Overview and history.

Fermented foods have a long history in many cultures, with sauerkraut being one of the most well-known instances of traditional fermented moist cabbage side dishes. The Roman writers Cato (in his "De Agri Cultura") and Columella (in his "De re Rustica") mentioned preserving cabbages and turnips with salt.  Although "sauerkraut" is a German word, the dish did not originate in Germany. Some claim that the Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan brought it to Europe. Others claim that it originally came from China and surrounding areas and that the Tatars brought it to Europe, and altered the original Chinese recipe by fermenting it with salt instead of rice wine. It took root mostly in Central and Eastern European cuisines, but also in other countries including the Netherlands, where it is known as "zuurkool", and France, where the name became "choucroute". The English name is borrowed from German where it means literally "sour herb" or "sour cabbage". The names in Slavic and other Central and Eastern European languages have similar meanings with the German word: "fermented cabbage" (,,,,,,, ) or "sour cabbage" (,,,,,,,,,,,,, "kisla kapusta").  Before frozen foods, refrigeration, and cheap transport from warmer areas became readily available in northern, central and eastern Europe, sauerkraut – like other preserved foods – provided a source of nutrients during the winter. Captain James Cook always took a store of sauerkraut on his sea voyages, since experience had taught him it prevented scurvy.  The word "Kraut", derived from this food, is a derogatory term for the German people. During World War I, due to concerns the American public would reject a product with a German name, American sauerkraut makers relabeled their product as "Liberty Cabbage" for the duration of the war.

Production.

Sauerkraut is made by a process of pickling called lactic acid fermentation that is analogous to how traditional (not heat-treated) pickled cucumbers and kimchi are made. The cabbage is finely shredded, layered with salt, and left to ferment. Fully cured sauerkraut keeps for several months in an airtight container stored at 15 °C (60 °F) or below. Neither refrigeration nor pasteurization is required, although these treatments prolong storage life.  Fermentation by lactobacilli is introduced naturally, as these air-borne bacteria culture on raw cabbage leaves where they grow. Yeasts also are present, and may yield soft sauerkraut of poor flavor when the fermentation temperature is too high. The fermentation process has three phases, collectively sometimes referred to as population dynamics. In the first phase, anaerobic bacteria such as "Klebsiella" and "Enterobacter" lead the fermentation, and begin producing an acidic environment that favors later bacteria. The second phase starts as the acid levels become too high for many bacteria, and "Leuconostoc mesenteroides" and other "Leuconostoc" species take dominance. In the third phase, various "Lactobacillus" species, including "L. brevis" and "L. plantarum", ferment any remaining sugars, further lowering the pH. Properly cured sauerkraut is sufficiently acidic to prevent a favorable environment for the growth of "Clostridium botulinum", the toxins of which cause botulism.  A 2004 genomic study found an unexpectedly large diversity of lactic acid bacteria in sauerkraut, and that previous studies had oversimplified this diversity. "Weissella" was found to be a major organism in the initial, heterofermentative stage, up to day 7. It was also found that "Lactobacillus brevis" and "Pediococcus pentosaceus" had smaller population numbers in the first 14 days than previous studies had reported.  The Dutch sauerkraut industry found that inoculating a new batch of sauerkraut with an old batch resulted in an excessively sour product. This sourdough process is known as "backslopping" or "inoculum enrichment"; when used in making sauerkraut, first- and second-stage population dynamics, important to developing flavor, are bypassed. This is due primarily to the greater initial activity of species "L. plantarum".

Regional varieties.

In Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Polish, Russian, Baltic states and Ukrainian cuisine, chopped cabbage is often pickled together with shredded carrots. Other ingredients may include whole or quartered apples for additional flavor or cranberry for flavor and better keeping (the benzoic acid in cranberries is a common preservative). Bell peppers and beets are added in some recipes for colour. The resulting sauerkraut salad is typically served cold, as "zakuski" or a side dish. A home made type of very mild sauerkraut is available, where white cabbage is pickled with salt in a refrigerator for only three to seven days. This process results in very little lactic acid production. Sometimes in Russia the double fermentation is used, with the initial step producing an exceptionally sour product, which is then "corrected" by adding 30-50% more fresh cabbage and fermenting the mix again. The flavor additives like apples, beets, cranberries and sometimes even watermelons are usually introduced at this step.  Sauerkraut may be used as a filling for Polish "pierogi", Ukrainian "varenyky", Russian "pirogi" and "pirozhki". Sauerkraut is also the central ingredient in traditional soups, such as "shchi" (a national dish of Russia), "kwaśnica" (Poland), "kapustnica" (Slovakia), and "zelňačka" (Czech Republic). It is an ingredient of Polish "bigos" (a hunter's stew).  In Germany, cooked sauerkraut is often flavored with juniper berries or caraway seeds; apples and white wine are added in popular variations. Traditionally it is served warm, with pork (e.g. "eisbein", "schweinshaxe", "Kassler") or sausages (smoked or fried sausages, "Frankfurter Würstchen", Vienna sausages, black pudding), accompanied typically by roasted or steamed potatoes or dumplings ("knödel" or "schupfnudel"). Similar recipes are common in other Central European cuisines. The Czech national dish "vepřo knedlo zelo" consists of roast pork with "knedliky" and sauerkraut.  In France, sauerkraut is the main ingredient of the Alsatian meal "choucroute garnie" (French for "dressed sauerkraut"), sauerkraut with sausages (Strasbourg sausages, smoked Morteau or Montbéliard sausages), charcuterie (bacon, ham, etc.), and often potatoes.  Sauerkraut, along with pork, is eaten traditionally in Pennsylvania on New Year's Day. The tradition, started by the Pennsylvania Dutch, is thought to bring good luck for the upcoming year. Sauerkraut is also used in American cuisine as a condiment upon various foods, such as sandwiches and hot dogs. In Maryland, particularly in Baltimore and on the Eastern Shore, sauerkraut is a traditional accompaniment for the Thanksgiving turkey.

Health effects.

Benefits.

Many health benefits have been claimed for sauerkraut:

Disadvantages.

Excessive consumption of sauerkraut may lead to bloating and flatulence due to the trisaccharide raffinose, which the human small intestine cannot break down. This does not negatively affect long-term health, although it might be uncomfortable.

Scientific discovery.

One of the early scientists who was involved in identifying the biology and function of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR), Philippe Horvath, focused on the genetics of a lactic-acid bacterium used in the production of sauerkraut.

Similar foods.

Many other vegetables are preserved by a similar process:

Sauerkraut (;, lit. "sour cabbage") is finely cut raw cabbage that has been fermented by various lactic acid bacteria. It has a long shelf life and a distinctive sour flavor, both of which result from the lactic acid formed when the bacteria ferment the sugars in the cabbage leaves.


Signs and symptoms.

The disease typically follows a biphasic pattern in 72–87% of patients and the median incubation period is 8 days (range, 4–28 days) after tick bite. Non-specific symptoms of mild fever, malaise, headache, nausea, vomiting and myalgias may be present as first manifestation of the disease and spontaneously resolve within 1 week. After another week the patient may develop neurological symptoms. The virus can result in long neurological symptoms, infecting the brain (encephalitis), the meninges (meningitis) or both (meningoencephalitis). In general, mortality is 1% to 2%, with deaths occurring 5 to 7 days after the onset of neurologic signs.  In dogs, the disease also manifests as a neurological disorder with signs varying from tremors to seizures and death.  In ruminants, neurological disease is also present, and animals may refuse to eat, appear lethargic, and also develop respiratory signs.

Cause.

TBE is caused by tick-borne encephalitis virus, a member of the genus "Flavivirus" in the family Flaviviridae. It was first isolated in 1937. Three virus sub-types also exist: European or Western tick-borne encephalitis virus (transmitted by "Ixodes ricinus"), Siberian tick-borne encephalitis virus (transmitted by "I. persulcatus"), and Far-Eastern tick-borne encephalitis virus, formerly known as Russian spring summer encephalitis virus (transmitted by "I. persulcatus").  Russia and Europe report about 5,000–7,000 human cases annually.  The former Soviet Union conducted research on tick-borne diseases, including the TBE viruses.

Transmission.

It is transmitted by the bite of several species of infected woodland ticks, including "Ixodes scapularis", "I. ricinus" and "I. persulcatus", or (rarely) through the non-pasteurized milk of infected cows.  Infection acquired through goat milk consumed as raw milk or raw cheese (Frischkäse) has been documented in 2016 and 2017 in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. None of the infected had neurological disease.

Diagnosis.

Detection of specific IgM and IgG antibodies in patients sera combined with typical clinical signs, is the principal method for diagnosis. In more complicated situations, e.g. after vaccination, testing for presence of antibodies in cerebrospinal fluid may be necessary.  PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) method is rarely used, since TBE virus RNA is most often not present in patient sera or cerebrospinal fluid at the time of clinical symptoms.

Prevention.

Prevention includes non-specific (tick-bite prevention, tick checks) and specific prophylaxis in the form of a vaccination. Tick-borne encephalitis vaccines are very effective and available in many disease endemic areas and in travel clinics. Trade names are "Encepur N" and "FSME-Immun CC".

Treatment.

There is no specific antiviral treatment for TBE. Symptomatic brain damage requires hospitalization and supportive care based on syndrome severity. Anti-inflammatory drugs, such as corticosteroids, may be considered under specific circumstances for symptomatic relief. Tracheal intubation and respiratory support may be necessary.

Epidemiology.

