals and their function; in nature, prominent examples would be accurate measurement and prediction of the elastic properties of minerals, which has led to new insight into seismological behaviour of rocks and depth-related discontinuities in seismograms of the Earth's mantle. To this end, in their focus on the connection between atomic-scale phenomena and macroscopic properties, the mineral sciences (as they are now commonly known) display perhaps more of an overlap with materials science than any other discipline.

Physical properties

An initial step in identifying a mineral is to examine its physical properties, many of which can be measured on a hand sample. These can be classified into density (often given as specific gravity); measures of mechanical cohesion (hardness, tenacity, cleavage, fracture, parting); macroscopic visual properties (luster, color, streak, luminescence, diaphaneity); magnetic and electric properties; radioactivity and solubility in hydrogen chloride ().

Hardness is determined by comparison with other minerals. In the Mohs scale, a standard set of minerals are numbered in order of increasing hardness from 1 (talc) to 10 (diamond). A harder mineral will scratch a softer, so an unknown mineral can be placed in this scale by which minerals it scratches and which scratch it. A few minerals such as calcite and kyanite have a hardness that depends significantly on direction. Hardness can also be measured on an absolute scale using a sclerometer; compared to the absolute scale, the Mohs scale is nonlinear.

Tenacity refers to the way a mineral behaves when it is broken, crushed, bent or torn. A mineral can be brittle, malleable, sectile, ductile, flexible or elastic. An important influence on tenacity is the type of chemical bond (e.g., ionic or metallic). Of the other measures of mechanical cohesion, cleavage is the tendency to break along certain crystallographic planes. It is described by the quality (e.g., perfect or fair) and the orientation of the plane in crystallographic nomenclature. Parting is the tendency to break along planes of weakness due to pressure, twinning or exsolution. Where these two kinds of break do not occur, fracture is a less orderly form that may be conchoidal (having smooth curves resembling the interior of a shell), fibrous, splintery, hackly (jagged with sharp edges), or uneven.

If the mineral is well crystallized, it will also have a distinctive crystal habit (for example, hexagonal, columnar, botryoidal) that reflects the crystal structure or internal arrangement of atoms. It is also affected by crystal defects and twinning. Many crystals are polymorphic, having more than one possible crystal structure depending on factors such as pressure and temperature.

Crystal structure

The crystal structure is the arrangement of atoms in a crystal. It is represented by a lattice of points which repeats a basic pattern, called a unit cell, in three dimensions. The lattice can be characterized by its symmetries and by the dimensions of the unit cell. These dimensions are represented by three Miller indices. The lattice remains unchanged by certain symmetry operations about any given point in the lattice: reflection, rotation, inversion, and rotary inversion, a combination of rotation and reflection. Together, they make up a mathematical object called a crystallographic point group or crystal class. There are 32 possible crystal classes. In addition, there are operations that displace all the points: translation, screw axis, and glide plane. In combination with the point symmetries, they form 230 possible space groups.

Most geology departments have X-ray powder diffraction equipment to analyze the crystal structures of minerals. X-rays have wavelengths that are the same order of magnitude as the distances between atoms. Diffraction, the constructive and destructive interference between waves scattered at different atoms, leads to distinctive patterns of high and low intensity that depend on the geometry of the crystal. In a sample that is ground to a powder, the X-rays sample a random distribution of all crystal orientations. Powder diffraction can distinguish between minerals that may appear the same in a hand sample, for example quartz and its polymorphs tridymite and cristobalite.

Isomorphous minerals of different compositions have similar powder diffraction patterns, the main difference being in spacing and intensity of lines. For example, the  (halite) crystal structure is space group Fm3m; this structure is shared by sylvite (), periclase (), bunsenite (), galena (), alabandite (), chlorargyrite (), and osbornite ().

Chemical elements

A few minerals are chemical elements, including sulfur, copper, silver, and gold, but the vast majority are compounds. The classical method for identifying composition is wet chemical analysis, which involves dissolving a mineral in an acid such as hydrochloric acid (). The elements in solution are then identified using colorimetry, volumetric analysis or gravimetric analysis.

Since 1960, most chemistry analysis is done using instruments. One of these, atomic absorption spectroscopy, is similar to wet chemistry in that the sample must still be dissolved, but it is much faster and cheaper. The solution is vaporized and its absorption spectrum is measured in the visible and ultraviolet range. Other techniques are X-ray fluorescence, electron microprobe analysis atom probe tomography and optical emission spectrography.

Optical

In addition to macroscopic properties such as color or lustre, minerals have properties that require a polarizing microscope to observe.

