text:
Radio broadcasting

Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio station, while in satellite radio the radio waves are broadcast by a satellite in Earth orbit. To receive the content the listener must have a broadcast radio receiver (radio). Stations are often affiliated with a radio network that provides content in a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast, or both. The encoding of a radio broadcast depends on whether it uses an analog or digital signal. Analog radio broadcasts use one of two types of radio wave modulation: amplitude modulation for AM radio, or frequency modulation for FM radio. Newer, digital radio stations transmit in several different digital audio standards, such as DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting), HD radio, or DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale).

History
The earliest radio stations were radiotelegraphy systems and did not carry audio. For audio broadcasts to be possible, electronic detection and amplification devices had to be incorporated.

The thermionic valve, a kind of vacuum tube, was invented in 1904 by the English physicist John Ambrose Fleming. He developed a device that he called an "oscillation valve," because it passes current in only one direction. The heated filament, or cathode, was capable of thermionic emission of electrons that would flow to the plate (or anode) when it was at a higher voltage. Electrons, however, could not pass in the reverse direction because the plate was not heated, and thus not capable of thermionic emission of electrons. Later known as the Fleming valve, it could be used as a rectifier of alternating current, and as a radio wave detector. This greatly improved the crystal set, which rectified the radio signal using an early solid-state diode based on a crystal and a so-called cat's whisker. However, an amplifier was still required.

The triode (mercury-vapor filled with a control grid) was created on March 4, 1906, by the Austrian Robert von Lieben;  independently, on October 25, 1906,  Lee De Forest patented his three-element Audion. It was not put to practical use until 1912 when its amplifying ability became recognized by researchers. By about 1920, valve technology had matured to the point where radio broadcasting was quickly becoming viable. However, an early audio transmission that could be termed a broadcast may have occurred on Christmas Eve in 1906 by Reginald Fessenden, although this is disputed. While many early experimenters attempted to create systems similar to radiotelephone devices by which only two parties were meant to communicate, there were others who intended to transmit to larger audiences. Charles Herrold started broadcasting in California in 1909 and was carrying audio by the next year. (Herrold's station eventually became KCBS).

In The Hague, the Netherlands, PCGG started broadcasting on November 6, 1919, making it arguably the first commercial broadcasting station. In 1916, Frank Conrad, an electrical engineer employed at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, began broadcasting from his Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania garage with the call letters 8XK. Later, the station was moved to the top of the Westinghouse factory building in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Westinghouse relaunched the station as KDKA on November 2, 1920, as the first commercially licensed radio station in the United States. The commercial broadcasting designation came from the type of broadcast license; advertisements did not air until years later. The first licensed broadcast in the United States came from KDKA itself: the results of the Harding/Cox Presidential Election. The Montreal station that became CFCF began broadcast programming on May 20, 1920, and the Detroit station that became WWJ began program broadcasts beginning on August 20, 1920, although neither held a license at the time.

In 1920, wireless broadcasts for entertainment began in the UK from the Marconi Research Centre 2MT at Writtle near Chelmsford, England. A famous broadcast from Marconi's New Street Works factory in Chelmsford was made by the famous soprano Dame Nellie Melba on June 15, 1920, where she sang two arias and her famous trill. She was the first artist of international renown to participate in direct radio broadcasts. The 2MT station began to broadcast regular entertainment in 1922. The BBC was amalgamated in 1922 and received a Royal Charter in 1926, making it the first national broadcaster in the world, followed by Czech Radio and other European broadcasters in 1923.

Radio Argentina began regularly scheduled transmissions from the Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires on August 27, 1920, making its own priority claim. The station got its license on November 19, 1923. The delay was due to the lack of official Argentine licensing procedures before that date. This station continued regular broadcasting of entertainment, and cultural fare for several decades.

Radio in education soon followed, and colleges across the U.S. began adding radio broadcasting courses to their curricula. Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts introduced one of the first broadcasting majors in 1932 when the college teamed up with WLOE in Boston to have students broadcast programs. By 1931, a majority of U.S. households owned at least one radio receiver.

In line to ITU Radio Regulations (article1.61) each broadcasting station shall be classified by the service in which it operates permanently or temporarily.

Types
Broadcasting by radio takes several forms. These include AM and FM stations. There are several subtypes, namely commercial broadcasting, non-commercial educational (NCE) public broadcasting and non-profit varieties as well as community radio, student-run campus radio stations, and hospital radio stations can be found throughout the world. Many stations broadcast on shortwave bands using AM technology that can be received over thousands of miles (especially at night). For example, the BBC, VOA, VOR, and Deutsche Welle have transmitted via shortwave to Africa and Asia. These broadcasts are very sensitive to atmospheric conditions and solar activity.

Nielsen Audio, formerly known as Arbitron, the United States-based company that reports on radio audiences, defines a "radio station" as a government-licensed AM or FM station; an HD Radio (primary or multicast) station; an internet stream of an existing government-licensed station; one of the satellite radio channels from XM Satellite Radio or Sirius Satellite Radio; or, potentially, a station that is not government licensed.

AM
AM stations were the earliest broadcasting stations to be developed. AM refers to amplitude modulation, a mode of broadcasting radio waves by varying the amplitude of the carrier signal in response to the amplitude of the signal to be transmitted. The medium-wave band is used worldwide for AM broadcasting. Europe also uses the long wave band. In response to the growing popularity of FM stereo radio stations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, some North American stations began broadcasting in AM stereo, though this never gained popularity and very few receivers were ever sold.

The signal is subject to interference from electrical storms (lightning) and other electromagnetic interference (EMI). One advantage of AM radio signal is that it can be detected (turned into sound) with simple equipment. If a signal is strong enough, not even a power source is needed; building an unpowered crystal radio receiver was a common childhood project in the early decades of AM broadcasting.

AM broadcasts occur on North American airwaves in the medium wave frequency range of 525 to 1,705 kHz (known as the "standard broadcast band"). The band was expanded in the 1990s by adding nine channels from 1,605 to 1,705 kHz. Channels are spaced every 10 kHz in the Americas, and generally every 9 kHz everywhere else.

AM transmissions cannot be ionospheric propagated during the day due to strong absorption in the D-layer of the ionosphere. In a crowded channel environment, this means that the power of regional channels which share a frequency must be reduced at night or directionally beamed in order to avoid interference, which reduces the potential nighttime audience. Some stations have frequencies unshared with other stations in North America; these are called clear-channel stations. Many of them can be heard across much of the country at night. During the night, absorption largely disappears and permits signals to travel to much more distant locations via ionospheric reflections. However, fading of the signal can be severe at night.

AM radio transmitters can transmit audio frequencies up to 15 kHz (now limited to 10 kHz in the US due to FCC rules designed to reduce interference), but most receivers are only capable of reproducing frequencies up to 5 kHz or less. At the time that AM broadcasting began in the 1920s, this provided adequate fidelity for existing microphones, 78 rpm recordings, and loudspeakers. The fidelity of sound equipment subsequently improved considerably, but the receivers did not. Reducing the bandwidth of the receivers reduces the cost of manufacturing and makes them less prone to interference. AM stations are never assigned adjacent channels in the same service area. This prevents the sideband power generated by two stations from interfering with each other. Bob Carver created an AM stereo tuner employing notch filtering that demonstrated that an AM broadcast can meet or exceed the 15 kHz baseband bandwidth allotted to FM stations without objectionable interference. After several years, the tuner was discontinued. Bob Carver had left the company and the Carver Corporation later cut the number of models produced before discontinuing production completely.

As well as on the medium wave bands, amplitude modulation (AM) is also used on the shortwave and long wave bands. Shortwave is used largely for national broadcasters, international propaganda, or religious broadcasting organizations. Shortwave transmissions can have international or inter-continental range depending on atmospheric conditions. Long-wave AM broadcasting occurs in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The ground wave propagation at these frequencies is little affected by daily changes in the ionosphere, so broadcasters need not reduce power at night to avoid interference with other transmitters.

FM
FM refers to frequency modulation, and occurs on VHF airwaves in the frequency range of 88 to 108 MHz everywhere except Japan and Russia. Russia, like the former Soviet Union, uses 65.9 to 74 MHz frequencies in addition to the world standard. Japan uses the 76 to 90 MHz frequency band.

Edwin Howard Armstrong invented wide-band FM radio in the early 1930s to overcome the problem of radio-frequency interference (RFI), which plagued AM radio reception. At the same time, greater fidelity was made possible by spacing stations further apart in the radio frequency spectrum. Instead of 10 kHz apart, as on the AM band in the US, FM channels are 200 kHz (0.2 MHz) apart. In other countries, greater spacing is sometimes mandatory, such as in New Zealand, which uses 700 kHz spacing (previously 800 kHz). The improved fidelity made available was far in advance of the audio equipment of the 1940s, but wide interchannel spacing was chosen to take advantage of the noise-suppressing feature of wideband FM.

Bandwidth of 200 kHz is not needed to accommodate an audio signal — 20 kHz to 30 kHz is all that is necessary for a narrowband FM signal. The 200 kHz bandwidth allowed room for ±75 kHz signal deviation from the assigned frequency, plus guard bands to reduce or eliminate adjacent channel interference. The larger bandwidth allows for broadcasting a 15 kHz bandwidth audio signal plus a 38 kHz stereo "subcarrier"—a piggyback signal that rides on the main signal. Additional unused capacity is used by some broadcasters to transmit utility functions such as background music for public areas, GPS auxiliary signals, or financial market data.

The AM radio problem of interference at night was addressed in a different way. At the time FM was set up, the available frequencies were far higher in the spectrum than those used for AM radio - by a factor of approximately 100. Using these frequencies meant that even at far higher power, the range of a given FM signal was much shorter; thus its market was more local than for AM radio. The reception range at night is the same as in the daytime. All FM broadcast transmissions are line-of-sight, and ionospheric bounce is not viable. The much larger bandwidths, compared to AM and SSB, are more susceptible to phase dispersion. Propagation speeds are fastest in the ionosphere at the lowest sideband frequency. The celerity difference between the highest and lowest sidebands is quite apparent to the listener. Such distortion occurs up to frequencies of approximately 50 MHz. Higher frequencies do not reflect from the ionosphere, nor from storm clouds. Moon reflections have been used in some experiments, but require impractical power levels.

