Technical details.

Test cards typically contain a set of patterns to enable television cameras and receivers to be adjusted to show the picture correctly (see SMPTE colour bars). Most modern test cards include a set of calibrated colour bars which will produce a characteristic pattern of "dot landings" on a vectorscope, allowing chroma and tint to be precisely adjusted between generations of videotape or network feeds. SMPTE bars—and several other test cards—include analog black (a flat waveform at 7.5 IRE, or the NTSC setup level), full white (100 IRE), and a "sub-black", or "blacker-than-black" (at 0 IRE), which represents the lowest low-frequency transmission voltage permissible in NTSC broadcasts (though the negative excursions of the colourburst signal may go below 0 IRE). Between the colour bars and proper adjustment of brightness and contrast controls to the limits of perception of the first sub-black bar, an analogue receiver (or other equipment such as VTRs) can be adjusted to provide impressive fidelity.  They are also used in the broader context of video displays for concerts and live events. There are a variety of different test patterns, each testing a specific technical parameter: gradient monotone bars for testing brightness and colour; a crosshatch pattern for aspect ratio, alignment, focus, and convergence; and a single-pixel border for over-scanning and dimensions.

History.

Formerly a common sight, test cards are now only rarely seen outside of television studios, post-production, and distribution facilities. In particular, they are no longer intended to assist viewers in calibration of television sets. Several factors have led to their demise for this purpose:  In developed countries such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the financial imperatives of commercial television broadcasting mean that air-time is now typically filled with programmes and commercials (such as infomercials) 24 hours a day, and non-commercial broadcasters have to match this.  In North America, most test cards such as the famous Indian-head test pattern of the 1950s and 1960s have long been relegated to history. The SMPTE colour bars occasionally turn up, but with most North American broadcasters now following a 24-hour schedule, these too have become a rare sight. For custom-designed video installations, such as LED displays in buildings or at live events, some test images are custom-made to fit the specific size and shape of the setup in question. These custom test images can also be an opportunity for the technicians to hide inside jokes for the crew to see while installing equipment for a show.

Monoscope.

Rather than physical test cards, which had to be televised using a camera, television stations often used a special purpose camera tube which had the test pattern painted on the inside screen of the tube. Each tube was only capable of generating the one test image, hence it was called a monoscope.  Monoscopes were similar in construction to an ordinary cathode ray tube (CRT), only instead of displaying an image on its screen it scanned a built-in image. The monoscope contained a formed metal target in place of the phosphor coating at its "screen" end and as the electron beam scanned the target, rather than displaying an image, a varying electrical signal was produced generating a video signal from the etched pattern. Monoscope tubes had the advantage over test cards that a full TV camera was not needed, and the image was always properly framed and in focus. They fell out of use in the 1960s as they were not able to produce colour images.

Test patterns for photocopiers.

A lesser-known kind of test pattern is used for the calibration of photocopiers. Photocopier test patterns are physical sheets that are photocopied, with the difference in the resulting photocopy revealing any telltale deviations or defects in the machine's ability to copy.

In numismatics.

Television has had such an impact in today's life that it has been the main motif for numerous collectors' coins and medals. One of the most recent examples is The 50 Years of Television commemorative coin minted on 9 March 2005, in Austria. The obverse of the coin shows a "test pattern", while the reverse shows several milestones in the history of television.

In popular culture.

The Philips Pattern is widely recognized as one of the iconic popular culture symbols of the 1980s and 1990s. Numerous novelty and collectible items has been patterned after the famous test card, including wall clocks, bedsheets, wristwatches, and clothing.  The BBC Test Card F features throughout 2006-07 TV sci-fi detective series Life on Mars.

A test card, also known as a test pattern or start-up/closedown test, is a television test signal, typically broadcast at times when the transmitter is active but no program is being broadcast (often at sign-on and sign-off). Used since the earliest TV broadcasts, test cards were originally physical cards at which a television camera was pointed, and such cards are still often used for calibration, alignment, and matching of cameras and camcorders. Test patterns used for calibrating or troubleshooting the downstream signal path are these days generated by test signal generators, which do not depend on the correct configuration (and presence) of a camera, and can also test for additional parameters such as sync, frames per second, and frequency. Digitally generated cards allow vendors, viewers and television stations to adjust their equipment for optimal functionality. The audio broadcast while test cards are shown is typically a sine wave tone, radio (if associated or affiliated with the television channel) or music (usually instrumental, though some also broadcast with jazz or popular music). More recently, the use of test cards has also expanded beyond television to other digital displays such as large LED walls and video projectors.


Climbing.

An early attempt on Lhotse was by the 1955 International Himalayan Expedition, headed by Norman Dyhrenfurth. It also included two Austrians (cartographer Erwin Schneider and Ernst Senn) and two Swiss (Bruno Spirig and Arthur Spöhel), and was the first expedition in the Everest area to include Americans (Fred Beckey, George Bell, and Richard McGowan). The Nepalese liaison officer was Gaya Nanda Vaidya. They were accompanied by 200 local porters and several climbing Sherpas. After a brief look at the dangerous southern approaches of Lhotse Shar, they turned their attention, during September and October, to the Western Cwm and the northwest face of Lhotse, on which they achieved an altitude of about. They were beaten back by unexpectedly strong wind and low temperatures. Under Schneider's direction, they completed the first map of the Everest area (1:50,000 photogrammetric). The expedition also made several short films covering local cultural topics and made a number of first ascents of smaller peaks in the Khumbu region.  The main summit of Lhotse was first climbed on May 18, 1956, by the Swiss team of Ernst Reiss and Fritz Luchsinger from the Swiss Mount Everest/Lhotse Expedition. On May 12, 1970, Sepp Mayerl and Rolf Walter of Austria made the first ascent of Lhotse Shar.  Lhotse Middle remained, for a long time, the highest unclimbed named point on Earth; on May 23, 2001, its first ascent was made by Eugeny Vinogradsky, Sergei Timofeev, Alexei Bolotov and Petr Kuznetsov of a Russian expedition.  The Lhotse standard climbing route follows the same path as Everest's South Col route up to the Yellow Band beyond Camp 3. After the Yellow Band, the routes diverge with climbers bound for Everest taking a left over the Geneva Spur up to the South Col, while Lhotse climbers take a right further up the Lhotse face. The last part to the summit leads through the narrow "Reiss couloir" until the Lhotse main peak is reached.  By December 2008, 371 climbers had summited Lhotse while 20 died during their attempt. Lhotse was not summited in 2014, 2015, or 2016 due to a series of incidents. It was next summited in May 2017.

Lhotse Face.

The western flank of Lhotse is known as the "Lhotse Face". Any climber bound for the South Col on Everest must climb this wall of glacial blue ice. This face rises at 40 and 50-degree pitches with the occasional 80-degree bulges. High-altitude climbing Sherpas and the lead climbers will set fixed ropes up this wall of ice. Climbers and porters need to establish a good rhythm of foot placement and pulling themselves up the ropes using their jumars. Two rocky sections called the Yellow Band and the Geneva Spur interrupt the icy ascent on the upper part of the face.  On May 19, 2016, a high-altitude mountain worker, Ang Furba Sherpa, died when he slipped and fell down Lhotse face.

Lhotse ( ;, "lho rtse") is the fourth highest mountain in the world at, after Mount Everest, K2, and Kangchenjunga. Part of the Everest massif, Lhotse is connected to the latter peak via the South Col. Lhotse means “South Peak” in Tibetan. In addition to the main summit at above sea level, the mountain comprises the smaller peaks Lhotse Middle (East) at, and Lhotse Shar at. The summit is on the border between Tibet of China and the Khumbu region of Nepal.


Life.

He was born at Ludwigsburg in Württemberg. After attending the classical schools of Ludwigsburg and Maulbronn, he was apprenticed in a cloth factory, but, in 1804, owing to the good services of Professor Karl Philipp Conz, was able to enter the University of Tübingen. He studied medicine but also had time for literary pursuits in the company of Ludwig Uhland, Gustav Schwab and others. He took his doctor's degree in 1808, spent some time travelling, and then settled as a practising physician in Wildbad.  Here he completed his "Reiseschatten von dem Schattenspieler Luchs" (1811), in which his own experiences are described with caustic humour. He next collaborated with Uhland and Schwab in the "Poetischer Almanach" for 1812, which was followed by the "Deutscher Dichterwald" (1813), and in these some of Kerner's best poems were published. In 1815 he obtained the official appointment of district medical officer ("Oberamtsarzt") in Gaildorf, and in 1818 was transferred to Weinsberg, where he spent the rest of his life  His house, the site of which at the foot of the historical Schloss Weibertreu was presented to him by the townspeople, became a mecca for literary pilgrims, all of whom were made welcome. Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden came with a knapsack on his back. The poets, Christian Friedrich Alexander von Württemberg and Nikolaus Lenau were constant guests, and in 1826 Friederike Hauffe (1801–1829), the daughter of a forester in Prevorst, a somnambulist and clairvoyante, arrived; she forms the subject of Kerner's famous work "Die Seherin von Prevorst, Eröffnungen über das innere Leben des Menschen und über das Hineinragen einer Geisterwelt in die unsere" ("The Seeress of Prevorst, revelations of the human inner life and about the penetrations of the spirit world into ours", 1829; 6th ed., 1892). In 1826 he published a collection of "Gedichte" which were later supplemented by "Der letzte Blütenstrauß" (1852) and "Winterblüten" (1859). Among others of his well-known poems are the charming ballad "Der reichste Fürst"; a drinking song, "Wohlauf, noch getrunken", and the pensive "Wanderer in der Sägemühle".  In addition to his literary productions, Kerner wrote some popular medical books, dealing with animal magnetism, the first treatise on sebacic acid and botulism, "Das Fettgift oder die Fettsäure und ihre Wirkung auf den tierischen Organismus" (1822), and a description of Wildbad and its healing waters, "Das Wildbad im Königreich Württemberg" (1813). He also gave a vivid account of his youthful years in "Bilderbuch aus meiner Knabenzeit" (1859) and, in "Die Bestürmung der württembergischen Stadt Weinsberg im Jahre 1525" (1820), showed considerable skill in historical narrative.  In 1851 he was compelled, owing to increasing blindness, to retire from his medical practice, but he lived, carefully tended by his daughters, at Weinsberg until his death. He was buried beside his wife, who had died in 1854, in the graveyard of Weinsberg, and the grave is marked by a stone slab with an inscription he himself had chosen: "Friederike Kerner und ihr Justinus".

