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Technical (vehicle)

A technical, known as a non-standard tactical vehicle (NSTV) in United States military parlance, is a light improvised fighting vehicle, typically an open-backed civilian pickup truck or four-wheel drive vehicle modified to mount SALWs and heavy weaponry, such as a machine gun, automatic grenade launcher, anti-aircraft autocannon, rotary cannon, anti-tank weapon, anti-tank gun, ATGM, mortar, multiple rocket launcher, recoilless rifle, or other support weapon (somewhat like a light military gun truck or potentially even a self-propelled gun), etc.

The neologism technical describing such a vehicle is believed to have originated in Somalia during the Somali Civil War in the early 1990s. Barred from bringing in private security, non-governmental organizations hired local gunmen to protect their personnel, using money defined as "technical assistance grants". Eventually the term broadened to include any vehicle carrying armed men. However, an alternative account is given by Michael Maren, who says the term was first used in Somalia in the 1980s, after engineers from Soviet arms manufacturer Tekniko mounted weapons on vehicles for the Somali National Movement during the Somaliland War of Independence. Technicals have also been referred to as battlewagons and gunwagons.

Among irregular militaries, often centered on the perceived strength and charisma of male warlords, the prestige of technicals is strong. According to one article, "The Technical is the most significant symbol of power in southern Somalia. It is a small truck with large tripod machine guns mounted on the back. A warlord's power is measured by how many of these vehicles he has." Technicals are not commonly used by well-funded militaries that are able to procure purpose-built combat vehicles, because the soft-skinned civilian vehicles that technicals are based on do not offer much armor protection to crew and passengers.

Technicals fill the niche of traditional light cavalry. Their major asset is speed and mobility, as well as their ability to strike from unexpected directions with automatic fire and light troop deployment. Further, the reliability of vehicles such as the Toyota Hilux is useful for forces that lack the repair-related infrastructure of a conventional military on land. However, in direct engagements they are no match for heavier vehicles, such as tanks or other armored fighting vehicles, and they are mostly helpless against any air support from a proper military.

In Russia and Ukraine, technicals are often referred to as tachanka, a reference to horse drawn machine gun platforms from the First World War and Russian Civil War.

Prototypes and early usage

Light improvised fighting vehicles date back to the first use of automobiles, and to the horse-drawn tachankas mounting machine guns in eastern Europe and Russia. At the Bombardment of Papeete during World War I, the French armed several Ford trucks with 37 mm guns to bolster their defense of the city. During the Spanish Civil War, field guns were fixed to trucks to act as improvised self-propelled guns, while improvised armored cars were constructed by attaching steel plates to trucks.

During World War II, various British and Commonwealth units, including the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), the No. 1 Demolition Squadron or 'PPA' (Popski's Private Army), and the Special Air Service (SAS) were noted for their exploits in the deserts of Egypt, Libya and Chad using unarmored motor vehicles, often fitted with machine guns. Examples of LRDG vehicles include the Chevrolet WB 30 cwt Patrol Truck and the Willys MB Jeep.

The SAS' use of heavily armed Land Rovers continued post war with their use of Series 1 Land Rovers and later Series 11A 1968 Land Rovers in the Dhofar Rebellion. The SAS painted their Land Rovers pink as it was found to provide excellent camouflage in the desert and they were nicknamed 'Pink Panthers' or Pinkies. The SAS also used a more modern Land Rover Desert Patrol Vehicle (DPV) during the Gulf War.

Western Sahara
Tactics for employing technicals were pioneered by the Sahrawi People's Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Polisario Front, fighting for independence against Mauritania (1975–79) and Morocco (1975–present) from headquarters in Tindouf, Algeria. Algeria provided arms and Land Rovers to Sahrawi guerrillas, who successfully used them in long-range desert raids against the less agile conventional armies of their opponents, recalling Sahrawi tribal raids (ghazis) of the pre-colonial period. Polisario later gained access to heavier equipment, but four-wheel drive vehicles remain a staple of their arsenal.

The Moroccan army quickly changed their strategy and created mounted units using technicals to challenge Polisario speed and hit and run strategies in the large desert, where the Moroccan units proved their efficiency.

Chadian–Libyan conflict
In 1987, Chadian troops equipped with technicals drove the heavily mechanized Libyan army from the Aozou Strip. The vehicles were instrumental in the victory at the Battle of Fada, and were driven over 150 km into Libya to raid military bases. It was discovered that these light vehicles could ride through anti-tank minefields without detonating the mines when driven at speeds over 100 km/h. The vehicles had become so famous that, in 1984, Time dubbed early stages of the conflict the "Great Toyota War".

The Toyota War was unusual in that the force equipped with improvised vehicles prevailed over the force equipped with purpose-built fighting vehicles. MILAN anti-tank guided missiles provided by France were key to the Chadian success, while the Libyan forces were poorly deployed and organized.

The Troubles in Northern Ireland
Throughout the conflict in Northern Ireland (1960s-1998), the Provisional IRA fitted vehicles, especially vans and trucks, with automatic weapons, heavy machine guns, and also improvised mortars. Sometimes the vehicles were armored with welded plates and sandbags. The IRA employed tractors and trailers to transport and fire improvised mortars, and heavy equipment to tear down fences and barbed wire and break into fortified security bases. Improvised flamethrowers were usually modified manure spreaders pulled to their targets by tractor.

Somali Civil War
Technicals played an important role in the 1990s Somali Civil War and the War in Somalia (2006–2009). Even prior to the collapse of the Somali Democratic Republic, camouflaged Toyota pickup trucks with mounted M2 Browning machine guns appeared in Somali military parades during the 1980s. After the fall of the Siad Barre regime and the collapse of the Somali National Army (SNA), it was rare for any Somali force to field armored fighting vehicles. However, technicals were very common.

Somali faction leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid used 30 technicals along with a force of 600 militia to capture Baidoa in September 1995. It was reported that after his death in 1996, his body was carried to his funeral on a Toyota pickup.

Proving their susceptibility to heavy weapons and their value as a military prize, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was able to capture 30 "battlewagons" during the defeat of warlord Abdi Qeybdid's militia at the Second Battle of Mogadishu in 2006. That September, an impressive array of 130 technicals was used to take Kismayo from the forces of the Juba Valley Alliance.

On November 13, 2006, then President of Puntland, General Adde Musa, personally led fifty technicals to Galkacyo to confront the Islamists. They were used a month later against the army of the Islamic Courts Union at the Battle of Bandiradley alongside Abdi Qeybdiid's reconstituted militia.

However, forced into conventional battles in the War in Somalia (2006–2009), the unarmored technicals of the ICU proved no match for the T-55 tanks, Mil Mi-24 helicopter gunships and fighter-bombers employed by Ethiopia.

War in Afghanistan
In the War in Afghanistan, U.S. special operations forces units such as the Green Berets were known to use technicals for patrol both because of the rugged terrain and the nature of their clandestine operations. The Taliban also use technicals in the bulk of their mobile fighting force.

Iraq War

Technicals were used by Iraqi military forces in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Iraqi Republican Guard and Fedayeen emulated tactics of the Somali National Alliance with limited success, but were outmatched by Coalition armor and aviation. In the aftermath of the invasion technicals saw use by Iraqi insurgents for transporting personnel and quick raids against the Iraqi police forces. The insurgent use of technicals increased after the Iraq Spring Fighting of 2004.

Many military utility vehicles have been modified to serve as gun trucks to protect Coalition convoys. The Humvee allows for weapon mounts by design, so it is not considered a technical.

The Coalition also supplied technicals to the Iraqi police. Private military contractors also use technicals and the United States military used modified Toyota Hiluxes, Land Cruisers, and other trucks as well.

Darfur conflict
Janjaweed militias use technicals on their raids against civilian villages in Darfur, Sudan, as do the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel troops in defense of their areas of operations. Light vehicles such as technicals are often thought to be more mobile than armored vehicles, but on one occasion an African peace-keeper driving a Grizzly AVGP whose guns had jammed, succeeded in catching up with, ramming and rolling over a fleeing Sudanese technical.

Lebanon
Introduced by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrilla groups, technicals were extensively employed by all factions involved in the Lebanese Civil War between 1975 and 1990, including the Christian Lebanese Front and the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) irregular militias, the Lebanese Army and the Internal Security Forces (ISF). Opposition forces have reportedly used technicals in the fighting for the Chouf District during the May 2008 clashes in Lebanon.