The original FM radio service in the U.S. was the Yankee Network, located in New England. Regular FM broadcasting began in 1939 but did not pose a significant threat to the AM broadcasting industry. It required purchase of a special receiver. The frequencies used, 42 to 50 MHz, were not those used today. The change to the current frequencies, 88 to 108 MHz, began after the end of World War II and was to some extent imposed by AM broadcasters as an attempt to cripple what was by now realized to be a potentially serious threat.

FM radio on the new band had to begin from the ground floor. As a commercial venture, it remained a little-used audio enthusiasts' medium until the 1960s. The more prosperous AM stations, or their owners, acquired FM licenses and often broadcast the same programming on the FM station as on the AM station ("simulcasting"). The FCC limited this practice in the 1960s. By the 1980s, since almost all new radios included both AM and FM tuners, FM became the dominant medium, especially in cities. Because of its greater range, AM remained more common in rural environments.

Pirate radio
Pirate radio is illegal or non-regulated radio transmission. It is most commonly used to describe illegal broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes. Sometimes it is used for illegal two-way radio operation. Its history can be traced back to the unlicensed nature of the transmission, but historically there has been occasional use of sea vessels—fitting the most common perception of a pirate—as broadcasting bases. Rules and regulations vary largely from country to country, but often the term pirate radio describes the unlicensed broadcast of FM radio, AM radio, or shortwave signals over a wide range. In some places, radio stations are legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are received—especially when the signals cross a national boundary. In other cases, a broadcast may be considered "pirate" due to the type of content, its transmission format, or the transmitting power (wattage) of the station, even if the transmission is not technically illegal (such as a webcast or an amateur radio transmission). Pirate radio stations are sometimes referred to as bootleg radio or clandestine stations.

Terrestrial digital radio
Digital radio broadcasting has emerged, first in Europe (the UK in 1995 and Germany in 1999), and later in the United States, France, the Netherlands, South Africa, and many other countries worldwide. The simplest system is named DAB Digital Radio, for Digital Audio Broadcasting, and uses the public domain EUREKA 147 (Band III) system. DAB is used mainly in the UK and South Africa. Germany and the Netherlands use the DAB and DAB+ systems, and France uses the L-Band system of DAB Digital Radio.

The broadcasting regulators of the United States and Canada have chosen to use HD radio, an in-band on-channel system that puts digital broadcasts at frequencies adjacent to the analog broadcast. HD Radio is owned by a consortium of private companies that is called iBiquity. An international non-profit consortium Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM), has introduced the public domain DRM system, which is used by a relatively small number of broadcasters worldwide.

International broadcasting
Broadcasters in one country have several reasons to reach out to an audience in other countries. Commercial broadcasters may simply see a business opportunity to sell advertising or subscriptions to a broader audience. This is more efficient than broadcasting to a single country, because domestic entertainment programs and information gathered by domestic news staff can be cheaply repackaged for non-domestic audiences.

Governments typically have different motivations for funding international broadcasting. One clear reason is for ideological, or propaganda reasons. Many government-owned stations portray their nation in a positive, non-threatening way. This could be to encourage business investment in or tourism to the nation. Another reason is to combat a negative image produced by other nations or internal dissidents, or insurgents. Radio RSA, the broadcasting arm of the apartheid South African government, is an example of this. A third reason is to promote the ideology of the broadcaster. For example, a program on Radio Moscow from the 1960s to the 1980s was What is Communism?

A second reason is to advance a nation's foreign policy interests and agenda by disseminating its views on international affairs or on the events in particular parts of the world. During the Cold War the American Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty and Indian Radio AIR were founded to broadcast news from "behind the Iron Curtain" that was otherwise being censored and promote dissent and occasionally, to disseminate disinformation. Currently, the US operates similar services aimed at Cuba (Radio y Televisión Martí) and the People's Republic of China, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea (Radio Free Asia).

Besides ideological reasons, many stations are run by religious broadcasters and are used to provide religious education, religious music, or worship service programs. For example, Vatican Radio, established in 1931, broadcasts such programs. Another station, such as HCJB or Trans World Radio will carry brokered programming from evangelists. In the case of the Broadcasting Services of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, both governmental and religious programming is provided.

Extensions
Extensions of traditional radio-wave broadcasting for audio broadcasting in general include cable radio, local wire television networks, DTV radio, satellite radio, and Internet radio via streaming media on the Internet.

Satellite
The enormous entry costs of space-based satellite transmitters and restrictions on available radio spectrum licenses has restricted growth of Satellite radio broadcasts. In the US and Canada, just two services, XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio exist. Both XM and Sirius are owned by Sirius XM Satellite Radio, which was formed by the merger of XM and Sirius on July 29, 2008, whereas in Canada, XM Radio Canada and Sirius Canada remained separate companies until 2010. Worldspace in Africa and Asia, and MobaHO! in Japan and the ROK were two unsuccessful satellite radio operators which have gone out of business.

Program formats
Radio program formats differ by country, regulation, and markets. For instance, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission designates the 88–92 megahertz band in the U.S. for non-profit or educational programming, with advertising prohibited.

In addition, formats change in popularity as time passes and technology improves. Early radio equipment only allowed program material to be broadcast in real time, known as live broadcasting. As technology for sound recording improved, an increasing proportion of broadcast programming used pre-recorded material. A current trend is the automation of radio stations. Some stations now operate without direct human intervention by using entirely pre-recorded material sequenced by computer control.

title: Radio broadcasting


text:
Richard Keith (actor)

Keith Thibodeaux (born December 1, 1950), also known as Richard Keith, is an American actor and musician, best known for playing Little Ricky on the television sitcoms I Love Lucy and The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour. He was billed as Richard Keith because his Cajun French last name, "Thibodeaux", was considered too difficult to pronounce by producer Desi Arnaz. He is the last living regular appearing cast member from I Love Lucy.

I Love Lucy

Thibodeaux showed skill on the drums at a young age, and was making $500 ($0 in dollars ) a week at the age of 3 while touring with the Horace Heidt Orchestra. His father took him to audition for the part of Little Ricky in 1955, "I walked on the set and there was Lucy, she was standing there and she was looking at me," he said. "She said 'OK he's cute, but what does he do?' My dad said, 'Well he plays the drums' and she said, 'Oh, come on--I can't believe that.' Then, she says 'Look, we have a drum set over there, go ahead and let him play.' Eventually Desi Arnaz himself came over and started jamming with me on the drums and then he kind of stood up and said 'Well, I think we found Little Ricky.'"

According to Lucie Arnaz, who was interviewed on the TV show Archive of American Television, he became like part of the family. "For a long time I thought Keith was related to us, because he went everywhere with us. Desi (Jr.) considered him his best friend and [Keith] was responsible for teaching him the drums. He came over to our house on many weekends and traveled with them during the summer. My mother kind of adopted him. He is in all of our home movies and photographs growing up and was a great kid, and still is."

In 1964 Thibodeaux appeared for a split second in an episode of The Lucy Show titled "Lucy is a Process Server." Initially he was featured in a comedic sequence at a train station in which a vending machine malfunctions. However, the scene was cut when the show ran too long. After the episode was edited, Thibodeaux is only seen for a moment, entering the station. Nevertheless, Thibodeaux remained in the credits listed as Richard Keith, the actor who played "Little Boy."

Other TV appearances
As a child, he made 13 appearances on The Andy Griffith Show, between 1962 and 1966, usually as Opie's friend "Johnny Paul Jason". He later described The Andy Griffith Show set as a far more laid-back and pleasant experience compared to I Love Lucy, though due to age differences between himself and Ron Howard, he never grew as close to that show's cast as he did to the Arnaz family. He also accepted small roles on other popular television shows.

Music career
In 1969, Thibodeaux joined the rock group David and the Giants who were based in Laurel, Mississippi. The group recorded in its early years with Capitol Records, Fame Records, and Crazy Horse Records, primarily touring throughout the South, and enjoyed a few regional hits which were recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and were well known in the Northern Soul music scene in England. After turning 21 in 1971, Thibodeaux received a final payment of $8,000 from a trust fund set up during his days on I Love Lucy

Thibodeaux developed a drug problem and eventually left the band, which broke up soon after. He became a born again Christian in 1974. The band leader, David Huff, and other members later converted. The group got back together. The band released a number of albums in the 1980s and 1990s for CBS Priority Records (Epic Records), The Benson Company, ABC Word Records (Myrrh) label, and the band's own label Giant Records. They released a CD in 2014 titled Still Rockin. A live David and the Giants album, The Best Is Yet To Come, and a DVD of the live performance, was recorded and released in August 2017, which marked the band's 40th anniverary. The band was honored in 2017, along with other notable Mississippi musicians such as Steve Forbert, Tammy Wynette, George Soule, and Elvis Presley, by receiving "The Jimmie" Mississippi Dreamers (Jimmie Rodgers Award) for their musical contributions as Mississippi artists at a special concert at Peavey Electronics Corporate headquarters in Meridian, MS, along with Hartley Peavey.

In 1990, Thibodeaux became the executive director for his wife's company, Ballet Magnificat! which tours nationally and internationally. In 2017 the couple launched the Ballet Magnificat! Brasil dance company and trainee program headquartered in Curitiba, Brazil.

Personal life
Raised as a Roman Catholic, Thibodeaux went to school at St. Victor's elementary in West Hollywood and St. Jane Frances de Chantal School in North Hollywood. He attended Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks for two years before his parents separated in 1966.

After his parents separated, Keith, his mother, and siblings moved back to Lafayette, Louisiana. He graduated from Lafayette High School where he continued to play drums in rock and rhythm and blues bands. He left Louisiana for Mississippi in late 1969 after going to college for a short period where he said he "majored in drinking beer and playing pool" to pursue a career with the band David and the Giants.