Transmitted light
When light passes from air or a vacuum into a transparent crystal, some of it is reflected at the surface and some refracted. The latter is a bending of the light path that occurs because the speed of light changes as it goes into the crystal; Snell's law relates the bending angle to the Refractive index, the ratio of speed in a vacuum to speed in the crystal. Crystals whose point symmetry group falls in the cubic system are isotropic: the index does not depend on direction. All other crystals are anisotropic: light passing through them is broken up into two plane polarized rays that travel at different speeds and refract at different angles.

A polarizing microscope is similar to an ordinary microscope, but it has two plane-polarized filters, a  (polarizer) below the sample and an analyzer above it, polarized perpendicular to each other. Light passes successively through the polarizer, the sample and the analyzer. If there is no sample, the analyzer blocks all the light from the polarizer. However, an anisotropic sample will generally change the polarization so some of the light can pass through. Thin sections and powders can be used as samples.

When an isotropic crystal is viewed, it appears dark because it does not change the polarization of the light. However, when it is immersed in a calibrated liquid with a lower index of refraction and the microscope is thrown out of focus, a bright line called a Becke line appears around the perimeter of the crystal. By observing the presence or absence of such lines in liquids with different indices, the index of the crystal can be estimated, usually to within .

Systematic

Systematic mineralogy is the identification and classification of minerals by their properties. Historically, mineralogy was heavily concerned with taxonomy of the rock-forming minerals. In 1959, the International Mineralogical Association formed the Commission of New Minerals and Mineral Names to rationalize the nomenclature and regulate the introduction of new names. In July 2006, it was merged with the Commission on Classification of Minerals to form the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature, and Classification. There are over 6,000 named and unnamed minerals, and about 100 are discovered each year. The Manual of Mineralogy places minerals in the following classes: native elements, sulfides, sulfosalts, oxides and hydroxides, halides, carbonates, nitrates and borates, sulfates, chromates, molybdates and tungstates, phosphates, arsenates and vanadates, and silicates.

Formation environments
The environments of mineral formation and growth are highly varied, ranging from slow crystallization at the high temperatures and pressures of igneous melts deep within the Earth's crust to the low temperature precipitation from a saline brine at the Earth's surface.

Various possible methods of formation include:

sublimation from volcanic gases
deposition from aqueous solutions and hydrothermal brines
crystallization from an igneous magma or lava
recrystallization due to metamorphic processes and metasomatism
crystallization during diagenesis of sediments
formation by oxidation and weathering of rocks exposed to the atmosphere or within the soil environment.

Biomineralogy
Biomineralogy is a cross-over field between mineralogy, paleontology and biology. It is the study of how plants and animals stabilize minerals under biological control, and the sequencing of mineral replacement of those minerals after deposition. It uses techniques from chemical mineralogy, especially isotopic studies, to determine such things as growth forms in living plants and animals as well as things like the original mineral content of fossils.

A new approach to mineralogy called mineral evolution explores the co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere, including the role of minerals in the origin of life and processes as mineral-catalyzed organic synthesis and the selective adsorption of organic molecules on mineral surfaces.

Mineral ecology
In 2011, several researchers began to develop a Mineral Evolution Database. This database integrates the crowd-sourced site Mindat.org, which has over 690,000 mineral-locality pairs, with the official IMA list of approved minerals and age data from geological publications.

This database makes it possible to apply statistics to answer new questions, an approach that has been called mineral ecology. One such question is how much of mineral evolution is deterministic and how much the result of chance. Some factors are deterministic, such as the chemical nature of a mineral and conditions for its stability; but mineralogy can also be affected by the processes that determine a planet's composition. In a 2015 paper, Robert Hazen and others analyzed the number of minerals involving each element as a function of its abundance. They found that Earth, with over 4800 known minerals and 72 elements, has a power law relationship. The Moon, with only 63 minerals and 24 elements (based on a much smaller sample) has essentially the same relationship. This implies that, given the chemical composition of the planet, one could predict the more common minerals. However, the distribution has a long tail, with 34% of the minerals having been found at only one or two locations. The model predicts that thousands more mineral species may await discovery or have formed and then been lost to erosion, burial or other processes. This implies a role of chance in the formation of rare minerals occur.

In another use of big data sets, network theory was applied to a dataset of carbon minerals, revealing new patterns in their diversity and distribution. The analysis can show which minerals tend to coexist and what conditions (geological, physical, chemical and biological) are associated with them. This information can be used to predict where to look for new deposits and even new mineral species.

Uses

Minerals are essential to various needs within human society, such as minerals used as ores for essential components of metal products used in various commodities and machinery, essential components to building materials such as limestone, marble, granite, gravel, glass, plaster, cement, etc. Minerals are also used in fertilizers to enrich the growth of agricultural crops.

