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Zhang Qun

Zhang Qun (May 9, 1889 – December 14, 1990), was a Chinese politician and premier of the Republic of China and a prominent member of the Kuomintang. He served as secretary general to the President of the Republic from 1954 to 1972 and senior advisor to Presidents Chiang Kai-shek, Yen Chia-kan, Chiang Ching-kuo, and Lee Teng-hui. Under the influence of his wife, Ma Yu-ying, he became a Christian in the 1930s.

Education and early career
Born in the Huayang County (now part of Shuangliu County), Sichuan province, Chang was admitted in 1906 to the Baoding Military Academy, just southwest of Beijing. The next year, he was selected to go to Japan to study at the Tokyo Shimbu Gakko, a preparatory military school, where he specialized in artillery. Together with his classmate, Chiang Kai-shek, he joined the Tongmenghui the same year. After completing their preparatory studies, they both served in the Takada regiment of the Imperial Japanese Army’s 13th Field Artillery Brigade, stationed in Niigata Prefecture before returning to China to serve under Sun Yat-sen in the Xinhai Revolution which would overthrow the Qing monarchy in 1911. During this period, a lifelong friendship between the two men and Huang Fu was formed and the three became sworn, or blood, brothers. Chang married Ma Yu-ying (馬育英) in 1913; because their first child was born in 1917, he later joked to have practiced family planning long before it became popular.

When Yuan Shikai attempted to restore the monarchy, Chang fled to Japan, finished his military training at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1915, and then went to the Netherlands East Indies, where he taught in an overseas Chinese school. Returning to China to participate in Yuan's overthrow in the National Protection War, he served as adjutant-general to Cen Chunxuan, president of the southern provinces, which repudiated Yuan's regime. With the restoration of the Republic, Chang held several posts. Becoming a major general of the National Revolutionary Army at age 28, he later became a member of the Kuomintang's Central Executive Committee, mayor of Shanghai and president of Tongji University, governor of Hubei province and foreign minister. In the KMT, he led the Political Science Clique (政學系), which included military men such as Huang Fu and Xiong Shihui (熊式輝), intellectuals, such as Yang Yongtai and Wang Chonghui, and bankers and industrialists, including Wu Dingchang (吳鼎昌) and Chang Kia-ngau. During World War II, he served as secretary general of the National Security Council and governor of Sichuan province.

Post-war career
In 1946, Chang, representing the national government, was a member of the Committee of Three (also known as the Marshall Mission) along with General George C. Marshall, then head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Chinese Communist Party representative Zhou Enlai, which had been established in Nanjing in January 1946 to effect a Kuomintang-Communist truce and head off civil war. The Marshall Mission helped to bring about a temporary ceasefire, but its plans for a political-military settlement did not succeed.

In 1947, Chang headed the first coalition government as president of the Executive Yuan, a position also known as premier of the Republic of China. His platform was to prepare China for constitutional government, land reform, and price control. Despite his long ties with Chiang Kai-shek, he could not bring about the political reforms that he favored. After the transfer of the capital from Nanjing to Taipei, he became chief of staff and secretary general to the president in 1954. Among his duties were planning the government's foreign policy and representing the president in Japan, Africa and Europe, including the Second Vatican Council in 1965. In 1972, he played a large role in the difficult negotiations regarding Japan's switch of diplomatic recognition to the People's Republic of China. His last official position was chairman of the Presidium of the Kuomintang's Central Advisory Committee.

Personal life
A member of the board of the National Palace Museum, Chang was a renowned calligrapher, keen art collector, friend of great artists such as Chang Dai-chien, Huang Jun-bi and Ran In-ting, and recipient of honorary doctorates from several universities, including the University of Illinois, Seoul National University, St. John's University (New York), Sungkyunkwan University and Soochow University (Taiwan). He died at the age of 101 years, 242 days, of heart and kidney failure, at Veterans General Hospital in Taipei, on December 14, 1990. From 20 January 1990, when former Japanese Prime Minister Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni died until his own death, Chang was the world's oldest living former head of government.

Chang's wife, Ma Yu-ying (馬育英; pinyin: Ma Yuying), was a devout Christian and died in 1974. His daughter, Yalan Chang Lew (劉張亞蘭; pinyin: Liu Zhang Yalan), died on July 14, 2014, at age 97 in Seattle, US; she was the widow of Ambassador Yu-tang Daniel Lew (劉毓棠; pinyin: Liu Yutang), who had died in 2005 at age 92 in Taipei. His son, Dr. Philip Chi-cheng Chang (張繼正; pinyin: Zhang Jizheng), who died on October 24, 2015, at age 96 in Taipei, was former communications minister 1969-72, chairman of the Council for Economic Planning and Development 1973-76, finance minister 1978-81 and governor of the Central Bank of China 1984-89. His second son, Rev. Dr. Chi-chong Chang, who died on October 26, 2020, at age 92 in California, was vice president of the Truth Theological Seminary and pastor emeritus of the Mandarin Baptist Church of Pasadena, California.

Awards

 * Order of National Glory
 * Order of Blue Sky and White Sun
 * Order of Chiang Chung-Cheng
 * Order of the Brilliant Star, Special Class with Grand Cordon
 * 🇱🇻 Order of the Three Stars, 1st Class (January 19, 1937)

Internet videos

 * Governor Chang takes salute at a parade of Central Military Academy cadets, marking the 31st anniversary of the Chinese Revolution in 1942
 * General George Marshall attends signing of Chinese Truce. National Security Council Secretary General Chang Chun and Communist representative Zhou Enlai sign the truce in 1946. (From National Archives and Records Administration - ARC 39099, LI 208-UN-192, beginning at 6:56)
 * 行政院長張群蒞台 Premier Chang arrives in Taipei in October, 1947
 * 台灣省慶祝第二屆光復節大會 Premier Chang presides over the celebrations of Taiwan's Retrocession Day, October 25, 1947
 * 張群特使訪日專輯 Special Envoy Chang Chun visits Japan, where he met with the Emperor, Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and others in 1957
 * 日本前首相吉田茂訪華 Secretary General Chang receives former Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida in 1964
 * 長江萬里圖 The 65-foot-long painting, Yangtze River by Chang Dai-chien, commissioned for Chang Chun's 80th birthday, on display at the National Museum of History in Taipei in 1967
 * 行政院新舊任院長交接典禮 Secretary General Chang presides over the transfer of the premiership in 1972
 * 張學良 Chang Hsueh-liang's 90th birthday celebration, hosted by 101-year-old Chang Chun on June 1, 1990 (View especially from 0:29-1:04 where Chang Chun remembers their friendship of 60 years)

title: Zhang Qun


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American Farm Bureau Federation

The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), more informally called the American Farm Bureau (AFB) or simply the Farm Bureau, is a United States-based 501(c)(5) tax-exempt agricultural organization and lobbying group. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Farm Bureau has affiliates in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Each affiliate is a (state or county) Farm Bureau, and the parent organization is also often called simply the Farm Bureau.