In 1976, he met and married ballet dancer Kathy Denton in Jackson, Mississippi. The couple moved briefly to Southern California in 1977 where he was asked to join the pop band Starbuck famous for the late '70s hit "Moonlight Feels Right". Thibodeaux returned to Mississippi in 1978, where he, his wife and daughter Tara (b. 1979) eventually settled in Jackson, Mississippi. Thibodeaux played with jazz bands locally for a brief time before joining a newly revamped Christian rock band, David and the Giants, in 1979.

Thibodeaux's autobiography Life After Lucy was published in 1994.

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

title: Richard Keith (actor)


text:
Richard Keith

Richard Keith may refer to:

 * Richard Keith (actor) (born 1950), American actor known for appearing on I Love Lucy
 * Dick Keith (1933–1967), Northern Irish footballer
 * Richard H. Keith (1842–1905), American known for coal, lumber, railroads and towns
 * Richard Keith (writer/actor/director) (born 1982), American writer, actor and director known for creating The CW series Significant Mother

title: Richard Keith


text:
Islamization of knowledge

The Islamization of Knowledge is a conceptual framework that originates from Islamic philosophy, advocating for the integration of Islamic teachings with modern academic disciplines, such as the social sciences, management sciences, humanities, sciences, engineering, and technology. This model posits that all knowledge and science should be consistent with the principles of Islam, aiming to foster a holistic understanding of the world through an Islamic worldview.

Origins
This initiative traces its roots to the 1977 Makkah conference, an influential event that triggered a dialogue among Islamic intellectuals regarding the role of Islam in shaping knowledge and understanding in the modern world. Among these intellectuals,  Isma'il Raji al-Faruqi played a pivotal role in formalizing and articulating the concept. Al-Faruqi expressed his concerns about the secularization of knowledge in Muslim societies. He discussed "the malaise of the ummah" (the faithful) and argued that the reliance on Western secular tools, categories, and analytical methods led to a disconnect with the ecological and social realities of Muslim nations, and often resulted in the overlooking of breaches of Islamic ethics.

Al-Faruqi advocated for the revival of methods used in early Muslim philosophy, the restoration of ijtihad (independent reasoning), and the integration of scientific methodologies within the boundaries of Islam. His theoretical framework and work plan for this concept were outlined in his 1982 book, "Islamization of Knowledge: General Principles and Work Plan," which continues to be a seminal reference for this project.

Principles and approach
The Islamization of Knowledge proposes an integrated approach to education that combines Islamic teachings with modern academic disciplines, including scientific, social, and humanistic fields. This concept involves critiquing and re-evaluating these disciplines through an Islamic perspective.

Abdullah Berghout, a contemporary scholar, has developed a framework that adapts a quality-management system model for the Islamization process. This framework aims to incorporate Islamic perspectives into modern academic disciplines and focuses on the development of educational policies, curricula, and continuous improvement.

Frameworks and Implementation Steps
Al-Faruqi’s 12-step work plan and Berghout’s framework are two models discussed in the context of Islamization. Al-Faruqi's framework involves integrating Islamic principles with modern disciplines by becoming proficient in modern science, understanding Islamic knowledge in those fields, and demonstrating the relevance of Islam to these disciplines. The goal is to compare and relate Islamic values and ethics with modern social sciences and introduce an Islamic perspective that aligns with Muslim values.

Berghout’s framework emphasizes the development of educational policies, curricula, and continuous improvement processes to ensure the effectiveness of Islamization. This model views Islamization as a quality process involving input, procedure, output, and feedback, integrating Islamic perspectives into all stages of the educational process. Berghout's approach focuses on three essential domains of learner progression: intellectual, psychomotor, and affective, with particular emphasis on the affective domain.

The implementation steps include becoming proficient in modern disciplines, providing an overview of disciplines including their history, approach, and primary contributors, mastering the Islamic legacy through anthology and analysis, establishing the significance of Islam to various disciplines, critically evaluating modern disciplines from an Islamic perspective, creatively examining and synthesizing the Islamic legacy with modern disciplines, and recasting these disciplines within an Islamic framework.

Reception and critiques
Supporters of this concept argue that it allows Muslims to maintain their religious identity in a secular world while simultaneously benefiting from modern scientific and technological advancements. Critics, however, express concerns over the potential conflation of religion and science and its impact on free inquiry, as well as the risk of imposing a single interpretation of Islam on diverse Muslim societies.

Impact and legacy
The concept of the Islamization of Knowledge has significantly influenced the establishment of various academic institutions, leading to the establishment of institutions such as the International Institute of Islamic Thought, which focus on intellectual development and research inspired by the principles of the Islamization of Knowledge.

title: Islamization of knowledge


text:
Outsider art

Outsider art is art made by self-taught individuals who are untrained and untutored in the traditional arts with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds.

The term outsider art was coined in 1972 as the title of a book by art critic Roger Cardinal. It is an English equivalent for art brut (, "raw art" or "rough art"), a label created in the 1940s by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture. Dubuffet focused particularly on art by those on the outside of the established art scene, using as examples psychiatric hospital patients, hermits, and spiritualists.

Outsider art has emerged as a successful art marketing category; an annual Outsider Art Fair has taken place in New York since 1993, and there are at least two regularly published journals dedicated to the subject. The term is sometimes applied as a marketing label for art created by people who are outside the mainstream "art world" or "art gallery system", regardless of their circumstances or the content of their work. A more specific term, "outsider music", was later adapted for musicians.

Art of the mentally ill
Interest in the art of the mentally ill, along with that of children and the makers of "peasant art", was first demonstrated by "Der Blaue Reiter" group: Wassily Kandinsky, August Macke, Franz Marc, Alexej von Jawlensky, and others. What the artists perceived in the work of these groups was an expressive power born of their perceived lack of sophistication. Examples of this were reproduced in 1912 in the first and only issue of their publication, Der Blaue Reiter Almanac. During World War I, Macke was killed at Champagne in 1914 and Marc was killed at Verdun in 1916; the gap left by these deaths was to some extent filled by Paul Klee, who continued to draw inspiration from these 'primitives'.

Interest in the art of insane asylum inmates continued to grow in the 1920s. In 1921, Dr. Walter Morgenthaler published his book Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (A Psychiatric Patient as Artist) about Adolf Wölfli, a psychotic mental patient in his care. Wölfli had spontaneously taken up drawing, and this activity seemed to calm him. His most outstanding work was an illustrated epic of 45 volumes in which he narrated his own imaginary life story. With 25,000 pages, 1,600 illustrations, and 1,500 collages, it is a monumental work. Wölfli also produced a large number of smaller works, some of which were sold or given as gifts. His work is on display at the Adolf Wölfli Foundation in the Museum of Fine Art, Bern.

A defining moment was the publication of Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill) in 1922, by Hans Prinzhorn. This was the first formal study of psychiatric works, based upon a compilation of thousands of examples from European institutions. The book and the art collection gained much attention from avant-garde artists of the time, including Paul Klee, Max Ernst, and Jean Dubuffet.

People with some formal artistic training as well as well-established artists are not immune from mental illness, and may also be institutionalized. For example, William Kurelek, later awarded the Order of Canada for his artistic life work, as a young man was admitted to the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital where he was treated for schizophrenia. In the hospital he painted, producing The Maze, a dark depiction of his tortured youth. He was transferred from the Maudsley to Netherne Hospital from November 1953 to January 1955, to work with Edward Adamson (1911–1996), a pioneer of art therapy, and creator of the Adamson Collection.

Jean Dubuffet and art brut

French artist Jean Dubuffet was particularly struck by Bildnerei der Geisteskranken and began his own collection of such art, which he called art brut or raw art. In 1948 he formed the Compagnie de l'Art Brut along with other artists, including André Breton and Claude Lévi-Strauss. The collection he established became known as the Collection de l'art brut and the curator was Slavko Kopač for almost three decades. It contains thousands of works and is now permanently housed in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Dubuffet characterized art brut as:

Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses – where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere – are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professionals. After a certain familiarity with these flourishings of an exalted feverishness, lived so fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade.
 * — Jean Dubuffet, "Place à l'incivisme" (December 1987 – February 1988).

Dubuffet argued that 'culture', that is mainstream culture, managed to assimilate every new development in art, and by doing so took away whatever power it might have had. The result was to asphyxiate genuine expression. Art brut was his solution to this problem – only art brut was immune to the influences of culture, immune to being absorbed and assimilated, because the artists themselves were not willing or able to be assimilated.

Dubuffet's championing of Art Brut would not last long. Scholars argue Dubuffet's distaste for the mainstream art world helped ensure that art brut and the Compagnie de l'Art Brut would not survive on a commercial basis. Dubuffet would kill art brut as he defined it in his quest for its authenticity. Three years after the Compagnie de l'Art Brut was formed, Dubuffet dissolved it, caving in to form the more conventional Collection de l'art brut afterward.

Cultural context
The interest in "outsider" practices among twentieth-century artists and critics can be seen as part of a larger emphasis on the rejection of established values within the modernist art milieu. The early part of the 20th century gave rise to Cubism and the Dada, Constructivist, and Futurist movements in art, all of which involved a dramatic movement away from cultural forms of the past. Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, for example, abandoned "painterly" technique to allow chance operations a role in determining the form of his works, or simply to recontextualize existing "ready-made" objects as art. Mid-century artists, including Pablo Picasso, looked outside the traditions of high culture for inspiration, drawing from the artifacts of "primitive" societies, the unschooled art made by children, and vulgar advertising graphics. Dubuffet's championing of the art brut – of the insane and others at the margins of society – is yet another example of avant-garde art challenging established cultural values. As with analysis of these other art movements, current discourse indicates art brut is innately tied to primitivism due to its similarity in its borrowing of personal "de-patriation" and exoticization of familiar yet alien forms.

