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Donegal fiddle tradition

The Donegal fiddle tradition is one of the distinct fiddle traditions within Irish traditional music. The distinctness of the Donegal tradition developed due to the close relations between County Donegal and Scotland, and the Donegal repertoire and style has influences from Scottish fiddle music. For example, in addition to the ”universally known” standard Irish dance tunes, there is an added volume of Scottish and Nova Scotia tunes played, with even some tunes from Shetland and Orkney. This includes standard tune types such as double jigs, slip jigs , reels , and hornpipes (swung ). It has been claimed that Donegal musicians play more slip jigs than any other region of Ireland. This is potentially due to the geographical borders/mountains (as well as national borders with Northern Ireland) keeping Donegal's repertoire more locally-known for decades. There is also a prevalence of mazurka playing. Mazurkas are historically mainland-European tunes very similar to a waltz, in its meter, though generally livelier and with more emphasis being placed on the second beat of each measure. Another uniquely Donegal tune is called the barndance, stemming from the Germanic schottische (essentially meaning ‘Scottish’), also similar to the Norwegian reinlander. The barndance is very similar to a hornpipe, but slower than a reel; typically they are played with less of a hornpipe's “swing” and more of the “drive” of a reel.

In stark contrast to other Irish musical styles, the Donegal tradition also has the Scottish strathspey, a traditional dance from Scotland, played a bit like a hornpipe but with emphasis on the semi-quaver; this dotted rhythm gives the strathspey its distinct “Scotch Snap” sound. While strathspeys are definitely known in Donegal (albeit played slightly slower and with less ”snap” than Scottish fiddlers), more common is the highland. Very rarely referred to as a “highland fling”, these quintessentially Donegal tunes are influenced by the Scottish strathspey, but played a bit smoother, as a sort of “strathspey-reel”. Some Scotch Snaps will be played, but highlands tend to be more akin to a slower reel, overall. Reels, themselves, are said to have originated in Scottish music. The distinctiveness of the Donegal tradition led to some conflict, between Donegal players and representatives of the mainstream tradition, when Irish traditional music was organised in the 1960s.

The tradition has several distinguishing traits compared to other fiddle traditions such as the Sliabh Luachra style of southern Ireland, most of which involves styles of bowing and the ornamentation of the music, and rhythm. Due to the frequency of double stops and the strong bowing it is often compared to the Cape Breton tradition. Another characteristic of the style is the rapid pace at which it tends to proceed. Modern players, such as the fiddle group Altan, continue to be popular due to a variety of reasons.

Among the most famous Donegal style players are John Doherty from the early twentieth century and James Byrne, Paddy Glackin, Tommy Peoples and Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh in recent decades.

History
The fiddle has ancient roots in Ireland, the first report of bowed instruments similar to the violin being in the Book of Leinster (ca. 1160). The modern violin was ubiquitous in Ireland by the early 1700s. However the first mention of the fiddle being in use in Donegal is from the blind harper Arthur O'Neill who in his 1760 memoirs described a wedding in Ardara as having "plenty of pipers and fiddlers". Donegal fiddlers participated in the development of the Irish music tradition in the 18th century during which jigs and slipjigs and later reels and hornpipes became the dominant musical forms. However, Donegal musicians, many of them being fishermen, also frequently travelled to Scotland, where they acquired tune types from the Scottish repertoire such as the Strathspey which was integrated into the Donegal tradition as "Highland" tunes. The Donegal tradition derives much of its unique character from the synthesis of Irish and Scottish stylistic features and repertoires. Aoidh notes however that while different types of art music were commonly played among the upper classes of Scottish society in the 18th century, the Donegal tradition drew exclusively from the popular types of Scottish music. Like some Scottish fiddlers (who, like Donegal fiddlers, tend to use a short bow and play in a straight-ahead fashion), some Donegal fiddlers worked at imitating the sound of the bagpipes. Workers from Donegal would bring their music to Scotland and also bring back Scottish tunes with them such music of J. Scott Skinner and Mackenzie Murdoch. Lilting, unaccompanied singing of wordless tunes, was also an important part of the Donegal musical tradition often performed by women in social settings. Describing the musical life of Arranmore Island in the late 19th century singer Róise Rua Nic Gríanna describes the most popular dances: "The Sets, the Lancers, the Maggie Pickie [i.e., Maggie Pickins] the Donkey, the Mazurka and the Barn dances". Among the travelling fiddlers of the late 19th century players such as John Mhosaí McGinley, Anthony Hilferty, the McConnells and the Dohertys are best known. As skill levels increased through apprenticeships several fiddle masters appeared such as the Cassidy's, Connie Haughey, Jimmy Lyons and Miock McShane of Teelin and Francie Dearg and Mickey Bán Byrne of Kilcar. These virtuosos played unaccompanied listening pieces in addition to the more common dance music.

The influences between Scotland and Donegal went both ways and were furthered by a wave of immigration from Donegal to Scotland in the 19th century (the regions share common names of dances), as can be heard in the volume of strathspeys, schottisches, marches, and Donegal's own strong piping tradition, has influenced and been influenced by music, and by the sounds, ornaments, and repertoire of the Píob Mhór, the traditional bagpipes of Ireland and Scotland. There are other differences between the Donegal style and the rest of Ireland. Instruments such as the tin whistle, flute, concertina and accordion were very rare in Donegal until modern times. Traditionally the píob mór and the fiddle were the only instruments used and the use of pipe or fiddle music was common in old wedding customs. Migrant workers carried their music to Scotland and also brought back a number of tunes of Scottish origin. The Donegal fiddlers may well have been the route by which Scottish tunes such as Lucy Campbell, Tarbolton Lodge (Tarbolton) and The Flagon (The Flogging Reel), that entered the Irish repertoire. These players prided themselves on their technical abilities, which included playing in higher positions (fairly uncommon among traditional Irish fiddlers), and sought out material which would demonstrate their skills.

As Irish music was consolidated and organised under the Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann movement in the 1960s, both strengthened the interest in traditional music but sometimes conflicted with the Donegal tradition and its social conventions. The rigidly organised sessions of the Comhaltas reflected the traditions of Southern Ireland and Donegal fiddlers like John Doherty considered the National repertoire with its strong focus on reels to be less diverse than that of Donegal with its varied rhythms. Other old fiddlers dislike the ways comhaltas sessions were organised with a committee player, often not himself a musician, in charge. Sometimes Comhaltas representatives would even disparage the Donegal tradition, with its Scottish flavour, as being un-Irish, and prohibit them from playing local tunes with Scottish genealogies such as the "Highlands" at Comhaltas sessions. This sometimes cause antagonism between Donegal players and the main organisation of traditional music in Ireland.

Outside of the Comhaltas movement however, Donegal fiddling stood strong with Paddy Glackin of Ceoltorí Laighean and the Bothy Band and later Tommy Peoples also with the Bothy Band and Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh with Altan, who all drew attention and prestige to the Donegal tradition within folk music circles throughout Ireland.

Description of style
The Donegal style of fiddling is a label often applied to music from this area, though one also might plausibly identify several different, but related, styles within the county. To the extent to which there is one common style in the county, it is characterised by a rapid pace; a tendency to be more un-swung in the playing of the fast dance tune types (reel and jigs); short (non-slurred), aggressive bowing, sparse ornamentation, the use of bowed triplets more often than trills as ornaments, the use of double stops and droning; and the occurrence of "playing the octave", with one player playing the melody and the other playing the melody an octave lower. None of these characteristics are universal, and there is some disagreement as to the extent to which there is a common style at all. In general, however, the style is rather aggressive.

Another feature of Donegal fiddling that makes it distinctive among Irish musical traditions is the variety of rare tune types that are played. Highlands, a type of tune in time with some similarities to Scottish strathspeys, which are also played in Donegal, are one of the most commonly played types of tune in the county. Other tune types common solely in the county include barndances, also called "Germans," and mazurkas.

Historical
There are a number of different strands to the history of fiddle playing in County Donegal. Perhaps the best-known and, in the last half of the twentieth century, the most influential has been that of the Doherty family. Hugh Doherty is the first known musician of this family. Born in 1790, he headed an unbroken tradition of fiddlers and pipers in the Doherty family until the death, in 1980, of perhaps the best-known Donegal fiddler, John Doherty. John, a travelling tinsmith, was known for his extremely precise and fast finger- and bow-work and vast repertoire, and is considered to be one of the greatest Irish fiddlers ever recorded. John's older brother, Mickey, was also recorded and, though Mickey was another of the great Irish fiddlers, his reputation has been overshadowed by John's.

There is no single Donegal style but several distinctive styles. These styles traditionally come from the geographical isolated regions of Donegal including Inishowen, eastern Donegal, The Rosses and Gweedore, Croaghs, Teelin, Kilcar, Glencolmcille, Ballyshannon and Bundoran. Even with improved communications and transport, these regions still have recognisably different ways of fiddle playing. Notable deceased players of the older Donegal styles include Neillidh ("Neilly") Boyle, Francie Byrne, Con Cassidy, Frank Cassidy, James Byrne (1946–2008), P.V. O'Donnell (2011), and Tommy Peoples (1948–2018). Currently living Donegal fiddlers, include, Vincent Campbell, John Gallagher, Paddy Glackin, and Danny O'Donnell.

Modern
Fiddle playing continues to be popular in Donegal. The three fiddlers of the Donegal "supergroup" Altan, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Paul O'Shaughnessy, and Ciarán Tourish, are generally admired within Donegal. An example of another fiddler-player from Donegal is Liz Doherty. Another well regarded fiddle player hailing from Donegal is Aidan O'Donnell. TG4 Young Musician of the Year 2010 Aidan O'Donnell has been described as one of the finest young Irish musicians at present. He began his music making at the age of 12, and since then has performed with some of traditional music's finest artists, including Donal Lunny, Micheal Ó'Suilleabháin and the Chieftains. In 2007, he won the prestigious ‘Oireachtas na Geailge' fiddle title, and has been a regular tutor at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, at the University of Limerick for the past number of years.