As of 2011, the disease was most common in Central and Eastern Europe, and Northern Asia. About ten to twelve thousand cases are documented a year but the rates vary widely from one region to another. Most of the variation has been the result of variation in host population, particularly that of deer. In Austria, an extensive free vaccination program since the 1960s reduced the incidence in 2013 by roughly 85%.  In Germany, during the 2010s, there have been a minimum of 95 (2012) and a maximum of 584 cases (2018) of TBE (or FSME as it is known in German). More than half of the reported cases from 2019 had meningitis, encephalitis or myelitis. The risk of infection was noted to be increasing with age, especially in people older than 40 years and it was greater in men than women. Most cases were acquired in Bavaria (46 %) and Baden-Württemberg (37%), much less in Saxonia, Hesse, Niedersachsen and other states. Altogether 164 Landkreise are designated FSME-risk areas, including all of Baden-Württemberg except for the city of Heilbronn.  In Sweden, most cases of TBE occur in a band running from Stockholm to the west, especially around lakes and the nearby region of the Baltic sea. It reflects the greater population involved in outdoor activities in these areas. Overall, for Europe, the estimated risk is roughly 1 case per 10,000 human-months of woodland activity. Although in some regions of Russia and Slovenia, the prevalence of cases can be as high as 70 cases per 100,000 people per year. Travelers to endemic regions do not often become cases, with only 5 cases reported among U.S. travelers returning from Eurasia between 2000 and 2011, a rate so low that as of 2016 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended vaccination only for those who will be extensively exposed in high risk areas.

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is a viral infectious disease involving the central nervous system. The disease most often manifests as meningitis, encephalitis, or meningoencephalitis. Long-lasting or permanent neuropsychiatric consequences are observed in 10 to 20% of infected patients.


Background.

Hans Egede was born into the home of a civil servant in Harstad, Norway, nearly 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle. His paternal grandfather had been a vicar in Vester Egede on southern Zealand, Denmark. Hans was schooled by an uncle, a clergyman in a local Lutheran Church. In 1704 he travelled to Copenhagen to enter the University of Copenhagen, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Theology. He returned to Hinnøya Island after graduation, and in April 1707 he was ordained and assigned to a parish on the equally remote archipelago of Lofoten. Also in 1707 he married Gertrud Rasch (or "Rask"), who was 13 years his senior. Four children were born to the marriage – two boys and two girls.

Greenland.

At Lofoten, Egede heard stories about the old Norse settlements on Greenland, with which contact had been lost centuries before. Beginning in 1711, he sought permission from Frederick IV of Denmark to search for the colony and establish a mission there, presuming that it had either remained Catholic after the Danish Reformation or been lost to the Christian faith altogether. Frederick gave consent at least partially to re-establish a colonial claim to the island.  Egede established the Bergen Greenland Company ("") with $9,000 in capital from Bergen merchants, $200 from the Danish king, and a $300 annual grant from the Royal Mission College. The company was granted broad powers to govern the peninsula (as it was then considered to be), to raise its own army and navy, to collect taxes and to administer justice; the king and his council, however, refused to grant it monopoly rights to whaling and trade in Greenland out of a fear of antagonizing the Dutch.  "Haabet" ("The Hope") and two smaller ships departed Bergen on 2 May 1721 bearing Egede, his wife and four children, and forty other colonists. On 3 July they reached Nuup Kangerlua and established Hope Colony ("") with the erection of a portable house on Kangeq Island, which Egede christened the Island of Hope ("Haabet Oe"). Searching for months for descendants of the old Norse colonists, he found only the local Inuit people and began studying their language. Missionising among them required some imagination as, for instance, the Inuit had no bread nor any idea of it, requiring the Lord's Prayer to be translated as "Give us this day our daily seal".  By the end of the first winter, many of the colonists had been stricken with scurvy and most returned home as soon as they could. Egede and his family remained with a few others and in 1722 welcomed two supply ships the king had funded with the imposition of a new tax. His (now ship-borne) explorations found no Norse survivors along the western shore and future work was misled by the two mistaken beliefs both prevalent at the time that the Eastern Settlement would be located on Greenland's east coast (it was later established it had been among the fjords of the island's extreme southwest) and that a strait existed nearby communicating with the western half of the island. In fact, his 1723 expedition found the churches and ruins of the Eastern Settlement, but he considered them to be those of the Western. At the end of the year, he turned north and helped establish a whaling station on Nipisat Island. In 1724 he baptized his first child converts, two of whom would travel to Denmark and there inspire Count Zinzendorf to begin the Moravian missions.  In 1728, a royal expedition under Major Claus Paarss arrived with four supply ships and moved the Kangeq colony to the mainland opposite, establishing a fort named Godt-Haab ("Good Hope"), the future Godthåb. The extra supplies also allowed Egede to build a proper chapel within the main house. More scurvy led to forty deaths and abandonment of the site not only by the Danes but by the Inuit as well. Egede's book "The Old Greenland's New Perlustration" () appeared in 1729 and was translated into several languages, but King Frederick had lost patience and recalled Paarss's military garrison from Greenland the next year. Egede, encouraged by his wife Gertrud, remained with his family and ten sailors.  A supply ship in 1733 brought three missionaries and news that the king had granted 2,000 rixdollars a year to establish a new company for the colony under Jacob Severin. The Moravians were allowed to establish a station at Neu-Herrnhut (which became the nucleus of modern Nuuk, Greenland's capital) and in time a string of missions along the island's west coast. The ship also returned one of Egede's convert children with a case of smallpox. By the next year, the epidemic was raging among the Inuit and in 1735 it claimed Gertrud Egede. Hans carried her body back to Denmark for burial the next year, leaving his son Poul to carry on his work. In Copenhagen, he was named Superintendent of the Greenland Mission Seminary ("Seminarium Groenlandicum") and in 1741 the Lutheran Bishop of Greenland. A catechism for use in Greenland was completed by 1747. He died on 5 November 1758 at the age of 72 in Stubbekøbing at Falster, Denmark.

Legacy.

Egede became something of a national "saint" of Greenland. The town of Egedesminde ( "Memory of Egede") commemorates him. It was established by Hans's second son, Niels, in 1759 on the Eqalussuit peninsula. It was moved to the island of Aasiaat in 1763, which had been the site of a pre-Viking Inuit settlement. Statues of Hans Egede stand watch over Greenland's capital in Nuuk and outside of Frederik's Church ("Marmorkirken") in Copenhagen. His grandson and namesake Hans Egede Saabye also became a missionary to Greenland and published a celebrated diary of his time there.  The Royal Danish Geographical Society established the Egede Medal in his honour in 1916. The medal is in silver and awarded 'preferably for geographical studies and researches in the Arctic countries'.  Hans Egede also gave one of the oldest descriptions of a sea serpent commonly believed to have been a giant squid. On 6 July 1734 he wrote that his ship was off the Greenland coast when those on board "saw a most terrible creature, resembling nothing they saw before. The monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than the crow's nest on the mainmast. The head was small and the body short and wrinkled. The unknown creature was using giant fins which propelled it through the water. Later the sailors saw its tail as well. The monster was longer than our whole ship".  A crater on the Moon is named after him: the Egede crater on the south edge of the Mare Frigoris (the Sea of Cold).

Hans Poulsen Egede (31 January 1686 – 5 November 1758) was a Dano-Norwegian Lutheran missionary who launched mission efforts to Greenland, which led him to be styled the Apostle of Greenland. He established a successful mission among the Inuit and is credited with revitalizing Dano-Norwegian interest in the island after contact had been broken for hundreds of years. He founded Greenland's capital Godthåb, now known as Nuuk.


Life.

He is said to have been born at the end of Thutmose III's reign, in the town of Athribis (modern Banha in the north of Cairo). His father was Hapu, and his mother Itu. Though little about Amenhotep's early life is known prior to his entering civil service, it is believed that he learned to read and write at the local library and scriptorium. He was a priest and a Scribe of Recruits (organizing the labour and supplying the manpower for the Pharaoh's projects, both civilian and military). He was also an architect and supervised several building projects, among them Amenhotep III's mortuary temple at western Thebes, of which only two statues remain nowadays, known as the Colossi of Memnon, and the creation of the quarry of El-Gabal el-Ahmar, nearby Heliopolis, from which the blocks used to create the Colossi were probably taken. Other plans, such as the portico of the Temple of Karnak, completed under Ramesses II, and those for the Luxor Temple are also attributed to Amenhotep. He may also have been the architect of the Temple of Soleb in Nubia. Amenhotep is noted to have participated in Amenhotep III's first Sed festival, in the 30th year of the king's rule. After this, he is believed to have retired from civil service and become the steward of Princess Sitamun's properties (similar to an asset manager today), and received honours such as the designation of Fan-bearer on the Right Side of the King, among other things. According to some reliefs in the tomb of Ramose, he may have died in the 31st year of Amenhotep III, which would correspond to either 1360 BC or 1357 BC, depending on the chronology used. His death has also been dated to the 35th year of the king.

Legacy.

After his death, his reputation grew and he was revered for his teachings and as a philosopher. He was also revered as a healer and eventually worshipped as a god of healing, like his predecessor Imhotep (Amenhotep and Imhotep are among the few non-royal Egyptians who were deified after their death, and until the 21st century, they were thought to be only two commoners to achieve this status). There are several surviving statues of him as a scribe, portraying him as a young man and as an older man. He was a deified human and thus was depicted only in human form. His cult was initially limited to the Thebes area, with a funerary temple constructed to him during his lifetime next to that of Amenhotep III. This was clearly an exceptional privilege, as it was the only private cult temple to be built among the royal monuments in the area. He continued to be worshipped for at least three centuries after his death, and evidence of this worship persists in a 26th Dynasty votary inscription on a statue dedicated to Amenhotep by a daughter of the pharaoh. During the period of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, his worship saw a resurgence which led to chapels being dedicated to him in the Temple of Hathor at Deir el-Medina and the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. Statues were erected to him in the Temple of Amun at Karnak and he was treated as an intermediary with the god Amun. Amenhotep also utilised his influence with the king to secure royal patronage for the town of Athribis, for the local god, and the temple dedicated to that god.  Manetho gives a legendary account of how Amenhotep advised a king named Amenophis, who was "desirous to become a spectator of the gods, as had Orus, one of his predecessors in that kingdom, desired the same before him". This Amenophis is commonly identified with Akhenaton also known as Amenhotep IV, while Orus fits with the latter's father, Amenhotep III. Manetho relates that the wise man counseled that the king should "clear the whole country of the lepers and of the other impure people" and that the King then sent 80,000 lepers to the quarries. After this the wise man foresaw that the lepers would ally themselves with people coming to their help and subdue Egypt. He put the prophecy into letter to the King and then killed himself. Manetho associates this event with the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, but Josephus strongly rejects this interpretation.

