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Patiala

Patiala is a city in southeastern Punjab, northwestern India. It is the fourth largest city in the state and is the administrative capital of Patiala district. Patiala is located around the Qila Mubarak (the 'Blessed Castle') constructed by a chieftain Ala Singh, who founded the royal dynasty of Patiala State in 1763, and after whom the city is named.

In popular culture, the city remains famous for its traditional Patiala shahi turban (a type of headgear), paranda (a tasselled tag for braiding hair), Patiala salwar (a type of female trousers), jutti (a type of footwear) and Patiala peg (a measure of liquor). Patiala is also known as the Royal City and the Beautiful City.

Etymology
'Patiala' comes from the roots pati and ala, the former is a local word for a "strip of land" and  'ala ' comes from the name of the founder of the city, Ala Singh. So, 'Patiala' can be translated into English to mean ‘the land of Ala Singh’.

History
Patiala city was established in 1763 by Ala Singh, a Jat Sikh chieftain, who laid the foundation of the Patiala fort known as Qila Mubarak, around 'which the present city of Patiala is built. After the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761 in which the Marathas was defeated by the Afghans, the writ of the Afghans prevailed throughout Punjab. It is at this stage that the rulers of Patiala began to acquire ensigns of royalty. The Patiala state saw more than forty years of a ceaseless power struggle with the Afghan Durrani Empire, Maratha Empire and the Sikh Empire of Lahore.

In 1808, the Raja of Patiala entered into a treaty with the British against Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Lahore in 1808, thus becoming collaborator in the grand empire-building process by the British in the sub-continent of India. Patiala became a 17-gun salute state during the British Raj. The rulers of Patiala such as Karam Singh, Narinder Singh, Mahendra Singh, Rajinder Singh, Bhupinder Singh, and Yadvindra Singh were treated with respect and dignity by the British.

The city of Patiala was designed and developed according to a plan akin to that of temple architecture, the first settlers of Patiala were the Hindus of Sirhind, who opened their business establishments outside the Darshani Gate.

Geography
Patiala is located at 30.32°N, 76.4°W. It has an average elevation of 250 m. During the short existence of PEPSU, Patiala served as its capital city.

Demographics
According to the 2021 census, Patiala UA had a population of 820,000 and Patiala city 763,280. Males constituted 54% of the population, and females 46%. Patiala had an average literacy rate of 86%, higher than the national average of 64.9%. In Patiala, 10% of the population was under 5 years of age.

Religion
Hinduism is the largest religion in Patiala city, with a significant Sikh minority.

Civic administration
Patiala Municipal Corporation (PMC) is the local body responsible for governing, developing and managing the city. PMC is further divided into 60 municipal wards.

Patiala Development Authority (PDA) is an agency responsible for the planning and development of the greater Patiala Metropolitan Area, which is revising the Patiala Master Plan and Building Bylaws. Patiala Development Department, a special department of the Government of Punjab, has been recently formed for overall development.

Patiala consists of three assembly constituencies: Patiala Urban, Patiala Rural, and Sanaur.

District administration
The Deputy Commissioner, an officer belonging to the Indian Administrative Service, is the overall in-charge of the General Administration in the district. He is assisted by a number of officers belonging to the Punjab Civil Service and other Punjab state services.

The brand-new Mini Secretariat on Nabha Road, which houses all the major offices including that of the DC and the SSP, was completed in record time, owing to the initiative of the member of parliament of Patiala and local administration.

In India, an Inspector General (IG) of Police is a two-star rank of the Indian Police Service. The ranks above this are Additional Director General (Addl. DG) and Director General (DG) of police. In Patiala, joint commissioners are at the rank of DIG and only additional commissioners are at the rank of IG.

The Senior Superintendent of Police, an officer belonging to the Indian Police Service, is responsible for maintaining law and order and related issues in the district. He is assisted by the officers of the Punjab Police Service and other Punjab Police officials.

The Divisional Forest Officer, an officer belonging to the Indian Forest Service, is responsible for the management of the Forests, Environment and Wild-Life in the district. He is assisted by the officers of the Punjab Forest Service and other Punjab Forest officials and Punjab Wild-Life officials.

Sectoral development is looked after by the district head officer of each development department such as PWD, Health, Education, Agriculture, Animal husbandry, etc. These officers are from Punjab state services.

Kali Devi Mandir
Kali Devi Temple is a Hindu temple dedicated to Maa Kaali. The temple was built by the Sikh ruler of the Patiala State, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh, who financed the building of the temple in his capital and oversaw its installation in 1936. Legend has it that the Maharaja built the temple to protect the city from flooding and performed annual sacrifice at the temple. Bhupinder Singh ruled the princely state of Patiala from 1900 to 1938. He brought the 6-ft statue of Divine Mother Kali and Paawan Jyoti from Bengal to Patiala and offered the first Bali (sacrifice) of a water buffalo to the temple. Because of the temple's beautiful structure, it has been declared a national monument. This large complex attracts devotees, Hindu and Sikh, from distant places.

A much older temple of Raj Rajeshwari is also situated in the center of this complex. The temple is situated opposite the Baradari garden at Mall Road. Devotees offer mustard oil, daal (lentils), sweets, coconuts, bangles, and chunnis, goats, hens, and liquor to the Divine Mother here. As an average estimate, devotees offer more than 60,000 liquor bottles during Navratras alone, which are distributed to the beggars sitting outside the temple and go into a 'Sharab Kund' built on the temple's premises.

Gurdwara Dukh Niwaran Sahib
According to local tradition, supported by an old handwritten document preserved in the Gurdwara, one Bhag Ram, a Jhivar of Lehal, waited upon the ninth Guru of Sikhs Guru Tegh Bahadur during his sojourn at Saifabad (now Bahadurgarh). He requested that the Guru might be pleased to visit and bless his village so that its inhabitants could be rid of a severe and mysterious sickness that had been their bane for a long time.

The Guru visited Lehal on Magh sudi 5, 1728 Bikram/24 January 1672 and stayed under a banyan tree by the side of a pond. The sickness in the village subsided. The site where Guru Tegh Bahadur had sat came to be known as Dukh Nivaran, literally meaning eradicator of suffering. Devotees have faith in the healing qualities of water in the Sarovar attached to the shrine. It is still believed that any illness can be cured by 'ishnaan' on five consecutive Panchami. It is in the vicinity of Patiala Bus Station.

Gurdwara Moti Bagh
Gurudwara Moti Baag is situated on the outskirts of Patiala City. When Shri Guru Teg Bahadur started his journey towards Delhi, he came here via Kiratpur Sahib, Bharatgarh Sahib, Roap Makar, Kabulpur, etc. Saint Saif Ali Khan was a great follower of Guru, To fulfill his wish Guru Sahib came to his Place Saifabad (Bahadur Garh). The holly Guru stayed here for 3 Months. Saif Ali Khan Served the Guru with great devotion. In the daytime Guru Teg Bahadur used to meditate on the Place inside the Qila (Fort) and at night time, he would come here. From here the Guru left for Samana and stayed in the Haveli of Muhamad Bakhshish. From there onward, Guru Sahib left towards Cheeka Via Karhali, Balbera.

Bahadurgarh Fort
The Bahadurgarh Fort is 6 kilometers away from Patiala city. It is situated on Patiala-Chandigarh road. The fort was constructed by Mughal Nawab Saif Khan in 1658 A.D. where Guru Teg Bahadur visited him and later renovated by a Sikh ruler Maharaja Karam Singh in 1837. The construction of the entire fort was completed in eight years. A sum of ten lakh rupees was spent on its construction. It covers an area of 2 km2. The fort is enclosed within two rounded walls and a moat. The circumference of the fort is slightly over two kilometers.

The name Bahadurgarh fort was given by Maharaja Karam Singh as a tribute to the Sikh Guru Teg Bahadur who stayed here for three months and nine days before leaving for Delhi where he was executed by Aurangzeb in 1675 CE. The fort consists of a historical Gurdwara Sahib (a Sikh temple) named Gurdwara Sahib Patshai Nauvin. This Gurudwara shows fine Sikh architecture. This Gurudwara is controlled by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee. People visit this Gurudwara on the occasion of the festival of Baisakhi on 13 April, every year.

Qila Mubarak complex
The Qila Mubarak complex stands on a 10-acre ground in the heart of the city and contains the main palace or Qila Androon (literally, 'inner fort'), the guesthouse or Ran Baas and the Darbar Hall. Outside the Qila are the Darshani Gate, a Shiva temple, and bazaar shops which border the streets that run around the Qila and sell precious ornaments, colourful hand-woven fabrics, 'jootis' and bright 'Paradis'.

It was the principal residence of the Patiala royals until the construction of Old Moti Bagh Palace.