Association with George Rapp and the Harmony Society.

In "Bilderbuch aus meiner Knabenzeit", Kerner recalls George Rapp's visits to his father, the Oberamtmann at Maulbronn. Kerner's father had helped shield Rapp from religious prosecution by the authorities in Germany, and Kerner well remembered Rapp and his long black beard. George Rapp and his followers eventually left Germany in 1803, settled in the United States, and started the Harmony Society. "Die Seherin von Prevorst" and its tale about Kerner's relationship with Friederike Hauffe — the latter reputed to have visionary and healing powers, and who had produced a strange 'inner' language containing Hebrew-like elements — made quite an impression among the members of the Harmony Society in 1829, who saw it as confirmation of the approaching millennium and of their religious views.

The Saw.

"The Saw" was translated by William Cullen Bryant and was included in Graham's Magazine in 1848.

Justinus Andreas Christian Kerner (18 September 1786, in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany – 21 February 1862, in Weinsberg, Baden-Württemberg) was a German poet, practicing physician, and medical writer. He gave the first detailed description of botulism.


Life.

He was born to a Kyrgyz father and Tatar mother. Aitmatov's parents were civil servants in Sheker. In 1937, his father was charged with "bourgeois nationalism" in Moscow, arrested and executed in 1938.  Aitmatov lived at a time when Kyrgyzstan was being transformed from one of the most remote lands of the Russian Empire to a republic of the USSR. The future author studied at a Soviet school in Sheker. He also worked from an early age. At fourteen, he was an assistant to the Secretary at the Village Soviet. He later held jobs as a tax collector, a loader, an engineer's assistant and continued with many other types of work.  In 1946, he began studying at the Animal Husbandry Division of the Kirghiz Agricultural Institute in Frunze, but later switched to literary studies at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow, where he lived from 1956-58. For the next eight years he worked for Pravda. His first two publications appeared in 1952 in Russian: "The Newspaper Boy Dziuio" and "Ашым." His first work published in Kyrgyz was "Ак Жаан" (White rain, 1954), and his well-known work "Jamila" (Jamila) appeared in 1958. In 1961, he was a member of the jury at the 2nd Moscow International Film Festival. In 1971, he was a member of the jury at the 7th Moscow International Film Festival.  1980 saw his first novel "The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years"; his next significant novel, "The Scaffold" was published in 1988. "The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years" and other writings were translated into several languages. In 1994, he was a member of the jury at the 44th Berlin International Film Festival. In 2002 he was the President of the Jury at the 24th Moscow International Film Festival.  Aitmatov suffered kidney failure, and on 16 May 2008 was admitted to a hospital in Nuremberg, Germany, where he died of pneumonia on 10 June 2008 at the age of 79. After his death, Aitmatov was flown to Kyrgyzstan, where there were numerous ceremonies before he was buried in Ata Beyit cemetery, which he helped found and where his father most likely is buried, in Chong-Tash village, Alamüdün district, Chüy oblast, Kyrgyzstan.  His obituary in "The New York Times" characterised him as "a Communist writer whose novels and plays before the collapse of the Soviet Union gave a voice to the people of the remote Soviet republic of Kyrgyz" and adds that he "later became a diplomat and a friend and adviser to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev."

Work.

Chinghiz Aitmatov belonged to the post-war generation of writers. His output before "Jamila"  Aitmatov was honoured in 1963 with the Lenin Prize for "Tales of the Mountains and Steppes" (a compilation including "Jamila", "First Teacher" and "Farewell Gulsary") and was later awarded a State prize for "Farewell, Gulsary!". Aitmatov's art was glorified by admirers. Even critics of Aitmatov mentioned the high quality of his novels.  Aitmatov's work has some elements that are unique specifically to his creative process. His work drew on folklore, not in the ancient sense of it; rather, he tried to recreate and synthesize oral tales in the context of contemporary life. This is prevalent in his work; in nearly every story he refers to a myth, a legend, or a folktale. In "The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years," a poetic legend about a young captive turned into a mankurt serves as a tragic allegory and becomes a significant symbolic expression of the philosophy of the novel.  His work also touches on Kyrgyzstan’s transformation from the Russian empire to a republic of the USSR and the lives of its people during the transformation. This is prevalent in one of his work in "Farewell, Gyusalry!" Although the short story touches on the idea of friendship and loyalty between a man and his stallion, it also serves an tragic allegory of the political and USSR government. It explores the loss and grief that many Kyrgyz faced through the protagonist character in the short story.  A second aspect of Aitmatov's writing is his ultimate closeness to our "little brothers" the animals, for their and our lives are intimately and inseparably connected. The two central characters of "Farewell, Gulsary!" are a man and his stallion. A camel plays a prominent role in "The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years"; one of the key turns of the novel which decides the fate of the main character is narrated through the story of the camel's rut and riot. "The Scaffold" starts off and finishes with the story of a wolf pack and the great wolf-mother Akbara and her cub; human lives enter the narrative but interweave with the lives of the wolves. Some of his stories were filmed, like "The First Teacher" in 1965 and "Red Scarf" (1970) as "The Girl with the Red Scarf" (1978).  As many educated Kyrgyzs, Aitmatov was fluent in both Kyrgyz and Russian. As he explained in one of his interviews, Russian was as much of a native language for him as Kyrgyz. Most of his early works he wrote in Kyrgyz; some of these he later translated into Russian himself, while others were translated into Russian by other translators. Since 1966, he was writing in Russian.

Diplomatic career.

In addition to his literary work, Chinghiz Aitmatov was first the ambassador for the Soviet Union and later for Kyrgyzstan, to the European Union, NATO, UNESCO and the Benelux countries.

Major works.

"(Russian titles in parentheses)"

Chingiz Torekulovich Aitmatov (as transliterated from Russian;, properly transliterated: Cıŋgız Törökulovic Aytmatov; 12 December 1928 – 10 June 2008) was a Soviet and Kyrgyz author who wrote in both Kyrgyz and Russian. He is one of the best known figures in Kyrgyzstan's literature.


History.

Ideology and support patterns.

The coalition can be classified as left-wing. However, during the 1990s, it managed to attract voters from the pro-market and even right-wing camp. The main support for SLD came from middle-rank state sector employees, retired people, former Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) and All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ) members and those who were unlikely to be frequent church-goers. The core of the coalition (Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland) rejected concepts such as lustration and de-communization, supported a parliamentarian regime with only the role of an arbiter for the president and criticized the right-wing camp for introduction of religious education into school. The ex-communists criticized the economic reforms, pointing to the high social costs, without negating the reforms per se.

Coalition.

SdRP, SDU and some other socialist and social-democratic parties had formed the original Democratic Left Alliance as a centre-left coalition just prior to the nation's first free elections in 1991. In 1999 the coalition became a party, but lost some members.  At the time, the coalition's membership drew mostly from the former PZPR. An alliance between the SLD and the Polish People's Party (PSL) ruled Poland in the years 1993–1997. However the coalition lost power to the right-wing Solidarity Electoral Action in the 1997 election as the right-wing opposition was united this time and because of the decline of support for SLD's coalition partner PSL, though the SLD itself actually gained votes.

Electoral victory.

SLD formed a coalition with Labour Union before the 2001 Polish election and won it overwhelmingly at last by capturing about 5.3 million votes, 42% of the whole and won 200 of 460 seats in the Sejm and 75 of 100 in the Senate. After the elections, the coalition was joined by the Polish People's Party (PSL) in forming a government and Leszek Miller became the Prime Minister. In March 2003, the PSL left the coalition.

Rywin-gate.

By 2004 the support for SLD in the polls had dropped from about 30% to just below 10%, and several high-ranking party members had been accused of taking part in high-profile political scandals by the mainstream press (most notably the Rywin affair: Rywin-gate).  On 6 March 2004, Leszek Miller resigned as party leader and was replaced by Krzysztof Janik. On March 26 the Sejm speaker Marek Borowski, together with other high-ranking SLD officials, announced the creation of a new centre-left party, the Social Democratic Party of Poland. On the next day, Leszek Miller announced he would step down as Prime Minister on 2 May 2004, the day after Poland joined the European Union. Miller proceeded to do so.

Decline after Rywin-gate.

In the 2004 European Parliament election, it only received 9% of the votes, giving it 5 of 54 seats reserved for Poland in the European Parliament, as part of the Party of European Socialists.  Wojciech Olejniczak, the former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, was elected the president of SLD on 29 May 2004, succeeded Józef Oleksy, who resigned from the post of Polish Prime Minister due to false accusations of links to the KGB.

Opposition: 2005–present.

The 2004 European elections foreshadowed the SLD's huge defeat in the 2005 parliamentary election, in which it won only 11.3% of the vote. This gave the party 55 seats, barely a quarter of what it had had prior to the election. It also lost all of its Senators. In late 2006 a centre-left political alliance called Left and Democrats was created, comprising SLD and smaller centre-left parties, the Labour Union, the Social Democratic Party of Poland, and the liberal Democratic Party – demokraci.pl. The coalition won a disappointing 13% in the 2007 parliamentary election and was dissolved soon after in April 2008. On 31 May 2008, Olejniczak was replaced by Grzegorz Napieralski as SLD leader.  In the 2009 European election the Democratic Left Alliance-Labor Union joint ticket received 12% of the vote and 7 MEPs were elected as part of the newly retitled Socialists & Democrats group.  In the 2011 parliamentary election, SLD received 8.24% of the vote which gave it 27 seats in the Sejm. After the elections, one of the party members, Sławomir Kopyciński, decided to leave SLD and join Palikot's Movement. On December 10, 2011, Leszek Miller was chosen to return as the party leader.  In the 2014 European elections on 25 May 2014, the SLD received 9.4% of the national vote and returned 4 MEPs.  In July 2015 the SLD formed the United Left electoral alliance along with Your Movement (TR), Labour United (UP) and The Greens (PZ) and minor parties to contest the upcoming election.  In the 2015 parliamentary election held on 25 October 2015, the United Left list received 7.6% of the vote, below the 8% threshold (electoral alliances must win at least 8% of the vote, as opposed to the 5% for individual parties), leaving the SLD without parliamentary representation for the first time. Indeed, for the first time since the end of Communism, no centre-left parties won any seats in this election.  In 2017, the party withdrew from the Socialist International, while maintaining ties with the Progressive Alliance.  For the 2019 parliamentary election SLD formed an alliance with Razem and Wiosna, known as The Left. In the 2019 parliamentary election, the alliance won 12.6% of the vote and 49 seats in the Sejm, with the SLD winning 24.

