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Nanobacterium

Nanobacterium (, pl. nanobacteria ) is the unit or member name of a former proposed class of living organisms, specifically cell-walled microorganisms, now discredited, with a size much smaller than the generally accepted lower limit for life (about 200 nm for bacteria, like mycoplasma). Originally based on observed nano-scale structures in geological formations (including one meteorite), the status of nanobacteria was controversial, with some researchers suggesting they are a new class of living organism capable of incorporating radiolabeled uridine, and others attributing to them a simpler, abiotic nature. One skeptic dubbed them "the cold fusion of microbiology", in reference to a notorious episode of supposed erroneous science. The term "calcifying nanoparticles" (CNPs) has also been used as a conservative name regarding their possible status as a life form.

Research tends to agree that these structures exist, and appear to replicate in some way. However, the idea that they are living entities has now largely been discarded, and the particles are instead thought to be nonliving crystallizations of minerals and organic molecules.

1981–2000
In 1981 Francisco Torella and Richard Y. Morita described very small cells called ultramicrobacteria. Defined as being smaller than 300 nm, by 1982 MacDonell and Hood found that some could pass through a 200 nm membrane. Early in 1989, geologist Robert L. Folk found what he later identified as nannobacteria (written with double "n"), that is, nanoparticles isolated from geological specimens in travertine from hot springs of Viterbo, Italy. Initially searching for a bacterial cause for travertine deposition, scanning electron microscope examination of the mineral where no bacteria were detectable revealed extremely small objects which appeared to be biological. His first oral presentation elicited what he called "mostly a stony silence", at the 1992 Geological Society of America's annual convention. He proposed that nanobacteria are the principal agents of precipitation of all minerals and crystals on Earth formed in liquid water, that they also cause all oxidation of metals, and that they are abundant in many biological specimens.

In 1996, NASA scientist David McKay published a study suggesting the existence of nanofossils — fossils of Martian nanobacteria — in ALH84001, a meteorite originating from Mars and found in Antarctica.

Nanobacterium sanguineum was proposed in 1998 as an explanation of certain kinds of pathologic calcification (apatite in kidney stones) by Finnish researcher Olavi Kajander and Turkish researcher Neva Çiftçioğlu, working at the University of Kuopio in Finland. According to the researchers, the particles self-replicated in microbiological culture, and the researchers further reported having identified DNA in these structures by staining.

A paper published in 2000 by a team led by NIH scientist John Cisar further tested these ideas. It stated that what had previously been described as "self-replication" was a form of crystalline growth. The only DNA detected in his specimens was identified as coming from the bacteria Phyllobacterium myrsinacearum, which is a common contaminant in PCR reactions.

2001–present
In 2004, a Mayo Clinic team led by Franklin Cockerill, John Lieske, and Virginia M. Miller reported to have isolated nanobacteria from diseased human arteries and kidney stones. Their results were published in 2004 and 2006 respectively. Similar findings were obtained in 2005 by László Puskás at the University of Szeged, Hungary. Dr. Puskás identified these particles in cultures obtained from human atherosclerotic aortic walls and blood samples of atherosclerotic patients but the group was unable to detect DNA in these samples.

In 2005, Ciftcioglu and her research team at NASA used a rotating cell culture flask, which simulates some aspects of low-gravity conditions, to culture nanobacteria suspected of rapidly forming kidney stones in astronauts. In this environment, they were found to multiply five times faster than in normal Earth gravity. The study concluded that nanobacteria potentially have a role in forming kidney stones and may need to be screened for in crews pre-flight.

An article published to the Public Library of Science Pathogens (PLOS Pathogens) in February 2008 focused on the comprehensive characterization of nanobacteria. The authors claim that their results rule out the existence of nanobacteria as living entities and that they are instead a unique self-propagating entity, namely self-propagating mineral-fetuin complexes.

An article published to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in April 2008 also reported that blood nanobacteria are not living organisms, and stated that "CaCO3 precipitates prepared in vitro are remarkably similar to purported nanobacteria in terms of their uniformly sized, membrane-delineated vesicular shapes, with cellular division-like formations and aggregations in the form of colonies." The growth of such "biomorphic" inorganic precipitates was studied in detail in a 2009 Science paper, which showed that unusual crystal growth mechanisms can produce witherite precipitates from barium chloride and silica solutions that closely resemble primitive organisms. The authors commented on the close resemblance of these crystals to putative nanobacteria, stating that their results showed that evidence for life cannot rest on morphology alone.

Further work on the importance of nanobacteria in geology by R. L. Folk and co-workers includes study of calcium carbonate Bahama ooids, silicate clay minerals, metal sulfides, and iron oxides. In all of these chemically diverse minerals, the putative nanobacteria are approximately the same size, mainly 0.05–0.2 μm. This suggests a commonality of origin. At least for the type locality at Viterbo, Italy, the biogenicity of these minute cells has been supported by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Slices through a green bioslime showed entities 0.09–0.4 μm in diameter with definite cell walls and interior dots resembling ribosomes, and even smaller objects with cell walls and lucent interiors with diameters of 0.05 μm. Culturable organisms on earth are the same 0.05 μm size as the supposed nanobacteria on Mars.

title: Nanobacterium


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Carte network

The Carte network or Carte circuit or Carte organization was an early and illusory attempt at organizing French resistance to the occupation of France by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The creator of Carte, André Girard, claimed to have "plans in hand for preparing first sabotage teams, then larger guerilla groups, and finally a private army some 300,000 strong" to liberate France. Girard's army existed mainly on paper and in the minds of a community of artists, musicians, and students living on the French Riviera. Girard persuaded the United Kingdom's clandestine organization, the Special Operations Executive, (SOE) that his plan merited British help. Carte was eventually suppressed by the Germans and many of its members ended up in concentration camps or were executed.

Carte and SOE
The Carte network was the brainchild of André Girard, an artist living in Antibes on the French Riviera in 1941. Girard took the code name Carte which also became the name of his resistance network. In April 1941, he persuaded Henri Frager, an architect, to be his second in command and the pair set about recruiting intellectuals, soldiers, and others to become members of the network. Girard envisioned the recruitment of an army from anti-Nazi officers and men serving in the army of Vichy France to rise up against the German occupiers of France. For SOE headquarters in London it seemed "that they had found what they were looking for; a ready-made secret army which only needed arms and orders before it was ready to co-operate in throwing the Germans out of France."

SOE agent Francis Basin made a first contact with Girard in late fall 1941 and agent Peter Churchill was sent to Antibes in January 1942 to assess Girard's claims and the viability of Carte. Based on the reports by Basin and Churchill, in July 1942 Nicolas Bodington, second in command of SOE's F section, landed in Vichy France. In September Bodington filed a report confirming his favourable opinion of the network. Maurice Buckmaster, leader of the French section of SOE, proposed an expansion of SOE to deal with Carte and approved a contribution of supplies and equipment. The potential of Carte was a "dominating influence" over the work of SOE's French section in 1942, work that would come to naught.

The official historian of the SOE, M.R.D. Foot said that Girard "combined an ingenious administrative talent with a total ignorance of security." The ignorance of security was soon demonstrated. Girard drew up in his Antibes apartment a list of more than 200 supporters or potential supporters of Carte. The list included their names, addresses, and other information. In November 1942, an assistant of Girard named André Marsac was carrying the list by train from Marseille to Paris to give it to SOE agent Francis Suttill. While Marsac slept on the train, an agent of Abwehr (German military intelligence) stole the briefcase which contained the list. The Germans did not immediately take action against Carte and the people on the list.

The danger to Carte and SOE in southern France increased when Germany occupied Vichy France in November 1942. Carte, however, fragmented prior to a German crackdown. Girard and his assistant Henri Frager quarreled, the final fracture between the two coming on January 2, 1943. SOE agent Peter Churchill had earlier arrived in southern France to evaluate the usefulness of the Carte network. He was impressed by the people he met but the disagreement between Girard and Frager made it necessary for SOE to choose between them. Churchill, having chosen Frager as preferable, took him to London in March 1943 to be briefed by SOE on his future role. After his arrival in France in March 1943, SOE agent Francis Cammaerts subsequently made a much more realistic appraisal of Carte. "What I found," said Cammaerts, "was musical comedy stuff: no concept of security whatsoever and wildly over-ambitious."