The entrance is through an imposing gate. The architectural style of the palace is a synthesis of late Mughal and Rajasthani. The complex has ten courtyards along the north–south axis. Each courtyard is unique in size and character, some being broad, others very small and others mere slits in the fabric of the building. Though the Androon is a single interconnected building, it is spoken of as a series of palaces. Each set of rooms makes a cluster around a courtyard, and each carries a name: Topkhana, Qila Mubarak, Sheesh Mahal, Treasury, and Prison. Ten of the rooms are painted with frescoes or decorated intricately with mirrors and gilt.

In a tiny portion of the complex is a little British construction with Gothic arches, fireplaces made of marble, and built-in toilets perched on the Mughal Rajasthani roof. Burj Baba Ala Singh has had a fire smouldering ever since the time of Ala Singh, along with a flame brought by him from Jwalaji. Every year it's decorated beautifully for the Heritage Festival.

Sheesh Mahal
A part of the Old Moti Bagh Palace built in the 19th century by the Maharajas is the famous Sheesh Mahal, literally meaning the Palace of Mirrors. The mahal contains a large number of frescoes, most of which were made under His Highness Maharaja Narinder Singh. A lake in front of the palace adds to the beauty. Lakshman Jhula, a bridge built across the lake, is a famous attraction. A museum housing the largest collection of medals from the world collected by His Highness Maharaja Bhupinder Singh is here.

Currently, the museum along with the main building is closed for public viewing because of renovation. However, tourists can access the surroundings of the Mahal along with the Lakshman Jhula.

Baradari Gardens
The Baradari Gardens, the garden with 12 gates, are in the north of old Patiala city, just outside Sheranwala Gate. The garden complex, set up during the reign of Maharaja Rajindera Singh, has extensive vegetation of rare trees, shrubs, and flowers dotted with impressive Colonial buildings and a marble statue of Maharaja Rajindera Singh. It was built as a royal residence with a cricket stadium, a skating rink, and a small palace set in its heart named Rajindera Kothi. The gardens include a museum building with collections of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh.

After extensive restoration, it opened as a heritage hotel run by Neemrana Hotels group in 2009. It is Punjab's first heritage hotel. It is near Press Club Patiala which was established in 2006 and is now headed by Parveen Komal, president. Press Club Patiala is situated at Barandari Garden Near 20 No. Railway Crossing. Headed by Mr. Parveen Komal President www.pressclubpatiala.com. It was established by Captain Amrinder Singh Chief Minister Of Punjab in 2006.

12 Royal Gates of Patiala

 * Darshani Gate - Main entrance of Quilla Mubarak
 * Sanouri Gate
 * Lahori Gate
 * Sherawala Gate
 * Sunami Gate
 * Sirhindi Gate
 * Ghalori Gate
 * Safabadi Gate
 * Top Khana Gate
 * Nabha Gate
 * Samania Gate
 * Rajindera Gate

National Institute of Sports
Founded in 1961, Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports (NIS) is Asia's largest sports institute in princely city of Patiala. The institute was renamed Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports in January 1973.NIS is housed in the Old Moti Bagh palace of the erstwhile royal family of Patiala, which was purchased by the government of India after Indian Independence. Today, several sports memorabilia, like a has (doughnut-shaped exercise disc), weighing 95 kg, used by the Great Gama for squats, Major Dhyan Chand's gold medal, from 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, and PT Usha 1986 Seoul Asiad shoes, are housed at the National Institute of Sports Museum.

Patiala Central State Library
Patiala Central State Library is one of the oldest libraries in the state. It was opened in 1956. It is named after the former Punjab Chief Minister Giani Gurmukh Singh Musafir. The library has a rare collection of books. There are more than 1,35,000 books in the library. Out of it, more than 15,000 books are archival books and 3,000 rare manuscripts.

Culture and traditions

Patiala's sway over the Malwa area extended beyond merely political influence. Patiala was equally the set of religious and cultural life. Educationally, Patiala was at the forefront. Patiala was the first town in this part of the country to have a degree college – the Mohindra College – in 1870.

Patiala has seen the evolution of a distinct style of architecture. Borrowing from the Rajput style, its beauty and elegance are molded according to the local traditions.

With the active patronage of the Maharajas of Patiala, a well-established style of Hindustan I music called the "Patiala gharana" came into existence and has held its own up to the present times. This school of music has had several famous musicians, many of whom came to Patiala after the disintegration of the Mughal Court at Delhi in the 18th century. At the turn of the century, Ustad Ali Bux was the most renowned exponent of this Gharana. Later, his sons Ustad Akhtar Hussain Khan and Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan achieved worldwide fame and brought glory to the Patiala Gharana.

After the partition of British India, the Muslim community was massacred or forced to flee the city en masse to Pakistan. At the same time, many Hindu and Sikh refugees migrated from Pakistan and settled on the Muslim properties in Patiala. The then Maharaja of Patiala, His Highness Yadavindra Singh, Rajpramukh of PEPSU with his wife Her Highness Maharani Mohinder Kaur organized a large number of camps and worked tirelessly for the people.

Transport
It is connected to cities like Ambala, Kaithal, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Delhi etc. by road. Patiala is well connected to cities like Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar, on NH 1 via State Highway no. 8 till Sirhind, which is on NH 1. Patiala is well connected to Delhi by road as well as by rail. NH 64 (Zirakpur – Patiala – Sangrur – Bhatinda) connects Patiala with Rajpura (on NH 1 and very well connected to Delhi) and Zirakpur (suburb of Chandigarh). Patiala has a railway station under Ambala railway division and Patiala Airport, which is not operational. The nearest domestic airport is Chandigarh Airport, which is approximately 62 km from the city. Patiala is located very close to Nabha city. The distance between Patiala and Nabha is approximately 27 km and it takes approximately half an hour by road to reach Nabha.

Patiala is connected by road to all the major towns.

Education
Since Indian independence in 1947, Patiala has emerged as a major education centre in the state of Punjab. The city houses the Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, LM Thapar School of Management, Jagat Guru Nanak Dev Punjab State Open University, Punjab Sports University, Punjabi University, Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, General Shivdev Singh Diwan Gurbachan Singh Khalsa College, Government Mohindra College, Aryans College of Law, Multani Mal Modi College, Government Medical College, Patiala, Thapar Polytechnic College, and Govt. Bikram College of Commerce, one of the premier commerce colleges in northern India.

Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports, Patiala is a sports hub of north India. Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Patiala was the first national law school of the north region established under the Punjab Government Act of 2006.

List of Universities in Patiala:

Notable schools:
 * The British Co-Ed High School
 * Our Lady of Fatima Convent Sec. School, Patiala

 * Guru Nanak Foundation Public School, Patiala
 * St. Peter's Academy, Patiala
 * Yadavindra Public School, Patiala (YPS Patiala)

Sports
Patiala is home to numerous inter-state sporting teams in tournaments like Black Elephants. The city has facilities for cricket, swimming, shooting, skating and hockey. The city has stadiums such as Dhruv Pandove Ground, Raja Bhalinder Stadium, Yadavindra Sports Stadium (YPS) and National Institute of Sports.

The latest addition to sports is the state-of-the-art shotgun shooting ranges housing New Moti Bagh Gun Club in village Maine. Founded by the royal family of Patiala, these ranges are home to the Indian Shotgun Shooting team who routinely trains here. It has recently hosted the 2nd Asian Shotgun Championship.

Suburbs of Patiala

 * Nabha (Municipal Council) 25 km
 * Rajpura (Municipal Council) 27 km
 * Samana (Municipal Council) 27 km

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Gastropoda

Gastropods, commonly known as slugs and snails, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda.

This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, freshwater, and from the land. There are many thousands of species of sea snails and slugs, as well as freshwater snails, freshwater limpets, land snails and slugs.

The class Gastropoda is a diverse and highly successful class of mollusks within the phylum Mollusca. It contains a vast total of named species, second only to the insects in overall number. The fossil history of this class goes back to the Late Cambrian. , 721 families of gastropods are known, of which 245 are extinct and appear only in the fossil record, while 476 are currently extant with or without a fossil record.

Gastropoda (previously known as univalves and sometimes spelled "Gasteropoda") are a major part of the phylum Mollusca, and are the most highly diversified class in the phylum, with 65,000 to 80,000 living snail and slug species. The anatomy, behavior, feeding, and reproductive adaptations of gastropods vary significantly from one clade or group to another, so stating many generalities for all gastropods is difficult.

The class Gastropoda has an extraordinary diversification of habitats. Representatives live in gardens, woodland, deserts, and on mountains; in small ditches, great rivers, and lakes; in estuaries, mudflats, the rocky intertidal, the sandy subtidal, the abyssal depths of the oceans, including the hydrothermal vents, and numerous other ecological niches, including parasitic ones.