Voter base.

The SLD is usually seen as the face of the standard Polish left, having achieved notable electoral success during the 90s and benefitting from a strongly organized network of local offices, which span 320 of Poland's 380 administrative counties. For this reason, it was often viewed as the go-to party for left-leaning Poles for the majority of Poland's modern history. The party's monopoly on mainstream left-wing economic ideas in Poland however ended, after the right-wing PiS party adopted many economically interventionist positions, which led a considerable portion of economically left-wing Poles to vote for PiS instead.  Besides self-described left-wingers, the party enjoys the support of many members of the country's police and military, but its largest voting bloc resides among former PZPR members, government officials and civil servants during the PPR period, which are seen as the party's core supporters. The loyal support of this voting bloc enabled the SLD to remain the largest party of the Polish left, even throughout the scandals that rocked the party in the early 2000s.  However, this electoral bloc was seen as unreliable by political observers, as despite the fact that it originally constituted a huge voting bloc, that segment of the population would inevitably shrink as its members steadily age. Following the passage of a "degradation law" by the ruling right-wing PiS party, which cut pensions and disability benefits to thousands of former bureaucrats, however, the party has undergone a revival, as more and more people's primary income came to be threatened by the new government policy. This led many of those affected to support the SLD, thus enlarging and mobilizing the formerly shrinking voting bloc.  The SLD nonetheless made a significant effort to broaden its political appeal by joining forces with two smaller left-wing parties in 2019, creating The Left political alliance, which poses itself as a'modern' take on leftism.

Democratic Left Alliance (since February 2020 officially known as the New Left) (, NL) is a social-democratic political party in Poland. It was formed in 1991 as an electoral alliance of centre-left parties, and became a single party on 15 April 1999. The party is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Progressive Alliance.


Breeding: selection by breeders.

The breeder (or group of breeders) who initially establishes a breed does so by selecting individual animals from within a gene pool that they see as having the necessary qualities needed to enhance the breed model they are aiming for. These animals are referred to as foundation stock. Furthermore, the breeder mates the most desirable representatives of the breed from his or her point of view, aiming to pass such characteristics to their progeny. This process is known as selective breeding. A written description of desirable and undesirable breed representatives is referred to as a breed standard.

Breed characteristics.

Breed specific characteristics, also known as breed traits, are inherited, and purebred animals pass such traits from generation to generation. Thus, all specimens of the same breed carry several genetic characteristics of the original foundation animal(s). In order to maintain the breed, a breeder would select those animals with the most desirable traits to achieve further maintenance and developing of such traits. At the same time, the breed would avoid animals carrying characteristics undesirable or not typical for the breed, including faults or genetic defects. The population within the same breed should consist of a sufficient number of animals to maintain the breed within the specified parameters without the necessity of forced inbreeding.  Domestic animal breeds commonly differ from country to country, and from nation to nation. Breeds originating in a certain country are known as "native breeds" of that country.

A breed is a specific group of domestic animals having homogeneous appearance (phenotype), homogeneous behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same species. In literature, there exist several slightly deviating definitions. Breeds are formed through genetic isolation and either natural adaptation to the environment or selective breeding, or a combination of the two. Despite the centrality of the idea of "breeds" to animal husbandry and agriculture, no single, scientifically accepted definition of the term exists. It was shown by set-theoretic means that for the term breed an infinite number of different definitions, which more or less meet the common requirements found in literature, can be given. A breed is therefore not an objective or biologically verifiable classification but is instead a term of art amongst groups of breeders who share a consensus around what qualities make some members of a given species members of a nameable subset.


Description.

Coltsfoot is a perennial herbaceous plant that spreads by seeds and rhizomes. "Tussilago" is often found in colonies of dozens of plants. The flowers, which superficially resemble dandelions, bear scale-leaves on the long stems in early spring. The leaves of coltsfoot, which appear after the flowers have set seed, wither and die in the early summer. The flower heads are of yellow florets with an outer row of bracts. The plant is typically in height. The leaves have angular teeth on their margins.

Distribution.

Coltsfoot is widespread across Europe, Asia, and North Africa, from Svalbard to Morocco to China and the Russian Far East. It is also a common plant in North and South America where it has been introduced, most likely by settlers as a medicinal item. The plant is often found in waste and disturbed places and along roadsides and paths. In some areas it is considered an invasive species.

Name.

The common name comes from the leaf's supposed resemblance to a colt's foot. Other common names include tash plant, ass's foot, bull's foot, coughwort (Old English), farfara, foal's foot, foalswort, and horse foot. Sometimes it is confused with "Petasites frigidus", or western coltsfoot.  It has been called "bechion", "bechichie", or "bechie", from the Ancient Greek word for "cough". Also "ungula caballina" ("horse hoof"), "pes pulli" ("foal's foot"), and "chamæleuce".

Uses.

Coltsfoot has been used in herbal medicine and has been consumed as a food product with some confectionery products, such as Coltsfoot Rock. "Tussilago farfara" leaves have been used in traditional Austrian medicine internally (as tea or syrup) or externally (directly applied) for treatment of disorders of the respiratory tract, skin, locomotor system, viral infections, flu, colds, fever, rheumatism and gout. An extract of the fresh leaves has also been used to make cough drops and hard candy.  Coltsfoot is used as a food plant by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including the Gothic and small angle shades. It is also visited by honeybees, providing pollen and nectar.

Toxicity.

"Tussilago farfara" contains tumorigenic pyrrolizidine alkaloids. Senecionine and senkirkine, present in coltsfoot, have the highest mutagenetic activity of any pyrrolozidine alkaloid, tested using "Drosophila melanogaster" to produce a comparative genotoxicity test.  Two cases of supposed liver damage (and death) due to coltsfoot tea have been shown to actually be the result of mistaken identity. In one, coltsfoot tea causing severe liver problems in an infant was actually the result of "Adenostyles alliariae" (alpendost). In another case, an infant developed liver disease and died because the mother drank tea originally believed to contain coltsfoot during her pregnancy, but which was later shown to be "Petasites hybridus" (butterbur) or a similar species. In one 27-year-old male, ingesting a multicomponent herbal supplement that included coltsfoot may have caused him to develop non-lethal deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism.  In response, the German government banned the sale of coltsfoot. Clonal plants of coltsfoot free of pyrrolizidine alkaloids were then developed in Austria and Germany. This has resulted in the development of the registered variety "Tussilago farfara" 'Wien', which has no detectable levels of these alkaloids.

Tussilago farfara, commonly known as coltsfoot, is a plant in the groundsel tribe in the daisy family Asteraceae, native to Europe and parts of western and central Asia. The name "tussilago" is derived from the Latin "tussis", meaning cough, and "ago", meaning to cast or to act on. It has had uses in traditional medicine, but the discovery of toxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids in the plant has resulted in liver health concerns.


Description.

This species is an annual and perennial with weak slender stems, up through 40 cm long. Plants are sparsely hairy, with hairs in a line along the stem. The leaves are oval and opposite, the lower ones with stalks. Flowers are white and small with 5 very deeply lobed petals. Some plants have no petals. The stamens are usually 3 and the styles 3. The flowers quickly form capsules. Plants have flowers and capsules at the same time.

Distribution and identification.

"Stellaria media" is widespread in Asia, Europe, North America, and other parts of the world. There are several closely related plants referred to as chickweed, but which lack the culinary properties of plants in the genus "Stellaria." Plants in the genus "Cerastium" are very similar in appearance to "Stellaria" and are in the same family (Caryophyllaceae). "Stellaria" has fine hairs on only one side of its stem in a single band and on the sepals. Other members of the family Caryophyllaceae which resemble "Stellaria" have hairs uniformly covering their entire stems and usually have 3 styles, 3-5, occasionally 8 stamens, variously stated as 8 stamens by Keble Martin and (1-)3(-8) by Clapham, Tutin and Warburg.

Habitat.

"Stellaria media" is common in lawns, meadows, waste places and open areas.

Ecology.

The larvae of the European moth yellow shell ("Camptogramma bilineata"), of North American moths pale-banded dart ("Agnorisma badinodis") or dusky cutworm ("Agrotis venerabilis") or North American butterfly dainty sulphur ("Nathalis iole") all feed on chickweed. It is susceptible to downy mildew caused by the oomycete species "Peronospora alsinearum".

Growth.

In both Europe and North America this plant is common in gardens, fields, and disturbed grounds where it grows as a ground cover.

Uses.

As food.

"Stellaria media" is edible and nutritious, and is used as a leaf vegetable, often raw in salads. It is one of the ingredients of the symbolic dish consumed in the Japanese spring-time festival, "Nanakusa-no-sekku".  It is also eaten by chickens and wild birds.

Toxicity.

"Stellaria media" contains plant chemicals known as saponins, which can be toxic to some species when consumed in large quantities. Chickweed has been known to cause saponin poisoning in cattle. However, as the animal must consume several kilos of chickweed in order to reach a toxic level, such deaths are extremely rare.  "S. media" should also not be confused with the mildly toxic "Euphorbia".

In folk medicine.

The plant has medicinal properties and is used in folk medicine. It has been used as a remedy to treat itchy skin conditions and pulmonary diseases. 17th century herbalist John Gerard recommended it as a remedy for mange. Modern herbalists prescribe it for iron-deficiency anemia (for its high iron content), as well as for skin diseases, bronchitis, rheumatic pains, arthritis and period pain. Not all of these uses are supported by scientific evidence. The plant was used by the Ainu for treating bruises and aching bones. Stems were steeped in hot water before being applied externally to affected areas.

Chemistry.