Mortuary temple.

Amenhotep was allowed to build his mortuary temple adjacent to that of the pharaoh. This honour is quite rare and indicates that Amenhotep was highly respected by the time of his death, despite the fact that he was a commoner and had only entered civil service at an advanced age, in his late forties. Excavated in 1934 or 1935, it measures 45 × 110 metres and is surrounded by three shrines. His first courtyard contained a 25 x 26 m water basin of considerable depth, fed by groundwater from the Nile. Twenty trees were planted in pits around the basin. The temple at the end of the courtyard was adorned with a pillared portico, and the temple was slightly elevated on a terrace.

Amenhotep, son of Hapu (transcribed "jmn-ḥtp z<unk> ḥ<unk>p.w"; early-mid 14th century BC) was an ancient Egyptian architect, a priest, a scribe, and a public official, who held a number of offices under Amenhotep III of the 18th Dynasty.


Etymology.

The word "mafia" () derives from the Sicilian adjective "mafiusu", which, roughly translated, means "swagger", but can also be translated as "boldness" or "bravado". In reference to a man, "mafiusu" ("mafioso" in Italian) in 19th century Sicily signified "fearless", "enterprising", and "proud", according to scholar Diego Gambetta. In reference to a woman, however, the feminine-form adjective "mafiusa" means 'beautiful' or 'attractive'.  Because Sicily was once an Islamic emirate from 831 to 1072, "mafia" may have come to Sicilian through Arabic, though the word's origins are uncertain. Possible Arabic roots of the word include:  The public's association of the word with the criminal secret society was perhaps inspired by the 1863 play "" ("The Mafiosi of the Vicaria") by Giuseppe Rizzotto and Gaspare Mosca. The words "mafia" and "mafiusi" are never mentioned in the play. The play is about a Palermo prison gang with traits similar to the Mafia: a boss, an initiation ritual, and talk of ""umirtà"" (omertà or code of silence) and ""pizzu"" (a codeword for extortion money). The play had great success throughout Italy. Soon after, the use of the term "mafia" began appearing in the Italian state's early reports on the phenomenon. The word made its first official appearance in 1865 in a report by the prefect of Palermo.

Definitions.

The term "mafia" was never officially used by Sicilian mafiosi, who prefer to refer to their organization as "Cosa Nostra". Nevertheless, it is typically by comparison to the groups and families that comprise the Sicilian Mafia that other criminal groups are given the label. Giovanni Falcone, an anti-Mafia judge murdered by the Sicilian Mafia in 1992, objected to the conflation of the term "Mafia" with organized crime in general:

Mafias as private protection firms.

Scholars such as Diego Gambetta and Leopoldo Franchetti have characterized the Sicilian Mafia as a "cartel of private protection firms", whose primary business is protection racketeering: they use their fearsome reputation for violence to deter people from swindling, robbing, or competing with those who pay them for protection. For many businessmen in Sicily, they provide an essential service when they cannot rely on the police and judiciary to enforce their contracts and protect their properties from thieves (this is often because they are engaged in black market deals). Scholars have observed that many other societies around the world have criminal organizations of their own that provide essentially the same protection service through similar methods.  For instance, in Russia after the collapse of Communism, the state security system had all but collapsed, forcing businessmen to hire criminal gangs to enforce their contracts and protect their properties from thieves. These gangs are popularly called "the Russian Mafia" by foreigners, but they prefer to go by the term "krysha". In his analysis of the Sicilian Mafia, Gambetta provided the following hypothetical scenario to illustrate the Mafia's function in the Sicilian economy. Suppose a grocer wants to buy meat from a butcher without paying sales tax to the government. Because this is a black market deal, neither party can take the other to court if the other cheats. The grocer is afraid that the butcher will sell him rotten meat. The butcher is afraid that the grocer will not pay him. If the butcher and the grocer can't get over their mistrust and refuse to trade, they would both miss out on an opportunity for profit. Their solution is to ask the local mafioso to oversee the transaction, in exchange for a fee proportional to the value of the transaction but below the legal tax. If the butcher cheats the grocer by selling rotten meat, the mafioso will punish the butcher. If the grocer cheats the butcher by not paying on time and in full, the mafioso will punish the grocer. Punishment might take the form of a violent assault or vandalism against property. The grocer and the butcher both fear the mafioso, so each honors their side of the bargain. All three parties profit.

Mafia-type organizations under Italian law.

Introduced by Pio La Torre, article 416-bis of the Italian Penal Code defines a Mafia-type association ("Associazione di Tipo Mafioso") as one where "those belonging to the association exploit the potential for intimidation which their membership gives them, and the compliance and omertà which membership entails and which lead to the committing of crimes, the direct or indirect assumption of management or control of financial activities, concessions, permissions, enterprises and public services for the purpose of deriving profit or wrongful advantages for themselves or others."

International.

Mafia-proper can refer to either:

Italy.

Other Italian criminal organizations include:

Other countries.

"See also List of criminal enterprises, gangs and syndicates"

A mafia is a type of organized crime syndicate whose primary activities are protection racketeering, arbitrating disputes between criminals, and brokering and enforcing illegal agreements and transactions. The term "mafia" derives from the Sicilian Mafia. Mafias often engage in secondary activities such as gambling, loan sharking, drug-trafficking, prostitution, and fraud.


Description.

Monetarism is an economic theory that focuses on the macroeconomic effects of the supply of money and central banking. Formulated by Milton Friedman, it argues that excessive expansion of the money supply is inherently inflationary, and that monetary authorities should focus solely on maintaining price stability.  This theory draws its roots from two historically antagonistic schools of thought: the hard money policies that dominated monetary thinking in the late 19th century, and the monetary theories of John Maynard Keynes, who, working in the inter-war period during the failure of the restored gold standard, proposed a demand-driven model for money. While Keynes had focused on the stability of a currency's value, with panics based on an insufficient money supply leading to the use of an alternate currency and collapse of the monetary system, Friedman focused on price stability.  The result was summarised in a historical analysis of monetary policy, "Monetary History of the United States 1867–1960", which Friedman coauthored with Anna Schwartz. The book attributed inflation to excess money supply generated by a central bank. It attributed deflationary spirals to the reverse effect of a failure of a central bank to support the money supply during a liquidity crunch.  Friedman originally proposed a fixed "monetary rule", called Friedman's k-percent rule, where the money supply would be automatically increased by a fixed percentage per year. Under this rule, there would be no leeway for the central reserve bank, as money supply increases could be determined "by a computer", and business could anticipate all money supply changes. With other monetarists he believed that the active manipulation of the money supply or its growth rate is more likely to destabilise than stabilise the economy.

Opposition to the gold standard.

Most monetarists oppose the gold standard. Friedman, for example, viewed a pure gold standard as impractical. For example, whereas one of the benefits of the gold standard is that the intrinsic limitations to the growth of the money supply by the use of gold would prevent inflation, if the growth of population or increase in trade outpaces the money supply, there would be no way to counteract deflation and reduced liquidity (and any attendant recession) except for the mining of more gold.

Rise.

Clark Warburton is credited with making the first solid empirical case for the monetarist interpretation of business fluctuations in a series of papers from 1945. Within mainstream economics, the rise of monetarism accelerated from Milton Friedman's 1956 restatement of the quantity theory of money. Friedman argued that the demand for money could be described as depending on a small number of economic variables.  Thus, where the money supply expanded, people would not simply wish to hold the extra money in idle money balances; i.e., if they were in equilibrium before the increase, they were already holding money balances to suit their requirements, and thus after the increase they would have money balances surplus to their requirements. These excess money balances would therefore be spent and hence aggregate demand would rise. Similarly, if the money supply were reduced people would want to replenish their holdings of money by reducing their spending. In this, Friedman challenged a simplification attributed to Keynes suggesting that "money does not matter." Thus the word'monetarist' was coined.  The rise of the popularity of monetarism also picked up in political circles when Keynesian economics seemed unable to explain or cure the seemingly contradictory problems of rising unemployment and inflation in response to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1972 and the oil shocks of 1973. On the one hand, higher unemployment seemed to call for Keynesian reflation, but on the other hand rising inflation seemed to call for Keynesian disinflation.  In 1979, United States President Jimmy Carter appointed as Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker, who made fighting inflation his primary objective, and who restricted the money supply (in accordance with the Friedman rule) to tame inflation in the economy. The result was a major rise in interest rates, not only in the United States; but worldwide. The "Volcker shock" continued from 1979 to the summer of 1982, decreasing inflation and increasing unemployment.  By the time Margaret Thatcher, Leader of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, won the 1979 general election defeating the sitting Labour Government led by James Callaghan, the UK had endured several years of severe inflation, which was rarely below the 10% mark and by the time of the May 1979 general election, stood at 15.4%. Thatcher implemented monetarism as the weapon in her battle against inflation, and succeeded at reducing it to 4.6% by 1983. However, unemployment in the United Kingdom increased from 5.7% in 1979 to 12.2% in 1983, reaching 13.0% in 1982; starting with the first quarter of 1980, the UK economy contracted in terms of real gross domestic product for six straight quarters. Monetarists not only sought to explain present problems; they also interpreted historical ones. Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in their book "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960" argued that the Great Depression of the 1930s was caused by a massive contraction of the money supply (they deemed it "the Great Contraction"), and not by the lack of investment Keynes had argued. They also maintained that post-war inflation was caused by an over-expansion of the money supply.  They made famous the assertion of monetarism that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." Many Keynesian economists initially believed that the Keynesian vs. monetarist debate was solely about whether fiscal or monetary policy was the more effective tool of demand management. By the mid-1970s, however, the debate had moved on to other issues as monetarists began presenting a fundamental challenge to Keynesianism.  Monetarists argued that central banks sometimes caused major unexpected fluctuations in the money supply. They asserted that actively increasing demand through the central bank can have negative unintended consequences.