Although the name "snail" can be, and often is, applied to all the members of this class, commonly this word means only those species with an external shell big enough that the soft parts can withdraw completely into it. Slugs are gastropods that have no shell or a very small, internal shell; semislugs are gastropods that have a shell that they can partially retreat into but not entirely.

The marine shelled species of gastropods include species such as abalone, conches, periwinkles, whelks, and numerous other sea snails that produce seashells that are coiled in the adult stage—though in some, the coiling may not be very visible, for example in cowries. In a number of families of species, such as all the various limpets, the shell is coiled only in the larval stage, and is a simple conical structure after that.

Etymology
In the scientific literature, gastropods were described as "gasteropodes" by Georges Cuvier in 1795. The word gastropod comes from Greek (gastḗr 'stomach') and  (poús 'foot'), a reference to the fact that the animal's "foot" is positioned below its guts.

The earlier name "univalve" means one valve (or shell), in contrast to bivalves, such as clams, which have two valves or shells.

Diversity
At all taxonomic levels, gastropods are second only to insects in terms of their diversity.

Gastropods have the greatest numbers of named mollusk species. However, estimates of the total number of gastropod species vary widely, depending on cited sources. The number of gastropod species can be ascertained from estimates of the number of described species of Mollusca with accepted names: about 85,000 (minimum 50,000, maximum 120,000). But an estimate of the total number of Mollusca, including undescribed species, is about 240,000 species. The estimate of 85,000 mollusks includes 24,000 described species of terrestrial gastropods.

Different estimates for aquatic gastropods (based on different sources) give about 30,000 species of marine gastropods, and about 5,000 species of freshwater and brackish gastropods. Many deep-sea species remain to be discovered, as only 0.0001% of the deep-sea floor has been studied biologically. The total number of living species of freshwater snails is about 4,000.

Recently extinct species of gastropods (extinct since 1500) number 444, 18 species are now extinct in the wild (but still exist in captivity), and 69 species are "possibly extinct".

The number of prehistoric (fossil) species of gastropods is at least 15,000 species.

In marine habitats, the continental slope and the continental rise are home to the highest diversity, while the continental shelf and abyssal depths have a low diversity of marine gastropods.

Habitat

Gastropods are found in a wide range of aquatic and terrestrial habitats, from deep ocean trenches to deserts.

Some of the more familiar and better-known gastropods are terrestrial gastropods (the land snails and slugs). Some live in fresh water, but most named species of gastropods live in a marine environment.

Gastropods have a worldwide distribution, from the near Arctic and Antarctic zones to the tropics. They have become adapted to almost every kind of existence on earth, having colonized nearly every available medium.

In habitats where not enough calcium carbonate is available to build a really solid shell, such as on some acidic soils on land, various species of slugs occur, and also some snails with thin, translucent shells, mostly or entirely composed of the protein conchiolin.

Snails such as Sphincterochila boissieri and Xerocrassa seetzeni have adapted to desert conditions. Other snails have adapted to an existence in ditches, near deepwater hydrothermal vents, in oceanic trenches 10,000 meters below the surface, the pounding surf of rocky shores, caves, and many other diverse areas.

Gastropods can be accidentally transferred from one habitat to another by other animals, e.g. by birds.

Anatomy

Snails are distinguished by an anatomical process known as torsion, where the visceral mass of the animal rotates 180° to one side during development, such that the anus is situated more or less above the head. This process is unrelated to the coiling of the shell, which is a separate phenomenon. Torsion is present in all gastropods, but the opisthobranch gastropods are secondarily untorted to various degrees.

Torsion occurs in two stages. The first, mechanistic stage is muscular, and the second is mutagenetic. The effects of torsion are primarily physiological. The organism develops by asymmetrical growth, with the majority of growth occurring on the left side. This leads to the loss of right-side anatomy that in most bilaterians is a duplicate of the left side anatomy. The essential feature of this asymmetry is that the anus generally lies to one side of the median plane. The gill-combs, the olfactory organs, the foot slime-gland, nephridia, and the auricle of the heart are single or at least are more developed on one side of the body than the other. Furthermore, there is only one genital orifice, which lies on the same side of the body as the anus. Furthermore, the anus becomes redirected to the same space as the head. This is speculated to have some evolutionary function, as prior to torsion, when retracting into the shell, first the posterior end would get pulled in, and then the anterior. Now, the front can be retracted more easily, perhaps suggesting a defensive purpose.

Gastropods typically have a well-defined head with two or four sensory tentacles with eyes, and a ventral foot. The foremost division of the foot is called the propodium. Its function is to push away sediment as the snail crawls. The larval shell of a gastropod is called a protoconch.

Shell

Most shelled gastropods have a one piece shell (with exceptional bivalved gastropods), typically coiled or spiraled, at least in the larval stage. This coiled shell usually opens on the right-hand side (as viewed with the shell apex pointing upward). Numerous species have an operculum, which in many species acts as a trapdoor to close the shell. This is usually made of a horn-like material, but in some molluscs it is calcareous. In the land slugs, the shell is reduced or absent, and the body is streamlined.

Some gastropods have adult shells which are bottom heavy due to the presence of a thick, often broad, convex ventral callus deposit on the inner lip and adapical to the aperture which may be important for gravitational stability.

Body wall
Some sea slugs are very brightly colored. This serves either as a warning, when they are poisonous or contain stinging cells, or to camouflage them on the brightly colored hydroids, sponges, and seaweeds on which many of the species are found.

Lateral outgrowths on the body of nudibranchs are called cerata. These contain an outpocketing of digestive glands called the diverticula.

Sensory organs and nervous system

The sensory organs of gastropods include olfactory organs, eyes, statocysts and mechanoreceptors. Gastropods have no hearing.

In terrestrial gastropods (land snails and slugs), the olfactory organs, located on the tips of the four tentacles, are the most important sensory organ. The chemosensory organs of opisthobranch marine gastropods are called rhinophores.

The majority of gastropods have simple visual organs, eye spots either at the tip or base of the tentacles. However, "eyes" in gastropods range from simple ocelli that only distinguish light and dark, to more complex pit eyes, and even to lens eyes. In land snails and slugs, vision is not the most important sense, because they are mainly nocturnal animals.

The nervous system of gastropods includes the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system. The central nervous system consists of ganglia connected by nerve cells. It includes paired ganglia: the cerebral ganglia, pedal ganglia, osphradial ganglia, pleural ganglia, parietal ganglia and the visceral ganglia. There are sometimes also buccal ganglia.

Digestive system
The radula of a gastropod is usually adapted to the food that a species eats. The simplest gastropods are the limpets and abalones, herbivores that use their hard radula to rasp at seaweeds on rocks.

Many marine gastropods are burrowers, and have a siphon that extends out from the mantle edge. Sometimes the shell has a siphonal canal to accommodate this structure. A siphon enables the animal to draw water into their mantle cavity and over the gill. They use the siphon primarily to "taste" the water to detect prey from a distance. Gastropods with siphons tend to be either predators or scavengers.

Respiratory system
Almost all marine gastropods breathe with a gill, but many freshwater species, and the majority of terrestrial species, have a pallial lung. The respiratory protein in almost all gastropods is hemocyanin, but one freshwater pulmonate family, the Planorbidae, have hemoglobin as the respiratory protein.

In one large group of sea slugs, the gills are arranged as a rosette of feathery plumes on their backs, which gives rise to their other name, nudibranchs. Some nudibranchs have smooth or warty backs with no visible gill mechanism, such that respiration may likely take place directly through the skin.

Circulatory system
Gastropods have open circulatory system and the transport fluid is hemolymph. Hemocyanin is present in the hemolymph as the respiratory pigment.

Excretory system
The primary organs of excretion in gastropods are nephridia, which produce either ammonia or uric acid as a waste product. The nephridium also plays an important role in maintaining water balance in freshwater and terrestrial species. Additional organs of excretion, at least in some species, include pericardial glands in the body cavity, and digestive glands opening into the stomach.

Reproductive system

Courtship is a part of mating behavior in some gastropods, including some of the Helicidae. Again, in some land snails, an unusual feature of the reproductive system of gastropods is the presence and utilization of love darts.

In many marine gastropods other than the opisthobranchs, there are separate sexes (dioecious/gonochoric); most land gastropods, however, are hermaphrodites.

Life cycle

Courtship is a part of the behavior of mating gastropods with some pulmonate families of land snails creating and utilizing love darts, the throwing of which have been identified as a form of sexual selection.

The main aspects of the life cycle of gastropods include:
 * Egg laying and the eggs of gastropods
 * The embryonic development of gastropods
 * The larvae or larval stadium: some gastropods may be trochophore and/or veliger
 * Estivation and hibernation (each of these are present in some gastropods only)
 * The growth of gastropods
 * Courtship and mating in gastropods: fertilization is internal or external according to the species. External fertilization is common in marine gastropods.