Libyan Civil War
During the First Libyan Civil War, both regime loyalist forces as well as the anti-Gaddafi forces used technicals extensively. The type of warfare that had been carried out in the conflict—wherein highly mobile groups of soldiers and rebels continued to move to and from on the desert terrain, retreating at a time and then suddenly attacking to regain control of small towns and villages in the Eastern rebel held parts of Libya—had led to the technical becoming a vehicle of choice for both sides.

Technicals had also been widely used by the rebels whilst setting up checkpoints. It also formed a vast percentage of the rebel inventory which was limited to light weapons, light body armor and very few tanks. Some medium flatbed trucks carried the Soviet-made ZPU and ZU-23-2 towed anti-aircraft twin or quad barreled guns, as well as recoilless rifles and S-5 rocket helicopter rocket launcher pods. Some rebels have improvised with captured heavy weaponry, like BMP-1 turrets and helicopter rocket pods, as well as lower-tech methods such as using doorbells to ignite rocket-launched ammunition. Rebel technicals have also frequently employed BM-21 Grad rockets. Rocket tubes were salvaged from damaged regime Ural-375D trucks and mounted on the backs of pickups, with the technicals able to fire anywhere from one to six rockets.

Syrian Civil War
In the Syrian Civil War, technicals are extensively used as improvised fighting vehicles, especially by opposition forces such as Jaysh al-Thuwar, who largely lack conventional fighting vehicles. Syrian government forces also use technicals, but on a smaller scale. The kind of weapons mounted on technicals varies widely, including machine guns, recoilless rifles, anti-aircraft autocannons (commonly ZPU and ZU-23-2) and even BMP-1 turrets. The Military of ISIL extensively used technicals in Iraq and Syria.

Peshmerga forces have used technicals to surround and attack ISIS targets.

War in Donbas
During the 2014 war in Donbas, both sides were using home-made military vehicles. OSCE monitors recorded 15 Russian armored utility vehicles (UAZ-23632-148 Esaul) in a training area near non-government-controlled Oleksandrivska in April 2021.

Russian invasion of Ukraine
Technicals were seen being used by Spetsnaz in Gomel, Belarus on February 24, 2022. Ukrainian forces reportedly used rocket launchers recovered from downed helicopters, mounted on technicals.

Yemeni Civil War
In the Yemeni Civil War, Houthis and Hadi-aligned militias use technicals.

Composition
Technicals consist of weapons mounted on a civilian vehicle, such as a four-wheel drive pickup truck. Many pickups have been used as technicals including Ford Ranger and Mitsubishi Triton, but the most favoured are the Toyota Hilux and Toyota Land Cruiser. They are typically fitted with heavy machine guns (especially the DShK and M2 Browning), anti-aircraft artillery (usually the ZPU or ZU-23-2), recoilless rifles (usually the SPG-9 or M40 recoilless rifle), anti-tank missiles launchers, multiple rocket launchers such as the Type 63 or the M-63 Plamen and in rare occasions rocket pods salvaged from downed attack helicopters like the S-5 rocket.

Due to being soft-skinned vehicles, optional add-on hardware include ballistic glass, turret gun shields and improvised vehicle armor such as made of welded steel plates as defense against small arms fire to increase survival chances. A number of those technicals had their original tires changed to off-road tires, run-flat tires or specialized tires with central tire inflation system. As those modified tires improve technicals' performance on different terrains, while the run-flat tires or central tire inflation system equipped tires give the technicals opportunity to quickly get out of dangerous situations even when tires were damaged.

title: Technical (vehicle)


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Poaceae

Poaceae, also called Gramineae , is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos, the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns and pasture. The latter are commonly referred to collectively as grass.

With around 780 genera and around 12,000 species, the Poaceae is the fifth-largest plant family, following the Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, Fabaceae and Rubiaceae.

The Poaceae are the most economically important plant family, providing staple foods from domesticated cereal crops such as maize, wheat, rice, oats, barley, and millet for people and as feed for meat-producing animals. They provide, through direct human consumption, just over one-half (51%) of all dietary energy; rice provides 20%, wheat supplies 20%, maize (corn) 5.5%, and other grains 6%. Some members of the Poaceae are used as building materials (bamboo, thatch, and straw); others can provide a source of biofuel, primarily via the conversion of maize to ethanol.

Grasses have stems that are hollow except at the nodes and narrow alternate leaves borne in two ranks. The lower part of each leaf encloses the stem, forming a leaf-sheath. The leaf grows from the base of the blade, an adaptation allowing it to cope with frequent grazing.

Grasslands such as savannah and prairie where grasses are dominant are estimated to constitute 40.5% of the land area of the Earth, excluding Greenland and Antarctica. Grasses are also an important part of the vegetation in many other habitats, including wetlands, forests and tundra.

Though they are commonly called "grasses", groups such as the seagrasses, rushes and sedges fall outside this family. The rushes and sedges are related to the Poaceae, being members of the order Poales, but the seagrasses are members of the order Alismatales. However, all of them belong to the monocot group of plants.

Description
Grasses may be annual or perennial herbs, generally with the following characteristics (the image gallery can be used for reference): The stems of grasses, called culms, are usually cylindrical (more rarely flattened, but not 3-angled) and are hollow, plugged at the nodes, where the leaves are attached. Grass leaves are nearly always alternate and distichous (in one plane), and have parallel veins. Each leaf is differentiated into a lower sheath hugging the stem and a blade with entire (i.e., smooth) margins. The leaf blades of many grasses are hardened with silica phytoliths, which discourage grazing animals; some, such as sword grass, are sharp enough to cut human skin. A membranous appendage or fringe of hairs called the ligule lies at the junction between sheath and blade, preventing water or insects from penetrating into the sheath.

Flowers of Poaceae are characteristically arranged in spikelets, each having one or more florets. The spikelets are further grouped into panicles or spikes. The part of the spikelet that bears the florets is called the rachilla. A spikelet consists of two (or sometimes fewer) bracts at the base, called glumes, followed by one or more florets. A floret consists of the flower surrounded by two bracts, one external—the lemma—and one internal—the palea. The flowers are usually hermaphroditic—maize being an important exception—and mainly anemophilous or wind-pollinated, although insects occasionally play a role. The perianth is reduced to two scales, called lodicules, that expand and contract to spread the lemma and palea; these are generally interpreted to be modified sepals. The fruit of grasses is a caryopsis, in which the seed coat is fused to the fruit wall. A tiller is a leafy shoot other than the first shoot produced from the seed.

Growth and development
Grass blades grow at the base of the blade and not from elongated stem tips. This low growth point evolved in response to grazing animals and allows grasses to be grazed or mown regularly without severe damage to the plant.

Three general classifications of growth habit present in grasses: bunch-type (also called caespitose), stoloniferous, and rhizomatous. The success of the grasses lies in part in their morphology and growth processes and in part in their physiological diversity. There are both C3 and C4 grasses, referring to the photosynthetic pathway for carbon fixation. The C4 grasses have a photosynthetic pathway, linked to specialized Kranz leaf anatomy, which allows for increased water use efficiency, rendering them better adapted to hot, arid environments.

The C3 grasses are referred to as "cool-season" grasses, while the C4 plants are considered "warm-season" grasses.
 * Annual cool-season – wheat, rye, annual bluegrass (annual meadowgrass, Poa annua), and oat
 * Perennial cool-season – orchardgrass (cocksfoot, Dactylis glomerata), fescue (Festuca spp.), Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne)
 * Annual warm-season – maize, sudangrass, and pearl millet
 * Perennial warm-season – big bluestem, Indiangrass, Bermudagrass and switchgrass.

Although the C4 species are all in the PACMAD clade (see diagram below), it seems that various forms of C4 have arisen some twenty or more times, in various subfamilies or genera. In the Aristida genus for example, one species (A. longifolia) is C3 but the approximately 300 other species are C4. As another example, the whole tribe of Andropogoneae, which includes maize, sorghum, sugar cane, "Job's tears", and bluestem grasses, is C4. Around 46 percent of grass species are C4 plants.

Taxonomy
The name Poaceae was given by John Hendley Barnhart in 1895, based on the tribe Poeae described in 1814 by Robert Brown, and the type genus Poa described in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus. The term is derived from the Ancient Greek πόα (póa, "fodder").

Evolutionary history
Grasses include some of the most versatile plant life-forms. They became widespread toward the end of the Cretaceous period, and fossilized dinosaur dung (coprolites) have been found containing phytoliths of a variety that include grasses that are related to modern rice and bamboo. Grasses have adapted to conditions in lush rain forests, dry deserts, cold mountains and even intertidal habitats, and are currently the most widespread plant type; grass is a valuable source of food and energy for all sorts of wildlife.