Current state.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan argued that the 1990s decoupling was explained by a virtuous cycle of productivity and investment on one hand, and a certain degree of "irrational exuberance" in the investment sector on the other.  There are also arguments that monetarism is a special case of Keynesian theory. The central test case over the validity of these theories would be the possibility of a liquidity trap, like that experienced by Japan. Ben Bernanke, Princeton professor and another former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, argued that monetary policy could respond to zero interest rate conditions by direct expansion of the money supply. In his words, "We have the keys to the printing press, and we are not afraid to use them."  These disagreements—along with the role of monetary policies in trade liberalisation, international investment, and central bank policy—remain lively topics of investigation and argument.  General:

Monetarism is a school of thought in monetary economics that emphasizes the role of governments in controlling the amount of money in circulation. Monetarist theory asserts that variations in the money supply have major influences on national output in the short run and on price levels over longer periods. Monetarists assert that the objectives of monetary policy are best met by targeting the growth rate of the money supply rather than by engaging in discretionary monetary policy.


Medieval chanson.

"Chanson de geste".

The earliest "chansons" were the epic poems performed to simple monophonic melodies by a professional class of "jongleurs" or "ménestrels". These usually recounted the famous deeds ("geste") of past heroes, legendary and semi-historical. The "Song of Roland" is the most famous of these, but in general the "chansons de geste" are studied as literature since very little of their music survives.

"Chanson courtoise".

The "chanson courtoise" or "grand chant" was an early form of monophonic "chanson", the chief lyric poetic genre of the trouvères. It was an adaptation to Old French of the Occitan "canso". It was practised in the 12th and 13th centuries. Thematically, as its name implies, it was a song of courtly love, written usually by a man to his noble lover. Some later "chansons" were polyphonic and some had refrains and were called "chansons avec des refrains".

Burgundian "chanson".

In its typical specialized usage, the word "chanson" refers to a polyphonic French song of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Early "chansons" tended to be in one of the "formes fixes"—ballade, rondeau or virelai (formerly the "chanson baladée")—though some composers later set popular poetry in a variety of forms. The earliest chansons were for two, three or four voices, with first three becoming the norm, expanding to four voices by the 16th century. Sometimes, the singers were accompanied by instruments.  The first important composer of "chansons" was Guillaume de Machaut, who composed three-voice works in the "formes fixes" during the 14th century. Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois, who wrote so-called Burgundian "chansons" (because they were from the area known as Burgundy), were the most important chanson composers of the next generation (c. 1420–1470). Their chansons, while somewhat simple in style, are also generally in three voices with a structural tenor. Musicologist David Fallows includes the Burgundian repertoire in "A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs 1415–1480." These works are typically still 3 voices, with an active upper voice (discantus) pitched above two lower voices (tenor and altus) usually sharing the same range.

Renaissance chanson.

Later 15th- and early 16th-century figures in the genre included Johannes Ockeghem and Josquin des Prez, whose works cease to be constrained by "formes fixes" and begin to feature a pervading imitation (all voices sharing material and moving at similar speeds), similar to that found in contemporary motets and liturgical music. The first book of music printed from movable type was "Harmonice Musices Odhecaton", a collection of ninety-six chansons by many composers, published in Venice in 1501 by Ottaviano Petrucci.

Parisian "chanson".

Beginning in the late 1520s through mid-century, Claudin de Sermisy, Pierre Certon, Clément Janequin, and Philippe Verdelot were composers of so-called Parisian "chansons", which also abandoned the "formes fixes", often featured four voices, and were in a simpler, more homophonic style. This genre sometimes featured music that was meant to be evocative of certain imagery such as birds or the marketplace. Many of these Parisian works were published by Pierre Attaingnant. Composers of their generation, as well as later composers, such as Orlando de Lassus, were influenced by the Italian madrigal.

Revival.

In the 20th century, French composers revived the genre. Claude Debussy composed Trois Chansons for choir a capella, completed in 1908. Maurice Ravel wrote "Trois Chansons" for choir a cappella after the outbreak of World War I as a return to French tradition, published in 1916.

Modern "chanson".

French solo song developed in the late 16th century, probably from the aforementioned Parisian works. During the 17th century, the "air de cour", "chanson pour boire" and other like genres, generally accompanied by lute or keyboard, flourished, with contributions by such composers as Antoine Boesset, Denis Gaultier, Michel Lambert and Michel-Richard de Lalande.  During the 18th century, vocal music in France was dominated by opera, but solo song underwent a renaissance in the 19th century, first with salon melodies and then by mid-century with highly sophisticated works influenced by the German Lieder, which had been introduced into the country. Louis Niedermeyer, under the particular spell of Schubert, was a pivotal figure in this movement, followed by Édouard Lalo, Felicien David and many others.  Another offshoot of "chanson", called "chanson réaliste" (realist song), was a popular musical genre in France, primarily from the 1880s until the end of World War II. Born of the "cafés-concerts" and cabarets of the Montmartre district of Paris and influenced by literary realism and the naturalist movements in literature and theatre, "chanson réaliste" was a musical style which was mainly performed by women and dealt with the lives of Paris's poor and working class. Among the better-known performers of the genre are Damia, Fréhel, and Édith Piaf.  Later 19th-century composers of French art songs, known as mélodie and not chanson, included Ernest Chausson, Emmanuel Chabrier, Gabriel Fauré, and Claude Debussy, while many 20th-century and current French composers have continued this strong tradition.

Nouvelle "chanson".

In France today "chanson" or "chanson française" is distinguished from the rest of French "pop" music by following the rhythms of French language, rather than those of English, and a higher standard for lyrics.

Museum.

In La Planche, Loire-Atlantique, the Musée de la chanson française was established in 1992. The museum has the goal to remember the artists that have established the heritage of the chanson.

A chanson (, ;, "song", from Latin "cantio", gen. "cantionis") is in general any lyric-driven French song, usually polyphonic and secular. A singer specializing in chansons is known as a "chanteur" (male) or "chanteuse" (female); a collection of chansons, especially from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, is also known as a chansonnier.


Life.

Nebuchadnezzar was the eldest son and successor of Nabopolassar, an Assyrian official who rebelled against the Assyrian Empire and established himself as the king of Babylon in 620 BC. Nebuchadnezzar is first mentioned in 607 BC, during the destruction of Babylon's arch-enemy Assyria, at which point he was already crown prince. In 605 BC he and his ally Cyaxares, ruler of the Medes, led an army against the Assyrians and Egyptians, who were then occupying Syria, and in the ensuing Battle of Carchemish, Pharaoh Necho II was defeated and Syria and Phoenicia were brought under the control of Babylon. Nabopolassar died in August 605 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon to ascend the throne. For the next few years, his attention was devoted to subduing his eastern and northern borders, and in 595/4 BC there was a serious but brief rebellion in Babylon itself. In 594/3 BC, the army was sent again to the west, possibly in reaction to the elevation of Psamtik II to the throne of Egypt. During the Siege of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezar captured King Jehoiachin along with prominent citizens and craftsman and appointed Zedekiah as King of Judah in his place, the latter rebelled and attempted to organize opposition among the small states in the region but his capital, Jerusalem, was taken in 587 BC (the events are described in the Bible's Books of Kings and Book of Jeremiah). In the following years, Nebuchadnezzar incorporated Phoenicia and the former Assyrian provinces of Cilicia (southwestern Anatolia) into his empire and may have campaigned in Egypt. According to a Babylonian poem, Nebuchadnezzar began behaving irrationally in his final years, "pay[ing] no heed to son or daughter," and was deeply suspicious of his sons. The kings who came after him ruled only briefly and Nabonidus, apparently not of the royal family, was overthrown by the Persian conqueror Cyrus the Great less than twenty-five years after Nebuchadnezzar's death.  The ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon are spread over two thousand acres, forming the largest archaeological site in the Middle East. He enlarged the royal palace (including in it a public museum, possibly the world's first), built and repaired temples, built a bridge over the Euphrates, and constructed a grand processional boulevard (the Processional Way) and gateway (the Ishtar Gate) lavishly decorated with glazed brick. Each spring equinox (the start of the New Year), a statue of the god Marduk was paraded from its temple to a temple outside the walls, returning through the Ishtar Gate and down the Processional Way, paved with colored stone and lined with molded lions, amidst rejoicing crowds.

Portrayal in the Bible.

The Babylonian king's two sieges of Jerusalem (in 597 and 587 BC) are depicted in. The Book of Jeremiah calls Nebuchadnezzar the "destroyer of nations" () and gives an account of the second siege of Jerusalem (587 BC) and the looting and destruction of the First Temple (Book of Jeremiah ; ). Nebuchadnezzar's assault on Egypt four months before the fall of Jerusalem in 587 is represented in Ezekiel as a divine initiative undertaken "by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon".  Nebuchadnezzar is an important character in the Old Testament Book of Daniel. Daniel 1 introduces Nebuchadnezzar as the king who takes Daniel and other Hebrew youths into captivity in Babylon, to be trained in "the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans". In Nebuchadnezzar's second year, Daniel interprets the king's dream of a huge image as God's prediction of the rise and fall of world powers, starting with Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom (Daniel 2). Nebuchadnezzar twice admits the power of the God of the Hebrews: first, after God saves three of Daniel's companions from a fiery furnace (Daniel 3); and secondly, after Nebuchadnezzar himself suffers a humiliating period of madness, as Daniel predicted (Daniel 4).  The consensus among critical scholars is that the book of Daniel is historical fiction. Nebuchadnezzar's recognition of the power of Yahweh is unlikely to have actually occurred. His period of madness is also fictional, historians attributing it to rumors about Nabonidus's stay in Teima (or Tayma), which were subsequently applied to Nebuchadnezzar through conflation.  His name is often recorded in the Bible as "Nebuchad"r"ezzar" (in Ezekiel and parts of Jeremiah), but more commonly as "Nebuchad"n"ezzar". The form "Nebuchadrezzar" is more consistent with the original Akkadian, and some scholars believe that "Nebuchadnezzar" may be a derogatory pun used by the Israelites, meaning "Nabu, protect my "jackass"".