The anthraquinones emodin, parietin (physcion) and questin, the flavonoid kaempferol-3,7-O-α-L-dirhamnoside, the phytosterols β-sitosterol and daucosterol, and the fatty alcohol 1-hexacosanol can be found in "S. media". Other flavonoid constituents are apigenin 6-C-beta-D-galactopyranosyl-8-C-alpha-L-arabinopyranoside, apigenin 6-C-alpha-L-arabinopyranosyl-8-C-beta-D-galactopyranoside, apigenin 6-C-beta-D-galactopyranosyl-8-C-beta-L-arabinopyranoside, apigenin 6-C-beta-D-glucopyranosyl-8-C-beta-D-galactopyranoside, apigenin 6, 8-di-C-alpha-L-arabinopyranoside. The plant also contains triterpenoid saponins of the hydroxylated oleanolic acid type. Proanthocyanidins are present in the testa of seeds.

Etymology.

"Stellaria" is derived from the word'stellar' meaning'star', which is a reference to the shape of its flowers. "Media" is derived from Latin and means 'between', 'intermediate', or'mid-sized'.

Stellaria media, chickweed, is an annual and perennial flowering plant in the family Caryophyllaceae. It is native to Eurasia and naturalized in throughout the world. This species is used as a cooling herbal remedy, and grown as a vegetable crop and ground cover for both human and poultry consumption. It is sometimes called common chickweed to distinguish it from other plants called chickweed. Other common names include chickenwort, craches, maruns, and winterweed. The plant germinates in autumn or late winter, then forms large mats of foliage.


Description.

Sorrel is a slender herbaceous perennial plant about high, with roots that run deep into the ground, as well as juicy stems and edible, arrow-shaped (sagittate) leaves. The leaves, when consumed raw, have a sour taste. The lower leaves are in length with long petioles and a membranous ocrea formed of fused, sheathing stipules. The upper ones are sessile, and frequently become crimson. It has whorled spikes of reddish-green flowers, which bloom in early summer, becoming purplish. The species is dioecious, with stamens and pistils on different plants.  The leaves are eaten by the larvae of several species of Lepidoptera (butterfly and moth) including the blood-vein moth, as well as by non-specialized snails and slugs.

Distribution.

"Rumex acetosa" occurs in grassland habitats throughout Europe from the northern Mediterranean coast to the north of Scandinavia and in parts of Central Asia. It occurs as an introduced species in parts of New Zealand, Australia and North America.

Subspecies.

Several subspecies have been named. Not all are cultivated:

Uses.

Common sorrel has been cultivated for centuries. The leaves may be puréed in soups and sauces or added to salads; they have a flavour that is similar to kiwifruit or sour wild strawberries. The plant's sharp taste is due to oxalic acid.  In northern Nigeria, sorrel is used in stews usually with spinach. In some Hausa communities, it is steamed and made into salad using "kuli-kuli" (traditional roasted peanut cakes with oil extracted), salt, pepper, onion and tomatoes. In India, the leaves are used in soups or curries made with yellow lentils and peanuts. In Afghanistan, the leaves are coated in a wet batter and deep fried, then served as an appetizer or if in season during Ramadan, for breaking the fast.  Throughout eastern Europe, wild or garden sorrel is used to make sour soups, stewed with vegetables or herbs, meats or eggs. In rural Greece, it is used with spinach, leeks, and chard in spanakopita. In Albania, the leaves are simmered and served cold marinated in olive oil, or as an ingredient for filling "byrek" pies ("byrek me lakra"). In Armenia, the leaves are collected in spring, woven into braids, and dried for use during winter. The most common preparation is aveluk soup, where the leaves are rehydrated and rinsed to reduce bitterness, then stewed with onions, potatoes, walnuts, garlic and bulgur wheat or lentils, and sometimes sour plums.

Common sorrel or garden sorrel ("Rumex acetosa"), often simply called sorrel, is a perennial herb in the family Polygonaceae. Other names for sorrel include spinach dock and narrow-leaved dock. It is a common plant in grassland habitats and is cultivated as a garden herb or salad vegetable (pot herb).


Life.

The son of Louis Marie, Count of Chamisso, by his marriage to Anne Marie Gargam, Chamisso began life as Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamissot at the "château" of Boncourt at Ante, in Champagne, France, the ancestral seat of his family. His name appears in several forms, one of the most common being "Ludolf Karl Adelbert von Chamisso."  In 1790, the French Revolution drove his parents out of France with their seven children, and they went successively to Liège, the Hague, Würzburg, and Bayreuth, and possibly Hamburg where he reportedly met both a younger boy in Johann August Wilhelm Neander and another younger boy in Karl August Varnhagen von Ense before settling in Berlin. There, in 1796 the young Chamisso was fortunate in obtaining the post of page-in-waiting to the queen of Prussia, and in 1798 he entered a Prussian infantry regiment as an ensign to train for a career as an army officer. Shortly thereafter, thanks to the Peace of Tilsit, his family was able to return to France, but Chamisso remained in Prussia and continued his military career. He had little formal education, but while in the Prussian military service in Berlin he assiduously studied natural science for three years. In collaboration with Varnhagen von Ense, in 1803 he founded the "Berliner Musenalmanach", the publication in which his first verses appeared. The enterprise was a failure, and, interrupted by the Napoleonic wars, it came to an end in 1806. It brought him, however, to the notice of many of the literary celebrities of the day and established his reputation as a rising poet.  Chamisso had become a lieutenant in 1801, and in 1805 he accompanied his regiment to Hamelin, where he shared in the humiliation of the town's treasonable capitulation the next year. Placed on parole, he went to France, but both his parents were dead; returning to Berlin in the autumn of 1807, he obtained his release from the Prussian service early the following year. Homeless and without a profession, disillusioned and despondent, Chamisso lived in Berlin until 1810, when through the services of an old friend of the family he was offered a professorship at the "lycée" at Napoléonville in the Vendée.  He set out to take up the post, but instead joined the circle of Madame de Staël, and followed her in her exile to Coppet in Switzerland, where, devoting himself to botanical research, he remained nearly two years. In 1812 he returned to Berlin, where he continued his scientific studies. In the summer of the eventful year, 1813, he wrote the prose narrative "Peter Schlemihl", the man who sold his shadow. This, the most famous of all his works, has been translated into most European languages (English by William Howitt). It was written partly to divert his own thoughts and partly to amuse the children of his friend Julius Eduard Hitzig.  In 1815, Chamisso was appointed botanist to the Russian ship "Rurik", fitted out at the expense of Count Nikolay Rumyantsev, which Otto von Kotzebue (son of August von Kotzebue) commanded on a scientific voyage round the world. He collected at the Cape of Good Hope in January 1818 in the company of Krebs, Mund and Maire. His diary of the expedition ("Tagebuch", 1821) is a fascinating account of the expedition to the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. During this trip Chamisso described a number of new species found in what is now the San Francisco Bay Area. Several of these, including the California poppy, "Eschscholzia californica", were named after his friend Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, the Rurik's entomologist. In return, Eschscholtz named a variety of plants, including the genus "Camissonia", after Chamisso. On his return in 1818 he was made custodian of the botanical gardens in Berlin, and was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1819 he married his friend Hitzig's foster daughter Antonie Piaste (1800–1837). He became a leading member of the Serapion Brethren, a literary circle around E. T. A. Hoffmann.  In 1827, partly for the purpose of rebutting the charges brought against him by Kotzebue, he published "Views and Remarks on a Voyage of Discovery", and "Description of a Voyage Round the World". Both works display great accuracy and industry. His last scientific labor was a tract on the Hawaiian language. Chamisso's travels and scientific researches restrained for a while the full development of his poetical talent, and it was not until his forty-eighth year that he turned back to literature. In 1829, in collaboration with Gustav Schwab, and from 1832 in conjunction with Franz von Gaudy, he brought out the "Deutscher Musenalmanach", in which his later poems were mainly published.  Chamisso died in Berlin at the age of 57. His grave is preserved in the Protestant "Friedhof III" (Cemetery No. 3 of the congregations of Jerusalem's Church and the New Church) in Berlin-Kreuzberg, to the south of the Hallesches Tor.

Botanical work.

Chamisso is chiefly remembered for his work as a botanist; his most important contribution, done in conjunction with Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal, was the description of many of the most important trees of Mexico in 1830–1831. Also, his "Bemerkungen und Ansichten", published in an incomplete form in Kotzebue's "Entdeckungsreise" (Weimar, 1821) and more completely in Chamisso's Collected Works (1836), and the botanical work, "Übersicht der nutzbarsten und schädlichsten Gewächse in Norddeutschland" (Review of the Most Useful and the Most Noxious Plants of North Germany, with Remarks on Scientific Botany), of 1829, are esteemed for their careful treatment of their subjects.  The genera "Chamissoa" Kunth (Amaranthaceae) and "Camissonia" Link (Onagraceae) and many species were named in his honor.

Belles lettres.

Chamisso's earliest writings, which include a verse translation of the tragedy "Le Comte de Comminge" in which "heilsam" is used in place of "heilig", show a 20-year-old still struggling to master his new language, and a number of his early poems are in French. Between 1801 and 1804 he became closely associated with other writers and edited their journal.  As a poet Chamisso's reputation stands high. "Frauenliebe und -leben" (1830), a cycle of lyrical poems set to music by Robert Schumann, by Carl Loewe, and by Franz Paul Lachner, is particularly famous. Also noteworthy are "Schloss Boncourt" and "Salas y Gomez". He often deals with gloomy or repulsive subjects; and even in his lighter and gayer productions there is an undertone of sadness or of satire. In the lyrical expression of the domestic emotions he displays a fine felicity, and he knew how to treat with true feeling a tale of love or vengeance. "Die Löwenbraut" may be taken as a sample of his weird and powerful simplicity; and "Vergeltung" is remarkable for a pitiless precision of treatment. The first collected edition of Chamisso's works was edited by Hitzig and published in six volumes in 1836.

Adelbert von Chamisso (; 30 January 178121 August 1838) was a German poet and botanist, author of "Peter Schlemihl", a famous story about a man who sold his shadow. He was commonly known in French as Adelbert de Chamisso (or Chamissot) de Boncourt, a name referring to the family estate at Boncourt.


Description.