Founded in 1919, the AFBF represents the 2 million farms in the United States, and is among the agriculture industry's largest lobby groups. Some observers contend that its federal lobbying efforts, which began in the 1930s, helped drive the subsequent three-decade shift to larger farms.

In 2022, the AFBF spent $2,120,000 on lobbying, including for policies benefitting the for-profit activities of state farm bureaus, such as federal subsidies for the crop insurance sold by affiliate companies. Until 2019, it denied that climate change was real.

AFBF itself does not sell insurance, but all but a handful of its non-profit state affiliates have affiliated for-profit insurance companies. Most of AFBF's revenue comes from dues paid by its nearly 5.9 million members, most of whom are not farmers but insurance customers who pay the dues as a condition of their policies.

Every year, the organization holds an annual convention and adopts new policies to guide its work. The convention is attended by farmer and rancher delegates from across the United States.

History
The Farm Bureau movement started in 1911 when John Barron, a farmer who graduated from Cornell University, worked as an extension agent in Broome County, New York. He served as a Farm Bureau representative for farmers with the Chamber of Commerce of Binghamton, New York. The effort was financed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Lackawanna Railroad. The Broome County Farm Bureau was soon separated from the Chamber of Commerce. Other farm bureaus later formed in counties across the U.S., as listed with dates at "List of Farm Bureaus".

In 1914, with the passage of the Smith–Lever Act of 1914, Congress agreed to share with the states the cost of programs for providing "county agents", who supplied information to farmers on improved methods of animal husbandry and crop production developed by agricultural colleges and experiment stations, which has evolved into the modern-day Cooperative Extension Service.

In 1915, farmers meeting in Saline County, Missouri, formed the first statewide Farm Bureau.

1919 - 1929
In 1919, a group of farmers from 30 states gathered in Chicago. They founded the American Farm Bureau Federation with the goal of "speaking for themselves through their own national organization". But they also sought to forestall populist organization of small farmers. "The inception of this national farm bureau association is taking place at a most opportune time," Harvey J. Sconce, president of the Illinois Agricultural Association, said at the meeting. "The United States is at present experiencing the greatest period of industrial unrest in its entire history. It is now just one year since the signing of the armistice. During this interval more than 3,000 strikes have been inaugurated in this country. Is it any wonder that production has dwindled and cost of living has so greatly increased? It is our duty in creating this organization to avoid any policy that will align organized farmers with the radicals of other organizations. The policy should be thoroughly American in every respect – a constructive organization instead of a destructive organization." Wrote Brian Campbell, now a professor at Berry College: "Farm Bureau began as a counter-move to various farm organizations that represented small farmers."

The initial organization papers said:

"The purpose of Farm Bureau is to make the business of farming more profitable, and the community a better place to live. Farm Bureau should provide an organization in which members may secure the benefits of unified efforts in a way that could never be accomplished through individual effort."

The initial local and state farm bureaus (1910s -1940s) had a social and educational function furthering the extension service efforts, and they also pursued the functions of pooled negotiating power for purchasing of supplies such as seed and equipment (comparable in that respect to farm co-operatives, but with potential for larger/wider unification). The bureaus also pooled capability to provide fire insurance and vehicle insurance for their farms, via both negotiating power (in group purchasing of insurance) and self-insuring capability (in forming new insurance companies of their own); they were comparable in that respect to mutual insurance companies (and indeed founded various such companies). In all of these functions, local and state farm bureaus thus became an analogue of a farmers' union or a trade association for farmers in the United States; the National Farmers Union was the other such effort, outside of small co-ops. More precisely, the local and state farm bureaus formed a network of such unions or associations with a national parent organization. They were thus somewhat analogous in that respect to a federation of trade unions (such as the AFL–CIO) - but with individual family farms being self-employed, the parallel with trade associations is the more relevant analogy.

1930 - 1939
In the 1930s, the American Farm Bureau Federation developed a lobbying presence in Washington, D.C., where it pushed for changes in New Deal programs to favor large farms with many employees over family farms. Meanwhile, the Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party (FLP), a political party which represented small operators and favored radical programs, was left without power by the New Deal policies, and so in the 1940s the FLP and similar groups in the upper Midwest died or were merged into the Democratic or Republican parties.

Along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Farm Bureau and other "advocates of a mechanized, highly commercialized agriculture helped initiate an abrupt two-decade shift to machines and wage labor." By World War II, the organization was "the most influential representative of large farmers."

In a study of the organization's New Deal period during the 1930s, Christian McFayden Cambell concluded that it was "...largely controlled from the top. Its leadership is self-perpetuating, and its policy, although nursed through an elaborate procedural labyrinth, is rarely permitted to wander very far afield. 'The Farm Bureau's cherished belief that its policy was made at the grass roots and adopted by democratic process turned out to be partly illusion,' concluded Christiana McFayden Cambell in her study of the organization's New Deal period. There appears to be no reason to change that assessment today," Samuel R. Berger wrote in Dollar Harvest (2nd ed., 1978).

2000 - present day
By the 21st century, the AFBF, through its state and local affiliates, was entwined financially with large agribusiness corporations. "In recent years, its insurance affiliates have bought stock in companies like Cargill, ConAgra, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Tyson and Archer Daniels Midland, all major food industry players. The Southern Farm Bureau Annuity Insurance Co. [co-owned by 10 state Farm Bureaus ] once owned more than 18,000 shares of Premium Standard stock," The Nation wrote in 2012.

Bob Stallman, a Texan, served as AFBF president from 2001 to 2016, earning a salary of $832,216 in his final year. Duval took over in January 2017, earning a salary of $648,111 in his first year.

In 2020, around 500 dairy farmers and haulers received letters demanding repayment (for up to $50,000) for milk shipped to Dean Foods, just before the company filed for bankruptcy (it was subsequently acquired by Dairy Farmers of America). AFBF, which called the demands a "predatory shakedown", was one of several groups that provided legal assistance to the farmers and haulers.

In 2023, AFBF announced several memorandums of understanding with equipment manufacturers, establishing repair agreements that make manufacturers' tools, software, and manuals available to farmers under "fair and reasonable" terms so farmers can make needed repairs. Under these, AFBF also agrees not to lobby on right to repair legislation, and to “encourage state-level Farm Bureaus to recognize the commitments made in the MOU and refrain from promoting “right to repair” legislation at the state or federal level”. In January, MOUs were signed with John Deere and in March, with CNH Industrial, Case IH and New Holland Agriculture.

Lobbying
A 2012 investigation by The Nation detailed the large-scale federal and state political operations of the Farm Bureau, and alleged the Bureau recruited political candidates (mostly Republicans) to affect legislative elections and appointments to state committees.