Collecting

Mineral collecting is also a recreational study and collection hobby, with clubs and societies representing the field. Museums, such as the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the Natural History Museum, London, and the private Mim Mineral Museum in Beirut, Lebanon, have popular collections of mineral specimens on permanent display.

See also

 List of minerals – a simple list concentrating on minerals with Wikipedia articles.
 List of minerals (complete) – a more complete list of IMA-approved minerals, regularly updated.
 List of mineralogists
 List of publications in mineralogy
 Mineral collecting
 Mineral physics
 Metallurgy
 Petrology

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

Associations

American Federation of Mineral Societies
French Society of Mineralogy and Crystallography
Geological Society of America
German Mineralogical Society
International Mineralogical Association
Italian Mineralogical and Petrological Society
Mineralogical Association of Canada
Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland
Mineralogical Society of America

Other
The Virtual Museum of the History of Mineralogy


Guilford, Ohio

Guilford is an unincorporated community in northeastern Hanover Township, Columbiana County, Ohio, United States. It took its name from Guilford Lake, which it surrounds.

The community is part of the Salem, Ohio Micropolitan Statistical Area.

References

Category:Census-designated places in Ohio
Category:Census-designated places in Columbiana County, Ohio
Category:Northeastern Ohio geography stubs


Gasteria armstrongii

Gasteria armstrongii (synonym Gasteria nitida var. armstrongii) is a dwarf succulent plant native to South Africa, in the genus Gasteria.

Description

This slow-growing species is closely related to the similar, but much larger, Gasteria nitida species of the South African grasslands, and their bright reddish-pink flowers are very similar. (In some classification schemes, it is even classed as a variety within this species, and in cultivation G. armstrongii can resemble juvenile plants of G. nitida.)

For those who treat it as a separate species, Gasteria armstrongii can be distinguished by its very dark, retuse, distichous, roughly tuberculate leaves. Its inflorescences are also solitary. (G. nitida is much larger, with smooth leaves that grow in a rosette, not distichous. Its inflorescences are branched.)

Taxonomy
Gasteria armstrongii was first described by Selmar Schönland in 1912. It was reduced to the variety armstrongii of Gasteria nitida by Ernst van Jaarsveld in 1992, a status accepted by the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families.

Distribution

This species occurs in only a few spots in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Here is occurs along the Gamtoos river, in a vegetation type named "Humansdorp Shale Renosterveld". At the edge of its habitat it gradually transforms into Gasteria nitida, making the two species part of a continuum.
The habitat of G. armstrongii is a flat to hilly terrain rich in pebbles, among which G. armstrongii is difficult to detect. The plants grow in full sun or are partially covered by small shrubs.
The rainfall in its habitat occurs all year round, but marginally more in summer.

This is the most threatened of all the Gasteria species, as its habitat is rapidly being developed.

References

Category:Flora of South Africa
armstrongii


Tlalnepantla de Baz

Tlalnepantla de Baz, commonly known as Tlalnepantla,  is a city and a municipality of the state of Mexico, north of Mexico City. Tlalnepantla comes from the Náhuatl words tlalli (land) and nepantla (middle) to mean the middle land. The city was known in prior times as Tlalnepantla de Galeana and Tlalnepantla de Comonfort, to honor Hermenegildo Galeana and Ignacio Comonfort, respectively.  The current addition of Baz comes from the last name of Gustavo Baz Prada, an important politician and soldier of Emiliano Zapata's army during the Mexican Revolution. After the Revolution, Baz Prada became Governor of the State of Mexico and President of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). It is located in the northeastern part of the state of Mexico, in the Valley of Mexico north of Mexico City proper.  Together with Atizapán, it comprises the dense Region XII of Mexico State.

History

Around the 11th century, a people called the Amaquemecan (after whom the municipality of Amecameca is named), migrated to this area following their leader Xolotl to look for a better climate and more food to sustain themselves. This same Xolotl founded the Tenayuca Oztopolco chiefdom and made the first census ever in the Americas. The Acolhuas, Tepanecas and Otomis were already established in this land so alliances were made. Despite this, the region was eventually conquered and made a tributary of the Aztec Empire. After the Spanish Conquest, the area was evangelized by the Franciscans.  The founding of modern Tlalnepantla was the result of a dispute between the towns of Tenayuca and Teocalhueyacan as to which should be the site of Franciscan monastery and religious center for the area. The result was to place the monastery at the midpoint between these two towns, and hence the name (middle land). This monastery, named Corpus Christi was built in 1550. After independence, Tlalnepantla was originally part of Mexico City, but in 1825, it was recognized as a district of the State of Mexico. During the Presidency of Porfirio Díaz, Tlalnepantla began industrial development, and in the 1950s underwent a demographic explosion after being declared a city in 1948. The population as of the 2010 INEGI census was 653,410 people, representing 98.37% of municipal population.