It has creeping rhizomes which enable it to grow rapidly across grassland. It has flat, hairy leaves with upright flower spikes. The stems ('culms') grow to 40–150 cm tall; the leaves are linear, 15–40 cm long and 3–10 mm broad at the base of the plant, with leaves higher on the stems 2–8.5 mm broad. The flower spike is 10–30 cm long, with spikelets 1–2 cm long, 5–7 mm broad and 3 mm thick with three to eight florets. The glumes are 7–12 mm long, usually without an awn or with only a short one.  It flowers at the end of June through to August in the Northern Hemisphere.

Taxonomy.

Various taxonomic subdivisions of this species have been proposed. Moreover, it is assigned to various genera ("Elymus", "Elytrigium", "Agropyron"). In a recent classification, three subspecies are distinguished, one of these with an additional variety:  Hybrids are recorded with several related grasses, including "Elytrigia juncea" ("Elytrigia × laxa" (Fr.) Kerguélen), "Elytrigia atherica" ("Elytrigia × drucei" Stace), and with the barley species "Hordeum secalinum" ("× Elytrordeum langei" (K. Richt.) Hyl.).

Ecology.

The foliage is an important forage grass for many grazing mammals. The seeds are eaten by several species of grassland birds, particularly buntings and finches. The caterpillars of some Lepidoptera use it as a foodplant, e.g. the Essex skipper ("Thymelicus lineola").

Eradication.

Couch grass has become naturalised throughout much of the world, and is often listed as an invasive weed. It is very difficult to remove from garden environments, as the thin rhizomes become entangled among the roots of shrubs and perennials, and each severed piece of rhizome can develop into a new plant. It may be possible to loosen the earth around the plant, and carefully pull out the complete rhizome. This is best done in the spring, when disturbed plants can recover. Another method is to dig deep into the ground in order to remove as much of the grass as possible. The area should then be covered with a thick layer of woodchips. To further prevent re-growth, cardboard can be placed underneath the woodchips. The long, white rhizomes will, however, dry out and die if left on the surface. Many herbicides will also control it.

Applications.

The dried rhizomes of couch grass were broken up and used as incense in medieval northern Europe where other resin-based types of incense were unavailable. "Elymus repens" ("Agropyron repens") rhizomes have been used in the traditional Austrian medicine against fever, internally as a tea, syrup, or cold maceration in water, or externally applied as a crude drug.

Elymus repens, commonly known as couch grass, is a very common perennial species of grass native to most of Europe, Asia, the Arctic biome, and northwest Africa. It has been brought into other mild northern climates for forage or erosion control, but is often considered a weed.


Classification.

There are several methods of classifying exploits. The most common is by how the exploit communicates to the vulnerable software.  A "remote exploit" works over a network and exploits the security vulnerability without any prior access to the vulnerable system.  A "local exploit" requires prior access to the vulnerable system and usually increases the privileges of the person running the exploit past those granted by the system administrator. Exploits against client applications also exist, usually consisting of modified servers that send an exploit if accessed with a client application.  Exploits against client applications may also require some interaction with the user and thus may be used in combination with the social engineering method. Another classification is by the action against the vulnerable system; unauthorized data access, arbitrary code execution, and denial of service are examples.  Many exploits are designed to provide superuser-level access to a computer system. However, it is also possible to use several exploits, first to gain low-level access, then to escalate privileges repeatedly until one reaches the highest administrative level (often called "root").  After an exploit is made known to the authors of the affected software, the vulnerability is often fixed through a patch and the exploit becomes unusable. That is the reason why some black hat hackers as well as military or intelligence agencies hackers do not publish their exploits but keep them private.  Exploits unknown to everyone but the people that found and developed them are referred to as "zero day exploits".

Types.

Exploitations are commonly categorized and named by the type of vulnerability they exploit (see vulnerabilities for a list), whether they are local/remote and the result of running the exploit (e.g. EoP, DoS, spoofing).

Pivoting.

Pivoting refers to a method used by penetration testers that uses the compromised system to attack other systems on the same network to avoid restrictions such as firewall configurations, which may prohibit direct access to all machines. For example, if an attacker compromises a web server on a corporate network, the attacker can then use the compromised web server to attack other systems on the network. These types of attacks are often called multi-layered attacks. Pivoting is also known as "island hopping".  Pivoting can further be distinguished into proxy pivoting and VPN pivoting. Proxy pivoting generally describes the practice of channeling traffic through a compromised target using a proxy payload on the machine and launching attacks from the computer. This type of pivoting is restricted to certain TCP and UDP ports that are supported by the proxy.  VPN pivoting enables the attacker to create an encrypted layer to tunnel into the compromised machine to route any network traffic through that target machine, for example, to run a vulnerability scan on the internal network through the compromised machine, effectively giving the attacker full network access as if they were behind the firewall.  Typically, the proxy or VPN applications enabling pivoting are executed on the target computer as the payload (software) of an exploit.  Pivoting is usually done by infiltrating a part of a network infrastructure (as an example, a vulnerable printer or thermostat) and using a scanner to find other devices connected to attack them. By attacking a vulnerable piece of networking, an attacker could infect most or all of a network and gain complete control.

An exploit (from the English verb "to exploit", meaning "to use something to one’s own advantage") is a piece of software, a chunk of data, or a sequence of commands that takes advantage of a bug or vulnerability to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer software, hardware, or something electronic (usually computerized). Such behavior frequently includes things like gaining control of a computer system, allowing privilege escalation, or a denial-of-service (DoS or related DDoS) attack.


First appearances.

The early appearances of the word all relate to its political meaning. It first appears in English (in fact Scottish) in the work of Robert Sempill (d. 1595). He uses "mache villion" and "Machivilian". As "Machiauilisme" it occurs in Thomas Nashe's "Pierce Peniless" (1592). A French to English dictionary of 1611 gives "subtle policie, cunning roguerie" as the meaning. The Italian "machiavellista" and "machiavello" also go back to the 16th century.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines "Machiavellian" (as an adjective) as: "Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Machiavelli, or his alleged principles; following the methods recommended by Machiavelli in preferring expediency to morality; practicing duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct; astute, cunning, intriguing". A "Machiavel" is "One who acts on the principles of Machiavelli; an intriguer, an unscrupulous schemer".

Reception of Machiavelli.

In so far as the Machiavellian trope has any relationship with Machiavelli's actual philosophy, it relates to his most famous work, "Il Principe", or "The Prince." The book would become infamous for its recommendation for absolute rulers to be ready to act in unscrupulous ways, such as resorting to fraud and treachery, elimination of political opponents, and the usage of fear as a means of controlling subjects. Machiavelli's view that acquiring a state and maintaining it requires evil means has been noted as the chief theme of the treatise.  In the late 1530s, immediately following the publication of "The Prince", Machiavelli's philosophy was seen as an immoral ideology that corrupted European politics. Reginald Pole read the treatise while he was in Italy, and on which he commented: "I found this type of book to be written by an enemy of the human race. It explains every means whereby religion, justice and any inclination toward virtue could be destroyed". Due to the treatise's controversial analysis on politics, in 1559, the Catholic Church banned "The Prince", putting it on the "Index Librorum Prohibitorum". Machiavelli's works were received similarly by other popular European authors, especially in Protestant Elizabethan England.  The "Anti-Machiavel" is an 18th-century essay by Frederick the Great, King of Prussia and patron of Voltaire, rebutting "The Prince". It was first published in September 1740, a few months after Frederick became king. Denis Diderot, the French philosopher, viewed Machiavellianism as "an abhorrent type of politics" and the "art of tyranny".

Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre.

The Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre of Huguenot Protestants in France in 1572 was a particular nexus of complaints about Machiavellianism, as the massacre came to be seen as a product of it. The massacre "spawned a pullulating mass of polemical literature, bubbling with theories, prejudices and phobias", in which Machiavellianism featured prominently. This view was greatly influenced by the Huguenot lawyer, who published his "Discours contre Machievel" in 1576, which was printed in ten editions in three languages over the next four years. Gentillet held, quite wrongly according to Sydney Anglo, that Machiavelli's "books [were] held most dear and precious by our Italian and Italionized courtiers" (in the words of his first English translation, "Anti-Machiavel: A Discourse Upon the Means of Well Governing"), and so (in Anglo's paraphrase) "at the root of France's present degradation, which has culminated not only in the St Bartholomew massacre but the glee of its perverted admirers". In fact there is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the massacre, and not very much after, until Gentillet's own book, but this concept was seized upon by many contemporaries, and played a crucial part in setting the long-lasting popular concept of Machiavellianism. It also gave added impetus to the strong anti-Italian feelings already present in Huguenot polemic.  The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913 was still ready to endorse a version of this view, describing the massacres as "an entirely political act committed in the name of the immoral principles of Machiavellianism" and blaming "the pagan theories of a certain raison d'état according to which the end justified the means".

English drama.

Christopher Marlowe was one of many Elizabethan English writers who were enthusiastic promoters of the trope, and although Machiavelli had not yet been published in English, he evidently expects his theatrical audience to understand the references. In "The Jew of Malta" (1589–90) "Machiavel" in person speaks the Prologue, claiming to not be dead, but to have possessed the soul of the Duke of Guise, considered the mastermind of the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre, "And, now the Guise is dead, is come from France/ To view this land, and frolic with his friends" (Prologue, lines 3-4) His last play, "The Massacre at Paris" (1593) takes the massacre, and the following years, as its subject, with Guise and Catherine de' Medici both depicted as Machiavellian plotters, bent on evil from the start.  The figure of the Machiavel in Elizabethan drama "combined elements of the Vice character (the comic villain from medieval morality drama) with a negative caricature of Machiavellian ideology as godless, scheming and self-interested." No English translation of "The Prince" was printed until 1640, but English manuscript translations were circulating by about 1585, as well as printed editions in other languages. Shakespeare may well have been aware of at least some of Machiavelli's ideas; he has the future Richard III boast in "Henry VI, Part III", that he can "set the murderous Machiavel to school", and the Host in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" asks rhetorically, "Am I politic? am I subtle? am I a Machiavel?"  Other examples are Lorenzo in Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy", Iago in "Othello", the title character of Ben Jonson's "Volpone", and Boscola in John Webster's "Duchess of Malfi".