As of 2012, the organization retains 22 registered lobbyists. From 2002 to 2012, the Farm Bureau spent $16 million, which was 45% of the total amount spent by the 10 largest agribusiness interests in the U.S.

The Farm Bureau supported the Fighting Hunger Incentive Act of 2014 (H.R. 4719; 113th Congress), a bill that would amend the federal tax laws to permanently extend and expand certain expired provisions that provided a bigger tax deduction for businesses that donated food to charitable organizations. The Farm Bureau argued that without the tax write-off, "it is cheaper in most cases for these types of businesses to throw their food away than it is to donate the food".

The Farm Bureau has lobbied for increases in federal subsidies for crop insurance, which "is a small, but significant piece of Farm Bureau insurance companies’ portfolio. In 2011, they collected over $300 million in crop insurance premiums", The Nation wrote in 2012.

Climate change
The Farm Bureau has long opposed regulation or taxation of greenhouse gases and climate policy, justifying its actions by denying the scientific consensus on climate change. "For decades, the Farm Bureau has derailed climate action, deploying its political apparatus and 6 million members in a forceful alliance with conservative groups and the fossil fuel industry," Inside Climate News wrote in 2018.

In 2003, Farm Bureau economists joined the Heartland and Hudson Institutes in publishing a paper that "called state or federal regulation of greenhouse gases 'unnecessary, enormously expensive, and particularly injurious to the agricultural community.

In 2010, the Farm Bureau's official position was that "there is no generally agreed upon scientific assessment of the exact impact or extent of carbon emissions from human activities, their impact on past decades of warming or how they will affect future climate changes". The climate change session at the Farm Bureau's national meeting that year was entitled "Global Warming: A Red Hot Lie?" It featured Christopher C. Horner, a climate change denier and lawyer for the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, a largely industry-backed group that strongly opposes limits on greenhouse gases. At the meeting, delegates unanimously approved a resolution that "strongly supports any legislative action that would suspend EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act". Right before the meeting, the Union of Concerned Scientists sent the group a letter pointing out that its climate change position runs counter to that of every major scientific organization and urged it to support action on climate change. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said that farmers have more to gain from cap and trade than they stand to lose.

By 2019, the Farm Bureau had ceased to publicly deny climate change, but remained opposed to non-market-based solutions, including opposing taxes on carbon uses or emissions. Politico called it a “longtime, powerful foe of federal action on climate."

Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance
In 2020, the Farm Bureau became one of four co-founders of the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance (FACA), a coalition of groups advocating for voluntary, incentive-based and market-oriented programs in the food and agriculture sector to respond to climate change. The coalition's website says its 80-plus member organizations represent "farmers, ranchers, forest owners, agribusinesses, manufacturers, the food and innovation sector, state governments, sportsmen, and environmental advocates", who cooperate to "develop and promote shared climate policy priorities across the entire agriculture, food and forestry value chains. While The New Republic reported in 2022 that the organization "wants guarantees that farmers will get paid for soil sequestration without anything else in agricultural business-as-usual changing", FACA has called for “a comprehensive effort involving financial and technical assistance, research investments, proactive response to innovation, public-private partnerships, and a commitment to equitable opportunities for all producers” to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2022, FACA and AFBF supported the Senate's passing of the Growing Climate Solutions Act. In February 2023, FACA released policy recommendations for the 2023 farm bill, calling for voluntary bipartisan climate solutions. The recommendations included incentives for farmers to plant cover crops and use precision agriculture equipment that more efficiently uses fertilizers and pesticides; a USDA grant program to improve soil health; a study to look for barriers to climate-smart practices in the crop insurance program; and changes to income limits so that all farmers can participate in “landscape level projects” to advance conservation and climate goals.

2012 Farm Bill
The AFBF was heavily involved in lobbying for the 2012 farm bill, which included $9 billion in federal subsidies for crop insurance.

Animal welfare
In 2022, the Farm Bureau joined the National Pork Producers Council in petitioning the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn California's Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross.

WOTUS
In 2023, AFBF was one of several organizations to legally challenge the new Waters of the United States rule.

Insurance
In addition to its political lobbying, the Farm Bureau is "a multi-billion dollar network of for-profit insurance companies" and the third-largest insurance group in the United States, The Nation wrote in 2012. Although AFBF itself does not sell insurance, all but a handful of its non-profit state affiliates have affiliated for-profit insurance companies. Most of these companies were founded by the state Farm Bureaus and retain "Farm Bureau" in their corporate names; some use the NFBF logo. "In many states, Missouri among them, members of the Farm Bureau board and the board of its affiliated insurance company are one and the same, sharing office buildings and support staff," The Nation wrote.

In many states, the non-profit state Farm Bureau owns the affiliated for-profit insurance company. FBL Financial Group, for example, was established in 1939 as Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company by the Iowa chapter of the Farm Bureau. Through expansion and mergers, FBL has grown to operate in 14 states, generally selling to consumers under the name Farm Bureau Financial Services. In 2022, it had profits of $72.51 million on revenues of $732.3 million. Its parent, the Iowa Farm Bureau, reported 2020 revenue of about $100 million and an investment portfolio worth more than $1 billion, while executive compensation was in the high six figures."

Similarly, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company began as an insurance company for members of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation and today serves as an insurance provider to Farm Bureaus in nine states. Farm Family Insurance, founded in 1955 by Farm Bureaus of several northeastern states, had 2000 revenues of $313 million and assets of more than $1.3 billion. Country Financial, founded by the Illinois Farm Bureau in 1925, served clients in 17 states as of 2017.

"The Farm Bureau has many for-profit interests outside of traditional farming," 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace reported in 2000. "Its Iowa chapter alone owns and operates a $3.5 billion insurance and financial services company that is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. That company, FBL Financial Group, gave thousands of stock options to its directors, including the presidents of 14 state Farm Bureaus." Ed Wiederstein, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau and chairman of FBL Financial, cashed in a "couple of hundred thousand bucks from stock options" in 1998.

American Agricultural Insurance Company
The American Agricultural Insurance Company was formed in 1948 as a capital stock company. It is owned by the “insurance company affiliates of various state Farm Bureau insurance companies and by AFBF.”It was reincorporated in 1954, and became a mutual carrier under the name American Agricultural Mutual Insurance Company, and then was reincorporated again in 1968 as a capital stock company under its current name.

The Farm Bureau also owns crop insurer American Farm Bureau Insurance Services, formed in 1995. AAIC began selling crop insurance in 1997. In 1999, the AAIC purchased Nationwide-Re as part of its plan to expand into Non-Farm Bureau premium writings. The AAIC is a reinsurer primarily assuming business from Farm Bureau insurance companies.

The company’s bylaws require its board of directors to include the president of the Federation and designated shareholders that are “affiliated with a state Farm Bureau organization that is a member of AFBF.”