Terminology
A number of terms are used to describe art that is loosely understood as "outside" of official culture. Definitions of these terms vary and overlap. The editors of Raw Vision, a leading journal in the field, suggest that "Whatever views we have about the value of controversy itself, it is important to sustain creative discussion by way of an agreed vocabulary". Consequently, they lament the use of "outsider artist" to refer to almost any untrained artist. "It is not enough to be untrained, clumsy or naïve. Outsider Art is virtually synonymous with Art Brut in both spirit and meaning, to that rarity of art produced by those who do not know its name."

 * Art Brut: Coined by Jean Dubuffet, the term translated literally from French means "raw art".  'Raw' is analogous in that it has not been through the academic 'cooking' process: i.e. the world of art schools, galleries, and museums. Dubuffet's original definition pertains strictly to the ‘raw art’ created by the autodidactic and shunned fringes of society.
 * Folk art: Folk art originally suggested crafts and decorative skills associated with peasant communities in Europe – though presumably it could equally apply to any indigenous culture. It has broadened to include any product of practical craftsmanship and decorative skill – everything from chain-saw animals to hub-cap buildings. A key distinction between folk and outsider art is that folk art typically embodies traditional forms and social values, where outsider art stands in some marginal relationship to society's mainstream.
 * Intuitive art/Visionary art: Raw Vision Magazine's preferred general terms for outsider art. It describes them as deliberate umbrella terms. However, visionary art, unlike other definitions here can often refer to the subject matter of the works, which includes images of a spiritual or religious nature. Intuitive art is probably the most general term available. Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art based in Chicago operates a museum dedicated to the study and exhibition of intuitive and outsider art. The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland is dedicated to the collection and display of visionary art.
 * Marginal art/Art singulier: Essentially the same as Neuve Invention; refers to artists on the margins of the art world.
 * Naïve art: Another term commonly applied to untrained artists who aspire to "normal" artistic status, i.e. they have a much more conscious interaction with the mainstream art world than do outsider artists.
 * Neuve invention: Used to describe artists who, although marginal, have some interaction with mainstream culture. They may be doing art part-time for instance. The expression was coined by Dubuffet too; strictly speaking, it refers only to a special part of the Collection de l'art brut.
 * Visionary environments: Buildings and sculpture parks built by visionary artists – ranging from decorated houses to large areas incorporating a large number of individual sculptures with a tightly associated theme. Examples include Watts Towers by Simon Rodia, Buddha Park and Sala Keoku by Bunleua Sulilat, and The Palais idéal by Ferdinand Cheval.

title: Outsider art


text:
User:Ejrh

Person
Edmund Horner was born on the 19th of December 1978, in Wellington, New Zealand, and still lives there. On Earth, the countries he has visited are Singapore, France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Australia, the Iranian embassy in Wellington, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, the Czech Republic and Hong Kong.

In 2005 he finally finished his degree in Computer Science and Mathematics at Victoria University of Wellington. He then stayed on and did BSc Honours in Logic and Computation. He now works in full time in Wellington.

Edmund has a blog at http://ejrh.wordpress.com/. He also has a "home page" at homepages.paradise.net.nz/~ejrh.

History

 * 2003-01-23 : Saw mention of the Wikipedia on Slashdot.

 * 2003-01-23 : Went to www.wikipedia.org and read approximately 170 articles in areas such as Information theory, Graph theory, Knot theory, Game theory, Chaos theory, Computational complexity theory, Computability theory (it occurs to me that "theory" must be my word-of-the-day), the Wannsee conference, New Zealand, Copyright, Anti-psychiatry, Wikipedia FAQ...

 * 2003-01-23 : Attempted editing the Taylor series article, to replace equations with TeX.

 * 2003-01-23 : Created a Wikipedia account.

 * 2003-01-23 : Actually saved changes from my edit to the Taylor series article.

 * 2003-01-23 : Began this history.

 * 2003-01-23 : Created the MIX article, and added to The Art of Computer Programming.

 * 2003-01-24 : An informal survey of 100 random pages.

 * 2003-02-21 : Revisited this history. I have continued TeXifying equations on Wikipedia, which has often resulted in faulty equations.  I will try harder.

 * 2003-12-18 : After a long break (my excuse is university) with only sporadic editing, I finally got round to adding a worked example of Markov chains.

 * 2003-12-18 : Updated Subversion article. (I use Subversion a lot myself: I strongly recommend it.)

 * 2004-01-26 : Repeated the survey of 100 random pages.

 * 2012-01-23 : Realise it's been nine years since I joined, and more than eight since I contributed anything substantial! But I've definitely supported Wikipedia by heavy use of it.

title: User:Ejrh


text:
Dutch elm disease

Dutch elm disease (DED) is caused by a member of the sac fungi (Ascomycota) affecting elm trees, and is spread by elm bark beetles. Believed to be originally native to Asia, the disease was accidentally introduced into America, Europe, and New Zealand. In these regions it has devastated native populations of elms that did not have resistance to the disease. The name "Dutch elm disease" refers to its identification in 1921 and later in the Netherlands by Dutch phytopathologists Bea Schwarz and Christine Buisman, who both worked with professor Johanna Westerdijk. The disease affects species in the genera Ulmus and Zelkova, therefore it is not specific to the Dutch elm hybrid.

Overview
Dutch elm disease (DED) is caused by ascomycete microfungi. Three species are now recognized:
 * Ophiostoma ulmi, which afflicted Europe from 1910, reaching North America on imported timber in 1928.
 * Ophiostoma himal-ulmi, a species endemic to the western Himalaya.
 * Ophiostoma novo-ulmi, an extremely virulent species from Japan which was first described in Europe and North America in the 1940s and has devastated elms in both continents since the late 1960s.

DED is spread in North America by three species of bark beetles (Family: Curculionidae, Subfamily: Scolytinae):
 * The native elm bark beetle, Hylurgopinus rufipes.
 * The smaller European elm bark beetle, Scolytus multistriatus.
 * The banded elm bark beetle, Scolytus schevyrewi.

In Europe, while S. multistriatus still acts as a vector for infection, it is much less effective than the large elm bark beetle, S. scolytus. H. rufipes can be a vector for the disease, but is inefficient compared to the other vectors. S. schevyrewi was found in 2003 in Colorado and Utah.

Other reported DED vectors include Scolytus sulcifrons, S. pygmaeus, S. laevis, Pteleobius vittatus and ''Р. kraatzi''. Other elm bark beetle species are also likely vectors.

Field resistance
'Field resistance' is an umbrella term covering the various factors by which some elms avoid infection in the first place, rather than survive it. A clear example would be the European White Elm (Ulmus laevis) which, while having little or no genetic resistance to DED, synthesizes a triterpene, Alnulin, rendering the bark distasteful to the vector beetles, obliging them to look further afield for more suitable elms. Another would be the inability of the beetles to see elms which did not break the silhouette. 'Weeping' elms are often spared infection owing to the beetles' aversion to hanging upside-down while feeding.

Mechanism
In an attempt to block the fungus from spreading farther, the tree reacts by plugging its own xylem tissue with gum and tyloses, bladder-like extensions of the xylem cell wall. As the xylem (one of the two types of vascular tissue produced by the vascular cambium, the other being the phloem) delivers water and nutrients to the rest of the plant, these plugs prevent them from travelling up the trunk of the tree, starving the tree of water and nutrients, which eventually kills it.

Symptoms
The first symptom of infection is usually an upper branch of the tree with leaves starting to wither and yellow in summer, months before the normal autumnal leaf shedding. This morbidity spreads in a progressive manner throughout the tree, with further dieback of branches. Eventually, the roots die, starved of nutrients from the leaves. Often, not all the roots die: the roots of some species, especially the English elm (formerly Ulmus procera), can repeatedly put up suckers, which flourish for approximately 15 years before dying off.

Europe
Dutch elm disease was first noticed in continental Europe in 1910, and spread slowly and eventually extended to all other countries except Greece and Finland. Barendina Gerarda Spierenburg compiled records of trees displaying symptoms from 1900 - 1905 onwards in the Netherlands and her publication of this information in 1921 was one part of the start of extensive research and practical measures to try to halt the disease. In addition the fungus that caused the disease was isolated in 1921 in The Netherlands by Bea Schwarz, a pioneering Dutch phytopathologist, and this discovery would lend the disease its name. Following this, in the 1920s and 30s Christine Buisman, working in the Netherlands and USA, identified the sexual stage of the fungal pathogen and also developed methods for experimental infections of elm seedlings that led to selection of resistant trees.

In Britain, the disease was first identified in 1927 by T R Peace on English elm in Hertfordshire. This first strain was a relatively mild one, which killed only a small proportion of elms, more often just killing a few branches, and had largely died out by 1940 owing to its susceptibility to viruses.

In around 1967, a new, far more virulent, strain arrived in Britain, apparently via east coast ports on shipments of rock elm U. thomasii logs from Canada destined for the small-boat industry, confirmed in 1973 when another consignment was examined at Southampton Docks. This strain proved both highly contagious and lethal to European elms; more than 25 million trees died in the United Kingdom alone, while France lost 97% of its elms. The disease spread rapidly northwards, reaching Scotland within 10 years.