A cladogram shows subfamilies and approximate species numbers in brackets:

Before 2005, fossil findings indicated that grasses evolved around 55 million years ago. Finds of grass-like phytoliths in Cretaceous dinosaur coprolites from the latest Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) aged Lameta Formation of India have pushed this date back to 66 million years ago. In 2011, fossils from the same deposit were found to belong to the modern rice tribe Oryzeae, suggesting substantial diversification of major lineages by this time.

In 2018, a study described grass microfossils extracted from the teeth of the hadrosauroid dinosaur Equijubus normani from northern China, dating to the Albian stage of the Early Cretaceous approximately 113–100 million years ago, which were found to belong to primitive lineages within Poaceae, similar in position to the Anomochlooideae. These are currently the oldest known grass fossils.

The relationships among the three subfamilies Bambusoideae, Oryzoideae and Pooideae in the BOP clade have been resolved: Bambusoideae and Pooideae are more closely related to each other than to Oryzoideae. This separation occurred within the relatively short time span of about 4 million years.

According to Lester Charles King, the spread of grasses in the Late Cenozoic would have changed patterns of hillslope evolution favouring slopes that are convex upslope and concave downslope and lacking a free face were common. King argued that this was the result of more slowly acting surface wash caused by carpets of grass which in turn would have resulted in relatively more soil creep.

Subdivisions
There are about 12,000 grass species in about 771 genera that are classified into 12 subfamilies. See the full list of Poaceae genera.
 * Anomochlooideae Pilg. ex Potztal, a small lineage of broad-leaved grasses that includes two genera (Anomochloa, Streptochaeta)
 * Pharoideae L.G.Clark & Judz., a small lineage of grasses of three genera, including Pharus and Leptaspis
 * Puelioideae L.G.Clark, M.Kobay., S.Mathews, Spangler & E.A.Kellogg, a small lineage of the African genus Puelia
 * Pooideae, including wheat, barley, oats, brome-grass (Bromus), reed-grasses (Calamagrostis) and many lawn and pasture grasses such as bluegrass (Poa)
 * Bambusoideae, including bamboo
 * Ehrhartoideae, including rice and wild rice
 * Aristidoideae, including Aristida
 * Arundinoideae, including giant reed and common reed
 * Chloridoideae, including the lovegrasses (Eragrostis, about 350 species, including teff), dropseeds (Sporobolus, some 160 species), finger millet (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn.), and the muhly grasses (Muhlenbergia, about 175 species)
 * Panicoideae, including panic grass, maize, sorghum, sugarcane, most millets, fonio, "Job's tears", and bluestem grasses
 * Micrairoideae
 * Danthonioideae, including pampas grass

Distribution
The grass family is one of the most widely distributed and abundant groups of plants on Earth. Grasses are found on every continent, including Antarctica. The Antarctic hair grass, Deschampsia antarctica is one of only two plant species native to the western Antarctic Peninsula.

Ecology
Grasses are the dominant vegetation in many habitats, including grassland, salt-marsh, reedswamp and steppes. They also occur as a smaller part of the vegetation in almost every other terrestrial habitat. Grass-dominated biomes are called grasslands. If only large, contiguous areas of grasslands are counted, these biomes cover 31% of the planet's land. Grasslands include pampas, steppes, and prairies. Grasses provide food to many grazing mammals, as well as to many species of butterflies and moths. Many types of animals eat grass as their main source of food, and are called graminivores – these include cattle, sheep, horses, rabbits and many invertebrates, such as grasshoppers and the caterpillars of many brown butterflies. Grasses are also eaten by omnivorous or even occasionally by primarily carnivorous animals.

Grasses dominate certain biomes, especially temperate grasslands, because many species are adapted to grazing and fire.

Grasses are unusual in that the meristem is near the bottom of the plant; hence, grasses can quickly recover from cropping at the top. The evolution of large grazing animals in the Cenozoic contributed to the spread of grasses. Without large grazers, fire-cleared areas are quickly colonized by grasses, and with enough rain, tree seedlings. Trees eventually outcompete most grasses. Trampling grazers kill seedling trees but not grasses.

Sexual reproduction and meiosis
Sexual reproduction and meiosis have been studied in rice, maize, wheat and barley. Meiosis research in these crop species is linked to crop improvement, since meiotic recombination is an important component of plant breeding. Unlike in animals, the specification of both male and female plant germlines occurs late in development during flowering. The transition from the sporophyte phase to the gametophyte state is initiated by meiotic entry.

Uses
Grasses are, in human terms, perhaps the most economically important plant family. Their economic importance stems from several areas, including food production, industry, and lawns. They have been grown as food for domesticated animals for up to 6,000 years and the grains of grasses such as wheat, rice, maize (corn) and barley have been the most important human food crops. Grasses are also used in the manufacture of thatch, paper, fuel, clothing, insulation, timber for fencing, furniture, scaffolding and construction materials, floor matting, sports turf and baskets.

Food production
Of all crops grown, 70% are grasses. Agricultural grasses grown for their edible seeds are called cereals or grains (although the latter term, when used agriculturally, refers to both cereals and similar seeds of other plant species, such as buckwheat and legumes). Three cereals—rice, wheat, and maize (corn)—provide more than half of all calories consumed by humans. Cereals constitute the major source of carbohydrates for humans and perhaps the major source of protein; these include rice (in southern and eastern Asia), maize (in Central and South America), and wheat and barley (in Europe, northern Asia and the Americas).

Sugarcane is the major source of sugar production. Additional food uses of sugarcane include sprouted grain, shoots, and rhizomes, and in drink they include sugarcane juice and plant milk, as well as rum, beer, whisky, and vodka.

Bamboo shoots are used in numerous Asian dishes and broths, and are available in supermarkets in various sliced forms, in both fresh, fermented and canned versions.

Lemongrass is a grass used as a culinary herb for its citrus-like flavor and scent.

Many species of grass are grown as pasture for foraging or as fodder for prescribed livestock feeds, particularly in the case of cattle, horses, and sheep. Such grasses may be cut and stored for later feeding, especially for the winter, in the form of bales of hay or straw, or in silos as silage. Straw (and sometimes hay) may also be used as bedding for animals.

An example of a sod-forming perennial grass used in agriculture is Thinopyrum intermedium.

Industry
Grasses are used as raw material for a multitude of purposes, including construction and in the composition of building materials such as cob, for insulation, in the manufacture of paper and board such as oriented structural straw board. Grass fiber can be used for making paper, biofuel production, nonwoven fabrics, and as replacement for glass fibers used in reinforced plastics. Bamboo scaffolding is able to withstand typhoon-force winds that would break steel scaffolding. Larger bamboos and Arundo donax have stout culms that can be used in a manner similar to timber, Arundo is used to make reeds for woodwind instruments, and bamboo is used for innumerable implements.

'Phragmites australis' (common reed) is important for thatching and wall construction of homes in Africa. Grasses are used in water treatment systems, in wetland conservation and land reclamation, and used to lessen the erosional impact of urban storm water runoff.

Palaeoecological reconstructions

Pollen morphology, particularly in the Poaceae family, is key to figuring out their evolutionary relationships and how environments have changed over time. Grass pollen grains, however, often look the same, making it hard to use them for detailed climate or environmental reconstructions. Grass pollen has a single pore and can vary a lot in size, from about 20 to over 100 micrometers, and this size difference has been looked into for clues about past habitats, to tell apart domesticated grasses from wild ones,  and to indicate various biological features like how they perform photosynthesis, their breeding systems, and genetic complexity. Yet, there's ongoing debate about how effective pollen size is for piecing together historical landscapes and weather patterns, considering other factors such as genetic material amount might also affect pollen size. Despite these challenges, new techniques in Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) and improved statistical methods are now helping to better identify these similar-looking pollen types.

Lawn and ornamental use
Grasses are the primary plants used in lawns, which themselves derive from grazed grasslands in Europe. They also provide an important means of erosion control (e.g., along roadsides), especially on sloping land. Grass lawns are an important covering of playing surfaces in many sports, including football (soccer), American football, tennis, golf, cricket, softball and baseball.

Ornamental grasses, such as perennial bunch grasses, are used in many styles of garden design for their foliage, inflorescences and seed heads. They are often used in natural landscaping, xeriscaping and slope and beach stabilization in contemporary landscaping, wildlife gardening, and native plant gardening. They are used as screens and hedges.

Sports turf
Grass playing fields, courses and pitches are the traditional playing surfaces for many sports, including American football, association football, baseball, cricket, golf, and rugby. Grass surfaces are also sometimes used for horse racing and tennis. Type of maintenance and species of grass used may be important factors for some sports, less critical for others. In some sports facilities, including indoor domes and other places where maintenance of a grass field would be difficult, grass may be replaced with artificial turf, a synthetic grass-like substitute.