Infrastructure

Tlalnepantla is a large city with an important mall (Mundo E) and hotels: Crowne Plaza Lancaster, Camino Real, Fiesta Inn, NH hotel, Holiday Inn, and Four Points by Sheraton. Tlalnepantla offers different options for entertainment and food: Punta Recoleta Restaurante (Argentine food), Boca del Rio (Mexican food restaurant), Real de Catorce (Show and Mexican food restaurant), La Antigua (Mexican food restaurant).

The most important avenues and boulevards in Tlalnepantla City are:
 Gustavo Baz Ave.
 Mario Colin Ave.
 Adolfo Lopez Mateos Blvd.
 Presidente Juárez Ave.

As well as the Periférico and the Mexico-Querétaro Freeway with 15 lanes in Tlalnepantla. (This is a section of Mexican Federal Highway 57, part of the Pan-American Highway.)

Tlanepantla is well served by the local pesero, intercity bus network and the suburban train.

Education

Schools located in the city include:

 UNAM, Facultad de Estudios Superiores Iztacala (FES Iztacala)
 National Autonomous University of Mexico
 Instituto Tecnológico de Tlalnepantla (ITTLA)
 Tlalnepantlas Institute of Technology
 Centro Universitario Emilio Cardenas (CUDEC)
 Escuela Bancaria y Comercial (EBC Tlalnepantla)
 Universidad Latinoamericana (ULA)
 Sistema Educativo Indoamericano (INDO)
 Centro Eleia
 Universidad Interamericana para el Desarrollo (UNID)
 Universidad de Cuautitlan Izcalli (UCI)
 Ateneo de Tlalnepantla
 Universidad ETAC (Escuela Técnica en Administración y Comercio)

Private schools:
 Instituto Thomas Jefferson

Economy
There are more than 2,700 industries located here, making Tlalnepantla one of the most industrialized areas in the country, along with Naucalpan and Monterrey, ranking first in the state of Mexico. The most common industries include: food processing, bottling, tobacco products, textiles, paper products, non-metallic mineral products and metals, chemicals and petroleum products, machinery and wood products. Its industrial zone is one of the largest in the country. The area also includes more than 15,000 retail businesses, including the Mundo E Mall and several large tianguis.

Notable sites

The church and monastery of Corpus Christi was built by both Nahuas and Otomis of pink and gray stone. The side gate, called the Porciúncula, shows the influence of both these peoples. In 1963, the church gained cathedral status.
The aqueduct that extends from Tlalnepantla to Villa de Guadalupe as well as the Caja del Agua are works that date from the colonial period. The Hacienda of Santa Mónica and the Hacienda de Emmedio are well-preserved. The Centro Cultural Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz has a collection of 130 fotografías del Tlalnepantla from the end of the 19th century to 1960 as well as other historical objects.

Two notable pyramids lie in the municipality's limits: Tenayuca and Santa Cecilia Acatitlan. The pyramid at Tenayuca is a smaller version of the Templo Mayor the Aztecs built in Tenochtitlan. It has dual staircases on the west side, each leading to two temples, at the top of the pyramid. One was dedicated to Tlaloc and the other to Huizilopochtli. Serpent sculptures surround the pyramid on three sides and are possibly of pre-Aztec origin. A small museum on the grounds holds artifacts diagrams and models of the site and the history that surrounds it. Another, smaller pyramid is at Santa Cecilia Acatitlan, just north of Tenayuca. This one was rebuilt as the original was destroyed and some of its blocks were used to build the Santa Cecelia Parish church that is next to it. This pyramid has one staircase one temple atop. On the plaza is the Hurtado Museum, which houses a small collection of pre Hispanic sculpture.

Sister cities
 Wichita, Kansas, United States

Notable people
Carlos Aguiar Retes, Cardinal-archbishop of Tlalnepantla, México
Edson Álvarez, Mexican footballer
Gustavo Baz Prada, politician, two time governor of the State of Mexico and head of the National Autonomous University of Mexico
Eugenia León, singer
Pablo Barrera, professional soccer player
Rodrigo Lopez, former Major League Baseball pitcher

References

Category:Populated places in the State of Mexico
Category:Nahua settlements


Los Hijos del otro

Los Hijos del otro is a 1947 Argentine film.

Cast

External links

Category:1947 films
Category:Argentine films
Category:Spanish-language films
Category:Argentine black-and-white films
Category:Argentine comedy-drama films
Category:1940s comedy-drama films


Iain Lom

John MacDonald, known as Iain Lom (c. 1624–c. 1710) was a Scottish Gaelic poet.