The Machiavellian Earl of Essex.

The two levels of Machiavellianism both feature in the case of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, a favourite of Elizabeth I of England. There is good evidence that he and his circle, which included Francis Bacon and his brother Anthony, were interested in a serious and informed way in the thought of Machiavelli. The famous climax of Essex's career was Essex's Rebellion in 1601, when he attempted a coup d'etat in London, which was a complete failure, flopping in a single day. He was executed within three weeks, with some of his co-conspirators following later. The government issued instructions to the nation's preachers a week after the rebellion on how to present the earl's character, which resorted to the theatrical caricature, saying he "was, in a word, a theatrical machiavel". The Privy Council's briefing included: "he has carried himself after a very insolent and ambitious sort... he has diligently trodden the steps of all arch-traitors, seeking by popular conversation to allure the hearts of the simple. In matters of religion, his dissimulation and hypocrisy are now disclosed...". Francis Bacon rapidly changed sides after the rebellion, taking part in Essex's prosecution, and referred to Machiavelli during Essex's trial, in a way that showed his familiarity with his actual writings, demonstrated at many points in his own writings.

Machiavellianism as a trope, or "popular discourse", in political history is a pejorative term for the supposed political philosophy of the Italian Renaissance diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli, "a negative caricature of Machiavellian ideology as godless, scheming and self-interested". Though in discussions of Machiavelli's thought "Machiavellian" and "Machiavellianism" may be used in reasoned critiques, in general usage the terms more often occur in political polemic, suggesting an unprincipled lust for power, achieved through "subtle policie, cunning roguerie" (the earliest dictionary definition in English, from 1611), by the "Machiavel", an adherent of these principles. In this trope, as described by Isaiah Berlin, Machiavelli was regarded as "a man inspired by the Devil to lead good men to their doom, the great subverter, the teacher of evil, "le docteur de la scélératesse", the inspirer of St. Bartholomew’s Eve, the original of Iago".


Description.

The bark is thin and scaly, flaking off in small, circular plates across. The crown is broad conic in young trees, becoming cylindric in older trees; old trees may not have branches lower than. The shoots are very pale buff-brown, almost white, and glabrous (hairless), but with prominent pulvini. The leaves are stiff, sharp, and needle-like, 15–25 mm long, flattened in cross-section, dark glaucous blue-green above with two or three thin lines of stomata, and blue-white below with two dense bands of stomata.  The cones are pendulous, slender cylindrical, long and broad when closed, opening to broad. They have thin, flexible scales long; the bracts just above the scales are the longest of any spruce, occasionally just exserted and visible on the closed cones. They are green or reddish, maturing pale brown 5–7 months after pollination. The seeds are black, long, with a slender, long pale brown wing.

Size.

More than a century of logging has left only a remnant of the spruce forest. The largest trees were cut long before careful measurements could be made. Trees over tall may still be seen in Pacific Rim National Park and Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park on Vancouver Island, British Columbia (the Carmanah Giant, at tall, is the tallest tree in Canada), and in Olympic National Park, Washington and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, California (United States); two at the last site are just over 96 m tall. The Queets Spruce is the largest in the world with a trunk volume of, a height of, and a dbh. It is located near the Queets River in Olympic National Park, about from the Pacific Ocean. Another specimen, from Klootchy Creek Park, Oregon, was previously recorded to be the largest with a circumference of and height of.

Age.

Sitka spruce is a long-lived tree, with individuals over 700 years old known. Because it grows rapidly under favorable conditions, large size may not indicate exceptional age. The Queets Spruce has been estimated to be only 350 to 450 years old, but adds more than a cubic meter of wood each year.

Root system.

Living in an extremely wet climate, the Sitka spruce has a shallow root system with long lateral roots and few branchings.

Fire danger.

Despite the prevalence of Sitka spruce in cool, wet climates, its thin bark and shallow root system make it susceptible to fire damage.

Taxonomy.

DNA analysis has shown that only "P. breweriana" has a more basal position than Sitka spruce to the rest of the spruce. The other 33 species of spruce are more derived, which suggests that "Picea" originated in North America.

Distribution and habitat.

Sitka spruce is native to the west coast of North America, with its northwestern limit on Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, and its southeastern limit near Fort Bragg in northern California. It is closely associated with the temperate rain forests and is found within a few kilometers of the coast in the southern portion of its range. North of Oregon, its range extends inland along river floodplains, but nowhere does its range extend more than from the Pacific Ocean and its inlets. Sitka spruce also grows on the west coast of Norway, where it is considered an invasive species.

Uses.

Sitka spruce is of major importance in forestry for timber and paper production. Outside its native range, it is particularly valued for its fast growth on poor soils and exposed sites where few other trees can prosper; in ideal conditions, young trees may grow per year. It is naturalized in some parts of Ireland and Great Britain, where it was introduced in 1831 by David Douglas, and New Zealand, though not so extensively as to be considered invasive. Sitka spruce is also planted extensively in Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. In Norway, Sitka spruce was introduced in the early 1900s. An estimated have been planted in Norway, mainly along the coast from Vest-Agder in the south to Troms in the north. It is more tolerant to wind and saline ocean air, and grows faster than the native Norway spruce. But in Norway, the Sitka spruce is now considered an invasive species, and effort to get rid of it is being made.  Sitka spruce is used widely in piano, harp, violin, and guitar manufacture, as its high strength-to-weight ratio and regular, knot-free rings make it an excellent conductor of sound. For these reasons, the wood is also an important material for sailboat spars, and aircraft wing spars (including flying models). The Wright brothers' Flyer was built using Sitka spruce, as were many aircraft before World War II; during that war, aircraft such as the British Mosquito used it as a substitute for strategically important aluminium.  Newly grown tips of Sitka spruce branches are used to flavor spruce beer and are boiled to make syrup.  The root bark of Sitka spruce trees is used in Native Alaskan basket-weaving designs.

Culture.

A unique specimen with golden foliage that used to grow on Haida Gwaii, known as Kiidk'yaas or "The Golden Spruce", is sacred to the Haida Native American people. It was illegally felled in 1997 by Grant Hadwin, although saplings grown from cuttings can now be found near its original site.

Chemistry.

The stilbene glucosides astringin, isorhapontin, and piceid can be found in the bark of the Sitka spruce.

Burls.

In the Olympic National Forest in Washington, Sitka spruce trees near the ocean sometimes develop burls.  According to a guidebook entitled "Olympic Peninsula", "Damage to the tip or the bud of a Sitka spruce causes the growth cells to divide more rapidly than normal to form this swelling or burl. Even though the burls may look menacing, they do not affect the overall tree growth."

Picea sitchensis, the Sitka spruce, is a large, coniferous, evergreen tree growing to almost 100 m (330 ft) tall, with a trunk diameter at breast height that can exceed 5 m (16 ft). It is by far the largest species of spruce and the fifth-largest conifer in the world (behind giant sequoia, coast redwood, kauri, and western redcedar); and the third-tallest conifer species (after coast redwood and coast Douglas fir). The Sitka spruce is one of the few species documented to exceed 300 ft (90 m) in height. Its name is derived from the community of Sitka in southeast Alaska, where it is prevalent. Its range hugs the western coast of Canada and the US, continuing south into northernmost California.


Terrestrial and planetary.

Flat maps are created using a map projection that inevitably introduces an increasing amount of distortion the larger the area that the map shows. A globe is the only representation of the Earth that does not distort either the shape or the size of large features – land masses, bodies of water, etc.  The Earth's circumference is quite close to 40 million metres. Many globes are made with a circumference of one metre, so they are models of the Earth at a scale of 1:40 million. In imperial units, many globes are made with a diameter of one foot (about 30 cm), yielding a circumference of 3.14 feet (about 96 cm) and a scale of 1:42 million. Globes are also made in many other sizes.  Some globes have surface texture showing topography or bathymetry. In these, elevations and depressions are purposely exaggerated, as they otherwise would be hardly visible. For example, one manufacturer produces a three dimensional raised relief globe with a diameter (equivalent to a 200 cm circumference, or approximately a scale of 1:20 million) showing the highest mountains as over tall, which is about 57 times higher than the correct scale of Mount Everest.  Most modern globes are also imprinted with parallels and meridians, so that one can tell the approximate coordinates of a specific place. Globes may also show the boundaries of countries and their names.  Many terrestrial globes have one celestial feature marked on them: a diagram called the analemma, which shows the apparent motion of the Sun in the sky during a year.  Globes generally show north at the top, but many globes allow the axis to be swiveled so that southern portions can be viewed conveniently. This capability also permits exploring the Earth from different orientations to help counter the north-up bias caused by conventional map presentation.

Celestial.

Celestial globes show the apparent positions of the stars in the sky. They omit the Sun, Moon and planets because the positions of these bodies vary relative to those of the stars, but the ecliptic, along which the Sun moves, is indicated.

History.

The sphericity of the Earth was established by Greek astronomy in the 3rd century BC, and the earliest terrestrial globe appeared from that period. The earliest known example is the one constructed by Crates of Mallus in Cilicia (now Çukurova in modern-day Turkey), in the mid-2nd century BC.  No terrestrial globes from Antiquity or the Middle Ages have survived. An example of a surviving celestial globe is part of a Hellenistic sculpture, called the Farnese Atlas, surviving in a 2nd-century AD Roman copy in the Naples Archaeological Museum, Italy.  Early terrestrial globes depicting the entirety of the Old World were constructed in the Islamic world. According to David Woodward, one such example was the terrestrial globe introduced to Beijing by the Persian astronomer, Jamal ad-Din, in 1267.  The earliest extant terrestrial globe was made in 1492 by Martin Behaim (1459–1537) with help from the painter Georg Glockendon. Behaim was a German mapmaker, navigator, and merchant. Working in Nuremberg, Germany, he called his globe the "Nürnberg Terrestrial Globe." It is now known as the Erdapfel. Before constructing the globe, Behaim had traveled extensively. He sojourned in Lisbon from 1480, developing commercial interests and mingling with explorers and scientists. In 1485–1486, he sailed with Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão to the coast of West Africa. He began to construct his globe after his return to Nürnberg in 1490.  Another early globe, the Hunt–Lenox Globe, ca. 1510, is thought to be the source of the phrase "Hic Sunt Dracones", or “Here be dragons”. A similar grapefruit-sized globe made from two halves of an ostrich egg was found in 2012 and is believed to date from 1504. It may be the oldest globe to show the New World. Stefaan Missine, who analyzed the globe for the Washington Map Society journal "Portolan", said it was “part of an important European collection for decades.” After a year of research in which he consulted many experts, Missine concluded the Hunt–Lenox Globe was a copper cast of the egg globe.  A facsimile globe showing America was made by Martin Waldseemueller in 1507. Another "remarkably modern-looking" terrestrial globe of the Earth was constructed by Taqi al-Din at the Constantinople Observatory of Taqi ad-Din during the 1570s.  The world's first seamless celestial globe was built by Mughal scientists under the patronage of Jahangir.  "Globus" IMP, electro-mechanical devices including five-inch globes have been used in Soviet and Russian spacecraft from 1961 to 2002 as navigation instruments. In 2001, the TMA version of the Soyuz spacecraft replaced this instrument with a digital map. In the 1800s small pocket globes (less than 3 inches) were status symbols for gentlemen and educational toys for rich children.