The fiddle, and traditional music in general, remained popular in Donegal not only because of the international coverage of certain artists but because of local pride in the music. Traditional music Seisiúns are still common place both in pubs and in houses. The Donegal fiddle music has been influenced by recorded music, but this is claimed to have had a positive impact on the tradition. Modern Donegal fiddle music is often played in concerts and recorded on albums.

title: Donegal fiddle tradition


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Double-barreled shotgun

A double-barreled shotgun, also known as a double shotgun, is a break-action shotgun with two parallel barrels, allowing two single shots that can be fired simultaneously or sequentially in quick succession.

Construction
Modern double-barreled shotguns, often known as doubles, are almost universally break action, with the barrels hinge down at the rear to expose the breech ends for unloading and reloading. Since there is no reciprocating action needed to eject and reload the shells, doubles are more compact than repeating designs such as pump action, lever action, bolt action, or self-loading shotguns.

Barrel configuration
Double-barreled shotguns (specifically break-action), come in two basic configurations:
 * side-by-side (S×S) — the two barrels are arranged horizontally;
 * over-and-under (O/U) — the two barrels are arranged vertically.

The original double-barreled guns were nearly all side-by-side designs, which was a more practical design for muzzleloaders. Early cartridge-firing shotguns also used the side-by-side action, because they kept the exposed hammers of the earlier muzzleloading shotguns from which they evolved. When hammerless designs started to become common, the over-and-under design was introduced, and most modern sporting doubles are over-and-under designs.

One significant advantage that doubles have over single-barrel repeating shotguns is the ability to have more than one choke at a time. Some shotgun shooting sports, such as skeet shooting, use crossing targets presented in a narrow range of distance, and only require one level of choke. Other sports, like sporting clays, give the shooter targets at differing ranges, and targets that might approach or recede from the shooter, and so must be engaged at differing ranges. Having two barrels lets the shooter use a more open choke for near targets, and a tighter choke for distant targets, providing the optimal shot pattern for each distance.

The disadvantage lies in the fact that the barrels of a double-barreled shotgun, whether over-and-under or side-by-side, are not parallel, but slightly angled, so that shots from the barrels converge, usually at "40 yards out". For the side-by-side configuration, the shotstring continues on its path to the opposite side of the rib after the converging point; for example, the left barrel's discharge travels on the left of the rib till it hits dead center at 40 yards (36.58 m) out, after that, the discharge continues on to the right. In the over-and-under configuration with a parallel rib, both barrels' discharges will keep to the dead center, but the discharge from the "under" barrel will shoot higher than the discharge from the "over" barrel after 40 yards (36.58 m). Thus, double-barreled shotguns are accurate only at practical shotgun ranges, though the range of their ammunition easily exceeds four to six times that distance.

Side-by-side shotguns are often more expensive, and may take more practice to aim effectively than an over-and-under. The off-center nature of the recoil in a side-by-side gun may make shooting the body-side barrel slightly more painful by comparison to an over-and-under, single-shot, or pump-action, lever-action shotgun. Gas-operated and Recoil-operated, designs will recoil less than either. More side-by-side than over-and-under guns have traditional "cast-off" stocks, where the end of the buttstock veers slightly to the right, allowing a right-handed user to point the gun more easily.

Double-barreled shotguns are also inherently more safe, as whether the shotgun is loaded or can be fired can be ascertained by anyone present if the action is broken open, for instance on a skeet, trap or hunting clays course when another shooter is firing; if the action is open, the gun cannot fire. Similarly, doubles are more easily examined to see if loaded than pump-action or semi-automatic shotguns, whose bolt must be opened and chamber closely examined or felt to make sure it is unloaded; with a double gun (or a break-action single gun), whether the gun is loaded, i.e., has cartridges in any chamber, is easily and immediately seen with a glance (and just as easily unloaded).

Trigger mechanism
The early doubles used two triggers, one for each barrel, located front to back inside the trigger guard. The index finger was used to pull either trigger, as having two fingers inside the trigger guard can cause a very undesirable recoil-induced double-discharge. Double-trigger designs are typically set up for right-handed users. In double-trigger designs, it is often possible to pull both triggers at once, firing both barrels simultaneously, though this is generally not recommended as it doubles the recoil, battering both shotgun and shooter, particularly if it was unanticipated or unintended. Discharging both barrels at the same time has long been a hunting trick employed by hunters using 8 gauge "elephant" shotguns, firing the two 875 gr slugs for sheer stopping power at close range.

Later models use a single trigger that alternately fires both barrels, called a single selective trigger or SST. The single selective trigger does not allow firing both barrels at once, since the single trigger must be pulled twice in order to fire both barrels. The change from one barrel to the other may be done by a clockwork type system, where a cam alternates between barrels, or by an inertial system where the recoil of firing the first barrel toggles the trigger to the next barrel. A double-barreled shotgun with an inertial trigger works best with full power shotshells; shooting low recoil shotshells often will not reliably toggle the inertial trigger, causing an apparent failure to fire occasionally when attempting to depress the trigger a second time to fire the second barrel (this also can happen if the first shell fails to fire). Generally there is a method of selecting the order in which the barrels of a single selective trigger shotgun fire; commonly this is done through manipulation of the safety, pushing to one side to select top barrel first and the other side to select bottom barrel first. In the event that an inertial trigger does not toggle to the second barrel when firing low recoil shotshells, manually selecting the order to the second barrel will enable the second barrel to fire when the trigger is depressed again.

One of the advantages of double-barreled shotgun with double triggers or single selective trigger, is that the second shot can be taken almost immediately after the first with merely a second trigger pull, without needing to manually operate the action (which will inevitably destabilize the gun from the shoulder position and affect aim), and can utilize different chokes for the two shots (assuming, of course, that full power shotshells are fired, at least for a double-barreled shotgun with an inertial type single selective trigger, as needed to toggle the inertial trigger). This can be noticeably faster than a pump-action shotgun, which requires manually pumping the fore-end to eject and reload for the second shot, and may be faster, or not slower, than a semi-automatic shotgun (as there are no bolt movements to delay the rechambering of a second shell). Note, however, in neither the pump-action or semi-automatic will the second shot be a different choke pattern from the first shot, whereas for a double, the two shots are usually with different chokes. Thus, depending on the nature of the hunt, the appropriate choke for the shot is always at hand. For example, while field hunting flushing birds, the first shot is usually closer than the second because the bird flies away from the shooter; so, the more open choke (and barrel) would be better for the first shot, and if a second shot is needed, as the bird is flying away, the more closed (and thus longer distance of an effective shot pattern) choke (and barrel) is then appropriate. Conversely, on a driven hunt, where the birds are driven towards the shooter, the closed (longer effective distance) choke (and barrel) should be fired first, saving the open (closer effective distance) choke (and barrel) for the now-closer incoming bird. None of this is possible with single-barrel shotguns, only with a double, either a side-by-side (S×S) or over-and-under (O/U).

Regulation
Regulation is a term used for multi-barreled firearms (most commonly found in rifles and shotguns) that indicates how close to the same point of aim the barrels will shoot. A poorly regulated gun may hit consistently with one barrel, but miss consistently with the other, making the gun nearly useless for anything requiring two shots. However, the short ranges and spread of shot provide a significant overlap, so a small error in regulation in a double is often too small to be noticed. Generally the shotguns are regulated to hit the point of aim at a given distance, usually the maximum expected range since that is the range at which a full choke is used, and where precise regulation matters most. The regulation is usually more important in side-by-side, rather than in over-and-under shotguns, as felt recoil differs.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Double-barreled shotgun


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Dessert

Dessert is a course that concludes a meal. The course consists of sweet foods, such as cake, biscuit, ice cream and possibly a beverage such as dessert wine and liqueur. Some cultures sweeten foods that are more commonly savory to create desserts. In some parts of the world there is no tradition of a dessert course to conclude a meal.

The term dessert can apply to many sweets, such as biscuits, cakes, cookies, custards, gelatins, ice creams, pastries, pies, puddings, macaroons, sweet soups, tarts, and fruit salad (fruit is commonly found in dessert courses because of its naturally occurring sweetness).

Historically, the dessert course consisted entirely of foods "from the storeroom" (de l’office), including fresh, stewed, preserved, and dried fruits; nuts; cheese and other dairy dishes; dry biscuits (cookies) and wafers; and ices and ice creams. Sweet dishes from the kitchen, such as freshly prepared pastries, meringues, custards, puddings, and baked fruits, were served in the entremets course, not in the dessert course. By the 20th century, though, sweet entremets had come to be included among the desserts.

Etymology
The term "dessert" originated from the French word desservir, meaning "to clear the table", and it referred to the final course of the meal, presented after the table was "cleared" (deservi).

One of the earliest uses of the term in a culinary context is in the Menagier de Paris (1393), which includes a course of "desserte" in three of the menus in the text, one of which includes sweet pastries and fruits, another of which includes savory frumenty and venison.

In later centuries, the term continued to refer to the last course of the meal. But in the late 19th century, the word "desserts" also came to refer to the dishes served in the dessert course.

Other names
The word "dessert" is most commonly used for this course in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States, while it is one of several synonyms, including "pudding", "sweet" and "afters", in the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth countries.

History
Sweets were fed to the gods in ancient Mesopotamia and ancient India and other ancient civilizations. Herodotus mentions that Persian meals featured many desserts, and were more varied in their sweet offerings than the main dishes. German army officer Helmuth von Moltke whilst serving in the Ottoman Empire noted the unusual presentation of courses with the sweet courses served between roasts and other savory dishes.

Dried fruit and honey were probably the first sweeteners used in most of the world, but the spread of sugarcane around the world was essential to the development of dessert. Sugarcane was grown and refined in India before 500 BC and was crystallized, making it easy to transport, by AD 500. Sugar and sugarcane were traded, making sugar available to Macedonia by 303 BC and China by AD 600. In the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, and China, sugar has been a staple of cooking and desserts for over a thousand years.

Sugarcane and sugar were little known and rare in Europe until the twelfth century or later when the Crusades and then colonization spread its use. Europeans began to manufacture sugar in the Middle Ages, and more sweet desserts became available. Even then sugar was so expensive usually only the wealthy could indulge on special occasions. The first apple pie recipe was published in 1381; The earliest documentation of the term cupcake was in "Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats" in 1828 in Eliza Leslie's Receipts cookbook.