Biography
Iain Lom's family were of the MacDonalds of Keppoch.  In Gaelic society, since there might often be a number of men with the same first names in any given clan, they were given sobriquets which might be based on a peculiar characteristic or feature.  "Lom" is Scots Gaelic for "bald" or "bare" (lom a. luime, bare, bald, shaven, cropped), perhaps indicating he was bald. However, in Gaelic idiom, it can also mean one who is very plain-spoken, an idiom which perhaps can best be related in English to the term "bare-faced" (though this is now generally applied only to liars). He was also known as Iain Manntach which translates as "stammering John," perhaps from a speech impediment.

His family held land as tacksmen at Allt a' Chaorainn, near the present day Laggan dam.
A ruin near the road is locally known as Iain Lom's house.

His dates of birth and death are unknown, but we know that he was present at (and composed a song about) the Battle of Inverlochy (1645) as an adult, and the Treaty of Union (1707); this would presume a birthdate in the early-mid-1620s (if not earlier), and a death in the early 18th century. Most of the few details we have of his life are known from contemporary comments, and from his poetry.

There is a tradition that he attended the Scots seminary at Valladolid in Spain as a youth and was expelled for some failing or indiscretion. Some suggest that Lom maybe a reference to a tonsure.

He was apparently somewhat disabled, and was once described by a contemporary as "walking with a hirple" (i.e., a limp.  Scots word originally used in 1450 by the Scots poet Robert Henryson, perhaps derived from the Old Norse word herpast "suffer from cramps").This, however, is somewhat at odds with the tradition that it was Iain Lom who walked from Brae Lochaber to Cille Chumein (now renamed Fort Augustus) to warn Montrose of the arrival of Argyll at Inverlochy and then guided the Jacobite army up Glen Turret and over the snow-covered hills into Glen Roy to surprise Argyll at Inverlochy on 2 February 1645. John Buchan described this as "that flank march which is one of the great exploits in the history of British arms". Montrose's own son died a month later as a result of this desperate march. It is believed that Iain Lom accidentally killed his own brother at a skirmish on Loch Tayside (Sròn a’ Chlachain), a battle in which his father was also killed. Thereafter he refused to draw a sword. When offered one by Alasdair Mac Colla at Inverlochy he declined saying "Cathaichibh sibhse 's innse mise" (You fight and I'll narrate). His long narrative poemLà Inbhir Lochaidh (Day of Inverlochy) is regarded as one of the treasures of the Gaelic language and an important historical source regarding the battle.

His supposed lameness didn't stop him from climbing a tree during the battle of Inverlochy.  When chastized for his seeming cowardice by his chief afterwards, he is said to have replied that he had climbed the tree the better to see his chief and clansmens' valiant deeds, and had he been killed in the battle, who would then have composed poetry about them?

There are many stories told of his quick and vitriolic wit, which apparently was  demonstrated from an early age. He was a man of strong passions, none of which exceeded his hatred of Clan Campbell, as is evident from the following from Là Inbhir Lochaidh (The Day of Inverlochy)

It is widely believed that Robert Burns was Scotland's first Poet Laureate.  However, Charles II named Iain Lom poet laureate during his reign, and a later MacDonald poet, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair ("Alexander, son of the teacher Alexander") was later appointed poet laureate by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the de jure Prince Regent, during the 1745 Jacobite Rising, but as the Stuart line was unseated in 1689, and the subsequent Jacobite Risings failed to permanently restore the Stuarts, their status became a moot point.  Their stature has further been diminished by the fact that they composed exclusively in Gaelic, which even at that time was a language in decline.

Iain Lom was almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the Keppoch murderers to justice. When Dòmhnall Glas II (Grey Donald II)died his heir, Alasdair was too young to rule. The clan was governed by Alasdair Buidhe (yellow haired Alexander), uncle to the heir, until the young chief and his brother, Raghnall, returned from their education in Rome. A banquet was held in their honour at which both boys were murdered by 7 men (a father and his sons) from a branch of the family that coveted the chiefship. Iain Lom appealed to MacDonnell of Glen Garry to administer justice but achieved nothing. He then had to go into exile and appealed to Sir James MacDonald of Sleat to avenge the murder. This finally happened in 1665. The guilty party were surprised and killed at a house near Inverlair. Iain Lom is said to have decapitated the bodies with the dirk used in the murders. He took these grisly trophies to show to Glen Garry, as reproof for his earlier failure to do his duty. On his way he stopped at Loch Oich side and washed the heads at Tobar nan Ceann (The Well of the Heads) where a monument was later erected. He told the story in Murt na Ceapaich (The Keppoch murders)

The Bard is also believed to have been present at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689 when he would have been in his mid-sixties. Two poems about the battle are attributed to him although it has been suggested that one of these may have been written by his son. Cath Raon Ruairidh, the Gaelic name for Killiecrankie, is sited as evidence that Dundee was shot just below his breast plate, and not, as later suggested by Professor Terry, in his left eye. Iain Lom dismissed William of Orange as "a borrowed king" and condemned Mary for her disloyalty to her father. The Massacre of Glen Coe was roundly condemned in Murt Glinne Comhann. Iain Lom's suggested punishment for the murder of his MacDonald kinsfolk was that the Campbell land in its entirety should be transferred to Clan Donald. Oran an Aghaidh and Aonaidh (A Song Against the Union) in which he condemned the Scottish aristocracy who had accepted union with England in 1707 is regarded as the last work that can be attributed to him and it is assumed that his death must have been soon afterwards.