By 1990, very few mature elms were left in Britain or much of continental Europe. One of the most distinctive English countryside trees (See John Constable's painting Salisbury Cathedral from the South-West), the English elm U. minor 'Atinia', is particularly susceptible as it is the elm most favoured by the Scolytus beetles. Thirty years after the outbreak of the epidemic, nearly all these trees, which often grew to more than 45 m high, are gone. The species still survives in hedgerows, as the roots are not killed and send up root sprouts ("suckers"). These suckers rarely reach more than 5 m tall before dying off from a new attack. However, established hedges kept low by clipping have remained apparently healthy throughout the nearly 40 years since the onset of the disease in the United Kingdom. The largest concentrations of mature elms in Europe are now in Amsterdam and The Hague. In 2005, Amsterdam was declared the "Elm City of Europe": the city's streets and canals are lined with at least 75,000 elms, including several generations of research-elms (see below: Resistant trees). Some 30,000 of the 100,000 mature trees in The Hague are elms, planted because of their tolerance of salty sea-winds. Since the 1990s, a programme of antifungal injections of the most prominent 10,000 elms, and of sanitation felling, has reduced annual elm losses in The Hague from 7% to less than 1% (see below: Preventive treatment). The losses are made up by the planting of disease-resistant cultivars. The largest concentration of mature elm trees remaining in England is in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, where of the 30,000 elms in 1983 15,000 still stand (2005 figures), several of which are estimated to be over 400 years old. Their survival is owing to the isolation of the area, between the English Channel and the South Downs, and the assiduous efforts of local authorities to identify and remove infected sections of trees immediately when they show symptoms of the disease. Empowered by the Dutch Elm Disease (Local Authorities) (Amendment) Order 1988, local authorities may order the destruction of any infected trees or timber, although in practice they usually do it themselves, successfully reducing the numbers of elm bark beetle Scolytus spp. Sanitary felling has also, to date, preserved most of the 250,000 elms on the Isle of Man, where average temperature and wind speed inhibit the activity of the beetles, which need a temperature of at least 20 degrees to fly and a wind speed of less than five metres per second. The largest concentration of mature elms in Scotland is in Edinburgh, where over 5,000 remained in 2009 from some 35,000 in 1976. The city council gives the overall number of elms as 15,000 (2016). Edinburgh's Leith Links and Meadows have some of the highest concentrations of mature elms among U.K. parks (2014). A policy of sanitary felling has kept losses in the city to an average of 1,000 a year (2009). Between 2013 and 2020 losses were below 1,000 a year. Elm was the most common tree in Paris from the 17th century; before the 1970s there were some 30,000 ormes parisiens. Today, only 1,000 mature elms survive in the city, including examples in the large avenues (Avenue d'Italie, Avenue de Choisy, Boulevard Lefebvre, Boulevard de Grenelle, Boulevard Garibaldi) and two very old specimens, one in the garden of the Tuileries in front of the l'Orangerie and another in the Place Saint-Gervais in front of l'hôtel de ville de Paris. Losses are now being made up with disease-resistant cultivars, especially the Dutch-French research elm 'Nanguen', named for the ancient Roman name for the city: Lutetia.

North America
DED was first reported in the United States in 1928, with the beetles believed to have arrived in a shipment of logs from the Netherlands destined for use as veneer in the Ohio furniture industry. Quarantine and sanitation procedures held most cases within 150 miles of metropolitan New York City until 1941 when war demands began to curtail them. The disease spread from New England westward and southward, almost completely destroying the famous elms in the "Elm City" of New Haven, Connecticut, reaching the Detroit area in 1950, the Chicago area by 1960, and Minneapolis by 1970. Of the estimated 77 million elms in North America in 1930, over 75% had been lost by 1989.

The disease first appeared on the planted rows of American elm trees (Ulmus americana) on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during the 1950s and reached a peak in the 1970s. The United States National Park Service (NPS) used a number of methods to control the epidemic, including sanitation, pruning, injecting trees with fungicide and replanting with DED-resistant American elm cultivars (see Ulmus americana cultivars). The NPS combated the disease's local insect vector, the smaller European elm bark beetle (Scolytus multistriatus), by trapping and by spraying with insecticides. As a result, the population of American elms planted on the Mall and its surrounding areas has remained intact for more than 80 years.

DED reached eastern Canada during World War II, and spread to Ontario in 1967, Manitoba in 1975 and Saskatchewan in 1981. In Toronto, 80% of the elm trees have been lost to Dutch elm disease; many more fell victim in Ottawa, Montreal and other cities during the 1970s and 1980s. Quebec City still has about 21,000 elms, thanks to a prevention program initiated in 1981. Alberta and British Columbia are the only provinces that are currently free of Dutch elm disease, although, in an isolated case, an elm tree in Wainwright, Alberta, was found diseased in June 1998 and was immediately destroyed. The presence of DED was monitored in this area during subsequent years but was not seen again. Today, Alberta has the largest number of elms unaffected by Dutch elm disease in the world.

The provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan all prohibit the pruning of elm trees during the middle of the year (taking effect in April, and lasting through the end of September, July, and August respectively), which they deem to be the most active time of year for bark beetles. It is also illegal to use, store, sell, or transport elm firewood.

The largest surviving urban forest of elm trees in North America is believed to be in the city of Winnipeg, where close to 200,000 elms remain. The city spends $3 million annually to aggressively combat the disease using Dursban Turf and the Dutch Trig vaccine.

New Zealand
Dutch elm disease has reached New Zealand. It was found in Napier where it was eradicated and was also found in the Auckland Region in 1989. The Ministry of Agriculture funded a national management programme but it was cancelled to allow more funds to be available for pests of a higher priority. A major outbreak occurred in New Zealand in July 2013, particularly at the site of Kingseat Hospital, south of Auckland. Auckland has 20,000 elms.

Mechanical
The first attempts to control Dutch elm disease consisted of pruning trees to remove and burn diseased timber. While this method was effective in New York State and adjacent areas, its cost made it uneconomical except in large cities where elms were considered valuable attractions.

Chemical
In the US, when Dutch elm disease spread away from the Atlantic coast, control focused on controlling the bark beetle by using insecticides such as DDT and dieldrin, which were sprayed heavily across all parts of elm trees, usually twice a year in the spring and again at a lower concentration in the summer. In its early years, it was generally thought by observers that pesticides did slow the spread of the disease across the United States but as early as 1947, concern was raised that many bird species were killed in large numbers by ingesting poisoned invertebrates. In areas sprayed during the 1950s, local people observed birds such as the American woodcock, American robin, white-breasted nuthatch, brown creeper and various Poecile species dying. Biologist Rachel Carson consequently argued for improved sanitation and against spraying elms, which she saw as having been more effective in areas with earlier and greater experience countering Dutch elm disease. Although modern critics of Carson have argued that the bird deaths were caused by other factors such as mercury poisoning in the soil, spraying against elm bark beetles declined very rapidly after 1962, a trend aided by fungicides without dangerous side-effects being discovered for the first time after many years of research.

Lignasan BLP (carbendazim phosphate), introduced in the 1970s, was the first fungicide used to control Dutch elm disease. This had to be injected into the base of the tree using specialized equipment, and was never especially effective. It is still sold under the name "Elm Fungicide".

Arbotect (thiabendazole hypophosphite) became available some years later, and it has been proven effective. Arbotect must be injected every two to three years to provide ongoing control; the disease generally cannot be eradicated once a tree is infected. Arbotect is not effective on root graft infections from adjacent elm trees. It is more than 99.5% effective for three years from beetle infections, which is the primary mode of tree infection.

Alamo (propiconazole) has become available more recently, though several university studies show it to be effective only for the current season in which it is injected. Alamo is primarily recommended for treatment of oak wilt.

Multistriatin is a pheromone produced by female elm bark beetles, which can be produced synthetically. It has potential in being used to trap male beetles, which carry the fungus.

Biological
Because of the ban on the use of chemicals on street and park trees in the Netherlands, the University of Amsterdam developed a biological vaccine by the late 1980s. Dutch Trig is nontoxic, consisting of a suspension in distilled water of spores of a strain of the fungus Verticillium albo-atrum that has lost much of its pathogenic capabilities, injected in the elm in spring. The strain is believed to have enough pathogenicity left to induce an immune response in the elm, protecting it against DED during one growing season. This is called induced resistance. Trials with the American elm have been very successful; in a six-year experiment with the American elm in Denver, CO, annual Dutch elm disease losses declined significantly after the first year from 7 percent to between 0.4 and 0.6 percent; a greater and more rapid reduction in disease incidence than the accompanying tree sanitation and plant health care programs.

Preventive treatment is usually justified only when a tree has unusual symbolic value or occupies a particularly important place in the landscape.

Resistant trees
Research to select resistant cultivars and varieties began in the Netherlands in 1928, followed by the United States in 1937 (see Ulmus americana cultivars). Initial efforts in the Netherlands involved crossing varieties of U. minor and U. glabra, but later included the Himalayan or Kashmir elm U. wallichiana as a source of antifungal genes. Early efforts in the USA involved the hybridization of the Siberian elm U. pumila with American red elm U. rubra to produce resistant trees. Resulting cultivars lacked the traditional shape and landscape value of the American elm; few were planted.

In 2005, the National Elm Trial (USA) began a 10-year evaluation of 19 cultivars in plantings across the United States. The trees in the trial were exclusively American developments; no European cultivars were included. Based on the trial's final ratings, the preferred cultivars of the American elm (Ulmus americana) are ‘New Harmony’ and ‘Princeton’. The preferred cultivars of Asian elms are the Morton Arboretum introductions and ‘New Horizon’.

Recent research in Sweden has established that early-flushing clones are less susceptible to DED owing to an asynchrony between DED susceptibility and infection.

Testing for disease resistance
Elms are tested for resistance by inoculation with the fungal pathogen in late May when the tree's growth is at its annual peak. Clones raised for testing are grown to an age of 3 or 4 years. In Europe, the inoculum is introduced into the cambium by a knife wound. However this method, developed in the Netherlands, was considered too severe in America, where the principal disease vector is the bark beetle Scolytus multistriatus, a far less effective vector than the larger beetle endemic to Europe, Scolytus scolytus, which is unknown in America. In the method devised by the USDA, the inoculum is introduced to the cambium via a 2 mm-diameter hole drilled through the bark in the lower third of the tree. This method was further refined by the University of Wisconsin team, which drilled holes in the branches to simulate natural infection by the bark beetles feeding in the twig crotches, but results from this method were found to exaggerate the genetic resistance of the host. Consequently, tests were conducted on specimens in a controlled environment, either in greenhouses or customized plant chambers, facilitating more accurate evaluation of both internal and external symptoms of disease.

Another variable is the composition of the inoculum; while an inoculum strength of 106 spores / ml is standard in both continents, its composition reflects the different Ophiostoma species, subspecies and hybrids endemic to the two continents. In Italy for example, two subspecies, americana and novo-ulmi, are present together with their hybrid, whereas in North America, ssp. novo-ulmi is unknown. The differences in method and inocula possibly explain why the American cultivar 'Princeton', displaying high resistance in the US, has often succumbed to Dutch elm disease in Europe.