The Industrial Revolution in Europe and later America led to the mass-production of foodstuffs, including desserts, that could be processed, preserved, canned, and packaged. Frozen foods, including desserts, became very popular starting in the 1920s.

Ingredients
Sweet desserts usually contain cane sugar, palm sugar, brown sugar, honey, or some types of syrup such as molasses, maple syrup, treacle, or corn syrup. Other common ingredients in Western-style desserts are flour or other starches, cooking fats such as butter or lard, dairy, eggs, salt, acidic ingredients such as lemon juice, and spices and other flavoring agents such as chocolate, coffee, peanut butter, fruits, and nuts. The proportions of these ingredients, along with the preparation methods, play a major part in the consistency, texture, and flavor of the end product.

Sugars contribute moisture and tenderness to baked goods. Flour or starch components serves as a protein and gives the dessert structure. Fats contribute moisture and can enable the development of flaky layers in pastries and pie crusts. The dairy products in baked goods keep the desserts moist. Many desserts also contain eggs, in order to form custard or to aid in the rising and thickening of a cake-like substance. Egg yolks specifically contribute to the richness of desserts. Egg whites can act as a leavening agent or provide structure. Further innovation in the healthy eating movement has led to more information being available about vegan and gluten-free substitutes for the standard ingredients, as well as replacements for refined sugar.

Desserts can contain many spices and extracts to add a variety of flavors. Salt and acids are added to desserts to balance sweet flavors and create a contrast in flavors. Some desserts are coffee-flavored, for example an iced coffee soufflé or coffee biscuits. Alcohols and liqueurs can also be used as an ingredient, to make alcoholic desserts.

Varieties and elements
Dessert consist of variations of tastes, textures, and appearances. Desserts can be defined as a usually sweeter course that concludes a meal. This definition includes a range of courses ranging from fruits or dried nuts to multi-ingredient cakes and pies. Many cultures have different variations of dessert. In modern times the variations of desserts have usually been passed down or come from geographical regions. This is one cause for the variation of desserts. These are some major categories in which desserts can be placed.

Cakes
Cakes are sweet tender breads made with sugar and delicate flour. Cakes can vary from light, airy sponge cakes to dense cakes with less flour. Common flavorings include dried, candied or fresh fruit, nuts, cocoa or extracts. They may be filled with fruit preserves or dessert sauces (like pastry cream), iced with buttercream or other icings, and decorated with marzipan, piped borders, or candied fruit. Cake is often served as a celebratory dish on ceremonial occasions, for example weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays. Small-sized cakes have become popular, in the form of cupcakes and petits fours, an example of which can be the Portuguese "bolo de arroz".

Puddings
Puddings are similar to custards in that their base is cream or milk. However, their primary difference is that puddings are thickened with starches such as corn starch or tapioca. On the other hand, custards are thickened using only eggs and are usually more firm.

Small cakes and pastries
Biscuits or Cookies are small disks of sweetened dough, similar in composition to a cake. The term "biscuit" is a derivation of Latin for twice-baked, while the term "cookie" is a dutch diminuitive for koek, meaning cake. Some examples of this dessert include a ginger nut, shortbread biscuit and chocolate chip cookie. In Commonwealth English, the term "biscuit" refers to this type of dessert in general, with "cookie" reserved for a specific type of drop cookie; in North America, the term "cookie" typically refers to all forms of this dessert, with "biscuit" more commonly referring to a type of bread.

Other small cakes and pastries can also be counted as under these terms, due to their size and relative similarity to cookies and biscuits, such as jaffa cakes and Eccles cakes.

Confection
Confection, also called candy, sweets or lollies, features sugar or honey as a principal ingredient.

Many involve sugar heated into crystals with subtle differences. Dairy and sugar based include caramel, fudge and toffee or taffy. They are multiple forms of egg and sugar meringues. and similar confections. Unheated sugar co-adulate into icings, preservatives and sauces with other ingredients.

Chocolate
Theobroma cacao beans can be a substitute or more commonly mixed with sugar to form chocolate. Pure, unsweetened dark chocolate contains primarily cocoa solids. Cocoa butter is also added in varying proportions. Much of the chocolate currently consumed is in the form of sweet chocolate, combining chocolate with sugar. Milk chocolate is sweet chocolate that additionally contains milk powder or condensed milk. White chocolate contains cocoa butter, sugar, and milk, but no cocoa solids. Dark chocolate is produced by adding fat and sugar to the cacao mixture, with no milk or much less than milk chocolate.

Mithai (sweets)
Mithai, derived from the Sanskrit word 'sharkara', represents the range of Indian desserts.

Custards
These kinds of desserts usually include a thickened dairy base. Custards are cooked and thickened with eggs. Baked custards include crème brûlée and flan. They are often used as ingredients in other desserts, for instance as a filling for pastries or pies.

Deep-fried
Many cuisines include a dessert made of deep-fried starch-based batter or dough. In many countries, a doughnut is a flour-based batter that has been deep-fried. It is sometimes filled with custard or jelly. Fritters are fruit pieces in a thick batter that have been deep fried. Gulab jamun is an Indian dessert made of milk solids kneaded into a dough, deep-fried, and soaked in honey. Churros are a deep-fried and sugared dough that is eaten as dessert or a snack in many countries.

Frozen
Ice cream, gelato, sorbet and shaved-ice desserts fit into this category. Ice cream is a cream base that is churned as it is frozen to create a creamy consistency. Gelato uses a milk base and has less air whipped in than ice cream, making it denser. Sorbet is made from churned fruit and is not dairy based. Shaved-ice desserts are made by shaving a block of ice and adding flavored syrup or juice to the ice shavings.

Gelatin
Jellied desserts are made with a sweetened liquid thickened with gelatin or another gelling agent. They are traditional in many cultures. Grass jelly and annin tofu are Chinese jellied desserts. Yōkan is a Japanese jellied dessert. In English-speaking countries, many dessert recipes are based on gelatin with fruit or whipped cream added. The vegetarian substitute for gelatin is agar agar. Marshmallow is also most commonly made with gelatin.

Pastries
Pastries are sweet baked pastry products. Pastries can either take the form of light and flaky bread with an airy texture, such as a croissant or unleavened dough with a high fat content and crispy texture, such as shortbread. Pastries are often flavored or filled with fruits, chocolate, nuts, and spices. Pastries are sometimes eaten with tea or coffee as a breakfast food.

Pies, cobblers, and clafoutis
Pies and cobblers consist of a filling enclosed by a crust, which can be made from either pastry or crumbs. The fillings of pies can vary from fruits to puddings, whereas cobbler fillings are mostly fruit-based. On the other hand, clafoutis is a dessert in which batter is poured over a fruit-based filling before being baked.

Sweet soups
Tong sui, literally translated as "sugar water" and also known as tim tong, is a collective term for any sweet, warm soup or custard served as a dessert at the end of a meal in Cantonese cuisine. Tong sui are a Cantonese specialty and are rarely found in other regional cuisines of China. Outside of Cantonese-speaking communities, soupy desserts generally are not recognized as a distinct category, and the term tong sui is not used.

Wines
Dessert wines are sweet wines typically served with dessert. There is no simple definition of a dessert wine. In the UK, a dessert wine is considered to be any sweet wine drunk with a meal, as opposed to the white fortified wines (fino and amontillado sherry) drunk before the meal, and the red fortified wines (port and madeira) drunk after it. Thus, most fortified wines are regarded as distinct from dessert wines, but some of the less strong fortified white wines, such as Pedro Ximénez sherry and Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise, are regarded as honorary dessert wines. In the United States, by contrast, a dessert wine is legally defined as any wine over 14% alcohol by volume, which includes all fortified wines - and is taxed at higher rates as a result. Examples include Sauternes and Tokaji Aszú.

Africa
Throughout much of central and western Africa, there is no tradition of a dessert course following a meal. Fruit or fruit salad would be eaten instead, which may be spiced, or sweetened with a sauce. In some former colonies in the region, the colonial power has influenced desserts – for example, the Angolan cocada amarela (yellow coconut) resembles baked desserts in Portugal.

Asia
In Asia, desserts are often eaten between meals as snacks rather than as a concluding course. There is widespread use of rice flour in East Asian desserts, which often include local ingredients such as coconut milk, palm sugar, and tropical fruit. In India, where sugarcane has been grown and refined since before 500 BC, desserts have been an important part of the diet for thousands of years; types of desserts include burfis, halvahs, jalebis, and laddus.

Bubble tea, which originated in Taiwan, is a kind of dessert made with flavored tea or milk and tapioca. It is well known across the world.

Early use of the term
The word dessert as a culinary term appears as early as 1393 in the Ménagier de Paris, where "desserte" is included in three of the twenty-nine menus. The desserte comes near the end of the meal, but before the issue (departure) of hypocras and wafers, included in ten of the menus; and before the boute-hors (sendoff) of wines and spices, included in four of the menus. The desserte was the last cooked course of the meal, but the boute-hors was the true final course of the meal.

In the later printed book Petit traicté auquel verrez la maniere de faire cuisine (c. 1536), more widely known from the edition titled Livre fort excellent de cuisine (1542), the menus at the end of the book present the meal in four stages : the entree de table (entrance to the table), potaiges (foods boiled or simmered "in pots"), services de rost (meat or fowl "roasted" in dry heat), and issue de table (departure from the table). The issue de table includes fruit, nuts, pastries, jellies, cheese, and cream. The menus do not mention "dessert".

Dessert in the “Classical Order” of table service
Between the mid-16th and mid-17th century, the stages of the meal underwent several significant changes. Notably, potage became the first stage of the meal, the entrée became the second stage, entremets came to be served in their own distinct stage after the roast, and the last course of the meal came to be called “dessert”.

In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, the dessert stage of the meal consisted entirely of foods "from the storeroom" (de l’office), such as fresh, stewed, preserved, and dried fruits; fruit jellies; nuts; cheese and other dairy dishes; dry biscuits (cookies) and wafers; and, beginning in the mid-18th century, ices and petits fours.