Manufacture.

Traditionally, globes were manufactured by gluing a printed paper map onto a sphere, often made from wood.  The most common type has long, thin gores (strips) of paper that narrow to a point at the poles, small disks cover over the inevitable irregularities at these points. The more gores there are, the less stretching and crumpling is required to make the paper map fit the sphere. This method of globe making was illustrated in 1802 in an engraving in The English Encyclopedia by George Kearsley.  Modern globes are often made from thermoplastic. Flat, plastic disks are printed with a distorted map of one of the Earth's Hemispheres. This is placed in a machine which molds the disk into a hemispherical shape. The hemisphere is united with its opposite counterpart to form a complete globe.  Usually a globe is mounted so that its spin axis is 23.5° (0.41 rad) from vertical, which is the angle the Earth's spin axis deviates from perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. This mounting makes it easy to visualize how seasons change.

Notable examples.

Sorted in decreasing sizes:

A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to some maps, but unlike maps, do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model globe of Earth is called a "terrestrial globe". A model globe of the celestial sphere is called a "celestial globe".


Design and development.

Zuse designed the Z1 in 1935 to 1936 and built it from 1936 to 1938. The Z1 was wholly mechanical and only worked for a few minutes at a time at most. Helmut Schreyer advised Zuse to use a different technology. As a doctoral student at the Berlin Institute of Technology in 1937 he worked on the implementation of Boolean operations and (in today's terminology) flip-flops on the basis of vacuum tubes. In 1938 Schreyer demonstrated a circuit on this basis to a small audience, and explained his vision of an electronic computing machine – but since the largest operational electronic devices contained far fewer tubes this was considered practically infeasible. In that year when presenting the plan for a computer with 2,000 electron tubes, Zuse and Schreyer, who was an assistant at Prof. Wilhelm Stäblein's Telecommunication Institute at the Technical University of Berlin, were discouraged by members of the institute who knew about the problems with electron tube technology. Zuse later recalled: “They smiled at us in 1939, when we wanted to build electronic machines... We said: The electronic machine is great, but first the components have to be developed." In 1940 Zuse and Schreyer managed to arrange a meeting at the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) to discuss a potential project for developing an electronic computer, but when they estimated a duration of two or three years, the proposal was rejected.  Zuse decided to implement the next design based on relays. The realization of the Z2 was helped financially by Dr. Kurt Pannke, who manufactured small calculating machines. The Z2 was completed and presented to an audience of the ("German Laboratory for Aviation") in 1940 in Berlin-Adlershof. Zuse was lucky – this presentation was one of the few instances where the Z2 actually worked and could convince the DVL to partly finance the next design.  Improving on the basic Z2 machine, he built the Z3 in 1941, which was a highly secret project of the German government. Dr. Joseph Jennissen (1905–1977), member of the "Research-Leadership" ("Forschungsführung") in the Reich Air Ministry acted as a government supervisor for orders of the ministry to Zuse's company "ZUSE Apparatebau". A further intermediary between Zuse and the Reich Air Ministry was the aerodynamicist Herbert A. Wagner.  The Z3 was completed in 1941 and was faster and far more reliable than the Z1 and Z2. The Z3 floating-point arithmetic was improved over that of the Z1 in that it implemented exception handling "using just a few relays", the exceptional values (plus infinity, minus infinity and undefined) could be generated and passed through operations. The Z3 stored its program on an external tape, thus no rewiring was necessary to change programs.  On 12 May 1941 the Z3 was presented to an audience of scientists including the professors Alfred Teichmann and Curt Schmieden of the ("German Laboratory for Aviation") in Berlin, today known as the German Aerospace Center in Cologne.  Zuse moved on to the Z4 design, which was built just days before World War II ended.

Z3 as a universal Turing machine.

It was possible to construct loops on the Z3, but there was no conditional branch instruction. Nevertheless, the Z3 was Turing-complete – how to implement a universal Turing machine on the Z3 was shown in 1998 by Raúl Rojas. He proposed that the tape program would have to be long enough to execute every possible path through both sides of every branch. It would compute all possible answers, but the unneeded results would be canceled out (a kind of speculative execution). Rojas concludes, "We can therefore say that, from an abstract theoretical perspective, the computing model of the Z3 is equivalent to the computing model of today's computers. From a practical perspective, and in the way the Z3 was really programmed, it was not equivalent to modern computers."  From a pragmatic point of view, however, the Z3 provided a quite "practical" instruction set for the typical engineering applications of the 1940s – Zuse was a civil engineer who only started to build his computers to facilitate his work in his main profession.

Relation to other work.

The success of Zuse's Z3 is often attributed to its use of the simple binary system. This was invented roughly three centuries earlier by Gottfried Leibniz; Boole later used it to develop his Boolean algebra. Zuse was inspired by Hilbert's and Ackermann's book on elementary mathematical logic (cf. Principles of Mathematical Logic). In 1937, Claude Shannon introduced the idea of mapping Boolean algebra onto electronic relays in a seminal work on digital circuit design. Zuse, however, did not know Shannon's work and developed the groundwork independently for his first computer Z1, which he designed and built from 1935 to 1938.  Zuse's coworker Helmut Schreyer built an electronic digital experimental model of a computer using 100 vacuum tubes in 1942, but it was lost at the end of the war.  An analog computer was built by the rocket scientist Helmut Hölzer in 1942 at the Peenemünde Army Research Center to simulate V-2 rocket trajectories.  The Tommy Flowers-built Colossus (1943) and the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (1942) used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) and binary representation of numbers. Programming was by means of re-plugging patch panels and setting switches.  The ENIAC computer, completed after the war, used vacuum tubes to implement switches and used decimal representation for numbers. Until 1948 programming was, as with Colossus, by patch leads and switches.  The Manchester Baby of 1948 along with the Manchester Mark 1 and EDSAC both of 1949 were the world's earliest working computers that stored program instructions and data in the same space. In this they implemented the stored-program concept which is frequently (but erroneously) attributed to a 1945 paper by John von Neumann and colleagues. Von Neumann is said to have given due credit to Alan Turing, and the concept had actually been mentioned earlier by Konrad Zuse himself, in a 1936 patent application (that was rejected). Konrad Zuse himself remembered in his memoirs: "During the war it would have barely been possible to build efficient stored program devices anyway." and Friedrich L. Bauer wrote: "His visionary ideas (live programs) which were only to be published years afterwards aimed at the right practical direction but were never implemented by him."

Modern reconstructions.

A modern reconstruction directed by Raúl Rojas and Horst Zuse started in 1997 and finished in 2003. It is now in the Konrad Zuse Museum in Hünfeld, Germany. Memory was halved to 32 words. Power consumption is about 400 W, and weight is about.  In 2008, Horst Zuse started a reconstruction of the Z3 by himself. It was presented in 2010 in the Konrad Zuse Museum in Hünfeld.

The Z3 was a German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. The Z3 was built with 2,600 relays, implementing a 22-bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 4–5 Hz. Program code was stored on punched film. Initial values were entered manually.


Structure.

Binary files are usually thought of as being a sequence of bytes, which means the binary digits (bits) are grouped in eights. Binary files typically contain bytes that are intended to be interpreted as something other than text characters. Compiled computer programs are typical examples; indeed, compiled applications are sometimes referred to, particularly by programmers, as binaries. But binary files can also mean that they contain images, sounds, compressed versions of other files, etc. – in short, any type of file content whatsoever.  Some binary files contain headers, blocks of metadata used by a computer program to interpret the data in the file. The header often contains a signature or "magic" number which can identify the format. For example, a GIF file can contain multiple images, and headers are used to identify and describe each block of image data. The leading bytes of the header would contain text like codice_1 or codice_2 that can identify the binary as a GIF file. If a binary file does not contain any headers, it may be called a flat binary file.

Manipulation.

To send binary files through certain systems (such as email) that do not allow all data values, they are often translated into a plain text representation (using, for example, Base64). Encoding the data has the disadvantage of increasing the file size during the transfer (for example, using Base64 will increase the file's size by approximately 30%), as well as requiring translation back into binary after receipt. The increased size may be countered by lower-level link compression, as the resulting text data will have about as much less entropy as it has increased size, so the actual data transferred in this scenario would likely be very close to the size of the original binary data. See Binary-to-text encoding for more on this subject.  Microsoft Windows and its standard libraries for the C and C++ programming languages allow the programmer to specify a parameter indicating if a file is expected to be plain text or binary when opening a file; this affects the standard library calls to read and write from the file in that the system converts between the C/C++ "end of line" character (the ASCII linefeed character) and the end-of-line sequence Windows expects in files (the ASCII carriage return and linefeed characters in sequence). In Unix-like systems, the C and C++ standard libraries on those systems also allow the programmer to specify whether a file is expected to be text or binary, but the libraries can and do ignore that parameter, as the end-of-line sequence in Unix-like systems is just the C/C++ end-of-line character.

Viewing.