Feeding behavior

The diet of gastropods differs according to the group considered. Marine gastropods include some that are herbivores, detritus feeders, predatory carnivores, scavengers, parasites, and also a few ciliary feeders, in which the radula is reduced or absent. Land-dwelling species can chew up leaves, bark, fruit and decomposing animals while marine species can scrape algae off the rocks on the seafloor. Certain species such as the Archaeogastropda maintain horizontal rows of slender marginal teeth. In some species that have evolved into endoparasites, such as the eulimid Thyonicola doglieli, many of the standard gastropod features are strongly reduced or absent.

A few sea slugs are herbivores and some are carnivores. The carnivorous habit is due to specialisation. Many gastropods have distinct dietary preferences and regularly occur in close association with their food species.

Some predatory carnivorous gastropods include: cone shells, Testacella, Daudebardia, turrids, ghost slugs and others.

Genetics
Gastropods exhibit an important degree of variation in mitochondrial gene organization when compared to other animals. Main events of gene rearrangement occurred at the origin of Patellogastropoda and Heterobranchia, whereas fewer changes occurred between the ancestors of Vetigastropoda (only tRNAs D, C and N) and Caenogastropoda (a large single inversion, and translocations of the tRNAs D and N). Within Heterobranchia, gene order seems relatively conserved, and gene rearrangements are mostly related with transposition of tRNA genes.

Geological history and evolution

The first gastropods were exclusively marine, with the earliest representatives of the group appearing in the Late Cambrian (Chippewaella, Strepsodiscus), though their only gastropod character is a coiled shell, so they could lie in the stem lineage, if they are gastropods at all. Earliest Cambrian organisms like Helcionella, Barskovia and Scenella are no longer considered gastropods, and the tiny coiled Aldanella of earliest Cambrian time is probably not even a mollusk.

As such, it's not until the Ordovician that the first crown-group members arise. By the Ordovician period the gastropods were a varied group present in a range of aquatic habitats. Commonly, fossil gastropods from the rocks of the early Palaeozoic era are too poorly preserved for accurate identification. Still, the Silurian genus Poleumita contains fifteen identified species. Fossil gastropods were less common during the Palaeozoic era than bivalves.

Most of the gastropods of the Palaeozoic era belong to primitive groups, a few of which still survive. By the Carboniferous period many of the shapes seen in living gastropods can be matched in the fossil record, but despite these similarities in appearance the majority of these older forms are not directly related to living forms. It was during the Mesozoic era that the ancestors of many of the living gastropods evolved.

One of the earliest known terrestrial (land-dwelling) gastropods is Anthracopupa (=Maturipupa), which is found in the Coal Measures of the Carboniferous period in Europe, but relatives of the modern land snails are rare before the Cretaceous period.

In rocks of the Mesozoic era, gastropods are slightly more common as fossils; their shells are often well preserved. Their fossils occur in ancient beds deposited in both freshwater and marine environments. The "Purbeck Marble" of the Jurassic period and the "Sussex Marble" of the early Cretaceous period, which both occur in southern England, are limestones containing the tightly packed remains of the pond snail Viviparus.

Rocks of the Cenozoic era yield very large numbers of gastropod fossils, many of these fossils being closely related to modern living forms. The diversity of the gastropods increased markedly at the beginning of this era, along with that of the bivalves.

Certain trail-like markings preserved in ancient sedimentary rocks are thought to have been made by gastropods crawling over the soft mud and sand. Although these trace fossils are of debatable origin, some of them do resemble the trails made by living gastropods today.

Gastropod fossils may sometimes be confused with ammonites or other shelled cephalopods. An example of this is Bellerophon from the limestones of the Carboniferous period in Europe, the shell of which is planispirally coiled and can be mistaken for the shell of a cephalopod.

Gastropods are one of the groups that record the changes in fauna caused by the advance and retreat of the ice sheets during the Pleistocene epoch.

Cladogram
A cladogram showing the phylogenic relationships of Gastropoda with example species:

Cocculiniformia, Neomphalina and Lower Heterobranchia are not included in the above cladogram.

Current classification
The present backbone classification of gastropods relies on the results of phylogenomic analyses. Consensus has not been reached yet considering the relationships at the very base of the gastropod tree of life, but otherwise the major groups are known with confidence.

 * Gastropoda
 * Adenogonogastropoda (Angiogastropoda )
 * Apogastropoda
 * Caenogastropoda
 * Heterobranchia
 * Neritimorpha
 * Patellogastropoda
 * Vetigastropoda (including Neomphaliones)

History
Since Darwin, biological taxonomy has attempted to reflect the phylogeny of organisms, i.e., the tree of life. The classifications used in taxonomy attempt to represent the precise interrelatedness of the various taxa. However, the taxonomy of the Gastropoda is constantly being revised and so the versions shown in various texts can differ in major ways.

In the older classification of the gastropods, there were four subclasses:
 * Opisthobranchia (gills to the right and behind the heart).
 * Gymnomorpha (no shell)
 * Prosobranchia (gills in front of the heart).
 * Pulmonata (with a lung instead of gills)

The taxonomy of the Gastropoda is still under revision, and more and more of the old taxonomy is being abandoned, as the results of DNA studies slowly become clearer. Nevertheless, a few of the older terms such as "opisthobranch" and "prosobranch" are still sometimes used in a descriptive way.

New insights based on DNA sequencing of gastropods have produced some revolutionary new taxonomic insights. In the case of the Gastropoda, the taxonomy is now gradually being rewritten to embody strictly monophyletic groups (only one lineage of gastropods in each group). Integrating new findings into a working taxonomy remain challenging. Consistent ranks within the taxonomy at the level of subclass, superorder, order, and suborder have already been abandoned as unworkable. Ongoing revisions of the higher taxonomic levels are expected in the near future.

Convergent evolution, which appears to exist at especially high frequency in gastropods, may account for the observed differences between the older phylogenies, which were based on morphological data, and more recent gene-sequencing studies.

In 2004, Brian Simison and David R. Lindberg showed possible diphyletic origins of the Gastropoda based on mitochondrial gene order and amino acid sequence analyses of complete genes.

In 2005, Philippe Bouchet and Jean-Pierre Rocroi made sweeping changes in the systematics, resulting in the Bouchet & Rocroi taxonomy, which is a step closer to the evolutionary history of the phylum. The Bouchet & Rocroi classification system is based partly on the older systems of classification, and partly on new cladistic research. In the past, the taxonomy of gastropods was largely based on phenetic morphological characters of the taxa. The recent advances are more based on molecular characters from DNA and RNA research. This has made the taxonomical ranks and their hierarchy controversial.

In 2017, Bouchet, Rocroi, and other collaborators published a significantly updated version of the 2005 taxonomy. In the Bouchet et al. taxonomy, the authors used unranked clades for taxa above the rank of superfamily (replacing the ranks suborder, order, superorder and subclass), while using the traditional Linnaean approach for all taxa below the rank of superfamily. Whenever monophyly has not been tested, or is known to be paraphyletic or polyphyletic, the term "group" or "informal group" has been used. The classification of families into subfamilies is often not well resolved.

Conservation
Many gastropod species face threats from habitat destruction, pollution, and climate change. Some species are endangered or have become extinct due to these factors. Conservation efforts often focus on protecting their habitats, especially in freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems.

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

title: Gastropoda


text:
Stuart Merrill

Stuart Fitzrandolph Merrill (August 1, 1863 in Hempstead, New York – December 1, 1915 in Versailles, France) was an American poet, who wrote mostly in the French language. He belonged to the Symbolist school. His principal books of poetry were Les Gammes (1887), Les Fastes (1891), and Petits Poèmes d'Automne (1895).

Life
Merrill was the product of a conservative, wealthy, Protestant upbringing. In 1866, his father George received a diplomatic appointment to Paris, where Merrill would learn French and live for the next 19 years. Stéphane Mallarmé was one of Merrill's school instructors. His classmates included future symbolists René Ghil and Pierre Quillard. Merrill ran a weekly journal, Le fou, before returning to the States in 1884 to attend law school. On April 15, 1887, Merrill went to Madison Square Theater in New York to hear Walt Whitman give his famous "Death of Abraham Lincoln" lecture. Afterwards, Merrill had the opportunity to meet Whitman, an experience he later recorded in the magazine "Le Masque."

Also in 1887, Merrill published his first book of poems, Les gammes, in Paris, and received wide critical acclaim in Europe. As his literary career took off he participated in radical political causes, siding with the anarchists in the famous Haymarket riots. When George Bernard Shaw attempted to circulate a petition in London calling for the release of Oscar Wilde, imprisoned for homosexuality, Merrill made a similar attempt to get notable artists and intellectuals to sign a similar petition in the United States. Although Merrill's father disinherited him for his politics, his mother would continue to support him financially throughout his life.