Hybrid cultivars
Many attempts to breed disease-resistant cultivar hybrids have involved a genetic contribution from Asian elm species that are demonstrably resistant to this fungal disease. Much of the early work was undertaken in the Netherlands. The Dutch research programme began in 1928, and ended in 1992. During those 64 years, well over 1000 cultivars were raised and evaluated. Still in use are cultivars such as 'Groeneveld', 'Lobel', 'Dodoens', 'Clusius' and 'Plantijn', although the resistance levels in these trees aren't high enough to confer good protection. The programme had three major successes: 'Columella', 'Nanguen', and 'Wanoux' , all found to have an extremely high resistance to the disease when inoculated with unnaturally large doses of the fungus. Only 'Columella' was released during the Dutch programme's lifetime—-in 1987. Patents for the and  clones were purchased by the French Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), which subjected the trees to 20 years of field trials in the Bois de Vincennes, Paris, before releasing them to commerce—-in 2002 and 2006, respectively.

Asian species featured in the American DED research programs were the Siberian elm U. pumila, Japanese elm U. davidiana var. japonica, and the Chinese elm U. parvifolia, which gave rise to several dozen hybrid cultivars resistant not just to DED, but also to the extreme cold of Asian winters. Among the most widely planted of these, both in North America and in Europe, are 'Sapporo Autumn Gold', 'New Horizon' and 'Rebona'. Some hybrid cultivars, such as 'Regal' and 'Pioneer' are the product of both Dutch and American research. Hybridization experiments using the slippery (or red) elm U. rubra resulted in the release of 'Coolshade' and 'Rosehill' in the 1940s and 50s; the species last featured in hybridization as the female parent of 'Repura' and 'Revera', both patented in 1993, although neither has yet appeared in commerce.

In Italy, research was initiated at the Istituto per la Protezione delle Piante, Florence, to produce a range of disease-resistant trees adapted to the warmer Mediterranean climate, using a variety of Asiatic species crossed with the early Dutch hybrid 'Plantyn' as a safeguard against any future mutation of the disease. Two trees with very high levels of resistance, 'San Zanobi' and 'Plinio', were released in 2003. 'Arno' and 'Fiorente' were patented in 2006 and entered commerce in 2012. All four have the Siberian elm U. pumila as a parent, the source of disease-resistance and drought-tolerance genes. 'Morfeo' was released in 2011; it arose from a crossing of the Dutch hybrid clone '405' (female parent) and the Chenmou Elm, the latter a small tree from the provinces of Anhui and Jiangsu in eastern China, The '405' clone is a crossing of an English U. × hollandica and a French U. minor.

In the Netherlands a new program has been initiated. From the old proving grounds of the Dorschkamp Research Institute, 10 fourth-generation hybrids survive in a DED-ridden area. These have been tested and some have a very high level of resistance. At Noordplant Nursery new hybrids have been tested since 2013.

North America
Ten resistant American elm cultivars are now in commerce in North America. No cultivar is immune to DED; even highly resistant cultivars can become infected, particularly if already stressed by drought or other environmental conditions where the disease prevalence is high. With the exception of 'Princeton', no trees have yet been grown to maturity; trees cannot be said to be mature until they have reached an age of 60 years.

Notable cultivars include:
 * 'Princeton', is a cultivar selected in 1922 by Princeton Nurseries for its landscape merit. By coincidence, this cultivar was found to be highly resistant in inoculation studies carried out by the USDA in the early 1990s.  As trees planted in the 1920s still survive, the properties of the mature plant are well known. However, 'Princeton' has not proven resistant in Europe, where the main vector of the disease—the larger elm bark beetle, Scolytus scolytus—is capable of introducing far more fungal spores into the tree; many of the 50 trees planted at Highgrove House in the south-west of England in 2006 had died from Dutch elm disease by 2011.
 * 'American Liberty', is, in fact, a set of six cultivars of moderate to high resistance produced through selection over several generations starting in the 1970s. Although 'American Liberty' is marketed as a single variety, nurseries selling the "Liberty Elm" actually distribute the six cultivars at random and thus, unfortunately, the resistance of any particular tree cannot be known. One of the cultivars, 'Independence', is covered by patent (U. S. Plant patent 6227). The oldest 'American Liberty' elm was planted in about 1980.
 * 'Valley Forge', released in 1995, has demonstrated the highest resistance of all the clones to Dutch elm disease in controlled USDA tests.
 * 'Lewis and Clark' =, released in 2004 to commemorate the bicentenary of the Lewis & Clark expedition, was cloned from a tree found growing in North Dakota which had survived unscathed when all around had succumbed to disease.

In 2007, the Elm Recovery Project of the University of Guelph Arboretum in Ontario, Canada, reported that cuttings from healthy surviving old elms surveyed across Ontario had been grown to produce a bank of resistant trees, isolated for selective breeding of highly resistant cultivars.

The University of Minnesota USA is testing various elms, including a huge now-patented century-old survivor known as "The St. Croix Elm", which is located in a Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN suburb (Afton) in the St. Croix River valley—a designated National Scenic Riverway.

The slippery or red elm U. rubra is marginally less susceptible to Dutch elm disease than the other American species, but this quality seems to have been largely ignored in American research. No cultivars were ever selected, although the tree was used in hybridization experiments (see above).

In 1993, Mariam B. Sticklen and James L. Sherald reported the results of NPS-funded experiments conducted at Michigan State University in East Lansing that were designed to apply genetic engineering techniques to the development of DED-resistant strains of American elm trees. In 2007, AE Newhouse and F Schrodt of the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse reported that young transgenic American elm trees had shown reduced DED symptoms and normal mycorrhizal colonization. By 2013, researchers in both New York State and North Carolina were conducting field trials of genetically engineered DED-resistant American elms.

Europe
Among European species, there is the unique example of the European white elm U. laevis, which has little innate resistance to DED, but is eschewed by the vector bark beetles and only rarely becomes infected. Recent research has indicated it is the presence of certain organic compounds, such as triterpenes and sterols, which serves to make the tree bark unattractive to the beetle species that spread the disease.

In Europe the testing of clones of surviving field elms for innate resistance has been carried out since the 1990s by national research institutes, with findings centrally assessed and published. The first results of this ongoing project suggest that in some countries a very small number of native field elm genotypes have comparatively high levels of tolerance to DED. In Spain, for example, of around 5,000 native elms evaluated to 2013, some 25 genotypes (0.5% of those tested) fall into this category; and it is now hoped that the controlled crossing of the best seven of these (genetically and aesthetically) will produce Ulmus minor hybrids with effective 'field resistance' and market appeal. Similar results are beginning to emerge in trials on surviving field elms in Greece.

United Kingdom
Much of the work in the United Kingdom is by the Forestry Commission's research arm, which has had Dutch elm disease on its agenda since the 1920s. In 1994 a Research Information Note (no 252) was published, written by John Gibbs, Clive Brasier and Joan Webber, and in 2010 a Pathology Advisory Note, as well as throughout the period a stream of more academic papers: notable results have been the observation that the progress of the disease through Scotland has been quite slow, and that genetic engineering has been tried to improve the resistance of the English elm.

In England the Conservation Foundation had been propagating, distributing and planting clones of surviving indigenous elms, including field elms (but not the highly susceptible English elm), as part of a scheme to return elms to city and countryside. The Foundation was running two elm programmes: the 'Great British Elm Experiment' and 'Ulmus londinium', an elm programme for London – these use saplings cultivated through micropropagation from mature parent elms found growing in the British countryside: parent trees are monitored for disease, while saplings were offered free to schools and community groups, who are asked to monitor their trees' progress on the Foundation's online elm map; in London, places with 'elm' in their name were offered a sapling – in an attempt to find out why some elms have survived while others succumbed to Dutch elm disease. Both these projects have been discontinued.

The spread of DED to Scotland has focussed attention on a small number of wych elms U. glabra surviving in areas of high infectivity, prompting the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to begin a programme of selecting trees, with a view to determining innate resistance (2009). The Garden is raising and distributing in Scotland seedlings derived from controlled crosses of rare survivors in these areas (2023).

In 2001–2004, English elm U. minor 'Atinia' was genetically engineered to resist disease, in experiments at Abertay University, Dundee, Scotland, by transferring antifungal genes into the elm genome using minute DNA-coated ball bearings. However, owing to reservations to GM developments, there are no plans to release the trees into the countryside.

Spain
In Spain, the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Montes, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, charged with discovering disease-resistant elms for use in forestry, has raised and patented seven cultivars of the field elm Ulmus minor, although two have subsequently been found to have Siberian elm U. pumila DNA, the species introduced to Spain in the 16th century. Although none have been released to commerce (2020), the clone 'Ademuz', pure U. minor, has been imported into the UK since 2014, and widely planted there.

The 'Elm Decline'
From analysis of fossil pollen in peat samples, it is apparent that elms, an abundant tree in prehistoric times, all but disappeared from northwestern Europe during the mid-Holocene period around 4000 BC, and to a lesser extent around 1000 BC. This roughly synchronous and widespread event has come to be known as the 'Elm Decline'. When first detected in the mid-20th century, the decline was attributed to the impact of forest-clearance by Neolithic farmers, and of elm-coppicing for animal fodder, though the numbers of settlers could not have been large. The devastation caused recently by DED has provided an alternative explanation. Examination of subfossil elm wood showing signs of the changes associated with the disease has suggested that a form of DED may have been responsible. Fossil finds from this period of elm bark beetles support this theory. A consensus today is that the Elm Decline was probably driven by both factors.