Cricket

In cricket, the pitch is the strip of carefully mowed and rolled grass where the bowler bowls. In the days leading up to the match it is repeatedly mowed and rolled to produce a very hard, flat surface for the ball to bounce off.

Golf
Grass on golf courses is kept in three distinct conditions: that of the rough, the fairway, and the putting green. Grass on the fairway is mown short and even, allowing the player to strike the ball cleanly. Playing from the rough is a disadvantage because the long grass may affect the flight of the ball. Grass on the putting green is the shortest and most even, ideally allowing the ball to roll smoothly over the surface. An entire industry revolves around the development and marketing of turf grass varieties.

Tennis
In tennis, grass is grown on very hard-packed soil, and the bounce of a tennis ball may vary depending on the grass's health, how recently it has been mowed, and the wear and tear of recent play. The surface is softer than hard courts and clay (other tennis surfaces), so the ball bounces lower, and players must reach the ball faster resulting in a different style of play which may suit some players more than others. Among the world's most prestigious court for grass tennis is Centre Court at Wimbledon, London which hosts the final of the annual Wimbledon Championships in England, one of the four Grand Slam tournaments.

Economically important grasses
A number of grasses are invasive species that damage natural ecosystems, including forms of Phragmites australis which are native to Eurasia but has spread around the world.

Role in society
Grasses have long had significance in human society. They have been cultivated as feed for people and domesticated animals for thousands of years. The primary ingredient of beer is usually barley or wheat, both of which have been used for this purpose for over 4,000 years.

In some places, particularly in suburban areas, the maintenance of a grass lawn is a sign of a homeowner's responsibility to the overall appearance of their neighborhood. One work credits lawn maintenance to:

"...the desire for upward mobility and its manifestation in the lawn. As Virginia Jenkins, author of The Lawn, put it quite bluntly, 'Upper middle-class Americans emulated aristocratic society with their own small, semi-rural estates.' In general, the lawn was one of the primary selling points of these new suburban homes, as it shifted social class designations from the equity and ubiquity of urban homes connected to the streets with the upper-middle class designation of a 'healthy' green space and the status symbol that is the front lawn."

In communities with drought problems, watering of lawns may be restricted to certain times of day or days of the week. Many US municipalities and homeowners' associations have rules which require lawns to be maintained to certain specifications, sanctioning those who allow the grass to grow too long.

The smell of freshly cut grass is produced mainly by cis-3-Hexenal.

Some common aphorisms involve grass. For example: A folk myth about grass is that it refuses to grow where any violent death has occurred.
 * "The grass is always greener on the other side" suggests an alternate state of affairs will always seem preferable to one's own.
 * "Don't let the grass grow under your feet" tells someone to get moving.
 * "A snake in the grass" means dangers that are hidden.
 * "When elephants fight, it is the grass which suffers" tells of bystanders caught in the crossfire.

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

title: Poaceae


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Talk:Pope Pius VI

Leopold I
Reference to "Leopold I" could be to Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor but I can't be sure of this. --Eclecticology

I think you are right, cross-checking with other sources showed it must be Leopold II. (1747—1792), Roman emperor, and grand-duke of Tuscany. As grand-duke he was Leopold I, but Leopold II as Roman emperor. Will change the article. --JeLuF

Fifth paragraph
The fifth paragraph talks of Febronius and his "old Galilean ideas", and I wondered what this controversy could be. Well, Febronius seems to have had Gallican ideas (in contrast with Ultramontane: the French didn't seem to like having too much authority in Rome). Looks much like a misprint. However, I see the same apparent misprint in http://93.1911encyclopedia.org/H/HO/HONTHEIM.htm and, not having the family's 1911 hard copy at hand, and knowing nothing about this, I hesitate to change it.

Does anybody know something of this antiquated fight? Dandrake 06:00, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Definitely "Gallican". Mock the Brittanica! -- Someone else 06:14, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Valence
Place of death given as Valence, which is a disambig page and has at least 6 plausible possibilities. Does anyone know which it is? Same issue at Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution, so if you know please fix it there, too.
 * Done; Valence, Drôme, the only one with an actual entry. Septentrionalis 18:30, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Style Wars
The original usage on this page, valid until the belligerent armies stormed through, was to begin Pius VI. That continued to be the usage until a few hours ago. In the hope of an armistice, I am reverting, once. Will you all go play somewhere else? Some of us would like to see if this page has any actual changes to it. Septentrionalis 22:56, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Created last cardinal nephew?
This page cites Pius as having created the last cardinal-nephew, but the Cardinal-Nephew page identifies a different individual as the last one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.154.67.41 (talk) 05:26, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Allocutions and briefs
It would interesing if we could have an entry on the different allocutions and briefs written by Pius VI. One that I found especially notable is Pourquoi notre voix, which forcefully condemned the execution of Louis XVI. Another that is noteworthy is Quod aliquantum, which denounces the civil constitution of the clergy. ADM (talk) 06:31, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Creation of United States of America
Even though the United States of America was (and still is) located across the Atlantic Ocean from the Vatican, it was still a new political state created during this Pope's reign. The Article says he disliked the French Revolution, but did he have any opinion one way or the other about the creation of the United States of America? The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 03:58, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

 * If I had time, I would read Parallel Empires: The Vatican and the United States by Massimo Franco, from Doubleday. I'm sure that book has far more information in answer to your question than we can distill here. James470 (talk) 05:25, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Here is a new question. Could we distill some such information here, and then mention that book in the Article? The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 21:59, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Absolutely, if you have time to at least skim that book. Much of the book is readable on Google Books. James470 (talk) 02:38, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry it took me a while to reply, but I look forward to eventually at least skimming that book. It will be a while, but I'm sure this Article will still be here to add such things to it. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 06:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Having "skimmed" that book
I read Chapter 3: "George Washington, Pope Pius VI Requests," the most relevant part of the book. From that, I would infer that he would have had both positive and negative feelings about the creation of the USA. On the negative hand, the USA was and is still a religiously neutral (and therefore not officially Roman Catholic) state. On the positive hand, because of the same religious neutrality, the USA ended the discrimination against Roman Catholics that had occurred in its precursor British colonies. As long as we cite the aforementioned book, shouldn't we mention this in the Article on Pope Pius VI? The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 01:35, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

96.252.17.88 (talk) 05:54, 8 May 2017 (UTC)Although, I haven't checked out this book 'Parallel Empires', I would be careful in assuming that there was much Catholic persucusion in the 13 colonies under British rule. While Britain actively persecuted Catholics, they often allowed the colonies to create their own local laws and govern themselves. Rode Island in particular was famous for its religous freedom, and I pretty sure Boston and New York both had Catholic communities which had little discrimination problems from the government. I just saying you might want to dubble check that claim. People of the colonies and later the United Sates alike have persecuted Catholics verious points in history in verous sates. Certian orginizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the YMCA (which mostly has changed its policies toward Catholics), or the Free Masions have actively opposed the Chruch and held predujusts against Roman Catholics. I was also wondering about what Pope Pius VI thought of the United States, if new diocies where opened (with Bishops being appointed to the USA), and how quickly the Vatican showed reconition of the USA (or the Articles of Confederation) as a sovern country.05:54, 8 May 2017 (UTC)96.252.17.88 (talk)

Longest-reigning
“...having then reigned longer than any Pope (except possibly St. Peter) ...” I think this is wrong. See List_of_10_longest-reigning_Popes. BruKerst (talk) 16:36, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

IP's edit/plagiarism?
I have nothing against the removal of unsourced information, which was done by the IP. However, the IP's addition, using Pastor's book as a source, reads like plagiarism. The IP needs to post the relevent information from Pastor's book to verify said addition is not plagiarism. --Kansas Bear (talk) 21:11, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Totally agree!. I was going to revert the edit but didn't do so because no citations are there. The para should be improved. ~ ScitDei Wanna talk? 10:04, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I will give the IP until 24 November at which point I will revert it back to the original wording and go from there. --Kansas Bear (talk) 06:31, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Need French speaker to verify
Was trying to tackle the Marechal footnote for #1Lib1Ref, and am reasonably sure it's incorrect, but don't speak enough French to tell. Here's the script of the play; if someone could verify whether the Pope's last line involves him marrying or not, this could get fixed. Otherwise, change to the usual reference to that bit, which is drowning in fiery catastrophe.