Downfall
Carte was doomed by its quixotic nature and the list of supporters the Germans had in their possession. German suppression of Carte began in March 1943 with a complicated plot. André Marsac, from whom the Carte list had been stolen by the Abwehr, was arrested near the Champs Élysées by Hugo Bleicher, a sergeant in the Abwehr, and incarcerated in Fresnes prison. Bleicher, posing as an anti-Nazi colonel, told Marsac that he wished to defect, and the pair concocted an elaborate scheme involving the co-operation of Marsac's assistant Roger Bardet, who was persuaded by letter to visit Marsac in prison. The outcome of Bleicher's deception was the arrest on 16 April 1943 of Churchill and his courier, Odette Sansom. A bonus was provided by Marsac, who supplied Bleicher with the addresses of some twenty clandestine networks in Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Marseille.

Henri Frager had returned to France to assume leadership of the new SOE Donkeyman circuit built on the remnants of Carte. Bardet, having been persuaded to betray Frager, was allowed to 'escape' German control. Frager was taken in by the escape story. He also fell for Bardet's offer to provide new forged identity papers for the British SOE agents working with him, and allowed photographs of the agents to be supplied to Bardet for that purpose. One of the agents was Vera Leigh. The 'forged' papers were provided by the Germans. On 2 July 1944 Frager attended a rendezvous with Bleicher (again posing as the anti-Nazi colonel), and was arrested. The meeting had been arranged by Bardet. Having obtained his liberty and sensing that Germany would lose the war, Bardet eventually rejoined the resistance movement.

The Abwehr's acquisition of Girard's list in November 1942 would have further implications for other SOE agents not directly involved with Carte. Carte had given Francis Suttill, an SOE agent, a list of contacts which he used. He instructed his courier Andrée Borrel to contact two sisters, Geraldine and Madeleine Tambour in Paris. The sisters were known to several members of Suttill's Prosper network who used them to pass on letters and held meetings in their Paris apartment. The sisters were arrested by the Gestapo in April 1943 which was the beginning of the destruction of the Prosper network and the execution of Suttill, Borrel and other members of the Prosper network.

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

title: Carte network


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User talk:ThomasO

Hi Thomas :) I hope you like the place and choose to stay.

Some links that may be of use:
 * Welcome, newcomers
 * How to edit a page
 * Village pump - ask questions you may have here, or leave a message on my talk page

Re your upload of a text file - it may be best to incoporate material there into an article. If it's about you, it goes on your user page, User:ThomasO which you can edit yourself. Thanks, keep contributing :) Dysprosia 11:59, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:ThomasO


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Talk:Football chant

Other regions
So you say there are only football chants in Australia, Italy and England? Thats utter nonsens like the whole article! It needs to be cleaned up and either expanded or renamed! And please add a note to all those yanks out there that "soccer" is called football in the rest of the world! --92.223.57.28 (talk) 12:25, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

 * “The rest of the world” like Ireland, South Africa, Singapore, New Zealand…?
 * Please add a note to all those Brits out there that soccer is an English word! —Wiki Wikardo 03:20, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

It looks like the rest of the world is excluded from this article. The article needs to widened, to make it as an article "in general" about football chants. Then we can create articles about the football chants per country. Kubura (talk) 02:09, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Sources?
Per WP:V everything here needs to be sourced to valid third party sources. After a reasonable time, I'm going to start removing unsourced stuff, which at present is most of the article. --John (talk) 07:32, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Did the first trim today. Eventually, everything here has to be referenced per WP:V. I'll come back in a few days for the rest. --John (talk) 23:26, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Folklore category
It is correct this is part of the tradition of blason populaire, but it is also part of a much older tradition - flyting. This was a traditional battle of wits - it had to be poetic and humorous - which took place before a battle. A famous eg of which is The Battle of Maldon. In order to "win" you had to win two things: 1. the battle of wits and 2. the actual battle. The goal was to achieve "fame" and fame meant going down in history. Being a good warrior was only part of this. In this sense, football is a ritualised battle and the supporters are continuing the tradition of flyting, where each side insulted one another and egged their comrades on. Flyting thus performs two functions, as do football chants. 1. to bond the group 2. to psych out the opposition. A simple insult is never valued as much as wit. I hope this information adds to your origin story - the roots of the chants go back to Viking and Anglo Saxon times. A good piece of research was done by the Centre for English Cultural Tradition eg see http://centre-for-english-traditional-heritage.org/TraditionToday4/TT4_Luhrs_Blason_Populaire.pdf Although this is a European tradition (flyting) the chant has now become part of the culture of football and has thus been exported with the game. There are strong associations of dance and singing with sport (because it is ritualised battle) eg the haka in rugby clearly fits within this tradition.SandrinaHatman (talk) 13:41, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
 * If you have a source that relates football chants to flyting, then by all means add it to article. The source you gave makes no mention of flyting. Hzh (talk) 16:58, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Football chant


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Donald Stewart (Scottish politician)

Donald James Stewart (17 October 1920 – 23 August 1992) was Scottish National Party (SNP) Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 to 1987 for the Western Isles. He also served as President of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from 1982 to 1987. He was a councillor in Stornoway for many years and twice served as the town's provost.

Early life
Stewart was born on 17 October 1920 in Stornoway, Western Isles, Scotland. He was educated at the Nicolson Institute. Stewart left school at 16 to work as a junior clerk in a local solicitor's office, before going on to work in the office of Kenneth Mackenzie Ltd, a Stornoway Harris Tweed firm. He saw active service during the Second World War with the Royal Navy, serving on HMS Celandine (K75) for the duration of the war. Following the war, he returned to Kenneth Mackenzie Ltd, eventually becoming a director. He remained with the firm until his election to Parliament in 1970.

Political career
A lifelong socialist, Stewart became convinced of the case for Scottish independence at the 1935 United Kingdom general election, and joined the Scottish National Party the following year. He also joined the Labour Party in 1937, but became disillusioned with the party and left it in 1939. He first elected to Stornoway Town Council in 1951, and remained a councillor until his election to Parliament in 1970. He stood in the 1952 Dundee East by-election. Stewart was the provost of Stornoway from 1959 to 1965, and again from 1968 to 1970. At the 1970 general election he was the SNP's first ever MP returned at a general election, and the last declared result in 1970, which caused great attention in the media.

Stewart was the SNP's sole Westminster representative from 1970 until he was joined by Margo MacDonald who won Glasgow Govan in the by-election of 1973. At the February 1974 General Election he was joined by six other SNP MPs, and at the October General Election of that year this number increased to eleven. Stewart became the SNP parliamentary group leader, with William Wolfe as the SNP leader overall. In 1977, Donald Stewart was appointed as a Privy Counsellor.

When Robin Cook MP moved an amendment to legalise homosexual acts to the Bill which became the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980, he stated "The clause bears the names of hon. Members from all three major parties. I regret that the only party represented among Scottish Members of Parliament from which there has been no support for the clause is the Scottish National Party. I am pleased to see both representatives of that party in their place, and I hope to convert them in the remainder of my remarks." When the amendment came to a vote, Stewart and the SNP's other MP Gordon Wilson both voted against the decriminalisation of homosexual acts.

In 1981 Stewart attempted to introduce some provisions for Gaelic through a private members bill, but it was met with hostility from the Conservatives and talked out by Bill Walker. It was only with the introduction of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 by the devolved Scottish Parliament, that the language was afforded some official recognition.