Work
Iain Lom is representative of a switch from the ancient, classical tradition of Gaelic poetry to the vernacular poetry of the 17th century and later. Classical bards wrote mainly praise poems to their clan chiefs in the classical Gaelic that Scotland had once shared with Ireland. While Iain Lom's work has many features of the classical tradition he largely wrote in the everyday Gaelic of his time. A thoroughly political poet, he was a fierce opponent of the English Puritans and the Scottish Covenanters.  Later he opposed the accession of William of Orange and later governments.  He remained a loyal devotee of the Stuart family, and thus was an early Jacobite.  As a clan bard, he commented on the battles and engagements the Keppoch clan engaged in while campaigning for the Stuarts, especially under Great Montrose, as well as on contemporary matters.  His known works include the following:

 The Battle of Inverlochy
 Alasdair MacColla
 Keppoch murders
 The Massacre of Glencoe (in which MacDonald kinsmen were killed)
 The Restoration
 The Hanoverian succession
 Act of Union 1707 which removed Scottish sovereignty.

Family
Iain Lom had a sister who was married to Alexander MacDonald of Inverlair who was deeply implicated in the Keppoch murders. The bard omitted any mention of this in his work and seems to have remained on good terms with his sister.
While W.T. Kilgour says that he never married others say that he had a son, a good poet in his own right, who was killed in a skirmish at High Bridge by Dòmhnall Donn (Brown haired Donald) of Bohuntin, a bard with family ties to the Keppoch Murderers. Dòmhnall Donn was a famous cattle rustler and when he was awaiting execution in Inverness Iain Lom, a man of influence, made no move to help him.

Burial
Iain Lom is believed to be buried on the churchyard of Cille Choiril, east of Roy Bridge and near his home at Allt a' Chaorainn. The exact location of his grave is unknown but Charles Fraser-Mackintosh erected a fine memorial stone there to him in the late 19th century.

References

Further reading
 Orain Iain Luim; the Songs of John MacDonald, bard of Keppoch, edited by Annie M. Mackenzie, Edinburgh, 1964.

Category:Scottish poets
Category:17th-century Scottish Gaelic poets
Category:Scottish Jacobites
Category:Jacobite poets
Category:Jacobite propagandists
Category:Clan Donald
Category:Clan MacDonald of Keppoch
Category:Scottish Catholic poets
Category:17th-century Scottish people
Category:18th-century Scottish people
Category:1620s births
Category:1710s deaths
Category:18th-century Scottish Gaelic poets


Jan-Philipp Rabente

Jan-Philipp Rabente (born 3 July 1987) is a German field hockey player who plays as a defender or midfielder for UHC Hamburg and the German national team.

At the 2012 Summer Olympics, he competed for the national team in the men's tournament. In January 2020, he won the European Indoor Championship with the national indoor hockey team by defeating Austria in the final.

References

External links

Category:1987 births
Category:Living people
Category:Sportspeople from Essen
Category:German male field hockey players
Category:Male field hockey defenders
Category:Male field hockey midfielders
Category:2010 Men's Hockey World Cup players
Category:Field hockey players at the 2012 Summer Olympics
Category:2014 Men's Hockey World Cup players
Category:Olympic field hockey players of Germany
Category:Olympic gold medalists for Germany
Category:Olympic medalists in field hockey
Category:Medalists at the 2012 Summer Olympics
Category:HTC Uhlenhorst Mülheim players
Category:Uhlenhorster HC players


Sables de Varennes

The Sables de Varennes is a geologic formation in France. It preserves fossils dating back to the Cretaceous period.

See also

 List of fossiliferous stratigraphic units in France

References

Category:Cretaceous France


Arionoceras

Arionoceras is an extinct orthocerid genus from the Middle and Upper Silurian, of Europe that is estimated to have lived from 422.9—418.1 mya, existing for approximately .

Taxonomy
Arionoceras was named by Barskov (1966)  and originally assigned to the Michelinoceratidae, but attributed by Serpagli and Gnoli (1977) -ibid to the Geisonoceratidae Zhuravleva (1959) "on the basis of the (admittedly irregular) occurrence of a lining-like endosiphucular deposit."  Dzik (1984) assigned Arionoceras to the newly proposed Arionoceratidae as the type genus. Sepkoski (2002) follows previous authors in putting Arionoceras in the Orthoceratida.