Similarly, AFBF president Zippy Duval simultaneously serves as president and chairman of the board of American Agricultural Insurance Company, whose directors are the presidents of 16 of the state Farm Bureaus. Its common stock is held by AFBF (443 shares in 2018) and various state Farm Bureau insurance companies (a total of 265,830 shares in 2018); it is unclear who owns its premium stock, which has a par value ten times that of the common stock. In 2021, AAIC reported total assets of $1.8 billion (up from $1.35 billion in 2018 ), premiums of $464 million (up from $328 million in 2018 ), and cash on hand of $120 million.

These kinds of ties can create conflicts of interest. "Nonprofit executives are supposed to operate in the best interest of the nonprofit, not themselves. But, by not taking salaries and having their income tied to FBL’s performance, the [Iowa] Farm Bureau’s executives open themselves up to questions," wrote Investigate Midwest, an independent, nonprofit newsroom.

The AFBF and its affiliated insurance companies are entwined in other ways as well. Most of the people it claims as "members" are not farmers but insurance customers: "In many states, anyone who signs up for Farm Bureau insurance becomes a member of the Farm Bureau automatically, which explains why the American Farm Bureau Federation boasts 6 million members when the United States has only about 2 million farmers." Sometimes annual-dues-paying membership in a state Farm Bureau is required to purchase the insurance; sometimes the insurance companies pay the state or county Farm Bureau a fee per member to access their contact information for marketing purposes. In 2019, AFBF collected $28.4 million in member dues, which accounted for more than three-quarters of its total revenue of $37.6 million.

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

title: American Farm Bureau Federation


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The Grange

The Grange may refer to:

Australia

 * Grange, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, often referred to as The Grange
 * The Grange, home of Charles Sturt in Grange, South Australia
 * The Grange, Windsor, a heritage-listed house in Brisbane, Queensland

Canada

 * The Grange, Edmonton, a neighbourhood in the city of Edmonton, Canada
 * The Grange (Toronto), a section of the Art Gallery of Ontario

United Kingdom

 * The Grange, Beeston, a Grade II listed building in Nottinghamshire
 * The Grange, Cawood, a Grade II* listed house in North Yorkshire
 * The Grange, Chalfont St Peter, a former country house in Buckinghamshire
 * The Grange, Edinburgh, a residential suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland
 * The Grange (Kensington), a former military installation in Liverpool
 * The Grange, Monmouth, three attached Grade II listed buildings in Monmouthshire, Wales
 * The Grange, Northington, a 19th-century country house in Hampshire
 * The Grange, Ramsgate, a 19th-century house in Kent, designed by architect Augustus Pugin as his home
 * The Grange Club, a cricket ground in the Stockbridge district of Edinburgh, Scotland

United States

 * The Grange (Lincoln, Massachusetts), an 18th-century home, also called Codman House
 * The Grange (New York City), a national memorial site and former home of Alexander Hamilton
 * The Grange (Paris, Kentucky), an 18th-century home built for slave trader Ned Stone

Organizations

 * National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry ("The Grange"), an agricultural and social organization in the United States

title: The Grange


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User:Shiaulteyr

I'm a Freelance Copywriter from Edmonton Alberta Canada, with a second residence in Sydney New South Wales Australia. I have a BA double-major in Anthropology & History specializing in Colonial History from the 14th-20th century.

I enjoy (and thus involve myself in) history; the classics; the sciences; writing, literature, style and usage; and biographies in particular - but can be found in-and-about anything that tweaks my interest at the time.

title: User:Shiaulteyr


text:
Substrate in Romanian

The proposed substratal elements in Romanian are mostly lexical items. The process of determining if a word is from the substratum involves comparison to Latin, languages with which Romanian came into contact, or determining if it is an internal construct. If there are no matching results, a comparison to Albanian vocabulary, Thracian remnants or Proto-Indo-European reconstructed words is made.

In addition to vocabulary, some other features of Eastern Romance, such as phonological features and elements of grammar (see Balkan sprachbund) may also be from Paleo-Balkan languages.

Romanian developed from the Common Romanian language, which in turn developed from Vulgar Latin. According to a widely accepted theory, the territory where the language formed was a large one, consisting of both the north and the south of the Danube (encompassing the regions of Dacia, Moesia, and possibly Illyria), more precisely to the north of the Jireček Line. Other scholars place the origin of the Romanian language in the Balkan Peninsula, strictly south of the Danube. The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages, published in 2013, came to the conclusion that the "historical, archaeological and linguistic data available do not seem adequate" to determine the territory where the development of the Romanian language began.

Lexical items
The study of the substrate involves comparative methods applied to:
 * 1) Albanian and its reconstructed ancient precursor – Proto-Albanian – an Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch, belonging to the Paleo-Balkan group of antiquity. Albanian varieties are today spoken by approximately 6 million people in the Balkans, primarily in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. Albanian, especially the Tosk dialect, also represents one of the core languages of the Balkan Sprachbund.
 * 2) Thraco-Dacian or Thracian, a language that although almost unattested has left traces in toponomy and inscriptions.
 * 3) Proto-Indo-European, if none of the other languages yielded any results.

Comparative methods applied to Albanian
In general, words assumed to belong to substratum can be placed into two categories:

those related to nature and natural world and those used in pastoral life for:
 * terrain: ciucă, groapă, mal, măgură, noian;
 * bodies of water: bâlc, pârâu;
 * flora: brusture, bung(et), ciump, coacăză, copac, curpen, druete, leurdă, ghimpe, mazăre, mărar, mugure, sâmbure, spânz, strugure, ţeapă;
 * fauna: balaur, bală, baligă, barză, brad, călbează, căpușă, cioară, cioc, ciut, ghionoaie, măgar, mânz(at), murg, mușcoi, năpârcă, pupăză, raţă, strepede, şopârlă, ştiră, ţap, viezure, vizuină;
 * food: abur, brânză, fărâmă, grunz, sarbăd, scrum, urdă, zară;
 * clothing: bască, brâu, căciulă, sarică;
 * housing: argea, cătun, gard, vatră;
 * body (some initially used for livestock):  buză, ceafă, ciuf, grumaz, guşă, rânză;
 * related activities: baci, bâr, buc, grapă, gresie, lete, strungă, ţarc, zgardă.

Other words from substratum are: bucur(ie), ciupi, copil, cursă, fluier, droaie, gata, ghiuj, jumătate, mare (adj), moş, scăpăra. Words possibly of substratum but not generally agreed among linguists are: arichiță, băiat, băl, brâncă, orbalţ, borţ, bulz, burduf, burtă, codru, Crăciun, creţ, cruţa, curma, daltă, dărâma, fluture, lai, mătură, mire, negură, păstaie, scorbură, spuză, stăpân, sterp, stână, traistă

Comparative methods applied to Thraco-Dacian and/or other Indo-European languages
The comparative method can be extended to other languages of the Indo-European family, including ones from which Romanian could not have borrowed directly or indirectly, in order to reconstruct Thraco-Dacian substratum words. This yields results with varying degrees of probability. Between 80 and 100 words belong to this category.