In March 1985 Stewart announced he would retire from front-line politics at the next election, although continued to represent the Western Isles until 1987. At the General Election of that year his replacement as SNP candidate Ian Smith, then the party's spokesman on transport, was defeated by Calum MacDonald of the Labour Party. The SNP vote dropped by 26% and the constituency saw an SNP to Labour swing of 19.6% in what was included by election analysts David Butler and Robert Waller as among the "exceptional results" seen in "individual constituencies" in that election. Labour held it until the 2005 general election when it was regained by the SNP's Angus MacNeil.

Upon his retirement from Parliament, Stewart was offered a Life Peerage, but refused it. Stewart was working on an autobiography when he died in 1992. It was edited and completed by his sister, and published in 1994 as A Scot in Westminster.

It was Stewart who famously described the SNP as a "radical party, with a revolutionary aim".

Personal life
He married Christina MacAulay.

In August 1992 he suffered a heart attack. He died a week later, aged 71, at Lewis hospital, Stornoway.

title: Donald Stewart (Scottish politician)


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Blackfriars Railway Bridge

Blackfriars Railway Bridge is a railway bridge crossing the River Thames in London, between Blackfriars Bridge and the Millennium Bridge.

First bridge
There have been two structures with the name. The first bridge was opened in 1864 and was designed by Joseph Cubitt for the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. Massive abutments at each end carried the railway's insignia, preserved and restored on the south side. Following the formation of the Southern Railway in 1924, inter-city and continental services were concentrated on Waterloo, and St Paul's Station became a local and suburban stop. For this reason, the use of the original bridge gradually declined. It eventually became too weak to support modern trains, and was therefore removed in 1985 – all that remains is a series of columns crossing the Thames and the southern abutment, which is a Grade II listed structure.

At the southern end of the bridge was Blackfriars Bridge railway station which opened in 1864 before closing to passengers in 1885 following the opening of what is today the main Blackfriars station. Blackfriars Bridge railway station continued as a goods stop until 1964 when it was completely demolished, and much of it redeveloped into offices.

Second bridge
The second bridge, built slightly further downstream (to the east), was originally called St Paul's Railway Bridge and opened in 1886 together with a new station in Queen Victoria Street called St Paul's Station. The joint engineers for the works were William Mills, of the London, Chatham, and Dover Company, and John Wolfe Barry and Henry Marc Brunel. The resident engineer in charge of the construction was Edward Cruttwell. The bridge is made of wrought iron. It was built by Lucas and Aird.

The need for the second bridge was the lack of capacity and overcrowding at the first station which had become "in the highest degree dangerous". The directors of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway determined that they needed to double the lines across the Thames.

The original design was for four rail lines but once work was underway it was decided to expand the bridge to carry seven lines of railway which required extensions to the four piers. The bridge had a clear width of 81ft between the parapets, increasing to 123ft at the northernmost span to provide space for the platforms. The bridge had five spans, the shore span on the Surrey side being 183ft, the centre span and Middlesex shore span 185ft each, and the second and fourth spans 175ft each. The lengths of the three middle spans corresponded with those of the old bridge alongside for ease of navigation.

When St Paul's railway station changed its name to Blackfriars in 1937 the name of the bridge was changed as well to Blackfriars Railway Bridge.

As part of the Thameslink Programme, the platforms at Blackfriars station were extended across the Thames and partially supported by the 1864 bridge piers. The project was designed by Will Alsop and built by Balfour Beatty. The work also included the installation of a roof covered with photovoltaic solar panels. It is the largest of only three solar bridges in the world (the others being Kennedy Bridge in Bonn, Germany, and Kurilpa Bridge in Australia). Other green improvements included sun pipes and systems to collect rain water.

title: Blackfriars Railway Bridge


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Daiquiri

The daiquiri (daiquirí ) is a cocktail whose main ingredients are rum, citrus juice (typically lime juice), and sugar or other sweetener.

The daiquiri is one of the six basic drinks listed in David A. Embury's classic The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, which also lists some variations.

Origins
Daiquirí is also the name of a beach and an iron mine near Santiago de Cuba in eastern Cuba, and is a word of Taíno origin. The drink was supposedly invented by an American mining engineer named Jennings Cox, who was in Cuba (then at the tail-end of the Spanish Captaincy-General government) at the time of the Spanish–American War of 1898. It is also possible that William A. Chanler, a US congressman who purchased the Santiago iron mines in 1902, introduced the daiquiri to clubs in New York in that year.

Originally the drink was served in a tall glass packed with cracked ice. A teaspoon of sugar was poured over the ice, and the juice of one or two limes was squeezed over the sugar. Two or three ounces of white rum completed the mixture. The glass was then frosted with a long-handled spoon. Later the daiquiri evolved to be mixed in a shaker with the same ingredients but with shaved ice. After a thorough shaking, it was poured into a chilled coupe glass.

Consumption of the drink remained localized until 1909, when Rear Admiral Lucius W. Johnson, a U.S. Navy medical officer, tried Cox's drink. Johnson subsequently introduced it to the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C., and drinkers of the daiquiri increased over the space of a few decades. It was one of the favorite drinks of the writer Ernest Hemingway and U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

The drink became popular in the 1940s. World War II rationing made whiskey and vodka hard to come by, yet rum was easily obtainable owing to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy, which opened up trade and travel relations with Latin America, Cuba, and the Caribbean. The Good Neighbor policy, also known as the Pan-American program, helped make Latin America fashionable. Consequently, rum-based drinks (once frowned upon as the choice of sailors and down-and-outs) also became fashionable, and the daiquiri saw tremendous popularity in the US.

The basic recipe for a daiquiri is also similar to the grog British sailors drank aboard ships from the 1780s as a means of preventing scurvy. By 1795 the Royal Navy daily grog ration contained rum, water, ¾ ounce of lemon or lime juice, and 2 ounces of sugar. This was a common drink across the Caribbean, and as soon as ice became available this was included instead of the water.

Variations

 * Hemingway daiquiri (Hemingway special) – or papa doble – two and a half jiggers of white rum, juice of two limes and half a grapefruit, six drops of maraschino liqueur, without sugar.
 * Mulata daiquiri: rum mixed with either coffee or chocolate liqueur and with fresh lime juice and sugar syrup
 * Old Rose daiquiri: strawberry syrup and rum along with two teaspoons of sugar and lime juice
 * Royal Bermuda Yacht Club: Barbados rum, fresh lime juice, Cointreau, and falernum, recorded since 1941.

Frozen daiquiri
A wide variety of alcoholic mixed drinks made with finely pulverized ice are often called frozen daiquirí. These drinks can also be combined and poured from a blender, eliminating the need for manual pulverisation and producing a texture similar to a smoothie. On larger scales, such drinks are often commercially made in larger machines and come in various flavors with various alcohol or liquors. Another way to create a frozen daiquiri (mostly fruit-flavored variants) is by using frozen limeade, providing the required texture, sweetness and sourness all at once.

Variations

 * Banana daiquiri – regular daiquiri with half a banana.
 * Strawberry daiquiri – a blender drink of puréed whole strawberries, rum, cane sugar and lime juice

title: Daiquiri


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Treaty of Riga

The Treaty of Riga was signed in Riga, Latvia, on between Poland on one side and Soviet Russia (acting also on behalf of Soviet Belarus) and Soviet Ukraine on the other, ending the Polish–Soviet War (1919–1921). The chief negotiators of the peace were Jan Dąbski for the Polish side and Adolph Joffe for the Soviet side.

Under the treaty, Poland recognized Soviet Ukraine and Belarus, abrogating its 1920 Treaty of Warsaw with the Ukrainian People's Republic. The Treaty of Riga established a Polish–Soviet border about 250 km east of the Curzon Line, incorporating large numbers of Ukrainians and Belarusians into the Second Polish Republic. Poland, which agreed to withdraw from areas further east (notably Minsk), renounced claims to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's border prior to the 1772 First Partition of Poland, recovering only those eastern regions (Kresy) lost to Russia in the 1795 Third Partition. While Russia and Ukraine agreed to withdraw their claims to lands west of the demarcated border line. Poland, by recognising the puppet states of the USSR and simultaneously withdrawing recognition of the UPR (its only ally in the Polish-Bolshevik war), was in fact giving up on the federation programme, while Russia approved of the fact that the whole of Galicia, as well as the territories of the former Russian Empire, inhabited largely by non-Polish people, were to be found within Poland's borders. The treaty also addressed matters of sovereignty, citizenship, national minorities, repatriation, and diplomatic and commercial relations. The Treaty lasted until the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union in 1939, and their borders were redefined by an agreement in 1945.