A hex editor or viewer may be used to view file data as a sequence of hexadecimal (or decimal, binary or ASCII character) values for corresponding bytes of a binary file.  If a binary file is opened in a text editor, each group of eight bits will typically be translated as a single character, and the user will see a (probably unintelligible) display of textual characters. If the file is opened in some other application, that application will have its own use for each byte: maybe the application will treat each byte as a number and output a stream of numbers between 0 and 255—or maybe interpret the numbers in the bytes as colors and display the corresponding picture. Other type of viewers (called 'word extractors') simply replace the unprintable characters with spaces revealing only the human-readable text. This type of view is useful for quick inspection of a binary file in order to find passwords in games, find hidden text in non-text files and recover corrupted documents. It can even be used to inspect suspicious files (software) for unwanted effects. For example, the user would see any URL/email to which the suspected software may attempt to connect in order to upload unapproved data (to steal). If the file is itself treated as an executable and run, then the operating system will attempt to interpret the file as a series of instructions in its machine language.

Interpretation.

Standards are very important to binary files. For example, a binary file interpreted by the ASCII character set will result in text being displayed. A custom application can interpret the file differently: a byte may be a sound, or a pixel, or even an entire word. Binary itself is meaningless, until such time as an executed algorithm defines what should be done with each bit, byte, word or block. Thus, just examining the binary and attempting to match it against known formats can lead to the wrong conclusion as to what it actually represents. This fact can be used in steganography, where an algorithm interprets a binary data file differently to reveal hidden content. Without the algorithm, it is impossible to tell that hidden content exists.

Binary compatibility.

Two files that are binary compatible will have the same sequence of zeros and ones in the data portion of the file. The file header, however, may be different.  The term is used most commonly to state that data files produced by one application are exactly the same as data files produced by another application. For example, some software companies produce applications for Windows and the Macintosh that are binary compatible, which means that a file produced in a Windows environment is interchangeable with a file produced on a Macintosh. This avoids many of the conversion problems caused by importing and exporting data.  One possible binary compatibility issue between different computers is the endianness of the computer. Some computers store the bytes in a file in a different order.

A binary file is a computer file that is not a text file. The term "binary file" is often used as a term meaning "non-text file". Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; for example, some computer document files containing formatted text, such as older Microsoft Word document files, contain the text of the document but also contain formatting information in binary form.


Units.

The SI unit of luminous flux is the lumen (lm). One lumen is defined as the luminous flux of light produced by a light source that emits one candela of luminous intensity over a solid angle of one steradian. In other systems of units, luminous flux may have units of power.

Weighting.

The luminous flux accounts for the sensitivity of the eye by weighting the power at each wavelength with the luminosity function, which represents the eye's response to different wavelengths. The luminous flux is a weighted sum of the power at all wavelengths in the visible band. Light outside the visible band does not contribute. The ratio of the total luminous flux to the radiant flux is called the luminous efficacy.

Context.

Luminous flux is often used as an objective measure of the useful light emitted by a light source, and is typically reported on the packaging for light bulbs, although it is not always prominent. Consumers commonly compare the luminous flux of different light bulbs since it provides an estimate of the apparent amount of light the bulb will produce, and a lightbulb with a higher ratio of luminous flux to consumed power is more efficient.  Luminous flux is not used to compare brightness, as this is a subjective perception which varies according to the distance from the light source and the angular spread of the light from the source.

Relationship to luminous intensity.

Luminous flux (in lumens) is a measure of the total amount of light a lamp puts out. The luminous intensity (in candelas) is a measure of how bright the beam in a particular direction is. If a lamp has a 1 lumen bulb and the optics of the lamp are set up to focus the light evenly into a 1 steradian beam, then the beam would have a luminous intensity of 1 candela. If the optics were changed to concentrate the beam into 1/2 steradian then the source would have a luminous intensity of 2 candela. The resulting beam is narrower and brighter, however the luminous flux remains the same.

In photometry, luminous flux or luminous power is the measure of the perceived power of light. It differs from radiant flux, the measure of the total power of electromagnetic radiation (including infrared, ultraviolet, and visible light), in that luminous flux is adjusted to reflect the varying sensitivity of the human eye to different wavelengths of light.


Terminology.

The extremely broad term sanitation includes the management of wastewater, human excreta, solid waste and stormwater. The term sewerage refers to the physical infrastructure required to transport and treat wastewater.

Sources.

Sources of wastewater include the following domestic or household activities:  Activities producing industrial wastewater include:  Other related activities or events:  Wastewater can be diluted or mixed with other types of water through the following mechanisms:

Pollutants.

The composition of wastewater varies widely. This is a partial list of pollutants that may be contained in wastewater:

Biological pollutants.

If the wastewater contains human feces, as is the case for sewage, then it may also contain pathogens of one of the four types:  It can also contain non-pathogenic bacteria and animals such as insects, arthropods and small fish.

Quality indicators.

Since all natural waterways contain bacteria and nutrients, almost any waste compounds introduced into such waterways will initiate biochemical reactions such as detailed above. Those biochemical reactions create what is measured in the laboratory as the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). Such chemicals are also liable to be broken down using strong oxidizing agents and these chemical reactions create what is measured in the laboratory as the chemical oxygen demand (COD). Both the BOD and COD tests are a measure of the relative oxygen-depletion effect of a waste contaminant. Both have been widely adopted as a measure of pollution effect. The BOD test measures the oxygen demand of biodegradable pollutants whereas the COD test measures the oxygen demand of oxidizable pollutants.  Any oxidizable material present in an aerobic natural waterway or in an industrial wastewater will be oxidized both by biochemical (bacterial) or chemical processes. The result is that the oxygen content of the water will be decreased.  Aquatic toxicology tests are used to provide qualitative and quantitative data on adverse effects on aquatic organisms from a toxicant. Testing types include acute (short-term exposure), chronic (life span) and bioaccumulation tests. Many industrial facilities in the US conduct "whole effluent toxicity" tests on their wastewater discharges, typically in combination with chemical tests for selected pollutants.

Treatment.

At a global level, around 80% of wastewater produced is discharged into the environment untreated, causing widespread water pollution.  There are numerous processes that can be used to clean up wastewaters depending on the type and extent of contamination. Wastewater can be treated in wastewater treatment plants which include physical, chemical and biological treatment processes. Municipal wastewater is treated in sewage treatment plants (which may also be referred to as wastewater treatment plants). Agricultural wastewater may be treated in agricultural wastewater treatment processes, whereas industrial wastewater is treated in industrial wastewater treatment processes.  For municipal wastewater the use of septic tanks and other On-Site Sewage Facilities (OSSF) is widespread in some rural areas, for example serving up to 20 percent of the homes in the U.S.  One type of aerobic treatment system is the activated sludge process, based on the maintenance and recirculation of a complex biomass composed of micro-organisms able to absorb and adsorb the organic matter carried in the wastewater. Anaerobic wastewater treatment processes (UASB, EGSB) are also widely applied in the treatment of industrial wastewaters and biological sludge. Some wastewater may be highly treated and reused as reclaimed water. Constructed wetlands are also being used.

Disposal.

In many cities, municipal wastewater is carried together with stormwater, in a combined sewer system, to a sewage treatment plant. In some urban areas, municipal wastewater is carried separately in sanitary sewers and runoff from streets is carried in storm drains. Access to these systems, for maintenance purposes, is typically through a manhole.  During high precipitation periods a combined sewer system may experience a combined sewer overflow event, which forces untreated sewage to flow directly to receiving waters. This can pose a serious threat to public health and the surrounding environment.  In less-developed or rural regions, sewage may drain directly into major watersheds with minimal or no treatment. This usually has serious impacts on the quality of an environment and on human health. Pathogens can cause a variety of illnesses. Some chemicals pose risks even at very low concentrations and can remain a threat for long periods of time because of bioaccumulation in animal or human tissue.  Wastewater from factories, power plants and other industrial activities is extensively regulated in developed nations, and treatment is required before discharge to surface waters. ("See" Industrial wastewater treatment.) Some facilities such as oil and gas wells may be permitted to pump their wastewater underground through injection wells. Wastewater injection has been linked to induced seismicity.

Reuse.

Treated wastewater can be reused in industry (for example in cooling towers), in artificial recharge of aquifers, in agriculture and in the rehabilitation of natural ecosystems (for example in wetlands). In rarer cases it is also used to augment drinking water supplies. There are several technologies used to treat wastewater for reuse. A combination of these technologies can meet strict treatment standards and make sure that the processed water is hygienically safe, meaning free from bacteria and viruses. The following are some of the typical technologies: Ozonation, ultrafiltration, aerobic treatment (membrane bioreactor), forward osmosis, reverse osmosis, advanced oxidation.  Some water demanding activities do not require high grade water. In this case, wastewater can be reused with little or no treatment. One example of this scenario is in the domestic environment where toilets can be flushed using greywater from baths and showers with little or no treatment.  Irrigation with recycled wastewater can also serve to fertilize plants if it contains nutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. In developing countries, agriculture is using untreated wastewater for irrigation - often in an unsafe manner. There can be significant health hazards related to using untreated wastewater in agriculture. The World Health Organization developed guidelines for safe use of wastewater in 2006.

Legislation.

Australia.

As part of the Environmental Protection Act 1994, the Environmental Protection (Water) Policy 2009 is responsible for the water management of Queensland, Australia.

Nigeria.

In Nigeria, the Water Resources Act of 1993 is the law responsible for all kinds of water management.

Philippines.

In the Philippines, Republic Act 9275, otherwise known as the Philippine Clean Water Act of 2004, is the governing law on wastewater management. It states that it is the country's policy to protect, preserve and revive the quality of its fresh, brackish and marine waters, for which wastewater management plays a particular role.

United States.

The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution in surface waters. It is implemented by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in collaboration with states, territories, and tribes. Groundwater protection provisions are included in the Safe Drinking Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Superfund act.

Wastewater (or waste water) is any water that has been contaminated by human use. Wastewater is "used water from any combination of domestic, industrial, commercial or agricultural activities, surface runoff or stormwater, and any sewer inflow or sewer infiltration". Therefore, wastewater is a byproduct of domestic, industrial, commercial or agricultural activities. The characteristics of wastewater vary depending on the source. Types of wastewater include: domestic wastewater from households, municipal wastewater from communities (also called sewage) and industrial wastewater. Wastewater can contain physical, chemical and biological pollutants.