Substratum words like mal (1. shore, bank; 2. ravine, reg. a raised portion of land smaller than a hill and with abrupt sides) have almost identical correspondents in Albanian mal (mountain), but they can also be related to toponyms like Dacia Maluensis later renamed by Romans to Dacia Ripensis (rīpa - meaning bank, shore - has been inherited in Romanian as râpă - the abrupt side of a hill).

All river names over 500 km and half of those between 200 and 500 km derive from pre-Latin substratum, according to linguist and philologist Oliviu Felecan. Similarly, linguist Grigore Brâncuș states that almost the entire major hydronymy has been transmitted from Dacian to Romanian. Other linguists have pointed out that the present Romanian forms of these hydronyms indicate that they were borrowed from Slavs or Hungarians.

Phonetic, morphological and syntactic features
A couple of phonetic changes have been agreed on as substratum influence:

 * the fricative post-alveolar consonant ș - /ʃ/ - comes from the voiceless fricative s in a soft position for example Lat. serpens> Rom. șarpe.
 * rhotacism of n consonant, seen only marginally in Romanian, is a general rule for lexical items of Istro-Romanian and Tosk Albanian prior to the contact with Slavic languages (before c. 600 CE).

Several other have been attributed to the influence of substratum by some researchers, but there is no general consensus among scholars. For example, the development of "ă" vowel: linguists Al. Phillipide and Grigore Brâncuș consider the spontaneous evolution of unstressed "a" from words like Lat. camisia>Rom. cămașă, and stresses "a" before a /n/ or a consonant cluster beginning with /m/, a vowel found also in Bulgarian and Albanian, as the substratum influence in Romanian, while linguist Marius Sala points this changes can also be seen as the tendency of the oral language to differentiate between forms of a paradigm, comparable to the development of similar central vowels in Portuguese or Neapolitan.

Likewise, the morphological and syntactical features attributed to substratum, identified by comparison to Albanian and other languages of the Balkan sprachbund, are subject to scholarly debate since the grammatical structure of Thraco-Dacian is unattested.

A difficult research topic
Numerous language studies and research papers discuss the problems of the Substrate in Romanian, considered by some to be the most controversial and difficult part of Romanian language since its nature and development could explain the evolution of Latin to Romanian.

Some linguists (including Sorin Olteanu, Sorin Paliga and Ivan Duridanov) propose that a number of words presented as borrowings from a Slavic language or from Hungarian in standard literature may have actually developed from reconstructed (not attested) words of local Indo-European languages and they were borrowed from Romanian by the neighboring languages. Though the substratum status of many Romanian words is not much disputed, their status as Dacian words is controversial, some more than others since there are no significant surviving written examples of the Dacian language. Many of the possible pre-Roman lexical items of Romanian have Albanian parallels, and if they are in fact substratum words cognates with the Albanian ones, and not loanwords from Albanian, it indicates that the substrate language of Romanian may have been on the same Indo-European branch as Albanian.

Other languages
The Bulgarian Thracologist Vladimir Georgiev developed the theory that the Romanian language has a "Daco-Moesian" language as its substrate, a hypothecised language that accordig to him had a number of features which distinguished it from the Thracian language spoken further south, across the Haemus range.

There are also some Romanian substratum words in languages other than Romanian, these examples having entered via Romanian dialects. For example, Bryndza is a type of cheese made in Eastern Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic (Moravian Wallachia), Slovakia and Ukraine, the name being derived from the Romanian word for cheese (brânză).

title: Substrate in Romanian


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Tank Girl

Tank Girl is a British comic book character created by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett, and first appeared in print in 1988 in the British comics magazine Deadline, and then in the solo comic book series Tank Girl. After a period of intense popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tank Girl inspired a 1995 feature film. After a long hiatus, the character returned to comics in 2007 and has appeared regularly in the years since.

Originally written by Martin and drawn by Hewlett, the character has also been drawn by Philip Bond, Glyn Dillon, Ashley Wood, Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, Jim Mahfood, Brett Parson, Jonathan Edwards, Craig Knowles, Rufus Dayglo, Andy Pritchett, Bill Strohacker and Mike McMahon.

Tank Girl (Rebecca Buck – later revealed to have been born as Fonzie Rebecca Buckler) drives a tank, which is also her home. She undertakes a series of missions for a nebulous organization before making a serious mistake and being declared an outlaw for her sexual inclinations and her substance abuse. The comic centres on her misadventures with her boyfriend, Booga, a mutant kangaroo. The comic's irreverent style is heavily influenced by punk visual art, and strips are frequently deeply disorganized, anarchic, absurdist, and psychedelic. The strip features various elements with origins in surrealist techniques, fanzines, collage, cut-up technique, stream of consciousness, and metafiction, with very little regard or interest for conventional plot or committed narrative.

The strip was initially set in a post-apocalyptic (rendered self-fending due to an implied nuclear armageddon) Australia, although it drew heavily from contemporary British pop culture.

Publication history
Martin and Hewlett first met in the mid-1980s in Worthing, while studying at The West Sussex College of Art and Design (WSCD, later renamed Northbrook College). Martin was in the college band The University Smalls with fellow comics enthusiast Philip Bond. One of their songs was called "Rocket Girl". They had started adding the suffix 'girl' to everything habitually after the release of the Supergirl movie, but "Rocket Girl" was a student at college on whom Bond had a crush and who apparently bore a striking resemblance to a Love and Rockets character. Martin and Hewlett began collaborating on a comic/fanzine called Atomtan, and while working on this, Hewlett had drawn: "A grotty-looking beefer of a girl brandishing an unfeasible firearm. One of our friends was working on a project to design a pair of headphones and was basing his design on the type used by World War II tank drivers. His studio in Worthing was littered with loads of photocopies of combat vehicles. I pinched one of the images and gave it to Jamie who then stuck it behind his grotty girl illustration and then added a logo which read 'Tank Girl'."

The image was published in the fanzine as a one-page ad, but the Tank Girl series first appeared in the debut issue of Deadline (1988), a UK magazine intended as a forum for new comic talent, and it continued until the end of the magazine in 1995.

Tank Girl became quite popular in the politicized indie counterculture zeitgeist as a cartoon mirror of the growing empowerment of women in punk rock culture. Posters, shirts, and underpants began springing up everywhere, including one especially made for the Clause 28 march against Margaret Thatcher's legislation. Clause 28 stated that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." Deadline publisher Tom Astor said, "In London, there are even weekly lesbian gatherings called 'Tank Girl nights.'"