Background
World War I removed former state borders across Europe. Following the Russian Revolution which had renounced Tsarist claims to Poland, as well as the Central Powers provisions for Congress Poland in the March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, The Great War had ended with the collapse of the Central Powers. The Treaty of Versailles had re-established Poland's independence after a century and a half of being divided by three empires.

The Russian Civil War presented an opportunity for Poland, under the leadership of Józef Piłsudski, to regain parts of the territories of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that had been incorporated into the Russian Empire during the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania. In 1920, Piłsudski's initially successful military offensive into Ukraine, whose aim was to establish an independent Ukraine in alliance with Poland, was met with a Soviet counter-offensive into central Poland. Poland was seen by the Soviets, who intended to extend the revolution westwards, as a land bridge to Western Europe. The Polish–Soviet War culminated in the Battle of Warsaw, won by the Poles. Further military setbacks persuaded Soviet Russia to enter into peace treaty negotiations. This was a relief for the government of Poland, a country heavily damaged and exhausted by the war, who also wanted to conclude peace talks. Piłsudski and his supporters, however, having failed in their quest, opposed the peace process.

Negotiations
Peace talks began in Minsk on 17 August 1920, but the talks were moved to Riga, and resumed on. The Soviets proposed two solutions, the first on 21 September and the second on. The Polish delegation made a counter-offer on 2 October. Three days later the Soviets offered amendments to the Polish offer, which Poland accepted. An armistice was signed on 12 October and went into effect on 18 October 1920. The chief negotiators were Jan Dąbski for Poland and Adolph Joffe for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The Soviet side insisted, successfully, on excluding non-communist Ukrainian representatives from the negotiations.

The Soviets' military setbacks made their delegation offer Poland substantial territorial concessions in the contested border areas. However, to many observers, it looked as though the Polish side conducted the Riga talks as if Poland had lost the war. The Polish delegation was dominated by members of the National Democrats, who were Piłsudski's political opponents. The National Democrats did not want non-Polish minorities in the reborn Polish state to constitute more than one-third of the overall population, therefore, prepared to accept a Polish-Soviet border substantially to the west of what was being offered by the Soviets even though it would leave hundreds of thousands of ethnic Poles on the Soviet side of the border.

That decision was also motivated by political objectives. The National Democrats' base of public support was among Poles in central and western Poland. In the east of the country and in the disputed borderlands, support for the National Democrats was greatly outweighed by support for Piłsudski, and in the countryside, outside the cities, Poles were outnumbered by Ukrainians or Belarusians in those areas. A border too far to the east would thus be against not only the National Democrats' ideological objective of minimising the minority population of Poland but also their electoral prospects. Warweary public opinion in Poland also favoured an end to the negotiations, and both sides remained under pressure from the League of Nations to reach a deal.

A special parliamentary delegation, consisting of six members of the Polish Sejm, held a vote on whether to accept the Soviets' far-reaching concessions, which would have left Minsk on the Polish side of the border. Pressured by the National Democrat ideologue, Stanisław Grabski, the 100 km of extra territory was rejected, a victory for the nationalist doctrine and a stark defeat for Piłsudski's federalism.

Regardless, the peace negotiations dragged on for months because of Soviet reluctance to sign. However, the matter became more urgent for the Soviet leadership, which had to deal with increased internal unrest towards the end of 1920, such as the Tambov Rebellion and later the Kronstadt rebellion against the Soviet authorities. As a result, Vladimir Lenin ordered the Soviet plenipotentiaries to finalise the peace treaty with Poland.

The Treaty of Riga, signed on 18 March 1921, partitioned the disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between Poland and Russia and ended the conflict.

Terms
The Treaty consisted of 26 articles. Poland was to receive monetary compensation (30 million rubles in gold) for its economic input into the Russian Empire during the Partitions of Poland. Under Article 14 Poland was also to receive railway materials (locomotives, rolling stock, etc.) with a value of 29 million gold roubles. Russia was to surrender works of art and other Polish national treasures acquired from Polish territories after 1772 (such as the Jagiellonian tapestries and the Załuski Library). Both sides renounced claims to war compensation. Article 3 stipulated that border issues between Poland and Lithuania would be settled by those states.

Article 6 created citizenship options for persons on either side of the new border. Article 7 consisted of a mutual guarantee that all nationalities would be permitted "free intellectual development, the use of their national language, and the exercise of their religion." In the treaty, it was agreed that Poland would refuse to form federations with Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.

Aftermath
The Allied Powers were initially reluctant to recognise the treaty, which had been concluded without their participation. Their postwar conferences had supported the Curzon Line as the Polish-Russian border, and Poland's territorial gains in the treaty lay about 250 km east of that line. French support led to its recognition in March 1923 by France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan, followed by the United States in April.

In Poland, the Treaty of Riga was met with criticism from the very beginning. Some characterised the treaty as short-sighted and argued that much of what Poland had gained during the Polish-Soviet war was lost during the peace negotiations. Józef Piłsudski had participated in the Riga negotiations only as an observer and called the resulting treaty "an act of cowardice". Piłsudski felt the agreement was a shameless and short-sighted political calculation, with Poland abandoning its Ukrainian allies. On 15 May 1921, he apologised to Ukrainian soldiers during his visit to the internment camp at Kalisz. The treaty substantially contributed to the failure of his plan to create a Polish-led Intermarium federation of Eastern Europe, as portions of the territory that had been proposed for the federation were ceded to the Soviets.

Lenin also considered the treaty unsatisfactory, as it forced him to put aside his plans for exporting the Soviet revolution to the West.

The Belarusian and Ukrainian independence movements saw the treaty as a setback. Four million Ukrainians and over a million Belarusians lived within areas ceded to Poland. In one estimate, only 15% of the population was ethnically Polish. The Ukrainian People's Republic, led by Symon Petliura, had been allied with Poland under the Treaty of Warsaw, which was abrogated by the Treaty of Riga. The new treaty violated Poland's military alliance with the UPR, which had explicitly prohibited a separate peace. Doing so worsened relations between Poland and the Ukrainians who had supported Petliura. The supporters felt that Ukraine had been betrayed by its Polish ally, which would be exploited by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and contribute to the growing tensions and eventual anti-Polish massacres in the 1930s and the 1940s. By the end of 1921, most Poland-allied Ukrainian, Belarusian and White Russian forces had been annihilated by Soviet forces or had crossed the border into Poland and laid down their arms.

According to the Belarusian historian Andrew Savchenko, Poland's new eastern border was "military indefensible and economically unviable" and a source of growing ethnic tensions, as the resulting minorities in Poland were too large to be ignored or assimilated and too small to win their desired autonomy.

Further consequences

While the Treaty of Riga led to a two-decade stabilisation of Soviet-Polish relations, conflict was renewed with the Soviet invasion of Poland during World War II. The treaty was subsequently overridden after a decision by war's Allied powers to change Poland's borders once again and transfer the populations.

In the view of some foreign observers, the treaty's incorporation of significant minority populations into Poland led to seemingly insurmountable challenges, because the newly formed organizations such as OUN engaged in terror and sabotage actions across ethnically mixed areas to inflame conflict in the region. Nevertheless, many groups representing national minorities welcomed Piłsudski's return to power in 1926 providing opportunities to play a role in the Polish government.