In 1890, Merrill published Pastels in Prose, a collection of his translations of French prose poems. This was his only book to be published in America during his lifetime. The same year, he returned to Europe permanently and he married in 1891. For the years 1893–1908, his address was 53 Quai de Bourbon, Île Saint-Louis, Paris. Several more books, including Les fastes in 1891 and Petits poèmes d’automne in 1895, were published before his death of heart disease in 1915. In 1927 a small traffic way in the 17th arrondissement of Paris took the name Place Stuart-Merrill.

Works

 * Les gammes (The Ranges), Vanier, Paris, 1887
 * Pastels en Prose, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1890
 * Les Fastes (The Record), 1891
 * Petits Poèmes d'Automne (Little Autumnal Poems), 1895
 * Les quatre saisons (The Four Seasons), Mercure de France, Paris, 1900
 * Walt Whitman, Henry S. Saunders, 1922
 * Prose et vers : œuvres posthumes (Prose and Verse: Posthumous Works), A. Messein, Paris, 1925
 * The White Tomb: Selected Writing, Talisman House, 1999

title: Stuart Merrill


text:
TWW

TWW may refer to:

 * The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, an action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for the GameCube
 * Television Wales and the West, the British Independent Television contractor serving South Wales and West of England from 1956–68
 * TheWolfWeb, an unofficial message board for North Carolina State University
 * Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
 * Transcom WorldWide, a customer relationship management and debt collection company based in Europe
 * Transformers: The War Within, a series of comic book mini-series written by Simon Furman
 * Tsuen Wan West station, Hong Kong; MTR station code TWW
 * The West Wing, an American serial political drama television series

title: TWW


text:
Woodstock '94

Woodstock '94 was an American music festival held in 1994 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the original Woodstock festival of 1969. It was promoted as "2 More Days of Peace and Music". The poster used to promote the first concert was revised to feature two catbirds perched on the neck of an electric guitar, instead of the original one catbird on an acoustic guitar.

The 1994 concert was scheduled for the weekend of August 13–14, with a third day (Friday, August 12) added later. Tickets to the festival cost $135 each. The weather was hot and dry on Friday but by early Saturday afternoon storms rolled in. The rains turned much of the field into mud.

The event took place on Winston Farm, just west of Saugerties, New York-about 100 mi north of New York City and 70 mi northeast of the original 1969 festival site near Bethel, which had 12,000 on hand to celebrate the silver anniversary.

Though only 164,000 tickets were sold, the crowd at Woodstock '94 was estimated at 350,000. The size of the crowd was larger than concert organizers had planned for and by the second night many of the event policies were logistically unenforceable. The major issues related to security, when attendees arrived, left or returned to the site, and the official concert food and beverage vendor policy which initially restricted attendees from entering with supplies of food, drinks, and above all alcohol. With the concert site mostly enclosed by simple chain link fences, there was hardly any difficulty for many attendees to enter freely with beer and other banned items. The security staff, along with the entrance and exit staff, could not continue reasonable monitoring of the increasing number of people entering and exiting while at the same time maintaining safety, security, and a peaceful atmosphere.

Three deaths at the festival were confirmed. An unidentified 45-year-old male died on Saturday of suspected diabetes complications. On Sunday, a 20-year-old died of a ruptured spleen. Organizers also confirmed 5,000 were treated at medical tents and 800 were taken to hospitals.

The festival was followed by Woodstock '99, also in New York at Rome.

North Stage

 * Roguish Armament with Rekk
 * Master of None
 * 3
 * Futu Futu
 * Abba Rage
 * Lunchmeat
 * The Paul Luke Band
 * Peacebomb
 * The Goats
 * Huffamoose
 * Orleans
 * Blues Traveler
 * Jackyl
 * Del Amitri
 * Live
 * James
 * King's X
 * Sheryl Crow
 * Collective Soul
 * Candlebox
 * Violent Femmes

Ravestock

 * Aphex Twin
 * Deee-Lite
 * DJ Spooky
 * Doc Martin
 * Frankie Bones
 * Kevin Saunderson
 * Little Louie Vega
 * The Orb
 * Orbital
 * Soul Slinger
 * DJ Scotto

Notable Events: Day 1

 * Jackyl took the stage early on Friday. Lead singer Jesse James Dupree took the stage with a bottle of whiskey and poured alcohol onto the crowd. He then started smoking marijuana and on a close up he shotgunned the joint into the camera, with copious amounts of smoke filling the screens and the stage, at which point the crowd cheered. Dupree then lit a stool on fire onstage and cut it up with a chainsaw. He also pulled out a rifle and started firing into the air but cut his hand, which started bleeding. As Dupree wiped his forehead, a streak of blood was left across his head.

 * Aphex Twin's performance was cut short when promoters "disconnected" him mid-show for signing a fake name on a contract, which would forfeit PolyGram's rights to his performance.

North Stage

 * Joe Cocker
 * Blind Melon
 * Cypress Hill
 * Rollins Band
 * Melissa Etheridge
 * Crosby, Stills, & Nash
 * Nine Inch Nails
 * Metallica
 * Aerosmith

South Stage

 * Nenad Bach
 * The Cranberries
 * Zucchero
 * Youssou N'Dour
 * The Band featuring Hot Tuna, Bruce Hornsby, Roger McGuinn, Rob Wasserman, and Bob Weir
 * Primus featuring Jerry Cantrell
 * Salt-N-Pepa
 * Vinx

Notable Events: Day 2

 * Blind Melon frontman Shannon Hoon took the stage in his girlfriend's dress and appeared to be tripping on acid during the band's performance and post-show interview with MTV.
 * Nine Inch Nails had the largest crowd density at the event, overshadowing many of the other performers. Just before going on stage, they wrestled each other in the mud and went on to perform completely wet and covered in mud. In the post-performance interview, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor claimed he thought his band's performance was "terrible" due to technical difficulties on stage. Reznor admitted that while he disliked playing at such a large show, it was done for the money: "To be quite frank, it's basically to offset the cost of the tour we're doing right now." Their performance of "Happiness in Slavery" at the festival won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 1996.
 * Aerosmith's Joey Kramer, Joe Perry, and Steven Tyler were all attendees at the original Woodstock festival in 1969. Aerosmith performed around 3 to 4 a.m., right after an extensive fireworks display from Metallica. Tyler said on the liner notes for the album during their set: "It rained like a cow pissing on a flat rock".
 * During Primus' performance of the song "My Name Is Mud", the audience responded by pelting the band with mud, which singer and bassist Les Claypool ended by telling the crowd that "when you throw things on stage, it's a sign of small and insignificant genitalia". Twenty years after the show, Claypool claimed to still have some of the mud stuck in the bass cabinets he used at the event. Another memorable moment from Primus' set at Woodstock '94 was when Jerry Cantrell, the guitarist and vocalist of Alice in Chains, joined Primus onstage during their performance of the song "Harold of the Rocks".

North Stage

 * Country Joe McDonald
 * Sisters of Glory featuring Thelma Houston, CeCe Peniston, Phoebe Snow, Mavis Staples, and Lois Walden
 * Arrested Development
 * The Allman Brothers Band
 * Traffic
 * Spin Doctors
 * Porno for Pyros
 * Bob Dylan
 * Red Hot Chili Peppers
 * Peter Gabriel

South Stage

 * John Sebastian and the J-Band
 * Country Joe McDonald
 * Gil Scott-Heron
 * WOMAD
 * Xalam
 * The Justin Trio
 * Geoffrey Oryema
 * Hassan Hakmoun & Zahar
 * Green Day
 * Paul Rodgers Rock and Blues Revue featuring Slash, Neal Schon, Andy Fraser, and Jason Bonham
 * The Neville Brothers
 * Santana featuring Eric Gales
 * Jimmy Cliff's All Star Reggae Jam featuring Rita Marley, Eek-A-Mouse and Shabba Ranks

Notable Events: Day 3

 * Woodstock '94 has also been referred to as Mudstock or Mudstock '94, partly due to the rainy weather that resulted in mud pits and the aforementioned performances of Nine Inch Nails and Primus. This culminated with Green Day's performance, during which guitarist and lead vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong started a mudfight with the crowd during their song "Paper Lanterns". In the documentary VH1 Behind the Music: Green Day, bassist Mike Dirnt was mistaken for one of the fans jumping on stage and was spear-tackled by a security guard, knocking out one of his teeth. It was this incident that caused Dirnt to need emergency orthodontia. A gag order was put in place regarding this incident. Due to the now-infamous mudfight and Dirnt's injury, Woodstock quickly propelled Green Day's then recently released album Dookie into success.
 * After being injured in a traffic accident in 1966 and his subsequent disappearance from the popular music scene, Bob Dylan declined to go to the original Woodstock Festival of 1969, even though he lived in the area at the time. He set off for the Isle of Wight Festival the day the Woodstock festival started and performed at Woodside Bay on August 31, 1969. Dylan, however, did accept an invitation to perform at Woodstock '94 and was introduced with the phrase: "We waited twenty-five years to hear this. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bob Dylan". Although he was an hour and a half late to his performance, his set was considered one of the greater moments of the festival by various critics and represented the beginning of another new phase in his lengthy career. Uncharacteristically for the time, Dylan played lead guitar in a more rock-oriented electric set.
 * The Red Hot Chili Peppers performed in lightbulb costumes for the first song of their set. Later in the set they would all dress up as Jimi Hendrix had at the original Woodstock. The lightbulb costumes are now on display at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
 * Peter Gabriel headlined the North Stage on the last night and closed Woodstock '94.