On lean days out of Lent, the dishes in the dessert stage of the meal were the same as those served on meat days. In Lent, though, eggs were never served at any meal, and only dishes that did not include eggs were appropriate for the dessert stage.

Despite the significance of dessert in the structured meals of the time, the dessert course was often not included on the menus or bills of fare of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Changes in the 19th and 20th centuries
In the late 19th century, the word dessert, which properly referred to the last stage of the meal, came to refer also to the dishes that were served in that stage.

In the 20th century, cheeses came to be served in their own course just before the dessert course.

Also in the 20th century, sweet dishes from the kitchen, such as freshly prepared pastries, meringues, custards, puddings, and baked fruits, which had traditionally been served in the entremets course, came to be included among the desserts.

Europe
In Ukraine and Russia, breakfast foods such as nalysnyky or blintz or oladi (pancake), and syrniki are served with honey and jam as desserts.

In the Netherlands vla is a popular dessert. It is a custard-like dessert that is served cold. Popular flavours are: vanilla, chocolate, caramel, and several fruit flavours. There is also hopjesvla which is flavoured like a Hopje, a Dutch coffee and caramel sweet.

Because of their long Christian history, all countries of Europe have developed traditional desserts and sweet snacks for the Christmas season.

North America
European colonization of the Americas yielded the introduction of a number of ingredients and cooking styles. The various styles continued expanding well into the 19th and 20th centuries, proportional to the influx of immigrants.

South America

Dulce de leche is a very common confection in Argentina. In Bolivia, sugarcane, honey and coconut are traditionally used in desserts. Tawa tawa is a Bolivian sweet fritter prepared using sugar cane, and helado de canela is a dessert that is similar to sherbet which is prepared with cane sugar and cinnamon. Coconut tarts, puddings cookies and candies are also consumed in Bolivia. Brazil has a variety of candies such as brigadeiros (chocolate fudge balls), cocada (a coconut sweet), beijinhos (coconut truffles and clove) and Romeu e Julieta (cheese with a guava jam known as goiabada). Peanuts are used to make paçoca, rapadura and pé-de-moleque. Local common fruits are turned in juices and used to make chocolates, ice pops and ice cream. In Chile, kuchen has been described as a "trademark dessert". Several desserts in Chile are prepared with manjar, (caramelized milk), including alfajor, flan, cuchufli and arroz con leche. Desserts consumed in Colombia include dulce de leche, waffle cookies, puddings, nougat, coconut with syrup and thickened milk with sugarcane syrup. Desserts in Ecuador tend to be simple, and desserts are a moderate part of the cuisine. Desserts consumed in Ecuador include tres leches cake, flan, candies and various sweets.

Oceania
In Australia, meals are often finished with dessert. This includes various fruits. More complex desserts include cakes, pies and cookies, which are sometimes served during special occasions.

New Zealand and Australia have a long-standing debate over which country invented the Pavlova. The pavlova is named after Anna Pavlova, who visited both countries in the 1920s.

Market
The market for desserts has grown over the last few decades, being greatly increased by the commercialisation of baking desserts and the rise of food productions. Desserts are served in most restaurants as their popularity has increased. Many commercial stores have been established as solely dessert stores. Ice cream parlors have been around since before 1800. Many businesses have started advertising campaigns focusing solely on desserts. The tactics used to market desserts are very different depending on the audience; for example, desserts can be advertised with popular movie characters to target children. The rise of companies such as Food Network has produced many shows which feature desserts and their creation. Shows like these have displayed extreme desserts and made a game show atmosphere to make desserts a more competitive field.

Desserts are a standard staple in restaurant menus, with different degrees of variety. Pie and cheesecake were among the most popular dessert courses ordered in U.S. restaurants in 2012.

Nutrition
Dessert foods often contain relatively high amounts of sugar and fats and, as a result, higher calorie counts per gram than other foods. Fresh or cooked fruit with minimal added sugar or fat is an exception.

List articles

 * List of desserts
 * List of dessert sauces
 * List of Bangladeshi sweets and desserts
 * List of foods
 * List of Indian sweets and desserts
 * List of Indonesian desserts
 * List of Italian desserts
 * List of Pakistani sweets and desserts
 * List of Sri Lankan sweets and desserts
 * List of Turkish desserts

title: Dessert


text:
Data Encryption Standard

The Data Encryption Standard (DES ) is a symmetric-key algorithm for the encryption of digital data. Although its short key length of 56 bits makes it too insecure for modern applications, it has been highly influential in the advancement of cryptography.

Developed in the early 1970s at IBM and based on an earlier design by Horst Feistel, the algorithm was submitted to the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) following the agency's invitation to propose a candidate for the protection of sensitive, unclassified electronic government data. In 1976, after consultation with the National Security Agency (NSA), the NBS selected a slightly modified version (strengthened against differential cryptanalysis, but weakened against brute-force attacks), which was published as an official Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for the United States in 1977.

The publication of an NSA-approved encryption standard led to its quick international adoption and widespread academic scrutiny. Controversies arose from classified design elements, a relatively short key length of the symmetric-key block cipher design, and the involvement of the NSA, raising suspicions about a backdoor. The S-boxes that had prompted those suspicions were designed by the NSA to remove a backdoor they secretly knew (differential cryptanalysis). However, the NSA also ensured that the key size was drastically reduced so that they could break the cipher by brute force attack. The intense academic scrutiny the algorithm received over time led to the modern understanding of block ciphers and their cryptanalysis.

DES is insecure due to the relatively short 56-bit key size. In January 1999, distributed.net and the Electronic Frontier Foundation collaborated to publicly break a DES key in 22 hours and 15 minutes (see ). There are also some analytical results which demonstrate theoretical weaknesses in the cipher, although they are infeasible in practice. The algorithm is believed to be practically secure in the form of Triple DES, although there are theoretical attacks. This cipher has been superseded by the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). DES has been withdrawn as a standard by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Some documents distinguish between the DES standard and its algorithm, referring to the algorithm as the DEA (Data Encryption Algorithm).

History
The origins of DES date to 1972, when a National Bureau of Standards study of US government computer security identified a need for a government-wide standard for encrypting unclassified, sensitive information.

Around the same time, engineer Mohamed Atalla in 1972 founded Atalla Corporation and developed the first hardware security module (HSM), the so-called "Atalla Box" which was commercialized in 1973. It protected offline devices with a secure PIN generating key, and was a commercial success. Banks and credit card companies were fearful that Atalla would dominate the market, which spurred the development of an international encryption standard. Atalla was an early competitor to IBM in the banking market, and was cited as an influence by IBM employees who worked on the DES standard. The IBM 3624 later adopted a similar PIN verification system to the earlier Atalla system.

On 15 May 1973, after consulting with the NSA, NBS solicited proposals for a cipher that would meet rigorous design criteria. None of the submissions was suitable. A second request was issued on 27 August 1974. This time, IBM submitted a candidate which was deemed acceptable—a cipher developed during the period 1973–1974 based on an earlier algorithm, Horst Feistel's Lucifer cipher. The team at IBM involved in cipher design and analysis included Feistel, Walter Tuchman, Don Coppersmith, Alan Konheim, Carl Meyer, Mike Matyas, Roy Adler, Edna Grossman, Bill Notz, Lynn Smith, and Bryant Tuckerman.

NSA's involvement in the design
On 17 March 1975, the proposed DES was published in the Federal Register. Public comments were requested, and in the following year two open workshops were held to discuss the proposed standard. There was criticism received from public-key cryptography pioneers Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie, citing a shortened key length and the mysterious "S-boxes" as evidence of improper interference from the NSA. The suspicion was that the algorithm had been covertly weakened by the intelligence agency so that they—but no one else—could easily read encrypted messages. Alan Konheim (one of the designers of DES) commented, "We sent the S-boxes off to Washington. They came back and were all different." The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reviewed the NSA's actions to determine whether there had been any improper involvement. In the unclassified summary of their findings, published in 1978, the Committee wrote: "In the development of DES, NSA convinced IBM that a reduced key size was sufficient; indirectly assisted in the development of the S-box structures; and certified that the final DES algorithm was, to the best of their knowledge, free from any statistical or mathematical weakness." However, it also found that "NSA did not tamper with the design of the algorithm in any way. IBM invented and designed the algorithm, made all pertinent decisions regarding it, and concurred that the agreed upon key size was more than adequate for all commercial applications for which the DES was intended." Another member of the DES team, Walter Tuchman, stated "We developed the DES algorithm entirely within IBM using IBMers. The NSA did not dictate a single wire!" In contrast, a declassified NSA book on cryptologic history states: "In 1973 NBS solicited private industry for a data encryption standard (DES). The first offerings were disappointing, so NSA began working on its own algorithm. Then Howard Rosenblum, deputy director for research and engineering, discovered that Walter Tuchman of IBM was working on a modification to Lucifer for general use. NSA gave Tuchman a clearance and brought him in to work jointly with the Agency on his Lucifer modification.'" and "NSA worked closely with IBM to strengthen the algorithm against all except brute-force attacks and to strengthen substitution tables, called S-boxes. Conversely, NSA tried to convince IBM to reduce the length of the key from 64 to 48 bits. Ultimately they compromised on a 56-bit key."

Some of the suspicions about hidden weaknesses in the S-boxes were allayed in 1990, with the independent discovery and open publication by Eli Biham and Adi Shamir of differential cryptanalysis, a general method for breaking block ciphers. The S-boxes of DES were much more resistant to the attack than if they had been chosen at random, strongly suggesting that IBM knew about the technique in the 1970s. This was indeed the case; in 1994, Don Coppersmith published some of the original design criteria for the S-boxes. According to Steven Levy, IBM Watson researchers discovered differential cryptanalytic attacks in 1974 and were asked by the NSA to keep the technique secret. Coppersmith explains IBM's secrecy decision by saying, "that was because [differential cryptanalysis] can be a very powerful tool, used against many schemes, and there was concern that such information in the public domain could adversely affect national security." Levy quotes Walter Tuchman: "[t]hey asked us to stamp all our documents confidential... We actually put a number on each one and locked them up in safes, because they were considered U.S. government classified. They said do it. So I did it". Bruce Schneier observed that "It took the academic community two decades to figure out that the NSA 'tweaks' actually improved the security of DES."

