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Quercus stellata

Quercus stellata, the post oak or iron oak, is a North American species of oak in the white oak section. It is a slow-growing oak that lives in dry areas on the edges of fields, tops of ridges, and also grows in poor soils, and is resistant to rot, fire, and drought. Interbreeding occurs among white oaks, thus many hybrid species combinations occur. It is identifiable by the rounded cross-like shape formed by the leaf lobes and hairy underside of the leaves.

Taxonomy
The specific epithet stellata is Latin for "star"; it is named this because the trichome hairs on the bottom of the leaves are stellate or star-shaped. Several variants of Q. stellata were named by American botanist Charles Sprague Sargent. The variety most recognised by the United States Forest Service is Q. stellata var. paludosa Sarg (delta post oak).

Varieties
Varieties include:
 * var. margarettiae (Ashe) Sarg.
 * var. paludosa Sarg.
 * var. boyntonii (Beadle) Sarg.
 * var. anomala Sarg.
 * var. attenuata Sarg.
 * var. araniosa Sarg.
 * var. palmeri Sarg.
 * var. parviloba Sarg.
 * var. rufescens Sarg.

Description

Post oak is a relatively small tree, typically 10–15 m tall and trunk 30–60 cm in diameter, though occasional specimens reach 30 m tall and 140 cm in diameter. The leaves have a very distinctive shape, with three perpendicular terminal lobes, shaped much like a Maltese cross. They are leathery, and tomentose (densely short-hairy) beneath. The branching pattern of this tree often gives it a rugged appearance. The acorns are 1.5–2 cm long, and are mature in their first summer.

Similar species
Both Quercus stellata and Q. alba are in a section of Quercus called the white oaks. In the white oak section, Q. stellata is a sister taxon with Q. alba. Q. stellata is sold and distributed as white oak. One identifiable difference between the two trees is that Q. stellata is 'hairy' on the underside of the leaf.

Distribution and habitat
Q. stellata is found in the eastern and Midwestern United States both inland and along the coast, then in a narrow range along the eastern coast from Massachusetts to Florida, then westward to Texas, and inland to Iowa. Normally found at the edge of a forest, it typically grows in dry, sandy areas, deficient of nutrients.

Ecology
Q. stellata has the ability to survive fires by having thicker bark. It is useful for fire surveys where the tree rings are used to get a fire history of an area. A tree ring survey of 36 trees in Illinois provided a 226-year tree ring record that indicated that many Q. stellata persisted through annual fire return intervals of 1.44 fires/year for over 100 years.

It is used for food for deer, turkeys, squirrels, and other rodents, but because the nuts contain tannin, it is toxic to cattle. A recent study in Kansas concluded that deer browsing reduces post-oak recruitment in canopy gaps generally in the sapling phase.

Uses
Because of its ability to grow in dry sites, attractive crown, and strong horizontal branches, it is used in urban forestry. It is resistant to decay, so it is used for railroad ties, siding, planks, construction timbers, stair risers and treads, flooring, pulp, veneer, particle board, fuel, and its namesake fence posts. It is one of the most common types of wood used for Central Texas barbecue.

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

title: Quercus stellata


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Head-marking language

A language is head-marking if the grammatical marks showing agreement between different words of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads (or nuclei) of phrases, rather than on the modifiers or dependents. Many languages employ both head-marking and dependent-marking, and some languages double up and are thus double-marking. The concept of head/dependent-marking was proposed by Johanna Nichols in 1986 and has come to be widely used as a basic category in linguistic typology.

In English
The concepts of head-marking and dependent-marking are commonly applied to languages that have richer inflectional morphology than English. There are, however, a few types of agreement in English that can be used to illustrate those notions. The following graphic representations of a clause, a noun phrase, and a prepositional phrase involve agreement. The three tree structures shown are those of a dependency grammar, as opposed to those of a phrase structure grammar:

 * Head-marking-he-not-I.png

Heads and dependents are identified by the actual hierarchy of words, and the concepts of head-marking and dependent-marking are indicated with the arrows. Subject-verb agreement, shown in the tree on the left, is a case of head-marking because the singular subject John requires the inflectional suffix -s to appear on the finite verb cheats, the head of the clause. The determiner-noun agreement, shown in the tree in the middle, is a case of dependent-marking because the plural noun houses requires the dependent determiner to appear in its plural form, these, not in its singular form, this. The preposition-pronoun agreement of case government, shown in the tree on the right, is also an instance of dependent-marking because the head preposition with requires the dependent pronoun to appear in its object form, him, not in its subject form, he.