The populations separated from Poland by the new Polish-Soviet border experienced a different fate from their fellow citizens. Ethnic Poles left within Soviet borders were subjected to discrimination and property confiscation. At least 111,000 were summarily executed in the NKVD operation in 1937/38, preceding other ethnic repression campaigns perpetrated during World War II, while others were exiled to different regions of the Soviet Union.

Belarusians and Ukrainians, having failed to create their own states, were subjects of repression in the Soviet Union, and even liquidation e.g. Executed Renaissance or persecuted kobzars and bandurists. Belarusians and Ukrainians living on the Polish side of the border were subjected to Polonization; which contributed to the rise of Ukrainian nationalist organisations and the adoption of terrorist tactics by Ukrainian extremists.

The Soviet Union, although thwarted in 1921, would see its sphere of influence expand as a result of World War II. After the Soviet Union established its control over the People's Republic of Poland, the Polish-Soviet border was moved westwards in 1945 to roughly coincide with the Curzon Line. This shift was accompanied by large population transfers which led to the expulsion of the Poles living east of the new border, and also moved most of the Ukrainian minority remaining in Poland to the former German territories that were ceded to Poland in compensation. The unified Belarusian and Ukrainian territories were fully incorporated into the USSR.

However, in 1989, Poland would regain its full sovereignty, and soon afterwards, with the fall of the Soviet Union, Belarus and Ukraine would go on to become independent nations.

title: Treaty of Riga


text:
French Assembly

The term French Assembly may refer to any of several French legislative bodies throughout the history of France, including:

 * The National Assembly (French Revolution) formed during the French Revolution on June 17, 1789
 * The National Constituent Assembly, which succeeded the National Assembly on July 9, 1789
 * The Legislative Assembly (France), which succeeded the National Constituent Assembly on October 1, 1791
 * The modern National Assembly of France under the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Republics.

title: French Assembly


text:
Berardius

The four-toothed whales or giant beaked whales are beaked whales in the genus Berardius. They include Arnoux's beaked whale (Berardius arnuxii) in cold Southern Hemispheric waters, and Baird's beaked whale (Berardius bairdii) in the cold temperate waters of the North Pacific. A third species, Sato's beaked whale (Berardius minimus), was distinguished from B. bairdii in the 2010s.

Arnoux's and Baird's beaked whales are so similar that researchers have debated whether or not they are simply two populations of the same species. However, genetic evidence and their wide geographical separation has led them to be classified as separate. Lifespan estimates, based on earwax plug samples, indicate male whales can live up to 85 years, while females can have a lifespan of 54 years. It is estimated that the length at birth is ~4 m. Growing up to ~10 m, these are the largest whales belonging to the family Ziphiidae. Sato's beaked whale is much smaller, with adult males having a length of ~7 m.

While Berardius arnuxii and Berardius bairdii are considered least concern by the IUCN. Berardius minimus is labeled as near threatened.

This article currently largely treats four-toothed whales as monospecific, due to a lack of species-specific information.

Species overview
Berardius was once classified as containing only two species: Arnoux's beaked whale (Berardius arnuxii) in the Southern Hemisphere waters, and Baird's beaked whale (Berardius bairdii) in the North Pacific. Arnoux's beaked whale was described by Georges Louis Duvernoy in 1851. The genus name honors admiral Auguste Bérard (1796–1852), who was captain of the French corvette Le Rhin (1842–1846), which brought back the type specimen to France where Duvernoy analyzed it; the species name honors Maurice Arnoux, the ship's surgeon who found the skull of the type specimen on a beach near Akaroa, New Zealand. Baird's beaked whale was first described by Leonhard Hess Stejneger in 1883 from a four-toothed skull he had found on Bering Island the previous year. The species is named for Spencer Fullerton Baird, a past Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

Researchers have debated over whether the northern and southern populations represent distinct species or whether they are simply geographic variants. Several morphological characters have been suggested to distinguish them, but the validity of each has been disputed;  currently, it seems that there are no significant skeletal or external differences between the two forms, except for the smaller size of the southern specimens known to date. The morphological similarity gave rise to the hypothesis that the populations were sympatric as recently as the last Pleistocene Ice Age, approximately 15,000 years ago, but subsequent genetic analyses suggest otherwise. Phylogenetic analyses of the mitochondrial DNA control region (D-loop) revealed that Baird's and Arnoux's beaked whales were reciprocally monophyletic — lineages from each of the species grouped together to the exclusion of lineages from the other species. Diagnostic DNA substitutions were also found. These results are consistent with the current classification of Baird's and Arnoux's beaked whales as distinct species. Further, the degree of differentiation between the northern and southern forms of Berardius suggest that the species may already have been separated for several million years.

It is speculated that the Baird's and Arnoux's whales separated from one another after their common ancestor separated from the kurotsuchi; however, this is not certain. The Berardius sp. are deep divers that can spend long periods of time submerged below the surface of the water and thus are difficult to study.

Possible species
Sightings during whale watching tours and studies of stranded individuals suggest the possibility of another form of Berardius in the Sea of Okhotsk inclusive of the coast of northern Hokkaido especially around Shiretoko Peninsula and off Abashiri, or to Sea of Japan off Korean Peninsula and north pacific and Bering Sea off Alaska. These whales are generally much smaller than known species (6 - 7 m), darker in color, and inhabit shallow waters closer to coastal areas, enough to be trapped within fixed nets for salmon. Local whalers had called them "kurotsuchi" (= black Berardius) or "karasu" (= ravens); it is not known whether these terms are synonyms or identify two separate species. Genetic studies indicate that kurotsuchi are Berardius minimus, recognized as a distinct species in the 2010s.

"Bottlenose whales in the Sea of Okhotsk" had been reported since the time of the Soviet Union's whaling, and an unknown type of beaked whale resembling Baird's beaked whales having four tusks on upper and lower jaws has also been recorded by traditional whalers in Japan. It is unknown whether these records correspond with this new form.

An unknown type of large beaked whale of similar size to fully grown Berardius bairdii have been reported to live in the Sea of Okhotsk, somewhat resembling Longman's beaked whale. The "Moore's Beach monster", an initially unidentified carcass found in 1925 on Moore's Beach on Monterey Bay, was identified by the California Academy of Sciences as a Baird's beaked whale. There have been claims that records of strandings of these whales exist along the areas within and adjacent to Tatar Strait in the 2010s.

Physical description
The two established species, Baird's and Arnoux's beaked whales, have very similar features and would be indistinguishable at sea if they did not exist in disjoint locations. Both whales reach similar sizes, have bulbous melons, and long prominent beaks. Their lower jaw is longer than the upper, and once sexual maturity is reached the front teeth are visible even when the mouth is fully closed. The Baird's and Arnoux's beaked whales are the only whales in the Ziphiidae family where both sexes have erupted teeth. The teeth in the Ziphiidae are presumed to be used by the males for fighting and competition for females. Ziphiidae has the most prevalent and pronounced markings caused by teeth scaring among the cetaceans. Front-facing teeth may be covered in barnacles after many years.

Baird's and Arnoux's beaked whales have similarly shaped small flippers with rounded tips, and small dorsal fins that sit far back on their body. Adult males and females of both species pick up numerous white linear scars all over the body as they age, and these may be a rough indicator of age. These traits are similar in both sexes, as there is little sexual dimorphism in either species. Among the observed differences in the sexes is their size: female Baird's and Arnoux giant beaked whales are slightly larger than the males.

Although fairly similar, there exist some differences between the species. Baird's beaked whales are around 4.6 m when born, and can reach lengths of 11.1 m as adults, making them the largest members of the beaked whale family. Members of the Baird's species have fairly narrow body shapes despite their large size, and have dorsal fins that are rounded at the tips. Their coloration is fairly uniform and can range from brown to grey. Arnoux's beaked whales are around 4 m long as calves and can reach lengths up to 9.75 m as adults. Their bodies are not as narrow as the Baird's, and resemble a spindle. Unlike the Baird's beaked whale, Arnoux's have slightly hooked dorsal fins. Arnoux's beaked whales have a dark coloration that ranges from brown to orange due to a buildup of algae on its body.