Other notes on performers

 * Several of the artists including Green Day and Cypress Hill skipped at least one Lollapalooza tour date in order to appear at Woodstock '94.
 * Performers from the original Woodstock appearing at Woodstock '94 were the Band, Santana, Joe Cocker, Country Joe McDonald, John Sebastian, the surviving members of Sweetwater, and Crosby, Stills, & Nash. Additionally, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, all Woodstock alumni, also appeared, performing with the Band on guitar, bass, and guitar and vocals, respectively.
 * Six local unsigned bands performed at Woodstock '94, including Futu Futu and Lunch Meat of Saugerties, and Straight Wired of Westchester County.

Declined invitations or missed connections

 * Guns N' Roses were asked to appear at the festival but the band declined due to internal problems, as well as feeling the concert was too "commercial." However, lead guitarist Slash made an appearance with Paul Rodgers.
 * Johnny Cash (the only living person at that time to be inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) was also invited to perform on the last day of Woodstock '94, but declined after learning that he would not be performing on the main stage.
 * Alice in Chains were on the festival’s initial bill. However, the band pulled out due to lead singer Layne Staley's continuing drug problems.
 * Todd Rundgren had a multimedia performance in the festival's "Surreal Field" several times during the course of the entire festival.
 * Promoters pursued Nirvana to perform at the festival. At the time, the band pulled out of Lollapalooza due to singer Kurt Cobain's health. By the time the festival was set to take place, Cobain's death and the disbanding of Nirvana made a performance impractical.

Broadcast and recordings
The Woodstock '94 festival was shot using the early analog HD 1125-line Hi-Vision system in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The footage would be used for later home packages and a planned theatrical documentary about the event. The HD footage was mixed live into standard definition 4:3 NTSC for cable TV broadcast.

The Woodstock '94 festival was broadcast live on MTV via pay-per-view in the U.S. and Canada. In the UK, audio from the event was broadcast on BBC Radio 1.

Commercial releases
Highlights from the concert were later released as a double album set on November 4, 1994 on CD and cassette. The film about the event, directed by Bruce Gowers, was also released direct-to-video the same year on VHS and Laserdisc. Currently, there is no DVD, Blu-ray, or digital media release.

Since the release of the official album, various recordings of songs performed have been released officially; however, complete performances of entire sets have only been released unofficially as bootlegs. In 2019, a limited edition vinyl-only release of Green Day's performance was released for Record Store Day, making this one of the first official releases of an entire Woodstock '94 set.

Video and discography

 * – a film directed by Bruce Gowers with the highlights of performances
 * Woodstock 94 – a live album released by A&M Records
 * Woodstock 1994 - Green Day (587282-1) - a 2019 Record Store Day vinyl release of their set.

title: Woodstock '94


text:
No-hair theorem

The no-hair theorem (which is a hypothesis) states that all stationary black hole solutions of the Einstein–Maxwell equations of gravitation and electromagnetism in general relativity can be completely characterized by only three independent externally observable classical parameters: mass, electric charge, and angular momentum. Other characteristics (such as geometry and magnetic moment) are uniquely determined by these three parameters, and all other information (for which "hair" is a metaphor) about the matter that formed a black hole or is falling into it "disappears" behind the black-hole event horizon and is therefore permanently inaccessible to external observers after the black hole "settles down" (by emitting gravitational and electromagnetic waves). Physicist John Archibald Wheeler expressed this idea with the phrase "black holes have no hair", which was the origin of the name.

In a later interview, Wheeler said that Jacob Bekenstein coined this phrase.

Richard Feynman objected to the phrase that seemed to me to best symbolize the finding of one of the graduate students: graduate student Jacob Bekenstein had shown that a black hole reveals nothing outside it of what went in, in the way of spinning electric particles. It might show electric charge, yes; mass, yes; but no other features – or as he put it, "A black hole has no hair". Richard Feynman thought that was an obscene phrase and he didn't want to use it. But that is a phrase now often used to state this feature of black holes, that they don't indicate any other properties other than a charge and angular momentum and mass.

The first version of the no-hair theorem for the simplified case of the uniqueness of the Schwarzschild metric was shown by Werner Israel in 1967. The result was quickly generalized to the cases of charged or spinning black holes. There is still no rigorous mathematical proof of a general no-hair theorem, and mathematicians refer to it as the no-hair conjecture. Even in the case of gravity alone (i.e., zero electric fields), the conjecture has only been partially resolved by results of Stephen Hawking, Brandon Carter, and David C. Robinson, under the additional hypothesis of non-degenerate event horizons and the technical, restrictive and difficult-to-justify assumption of real analyticity of the space-time continuum.

Example
Suppose two black holes have the same masses, electrical charges, and angular momenta, but the first black hole was made by collapsing ordinary matter whereas the second was made out of antimatter; nevertheless, then the conjecture states they will be completely indistinguishable to an observer outside the event horizon. None of the special particle physics pseudo-charges (i.e., the global charges baryonic number, leptonic number, etc., all of which would be different for the originating masses of matter that created the black holes) are conserved in the black hole, or if they are conserved somehow then their values would be unobservable from the outside.

Changing the reference frame
Every isolated unstable black hole decays rapidly to a stable black hole; and (excepting quantum fluctuations) stable black holes can be completely described (in a Cartesian coordinate system) at any moment in time by these eleven numbers: These numbers represent the conserved attributes of an object which can be determined from a distance by examining its gravitational and electromagnetic fields. All other variations in the black hole will either escape to infinity or be swallowed up by the black hole.
 * mass–energy $$M$$,
 * electric charge $$Q$$,
 * position $$\textbf{X}$$ (three components),
 * linear momentum $$\textbf{P}$$ (three components),
 * angular momentum $$\textbf{J}$$ (three components).

By changing the reference frame one can set the linear momentum and position to zero and orient the spin angular momentum along the positive z axis. This eliminates eight of the eleven numbers, leaving three which are independent of the reference frame: mass, angular momentum magnitude, and electric charge. Thus any black hole that has been isolated for a significant period of time can be described by the Kerr–Newman metric in an appropriately chosen reference frame.

Extensions
The no-hair theorem was originally formulated for black holes within the context of a four-dimensional spacetime, obeying the Einstein field equation of general relativity with zero cosmological constant, in the presence of electromagnetic fields, or optionally other fields such as scalar fields and massive vector fields (Proca fields, etc.).

It has since been extended to include the case where the cosmological constant is positive (which recent observations are tending to support).

Magnetic charge, if detected as predicted by some theories, would form the fourth parameter possessed by a classical black hole.

Counterexamples
Counterexamples in which the theorem fails are known in spacetime dimensions higher than four; in the presence of non-abelian Yang–Mills fields, non-abelian Proca fields, some non-minimally coupled scalar fields, or skyrmions; or in some theories of gravity other than Einstein's general relativity. However, these exceptions are often unstable solutions and/or do not lead to conserved quantum numbers so that "The 'spirit' of the no-hair conjecture, however, seems to be maintained". It has been proposed that "hairy" black holes may be considered to be bound states of hairless black holes and solitons.

In 2004, the exact analytical solution of a (3+1)-dimensional spherically symmetric black hole with minimally coupled self-interacting scalar field was derived. This showed that, apart from mass, electrical charge and angular momentum, black holes can carry a finite scalar charge which might be a result of interaction with cosmological scalar fields such as the inflaton. The solution is stable and does not possess any unphysical properties; however, the existence of a scalar field with the desired properties is only speculative.

Observational results
The results from the first observation of gravitational waves in 2015 provide some experimental evidence consistent with the uniqueness of the no-hair theorem. This observation is consistent with Stephen Hawking's theoretical work on black holes in the 1970s.