The algorithm as a standard
Despite the criticisms, DES was approved as a federal standard in November 1976, and published on 15 January 1977 as FIPS PUB 46, authorized for use on all unclassified data. It was subsequently reaffirmed as the standard in 1983, 1988 (revised as FIPS-46-1), 1993 (FIPS-46-2), and again in 1999 (FIPS-46-3), the latter prescribing "Triple DES" (see below). On 26 May 2002, DES was finally superseded by the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), following a public competition. On 19 May 2005, FIPS 46-3 was officially withdrawn, but NIST has approved Triple DES through the year 2030 for sensitive government information.

The algorithm is also specified in ANSI X3.92 (Today X3 is known as INCITS and ANSI X3.92 as ANSI INCITS 92), NIST SP 800-67 and ISO/IEC 18033-3 (as a component of TDEA).

Another theoretical attack, linear cryptanalysis, was published in 1994, but it was the Electronic Frontier Foundation's DES cracker in 1998 that demonstrated that DES could be attacked very practically, and highlighted the need for a replacement algorithm. These and other methods of cryptanalysis are discussed in more detail later in this article.

The introduction of DES is considered to have been a catalyst for the academic study of cryptography, particularly of methods to crack block ciphers. According to a NIST retrospective about DES,
 * The DES can be said to have "jump-started" the nonmilitary study and development of encryption algorithms. In the 1970s there were very few cryptographers, except for those in military or intelligence organizations, and little academic study of cryptography. There are now many active academic cryptologists, mathematics departments with strong programs in cryptography, and commercial information security companies and consultants. A generation of cryptanalysts has cut its teeth analyzing (that is, trying to "crack") the DES algorithm. In the words of cryptographer Bruce Schneier, "DES did more to galvanize the field of cryptanalysis than anything else. Now there was an algorithm to study." An astonishing share of the open literature in cryptography in the 1970s and 1980s dealt with the DES, and the DES is the standard against which every symmetric key algorithm since has been compared.

Description
DES is the archetypal block cipher—an algorithm that takes a fixed-length string of plaintext bits and transforms it through a series of complicated operations into another ciphertext bitstring of the same length. In the case of DES, the block size is 64 bits. DES also uses a key to customize the transformation, so that decryption can supposedly only be performed by those who know the particular key used to encrypt. The key ostensibly consists of 64 bits; however, only 56 of these are actually used by the algorithm. Eight bits are used solely for checking parity, and are thereafter discarded. Hence the effective key length is 56 bits.

The key is nominally stored or transmitted as 8 bytes, each with odd parity. According to ANSI X3.92-1981 (Now, known as ANSI INCITS 92–1981), section 3.5:

"One bit in each 8-bit byte of the KEY may be utilized for error detection in key generation, distribution, and storage. Bits 8, 16,..., 64 are for use in ensuring that each byte is of odd parity."

Like other block ciphers, DES by itself is not a secure means of encryption, but must instead be used in a mode of operation. FIPS-81 specifies several modes for use with DES. Further comments on the usage of DES are contained in FIPS-74.

Decryption uses the same structure as encryption, but with the keys used in reverse order. (This has the advantage that the same hardware or software can be used in both directions.)

Overall structure
The algorithm's overall structure is shown in Figure 1: there are 16 identical stages of processing, termed rounds. There is also an initial and final permutation, termed IP and FP, which are inverses (IP "undoes" the action of FP, and vice versa). IP and FP have no cryptographic significance, but were included in order to facilitate loading blocks in and out of mid-1970s 8-bit based hardware.

Before the main rounds, the block is divided into two 32-bit halves and processed alternately; this criss-crossing is known as the Feistel scheme. The Feistel structure ensures that decryption and encryption are very similar processes—the only difference is that the subkeys are applied in the reverse order when decrypting. The rest of the algorithm is identical. This greatly simplifies implementation, particularly in hardware, as there is no need for separate encryption and decryption algorithms.

The ⊕ symbol denotes the exclusive-OR (XOR) operation. The F-function scrambles half a block together with some of the key. The output from the F-function is then combined with the other half of the block, and the halves are swapped before the next round. After the final round, the halves are swapped; this is a feature of the Feistel structure which makes encryption and decryption similar processes.

The Feistel (F) function
The F-function, depicted in Figure 2, operates on half a block (32 bits) at a time and consists of four stages:
 * 1) Expansion: the 32-bit half-block is expanded to 48 bits using the expansion permutation, denoted E in the diagram, by duplicating half of the bits. The output consists of eight 6-bit (8 × 6 = 48 bits) pieces, each containing a copy of 4 corresponding input bits, plus a copy of the immediately adjacent bit from each of the input pieces to either side.
 * 2) Key mixing: the result is combined with a subkey using an XOR operation. Sixteen 48-bit subkeys—one for each round—are derived from the main key using the key schedule (described below).
 * 3) Substitution: after mixing in the subkey, the block is divided into eight 6-bit pieces before processing by the S-boxes, or substitution boxes. Each of the eight S-boxes replaces its six input bits with four output bits according to a non-linear transformation, provided in the form of a lookup table. The S-boxes provide the core of the security of DES—without them, the cipher would be linear, and trivially breakable.
 * 4) Permutation: finally, the 32 outputs from the S-boxes are rearranged according to a fixed permutation, the P-box. This is designed so that, after permutation, the bits from the output of each S-box in this round are spread across four different S-boxes in the next round.

The alternation of substitution from the S-boxes, and permutation of bits from the P-box and E-expansion provides so-called "confusion and diffusion" respectively, a concept identified by Claude Shannon in the 1940s as a necessary condition for a secure yet practical cipher.

Key schedule
Figure 3 illustrates the key schedule for encryption—the algorithm which generates the subkeys. Initially, 56 bits of the key are selected from the initial 64 by Permuted Choice 1 (PC-1)—the remaining eight bits are either discarded or used as parity check bits. The 56 bits are then divided into two 28-bit halves; each half is thereafter treated separately. In successive rounds, both halves are rotated left by one or two bits (specified for each round), and then 48 subkey bits are selected by Permuted Choice 2 (PC-2)—24 bits from the left half, and 24 from the right. The rotations (denoted by "<<<" in the diagram) mean that a different set of bits is used in each subkey; each bit is used in approximately 14 out of the 16 subkeys.

The key schedule for decryption is similar—the subkeys are in reverse order compared to encryption. Apart from that change, the process is the same as for encryption. The same 28 bits are passed to all rotation boxes.

Pseudocode
Pseudocode for the DES algorithm follows.

// All variables are unsigned 64 bits

// Pre-processing: padding with the size difference in bytes pad message to reach multiple of 64 bits in length

var key // The keys given by the user var keys[16] var left, right

// Generate Keys

// PC1 (64 bits to 56 bits) key := permutation(key, PC1) left := (key rightshift 28) and 0xFFFFFFF right := key and 0xFFFFFFF

for i from 0 to 16 do	right := right leftrotate KEY_shift[i] left := left leftrotate KEY_shift[i] var concat := (left leftshift 28) or right // PC2 (56bits to 48bits) keys[i] := permutation(concat, PC2) end for

// To decrypt a message reverse the order of the keys if decrypt do	reverse keys end if

// Encrypt or Decrypt for each 64-bit chunk of padded message do	var tmp

// IP	chunk := permutation(chunk, IP) left := chunk rightshift 32 right := chunk and 0xFFFFFFFF for i from 0 to 16 do		tmp := right // E (32bits to 48bits) right := expansion(right, E)		right := right xor keys[i] // Substitution (48bits to 32bits) right := substitution(right) // P		right := permutation(right, P)		right := right xor left left := tmp end for // Concat right and left var cipher_chunk := (right leftshift 32) or left // FP	cipher_chunk := permutation(cipher_chunk, FP) end for

Security and cryptanalysis
Although more information has been published on the cryptanalysis of DES than any other block cipher, the most practical attack to date is still a brute-force approach. Various minor cryptanalytic properties are known, and three theoretical attacks are possible which, while having a theoretical complexity less than a brute-force attack, require an unrealistic number of known or chosen plaintexts to carry out, and are not a concern in practice.

Brute-force attack
For any cipher, the most basic method of attack is brute force—trying every possible key in turn. The length of the key determines the number of possible keys, and hence the feasibility of this approach. For DES, questions were raised about the adequacy of its key size early on, even before it was adopted as a standard, and it was the small key size, rather than theoretical cryptanalysis, which dictated a need for a replacement algorithm. As a result of discussions involving external consultants including the NSA, the key size was reduced from 256 bits to 56 bits to fit on a single chip.

In academia, various proposals for a DES-cracking machine were advanced. In 1977, Diffie and Hellman proposed a machine costing an estimated US$20 million which could find a DES key in a single day. By 1993, Wiener had proposed a key-search machine costing US$1 million which would find a key within 7 hours. However, none of these early proposals were ever implemented—or, at least, no implementations were publicly acknowledged. The vulnerability of DES was practically demonstrated in the late 1990s. In 1997, RSA Security sponsored a series of contests, offering a $10,000 prize to the first team that broke a message encrypted with DES for the contest. That contest was won by the DESCHALL Project, led by Rocke Verser, Matt Curtin, and Justin Dolske, using idle cycles of thousands of computers across the Internet. The feasibility of cracking DES quickly was demonstrated in 1998 when a custom DES-cracker was built by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a cyberspace civil rights group, at the cost of approximately US$250,000 (see EFF DES cracker). Their motivation was to show that DES was breakable in practice as well as in theory: "There are many people who will not believe a truth until they can see it with their own eyes. Showing them a physical machine that can crack DES in a few days is the only way to convince some people that they really cannot trust their security to DES." The machine brute-forced a key in a little more than 2 days' worth of searching.