A third species, B. minimus, (known by the Japanese common name "kurotsuchi", which means "black Berardius") was formally named in 2019, after being distinguished in 2016, based on differences in haplotypes from mtDNA. It generally has a short beak (~4% body length). While other four-toothed whales are generally grey with scars, kurotsuchis usually have few linear scars, so that the dark, smooth skin contrasts highly with round, white scars of about 5 cm diameter (from cookiecutter shark bites). The tip of the rostrum is also white. The kurotsuchi is shorter than other four-toothed whales, around 6-7 m long at maturity, hence the species name, B. minimus (="smallest"). No females of this species have yet been described in the research literature.

Population and distribution
The total population is not known for two of the three species. Estimates for Baird's are of the order of 30,000 individuals. Nothing is known at all about the population size of the third species of Berardius, first scientifically described in the 2010s. Baird's and Arnoux's beaked whales have an allopatric (non-overlapping) antitropical distribution; kurotsuchis are known to live in the North Pacific.

Arnoux's
Arnoux's beaked whales inhabit great tracts of the Southern Ocean. Large groups of animals, pods of up to 47 individuals, have been observed off Kemp Land, Antarctica. Beachings in New Zealand and Argentina indicate the whale may be relatively common in the Southern Ocean between those countries and Antarctica; sporadic sightings have been recorded in polar waters, such as in McMurdo Sound. It has also been spotted close to South Georgia and South Africa, indicating a likely circumpolar distribution. The northernmost stranding was at 34 degrees south, indicating the whales inhabit cool and temperate, as well as polar, waters. There is no stock report for the Arnoux's beaked whale to date by NOAA.

Baird's
Baird's beaked whale is found in the North Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan and the southern part of the Sea of Okhotsk. They appear to prefer seas over steep cliffs at the edge of the continental shelf, but are known to migrate to oceanic islands and to near shore waters where deep cliffs locate next to landmasses such as at Rishiri Island and in Tsugaru Strait, Shiretoko Peninsula, Tokyo Bay, and Toyama Bay.

The continental shelf was reported in the Alaska stock report as the whales migrate to the shelf in the summer months during when the water temperature are at the highest. According to the California/Oregon/Washington NOAA stock assessment report the Baird's beaked whales can be found in the deep waters along the continental slopes of the North Pacific Ocean. They are often seen along the slope between late spring to early fall.

Specimens have been recorded as far north as the Bering Sea and as far south as the Baja California Peninsula. They are also found on the east side and the southern islands (Izu and Bonin Islands) of Japan on the west although it is unclear whether records at these islands are of Berardius bairdii. Southern limits of historical occurrences in east Asian were unclear, while there had been either a stranding or a catch in East China Sea at Zhoushan Islands in the 1950s, and was a disentanglement at Kamae, Ōita. Whales off the east coast of North America seems to approach coasts less frequently than in the western North Pacific, but they may travel further south than in Japan. Historical distributions of southward migrations or vagrants in Asian waters are unknown as the whales wintering from Bōsō Peninsula and in Tokyo Bay to Sagami Bay and around Izu Ōshima have been severely depleted or nearly wiped out by modern whaling (recently whalers shifted their major hunting grounds from Bōsō Peninsula to further north due to the very small numbers of whales still migrating to the former habitats). Within the Sea of Japan, the first scientific approaches to the species were made in Peter the Great Gulf, and the whales can widely distribute more on Japanese archipelago from west of Rebun Island to west of Oki Islands on unknown regularities, and major whaling grounds were in Toyama Bay and Oshima Peninsula.

The historic and current status of the northern species in northwestern coastal Pacific outside the Japanese EEZ are vague, especially within North and South Korea and China. Some groups still survive in the Japanese archipelago but are under serious threat by commercial whaling activities. The species is not thought to occur in Chinese waters (or at least is not resident), and the origin of a skeletal specimen at the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, although claimed to be national, is unreliable. However, archaeological and capture records by Japanese whalers suggest that there may have been historical migrant groups of Baird's beaked whales that once regularly reached the Yellow and Bohai Seas, especially around the island of Lingshan off Jiaozhou Bay and off Dalian, at least until the mid-16th century, until being wiped out by Japanese whalers. This may have included regions at least as far south as the Zhoushan archipelago. See also Wildlife of China for natural histories of large cetaceans in this region. 12 individuals were caught as by-catch along the east coasts of the Korean Peninsula between 1996 and 2012. Canada; Japan; Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea; Mexico; Russian; United States, (Taylor et al. 2008). Endemic to the North Pacific Ocean and the adjacent seas. There are two different stocks of Baird beaked whales that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) keeps track of for management of the species, the Alaska stock and the California-Oregon-Washington stock. (NOAA website). According to the Alaska 2017 stock report, the range of the Baird's beaked whale is north of the Cape Navarn (62o N) and Central Sea of Okhotsk (57o N) that spans to St. Matthew Island, the Pribilof Islands, and the northern Gulf of Alaska. (Alaska Stock assessment report and Balcomb 1989).

The seasonal distribution can be observed when the Baird's beaked whales spend the summer months in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea between April–May to October. (Tomilin 1957, Kasuya 2002, Alaska Stock assessment report 2017). The wintering habitats is assumed to be located in the northern Gulf of Alaska which was determined by using acoustic detection, (Baumann-Pickering et al. 2012b. and Alaska Stock assessment report 2017.)

Sato's
B. minimus is currently known to reside in only the central and western North Pacific Ocean. The species' range includes portions of Japan, Russia, and Alaska, between 40°N and 60°N and 140°E and 160°W. However, this distribution is based primarily on data collected from stranded specimens, and its range may extend further.

Behavior
Little is known about the behavior of Arnoux's beaked whale, but it is expected to be similar to that of Baird's. Distinctions between the two species are so slight that they are speculated to be the same, although genetic makeup and geographic distribution offer evidence otherwise. Baird's beaked whales generally move in pods of 5 to 20 individuals, with groups of 50 observed in rarer circumstances. Congregating groups of Baird's whales are led by a single large male. Scarring among males indicate competition for this leadership position that must entail more breeding opportunities and gives evidence that the species' behaviors portray sexual selection. Potentially one of the deepest diving cetaceans, they can dive for an hour at a time, predating on deep-water and bottom-dwelling fish, cephalopods, and crustaceans. When not diving, they drift along the surface. The deep diving whales can dive to depths of 800 –, and when feeding, they generally prefer deep waters near the continental shelf or around seamounts, where high biological activity is present in shallower waters. The deepest recorded dive is 1777 m.

Diel variation in behavior suggests that beaked whales spend less time at the surface during the day than they do at night, so as to avoid surface predators like sharks and killer whales. Considering the extent of whaling on the Baird's species, the pod's uninfluenced structure is not well known. To date, two-thirds of the whales caught have been male, despite the fact that females are somewhat larger than males and would be thought to be the preferred targets for whalers. They are listed as least concern under the IUCN Red List and not listed as depleted under the MMPA. They are not being hunted for research due to Japan pulling out of the whaling commission in 2018/2019.

Observations of Arnoux's beaked whales in Doubtful Sound, New Zealand in the same seasons in 2009 and in 2010 indicate that this species may possess a form of bond to locations similar to those of other species such as right whales. Another 4 or 5 sightings have been recorded in the Doubtful Sound between 2007 and in 2011. Underwater recordings, made in the austral summer in the Antarctic of a large group of 47 Arnoux's beaked whales showed that they were highly vociferous animals at this time. The whales produced clicks, click trains, and frequency modulated pulses and whistles which gives their vocalizations a characteristic warbling aural impression. The group swam in coordinated positions along the ice edge, some of them splitting and reassembling.