Morphology
Arionoceras has a straight or slightly curved shell with a circular or depressed cross section, smooth or transversely sculptured surface, and large apically pointed protoconch. The siphuncle is central with very short suborthochoanitic septal necks and cylindrical connecting rings. Apical chambers in adults have  cameral deposits.

References

Category:Cephalopod genera
Category:Silurian cephalopods
Category:Silurian extinctions
Category:Silurian animals of Europe


Top Chess Engine Championship

Top Chess Engine Championship, formerly known as Thoresen Chess Engines Competition  (TCEC or nTCEC), is a computer chess tournament that has been run since 2010. It was organized, directed, and hosted by Martin Thoresen until the end of Season 6; from Season 7 onward it has been organized by Chessdom. It is often regarded as the Unofficial World Computer Chess Championship because of its strong participant line-up and long time-control matches on high-end hardware, giving rise to very high-class chess.

After a short break in 2012, TCEC was restarted in early 2013 (as nTCEC) and is currently active (renamed as TCEC in early 2014) with 24/7 live broadcasts of chess matches on its website.

Since season 5, TCEC has been sponsored by Chessdom Arena. The current TCEC champion is Stockfish 19092522, which defeated AllieStein v0.5-dev_7b41f8c-n11 by a score of 54.5-45.5 in the TCEC Season 16 Superfinal 100-game match ending 13 Oct 2019.

Overview

Basic structure of competition
The TCEC competition is divided into seasons, where each season happens over a course of a few months, with matches played round-the-clock and broadcast live over the internet. Each season is divided into several qualifying stages and one "superfinal", where the top two chess engines play 100 games to win the title of "TCEC Grand Champion". In the superfinal, each engine plays 50 openings, once as each side. Beginning in Season 11 in 2018, a division system was introduced; the top 2 engines in each division are promoted, and the bottom 2 are relegated. Currently there are 5 divisions (a Premier division, and divisions 1-4); newcomers generally start in division 4.

Engine settings/characteristics

Pondering is set to off. All engines run on mostly the same hardware and use the same opening book, which is set by the organizers and changed in every stage. Large pages are disabled but access to various endgame tablebases is permitted. Engines are allowed updates between stages; if there is a critical play-limiting bug, they are also allowed to be updated once during the stage. If an engine crashes 3 times in one event, it is disqualified to avoid distorting the results for the other engines. TCEC generates its own elo rating list from the matches played during the tournament. An initial rating is given to any new participant based on its rating in other chess engine rating lists.

Criteria for entering the competition

There is no definite criterion for entering into the competition, other than inviting the top participants from various rating lists. Initially, the list of participants was personally chosen by Thoresen before the start of a season. His stated goal was to include "every major engine that is not a direct clone". However, Shredder's developers have declined to enter it in the competition. Usually chess engines that support multiprocessor mode are preferred (8-cores or higher). Both Winboard and UCI engines are supported.

Structure by season

Tournament results (TCEC)

Main seasons

Other TCEC tournaments

1 Originally named "nTCEC Season 1".
2 Originally named "nTCEC Season 2".
3 Season 7 did not use endgame table bases at all and Stage two did not use opening books either.
4 League format.
5 Special Chess960 quad-round-robin tournament consisting of the top 8 engines that had support for Chess960.
6 Double round robin tournament.
7 Knockout tournament, with 8 game Rapid matches and tiebreaks if necessary

Statistics

All-time table for champions after TCEC Season 15

Notable games

References

Sources

External links
 TCEC Live Games Page
 TCEC Season 13 report, by Guy Haworth and Nelson Hernandez
 TCEC Season 12 report, by Guy Haworth and Nelson Hernandez

 TCEC games archive
 Additional information for Season 4
 Additional information for Season 5
 chessdom.org with an overview of TCEC's websites

Category:Computer chess competitions
Category:World championships in chess
Category:Recurring events established in 2010
Category:Top Chess Engine Championship


Jeong Da-rae

Jeong Da-rae (; born December 2, 1991) is a South Korean former swimmer, who specialized in breaststroke events. She is a gold medalist in the 200 m breaststroke at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, China.

Jeong made her official debut, as a 16-year-old, at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where she qualified for the women's 200 m breaststroke. She cleared a FINA B-cut of 2:27.78 from the Good Luck Beijing China Open. On the evening preliminaries, Jeong rounded out the semifinal field by taking the final spot in a lifetime best of 2:27.28, just half a second (0.50) faster than her entry time. The next morning's session, Jeong failed to qualify for the final, as she placed fourteenth overall in the semifinal run at 2:28.28.