With public interest growing, Penguin, the largest publishing company in Britain, bought the rights to collect the strips as a book, and before long, Tank Girl had been published in Spain, Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, Argentina, Brazil and Japan, with several United States publishers fighting over the licence. Finally Dark Horse Comics won, and the strips were reprinted beginning in 1991, with an extended break in '92, and ending in September '93. A graphic novel-length story named Tank Girl: The Odyssey was also published in 1995 (released in four issues by Vertigo Comics), written by Peter Milligan and loosely inspired by Homer's Odyssey, Joyce's Ulysses, and a considerable quantity of junk TV. This was followed by another four issue series, Tank Girl: Apocalypse, written by Alan Grant and published by Vertigo from November 1995 to February 1996.

Tank Girl after 1996
After the 1995 film, Hewlett went on to create the band Gorillaz with Blur's Damon Albarn. Martin has also played in various bands, and written various screenplays and scripts.

After a long publishing hiatus, the character returned in 2007 in Tank Girl: The Gifting, a four-issue limited series written by Martin and illustrated by Australian artist Ashley Wood, which was published by IDW Publishing. This was the first new Tank Girl comic material since the final two issues of the four issue series Tank Girl: Apocalypse in 1996. The four-issue limited series Tank Girl: Visions of Booga, by Martin and artist Rufus Dayglo, was released in 2008 by IDW, as was Tank Girl: Armadillo and a Bushel of Other Stories, a Tank Girl novel authored by Martin and published by Titan Books.

Since then, Tank Girl has appeared on a regular basis in various one-shots and limited series, published by IDW, Image Comics, and Titan Comics. The regular creative team is Alan Martin and Brett Parson.

Titan Books released The Hole of Tank Girl on 28 September 2012, which encompasses the original Hewlett and Martin material, as well as additional content.

The three-issue limited series 21st Century Tank Girl debuted on 10 June 2015.

Martin and artist Warwick Johnson-Cadwell have also created a kid-friendly spin-off called Young Tank Girl, published in the digital anthology Moose Kid Comics.

In 2019, Titan Comics debuted Tank Girl, publicized as Tank Girl's first ongoing series, with an indicia listing the book as Tank Girl Ongoing. From January to May 2019, the first four issues were cover-titled Tank Girl: Action Alley, and from July to December 2019, the next four issues were cover-titled Tank Girl Forever.

Characters

 * Tank Girl: Her real name in the strip is Rebecca Buck, but this is very rarely mentioned. She became a tank driver and worked as a bounty hunter, before shooting a heavily decorated officer, having mistaken him for her father, and failing to deliver colostomy bags to President Hogan, the incontinent Head of State in Australia, resulting in him publicly embarrassing himself at a large international trade conference. These events resulted in Tank Girl becoming an outlaw with a multi-million dollar bounty on her head. She is prone to random acts of sex and violence, hair dyeing, flatulence, nose picking, vomiting, spitting, and more than occasional drunkenness.  She also has the ability to outrun any ice cream van – even Mr. Whippy. Tank Girl typically wears cut-off T-shirts or simply a bra, along with shorts and plenty of earrings and necklaces. Her natural hair color appears to be blonde, though she has appeared in many different hairstyles.
 * Booga: A mutated kangaroo, formerly a successful toy designer of "products Santa would've sacrificed a reindeer for," and presently Tank Girl's devoted boyfriend. She met him when he sneaked into her tank one night to pinch a pair of her knickers. He is a big Dame Edna fan and once impersonated Bill Clinton. Booga, often against his will, always does the cooking, particularly the great British institution of tea. He follows Tank Girl everywhere and does, by his own admission, whatever she tells him. This includes murder.
 * The talking stuffed animals:
 * Camp Koala: A stitchy, brown, gay, koala-shaped stuffed toy described as "the Jeremy Thorpe of comics", whom TG sodomizes with a hot banana. Camp Koala died tragically when they were playing baseball with live hand grenades which Camp eagerly caught in the outfield, exploding on impact, resulting in a violent, bloody, and gruesome death. After a tearless and comical funeral service, the other characters go to a toy store and buy a new one. Camp Koala is known for visiting occasionally as a guardian angel.  He is the only character TG has ever admitted to loving.
 * Squeaky toy rat: A squeaky toy rat.
 * Mr. Precocious: A "small Shakespearean mutant" who looks a bit like a mini bipedal pink elephant, though may possibly be a bilby.

 * Stevie: A wild-haired blond Aboriginal man who owns a convenience store and chain-smokes. Since he is TG's ex-boyfriend, Booga is always a bit jealous of him. He has various familial ties and connections with Aboriginal culture and remote traditionalist tribespeople.
 * Barney: Busted out of a mental hospital by TG, she is more or less insane. In The Odyssey, she is responsible for killing the whole cast, thereby sending them all to the land of the dead, from which TG was forced to save them by finding the Prince of Farts.
 * Sub Girl (real name unknown, although a trading card for the film once listed her real name as 'Subrina'): Described as "like a beautiful flower floating in the loo", she pilots a submarine. A friend of TG's since childhood, she used to come round her house with Jet Girl and try on her mum's underwear.
 * Jet Girl (real name unknown): A talented mechanic who flies a jet. All her friends call her "boring" (she has admitted to being a big fan of Rod Stewart).

Collected editions
Tank Girl has been collected into a number of trade paperbacks over the years. The entire back catalogue was reprinted by Titan Books in 2002 and these books were "re-mastered" in anniversary editions, stripped of their subsequently-added computer colouring and line work repaired. In 2018 the entire Hewlett and Martin back catalogue was once again reprinted under the "Tank Girl Colour Classics" banner, this time as collectible hardbacks, with all-new colouring and extra material.

Film
The comic was also adapted into a critically and financially unsuccessful film, albeit with a small cult following. The film featured Lori Petty as Tank Girl and Naomi Watts as Jet Girl. Martin and Hewlett are known for speaking poorly of the experience, with Martin calling it "a bit of a sore point" for them.

In September 2019, a Tank Girl reboot movie was reported to be in development with Margot Robbie's production company LuckyChap Entertainment optioned rights from MGM, Robbie co-produce with her partners Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara, Mallory Westfall writing and Miles Joris-Peyrafitte directing.

title: Tank Girl


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Big Brothers Big Sisters of America

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to "create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth". Adult volunteers are matched with children from age 5 to young adulthood. It was founded by Ernest Kent Coulter.

Big Brothers Big Sisters is one of the oldest and largest youth mentoring organizations in the United States. Big Brothers Big Sisters mentors children, ages 5 through young adulthood in communities across the country. The ages of children and youth served varies by affiliate.

Congressional charter
The group holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code.