thx - akondrashova

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title: Talk:Pope Pius VI


text:
Talk:Starman Jones

A Real Problem With this whole set of articles on novels
The whole notion of presenting "plot summaries" is not only childish, but very likely a violation of copyright laws and rules. It is unencyclopedic, too, and I don't think that it should be done at all.74.249.79.103 (talk) 01:27, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The present complaint about things "reading like a book review" is quaint and quare, because a book review is a much more mature expression of writing about a book, and they are allowed by the copyright laws. So, the complaints and flags about book reviews are really backwards. It is "plot summaries" that ought not to be allowed. They're childish, too. (elementary school level in the United States)74.249.79.103 (talk) 01:27, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Orientation ability
"Inability to get lost"? That happened in Glory Road, but I don't think it happens in Starman Jones. Michael Hardy 01:33 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)

 * Yeah Jones can get lost... if he couldn't see where he was going or even if he didn't just concentrate. He had to concentrate & look around a lot while they were taking him away.  And then he had to concentrate when returning.  Shonsu 08:40, 3 December 2005 UTC

"Allah"
I wonder though... early on in the book "IIRC", Jones said "Praise Allah!" [or something Allah...(I think)]. I was wondering if maybe he intended for Jones to be black, but the editors cut it out? Shonsu 08:40, 3 December 2005 UTC

 * Forgive me for not knowing "IIRC" and for jumping in in the middle, but Max Jones can get lost and he certainly never says anything like "Praise Allah", and if he had, it would have meant he was Middle Eastern (in a very wide sense; compare Muslims in other Heinlein juveniles like Space Cadet), not a black American. Zaslav 06:05, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

 * In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress Heinlein described a society where also people of completely non-Russian origin speak a languague with many Russian words and grammatical forms. Similarly, he may have in this book posited a society where also non-Muslims adopted the Muslim word for God. (Adam Keller) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.114.46.174 (talk) 12:24, 2 March 2006 UTC

Suggestions:

The list of Heinlein novels belongs in the Heinlein page, not in the article on any one novel.

 * The comparison with Gulliver's Travels is original research and should appear elsewhere despite being quite interesting. I have not removed it because Wikipedians should think this over. Zaslav 03:00, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I'm commenting backwards! Yay for being sleepy. Anyway, re: "Allah", Heinlein has Lazarus Long, at least, refer to Allah in the same way in Time Enough For Love, and I want to say that comes up in other novels. I think it's more an attempt to show multiculturalism than anything else, as I get the impression from reading that Heinlein wasn't a huge fan of Christianity, but that's just my opinion.  KathL 13:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Discussion of corrections
"Heinlein - like many other science fiction writers of the time - had a weak grasp of Special Relativity's statement of the impossibility of acclerating (sic) to the speed of light." I don't believe this is true. First of all, there is no mention that the ship had to reach the speed of light before entering the congruence. Secondly, in Time for the Stars (written a few years later), Heinlein demonstrates a reasonably good layman's understanding of special relativity.
 * On a side note, when I was an undergrad in the late 70's, I took an electronics course where (among other things) I had to program a PDP8(?) minicomputer in the manner described by Heinlein, e.g. entering binary numbers via switches, with lights indicating the settings, so he wasn't totally off base with his predictions. Clarityfiend 18:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

 * It is rather silly to say that Heinlein didn't understand Special Relativitiy. After all, Heinlein was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and even back in the 1920s, ALL Naval Academy students studied physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering, and Heinlein was also a widely-read man in the the sciences and engineering. He also worked as an aeronautical engineer for the Philadelphia Naval yard during WW II.74.249.79.103 (talk) 01:04, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

 * I just finished reading the novel (Sept. 1 2008), it is about the 6th or 7th time I have read it since I did first in 1954. About that "computer", it is there, but almost un-described. Heinlein would have been aware of the vacuum tube monsters that existed in 1952 and 1953, however this one is small enough to fit into the "worry room". On the other hand it is hard to tell exactly what it does! Astrogation in Starman Jones is a human-machine "symbiosis" quite cleverly worked out by Heinlein, though some of the Astrogator's work seems more theoretical physics than engineering physics, me-thinks that it would be the other way around. On, well, Heinlein does the science fiction "gold standard" of showing us how star travel is done and not giving us techno-bable about what is going on. (The "field effect" acceleration generators are about the only "poetic license" technology that Heinlein lets stick out). There is the interjection of real observational instrumentation: stellar spectra, Doppler shifts, and radar (for planetary approach) enough to make things sound tenable. I would think if someone made a film of this story all the "super science" that Heinlein uses could be easily doctored to make it sound less anachronistic. (Cordwainer Smith had similar human-assisted Faster Than Light travel in his stories with the GO Captains and Stop Captains, dispensing with computers altogether.)--aajacksoniv (talk) 18:51, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

 * I don't know what Heinlein's grasp of special relativity was - certainly it was better than mine which falls somewhere above absolute zero, ha, ha - but I do know from reading biographies that he spent a lot of time researching his theories on space travel in terms of mathematics (there are references to him and Ginny doing massive calculations on rolls of butcher paper), so I imagine his grasp of it was as good as or better than anyone's of the period. Also, the statement that most of his stories had weak or rushed endings is, well, weak. Normally I would say examples of weak/rushed endings should be provided but I believe that would fall under original research, so this ought to be backed up with citations of such criticism.  I'm just doing a bit of bedtime reading here, so I won't attempt a rewrite but I'll flag the page and try to come back to it.  66.25.167.155 13:51, 5 July 2006 (UTC) The above is me being lame and forgetting to log in.  KathL 13:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

 * The whole idea of deep discussions of the reasons or mechanisms of interstellar travel are besides the point. This is science fiction, after all, and the author can postulate such things any way he wants to in order to make the story work. Note such works as the novel and the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, and the novels of Isaac Asimov, which never go into the details of how the "engines" are supposed to work - but rather, they just do work. Asimov mentions making a "jump through hyperspace", and that's all he says about getting from here to there. Likewise, in the Star Wars movies by George Lucas, they "jump through hyperspace" and that's all. 74.249.79.103 (talk) 01:35, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

 * The only reason why Heinlein dealt with the space travel mechanisms, and the only reason why he even bothered to do so, is that he was writing a series of juvenile books for teenagers and younger. So, he included childish discussions for childish books, and such things should be ignored by adults. Their details are beside the point. It is also true that the plots and settings are usually childish ones, too, which all does surprise my why the Wikipedia even bothers with them. "Starship Troopers" is an exception, but as we know the Scribner's company rejected that one on the grounds that it dealt with too many adult-level concepts and ideas - and I mean nothing about XXX-rated stuff. Just, material that is suitable for grown-ups, like political ideas. 74.249.79.103 (talk) 01:41, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Section removal
I deleted the Rags to Riches section as original analysis, after giving the main contributor plenty of time to respond to my objection or provide sources (fan reviews are not acceptable). Clarityfiend 17:51, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Scientific Extrapolation
"The "transitions" that transport a ship from one star system to another are effected by accelerating the ship until it reaches precisely the right location and reappears at a "congruent" location that may be hundreds of light years away in ordinary space. The idea of "congruence", nicely explained by Max using a folded scarf, is sound mathematics (though it is not known physics)."

The above statement in Literary significance and criticism is a bit wrong.

This section of the novel and the "worry hole" expositions are quite extraordinary. It's not that "star gate" concepts had been rare in prose science fiction by 1953. Heinlein's extrapolation of multiply-connected topology (Homotopy was a known mathematical concept in 1953) for star flight is the height of sophistication. Though the Einstein-Rosen "bridge" (see wormhole), had been known since the 1930s, it's mysterious diffusion into SF is quite extraordinary. It is hard to know if Heinlein had first-hand knowledge of it, though knowing the people he knew, it is not a surprise. One notes there is indeed a computer in the star ship's control room, never fully described, but the man-machine interface shades more towards the "man". Here we get a superb example of modern SF's clever verisimilitude that is realized in the modern physics of General Relativity of the 1960's and 1970's and even to the present ideas of Interstellar Travel. Even though the technological realization of the process described is some what problematic, the clever use of physics, the starship "Asgard" is a "field effect" ship (a common idea in SF by the 1950) but used by Heinlein to great effect. The "Asgard" can apparently do nearly 30 gravities (of acceleration) while maintaining a one g environment inside. It never exceeds the speed of light, though one needs to be near it to cross a "congruency". When the "Asgard" makes a bad transition, Heinlein even discusses the idea of the multiverse - this is amazing. Heinlein must have been extrapolating from parallel universe theory because the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics would not be presented for four more years! So the basic mathematics and physics existed in 1953 for Heinlein to make his extrapolations and is even better defined these days see faster-than-light, its the technology that is unknown and may lay so or may be in the far, far, distant future. --aajacksoniv (talk) 13:51, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Benevolent trucker in Heinlein novels?
The line "(The trucker who gives rides to down-and-out hitchhikers is a recurring element in Heinlein's books.)" seems like original research and not particularly valid. Anyone agree/disagree? -- Rydra Wong (talk) 05:45, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * This claim has its thumb out, but I don't see anybody stopping to pick it up (although Thorby does get a r-e-a-l-l-y long ride from this nice, big, freight-carrying vehicle). Clarityfiend (talk) 06:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to stop to give it a lift either; the article will read better without it. -- Rydra Wong (talk) 23:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Eldreth or Ellie?
A very minor point, but Eldreth suddenly becomes Ellie after two mentions. I know they are the same person, but my copy of the book, an ancient paperback with the great Worry Hole drawing on the cover, is falling apart from too many readings. A HeinNewb might not know. 159.169.242.3 (talk) 22:03, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Clarityfiend (talk) 19:17, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Did anyone else notice that the young woman called Ellie Coburn becomes Ellie Coburg in the translation into German? 50.188.46.248 (talk) 03:18, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:Starman Jones