Noun phrases and verb phrases
The distinction between head-marking and dependent-marking shows the most in noun phrases and verb phrases, which have significant variation among and within languages.

 * {| class="wikitable"

!Phrase type!!Head!!Dependents!!Global distribution map (WALS)
 * Noun phrase||Nouns||adjectives, possessives, relative clauses, etc.||Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases
 * Verb phrase (theory A)||Verb||verb arguments||Marking in the Clause: Head-marking
 * Verb phrase (theory B)||Subject||verbs||Marking in the Clause: Dependent-marking
 * }
 * Verb phrase (theory B)||Subject||verbs||Marking in the Clause: Dependent-marking
 * }
 * }

Languages may be head-marking in verb phrases and dependent-marking in noun phrases, such as most Bantu languages, or vice versa, and it has been argued that the subject rather than the verb is the head of a clause so "head-marking" is not necessarily a coherent typology. Still, languages that are head-marking in both noun and verb phrases are common enough to make the term useful for typological description.

Geographical distribution
Head-marked possessive noun phrases are common in the Americas, Melanesia, Afro-Asiatic languages (status constructus) and Turkic languages and infrequent elsewhere. Dependent-marked noun phrases have a complementary distribution and are frequent in Africa, Eurasia, Australia, and New Guinea, the only area in which both types overlap appreciably. Double-marked possession is rare but found in languages around the Eurasian periphery such as Finnish, in the Himalayas, and along the Pacific Coast of North America. Zero-marked possession is also uncommon, with instances mostly found near the equator, but it does not form any true clusters.

The head-marked clause is common in the Americas, Australia, New Guinea, and the Bantu languages but is very rare elsewhere. The dependent-marked clause is common in Eurasia and Northern Africa, sparse in South America, and rare in North America. In New Guinea, it clusters in the Eastern Highlands and in Australia in the south, east, and interior with the very old Pama-Nyungan family. Double-marking is moderately well attested in the Americas, Australia, and New Guinea, and the southern fringe of Eurasia (chiefly in the Caucasian languages and Himalayan mountain enclaves), and it is particularly favored in Australia and the westernmost Americas. The zero-marked object is unsurprisingly common in Southeast Asia and Western Africa, two centers of morphological simplicity, but it is also very common in New Guinea and moderately common in Eastern Africa and Central America and South America, among languages of average or higher morphological complexity.

The Pacific Rim distribution of head-marking may reflect population movements beginning tens of thousands of years ago and founder effects. Kusunda has traces in the Himalayas, and there are Caucasian enclaves, both of which are perhaps remnants of typology preceding the spreads of interior Eurasian language families. The dependent-marking type is found everywhere but rare in the Americas, possibly another result of founder effects. In the Americas, all four types are found along the Pacific Coast, but in the East, only head-marking is common. Whether the diversity of types along the Pacific Coast reflects a great age or an overlay of more recent Eurasian colonizations on an earlier American stratum remains to be seen.

title: Head-marking language


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Dependent-marking language

A dependent-marking language has grammatical markers of agreement and case government between the words of phrases that tend to appear more on dependents than on heads. The distinction between head-marking and dependent-marking was first explored by Johanna Nichols in 1986, and has since become a central criterion in language typology in which languages are classified according to whether they are more head-marking or dependent-marking. Many languages employ both head and dependent-marking, but some employ double-marking, and yet others employ zero-marking. However, it is not clear that the head of a clause has anything to do with the head of a noun phrase, or even what the head of a clause is.

In English
English has few inflectional markers of agreement and so can be construed as zero-marking much of the time. Dependent-marking, however, occurs when a singular or plural noun demands the singular or plural form of the demonstrative determiner this/these or that/those and when a verb or preposition demands the subject or object form of a personal pronoun: I/me, he/him, she/her, they/them, who/whom. The following representations of dependency grammar illustrate some cases:

 * Dependent marking 1.png

Plural nouns in English require the plural form of a dependent demonstrative determiner, and prepositions require the object form of a dependent personal pronoun.