Reproduction
Mating in Baird's beaked whales happens in the months of October and November and calving occurs in March and April after a 17-month gestational period. Scarring among males indicate competition for leadership position that must entail more breeding opportunities and gives evidence that the species' behaviors portray sexual selection. The sex ratio seems to be skewed in favor of males from observational data; with some observations indicating as high is 3:1. Males are recorded to live longer. Males live 39 years longer than females with the adult sex ratio strongly biases toward males and the female's exhibit high annual ovulation. It is possible that these results are seasonal abundances of different sexes in the region studied. They exhibit a slight reverse sexual dimorphism with females tending to be larger than males in size. The females have no post-reproductive stage. Cetaceans in general have an interbirth interval which is the time between births of new calves. The mysticetes tend to have two or three years or relative to body size intervals whereas the odontocete interbirth intervals are more varied. Baird beaked whales have interbirth intervals similar to mysticeti to their size than they do with other odontocetes. In July 2006, in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, there was summer stranding event of 10 males of mixed age composition that was highly suggestive of male alloparental care. Females are slightly larger than the males and exhibit high annual ovulation and pregnancy rates. Males live about 30 years longer than the females with this sex ratio biased toward males it is speculated that the males provide alloparetnel care to offspring which in turn allows the females to have a shorten birth interval frequency.

Feeding
Baird's beaked whale has a diet that consists primarily of deep sea fish and cephalopods found at its preferred dive depths (1000–1777m). On rare occasions, it has been known to eat octopus, lobster, crab, rockfish, herring, starfish, pyrosomes and sea cucumbers. Baird's beaked whales in the southern Sea of Okhotsk diet consists of deep-water gadiform fishes and cephalopods. The species has a mean dive time of about 1 hour, which suggests a long search and handling time. Its generalist feeding strategy may be reflective of limited prey availability at such depths or regions, as mammals become more general feeding strategists as prey diversity decreases. It may also explain the species' migrational patterns around the North Pacific. In summer months, Baird's beaked whale can be found off the Pacific coast of Japan where demersal fish are abundant. Stomach content analysis's found that Baird's beaked whale feeds in benthic zones both day and night. This behavior differs from its other Odontocete relatives (namely the common dolphin and Dall's porpoise) who feed in mesopelagic regions during the day when the light can penetrate the water column. This suggests that Baird's beaked whale does not rely as much on its sense of sight and has evolved to navigate and hunt competently with echolocation. There is little information on the foraging behavior of Baird's beaked whales and their ecological role in the marine ecosystem.

Conservation
Arnoux's beaked whale has rarely been exploited, and although no abundance estimates are available, the population is not believed to be endangered. Arnoux's beaked whale is covered by the Memorandum of Understanding for the Conservation of Cetaceans and Their Habitats in the Pacific Islands Region (Pacific Cetaceans MOU).

Baird's beaked whale is listed by the Mammalogical Society of Japan as rare in Japanese coastal waters. The Baird's beaked whale is listed on Appendix II of the convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). It is listed on Appendix II as it has an unfavorable conservation status or would benefit significantly from international co-operation organised by tailored agreements. It is considered Least Concern by the IUCN. They are not listed as "threatened" or "endangered" under the endangered species act nor depleted under the MMPA. There is preliminary evidence of the Baird's beaked whale being sensitive to anthropogenic aquatic noise pollution, as other odontocete species are. Anthropogenic sound sources such as military sonar and seismic testing. The testing of military sonar has been recorded to effect the diving behavior of beaked whales. This implication on the whales effects their ability to decompress upon surfacing and results in the whales suffering the bends, increase nitrogen gas bubbles in the blood.

In the 20th century, Baird's beaked whales were hunted primarily by Japan and to a lesser extent by the USSR, Canada and the United States. The USSR reported killing 176 before hunting ended in 1974. Canadian and American whalers killed 60 before halting in 1966. Japan killed around 4000 individuals before the 1986 moratorium on whaling (about 300 were killed in the most prolific year, 1952). Baird's beaked whales are not protected under the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on commercial whaling, as Japan argues they are a 'small cetacean' species, despite being larger than minke whales, which are protected. Each year, 62 Baird's beaked whales are hunted commercially in Japan, with the meat sold for human consumption. A landing and processing of a Baird's beaked whale was filmed by the Environmental Investigation Agency on 7 August 2009. Meat and blubber food products of the whales have been found to contain high levels of mercury and other pollutants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

Population status

Estimates of the abundance of populations are unavailable. They are not listed as "threatened" or "endangered" under the endangered species act nor depleted under the MMPA.

Threats

The Baird's beaked whale is hunted by Japan. As of 2019, Japan pulled out of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to continue harvesting whales commercially. The California large mesh drift gillnet fishery has known to interact with the CA-OR-WA population. There are habitat concerns for the Alaska stock, in areas with oil and gas activities or shipping and military activities are high. For the Baird's beaked whale. Anthropogenic sound sources such as military sonar and seismic testing. The testing of military sonar has been recorded to effect the diving behavior of beaked whales. This implication on the whales effects their ability to decompress upon surfacing and results in the whales suffering the bends, increase nitrogen gas bubbles in the blood.

Common names

 * B. arnuxii is known as Arnoux's beaked whale, southern four-toothed whale, southern beaked whale, New Zealand beaked whale, southern giant bottlenose whale, and southern porpoise whale. In Japanese it is known as minami-tsuchi (ミナミツチ), literally "Southern hammer (i.e. Berardius)".
 * B. bairdii is known as Baird's beaked whale, northern giant bottlenose whale, North Pacific bottlenose whale, giant four-toothed whale, northern four-toothed whale, and North Pacific four-toothed whale. In Japanese, it is called tsuchi-kujira　(ツチクジラ), where tsuchi means "hammer", in reference to the way the head vaguely resembles a traditional Japanese hammer or mallet, and kujira means "whale".
 * The newly described species, B. minimus, is traditionally known to Japanese whalers as kuro-tsuchi (黒ツチ), where kuro means "black" and tsuchi means "hammer". The Society for Marine Mammalogy lists Sato's beaked whale as an additional common name for B. minimus.

Specimens

 * MNZ MM002654 B. arnuxii Arnoux's beaked whale, collected Riverton, near Invercargill, New Zealand, 27 January 2006

title: Berardius


text:
Arnoux's beaked whale

Arnoux's beaked whale (Berardius arnuxii), also called the southern four-toothed whale, southern beaked whale, New Zealand beaked whale, southern giant bottlenose whale and southern porpoise whale is one of the species of Berardius. Arnoux's and Baird's beaked whales are so similar that researchers debated whether or not they are simply two populations of the same species, until genetic evidence and their wide geographical separation led them to be classified as separate. Little is known about their behavior due to infrequent encounters with live individuals.

Etymology
Named Berardius arnuxii in 1851 for the French surgeon, M. Arnoux, who presented the skull to the Paris Museum of Natural History in 1846.

Physical description
Arnoux's and Baird’s beaked whales, have very similar features and would be indistinguishable at sea if they did not exist in disjoint locations. Both whales reach similar sizes, have bulbous melons, and long prominent beaks. Their lower jaw is longer than the upper, and once sexual maturity is reached the front teeth are visible even when the mouth is fully closed. The Baird's and Arnoux's beaked whales are the only whales in the Ziphiidae family where both sexes have erupted teeth. The teeth in the Ziphiidae are presumed to be used by males for fighting and competition for females. Ziphiidae have the most prevalent and pronounced markings caused by teeth scarring among the cetaceans. Front-facing teeth may be covered in barnacles after many years.

Baird's and Arnoux's beaked whales have similarly shaped small flippers with rounded tips, and small dorsal fins that sit far back on their bodies. Adult males and females of both species pick up numerous white linear scars all over the body as they age, and these may be a rough indicator of age. These traits are similar in both sexes, as there is little sexual dimorphism in either species. Among the observed differences in the sexes is their size: female Baird's and Arnoux giant beaked whales are slightly larger than the males.