Historic period
A less devastating form of the disease, caused by a different fungus, had possibly been present in north-west Europe for some time. Dr Oliver Rackham of Cambridge University presented evidence of an outbreak of elm disease in north-west Europe, c. 1819–1867. "Indications from annual rings [a reference to the dark staining in an annual ring in infected elms] confirm that Dutch elm disease was certainly present in 1867," he wrote, quoting contemporary accounts of diseased and dying elms, including this passage in Richard Jefferies' 1883 book, Nature near London:

"There is something wrong with elm trees. In the early part of this summer, not long after the leaves were fairly out upon them, here and there a branch appeared as if it had been touched with red-hot iron and burnt up, all the leaves withered and browned on the boughs. First one tree was thus affected, then another, then a third, till, looking round the fields, it seemed as if every fourth or fifth tree had thus been burnt. [...] Upon mentioning this I found that it had been noticed in elm avenues and groups a hundred miles distant, so that it is not a local circumstance."

Earlier still, Rackham noted, "The name Scolytus destructor was given to the great bark beetle on evidence, dating from c. 1780, that it was destroying elms around Oxford."

In Belgium, elm die-back and death was observed in 1836 and 1896 in Brussels, and in 1885–1886 in Ghent. In the later outbreaks the die-back was attributed to the elm bark beetle.

It has been suggested that "for thousands of years elms have flourished in natural balance with the scolytidae, combating occasional infections of Dutch elm disease."

Sir Thomas Browne, writing in 1658, noted in The Garden of Cyrus an elm disease that was spreading through English hedgerows, and described symptoms reminiscent of DED.

title: Dutch elm disease


text:
Mosbach

Mosbach (South Franconian: Mossbach) is a town in the north of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is the seat of the Neckar-Odenwald district and has a population of approximately 25,000 distributed in six boroughs: Mosbach Town, Lohrbach, Neckarelz, Diedesheim, Sattelbach and Reichenbuch.

Geography
Located about 35 km east of Heidelberg, it is situated south of the Odenwald mountains at a height of 134-354m at the confluence of the Neckar and the Elz. The town is part of the conservation area Neckartal-Odenwald Nature Park and the UNESCO Bergstrasse-Odenwald Nature Park.

History
The settlement of Mosbach developed around the Benedictine monastery of Mosbach Abbey ("Monasterium Mosabach"), the first written record of which dates from the 9th century. In 1241 rights and privileges had been granted to Mosbach as an Imperial free city. These rights were lost in 1362 when Mosbach became part of the Electorate of the Palatinate. With the division of the lands of King Rupert in 1410, Mosbach became the capital of a small principality known as Palatinate-Mosbach as the inheritance for his son Otto I. With the death of his brother John, Count Palatine of Neumarkt 1443, the territory of Palatinate-Neumarkt was added in a personal union to Palatinate-Mosbach creating the territory of Palatinate-Mosbach-Neumarkt. This principality was dissolved with the death of Count Palatine Otto II in 1499. The city and adjoining territory reverted to the Electorate of the Palatinate, and Mosbach became the capital of the administrative district of "Oberamt Mosbach". In 1806 the city was made part of the Grand Duchy of Baden. In World War II, the Mosbach area was the location of a Daimler-Benz underground airplane engine factory, codenamed "Goldfisch". It was occupied by the 289th Combat Engineer Battalion in the immediate postwar period.

Twin towns and sister cities
Mosbach is twinned with:

 * 🇭🇺 Budapest II, Hungary
 * 🇫🇷 Château-Thierry, France
 * 🇹🇷 Finike, Turkey
 * 🏴 Lymington, England, United Kingdom
 * 🇮🇹 Rosolina, Italy

Points of interest
Historic sites include:
 * the historic town centre with the pedestrian area and timber-framed houses, such as:
 * the Palm House built in 1610, which is the town's emblem
 * the Salzhaus, which is the oldest timber-framed house
 * old town hall with tower
 * the former collegiate church, now a parish church, of which the nave is used by the Protestants, and the chancel by the Roman Catholics
 * the Tempelhaus in Neckarelz, which has the character of both a castle and a church.

Mosbach lies on two heritage routes:
 * the Burgenstraße (“Castle Road”), linking many historic castles
 * the Deutsche Fachwerkstraße (“German Half-timbered Road”), joining the locations of many of the best German half-timbered buildings

Notable people born in Mosbach
TM Garret, German-American human-rights activist.

title: Mosbach


text:
Talk:19th century in film

Untitled
Now this, I like. A lot of interesting information here. -- Zoe

title: Talk:19th century in film


text:
.38 Special

The .38 Special, also commonly known as .38 S&W Special (not to be confused with .38 S&W), .38 Smith & Wesson Special, .38 Spl, .38 Spc (pronounced "thirty-eight special"), or 9×29mmR is a rimmed, centerfire cartridge designed by Smith & Wesson.

The .38 Special was the standard service cartridge for the majority of United States police departments from the 1920s to the 1990s. It was also a common sidearm cartridge used by United States military personnel in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. In other parts of the world, it is known by its metric designation of 9×29.5mmR or 9.1×29mmR.

Known for its accuracy and manageable recoil, the .38 Special remains one of the most popular revolver cartridges in the world more than a century after its introduction. It is used for recreational target shooting, formal target competition, personal defense, and small-game hunting.

Overview

The .38 Special was designed and entered production in 1898 as an improvement over the .38 Long Colt which, as a military service cartridge, was found to have inadequate stopping power against the charges of Filipino Muslim warriors during the Philippine–American War. Upon its introduction, the .38 Special was originally loaded with black powder, but the cartridge's popularity caused manufacturers to offer smokeless powder loadings within a year of its introduction.

Despite its name, the caliber of the .38 Special cartridge is actually .357 inches (36 caliber/9.07 mm), with the ".38" referring to the approximate diameter of the loaded brass case. This came about because the original 38-caliber cartridge, the .38 Short Colt, was designed for use in converted .36-caliber cap-and-ball Navy revolvers, which had untapered cylindrical firing chambers of approximately 0.374 in diameter that required heeled bullets, the exposed portion of which was the same diameter as the cartridge case.

Except for case length, the .38 Special is identical to the .38 Short Colt, .38 Long Colt, and .357 Magnum. This nearly identical nature of the three rounds allows a .38 Special round to be safely fired in revolvers chambered for .357 Magnum. It also allows .38 Short Colt and .38 Long Colt rounds to be safely fired in revolvers chambered for .38 Special. Thus, the .38 Special round and revolvers chambered for it have a unique versatility. However, the longer and more powerful .357 Magnum cartridge will usually not chamber and fire in weapons rated specifically for .38 Special (e.g., all versions of the Smith & Wesson Model 10), which are not designed for the greatly increased pressure of the magnum rounds. Both .38 Special and .357 Magnum will chamber in Colt New Army revolvers in .38 Long Colt due to their straight walled chambers, but this should not be done under any circumstances, due to dangerous pressure levels up to three times what the New Army is designed to withstand.

History
The .38 Special was designed and produced in 1898 to be a higher-velocity round, with better penetration properties than the .38 Long Colt that was in government service in the Philippines during the Spanish–American War. The .38 Long Colt revolver round would not penetrate the shields of the insurgent Philippine Moro warriors, and the government contracted with Smith & Wesson for a new revolver round. The .38 Special held a minimum of 21 grains of black powder, 3 grains more than the then-current .38 Long Colt, and muzzle velocity (with a 158 grain bullet) was 100–150 feet per second greater.

During the late 1920s, in response to demands for a more effective law-enforcement version of the cartridge, a new standard-velocity loading for the .38 Special was developed by Western Cartridge Company. This .38 Special variant, which incorporated a 200 gr round-nosed lead 'Lubaloy' bullet, was named the .38 Super Police. Remington-Peters also introduced a similar loading. Testing revealed that the longer, heavier 200 gr .357-calibre bullet fired at low velocity tended to 'keyhole' or tumble upon impact, providing more shock effect against unprotected personnel. At the same time, authorities in Great Britain, who had decided to adopt the .38 caliber revolver as a replacement for their existing .455 service cartridge, also tested the same 200 gr bullet in the smaller .38 S&W cartridge. This cartridge was called the .38 S&W Super Police or the 38/200. Britain later adopted the 38/200 as its standard military handgun cartridge.

In 1930, Smith & Wesson introduced a large-frame 38 Special revolver with a 5-inch barrel and fixed sights intended for police use, the Smith & Wesson 38/44 Heavy Duty. The following year, a new high-power loading called the .38 Special Hi-Speed with a 158 gr metal-tip bullet was developed for these revolvers in response to requests from law enforcement agencies for a handgun bullet that could penetrate auto bodies and body armor. That same year, Colt Firearms announced that their Colt Official Police would also handle 'high-speed' .38 Special loadings. The 38/44 high-speed cartridge came in three bullet weights: 158 gr, 150 gr, and 110 gr, with either coated lead or steel jacket, metal-piercing bullets. The media attention gathered by the 38/44 and its ammunition eventually led Smith & Wesson to develop a completely new cartridge with a longer case length, in 1934. This was the .357 Magnum.

During World War II, some U.S. aircrew (primarily Navy and Marine Corps) were issued .38 Special S&W Victory revolvers as sidearms for use in the event of a forced landing. In May 1943, a new .38 Special cartridge with a 158 gr, full-steel-jacketed, copper flash-coated bullet meeting the requirements of the Hague Convention was developed at Springfield Armory and adopted for the Smith & Wesson revolvers. The new military .38 Special loading propelled its 158 gr bullet at a standard 850 ft/s from a 4 in revolver barrel. During the war, many U.S. naval and Marine aircrew were also issued red-tipped 38 Special tracer ammunition using either a 120 or bullet for emergency signaling purposes.