In German
Such instances of dependent-marking are a relatively rare occurrence in English, but dependent-marking occurs much more frequently in related languages, such as German. There, for instance, dependent-marking is present in most noun phrases. A noun marks its dependent determiner:

 * Dependent marking 2.1.png

The noun marks the dependent determiner in gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter) and number (singular or plural). In other words, the gender and number of the noun determine the form of the determiner that must appear. Nouns in German also mark their dependent adjectives in gender and number, but the markings vary across determiners and adjectives. Also, a head noun in German can mark a dependent noun with the genitive case.

title: Dependent-marking language


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Nierstein-Oppenheim

Nierstein-Oppenheim is a former Verbandsgemeinde ("collective municipality") in the district Mainz-Bingen (Rheinhessen) in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated on the left bank of the Rhine, approx. 15 km south-east of Mainz. On 1 July 2014 it merged into the new Verbandsgemeinde Rhein-Selz.

The Verbandsgemeinde consisted of the following eleven Ortsgemeinden ("local municipalities"):

 * 1) Dalheim
 * 2) Dexheim
 * 3) Dienheim
 * 4) Friesenheim
 * 5) Hahnheim
 * 6) Köngernheim
 * 7) Mommenheim
 * 8) Nierstein
 * 9) Oppenheim
 * 10) Selzen
 * 11) Undenheim

title: Nierstein-Oppenheim


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Continuity of government

Continuity of government (COG) is the principle of establishing defined procedures that allow a government to continue its essential operations in case of a catastrophic event such as nuclear war.

Continuity of government was developed by the British government before and during World War II to counter threats, such as that of the Luftwaffe bombing during the Battle of Britain. The need for continuity of government plans gained new urgency with nuclear proliferation.

During and after the Cold War countries developed such plans to avoid (or minimize) confusion and disorder due to a power vacuum in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.

In the US, COG is no longer limited to nuclear emergencies; the Continuity of Operations Plan was activated following the September 11 attacks.

Australia
During the years following the federation of Australia in 1901, several locations were considered for the national capital. One of the criteria used to assess sites was that they needed to be inland so that they could not be attacked from the sea. It was also believed that locations away from the coast would have a lower incidence of disease. During the Cold War the Office of National Assessments believed that it was unlikely that Australian cities would be attacked by the Soviet Union during a nuclear war.

The modern Australian Government has plans to enable the continuity of government. As of 2008, these formed part of 'Plan Mercator', which the government has described as aiming "to minimise the impact of a national security emergency on critical government operations and provide for the rapid resumption of 'near normal' government business under alternate arrangements until normal operations can be resumed".

Under the Australian system of government, there is not necessarily a requirement to maintain the Cabinet in a crisis. If the Prime Minister was killed in a disaster, the Governor-General would need to appoint their successor. A national unity government could also be formed in a major crisis.

A range of legislation, including the Defence Act 1903 and several health bills, include provisions that can be activated in response to emergencies. There are also plans for the Parliament of Australia to operate from another location if it is unable to sit at Parliament House in Canberra. These plans are classified.

The Canberra Times has reported that an Australian Government building in the Canberra suburb of Symonston houses communications systems that would be used to support the continuity of government if Plan Mercator was activated. The building was completed in 2007, and its secret function was disclosed as part of a job advertisement in 2008.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal and most of the state and territory parliaments cancelled scheduled sittings from March 2020. Federal parliamentary committees continued to operate virtually. The federal parliament met with only the number of members necessary to form a quorum present on several occasions between March and June 2020, and resumed full sittings from August that year. The arrangements in place from August allowed members of parliament who were unable to travel to Canberra to participate virtually, but these members were unable to vote in proceedings.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison arranged to be secretly appointed to hold several ministerial positions during 2020 and 2021, justifying his appointment as the Minister for Finance and Minister for Health as being necessary in case the ministers for portfolios were affected by COVID-19 and unable to perform their duties. Morrison's appointment as Minister for Health was approved in March 2020 by the National Security Committee of Cabinet as part of measures taken in response to the pandemic, but was not publicly announced. His subsequent appointment to the other ministries was not known to other members of the government. An inquiry held into the matter during 2022 that was headed by Former High Court justice Virginia Bell found that Morrison had not needed to hold these ministries, as he could have been appointed "in a matter of minutes" if the ministers had been incapacitated. Morrison did not use the powers available to him as Finance or Health minister.

Canada
Canada built numerous nuclear bunkers across the country, nicknamed "Diefenbunkers" in a play on the last name of then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. In 2016, the Privy Council Office made an agreement with the Department of National Defence to open two bunkers for government officials amid the ongoing North Korean nuclear crisis.