Nebuchadnezzar II (), also Nebuchadrezzar II (Akkadian: – "Nabû-kudurri-uṣur", meaning "O god Nabu, preserve/defend my firstborn son"; Biblical Hebrew: – "Nəḇūḵaḏreʾṣṣar" or – "Nəḇūḵaḏneʾṣṣar"; Biblical Aramaic: – "Nəḇūḵaḏneṣṣar"), king of Babylon 605 BC – 562 BC, was the longest-reigning and most powerful monarch of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.


History.

Genetic analyses made in 2009 in a laboratory of the University of Dieppe showed that Chasselas is a grape variety originating in western Switzerland. Its name was first mentioned in the 16th century.  In 1940, Chasselas was crossed with Silvaner to produce the white grape variety Nobling.

Wine regions.

Chasselas is widely grown in Switzerland, where it has several regional synonym names, the main one being "Fendant" in the canton of Valais. It is considered an ideal pairing for raclette or fondue. Chasselas is also known as "Perlan" in the Mandement district of Geneva. In 2009, it was Switzerland's second-most planted grape variety at.  In Germany, with, it is almost exclusively grown in the wine region of Baden under the name "Gutedel".  In France it is mostly grown in the Loire region, where it is blended with Sauvignon blanc to produce a wine called "Pouilly-sur-Loire". Californian and Australian growers know this variety under the names "Chasselas Doré" and "Golden Chasselas."  Michel Chapoutier has stated that he is looking for land for a vineyard in England, which would be planted with Chasselas. He said that he believed Chasselas would suit the English climate and terroir very well.

Synonyms.

Chasselas is also known under the synonyms Abelione, Abelone, Albilloidea, Alsacia blanca, Amber Chasselas, Amber Muscadine, Bar sur Aube, Bela Glera, Bela žlahtnina, Berezka Prostaya, Berioska Casla, Beyaz Gutedel, Biela Plemenika Praskava, Biela Plemincka Chrapka, Biela Plemincka Pruskawa, Blanchette, Blanquette, Bon blanc, Bordo, Bournet, Bournot, Ceasla, Charapka, Chasselas, Chasselas Angevin, Chasselas bianco, Chasselas Blanc Royal, Chasselas Blanchette, Chasselas Crognant, Chasselas Croquant, Chasselas de Bar-sur-Aube, Chasselas de Bordeaux, Chasselas de Florence, Chasselas de Fontainebleau, Chasselas de Jalabert, Chasselas de la Contrie, Chasselas de la Naby, Chasselas de Moissac, Chasselas de Montauban, Chasselas de Mornain, Chasselas de Pondichéry, Chasselas de Pontchartrain, Chasselas de Pouilly, Chasselas de Quercy, Chasselas de Rappelo, Chasselas de Tenerife, Chasselas de Teneriffe, Chasselas de Thomeri, Chasselas de Toulaud, Chasselas de Vaud, Chasselas di Fountanbleau, Chasselas di Thomery, Chasselas Dorada, Chasselas Dorato, Chasselas Dore, Chasselas Dore Hatif, Chasselas Dore Salomon, Chasselas du Doubs, Chasselas du Portugal, Chasselas du Roi, Chasselas du Serail, Chasselas du Thor, Chasselas Dugommier, Chasselas Dur, Chasselas Fendant, Chasselas Hatif de Tenerife, Chasselas Haute Selection, Chasselas Jalabert, Chasselas Jaune Cire, Chasselas Piros, Chasselas Plant Droit, Chasselas Queen Victoria, Chasselas Reine Victoria, Chasselas Salsa, Chasselas Tokay Angevine, Chasselas Vert de la Cote, Chasselas White, Chasselat, Chrupka, Chrupka Biela, Chrupka Bila, Common Muscadine, Danka Belaya, Dinka Belaya, Dinka blanche, Dobrorozne, Doppelte Spanische, Dorin, Doucet, Eau Douce blanche, Edelschoen, Edelwein, Edelweiss, Edelxeiss, Elsaesser, Elsasser Weiss, Fabian, Fabiantraube, Fábiánszőlő, Fehér Chasselas, Fehér Fábiánszőlő, Fehér gyöngyszőlő, Fehér ropogós, Fendant, Fendant blanc, Fendant Roux, Fendant vert, Florenci Jouana, Fondan Belyi, Franceset, Franceseta, Frauentraube, Gamet, Gelber Gutedel, Gemeiner Gutedel, Gentil blanc, Gentil vert, Golden Bordeaux, Golden Chasselas, Grossblaettrige Spanische, Grosse Spanische, Grosser Spaniger, Gruener Gutedel, Gutedel, Gutedel Weiss, Gutedel Weisser, Gyöngyszőlő, Junker, Koenigs Gutedel, Kracher, Krachgutedel, Krachmost, Lardot, Lourdot, Maisa, Marzemina bianca, Marzemina Niduca, Morlenche, Mornan blanc, Mornen, Mornen blanc, Most, Most Rebe, Moster, Pariser Gutedel, Perlan, Pinzutella, Plamenka Belyi, Plant de Toulard, Plant de Toulaud, Plemenika Praskava, Plemenka, Plemenka Bela, Plemenka Rana, Pleminka Biela, Praskava, Pruscava Biela, Queen Victoria, Queen Victoria White, Raisin D'officier, Ranka, Rebe Herrn Fuchses, Reben Herm Fuchs, Reben Herrn, Rheinrebe, Rosmarinentraube, Rosmarintraube, Royal Muscadine, Sasla, Sasla Bela, Schoenedel, Shasla Belaya, Shasla Dore, Shasla Lechebnaya, Shasla Viktoria, Silberling, Silberweiss, Silberweissling, Silberwissling, Strapak, Suessling, Suesstraube, Sweetwater, Sweetwater White, Temprano, Temprano blanco, Terravin, Tribi Vognoble, Tribiano Tedesco, Ugne, Uslechtile Bile, Valais blanc, Viala, Viviser, Waelsche, Waelscher, Weisser Gutedel, Weisser Krachgutedel, White Chasselas, White Muscadine, White Sweetwater, White Van der Laan, Žlahtina, Žlahtnina, Žlahtnina bijela, Zlatina, and Župljanka.

Chasselas or Chasselas blanc is a wine grape variety grown mainly in Switzerland, France, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, New Zealand and Chile. Chasselas is mostly vinified to be a full, dry and fruity white wine. It is also suitable as a table grape, grown widely for this purpose in Turkey and Hungary.


History.

In German politics, the Ministry of Finance beside the Interior, Foreign, Justice and Defence ministries is counted as one of the "classical portfolios" (denoted by the definite article "der"), which were also part of the first German government under Otto von Bismarck following the Unification of 1871. Fiscal policy in the German Empire was predominantly the domain of the various states responsible for all direct taxation according to the 1833 "Zollverein" treaties. The federal government merely received indirect contributions from the states. Matters of fiscal policy at the federal level initially was the exclusive responsibility of the German Chancellery under Otto von Bismarck. However, in 1877 a special finance department was established, which with effect from 14 July 1879 was separated from the chancellery as the Imperial Treasury ("Reichsschatzamt"), a federal agency in its own right. With its seat vis-à-vis on Wilhelmplatz in Berlin, it was first headed by a subsecretary, and from 1880 by a Secretary of State only answerable to the chancellor.  After World War I, the newly established Weimar Republic had to face huge reparations and a fiscal emergency. To cope with the implications, the former "Reichsschatzamt" in 1919 was re-organised as a federal ministry, the "Reichsministerium der Finanzen", as supreme financial authority headed by a federal minister. Besides a Reich Treasury Ministry ("Reichsschatzministerium") was established for the administration of the federal property, both agencies were merged in 1923.  Already in the German cabinet of Chancellor Franz von Papen, Undersecretary Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk was appointed Finance Minister in 1932, an office he held throughout the Nazi era until 1945. The ministry played a vital role in financing the German re-armament, in the "Aryanization" of Jewish property ("Reich Flight Tax"), German war economy, and the plundering of occupied countries in World War II. The budget deficit had already reached heady heights on the eve of the war, aggrandised by hidden Mefo and Oeffa bill financing. In turn, saving banks and credit institutions were obliged to sign war bonds while price stability was enforced by government intervention and the German public was called up to bank surplus money.  After World War II the ministry was re-established in 1949 and renamed the West German "Bundesministerium der Finanzen". Since 1999, the Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus (former Air Ministry Building) in Berlin has been the headquarters of the ministry.  The Ministry of Finance in Berlin in the 1930s' and 1940s' was responsible for the plunder of Jewish assets throughout Europe. After Germany took over Austria on March 12th, 1938 every Jewish family in Austria received from the Ministry of Finance in Berlin, a form called "Verzeichnis uber das Vermogen von Juden nach dem Stand von 27 April, 1938." All Jewish households had to list the value of all their assets including silver, gold, real estate, bank accounts, businesses / inventories and jewelry. This even included silverware such as knives, forks and spoons. In addition all debts owed to Aryan Germans also had to be listed. On the form Austrian Jews were warned that they had to complete these documents by June 30th, 1938 or risk serious punishment such as imprisonment. These forms had to be mailed back to the Finanzamt (tax authority) in Berlin.

Structure and function.