In 1956, the U.S. Air Force adopted the Cartridge, Caliber 38, Ball M41, a military variant of the .38 Special cartridge designed to conform to Hague Convention rules. The original 38 M41 ball cartridge used a 130-grain full-metal-jacketed bullet, and was loaded to an average pressure of only 13000 psi, giving a muzzle velocity of approximately 725 ft/s from a 4 in barrel. This ammunition was intended to prolong the life of S&W M12 and Colt Aircrewman revolvers equipped with aluminum cylinders and frames, which were prone to stress fractures when fired with standard 38 Special ammunition. By 1961, a slightly revised M41 38 cartridge specification known as the Cartridge, Caliber 38 Ball, Special, M41 had been adopted for U.S. armed forces using 38 Special caliber handguns. The new M41 Special cartridge used a 130-grain FMJ bullet loaded to a maximum allowable pressure of 16000 psi for a velocity of approximately 950 ft/s in a solid 6 in test barrel, and about 750 ft/s from a 4 in revolver barrel. The M41 ball cartridge was first used in .38 Special revolvers carried by USAF aircrew and Strategic Air Command security police, and by 1961 was in use by the U.S. Army for security police, dog handlers, and other personnel equipped with 38 Special caliber revolvers. A variant of the standard M41 cartridge with a semi-pointed, unjacketed lead bullet was later adopted for CONUS (Continental United States) police and security personnel. At the same time, .38 Special tracer cartridges were reintroduced by the US Navy, Marines, and Air Force to provide a means of emergency signaling by downed aircrew. Tracer cartridges in .38 Special caliber of different colors were issued, generally as part of a standard aircrew survival vest kit.

A request for more powerful .38 Special ammunition for use by Air Police and security personnel resulted in the Caliber 38 Special, Ball, PGU-12/B High Velocity cartridge. Issued only by the U.S. Air Force, the PGU-12/B had a greatly increased maximum allowable pressure rating of 20,000 psi, sufficient to propel a 130-grain FMJ bullet at 1125 ft/s from a solid 6 in test barrel, and about 950–1,000 ft/s from a 4 in revolver barrel. The PGU-12/B High Velocity cartridge differs from M41 Special ammunition in two important respects—the PGU-12/B is a much higher-pressure cartridge, with a bullet deeply set and crimped into the cartridge case.

In response to continued complaints over ineffectiveness of the standard .38 Special 158-grain cartridge in stopping assailants in numerous armed confrontations during the 1950s and 1960s, ammunition manufacturers began to experiment with higher-pressure (18,500 CUP) loadings of the .38 Special cartridge, known as 38 Special +P (+P or +P+ designation indicates that the cartridge is using higher pressures, therefore it is overpressure ammunition). In 1972, the Federal Bureau of Investigation introduced a new .38 Special +P loading that became known as the "FBI Load". The FBI Load combined a more powerful powder charge with a 158-grain unjacketed soft lead semi-wadcutter hollow-point bullet designed to readily expand at typical .38 Special velocities obtained in revolvers commonly used by law enforcement. The FBI Load proved very satisfactory in effectively stopping adversaries in numerous documented shootings using 2- to 4-inch barreled revolvers. The FBI Load was later adopted by the Chicago Police Department and numerous other law enforcement agencies.

Demand for a .38 Special cartridge with even greater performance for law enforcement led to the introduction of the +P+ .38 Special cartridge, first introduced by Federal and Winchester. Originally labeled "For Law Enforcement Only", +P+ ammunition is intended for heavier-duty .38 Special and .357 Magnum revolvers, as the increased pressure levels can result in accelerated wear and significant damage to firearms rated for lower-pressure .38 Special loadings (as with all .38 Special loadings, the .38 Special +P+ can also be fired safely in .357 Magnum revolvers).

Performance

Due to its black-powder heritage, the .38 Special is a low-pressure cartridge, one of the lowest in common use today at 17,000 psi. By modern standards, the .38 Special fires a medium-sized bullet at rather low speeds. In the case of target loads, a 148 gr bullet is propelled to only 690 ft/s. The closest comparisons are the 380 ACP, which fires much lighter bullets slightly faster than most .38 Special loads; the 9×19mm Parabellum, which fires a somewhat lighter bullet significantly faster; and the .38 Super, which fires a comparable bullet considerably faster. All of these cartridges are usually found in semi-automatic pistols.

The higher-pressure .38 Special +P loads at 20,000 psi offer about 20% more muzzle energy than standard-pressure loads, which places them between the .380 ACP and the 9mm Parabellum; similar to that of the 9×18mm Makarov. A few specialty manufacturers' +P loads for this cartridge can attain even higher energies than that, especially when fired from longer barrels, producing energies in the range of the 9mm Parabellum. These loads are generally not recommended for older revolvers or ones not specifically "+P" rated.

All of the above specifications for 38 loadings, and the .357 Magnum, are applicable when fired from a 6 in barreled revolver. The velocity is reduced when using the more standard 4 in barreled guns. Power (muzzle energy) will, of course, decrease accordingly.

Although only a few US police departments now issue or authorize use of the .38 Special revolver as a standard-duty weapon, the caliber remains popular with some police officers for use in short-barreled revolvers carried when off duty or for undercover-police investigations. It is also widely used in revolvers purchased for civilian home defense or for concealed carry.

title: .38 Special


text:
The Anxiety of Influence

The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry is a 1973 book by Harold Bloom on the anxiety of influence in writing poetry. It was the first in a series of books that advanced a new "revisionary" or antithetical approach to literary criticism. Bloom's central thesis is that poets are hindered in their creative process by the ambiguous relationship they necessarily maintain with precursor poets. While admitting the influence of extraliterary experience on every poet, he argues that "the poet in a poet" is inspired to write by reading another poet's poetry and will tend to produce work that is in danger of being derivative of existing poetry, and, therefore, weak. Because poets historically emphasize an original poetic vision in order to guarantee their survival into posterity, the influence of precursor poets inspires a sense of anxiety in living poets. Thus Bloom attempts to work out the process by which the small minority of 'strong' poets manage to create original work in spite of the pressure of influence. Such an agon (a vain attempt by a writer to resolve the conflict between his ideas and those of a much more influential predecessor), Bloom argues, depends on six revisionary ratios, which reflect Freudian and quasi-Freudian defense mechanisms, as well as the tropes of classical rhetoric.

Before writing this book, Bloom spent a decade studying the Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century. This is reflected in the emphasis given to those poets and their struggle with the influence of John Milton, Robert Burns, and Edmund Spenser. Other poets analyzed range from Lucretius and Dante to Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and John Ashbery. In The Anxiety of Influence and other early books, Bloom claimed that influence was particularly important for post-enlightenment poets. Conversely, he suggested that influence might have been less of a problem for such poets as Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Bloom later changed his mind, and the most recent editions of The Anxiety of Influence include a preface claiming that Shakespeare was troubled early in his career by the influence of Christopher Marlowe. The book itself is divided into six major categories, called "six revisionary ratios" by Bloom. They are clinamen, tessera, kenosis, daemonization, askesis, and apophrades.

Six revisionary ratios
Bloom introduces his six revisionary ratios in the following manner, which he consistently applies in this book as well as his successor volume titled A Map of Misreading.

 * Clinamen – Bloom defines this as "poetic misreading or misprision proper". The poet makes a swerve away from the precursor in the form of a "corrective movement". This swerve suggests that the precursor "went accurately up to a certain point", but should have swerved in the direction that the new poem moves. Bloom took the word clinamen from Lucretius, who refers to swerves of atoms that make change possible.
 * Tessera – Bloom defines this as "completion and antithesis". The author "completes" his precursor's work, retaining its terms but meaning them in a new sense, "as though the precursor had failed to go far enough". The word tessera refers to a fragment that, together with other fragments, reconstitutes the whole; Bloom is referring to ancient mystery cults, who would use tessera as tokens of recognition.
 * Kenosis – Bloom defines this as a "breaking device similar to the defence mechanisms our psyches employ against repetition compulsions", in other words "a movement toward discontinuity with the precursor". The poet humbles himself, "as though he were ceasing to be a poet", but does so in such a way as to empty out the precursor poem too, so that the later poet is not deflated as much as may seem. Bloom took the word kenosis from St. Paul, who uses it to refer to Jesus accepting his own reduction from divine to human status.
 * Daemonization – Bloom defines this as a "movement towards a personalized Counter-Sublime, in reaction to the precursor’s Sublime". The author suggests that the powers in the precursor poem actually derive from something beyond it; the poet does so "to generalize away the uniqueness of the earlier work". Bloom took the term daemonization from Neoplatonism, where it refers to an adept being aided by an intermediary, who is neither divine nor human.
 * Askesis – Bloom defines this as a "movement of self-purgation which intends the attainment of a state of solitude". The author curtails the impression of his/her own "human and imaginative endowment" in order to separate themselves from others and stress his/her own individuality. The poet does this in such a way as to do the same to the precursor, whose limitations and individuality are also emphasized, separating him/her from the later poet. Bloom took the word askesis (asceticism) from the pre-Socratic philosophers.
 * Apophrades – Bloom defines this as the “return of the dead”. The poet, toward the end of his/her life, opens up his poem – this time deliberately rather than naturally – to the precursor's influence. But this deliberateness creates the uncanny effect that the precursor's work seems to be derivative of the later poet. Bloom took the word apophrades from the Athenian concept of the days on which the dead return to reinhabit the houses in which they once lived.

title: The Anxiety of Influence


text:
Bernard Lortie

Bernard Lortie (born c. 1951) of Montreal, Quebec, Canada was a member of the Chenier Cell of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) who were responsible for a decade of bombings and armed robberies in the province of Quebec.

During what became known as the October Crisis, on October 5, 1970, members of the FLQ's Liberation Cell kidnapped the British Trade Commissioner James Cross from his Montreal home as part of a violent attempt to overthrow the elected government and to establish a socialist Quebec state independent of Canada. On October 10, Bernard Lortie, along with Chenier Cell leader Paul Rose and his brother, Jacques Rose, and Francis Simard, kidnapped and then murdered Quebec Vice Premier and Cabinet Minister, Pierre Laporte. Believing many others would follow in an uprising, their goal was to create an independent state based on the ideals of Fidel Castro's Cuba.

On November 6, 1970, Bernard Lortie was arrested when the police raided the hiding place of the FLQ's Chenier cell. Although the other three members escaped the raid, they were later captured in St-Luc, Quebec in late December. All four members were charged with the kidnapping and murder of Pierre Laporte. For his part in the kidnapping and murder, Bernard Lortie was sentenced to 20 years in jail. He was granted parole by the Canadian Parole Board after seven years.

title: Bernard Lortie