The next confirmed DES cracker was the COPACOBANA machine built in 2006 by teams of the Universities of Bochum and Kiel, both in Germany. Unlike the EFF machine, COPACOBANA consists of commercially available, reconfigurable integrated circuits. 120 of these field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) of type XILINX Spartan-3 1000 run in parallel. They are grouped in 20 DIMM modules, each containing 6 FPGAs. The use of reconfigurable hardware makes the machine applicable to other code breaking tasks as well. One of the more interesting aspects of COPACOBANA is its cost factor. One machine can be built for approximately $10,000. The cost decrease by roughly a factor of 25 over the EFF machine is an example of the continuous improvement of digital hardware—see Moore's law. Adjusting for inflation over 8 years yields an even higher improvement of about 30x. Since 2007, SciEngines GmbH, a spin-off company of the two project partners of COPACOBANA has enhanced and developed successors of COPACOBANA. In 2008 their COPACOBANA RIVYERA reduced the time to break DES to less than one day, using 128 Spartan-3 5000's. SciEngines RIVYERA held the record in brute-force breaking DES, having utilized 128 Spartan-3 5000 FPGAs. Their 256 Spartan-6 LX150 model has further lowered this time.

In 2012, David Hulton and Moxie Marlinspike announced a system with 48 Xilinx Virtex-6 LX240T FPGAs, each FPGA containing 40 fully pipelined DES cores running at 400 MHz, for a total capacity of 768 gigakeys/sec. The system can exhaustively search the entire 56-bit DES key space in about 26 hours and this service is offered for a fee online.

Attacks faster than brute force
There are three attacks known that can break the full 16 rounds of DES with less complexity than a brute-force search: differential cryptanalysis (DC), linear cryptanalysis (LC), and Davies' attack. However, the attacks are theoretical and are generally considered infeasible to mount in practice; these types of attack are sometimes termed certificational weaknesses.

 * Differential cryptanalysis was rediscovered in the late 1980s by Eli Biham and Adi Shamir; it was known earlier to both IBM and the NSA and kept secret. To break the full 16 rounds, differential cryptanalysis requires 247 chosen plaintexts. DES was designed to be resistant to DC.
 * Linear cryptanalysis was discovered by Mitsuru Matsui, and needs 243 known plaintexts (Matsui, 1993); the method was implemented (Matsui, 1994), and was the first experimental cryptanalysis of DES to be reported. There is no evidence that DES was tailored to be resistant to this type of attack. A generalization of LC—multiple linear cryptanalysis—was suggested in 1994 (Kaliski and Robshaw), and was further refined by Biryukov and others. (2004); their analysis suggests that multiple linear approximations could be used to reduce the data requirements of the attack by at least a factor of 4 (that is, 241 instead of 243). A similar reduction in data complexity can be obtained in a chosen-plaintext variant of linear cryptanalysis (Knudsen and Mathiassen, 2000). Junod (2001) performed several experiments to determine the actual time complexity of linear cryptanalysis, and reported that it was somewhat faster than predicted, requiring time equivalent to 239–241 DES evaluations.
 * Improved Davies' attack: while linear and differential cryptanalysis are general techniques and can be applied to a number of schemes, Davies' attack is a specialized technique for DES, first suggested by Donald Davies in the eighties, and improved by Biham and Biryukov (1997). The most powerful form of the attack requires 250 known plaintexts, has a computational complexity of 250, and has a 51% success rate.

There have also been attacks proposed against reduced-round versions of the cipher, that is, versions of DES with fewer than 16 rounds. Such analysis gives an insight into how many rounds are needed for safety, and how much of a "security margin" the full version retains.

Differential-linear cryptanalysis was proposed by Langford and Hellman in 1994, and combines differential and linear cryptanalysis into a single attack. An enhanced version of the attack can break 9-round DES with 215.8 chosen plaintexts and has a 229.2 time complexity (Biham and others, 2002).

Minor cryptanalytic properties
DES exhibits the complementation property, namely that
 * $$E_K(P)=C \iff E_{\overline{K}}(\overline{P})=\overline{C}$$

where $$\overline{x}$$ is the bitwise complement of $$x.$$ $$E_K$$ denotes encryption with key $$K.$$ $$P$$ and $$C$$ denote plaintext and ciphertext blocks respectively. The complementation property means that the work for a brute-force attack could be reduced by a factor of 2 (or a single bit) under a chosen-plaintext assumption. By definition, this property also applies to TDES cipher.

DES also has four so-called weak keys. Encryption (E) and decryption (D) under a weak key have the same effect (see involution):
 * $$E_K(E_K(P)) = P$$ or equivalently, $$E_K = D_K.$$

There are also six pairs of semi-weak keys. Encryption with one of the pair of semiweak keys, $$K_1$$, operates identically to decryption with the other, $$K_2$$:
 * $$E_{K_1}(E_{K_2}(P)) = P$$ or equivalently, $$E_{K_2} = D_{K_1}.$$

It is easy enough to avoid the weak and semiweak keys in an implementation, either by testing for them explicitly, or simply by choosing keys randomly; the odds of picking a weak or semiweak key by chance are negligible. The keys are not really any weaker than any other keys anyway, as they do not give an attack any advantage.

DES has also been proved not to be a group, or more precisely, the set $$\{E_K\}$$ (for all possible keys $$K$$) under functional composition is not a group, nor "close" to being a group. This was an open question for some time, and if it had been the case, it would have been possible to break DES, and multiple encryption modes such as Triple DES would not increase the security, because repeated encryption (and decryptions) under different keys would be equivalent to encryption under another, single key.

Simplified DES
Simplified DES (SDES) was designed for educational purposes only, to help students learn about modern cryptanalytic techniques. SDES has similar structure and properties to DES, but has been simplified to make it much easier to perform encryption and decryption by hand with pencil and paper. Some people feel that learning SDES gives insight into DES and other block ciphers, and insight into various cryptanalytic attacks against them.

Replacement algorithms
Concerns about security and the relatively slow operation of DES in software motivated researchers to propose a variety of alternative block cipher designs, which started to appear in the late 1980s and early 1990s: examples include RC5, Blowfish, IDEA, NewDES, SAFER, CAST5 and FEAL. Most of these designs kept the 64-bit block size of DES, and could act as a "drop-in" replacement, although they typically used a 64-bit or 128-bit key. In the Soviet Union the GOST 28147-89 algorithm was introduced, with a 64-bit block size and a 256-bit key, which was also used in Russia later.

DES itself can be adapted and reused in a more secure scheme. Many former DES users now use Triple DES (TDES) which was described and analysed by one of DES's patentees (see FIPS Pub 46–3); it involves applying DES three times with two (2TDES) or three (3TDES) different keys. TDES is regarded as adequately secure, although it is quite slow. A less computationally expensive alternative is DES-X, which increases the key size by XORing extra key material before and after DES. GDES was a DES variant proposed as a way to speed up encryption, but it was shown to be susceptible to differential cryptanalysis.

On January 2, 1997, NIST announced that they wished to choose a successor to DES. In 2001, after an international competition, NIST selected a new cipher, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), as a replacement. The algorithm which was selected as the AES was submitted by its designers under the name Rijndael. Other finalists in the NIST AES competition included RC6, Serpent, MARS, and Twofish.

title: Data Encryption Standard


text:
Double-hulled tanker

A double-hulled tanker refers to an oil tanker which has a double hull. They reduce the likelihood of leaks occurring compared to single-hulled tankers, and their ability to prevent or reduce oil spills led to double hulls being standardized for oil tankers and other types of ships including by the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships or MARPOL Convention. After the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster in Alaska in 1989, the US government required all new oil tankers built for use between US ports to be equipped with a full double hull.

Reasons for use

A number of manufacturers have embraced oil tankers with a double hull because it strengthens the hull of ships, reducing the likelihood of oil disasters in low-impact collisions and groundings over single-hull ships. They reduce the likelihood of leaks occurring at low speed impacts in port areas when the ship is under pilotage. Research of impact damage of ships has revealed that double-hulled tankers are unlikely to perforate both hulls in a collision, preventing oil from seeping out. However, for smaller tankers, U-shaped tanks might be susceptible to "free flooding" across the double bottom and up to the outside water level each side of the cargo tank. Salvors prefer to salvage doubled-hulled tankers because they permit the use of air pressure to vacuum out the flood water. In the 1960s, collision proof double hulls for nuclear ships were extensively investigated, due to escalating concerns over nuclear accidents.

The ability of double-hulled tankers to prevent or reduce oil spills led to double hulls being standardized for other types of ships including oil tankers by the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships or MARPOL Convention. In 1992, MARPOL was amended, making it "mandatory for tankers of 5,000 dwt and more ordered after 6 July 1993 to be fitted with double hulls, or an alternative design approved by IMO". However, in the aftermath of the Erika incident of the coast off France in December 1999, members of IMO adopted a revised schedule for the phase-out of single-hull tankers, which came into effect on 1 September 2003, with further amendments validated on 5 April 2005.

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster, when that ship grounded on Bligh Reef outside the port of Valdez, Alaska in 1989, the US government required all new oil tankers built for use between US ports to be equipped with a full double hull. However, the damage to the Exxon Valdez penetrated sections of the hull (the slops oil tanks, or slop tanks) that were protected by a double bottom, or partial double hull.

Maintenance issues
Although double-hulled tankers reduce the likelihood of ships grazing rocks and creating holes in the hull, a double hull does not protect against major, high-energy collisions or groundings which cause the majority of oil pollution, despite this being the reason that the double hull was mandated by United States legislation. Double-hulled tankers, if poorly designed, constructed, maintained and operated can be as problematic, if not more problematic than their single-hulled counterparts. Double-hulled tankers have a more complex design and structure than their single-hulled counterparts, which means that they require more maintenance and care in operating, which if not subject to responsible monitoring and policing, may cause problems. Double hulls often result in the weight of the hull increasing by at least 20%, and because the steel weight of doubled-hulled tanks should not be greater than that of single-hulled ships, the individual hull walls are typically thinner and theoretically less resistant to wear. Double hulls by no means eliminate the possibility of the hulls breaking apart. Due to the air space between the hulls, there is also a potential problem with volatile gases seeping out through worn areas of the internal hull, increasing the risk of an explosion.