text:
Piltdown Man

The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although there were doubts about its authenticity virtually from the beginning (in 1912), the remains were still broadly accepted for many years, and the falsity of the hoax was only definitively demonstrated in 1953. An extensive scientific review in 2016 established that amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson was responsible for the fraudulent evidence.

In 1912, Charles Dawson claimed that he had discovered the "missing link" between early apes and man. In February 1912, Dawson contacted Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, stating he had found a section of a human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds near Piltdown, East Sussex. That summer, Dawson and Smith Woodward purportedly discovered more bones and artifacts at the site, which they connected to the same individual. These finds included a jawbone, more skull fragments, a set of teeth, and primitive tools.

Smith Woodward reconstructed the skull fragments and hypothesised that they belonged to a human ancestor from 500,000 years ago. The discovery was announced at a Geological Society meeting and was given the Latin name Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's dawn-man"). The questionable significance of the assemblage remained the subject of considerable controversy until it was conclusively exposed in 1953 as a forgery. It was found to have consisted of the altered mandible and some teeth of an orangutan deliberately combined with the cranium of a fully developed, though small-brained, modern human.

The Piltdown hoax is prominent for two reasons: the attention it generated around the subject of human evolution, and the length of time, 41 years, that elapsed from its alleged initial discovery to its definitive exposure as a composite forgery.

Find
At a meeting of the Geological Society of London on 18 December 1912, Charles Dawson claimed that a workman at the Piltdown gravel pit had given him a fragment of the skull four years earlier. According to Dawson, workmen at the site discovered the skull shortly before his visit and broke it up in the belief that it was a fossilised coconut. Revisiting the site on several occasions, Dawson found further fragments of the skull and took them to Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of the geological department at the British Museum. Greatly interested by the finds, Woodward accompanied Dawson to the site. Though the two worked together between June and September 1912, Dawson alone recovered more skull fragments and half of the lower jaw. The skull unearthed in 1908 was the only find discovered in situ, with most of the other pieces found in the gravel pit's spoil heaps. French Jesuit paleontologist and geologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin participated in the uncovering of the Piltdown skull with Woodward.

At the same meeting, Woodward announced that a reconstruction of the fragments indicated that the skull was in many ways similar to that of a modern human, except for the occiput (the part of the skull that sits on the spinal column), and brain size, which was about two-thirds that of a modern human. He went on to indicate that, save for two human-like molar teeth, the jaw bone was indistinguishable from that of a modern, young chimpanzee. From the British Museum's reconstruction of the skull, Woodward proposed that Piltdown Man represented an evolutionary missing link between apes and humans, since the combination of a human-like cranium with an ape-like jaw tended to support the notion then prevailing in England that human evolution began with the brain. The find was considered legitimate by Otto Schoetensack who had discovered the Heidelberg fossils just a few years earlier; he described it as being the best evidence for an ape-like ancestor of modern humans.

But almost from the outset, Woodward's reconstruction of the Piltdown fragments was strongly challenged by some researchers. At the Royal College of Surgeons, copies of the same fragments used by the British Museum in their reconstruction were used to produce an entirely different model, one that in brain size and other features resembled a modern human. This reconstruction, by Prof. (later Sir) Arthur Keith, was called Homo piltdownensis in reflection of its more human appearance.

Woodward's reconstruction included ape-like canine teeth, which was itself controversial. In August 1913, Woodward, Dawson and Teilhard de Chardin began a systematic search of the spoil heaps specifically to find the missing canines. Teilhard de Chardin soon found a canine that, according to Woodward, fitted the jaw perfectly. A few days later, Teilhard de Chardin moved to France and took no further part in the discoveries. Noting that the tooth "corresponds exactly with that of an ape", Woodward expected the find to end any dispute over his reconstruction of the skull. However, Keith attacked the find. Keith pointed out that human molars are the result of side to side movement when chewing. The canine in the Piltdown jaw was impossible as it prevented side to side movement. To explain the wear on the molar teeth, the canine could not have been any higher than the molars. Grafton Elliot Smith, a fellow anthropologist, sided with Woodward, and at the next Royal Society meeting claimed that Keith's opposition was motivated entirely by ambition. Keith later recalled, "Such was the end of our long friendship."

As early as 1913, David Waterston of King's College London published in Nature his conclusion that the sample consisted of an ape mandible and human skull. Likewise, French paleontologist Marcellin Boule concluded the same in 1915. A third opinion from the American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller Jr. concluded that Piltdown's jaw came from a fossil ape. In 1923, Franz Weidenreich examined the remains and correctly reported that they consisted of a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth.

Sheffield Park find
In 1915, Dawson claimed to have found three fragments of a second skull (Piltdown II) at a new site about 2 mi away from the original finds. Woodward attempted several times to elicit the location from Dawson, but was unsuccessful. So far as is known, the site was never identified and the finds appear largely undocumented. Woodward did not present the new finds to the Society until five months after Dawson's death in August 1916 and deliberately implied that he knew where they had been found. In 1921, Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the American Museum of Natural History, examined the Piltdown and Sheffield Park finds and declared that the jaw and skull belonged together "without question" and that the Sheffield Park fragments "were exactly those which we should have selected to confirm the comparison with the original type."

The Sheffield Park finds were taken as proof of the authenticity of the Piltdown Man; it may have been chance that brought an ape's jaw and a human skull together, but the odds of it happening twice were slim. Even Keith conceded to this new evidence, though he still harboured personal doubts.

Memorial
On 23 July 1938, at Barkham Manor, Piltdown, Sir Arthur Keith unveiled a memorial to mark the site where Piltdown Man was discovered by Charles Dawson. Sir Arthur finished his speech saying:

"So long as man is interested in his long past history, in the vicissitudes which our early forerunners passed through, and the varying fare which overtook them, the name of Charles Dawson is certain of remembrance. We do well to link his name to this picturesque corner of Sussex—the scene of his discovery. I have now the honour of unveiling this monolith dedicated to his memory."

The inscription on the memorial stone reads:

"Here in the old river gravel Mr Charles Dawson, FSA found the fossil skull of Piltdown Man, 1912–1913, The discovery was described by Mr Charles Dawson and Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1913–15."

Scientific investigation
From the outset, some scientists expressed scepticism about the Piltdown find (see above). Gerrit Smith Miller Jr., for example, observed in 1915 that "deliberate malice could hardly have been more successful than the hazards of deposition in so breaking the fossils as to give free scope to individual judgment in fitting the parts together". In the decades prior to its exposure as a forgery in 1953, scientists increasingly regarded Piltdown as an enigmatic aberration, inconsistent with the path of hominid evolution as demonstrated by fossils found elsewhere.

In November 1953, Time magazine published evidence, gathered variously by Kenneth Page Oakley, Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark and Joseph Weiner, proving that Piltdown Man was a forgery and demonstrating that the fossil was a composite of three distinct species. It consisted of a human skull of medieval age, the 500-year-old lower jaw of an orangutan and chimpanzee fossil teeth. Someone had created the appearance of age by staining the bones with an iron solution and chromic acid. Microscopic examination revealed file-marks on the teeth, and it was deduced from this that someone had modified the teeth to a shape more suited to a human diet.

The Piltdown Man hoax succeeded so well because, at the time of its discovery, the scientific establishment believed that the large modern brain preceded the modern omnivorous diet, and the forgery provided exactly that evidence. Stephen Jay Gould argued that nationalism and cultural prejudice played a role in the ready acceptance of Piltdown Man as genuine, because it satisfied European expectations that the earliest humans would be found in Eurasia, and the British in particular wanted a "first Briton" to set against fossil hominids found elsewhere in Europe.