The Ministry is the supreme federal authority in revenue administration and governs a number of subordinate federal, intermediate, and local authorities such as the Federal Centre for Data Processing and Information Technology (ZIVIT). The Ministry's wider portfolio includes public-law agencies and corporations such as the Federal Finance Regulator (BaFin) and Real Estate regulatory bodies. The finance minister is the only cabinet minister who can veto a decision of the government if it would lead to additional expenditure. The German newspaper FAZ stated, the Ministry of Finance is the most important Ministry in the German government.  The Finance Ministry is responsible for all aspects of tax and revenue policy in Germany and plays a significant role in European Union policy. It has nine directorates-general:

Subordinate agencies.

The federal ministry directly governs the following agencies:  Legally independent entities in the Ministry's wider portfolio include:

Federal Ministers of Finance.

Political Party:

The Federal Ministry of Finance (), abbreviated BMF, is the cabinet-level finance ministry of Germany, with its seat at the Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus in Berlin and a secondary office in Bonn. The current Federal Minister of Finance is Olaf Scholz (SPD).


Biography.

Early life.

Von Sacher-Masoch was born in the city of Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine), the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, at the time a province of the Austrian Empire, into the Roman Catholic family of an Austrian civil servant, Leopold Johann Nepomuk Ritter von Sacher, and Charlotte von Masoch, a Ukrainian noblewoman. The father later combined his surname with his wife's 'von Masoch', at the request of her family (she was the last of the line). Von Sacher served as a Commissioner of the Imperial Police Forces in Lemberg, and he was recognised with a new title of nobility as Sacher-Masoch awarded by the Austrian Emperor.

Galician storyteller.

Leopold studied law, history and mathematics at Graz University, and after graduating moved back to Lemberg where he became a professor. His early, non-fictional publications dealt mostly with Austrian history. At the same time, Masoch turned to the folklore and culture of his homeland, Galicia. Soon he abandoned lecturing and became a free man of letters. Within a decade his short stories and novels prevailed over his historical non-fiction works, though historical themes continued to imbue his fiction.  Panslavist ideas were prevalent in Masoch's literary work, and he found a particular interest in depicting picturesque types among the various ethnicities that inhabited Galicia. From the 1860s to the 1880s he published a number of volumes of "Jewish Short Stories", "Polish Short Stories", "Galician Short Stories", "German Court Stories" and "Russian Court Stories". His works were published in translation in Ukrainian, Polish, Russian and French.

"The Legacy of Cain".

In 1869, Sacher-Masoch conceived a grandiose series of short stories under the collective title "Legacy of Cain" that would represent the author's aesthetic "Weltanschauung". The cycle opened with the manifesto "The Wanderer" that brought out misogynist themes that became peculiar to Masoch's writings. Of the six planned volumes, only the first two were ever completed. By the middle of the 1880s, Masoch abandoned the "Legacy of Cain". Nevertheless, the published volumes of the series included Masoch's best-known stories, and of them, "Venus in Furs" (1869) is the most famous today. The short novel expressed Sacher-Masoch's fantasies and fetishes (especially for dominant women wearing fur). He did his best to live out his fantasies with his mistresses and wives.

Philosemitism.

Sacher-Masoch edited the Leipzig-based monthly literary magazine "Auf der Höhe. Internationale Review" ("At the Pinnacle. International Review"), which was published from October, 1881 to September, 1885. This was a progressive magazine aimed at tolerance and integration for Jews in Saxony, as well as for the emancipation of women with articles on women's education and suffrage.  In his later years, he worked against local antisemitism through an association for adult education called the "Oberhessischer Verein für Volksbildung" (OVV), founded in 1893 with his second wife, Hulda Meister, who had also been his assistant for some years.

Private life and inspiration for "Venus in Furs".

Fanny Pistor was an emerging literary writer. She met Sacher-Masoch after she contacted him, under the assumed name and fictitious title of Baroness Bogdanoff, for suggestions on improving her writing to make it suitable for publication.  On 9 December 1869, Sacher-Masoch and Pistor, who was by then his mistress, signed a contract making him her slave for a period of six months, with the stipulation that the Baroness wear furs as often as possible, especially when she was in a cruel mood. Sacher-Masoch took the alias of "Gregor", a stereotypical male servant's name, and assumed a disguise as the servant of the Baroness. The two travelled by train to Italy. As in "Venus in Furs", he traveled in the third-class compartment, while she had a seat in first-class, arriving in Venice (Florence, in the novel), where they were not known, and would not arouse suspicion.  Sacher-Masoch pressured his first wife – Aurora von Rümelin, whom he married in 1873 – to live out the experience of the book, against her preferences. Sacher-Masoch found his family life to be unexciting, and eventually got a divorce and married his assistant.

Later years.

In 1875, Masoch wrote "The Ideals of Our Time", an attempt to give a portrait of German society during its Gründerzeit period.  In his late fifties, his mental health began to deteriorate, and he spent the last years of his life under psychiatric care. According to official reports, he died in Lindheim, Altenstadt, Hesse, in 1895. It is also claimed that he died in an asylum in Mannheim in 1905.  Sacher-Masoch is the great-great-uncle to the British singer and actress Marianne Faithfull on the side of her mother, the Viennese Baroness Eva Erisso.

Masochism.

The term "masochism" was coined in 1886 by the Austrian psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) in his book "Psychopathia Sexualis":  Sacher-Masoch was not pleased with Krafft-Ebing's assertions. Nevertheless, details of Masoch's private life were obscure until Aurora von Rümelin's memoirs, "Meine Lebensbeichte" (My Life Confession; 1906), were published in Berlin under the pseudonym Wanda v. Dunajew. The following year, a French translation, "Confession de Ma Vie" (1907) by "Wanda von Sacher-Masoch", was printed in Paris by Mercure de France. An English translation of the French edition was published as "The Confessions of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch" (1991) by RE/Search Publications.

Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (27 January 1836 – 9 March 1895) was an Austrian nobleman, writer and journalist, who gained renown for his romantic stories of Galician life. The term "masochism" is derived from his name, invented by his contemporary, the Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Masoch did not approve of this use of his name.


Size.

Registers are normally measured by the number of bits they can hold, for example, an "8-bit register", "32-bit register" or a "64-bit register" or even more. In some instruction sets, the registers can operate in various modes breaking down its storage memory into smaller ones (32-bit into four 8-bit one for instance) to which multiple data (vector, or one dimensional array of data) can be loaded and operated upon at the same time. Typically it is implemented by adding extra registers that map their memory into bigger one. Processors that have the ability to execute single instruction on multiple data are called vector processors.

Types.

A processor often contains several kinds of registers, which can be classified according to their content or instructions that operate on them:  Hardware registers are similar, but occur outside CPUs.  In some architectures (such as SPARC and MIPS), the first or last register in the integer register file is a pseudo-register in a way that it is hardwired to always return zero when read (mostly to simplify indexing modes), and it cannot be overwritten. In Alpha this is also done for the floating-point register file. As a result of this, register files are commonly quoted as having one register more than how many of them are actually usable; for example, 32 registers are quoted when only 31 of them fit within the above definition of a register.

Examples.

The following table shows the number of registers in several mainstream CPU architectures. Note that in x86-compatible processors the stack pointer (ESP) is counted as an integer register, even though there are a limited number of instructions that may be used to operate on its contents. Similar caveats apply to most architectures.  Although all of the above listed architectures are different, almost all are a basic arrangement known as the Von Neumann architecture, first proposed by the Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann. It is also noteworthy that the number of registers on GPUs is much higher than that on CPUs.

Usage.

The number of registers available on a processor and the operations that can be performed using those registers has a significant impact on the efficiency of code generated by optimizing compilers. The Strahler number of an expression tree gives the minimum number of registers required to evaluate that expression tree.

A processor register is a quickly accessible location available to a computer's processors. Registers usually consist of a small amount of fast storage, although some registers have specific hardware functions, and may be read-only or write-only. In computer architecture, registers are typically addressed by mechanisms other than main memory, but may in some cases be assigned a memory address e.g. DEC PDP-10, ICT 1900.


Biology.

Flower buds are formed late in the growing season and overwinter for blooming in spring of the next year. They produce leaf-opposed cymes. "Vitis" is distinguished from other genera of Vitaceae by having petals which remain joined at the tip and detach from the base to fall together as a calyptra or 'cap'. The flowers are mostly bisexual, pentamerous, with a hypogynous disk. The calyx is greatly reduced or nonexistent in most species and the petals are joined together at the tip into one unit but separated at the base. The fruit is a berry, ovoid in shape and juicy, with a two-celled ovary each containing two ovules, thus normally producing four seeds per flower (or fewer by way of aborted embryos).  Other parts of the vine include the tendrils which are leaf-opposed, branched in "Vitis vinifera", and are used to support the climbing plant by twining onto surrounding structures such as branches or the trellising of a vine-training system.  In the wild, all species of "Vitis" are normally dioecious, but under domestication, variants with perfect flowers appear to have been selected.  The genus "Vitis" is divided into two subgenera "Euvitis" Planch. have 38 chromosomes (n=19) with berries borne on clusters and "Muscadinia" Planch. 40 (n=20) with small custers.

Species.

Most "Vitis" species are found in the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in North America and Asia with a few in the tropics. The wine grape "Vitis vinifera" originated in southern Europe and southwestern Asia. The species occur in widely different geographical areas and show a great diversity of form.  Their growth makes leaf collection challenging and<nowiki> </nowiki>polymorphic leaves make identification of species difficult. Mature grapevines can grow up to 48 cm in diameter at breast height and reach the upper canopy of trees more than 35 m in height.  Many species are sufficiently closely related to allow easy interbreeding and the resultant interspecific hybrids are invariably fertile and vigorous. Thus the concept of a species is less well defined and more likely represents the identification of different ecotypes of "Vitis" that have evolved in distinct geographical and environmental circumstances.  The exact number of species is not certain, with species in Asia in particular being poorly defined. Estimates range from 40 to more than 60. Some of the more notable include:  There are many cultivars of grapevines; most are cultivars of "V. vinifera".  Hybrid grapes also exist, and these are primarily crosses between "V. vinifera" and one or more of "V. labrusca", "V. riparia" or "V. aestivalis". Hybrids tend to be less susceptible to frost and disease (notably phylloxera), but wine from some hybrids may have a little of the characteristic "foxy" taste of "V. labrusca".  The Latin word "Vitis" has feminine grammatical gender, and therefore species names with adjectival specific epithets take feminine forms, such as "V. vinifera".