Although several international conventions against pollution are in place, as of 2003 there was still no formal body setting international mandatory standards, although the International Safety Guide for Oil Tankers and Terminals (ISGOTT) does provide guidelines giving advice on optimum use and safety, such as recommending that ballast tanks are not entered while loaded with cargo, and that weekly samples are made of the atmosphere inside for hydrocarbon gas. Due to the difficulties of maintenance, ship builders have been competitive in producing double-hulled ships which are easier to inspect, such as ballast and cargo tanks which are easily accessible and easier to spot corrosion in the hull. The Tanker Structure Cooperative Forum (TSCF) published the Guide to Inspection and Maintenance of Double-Hull Tanker Structures in 1995 giving advice based on experience of operating double-hulled tankers.

title: Double-hulled tanker


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Drink

A drink or beverage is a liquid intended for human consumption. In addition to their basic function of satisfying thirst, drinks play important roles in human culture. Common types of drinks include plain drinking water, milk, juice, smoothies and soft drinks. Traditionally warm beverages include coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. Caffeinated drinks that contain the stimulant caffeine have a long history.

In addition, alcoholic drinks such as wine, beer, and liquor, which contain the drug ethanol, have been part of human culture for more than 8,000 years. Non-alcoholic drinks often signify drinks that would normally contain alcohol, such as beer, wine and cocktails, but are made with a sufficiently low concentration of alcohol by volume. The category includes drinks that have undergone an alcohol removal process such as non-alcoholic beers and de-alcoholized wines.

Biology
When the human body becomes dehydrated, a person experiences thirst. This craving of fluids results in an instinctive need to drink. Thirst is regulated by the hypothalamus in response to subtle changes in the body's electrolyte levels, and also as a result of changes in the volume of blood circulating. The complete deprivation of drinks (that is, water) will result in death faster than the removal of any other substance besides oxygen. Water and milk have been basic drinks throughout history. As water is essential for life, it has also been the carrier of many diseases.

As society developed, techniques were discovered to create alcoholic drinks from the plants that were available in different areas. The earliest archaeological evidence of wine production yet found has been at sites in Georgia (c. 6000 BCE) and Iran (c. 5000 BCE). Beer may have been known in Neolithic Europe as far back as 3000 BCE, and was mainly brewed on a domestic scale. The invention of beer (and bread) has been argued to be responsible for humanity's ability to develop technology and build civilization. Tea likely originated in Yunnan, China, during the Shang dynasty (1500 BCE–1046 BCE) as a medicinal drink.

History
Drinking has been a large part of socialising throughout the centuries. In Ancient Greece, a social gathering for the purpose of drinking was known as a symposium, where watered down wine would be drunk. The purpose of these gatherings could be anything from serious discussions to direct indulgence. In Ancient Rome, a similar concept of a convivium took place regularly.

Many early societies considered alcohol a gift from the gods, leading to the creation of gods such as Dionysus. Other religions forbid, discourage, or restrict the drinking of alcoholic drinks for various reasons. In some regions with a dominant religion the production, sale, and consumption of alcoholic drinks is forbidden to everybody, regardless of religion.

Toasting is a method of honouring a person or wishing good will by taking a drink. Another tradition is that of the loving cup, at weddings or other celebrations such as sports victories a group will share a drink in a large receptacle, shared by everyone until empty.

In East Africa and Yemen, coffee was used in native religious ceremonies. As these ceremonies conflicted with the beliefs of the Christian church, the Ethiopian Church banned the secular consumption of coffee until the reign of Emperor Menelik II. The drink was also banned in Ottoman Turkey during the 17th century for political reasons and was associated with rebellious political activities in Europe.

Production
A drink is a form of liquid which has been prepared for human consumption. The preparation can include a number of different steps, some prior to transport, others immediately prior to consumption.

Purification of water
Water is the chief constituent in all drinks, and the primary ingredient in most. Water is purified prior to drinking. Methods for purification include filtration and the addition of chemicals, such as chlorination. The importance of purified water is highlighted by the World Health Organization, who point out 94% of deaths from diarrhea – the third biggest cause of infectious death worldwide at 1.8 million annually – could be prevented by improving the quality of the victim's environment, particularly safe water.

Pasteurisation
Pasteurisation is the process of heating a liquid for a period of time at a specified temperature, then immediately cooling. The process reduces the growth of microorganisms within the liquid, thereby increasing the time before spoilage. It is primarily used on milk, which prior to pasteurisation is commonly infected with pathogenic bacteria and therefore is more likely than any other part of the common diet in the developed world to cause illness.

Juicing
The process of extracting juice from fruits and vegetables can take a number of forms. Simple crushing of most fruits will provide a significant amount of liquid, though a more intense pressure can be applied to get the maximum amount of juice from the fruit. Both crushing and pressing are processes used in the production of wine.

Infusion
Infusion is the process of extracting flavours from plant material by allowing the material to remain suspended within water. This process is used in the production of teas, herbal teas and can be used to prepare coffee (when using a coffee press).

Percolation
The name is derived from the word "percolate" which means to cause (a solvent) to pass through a permeable substance especially for extracting a soluble constituent. In the case of coffee-brewing the solvent is water, the permeable substance is the coffee grounds, and the soluble constituents are the chemical compounds that give coffee its color, taste, aroma, and stimulating properties.

Carbonation
Carbonation is the process of dissolving carbon dioxide into a liquid, such as water.

Fermentation
Fermentation is a metabolic process that converts sugar to ethanol. Fermentation has been used by humans for the production of drinks since the Neolithic age. In winemaking, grape juice is combined with yeast in an anaerobic environment to allow the fermentation. The amount of sugar in the wine and the length of time given for fermentation determine the alcohol level and the sweetness of the wine.

When brewing beer, there are four primary ingredients – water, grain, yeast and hops. The grain is encouraged to germinate by soaking and drying in heat, a process known as malting. It is then milled before soaking again to create the sugars needed for fermentation. This process is known as mashing. Hops are added for flavouring, then the yeast is added to the mixture (now called wort) to start the fermentation process.

Distillation
Distillation is a method of separating mixtures based on differences in volatility of components in a boiling liquid mixture. It is one of the methods used in the purification of water. It is also a method of producing spirits from milder alcoholic drinks.

Mixing
An alcoholic mixed drink that contains two or more ingredients is referred to as a cocktail. Cocktails were originally a mixture of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters. The term is now often used for almost any mixed drink that contains alcohol, including mixers, mixed shots, etc. A cocktail today usually contains one or more kinds of spirit and one or more mixers, such as soda or fruit juice. Additional ingredients may be sugar, honey, milk, cream, and various herbs.

Non-alcoholic drinks
A non-alcoholic drink is one that contains little or no alcohol. This category includes low-alcohol beer, non-alcoholic wine, and apple cider if they contain a sufficiently low concentration of alcohol by volume (ABV). The exact definition of what is "non-alcoholic" and what is not depends on local laws: in the United Kingdom, "alcohol-free beer" is under 0.05% ABV, "de-alcoholised beer" is under 0.5%, while "low-alcohol beer" can contain no more than 1.2% ABV. The term "soft drink" specifies the absence of alcohol in contrast to "hard drink" and "drink". The term "drink" is theoretically neutral, but often is used in a way that suggests alcoholic content. Drinks such as soda pop, sparkling water, iced tea, lemonade, root beer, fruit punch, milk, hot chocolate, tea, coffee, milkshakes, tap water, bottled water, juice and energy drinks are all soft drinks.

Water
Water is the world's most consumed drink, however, 97% of water on Earth is non-drinkable salt water. Fresh water is found in rivers, lakes, wetlands, groundwater, and frozen glaciers. Less than 1% of the Earth's fresh water supplies are accessible through surface water and underground sources which are cost effective to retrieve.

In western cultures, water is often drunk cold. In the Chinese culture, it is typically drunk hot.

Milk
Milk is regarded as one of the "original" drinks; milk is the primary source of nutrition for babies. In many cultures of the world, especially the Western world, humans continue to consume dairy milk beyond infancy, using the milk of other animals (especially cattle, goats and sheep) as a drink.

Carbonated drinks
Carbonated drinks refer to drinks which have carbon dioxide dissolved into them. This can happen naturally through fermenting and in natural water spas or artificially by the dissolution of carbon dioxide under pressure. The first commercially available artificially carbonated drink is believed to have been produced by Thomas Henry in the late 1770s. Cola, orange, various roots, ginger, and lemon/lime are commonly used to create non-alcoholic carbonated drinks; sugars and preservatives may be added later.

The most consumed carbonated soft drinks are produced by three major global brands: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

Hot drinks
These drinks are often served warm or hot.

Coffee
Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from the roasted seeds of several species of an evergreen shrub of the genus Coffea. The two most common sources of coffee beans are the highly regarded Coffea arabica, and the "robusta" form of the hardier Coffea canephora. Coffee plants are cultivated in more than 70 countries. Once ripe, coffee "berries" are picked, processed, and dried to yield the seeds inside. The seeds are then roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavor, before being ground and brewed to create coffee.

Coffee is slightly acidic (pH 5.0–5.1 ) and can have a stimulating effect on humans because of its caffeine content. It is one of the most popular drinks in the world. It can be prepared and presented in a variety of ways. The effect of coffee on human health has been a subject of many studies; however, results have varied in terms of coffee's relative benefit.

Coffee cultivation first took place in southern Arabia; the earliest credible evidence of coffee-drinking appears in the middle of the 15th century in the Sufi shrines of Yemen.

Coffee may have been used socially in the renaissance period of the 17th century. The increasing trades between Europe and North Africa regions made coffee more widely available to Europeans gathering at social locations that served coffee, possibly contributing to the growth of coffeehouses.

Hot chocolate
Hot chocolate, also known as drinking chocolate or cocoa, is a heated drink consisting of shaved chocolate, melted chocolate or cocoa powder, heated milk or water, and usually a sweetener. Hot chocolate may be topped with whipped cream. Hot chocolate made with melted chocolate is sometimes called drinking chocolate, characterized by less sweetness and a thicker consistency.

The first chocolate drink is believed to have been created by the Mayans around 2,500-3,000 years ago, and a cocoa drink was an essential part of Aztec culture by 1400 AD, by which they referred to as xocōlātl. The drink became popular in Europe after being introduced from Mexico in the New World and has undergone multiple changes since then. Until the 19th century, hot chocolate was even used medicinally to treat ailments such as liver and stomach diseases.