Soft hair
A study by Sasha Haco, Stephen Hawking, Malcolm Perry and Andrew Strominger postulates that black holes might contain "soft hair", giving the black hole more degrees of freedom than previously thought. This hair permeates at a very low-energy state, which is why it didn't come up in previous calculations that postulated the no-hair theorem. This was the subject of Hawking's final paper which was published posthumously.

title: No-hair theorem


text:
Renée Vivien

Renée Vivien (born Pauline Mary Tarn; 11 June 1877 – 18 November 1909) was one of the first twentieth-century lesbian British poets. [p.12] She wrote in French, in the style of the Symbolistes and the Parnassiens. A high-profile lesbian in the Paris of the Belle Époque, she is notable for her work, which has received more attention following a recent revival of interest in Sapphic verse. Many of her poems are autobiographical, pertaining mostly to Baudelarian themes of extreme romanticism and frequent despair. Apart from poetry, she wrote several works of prose, including L'Etre Double (inspired by Coleridge's Christabel), and an unfinished biography of Anne Boleyn, which was published posthumously. She has been the object of multiple biographies, most notably by Jean-Paul Goujon, André Germain (journalist), and Yves-Gerard Le Dantec.

Early life
Renée Vivien was born Pauline Mary Tarn in London, England to a wealthy British father, John Tarn, and an American mother, Mary Gilett Bennett. John Tarn earned his wealth from property investments. In 1883, while attending the Belsize College in Hampstead, London, the Alliance française awarded a silver medal to her for her study of French in France. Vivien was attending school in Paris when her father died in 1886. Upon his death, Vivien returned to London to find that her father's inheritance was given to her. Purportedly, Vivien's mother attempted to declare Vivien legally insane so that she could have her husband's inheritance money instead. The plot failed, and Vivien was taken away from her mother to live as a ward of the court until she came of age. In 1899, after she turned 21, Vivien returned to France with the inheritance money. It is around this time that she began to be known as Renée Vivien.

Relationships
Vivien harbored a romantic relationship with her childhood friend and neighbor, Violet Shillito – a relationship that remained unconsummated. Shillito introduced Vivien to the American heiress, Natalie Barney. The following year Shillito died of typhoid fever, Vivien felt to blame for her death and felt guilty for sidelining Shillito in favour of Barney. Perhaps because of this death, but likely also in part to Barney's infidelities, Vivien and Barney split a year later, in 1901. It is thought that Shillito is mentioned in Vivien's poems using the word violet or purple. In 1902, Vivien became romantically involved with the wealthy Baroness Hélène van Zuylen, one of the Paris Rothschilds. Zuylen provided much-needed emotional support and stability. Her social position did not allow for a public relationship, but she and Vivien often travelled together and continued a discreet affair for a number of years. In letters to her confidant, the French journalist and Classical scholar Jean Charles-Brun, Vivien considered herself married to the Baroness.

While still with Zuylen, Vivien received a letter from an admirer in Istanbul, Kérimé Turkhan Pacha, the wife of a Turkish diplomat. This launched a passionate correspondence, followed by brief clandestine encounters. Kérimé, who was French-educated and cultivated, lived according to Islamic tradition. Isolated and veiled, she could neither travel freely nor leave her husband. Meanwhile, Vivien would not give up the Baroness de Zuylen.

In 1907, Zuylen left Vivien for another woman. Shocked and humiliated, Vivien fled to Japan and Hawaii with her mother, becoming seriously ill on the voyage. Another blow came in 1908 when Kérimé, upon moving with her husband to Saint Petersburg, ended their affair.

Vivien was terribly affected by these losses and turned increasingly to alcohol and drugs.

The French writer Colette, who was Vivien's neighbour from 1906 to 1908, immortalised this period in The Pure and the Impure, a collection of portraits showing the spectrum of homosexual behaviour. Written in the 1920s and originally published in 1932, its factual accuracy is questionable; Natalie Barney reportedly did not concur with Colette's characterization of Vivien.

World travels
Vivien was cultivated and very well travelled, especially for a woman of her era. She wintered in Egypt, visited China, and explored much of the Middle East, as well as Europe and America.

After the heartbreak from Zuylen and Pasha, Vivien fled to Japan and then Hawaii with her mother in 1907. Vivien became ill on the voyage.

Her Paris home was a luxurious ground-floor apartment at 23, avenue du Bois de Boulogne (now 23, Avenue Foch) that opened onto a Japanese garden. She purchased antique furnishings from London and exotic objets d'art from the Far East. Fresh flowers were abundant, as were offerings of Lady Apples to a collection of shrines, statuettes, icons, and Buddhas.

A public square is named in her honor in Paris: Place Renée-Vivien, in Le Marais, central historic district of the French capital.

Illness and death
While visiting London in 1908, Vivien tried to kill herself by drinking an excess of laudanum. She stretched out on her divan with a bouquet of violets held over her heart. The suicide failed, but while in England, she contracted pleurisy; later, upon her return to Paris, she grew weaker. According to biographer Jean-Paul Goujon, Vivien suffered from chronic gastritis, due to years of chloral hydrate and alcohol abuse. She had also started to refuse to eat. By the summer of 1909, she walked with a cane.

Vivien died in Paris on the morning of 18 November 1909 at the age of 32; the cause of death was reported at the time as "lung congestion", but likely resulted from pneumonia complicated by alcoholism, drug abuse, and anorexia nervosa. She was interred at Passy Cemetery in the same Parisian neighbourhood where she had lived.

Published works
Vivien only wrote in French. Some of her works have been translated.

She published her first collection of poetry, Études et préludes, in 1901. She would go on to publish 12 more collections of poetry in her lifetime, as well as her own translations of Sappho's verses from Greek (the language she learnt specifically for the purpose). Contemporary feminists consider her one of the first women to write openly lesbian poetry.

In 1903, Vivien produced a translation of Sappho's poetry from the edition of Hentry Thornton Wharton, entitled Sapho, traduction nouvelle avec le texte grec (Sapho: A New Translation with the Greek Text). [p. 78] She learned Greek by taking private lessons with a teacher, Gaetan Baron, because she wanted to read Homer in the original Greek. [p. 93] In 1904, Vivien originally published A Woman Appeared to Me (in French), an autobiographical novel. In 1976, it was translated to English by Jeanette Foster and published by Naiad Press. Naiad also published a translation of Vivien's poetry collection, The Muse of Violets, in 1977.

Vivien also published poetry and prose in collaboration with lover, Hélène van Zuylen using the pseudonym, Paule Riversdale. The true attribution of these works is uncertain, however; some scholars believe they were written solely by Vivien. Even certain books published under Zuylen's name may be, in fact, Vivien's work. During her brief life, Vivien was an extremely prolific poet who came to be known as the "Muse of the Violets", derived from her love of the flower. Her obsession with violets (as well as with the colour violet) was a reminder of her beloved childhood friend, Violet Shillito.

She took to heart all the mannerisms of Parnassianism and of Symbolism, as one of the last poets to claim allegiance to the school. Her compositions include sonnets, hendecasyllabic verse, and prose poetry.

Virtually all her verse is veiled autobiography written in the French language; most of it has never been translated into English. Her principal published books of verse are Cendres et Poussières (1902), La Vénus des aveugles (1903), A l'heure des mains jointes (1906), Flambeaux éteints (1907), Sillages (1908), Poèmes en Prose (1909), Dans un coin de violettes (1909), and Haillons (1910).

Her poetry has achieved greater appeal and a wider audience due to the contemporary rediscovery of the works of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, also a lesbian. Her work has been described as 'coded, even though it is consciously lesbian poetry - erotic, romantic, about some of the complexities of women's relationships as she saw them, occasionally explicitly political - a poetry that celebrates lesbian experience, but more than celebrates, accepts it as a given.' [p. 13]

List of works

 * appearing under the name R. Vivien
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
 * appearing under Pauline M. Tarn

title: Renée Vivien


text:
Wales West and North Television

Wales (West and North) Television, known on screen as Teledu Cymru (, Welsh for "Wales Television") and often abbreviated to WWN, was the Welsh "Independent Television" (commercial television) contractor awarded the franchise area serving North and West Wales, from 1962 (franchise awarded 6 June 1961). It began transmitting on 14 September 1962, and ceased on 26 January 1964 through financial failure; the franchise area was soon combined with the South Wales and West of England area, operated by TWW. TWW retained the Teledu Cymru name in the former WWN franchise area, as did successor Harlech during their emergency transitional franchise, only retiring the name when they were able to officially take over.

History
The geography of Wales presented a daunting problem to the Independent Television Authority (ITA). The populous area of Wales in the South were already being served by TWW, which had begun broadcasting in 1958, while the north-east of the country and much of the north coast was served by the North of England weekday and weekend franchise holders, Granada and ABC, operating since 1956; the interior of north Wales could not receive ITV transmissions at all.