Population and distribution
Arnoux's beaked whales inhabit great tracts of the Southern Ocean. Large groups of animals, pods of up to 47 individuals, have been observed off Kemp Land, Antarctica. Beachings in New Zealand and Argentina indicate the whale may be relatively common in the Southern Ocean between those countries and Antarctica; sporadic sightings have been recorded in polar waters, such as in McMurdo Sound. It has also been spotted close to South Georgia and South Africa, indicating a likely circumpolar distribution. The northernmost stranding was at 34 degrees south, indicating the whales inhabit cool and temperate, as well as polar, waters. There is no stock report for the Arnoux's beaked whale to date by NOAA.

Conservation
Arnoux's beaked whale has rarely been exploited, and although no abundance estimates are available, the population is not believed to be endangered. Arnoux's beaked whale is covered by the Memorandum of Understanding for the Conservation of Cetaceans and Their Habitats in the Pacific Islands Region (Pacific Cetaceans MOU).

title: Arnoux's beaked whale


text:
Baird's beaked whale

Baird's beaked whale (Berardius bairdii), also known as the northern giant bottlenose whale, North Pacific bottlenose whale, giant four-toothed whale, northern four-toothed whale and the North Pacific four-toothed whale, is a species of whale from the genus Berardius. Baird's and Arnoux's beaked whales are so similar that researchers have debated whether or not they are simply two populations of the same species. However, genetic evidence and their wide geographical separation has led them to be classified as separate. Baird's beaked whale is the second largest living species of toothed whale after the sperm whale.

Taxonomy
Baird's beaked whales were first described in 1883 by American zoologist Leonhard Stejneger based on a skull from a specimen that had been found stranded on the eastern shore of Bering Island the previous fall. The species was named after Spencer Fullerton Baird, the then Secretary of the Smithsonian. A few months after Stejneger's description was published, Swedish zoologist August Wilhelm Malm published a description of a new species in the Beradius genus, Beradius vegae, based on a portion of a skull found on Bering Island in 1879. Beradius vegae was later determined to be a junior synonym of Beradius bairdii.

Description
The species reaches lengths of about 11.9 m for males and 12.8 m for females.

The snout, called a beak, is elongated and lacks all teeth except for one or two sets in the lower mandible, which are called "battle teeth" for their use in intra-species conflict. Individuals often bear scars from such confrontations.

Baird's beaked whale can live for up to 84 years.

Distribution
The species occurs primarily in the North Pacific Ocean, where it is a deep-water cetacean, often frequenting depths between 1000 and 3000 m in its search for prey.

In the northwestern part of its range, sightings have been documented off of Hokkaido, Japan, Sakhalin and Kamchatka, as well as in the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea and the Aleutian Islands. In the more eastern and southern reaches of their distribution, they have been seen from southern Alaska and down the U.S. West Coast to San Diego and northern Baja California.

title: Baird's beaked whale


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gregor Brand

This page is an archive of the discussion surrounding the proposed deletion of a page entitled Gregor Brand.

Further comments can be made in a new section below.

The result of the debate was to move the page to User:GregorBrand.

 * vanity page, self-advertising by same internet persona. Only 63 hits on Google, 1000 if you include German pages.  He added a page about an ancestor of his, Siegfried Alkan, who only gets 3 google hits from Brand's own free web-hosting pages, so it poses verification problems.  Advert also includes link to a genealogy site claiming he's related to another historical person.  User has also linked his article into a variety of list articles over the last few days from a variety of IP addresses: User:193.159.25.80 User:212.185.253.71 User:193.159.25.22 User:62.227.254.4 User:62.158.143.175 and more for the other article.  Daniel Quinlan 01:13, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)
 * Since I'm no expert on .de poetry, I hesitated. But adding himself to 1957 makes my decision much easier. Is "Brand" German for Bradford? Delete. orthogonal 12:08, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Speaking for myself: Why should a poet who is listed in more than 10 national and international literature lexica or biographical works (See the page: www.angelfire.com/art/gregorbrand/Biographie.html)have no entry in Wikipedia? I don´t see this as a case of vanity. GregorBrand
 * Correct me if I'm wrong, but your user name isn't an homage to Brand, is it? You're actually the person in question. So I guess you are literally "speaking for yourself". Bad form, old boy. And very clearly vanity. If you're actually of note, someday someone who isn't you will come along and note you. Let us hope for the arrival of that happy day, but not anticipate it. orthogonal 21:49, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete. Wikipedia is not the place for self-agrandizement. Kingturtle 18:13, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Orthogonal admits that he is no expert on German poetry. Is Wikipedia a place for judging - in an arrogant tone - without expertise and knowledge? And what have the two, three non-exaggerating, but simply and decently informing sentences of the incriminated entries to do with self-agrandizement? If a writer writes that he is a writer, this is nothing else but a pure fact.  GregorBrand
 * Siegfried Alkan was a published composer in his time. It can be proven with paper evidence - if someone really doubts his existence. His life and work came - similar to many other cases of Jewish artists in Nazi Germany - through a lot of circumstances in the danger of being forgotten. In which way does it harm Wikipedia if such a musician has an entry here? GregorBrand
 * Can you provide verifiable evidence (that does not rely on web pages authored by you) of Alkan's works? If you can, I have no objection in principle to retaining the page. In the absence of such evidence, I must assume Alkan is not of significant note, and therefore inappropriate as an article here. orthogonal 02:46, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Why not transfer this to User:Gregor Brand?? Muriel Victoria 13:00, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * If I would have known that there is so much discussion about such short and modest entries I wouldn´t have edited those pages. If it is really a problem for someone here to have an entry in Wikipedia about a contemporary, more than tenfold lexical listed German poet, then delete and be happy. I have no problem with it. Instead I have a problem with a rather absurd discussion that hadn´t started if not I, but for example a friend of mine had edited the pages. Or, even simplier, that hadn´t started if I had used a different Username. When I stepped into Wikipedia I thought - probably too naive - that it is important WHAT is edited and not WHO is the editor.GregorBrand

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Talk:Gauss map

The range of the Gauss map
I believe the range of the Gauss map is the unit sphere, not the unit circle: the normal vector is a three dimensional vector. I did an edition, but please check whether it's correct. --Anša (talk) 19:16, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

S2 is the unit sphere and so it was correct previously.

Grassmannian
The Grassmannian page does talk about unoriented k-subspaces, so the notation here isn't yet consistent with that there.

Charles Matthews 13:01, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Charles for reminding me of that. I have changed grassmannian to oriented grassmannian, though I am not sure of the name. It seems that in the litterature, both are called grassmannian, with definition depending on context. I wonder whether we should expand on that notion in Grassmannian ...

Good editing work too: it does look clearer that way (and the english is better, I guess).

By the way, since you seem to have a lot more experience with Wikipedia, is there some kind of hierarchy (sections, chapters and what not) where one should (could ?) register these pages ? Like any page on math should belong to the math "section", and so on.

Pascalromon 21:45, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

On orientations: the Grassmannian page should point out that the orthogonal group acts transitively also on oriented k-subspaces, and so on: the distinction should be clarified there.

As for lists/hierarchy, this should be linked from list of mathematical topics (G-I) (and is already); and also from list of differential geometry topics. I would do this in time - I tend to wait until I have a few to add, though.

Charles Matthews 22:08, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Generalizations
I think the generalization given here should be limited to Euclidean n-space, the generalization for manifold formally works, but it does not seems to be used at all, so if it is useless for me it is defenately useless for reader who wants to know what is Gauss map.

Tosha 04:32, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

radial of a curve
given a plane curve, take all the radiuses of tangent circles and move them to the origin. The end points forms what's called the radial curve of the given curve. Xah Lee 01:49, 2005 May 1 (UTC)

 * Thanks for mentioning. A nice article on that (and a link from this article) would not hurt. Oleg Alexandrov 02:13, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Degree of a Gauss map
The degree of a Gauss map is mentioned in this article and elsewhere, for example in Smale's paradox, but is not defined here. Can this be added? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:17, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

title: Talk:Gauss map