Identity of the forger
The identity of the Piltdown forger remains unknown, but suspects have included Dawson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Arthur Keith, Martin A. C. Hinton, Horace de Vere Cole and Arthur Conan Doyle.

The focus on Charles Dawson as the main forger is supported by the accumulation of evidence regarding other archaeological hoaxes he perpetrated in the decade or two before the Piltdown discovery. The archaeologist Miles Russell of Bournemouth University analysed Dawson's antiquarian collection, and determined that at least 38 of his specimens were fakes. Among these were the teeth of a multituberculate mammal, Plagiaulax dawsoni, "found" in 1891 (and whose teeth had been filed down in the same way that the teeth of Piltdown Man were to be some 20 years later); the so-called "shadow figures" on the walls of Hastings Castle; a unique hafted stone axe; the Bexhill boat (a hybrid seafaring vessel); the Pevensey bricks (allegedly the latest datable "finds" from Roman Britain); the contents of the Lavant Caves (a fraudulent "flint mine"); the Beauport Park "Roman" statuette (a hybrid iron object); the Bulverhythe Hammer (shaped with an iron knife in the same way as the Piltdown elephant bone implement would later be); a fraudulent "Chinese" bronze vase; the Brighton "Toad in the Hole" (a toad entombed within a flint nodule); the English Channel sea serpent; the Uckfield Horseshoe (another hybrid iron object) and the Lewes Prick Spur. Of his antiquarian publications, most demonstrate evidence of plagiarism or at least naive referencing. Russell wrote: "Piltdown was not a 'one-off' hoax, more the culmination of a life's work." In addition, Harry Morris, an acquaintance of Dawson, had come into possession of one of the flints obtained by Dawson at the Piltdown gravel pit. He suspected that it had been artificially aged – "stained by C. Dawson with intent to defraud". He remained deeply suspicious of Dawson for many years to come, though he never sought to discredit him publicly, possibly because it would have been an argument against the eolith theory, which Morris strongly supported.

Adrian Lister of the UK's Natural History Museum has said that "some people have suggested" that there may also have been a second 'fraudster' seeking to use outrageous fraud in the hope of anonymously exposing the original frauds. This was a theory first proposed by Miles Russell. He has explained that the piece nicknamed the 'cricket bat' (a fossilised elephant bone) was such a crudely forged 'early tool' that it may have been planted to cast doubt upon the other finds, the 'Earliest Englishman' in effect being recovered with the earliest evidence for the game of cricket. This seems to have been part of a wider attempt, by disaffected members of the Sussex archaeological community, to expose Dawson's activities, other examples being the obviously fraudulent 'Maresfield Map', the 'Ashburnham Dial', and the 'Piltdown Palaeolith'. Nevertheless, the 'cricket bat' was accepted at the time, even though it aroused the suspicions of some and ultimately helped lead to the eventual recognition of the fraud decades later.

In 2016, the results of an eight-year review of the forgery were released, identifying Dawson's modus operandi. Multiple specimens demonstrated the same consistent preparation: application of the stain, packing of crevices with local gravel, and fixation of teeth and gravel with dentist's putty. Analysis of shape and trace DNA showed that teeth from both sites belonged to the same orangutan. The consistent method and common source indicated the work of one person on all the specimens, and Dawson was the only one associated with Piltdown II. The authors did not rule out the possibility that someone else provided the false fossils to Dawson, but ruled out several other suspects, including Teilhard de Chardin and Doyle, based on the skill and knowledge demonstrated by the forgeries, which closely reflected ideas fashionable in biology at the time.

On the other hand, Stephen Jay Gould judged that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin conspired with Dawson in the Piltdown forgery. Teilhard de Chardin had travelled to regions of Africa where one of the anomalous finds originated, and resided in the Wealden area from the date of the earliest finds (although others suggest that he was "without doubt innocent in this matter"). Hinton left a trunk in storage at the Natural History Museum in London that in 1970 was found to contain animal bones and teeth carved and stained in a manner similar to the carving and staining on the Piltdown finds. Phillip Tobias implicated Arthur Keith in helping Dawson by detailing the history of the investigation of the hoax, dismissing other theories, and listing inconsistencies in Keith's statements and actions. Other investigations suggest that the hoax involved accomplices rather than a single forger.

Richard Milner, an American historian of science, argued that Arthur Conan Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax. Milner noted that Doyle had a plausible motive—namely, revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics—and said that The Lost World appeared to contain several clues referring cryptically to his having been involved in the hoax. Samuel Rosenberg's 1974 book Naked is the Best Disguise purports to explain how, throughout his writings, Doyle had provided overt clues to otherwise hidden or suppressed aspects of his way of thinking that seemed to support the idea that Doyle would be involved in such a hoax. However, more recent research suggests that Doyle was not involved. In 2016, researchers at the Natural History Museum and Liverpool John Moores University analyzed DNA evidence showing that responsibility for the hoax lay with Dawson, who had originally "found" the remains. Dawson had initially not been considered the likely perpetrator, because the hoax was seen as being too elaborate for him to have devised. However, the DNA evidence showed that a supposedly ancient tooth Dawson had "discovered" in 1915 (at a different site) came from the same jaw as that of the Piltdown Man, suggesting that he had planted them both. That tooth, too, was later proven to have been planted as part of a hoax.

Chris Stringer, an anthropologist from the Natural History Museum, was quoted as saying: "Conan Doyle was known to play golf at the Piltdown site and had even given Dawson a lift in his car to the area, but he was a public man and very busy[,] and it is very unlikely that he would have had the time [to create the hoax]. So there are some coincidences, but I think they are just coincidences. When you look at the fossil evidence[,] you can only associate Dawson with all the finds, and Dawson was known to be personally ambitious. He wanted professional recognition. He wanted to be a member of the Royal Society and he was after an MBE [sic ]. He wanted people to stop seeing him as an amateur".

Early humans
In 1912, the majority of the scientific community believed the Piltdown Man was the "missing link" between apes and humans. However, over time the Piltdown Man lost its validity, as other discoveries such as the Taung Child and Peking Man were made. R. W. Ehrich and G. M. Henderson note, "To those who are not completely disillusioned by the work of their predecessors, the disqualification of the Piltdown skull changes little in the broad evolutionary pattern. The validity of the specimen has always been questioned". Eventually, during the 1940s and 1950s, more advanced dating technologies, such as the fluorine absorption test, proved scientifically that this skull was actually a fraud.

Influence
The Piltdown Man fraud significantly affected early research on human evolution. Notably, it led scientists down a blind alley in the belief that the human brain expanded in size before the jaw adapted to new types of food. Discoveries of Australopithecine fossils such as the Taung child found by Raymond Dart during the 1920s in South Africa were ignored because of the support for Piltdown Man as "the missing link," and the reconstruction of human evolution was confused for decades. The examination and debate over Piltdown Man caused a vast expenditure of time and effort on the fossil, with an estimated 250+ papers written on the topic.

The book Scientology: A History of Man by L. Ron Hubbard features the Piltdown Man as a phase of biological history capable of leaving a person with subconscious memories of traumatic incidents that can only be resolved by use of Scientology technology. Recovered "memories" of this phase are prompted by one's obsession with biting, hiding the teeth or mouth, and early familial issues. Nominally, this appears to be related to the large jaw of the Piltdown Man specimen. The book was first published in 1952, shortly before the fraud was confirmed, and has since been republished 5 times (most recently in 2007).

Creationists often cite the hoax (along with Nebraska Man) as evidence of an alleged dishonesty of paleontologists who study human evolution, although scientists themselves had exposed the Piltdown hoax (and the Nebraska Man incident was not a deliberate fraud).

In November 2003, the Natural History Museum in London held an exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of the exposure of the fraud.

Biases in the interpretation of the Piltdown Man
The Piltdown case is an example of how race, nationalism, and gender influenced scientific and public opinion. Newspapers explained the seemingly primitive and contradictory features of the skull and jaw by attempting to demonstrate an analogy with non-white races, presumed at the time to be more primitive and less developed than white Europeans. The influence of nationalism resulted in the differing interpretations of the find: whilst the majority of British scientists accepted the discovery as "the earliest Englishman", European and American scientists were considerably more sceptical, and several suggested at the time that the skull and jaw were from two different creatures and had been accidentally mixed up. Although Woodward suggested that the specimen discovered might be female, most scientists and journalists referred to Piltdown as a male. The only notable exception was the coverage by the Daily Express newspaper, which referred to the discovery as a woman, but only to mock the suffragette movement, of which the Express was highly critical.