Impact
Public/Private Ventures, an independent Philadelphia-based national research organization, conducted a study from 1994 to 1995, monitoring 950 boys and girls nationwide to study the effects of Big Brothers Big Sisters. CEO Karen J. Mathis reported that the study found favorable outcomes to the organization.

Public/Private Ventures conducted another study in 2011 that evaluated the school-based Big Brothers Big Sisters Program. This program also found favorable outcomes.

History
In 1904, a young New York City court clerk named Ernest Kent Coulter was seeing many boys come through his courtroom. He recognized that caring adults could help many of these boys stay out of trouble, and he set out to find volunteers. That marked the beginning of Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City and the Big Brothers movement. By 1916, Big Brothers had spread to 96 cities across the country.

At around the same time, the members of a group called Ladies of Charity were befriending girls who had come through the New York Children's Court. That group would later become Catholic Big Sisters, an independent organization.

In 1958, the Big Brothers Association was granted a Congressional charter. Big Sisters International was founded in 1970. Both groups continued to work independently until 1977, when Big Brothers of America and Big Sisters International joined forces and became Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

Big Brothers Big Sisters received the American Institute of Philanthropy's highest rating, an A+. In 2011, Philanthropedia listed BBBS as the #1 Nonprofit for At-Risk Youth.

In 2013, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) found itself at the center of a scandal involving grant funding, which led to sweeping changes at the organization. On June 24, 2013, the United States Department of Justice issued an Audit Report stating it was freezing the disbursement of all grant funds to BBBSA, noting that the organization was "in material non-compliance with the majority of the grant requirements" that were tested by the audit. "As a result of these weaknesses," the audit noted, the agency "questioned $19,462,448 in funding that the grantee has received and recommended the $3,714,838 in funds not yet disbursed be put to better use". The audit further stated that "most significantly", it "found that BBBSA's practices for recording and supporting grant-related expenditures were inadequate to safeguard grant funds and ensure compliance with the terms and conditions of the grants".

In the wake of the 2013 audit, Big Brothers replaced its management team and implemented policies governing the use of federal grant funds to bring the organization back into compliance. As part of a settlement with the Justice Department, BBBSA paid $1.6 million and agreed to institute a strict compliance program that requires the organization to engage in regular audits, establish a compliance team, an employee code of conduct, whistleblower policies and a disciplinary policy for employees who engage in or fail to disclose abuses of federal grant funds. The organization also provides regular employee training on these policies and employs risk assessment tools to detect abuses that might otherwise go undetected.

The claims resolved by this settlement are allegations only; there has been no determination of liability. BBBSA and many of its affiliates remain partnered with OJJDP today.

title: Big Brothers Big Sisters of America


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Plastocyanin

Plastocyanin is a copper-containing protein that mediates electron-transfer. It is found in a variety of plants, where it participates in photosynthesis. The protein is a prototype of the blue copper proteins, a family of intensely blue-colored metalloproteins. Specifically, it falls into the group of small type I blue copper proteins called "cupredoxins".

Function
In photosynthesis, plastocyanin functions as an electron transfer agent between cytochrome f of the cytochrome b6f complex from photosystem II and P700+ from photosystem I. Cytochrome b6f complex and P700+ are both membrane-bound proteins with exposed residues on the lumen-side of the thylakoid membrane of chloroplasts. Cytochrome f acts as an electron donor while P700+ accepts electrons from reduced plastocyanin.

Structure

Plastocyanin was the first of the blue copper proteins to be characterised by X-ray crystallography. It features an eight-stranded antiparallel β-barrel containing one copper center.

Structures of the protein from poplar, algae, parsley, spinach, and French bean plants have been characterized crystallographically. In all cases the binding site is generally conserved. Bound to the copper center are four ligands: the imidazole groups of two histidine residues (His37 and His87), the thiolate of Cys84 and the thioether of Met92. The geometry of the copper binding site is described as a ‘distorted trigonal pyramidal’. The Cu-S (cys) contact is much shorter (207 picometers) than Cu-S (met) (282 pm) bond. The elongated Cu-thioether bond appears to destabilise the CuII state thereby enhancing its oxidizing power. The blue colour (597 nm peak absorption) is assigned to a charge transfer transition from Spπ to Cudx2-y2.

In the reduced form of plastocyanin, His-87 becomes protonated.

While the molecular surface of the protein near the copper binding site varies slightly, all plastocyanins have a hydrophobic surface surrounding the exposed histidine of the copper binding site. In plant plastocyanins, acidic residues are located on either side of the highly conserved tyrosine-83. Algal plastocyanins, and those from vascular plants in the family Apiaceae, contain similar acidic residues but are shaped differently from those of plant plastocyanins—they lack residues 57 and 58. In cyanobacteria, the distribution of charged residues on the surface is different from eukaryotic plastocyanins and variations among different bacterial species is large. Many cyanobacterial plastocyanins have 107 amino acids. Although the acidic patches are not conserved in bacteria, the hydrophobic patch is always present. These hydrophobic and acidic patches are believed to be the recognition/binding sites for the other proteins involved in electron transfer.

Reactions
Plastocyanin (Cu2+Pc) is reduced (an electron is added) by cytochrome f according to the following reaction:

 * Cu2+Pc + e− → Cu+Pc

After dissociation, Cu+Pc diffuses through the lumen space until recognition/binding occurs with P700+, at which point P700+ oxidizes Cu+Pc according to the following reaction:

 * Cu+Pc → Cu2+Pc + e−

The redox potential is about 370 mV and the isoelectric pH is about 4.

Entatic state
A catalyst's function is to increase the speed of the electron transfer (redox) reaction. Plastocyanin is believed to work less like an enzyme where enzymes decrease the transition energy needed to transfer the electron. Plastocyanin works more on the principles of entatic states where it increases the energy of the reactants, decreasing the amount of energy needed for the redox reaction to occur. Another way to rephrase the function of plastocyanin is that it can facilitate the electron transfer reaction by providing a small reorganization energy, which has been measured to about 16-28 kcal/mol.