At the 2009 FINA World Championships in Rome, Italy, Jeong matched her preliminary heat time of 2:25.00 in the semifinals, but finished only in twelfth place. Six months later, she edged out her teammate Jung Seul-ki to take a silver medal by a two-tenth margin (0.20) in the same discipline at the East Asian Games in Hong Kong, China, breaking her personal best of 2:24.90.

At the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, Jeong picked up the women's 200 m breaststroke title in 2:25.02, beating two Chinese swimmers for the silver and bronze medals. Jeong's best effort at the Asian Games moved her up to fifteenth in the world rankings.

Four years after competing in her first Olympics, Jeong qualified for her second South Korean team, as a 20-year-old, at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. She attained a FINA A-standard entry time of 2:26.07 from the Dong-A Swimming Tournament in Ulsan. Jeong shared a fourteenth-fastest qualifying time of 2:26.83 with Russia's Yuliya Efimova in the morning's preliminary heats to secure a spot for the semifinals. On the evening session, Jeong failed to qualify for the final, as she finished her semifinal run with a slowest time of 2:28.74.

References

External links
NBC Olympics Profile

Category:1991 births
Category:Living people
Category:South Korean female swimmers
Category:Olympic swimmers of South Korea
Category:Swimmers at the 2008 Summer Olympics
Category:Swimmers at the 2012 Summer Olympics
Category:Asian Games medalists in swimming
Category:Swimmers at the 2010 Asian Games
Category:Sportspeople from South Jeolla Province
Category:Asian Games gold medalists for South Korea
Category:Medalists at the 2010 Asian Games


Frank Rainieri

Francisco Rafael 'Frank' Rainieri Marranzini is a businessman in the tourist industry in the Dominican Republic. He is the chairman and founder of Grupo Puntacana. According to Forbes, Rainieri has one of the ten largest fortunes in the Dominican Republic, with a net worth near the billion-dollar mark as of 2014. In 2015, he was designated ambassador of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to the Dominican Republic, a position that his father also held four decades earlier.

Early life
Rainieri was born into a family with tradition of hospitality. His paternal grandparents, Isidoro Rainieri and Bianca Franceschini, migrated from Bologna, northern Italy, to northern Dominican Republic, and established two hotels, one in Puerto Plata and the other in Santiago; they had more than 10 children. His parents were Francisco Rainieri Franceschini and Venecia Marranzini Lepore (daughter of the Italian immigrants Orazio Michelo Marranzini Inginio and Inmaccolatta Lepore Rodia, who migrated as children with their respective families, all of them natives of Santa Lucia di Serino, in southern Italy).

He went to college in Philadelphia at Saint Joseph's College, now Saint Joseph's University., finalizing them at APEC University, in Santo Domingo.

Punta Cana

In 1969, Rainieri and Theodore Kheel acquired a 58-million square meter lot on the eastern end of the Dominican Republic, which was covered with jungle and six miles of beach. Their first project was a 40 guest hotel called the Punta Cana Club, inaugurated two years later. In 1979, they constructed the Puntacana Hotel. The Punta Cana International Airport followed in 1984. In 1997, Rainieri and Kheel partnered with Oscar de la Renta and Julio Iglesias to start work on the Punta Cana Marina and the real estate development of the area.

References

Category:Living people
Category:1940s births
Category:Date of birth missing (living people)
Category:People from Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic
Category:Dominican Republic people of Italian descent
Category:Saint Joseph's University alumni
Category:Dominican Republic businesspeople
Category:Dominican Republic billionaires
Category:Order of Merit of Duarte, Sánchez and Mella
Category:People of Campanian descent
Category:People of Emilian descent
Category:Ambassadors of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta
Category:Ambassadors to the Dominican Republic


Bedeva baileyana

Bedeva baileyana is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk, in the family Muricidae, the murex snails or rock snails.

References

baileyana
Category:Gastropods described in 1881


Cricqueville-en-Bessin

Cricqueville-en-Bessin is a commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region in northwestern France.

The municipality takes its name from its deep-water creek that forms a natural harbor, from Crycavilla.

History

World War II
Just outside Cricqueville, the United States Army Air Forces established an airfield shortly after D-Day on 9 June 1944, just three days after the Allied landings in France.  The airfield was one of the first established in the liberated area of Normandy.  Known as Advanced Landing Ground "A-2" (Cricqueville), it was used from early June though September 1944. After the Americans moved east into Central France, the airfield was dismantled and the land returned to agricultural use.

Population

See also
 Communes of the Calvados department
 Pointe du Hoc, a point of attack by the United States Army during the Battle of Normandy

References

Category:Communes of Calvados (department)
Category:Calvados communes articles needing translation from French Wikipedia