Timeline

 * 1908: Dawson claims discovery of first Piltdown fragments.
 * 1912 February: Dawson contacts Woodward about first skull fragments.
 * 1912 June: Dawson, Woodward, and Teilhard de Chardin form digging team.
 * 1912 June: Team finds elephant molar, skull fragment.
 * 1912 June: Right parietal skull bones and the jaw bone discovered.
 * 1912 November: News breaks in the popular press.
 * 1912 December: Official presentation of Piltdown Man.
 * 1913: David Waterston concludes that the sample is an ape mandible and a human skull.
 * 1914: Talgai Skull (Australia) found, and considered (at the time) to confirm Piltdown.
 * 1915: Marcellin Boule concludes that the sample is an ape mandible and a human skull. Gerrit Smith Miller concludes the jaw is from a fossil ape.
 * 1916 August: Dawson dies.
 * 1923: Franz Weidenreich reports the remains consist of a modern human cranium and orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth.
 * 1925: Edmonds reports Piltdown geology error. Report ignored.
 * 1943: Fluorine content test is first proposed.
 * 1948: The Earliest Englishman by Woodward is published (posthumously).
 * 1949: Fluorine content test establishes Piltdown Man as relatively recent.
 * 1953: Weiner, Le Gros Clark, and Oakley expose the hoax.
 * 2003: Full extent of Charles Dawson's career in forgeries is exposed.
 * 2016: Study reveals method of Dawson's forgery.

title: Piltdown Man


text:
Oersted

The oersted (,; symbol Oe) is the coherent derived unit of the auxiliary magnetic field H in the centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS). It is equivalent to 1 dyne per maxwell.

Difference between CGS and SI systems
In the CGS system, the unit of the H-field is the oersted and the unit of the B-field is the gauss. In the SI system, the unit ampere per meter (A/m), which is equivalent to newton per weber, is used for the H-field and the unit of tesla is used for the B-field.

History
The unit was established by the IEC in the 1930s in honour of Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted. Ørsted discovered the connection between magnetism and electric current when a magnetic field produced by a current-carrying copper bar deflected a magnetised needle during a lecture demonstration.

Definition
The oersted is defined as a dyne per unit pole. The oersted is $1000⁄4π$ (≈1.000000 Oe) amperes per meter, in terms of SI units.

The H-field strength inside a long solenoid wound with 79.58 turns per meter of a wire carrying 1 A is approximately 1 oersted. The preceding statement is exactly correct if the solenoid considered is infinite in length with the current evenly distributed over its surface.

The oersted is closely related to the gauss (G), the CGS unit of magnetic flux density. In a vacuum, if the magnetizing field strength is 1 Oe, then the magnetic field density is 1 G, whereas, in a medium having permeability $μ_{r}$ (relative to permeability of vacuum), their relation is:

 * $$B(\text{G}) = \mu_\text{r} H(\text{Oe})$$

Because oersteds are used to measure magnetizing field strength, they are also related to the magnetomotive force (mmf) of current in a single-winding wire-loop:

 * $$1\text{ Oe}= \frac{1000}{4 \pi} \text{A}/\text{m}$$

Stored energy
The stored energy in a magnet, called magnet performance or maximum energy product (often abbreviated BHmax), is typically measured in units of megagauss-oersteds (MG⋅Oe).

title: Oersted


text:
Electrum

Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper and other metals. Its color ranges from pale to bright yellow, depending on the proportions of gold and silver. It has been produced artificially and is also known as "green gold".

Electrum was used as early as the third millennium BC in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, sometimes as an exterior coating to the pyramidions atop ancient Egyptian pyramids and obelisks. It was also used in the making of ancient drinking vessels. The first known metal coins made were of electrum, dating back to the end of the 7th century or the beginning of the 6th century BC.

Etymology
The name electrum is the Latinized form of the Greek word ἤλεκτρον (ḗlektron), mentioned in the Odyssey, referring to a metallic substance consisting of gold alloyed with silver. The same word was also used for the substance amber, likely because of the pale yellow color of certain varieties. It is from amber’s electrostatic properties that the modern English words electron and electricity are derived. Electrum was often referred to as "white gold" in ancient times but could be more accurately described as pale gold because it is usually pale yellow or yellowish-white in color. The modern use of the term white gold usually concerns gold alloyed with any one or a combination of nickel, silver, platinum and palladium to produce a silver-colored gold.

Composition
Electrum consists primarily of gold and silver but is sometimes found with traces of platinum, copper and other metals. The name is mostly applied informally to compositions between 20–80% gold and 80–20% silver, but these are strictly called gold or silver depending on the dominant element. Analysis of the composition of electrum in ancient Greek coinage dating from about 600 BC shows that the gold content was about 55.5% in the coinage issued by Phocaea. In the early classical period the gold content of electrum ranged from 46% in Phokaia to 43% in Mytilene. In later coinage from these areas, dating to 326 BC, the gold content averaged 40% to 41%. In the Hellenistic period electrum coins with a regularly decreasing proportion of gold were issued by the Carthaginians. In the later Eastern Roman Empire controlled from Constantinople the purity of the gold coinage was reduced

History

Electrum is mentioned in an account of an expedition sent by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt. It is also discussed by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia.

Early coinage
The earliest known electrum coins, Lydian coins and East Greek coins found under the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, are currently dated to the last quarter of the 7th century BC (625–600 BC). Electrum is believed to have been used in coins c. 600 BC in Lydia during the reign of Alyattes.

Electrum was much better for coinage than gold, mostly because it was harder and more durable, but also because techniques for refining gold were not widespread at the time. The gold content of naturally occurring electrum in modern western Anatolia ranges from 70% to 90%, in contrast to the 45–55% of gold in electrum used in ancient Lydian coinage of the same geographical area. This suggests that the Lydians had already solved the refining technology for silver and were adding refined silver to the local native electrum some decades before introducing pure silver coins.

In Lydia, electrum was minted into coins weighing 4.7 g, each valued at $1/undefined$ stater (meaning "standard"). Three of these coins—with a weight of about 14.1 g—totaled one stater, about one month's pay for a soldier. To complement the stater, fractions were made: the trite (third), the hekte (sixth), and so forth, including $1/undefined$ of a stater, and even down to $1/undefined$ and $1/undefined$ of a stater. The $1/undefined$ stater was about 0.14 g to 0.15 g. Larger denominations, such as a one stater coin, were minted as well.

Because of variation in the composition of electrum, it was difficult to determine the exact worth of each coin. Widespread trading was hampered by this problem, as the intrinsic value of each electrum coin could not be easily determined. This suggests that one reason for the invention of coinage in that area was to increase the profits from seigniorage by issuing currency with a lower gold content than the commonly circulating metal.

These difficulties were eliminated circa 570 BC when the Croeseids, coins of pure gold and silver, were introduced. However, electrum currency remained common until approximately 350 BC. The simplest reason for this was that, because of the gold content, one 14.1 gram stater was worth as much as ten 14.1 gram silver pieces.

title: Electrum


text:
Skin tag

A skin tag, or acrochordon (: acrochorda), is a small benign tumor that forms primarily in areas where the skin forms creases (or rubs together), such as the neck, armpit and groin. They may also occur on the face, usually on the eyelids. Though tags up to half an inch (12.7 mm) long have been seen, they are typically the size of a grain of rice. The surface of an acrochordon may be smooth or irregular in appearance and is often raised from the surface of the skin on a fleshy stalk called a peduncle. Microscopically, an acrochordon consists of a fibrovascular core, sometimes also with fat cells, covered by an unremarkable epidermis. However, tags may become irritated by shaving, clothing, jewellery, or eczema.

Etiology
Skin tags are thought to occur from skin rubbing against skin, since they are often found in skin creases and folds. Studies have shown existence of low-risk human papillomaviruses 6 and 11 in skin tags, hinting at a possible role in their pathogenesis, although a 2012 study found no association between skin tags and either low- or high-risk HPV. Acrochorda have been reported to have a prevalence of 46% in the general population. A causal genetic component is thought to exist. They are also more common in women than in men. Acrochorda were once thought to be associated with colorectal polyps, but studies have shown no such connection exists. Rarely, they can be associated with Birt–Hogg–Dubé syndrome, acromegaly, or polycystic ovary syndrome.

Elevated blood sugar and insulin is linked to an increased incidence of skin tags through an unknown mechanism.

Treatment
Removal, if desired or warranted, can be done by a dermatologist, a general practitioner, or a similarly trained professional who may use cauterization, cryosurgery, excision, laser, or surgical ligation to remove the acrochorda. Varied home remedies are unsupported by medical evidence.

title: Skin tag