To study the properties of the redox reaction of plastocyanin, methods such as quantum mechanics / molecular mechanics (QM/MM) molecular dynamics simulations. This method was used to determine that plastocyanin has an entatic strain energy of about 10 kcal/mol. Four-coordinate copper complexes often exhibit square planar geometry, however plastocyanin has a trigonally distorted tetrahedral geometry. This distorted geometry is less stable than ideal tetrahedral geometry due to its lower ligand field stabilization as a result of the trigonal distortion. This unusual geometry is induced by the rigid “pre-organized” conformation of the ligand donors by the protein, which is an entatic state. Plastocyanin performs electron transfer with the redox between Cu(I) and Cu(II), and it was first theorized that its entatic state was a result of the protein imposing an undistorted tetrahedral geometry preferred by ordinary Cu(I) complexes onto the oxidized Cu(II) site. However, a highly distorted tetrahedral geometry is induced upon the oxidized Cu(II) site instead of a perfectly symmetric tetrahedral geometry. A feature of the entatic state is a protein environment that is capable of preventing ligand dissociation even at a high enough temperature to break the metal-ligand bond. In the case of plastocyanin, it has been experimentally determined through absorption spectroscopy that there is a long and weak Cu(I)-SMet bond that should dissociate at physiological temperature due to increased entropy. However, this bond does not dissociate due to the constraints of the protein environment dominating over the entropic forces. In ordinary copper complexes involved in Cu(I)/Cu(II) redox coupling without a constraining protein environment, their ligand geometry changes significantly, and typically corresponds to the presence of a Jahn-Teller distorting force. However, the Jahn-Teller distorting force is not present in plastocyanin due to a large splitting of the dx2-y2 and dxy orbitals (See Blue Copper Protein Entatic State). Additionally, the structure of plastocyanin exhibits a long Cu(I)-SMet bond (2.9Å) with decreased electron donation strength. This bond also shortens the Cu(I)-SCys bond (2.1Å), increasing its electron donating strength. Overall, plastocyanin exhibits a lower reorganization energy due to the entatic state of the protein ligand enforcing the same distorted tetrahedral geometry in both the Cu(II) and Cu(I) oxidation states, enabling it to perform electron transfer at a faster rate. The reorganization energy of blue copper proteins such as plastocyanin from 0.7 to 1.2 eV (68-116 kJ/mol) compared to 2.4 eV (232 kJ/mol) in an ordinary copper complex such as [Cu(phen)2]2+/+.

In the ocean
Usually, plastocyanin can be found in organisms that contain chlorophyll b and cyanobacteria, as well as algae that contain chlorophyll c. Plastocyanin has also been found in the diatom, Thalassiosira oceanica, which can be found in oceanic environments. It was surprising to find these organisms containing the protein plastocyanin because the concentration of copper dissolved in the ocean is usually low (between 0.4 – 50 nM). However, the concentration of copper in the oceans is comparatively higher compared to the concentrations of other metals such as zinc and iron. Other organisms that live in the ocean, such as other phytoplankton species, have adapted to where they do not need as high of concentrations of these low concentration metals (Fe and Zn) to facilitate photosynthesis and grow.

title: Plastocyanin


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Penis captivus

Penis captivus is a supposed occurrence during human sexual intercourse when the muscles in the vagina clamp down on the penis much more firmly than usual, making it impossible for the penis to be withdrawn from the vagina. According to a 1979 article in the British Medical Journal, this condition was unknown in the twentieth century, but a subsequent letter to the same journal reported an apparent case of penis captivus in 1947. Penis captivus should not be confused with vaginismus, though a relation between the supposed event of penis captivus and the occurrence of vaginismus is assumed in the existing descriptions.

Reported cases
In an article published in the British Medical Journal in 1979, Dr F. Kräupl Taylor reviewed the literature on penis captivus and concluded that while "almost all the cases mentioned in medical publications and in textbooks are based on hearsay and rumour", two papers published by nineteenth-century German gynaecologists – Scanzoni (1870) and Hildebrandt (1872) – who had personally dealt with cases of the condition "leave no doubt about the reality of this unusual symptom", which, however, "is so rare that it is often regarded nowadays as no more than a prurient myth". Scanzoni's patient was "a completely healthy young woman, married for six months". She and her husband had to abstain from sexual intercourse because her intense vaginal contractions were "most painful to him and ... did on several occasions end in a spasm ... which sometimes lasted more than ten minutes and made it impossible for the couple to separate". Hildebrandt's patient had been married for about a year. Sexual intercourse with her husband had always been painless until one particular evening. Hildebrandt gives the husband's account of what happened:

"He reported that just at the moment when he thought intercourse, which had been quite normal till then, had come to an end, he suddenly felt that he, or rather his glans, was held back deep in the vagina, tightly gripped and imprisoned, while his whole penis was in the vagina. All attempts at withdrawal failed. When he forced the attempts, he caused severe pain to himself and his wife. Bathed in perspiration through agitation, alarm and his failure to free himself, he was finally forced to resign himself to waiting in patience. He could not say how many minutes this lasted, his imprisonment seemed endless. Then — the hindrance vanished on its own; he was free."

Finding no later reports that were properly authenticated, Kräupl Taylor was of the opinion that the symptom "does not seem to have occurred in the past 100 years or so. If there had been, during that time, a case of penis captivus that needed medical intervention or admission to hospital it would have been eagerly reported in a medical journal with as much detail and evidence as possible."

In a letter published in the British Medical Journal in 1980 in response to Kräupl Taylor's article, Dr Brendan Musgrave recalled that in 1947 when he was a houseman at the Royal Isle of Wight County Hospital he had seen a case of this seemingly rare condition. "I can distinctly remember the ambulance drawing up and two young people, a honeymoon couple I believe, being carried on a single stretcher into the casualty department. An anaesthetic was given to the female and they were discharged later the same morning." To check the veracity of his memory, Dr. Musgrave had rung his old friend Dr S.W. Wolfe, "who was the other houseman at the hospital at the time. He confirmed my story, his exact words being 'I remember it well.'"

In her memoir An Impossible Woman (1975), Graham Greene's friend dottoressa Elisabeth Moor recounts how she was once urgently called to the Hotel Eden-Paradiso in Anacapri, Italy. "And there I found a young German girl, in the bathtub in a pool of blood, who begged me to do what I could; I should help her as she was bleeding to death" from "a tear in the vagina". The girl had been having sex with a man and her vagina had clamped tightly around his swollen penis. In freeing his penis, the man had inflicted "a heavily bleeding tear. A very deep wound." He had then fled. After Dottoressa Moor had staunched the bleeding, she and a colleague she had summoned stitched the girl up. "She healed very well." Dottoressa Moor adds, "These cases are not as rare as you think." She mentions – though only as hearsay – "a much worse case" involving a Swiss girl that occurred in Lucerne, Switzerland, during the war and resulted in "dreadful injuries" when the man panicked: "they had got stuck inside each other. It needed two or three doctors to help to undo them."

Hoax report
A report of the phenomenon in an 1884 article by one Egerton Yorrick Davis in the Philadelphia Medical News was later discovered to be a hoax perpetrated by Sir William Osler. Historians speculate that he was annoyed by an editorial published in the same journal by Dr. Theophilus Parvin, "An Uncommon Form of Vaginismus". Both men served on that respected journal's editorial board.

title: Penis captivus


text:
Talk:Kamal Hasan

BBC uses Kamal Hassan and Kamal Hasan too. There is already a page on Kamal Hassan. What do we standardize ? Could Chance or Raja do that ? and also can Raja also mention the reference that says Kamal is follower of Periyar ? - Kaysov 04:08, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)
 * Done. For your review chance 05:29, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Kamal Hasan