Uses.

The fruit of several "Vitis" species are grown commercially for consumption as fresh grapes and for fermentation into wine. "Vitis vinifera" is the most important such species.  The leaves of several species of grapevine are edible and are used in the production of dolmades and Vietnamese lot leaves.

Commercial distribution.

According to the "Food and Agriculture Organization" (FAO), 75,866 square kilometres of the world is dedicated to grapes. Approximately 71% of world grape production is used for wine, 27% as fresh fruit, and 2% as dried fruit. A portion of grape production goes to producing grape juice to be used as a sweetener for fruits canned "with no added sugar" and "100% natural". The area dedicated to vineyards is increasing by about 2% per year.  The following list of top wine-producers shows the corresponding areas dedicated to grapes (regardless of the grapes’ final destination):

Domestic cultivation.

Grapevines are widely cultivated by gardeners, and numerous suppliers cater specifically for this trade. The plants are valued for their decorative foliage, often colouring brightly in autumn; their ability to clothe walls, pergolas and arches, thus providing shade; and their fruits, which may be eaten as dessert or provide the basis for homemade wines. Popular varieties include:-  The following varieties have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit:-

Pests and diseases.

Phylloxera is an American root aphid that devastated "V. vinifera" vineyards in Europe when accidentally introduced in the late 19th century. Attempts were made to breed in resistance from American species, but many winemakers didn't like the unusual flavour profile of the hybrid vines. However, "V. vinifera" grafts readily onto rootstocks of the American species and their hybrids with "V. vinifera", and most commercial production of grapes now relies on such grafts.  The black vine weevil is another root pest.  Grapevines are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species - see list of Lepidoptera that feed on grapevines".

Symbolism.

The grapevine (typically "Vitis vinifera") has been used as a symbol since ancient times. In Greek mythology, Dionysus (called Bacchus by the Romans) was god of the vintage and, therefore, a grapevine with bunches of the fruit are among his attributes. His attendants at the Bacchanalian festivals hence had the vine as an attribute, together with the thyrsus, the latter often entwined with vine branches. For the same reason, the Greek wine cup (cantharos) is commonly decorated with the vine and grapes, wine being drunk as a libation to the god.  In Christian iconography, the vine also frequently appears. It is mentioned several times in the New Testament. We have the parable of the kingdom of heaven likened to the father starting to engage laborers for his vineyard. The vine is used as symbol of Jesus Christ based on his own statement, “I am the true vine (John 15:1).” In that sense, a vine is placed as sole symbol on the tomb of Constantia, the sister of Constantine the Great, and elsewhere. In Byzantine art, the vine and grapes figure in early mosaics, and on the throne of Maximianus of Ravenna it is used as a decoration.  The vine as symbol of the chosen people is employed several times in the Old Testament. The vine and wheat ear have been frequently used as symbol of the blood and flesh of Christ, hence figuring as symbols (bread and wine) of the Eucharist and are found depicted on ostensories. Often the symbolic vine laden with grapes is found in ecclesiastical decorations with animals biting at the grapes. At times, the vine is used as symbol of temporal blessing.

Vitis (grapevines) is a genus of 79 accepted species of vining plants in the flowering plant family Vitaceae. The genus is made up of species predominantly from the Northern hemisphere. It is economically important as the source of grapes, both for direct consumption of the fruit and for fermentation to produce wine. The study and cultivation of grapevines is called viticulture.


Biochemical process of fermentation of sucrose.

The chemical equations below summarize the fermentation of sucrose (CHO) into ethanol (CHOH). Alcoholic fermentation converts one mole of glucose into two moles of ethanol and two moles of carbon dioxide, producing two moles of ATP in the process.  The overall chemical formula for alcoholic fermentation is:  Sucrose is a dimer of glucose and fructose molecules. In the first step of alcoholic fermentation, the enzyme invertase cleaves the glycosidic linkage between the glucose and fructose molecules.  Next, each glucose molecule is broken down into two pyruvate molecules in a process known as glycolysis. Glycolysis is summarized by the equation:  CHCOCOO is pyruvate, and P is inorganic phosphate. Finally, pyruvate is converted to ethanol and CO in two steps, regenerating oxidized NAD+ needed for glycolysis: catalyzed by pyruvate decarboxylase  This reaction is catalyzed by alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH1 in baker's yeast).  As shown by the reaction equation, glycolysis causes the reduction of two molecules of NAD to NADH. Two ADP molecules are also converted to two ATP and two water molecules via substrate-level phosphorylation.

Related processes.

Fermentation of sugar to ethanol and CO can also be done by "Zymomonas mobilis", however the path is slightly different since formation of pyruvate does not happen by glycolysis but instead by the Entner–Doudoroff pathway. Other microorganisms can produce ethanol from sugars by fermentation but often only as a side product. Examples are

Effect of oxygen.

Fermentation does not require oxygen. If oxygen is present, some species of yeast (e.g., "Kluyveromyces lactis" or "Kluyveromyces lipolytica") will oxidize pyruvate completely to carbon dioxide and water in a process called cellular respiration, hence these species of yeast will produce ethanol only in an anaerobic environment (not cellular respiration). This phenomenon is known as the Pasteur effect.  However, many yeasts such as the commonly used baker's yeast "Saccharomyces cerevisiae" or fission yeast "Schizosaccharomyces pombe" under certain conditions, ferment rather than respire even in the presence of oxygen. In wine making this is known as the counter-Pasteur effect. These yeasts will produce ethanol even under aerobic conditions, if they are provided with the right kind of nutrition. During batch fermentation, the rate of ethanol production per milligram of cell protein is maximal for a brief period early in this process and declines progressively as ethanol accumulates in the surrounding broth. Studies demonstrate that the removal of this accumulated ethanol does not immediately restore fermentative activity, and they provide evidence that the decline in metabolic rate is due to physiological changes (including possible ethanol damage) rather than to the presence of ethanol. Several potential causes for the decline in fermentative activity have been investigated. Viability remained at or above 90%, internal pH remained near neutrality, and the specific activities of the glycolytic and alcohologenic enzymes (measured in vitro) remained high throughout batch fermentation. None of these factors appears to be causally related to the fall in fermentative activity during batch fermentation.

Bread baking.

Ethanol fermentation causes bread dough to rise. Yeast organisms consume sugars in the dough and produce ethanol and carbon dioxide as waste products. The carbon dioxide forms bubbles in the dough, expanding it to a foam. Less than 2% ethanol remains after baking.

Alcoholic beverages.

All ethanol contained in alcoholic beverages (including ethanol produced by carbonic maceration) is produced by means of fermentation induced by yeast.  In all cases, fermentation must take place in a vessel that allows carbon dioxide to escape but prevents outside air from coming in. This is to reduce risk of contamination of the brew by unwanted bacteria or mold and because a buildup of carbon dioxide creates a risk the vessel will rupture or fail, possibly causing injury or property damage.

Feedstocks for fuel production.

Yeast fermentation of various carbohydrate products is also used to produce the ethanol that is added to gasoline.  The dominant ethanol feedstock in warmer regions is sugarcane. In temperate regions, corn or sugar beets are used.  In the United States, the main feedstock for the production of ethanol is currently corn. Approximately 2.8 gallons of ethanol are produced from one bushel of corn (0.42 liter per kilogram). While much of the corn turns into ethanol, some of the corn also yields by-products such as DDGS (distillers dried grains with solubles) that can be used as feed for livestock. A bushel of corn produces about 18 pounds of DDGS (320 kilograms of DDGS per metric ton of maize). Although most of the fermentation plants have been built in corn-producing regions, sorghum is also an important feedstock for ethanol production in the Plains states. Pearl millet is showing promise as an ethanol feedstock for the southeastern U.S. and the potential of duckweed is being studied.  In some parts of Europe, particularly France and Italy, grapes have become a "de facto" feedstock for fuel ethanol by the distillation of surplus wine. Surplus sugary drinks may also be used. In Japan, it has been proposed to use rice normally made into sake as an ethanol source.

Cassava as ethanol feedstock.

Ethanol can be made from mineral oil or from sugars or starches. Starches are cheapest. The starchy crop with highest energy content per acre is cassava, which grows in tropical countries.  Thailand already had a large cassava industry in the 1990s, for use as cattle feed and as a cheap admixture to wheat flour. Nigeria and Ghana are already establishing cassava-to-ethanol plants. Production of ethanol from cassava is currently economically feasible when crude oil prices are above US$120 per barrel.  New varieties of cassava are being developed, so the future situation remains uncertain. Currently, cassava can yield between 25-40 tonnes per hectare (with irrigation and fertilizer), and from a tonne of cassava roots, circa 200 liters of ethanol can be produced (assuming cassava with 22% starch content). A liter of ethanol contains circa 21.46 MJ of energy. The overall energy efficiency of cassava-root to ethanol conversion is circa 32%.  The yeast used for processing cassava is "Endomycopsis fibuligera", sometimes used together with bacterium "Zymomonas mobilis".

Byproducts of fermentation.

Ethanol fermentation produces unharvested byproducts such as heat, carbon dioxide, food for livestock, water, methanol, fuels, fertilizer and alcohols. The cereal unfermented solid residues from the fermentation process, which can be used as livestock feed or in the production of biogas, are referred to as Distillers grains and sold as WDG, "Wet Distiller's grains", and DDGS, "Dried Distiller's Grains with Solubles", respectively.

Ethanol fermentation, also called alcoholic fermentation, is a biological process which converts sugars such as glucose, fructose, and sucrose into cellular energy, producing ethanol and carbon dioxide as by-products. Because yeasts perform this conversion in the absence of oxygen, alcoholic fermentation is considered an anaerobic process. It also takes place in some species of fish (including goldfish and carp) where (along with lactic acid fermentation) it provides energy when oxygen is scarce.