Hot chocolate is consumed throughout the world and comes in multiple variations, including the spiced chocolate para mesa of Latin America, the very thick cioccolata calda served in Italy and chocolate a la taza served in Spain, and the thinner hot cocoa consumed in the United States. Prepared hot chocolate can be purchased from a range of establishments, including cafeterias, fast food restaurants, coffeehouses and teahouses. Powdered hot chocolate mixes, which can be added to boiling water or hot milk to make the drink at home, are sold at grocery stores and online.

Tea
Tea, the second most consumed drink in the world, is produced from infusing dried leaves of the Camellia sinensis shrub, in boiling water. There are many ways in which tea is prepared for consumption: lemon or milk and sugar are among the most common additives worldwide. Other additions include butter and salt in Bhutan, Nepal, and Tibet; bubble tea in Taiwan; fresh ginger in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore; mint in North Africa and Senegal; cardamom in Central Asia; rum to make Jagertee in Central Europe; and coffee to make yuanyang in Hong Kong. Tea is also served differently from country to country: in China, Japan and South Korea tiny cups are used to serve tea; in Thailand and the United States tea is often served cold (as "iced tea") or with a lot of sweetener; Indians boil tea with milk and a blend of spices as masala chai; tea is brewed with a samovar in Iran, Kashmir, Russia and Turkey; and in the Australian Outback it is traditionally brewed in a billycan. Tea leaves can be processed in different ways resulting in a drink which appears and tastes different. Chinese yellow and green tea are steamed, roasted and dried; Oolong tea is semi-oxidised and appears green-black and black teas are fully oxidised.

Herbal tea
Around the world, people refer to other herbal infusions as "teas"; it is also argued that these were popular long before the Camellia sinensis shrub was used for tea making. Leaves, flowers, roots or bark can be used to make a herbal infusion and can be bought fresh, dried or powdered.

Juice and plant drinks
Fruit juice is a natural product that contains few or no additives. Citrus products such as orange juice and tangerine juice are familiar breakfast drinks, while grapefruit juice, pineapple, apple, grape, lime, and lemon juice are also common. Coconut water is a highly nutritious and refreshing juice. Many kinds of berries are crushed; their juices are mixed with water and sometimes sweetened. Raspberry, blackberry and currants are popular juices drinks but the percentage of water also determines their nutritive value. Grape juice allowed to ferment produces wine.

Fruits are highly perishable so the ability to extract juices and store them was of significant value. Some fruits are highly acidic and mixing them with water and sugars or honey was often necessary to make them palatable. Fruits can also be blended with ice and other ingredients to make a smoothie. Early storage of fruit juices was labor-intensive, requiring the crushing of the fruits and the mixing of the resulting pure juices with sugars before bottling.

Vegetable juices are usually served warm or cold. Different types of vegetables can be used to make vegetable juice such as carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, celery and many more. Some vegetable juices are mixed with some fruit juice to make the vegetable juice taste better. Many popular vegetable juices, particularly ones with high tomato content, are high in sodium, and therefore consumption of them for health must be carefully considered. Some vegetable juices provide the same health benefits as whole vegetables in terms of reducing risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Plant milk is a general term for any milk-like product that is derived from a plant source. The most common varieties internationally are soy milk, almond milk, rice milk and coconut milk.

Sleep drinks
A nightcap is a drink taken shortly before bedtime to induce sleep. For example, a small alcoholic drink or a cup of warm milk can supposedly promote a good night's sleep. Today, most nightcaps and relaxation drinks are generally non-alcoholic beverages containing calming ingredients. They are considered beverages which serve to relax a person. Unlike other calming beverages, such as tea, warm milk or milk with honey; relaxation drinks almost universally contain more than one active ingredient. Relaxation drinks have been known to contain other natural ingredients and are usually free of caffeine and alcohol but some have claimed to contain marijuana.

Alcoholic drinks
A drink is considered "alcoholic" if it contains ethanol, commonly known as alcohol (although in chemistry the definition of "alcohol" includes many other compounds). Beer has been a part of human civilisation for around 8,000 years.

Beer
Beer is an alcoholic drink produced by the saccharification of starch and fermentation of the resulting sugar. The starch and saccharification enzymes are often derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat. Most beer is also flavoured with hops, which add bitterness and act as a natural preservative, though other flavourings such as herbs or fruit may occasionally be included. The preparation of beer is called brewing. Beer is the world's most widely consumed alcoholic drink, and is the third-most consumed drink overall, after water and tea. It is said to have been discovered by goddess Ninkasi around 5300 BCE, when she accidentally discovered yeast after leaving grain in jars that were later rained upon and left for several days. Women have been the chief creators of beer throughout history due to its association with domesticity and it, throughout much of history, being brewed in the home for family consumption. Only in recent history have men begun to dabble in the field. It is thought by some to be the oldest fermented drink.

Some of humanity's earliest known writings refer to the production and distribution of beer: the Code of Hammurabi included laws regulating beer and beer parlours, and "The Hymn to Ninkasi", a prayer to the Mesopotamian goddess of beer, served as both a prayer and as a method of remembering the recipe for beer in a culture with few literate people. Today, the brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant multinational companies and many thousands of smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries.

Cider
Cider is a fermented alcoholic drink made from fruit juice, most commonly and traditionally apple juice, but also the juice of peaches, pears ("Perry" cider) or other fruit. Cider may be made from any variety of apple, but certain cultivars grown solely for use in cider are known as cider apples. The United Kingdom has the highest per capita consumption of cider, as well as the largest cider-producing companies in the world,, the U.K. produces 600 million litres of cider each year (130 million imperial gallons).

Wine
Wine is an alcoholic drink made from fermented grapes or other fruits. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, water, or other nutrients. Yeast consumes the sugars in the grapes and converts them into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts produce different styles of wine. The well-known variations result from the very complex interactions between the biochemical development of the fruit, reactions involved in fermentation, terroir and subsequent appellation, along with human intervention in the overall process. The final product may contain tens of thousands of chemical compounds in amounts varying from a few percent to a few parts per billion.

Wines made from produce besides grapes are usually named after the product from which they are produced (for example, rice wine, pomegranate wine, apple wine and elderberry wine) and are generically called fruit wine. The term "wine" can also refer to starch-fermented or fortified drinks having higher alcohol content, such as barley wine, huangjiu, or sake.

Wine has a rich history dating back thousands of years, with the earliest production so far discovered having occurred c. 6000 BC in Georgia. It had reached the Balkans by c. 4500 BC and was consumed and celebrated in ancient Greece and Rome. From its earliest appearance in written records, wine has also played an important role in religion. Red wine was closely associated with blood by the ancient Egyptians, who, according to Plutarch, avoided its free consumption as late as the 7th-century BC Saite dynasty, "thinking it to be the blood of those who had once battled against the gods". The Greek cult and mysteries of Dionysus, carried on by the Romans in their Bacchanalia, were the origins of western theater. Judaism incorporates it in the Kiddush and Christianity in its Eucharist, while alcohol consumption was forbidden in Islam.

Spirits
Spirits are distilled beverages that contain no added sugar and have at least 20% alcohol by volume (ABV). Popular spirits include borovička, brandy, gin, rum, slivovitz, tequila, vodka, and whisky. Brandy is a spirit created by distilling wine, whilst vodka may be distilled from any starch- or sugar-rich plant matter; most vodka today is produced from grains such as sorghum, corn, rye or wheat.

Places to drink
Throughout history, people have come together in establishments to socialise whilst drinking. This includes cafés and coffeehouses, focus on providing hot drinks as well as light snacks. Many coffee houses in the Middle East, and in West Asian immigrant districts in the Western world, offer shisha (nargile in Turkish and Greek), flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah. Espresso bars are a type of coffeehouse that specialize in serving espresso and espresso-based drinks.

In China and Japan, the establishment would be a tea house, where people would socialise while drinking tea. Chinese scholars have used the teahouse as a place to share ideas.

Alcoholic drinks are served in drinking establishments, which have different cultural connotations. For example, pubs are fundamental to the culture of The United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada, New England, Metro Detroit, South Africa and New Zealand. In many places, especially in villages, a pub can be the focal point of the community. The writings of Samuel Pepys describe the pub as the heart of England. Many pubs are controlled by breweries, so cask ale or keg beer may be a better value than wines and spirits.

In contrast, types of bars range from seedy bars or nightclubs, sometimes termed "dive bars", to elegant places of entertainment for the elite. Bars provide stools or chairs that are placed at tables or counters for their patrons. The term "bar" is derived from the specialized counter on which drinks are served. Some bars have entertainment on a stage, such as a live band, comedians, go-go dancers, or strippers. Patrons may sit or stand at the bar and be served by the bartender, or they may sit at tables and be served by cocktail servers.

Matching with food
Food and drink are often paired together to enhance the taste experience. This primarily happens with wine and a culture has grown up around the process. Weight, flavors and textures can either be contrasted or complemented. In recent years, food magazines began to suggest particular wines with recipes and restaurants would offer multi-course dinners matched with a specific wine for each course.

Presentation
Different drinks have unique receptacles for their consumption. This is sometimes purely for presentations purposes, such as for cocktails. In other situations, the drinkware has practical application, such as coffee cups which are designed for insulation or brandy snifters which are designed to encourage evaporation but trap the aroma within the glass.

Many glasses include a stem, which allows the drinker to hold the glass without affecting the temperature of the drink. In champagne glasses, the bowl is designed to retain champagne's signature carbonation, by reducing the surface area at the opening of the bowl. Historically, champagne has been served in a champagne coupe, the shape of which allowed carbonation to dissipate even more rapidly than from a standard wine glass.

International exports and imports
An important export commodity, coffee was the top agricultural export for twelve countries in 2004, and it was the world's seventh-largest legal agricultural export by value in 2005. Green (unroasted) coffee is one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world.

Investment
Some drinks, such as wine, can be used as an alternative investment. This can be achieved by either purchasing and reselling individual bottles or cases of particular wines, or purchasing shares in an investment wine fund that pools investors' capital.

title: Drink