The ITA was pressured, by a consortium of Welsh-speaking businessmen, into setting up a new North and West Wales region; the ITA asked the Postmaster General to allow this, which he did, with strict provisos: the new service must not offer viewers in Wales a choice other viewers did not have, and at the last minute, the Postmaster General insisted that the new station should, on its own, produce ten-hours-a-week of programmes in Welsh, without relying on Welsh language programmes produced by Granada (and ABC) and TWW.

These punitive regulations were accepted, and the contract was awarded in 1961 to Wales Television Limited, which was later changed to Wales (West and North) Television Limited, following objections from TWW who felt that the original name was intruding on their area, though WWN dropped the parenthesis at every possible opportunity. WWN was to use three VHF transmitters, at Preseli (covering the south west), Arfon (north west) and Moel-y-Parc in the north east. When the Preseli transmitter came online on 14 September 1962, so did WWN, making it the 17th and last of the original ITA franchises to launch. However, the delay in introducing the transmitters at Arfon and Moel-y-Parc, until later in 1963, destroyed the morale and the finances of WWN. Free programming from the ITV network, plus other support from its neighbours ABC, ATV and TWW just about kept the ship afloat, but Manchester's Granada Television decided to dispense with its productions in the Welsh language, and the loss of this valuable programming stream proved fatal to WWN. Local productions ceased in May 1963 and the station's studios were reduced to a small master control until WWN could find a successor.

TWW offered a generous package to WWN's shareholders, in order to gain control of the territory, and as per the guidance of former WWN employees, kept the Teledu Cymru name on the air for four years after the demise of its parent company on 26 January 1964. TWW successor Harlech also retained the Teledu Cymru name when TWW's early termination of service forced them to run an emergency transitional franchise, only retiring the name when their franchise began properly.

Studios
WWN's studio complex was located in Western Avenue, Cardiff, despite the fact that this area was not served by WWN but by their rivals TWW. It was from here their programmes were made and their headquarters were. The company did, however, have a regional office and news studio in the region located in Bangor. Following the acquisition of WWN by TWW, the Western Avenue base was closed, with all operations moved to TWW's Pontcanna base, also in Cardiff. To accommodate the addition Teledu Cymru presentation, the Pontcanna studios received a large upgrade. It is believed that the Bangor base was retained by TWW. The studios on Western Avenue were eventually demolished and replaced by the new headquarters for the WJEC examining board.

Identity
WWN's on screen identity featured a stylised dragon against a black background with the 'Teledu Cymru' name beneath. This ident, it is believed, was the only one used by the station, whose existence was very short. Following the takeover from TWW however, the ident was modified. The dragon emblem was retained, as was the Teledu Cymru name, with the only addition being a caption below with TWW's logo and a legend stating 'Network for Wales'. The ident also now animated on screen in sections to the tune of TWW's ident. Following TWW's loss of contract, the Teledu Cymru name was once again utilised by the Independent Television Service for Wales and the West that ran the franchise until HTV could begin broadcasting.

title: Wales West and North Television


text:
VDSL

Very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) and very high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) are digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies providing data transmission faster than the earlier standards of asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) G.992.1, G.992.3 (ADSL2) and G.992.5 (ADSL2+).

VDSL offers speeds of up to 52 Mbit/s downstream and 16 Mbit/s upstream, over a single twisted pair of copper wires using the frequency band from 25 kHz to 12 MHz. These rates mean that VDSL is capable of supporting applications such as high-definition television, as well as telephone services (voice over IP) and general Internet access, over a single connection. VDSL is deployed over existing wiring used for analog telephone service and lower-speed DSL connections. This standard was approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in November 2001.

Second-generation systems (VDSL2; ITU-T G.993.2 approved in February 2006) use frequencies of up to 30 MHz to provide data rates exceeding 100 Mbit/s simultaneously in both the upstream and downstream directions. The maximum available bit rate is achieved at a range of about 300 m; performance degrades as the local loop attenuation increases.

Conceptual development
The concept of VDSL was first published in 1991 through a joint Bellcore-Stanford research study. The study searched for potential successors to the then-prevalent HDSL and relatively new ADSL, which were both 1.5 Mbit/s. Specifically, it explored the feasibility of symmetric and asymmetric data rates exceeding 10 Mbit/s on short phone lines.

VDSL2 standard is an enhancement to ITU T G.993.1 that supports asymmetric and symmetric transmission at a bidirectional net data rate up to 400 Mbit/s on twisted pairs using a bandwidth up to 35 MHz.

VDSL standards
A VDSL connection uses up to seven frequency bands, so one can allocate the data rate between upstream and downstream differently depending on the service offering and spectrum regulations. The first-generation VDSL standard specified both quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and discrete multi-tone modulation (DMT). In 2006, ITU-T standardized VDSL in recommendation G.993.2 which specified only DMT modulation for VDSL2.

VDSL2
VDSL2 is an enhancement to VDSL designed to support the wide deployment of triple play services such as voice, video, data and high-definition television (HDTV) VDSL2 is intended to enable operators and carriers to gradually, flexibly, and cost-efficiently upgrade existing xDSL infrastructure.

The protocol is standardized in the International Telecommunication Union telecommunications sector (ITU-T) as Recommendation G.993.2. It was announced as finalized on 27 May 2005, and first published on 17 February 2006. Several corrections and amendments were published from 2007 to 2011.

VDSL2 permits the transmission of asymmetric and symmetric aggregate data rates up to 300+ Mbit/s downstream and upstream on twisted pairs using a bandwidth up to 35 MHz on its latest version. It deteriorates quickly from a theoretical maximum of 350 Mbit/s at source to 100 Mbit/s at 500 m (1640.42 ft) and 50 Mbit/s at 1000 m (3280.84 ft), but degrades at a much slower rate from there, and outperforms VDSL. Starting from 1600 m its performance is equal to ADSL2+. ADSL-like long-reach performance is one of the key advantages of VDSL2. LR-VDSL2 enabled systems are capable of supporting speeds of around 1–4 Mbit/s (downstream) over distances of 4–5 km (2.5–3 miles), gradually increasing the bit rate up to symmetric 100 Mbit/s as loop-length shortens. This means that VDSL2-based systems, unlike VDSL systems, are not limited to short local loops or MTU/MDUs only, but can also be used for medium range applications.

Bonding (ITU-T G.998.x) may be used to combine multiple wire pairs to increase available capacity, or extend the copper network's reach. Hybrid Access Networks can be used to combine xDSL with wireless networks. This enables network operators to provide faster Internet access services over long lines.

Vplus/35b
Vplus is a technology to achieve higher speeds over existing VDSL2 networks. It was developed by Alcatel-Lucent and standardised in November 2015 in ITU G.993.2 Amendment 1 as VDSL2 profile 35b. It promises to deliver speeds of up to 300 Mbit/s downstream and 100 Mbit/s upstream on loops shorter than 250 m. On longer loops, Vplus falls back to VDSL2 17a vectoring performance. Vplus uses the same tone spacing as VDSL2 17a to allow vectoring across Vplus (35b) and 17a lines, and thus mixed deployments and a smooth introduction of Vplus.

Profiles
The VDSL1 standard has three bandplans: Annex A (Asymmetric BandPlan), Annex B (Symmetric BandPlan) and Annex C (Fx BandPlan). Annex A and Annex B were formerly called Plan 998 and Plan 997 respectively. VDSL1 Annex C is intended for use in Sweden only and it uses a variable separating frequency between the second downstream band, and the second upstream band. All VDSL1 bandplans have spectrum up to 12 MHz, so the length of the copper loops must be shorter than ADSL.

The VDSL2 standard defines a wide range of profiles that can be used in different VDSL deployment architectures; in the central office, in the cabinet or in the building for example.

VDSL2 vectoring
Vectoring is a transmission method that employs the coordination of line signals for reduction of crosstalk levels and improvement of performance. It is based on the concept of noise cancellation, much like noise-cancelling headphones. The ITU-T G.993.5 standard, "Self-FEXT cancellation (vectoring) for use with VDSL2 transceivers" (2010), also known as G.vector, describes vectoring for VDSL2. The scope of Recommendation ITU-T G.993.5 is specifically limited to the self-FEXT (far-end crosstalk) cancellation in the downstream and upstream directions. The far-end crosstalk (FEXT) generated by a group of near-end transceivers and interfering with the far-end transceivers of that same group is cancelled. This cancellation takes place between VDSL2 transceivers, not necessarily of the same profile. The technology is analogous to G.INP and Seamless Rate Adaptation (SRA).

Although technically feasible, as of 2022, vectoring is incompatible with local-loop unbundling, but future standard amendments could bring a solution.

VDSL2+ Supervectoring
Supervectoring is an evolution of the vectoring technology invented and widely implemented by Deutsche Telekom, which further increases crosstalk and interference resistance and allows for stable internet at home connections at 250 Mbit/s downstream and 100 Mbit/s upstream.

title: VDSL