Early life.

Mengs was born in 1728 at Ústí nad Labem (German: Aussig) in the Kingdom of Bohemia, the son of, a Danish painter who eventually established himself at Dresden, where the court of Saxonian-Polish electors and kings was. His older sister, Therese Maron, was also a painter, as was his younger sister, Julia.  His and Therese's births in Bohemia were mere coincidence. Their mother was not their father's wife; Ismael carried on a years-long affair with the family's housekeeper, Charlotte Bormann. In an effort to conceal the births of two illegitimate children, Ismael took Charlotte, under the pretext of "vacations", to the nearest bigger town abroad, Ústí nad Labem (90 km upstream of the Elbe River). At least in Anton's case, Ismael Mengs took his baby and Charlotte back to Dresden a few weeks after the birth. There they lived for the next 13 years.  In 1741 Ismael moved his family from Dresden to Rome.

Adulthood and death.

In 1749 Anton Raphael Mengs was appointed first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, but this did not prevent him from continuing to spend much of his time in Rome. There he married Margarita Guazzi, who had sat for him as a model in 1748. He converted to Catholicism, and in 1754 he became director of the Vatican painting school. His fresco painting "Parnassus" at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter.  In 1749 Mengs accepted a commission from the Duke of Northumberland to make a copy, in oil on canvas, of Raphael's fresco "The School of Athens" for his London home. Executed in 1752–5, Mengs's painting is full-sized, but he adapted the composition to a rectangular format and added other figures. It is now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.  Mengs died in Rome in June 1779 and was buried there in the Church of Santi Michele e Magno.

Career.

On two occasions he accepted invitations from Charles III of Spain to go to Madrid. There he produced some of his best work, most notably the ceiling of the banqueting hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid, the subject of which was the "Triumph of Trajan" and the "Temple of Glory." After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs returned to Rome, where he died two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. His portraits and self-portraits recall an attention to detail and insight often lost in his grander paintings.  His closeness to Johann Joachim Winckelmann has enhanced his historical importance. Mengs came to share Winckelmann's enthusiasm for classical antiquity, and worked to establish the dominance of Neoclassical painting over the then popular Rococo style. At the same time, however, the influence of the Roman Baroque remained strong in his work, particularly in his religious paintings. He would have fancied himself the first neoclassicist, while in fact he may be the last flicker of Baroque art. Rudolf Wittkower wrote: "In the last analysis, he is as much an end as a beginning". Goethe regretted that "so much learning should have been allied to a total want of initiative and poverty of invention, and embodied with a strained and artificial mannerism."  Mengs had a well-known rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter Pompeo Batoni. He was also a friend of Giacomo Casanova. Casanova provides accounts of his personality and contemporary reputation through anecdotes in his "Histoire de Ma Vie". Among his pupils in Italy were Anton von Maron, Antonio Maron (Vienna, 1731- Naples 1761). His pupils in Spain included Agustín Esteve.  Besides numerous paintings in Madrid, the "Ascension" and "St Joseph" at Dresden, "Perseus and Andromeda" at Saint Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani are among his chief works. A "Noli me tangere" was commissioned as an altar-piece by All Souls College, Oxford, and is now held in the National Gallery, London. Another altar-piece was installed in Magdalen College, Oxford.

Theoretical writings.

Mengs wrote about art in Spanish, Italian, and German. He reveals an eclectic theory of art that sees perfection as attainable through a well-balanced fusion of diverse excellences: Greek design combined with the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the colour of Titian.

Anton Raphael Mengs (22 March 1728 – 29 June 1779) was a German (Saxon) painter, active in Dresden, Rome and Madrid, who while painting in the Rococo period of the mid-18th century became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting, which replaced Rococo as the dominant painting style.


Analysis.

Performance.

Bubble sort has a worst-case and average complexity of "О"("n"), where "n" is the number of items being sorted. Most practical sorting algorithms have substantially better worst-case or average complexity, often "O"("n" log "n"). Even other "О"("n") sorting algorithms, such as insertion sort, generally run faster than bubble sort, and are no more complex. Therefore, bubble sort is not a practical sorting algorithm.  The only significant advantage that bubble sort has over most other algorithms, even quicksort, but not insertion sort, is that the ability to detect that the list is sorted efficiently is built into the algorithm. When the list is already sorted (best-case), the complexity of bubble sort is only "O"("n"). By contrast, most other algorithms, even those with better average-case complexity, perform their entire sorting process on the set and thus are more complex. However, not only does insertion sort share this advantage, but it also performs better on a list that is substantially sorted (having a small number of inversions).  Bubble sort should be avoided in the case of large collections. It will not be efficient in the case of a reverse-ordered collection.

Rabbits and turtles.

The distance and direction that elements must move during the sort determine bubble sort's performance because elements move in different directions at different speeds. An element that must move toward the end of the list can move quickly because it can take part in successive swaps. For example, the largest element in the list will win every swap, so it moves to its sorted position on the first pass even if it starts near the beginning. On the other hand, an element that must move toward the beginning of the list cannot move faster than one step per pass, so elements move toward the beginning very slowly. If the smallest element is at the end of the list, it will take passes to move it to the beginning. This has led to these types of elements being named rabbits and turtles, respectively, after the characters in Aesop's fable of The Tortoise and the Hare.  Various efforts have been made to eliminate turtles to improve upon the speed of bubble sort. Cocktail sort is a bi-directional bubble sort that goes from beginning to end, and then reverses itself, going end to beginning. It can move turtles fairly well, but it retains "O(n)" worst-case complexity. Comb sort compares elements separated by large gaps, and can move turtles extremely quickly before proceeding to smaller and smaller gaps to smooth out the list. Its average speed is comparable to faster algorithms like quicksort.

Step-by-step example.

Take an array of numbers " 5 1 4 2 8", and sort the array from lowest number to greatest number using bubble sort. In each step, elements written in bold are being compared. Three passes will be required;  Now, the array is already sorted, but the algorithm does not know if it is completed. The algorithm needs one whole pass without any swap to know it is sorted.

Implementation.

Pseudocode implementation.

In pseudocode the algorithm can be expressed as (0-based array):  procedure bubbleSort(A : list of sortable items) end procedure

Optimizing bubble sort.

The bubble sort algorithm can be optimized by observing that the "n"-th pass finds the "n"-th largest element and puts it into its final place. So, the inner loop can avoid looking at the last "n" − 1 items when running for the "n"-th time: procedure bubbleSort(A : list of sortable items) end procedure More generally, it can happen that more than one element is placed in their final position on a single pass. In particular, after every pass, all elements after the last swap are sorted, and do not need to be checked again. This allows to skip over many elements, resulting in about a worst case 50% improvement in comparison count (though no improvement in swap counts), and adds very little complexity because the new code subsumes the "swapped" variable:  To accomplish this in pseudocode, the following can be written:  procedure bubbleSort(A : list of sortable items) end procedure Alternate modifications, such as the cocktail shaker sort attempt to improve on the bubble sort performance while keeping the same idea of repeatedly comparing and swapping adjacent items.

Use.

Although bubble sort is one of the simplest sorting algorithms to understand and implement, its "O"("n") complexity means that its efficiency decreases dramatically on lists of more than a small number of elements. Even among simple "O"("n") sorting algorithms, algorithms like insertion sort are usually considerably more efficient.  Due to its simplicity, bubble sort is often used to introduce the concept of an algorithm, or a sorting algorithm, to introductory computer science students. However, some researchers such as Owen Astrachan have gone to great lengths to disparage bubble sort and its continued popularity in computer science education, recommending that it no longer even be taught.  The Jargon File, which famously calls bogosort "the archetypical [sic] perversely awful algorithm", also calls bubble sort "the generic bad algorithm". Donald Knuth, in "The Art of Computer Programming", concluded that "the bubble sort seems to have nothing to recommend it, except a catchy name and the fact that it leads to some interesting theoretical problems", some of which he then discusses.  Bubble sort is asymptotically equivalent in running time to insertion sort in the worst case, but the two algorithms differ greatly in the number of swaps necessary. Experimental results such as those of Astrachan have also shown that insertion sort performs considerably better even on random lists. For these reasons many modern algorithm textbooks avoid using the bubble sort algorithm in favor of insertion sort.  Bubble sort also interacts poorly with modern CPU hardware. It produces at least twice as many writes as insertion sort, twice as many cache misses, and asymptotically more branch mispredictions. Experiments by Astrachan sorting strings in Java show bubble sort to be roughly one-fifth as fast as an insertion sort and 70% as fast as a selection sort.  In computer graphics bubble sort is popular for its capability to detect a very small error (like swap of just two elements) in almost-sorted arrays and fix it with just linear complexity (2"n"). For example, it is used in a polygon filling algorithm, where bounding lines are sorted by their "x" coordinate at a specific scan line (a line parallel to the "x" axis) and with incrementing "y" their order changes (two elements are swapped) only at intersections of two lines. Bubble sort is a stable sort algorithm, like insertion sort.

Debate over name.

Bubble sort has been occasionally referred to as a "sinking sort".  For example, in Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming", Volume 3: "Sorting and Searching" he states in section 5.2.1 'Sorting by Insertion', that [the value] "settles to its proper level" and that this method of sorting has sometimes been called the "sifting" or "sinking" technique.  This debate is perpetuated by the ease with which one may consider this algorithm from two different but equally valid perspectives:

In popular culture.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt asked then-presidential candidate Barack Obama once during an interview about the best way to sort one million integers – and Obama, pausing for a moment, then replied: "I think the bubble sort would be the wrong way to go."

Bubble sort, sometimes referred to as sinking sort, is a simple sorting algorithm that repeatedly steps through the list, compares adjacent elements and swaps them if they are in the wrong order. The pass through the list is repeated until the list is sorted. The algorithm, which is a comparison sort, is named for the way smaller or larger elements "bubble" to the top of the list.