China

The People's Republic of China (PRC) once operated Underground Project 131, intended to be the PLA headquarters in Hubei during a nuclear conflict. Built due to the Sino-Soviet split during that portion of the Cold War, in 1981, the Project 131 site was turned over to the civilian authorities of the prefecture-level city of Xianning, where it is located.

Czech Republic
The K-116 facility under Zlíchov hill in western Prague was designated to house the Czechoslovak government in case of nuclear attack (together with the K-9 facility in Jihlava) and might still be used as the emergency headquarters of the Czech government and military.

Denmark
During the Cold War, Denmark built two bunker complexes, named REGAN Vest and REGAN Øst (Danish: "REGeringsANlæg", translated: "Government Complex West and Government Complex East"), in Jutland and Zealand respectively. The idea was to have half of the government and the royal family in one bunker, and the other half in the other, allowing continuity of government, even if one of the bunkers were destroyed or cut off.

France
The Centre d'opération des forces aériennes stratégiques (COFAS) is a hardened command centre for French nuclear forces at Taverny Air Base in Taverny, Val d'Oise. The alternate national command center is located at Mont Verdun near Lyon.

The hardened headquarters of Force océanique stratégique (FOST), France's nuclear SSBN fleet, is at Brest, Finistère.

Germany
Germany operated a government bunker (Regierungsbunker) to house the German government, parliament and all federal personnel needed to keep the government working in the event of war or severe crisis. It was decommissioned in 1997.

Republic of Ireland
In Ireland, the National Security Committee (NSC) is the conduit for officials to communicate with the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and/or cabinet members if the normal channel of communication with their minister became unavailable. Drafts of emergency powers legislation have been drawn up in secret, including legislation to deal with circumstances such as an attack on cabinet involving numerous deaths.

During the period of the Cold War, it was envisaged that cabinet ministers, senior civil servants and military advisers would use an underground nuclear bunker at Custume Barracks in Athlone in the event of a nuclear exchange. The bunker was equipped with a command and control centre with communications equipment – which had a hotline to the British government in Whitehall – a map room pointing out important areas for protection, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom facilities.

Israel
As of December 2003 an underground national crisis management center was being constructed at an undisclosed location in the Judaean Mountains under Jerusalem. Another command and control bunker is being built as part of the new Prime Minister's Office complex in Givat Ram.

Poland
According to Constitution of Poland in case of death or inability to discharging duties of the President, his duties are discharged by Marshal of the Sejm (or if they are unable, the Marshal of the Senate).

After Smolensk air disaster in 2010 a lot of the highest state and army offices were emptied. Their duties were automatically taken over by respective deputies.

New Zealand
The New Zealand government believes the most likely disaster scenario to affect the government is a large earthquake in Wellington. The government has plans to move Parliament and essential staff to Devonport Naval Base in Auckland if such an event occurs.

The website of the Governor-General of New Zealand notes that their constitutional role is to "maintain the legitimacy and continuity of government by ensuring there is always a government in office with a democratic mandate to govern".

The New Zealand National Crisis Management Centre is located under the "Beehive" building in Wellington. An Alternate National Crisis Management Centre is in Auckland, and would be activated if the facility in Wellington was damaged, if multiple crises were occurring or if the government is required to relocate to Auckland.

Norway
The Norwegian government operates a nuclear bunker called Sentralanlegget in Buskerud County. The bunker is meant to accommodate the Norwegian royal family and the government in case of a nuclear/military attack on the nation, and also function as a wartime headquarters. There is also a bunker beneath Høyblokka in downtown Oslo.

Soviet Union and Russia
In the public domain very little is known about Russia's COG plans. One sprawling underground facility residing in tunnels cut into Mount Yamantau is likely to be related to the survival of Russia's government, given its size and decades long construction history, with a construction start during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1964–82). KGB defector Colonel Oleg Gordievsky states that an organization, known as Directorate 15, was (or is) tasked with building and maintaining a network of hundreds of underground command bunkers for the Soviet leadership; this includes the vast site beneath Yamantau Mountain, which is often called Mezhgorye / Межго́рье after the closed city that is located nearby. However, there is speculation, due to its proximity to Chelyabinsk-70, that Yamantau is a 400-square-mile underground complex which houses nuclear warheads, missiles, launch controls, and several nuclear weapons factories designed to continue production after a hypothetical nuclear war begins.

The second command and control center in the Urals, after Yamantau, is similarly speculated to be underground and located near, or under, Kosvinsky Kamen. The site is believed to host the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces alternate command post, a post for the general staff built to compensate for the vulnerability of older Soviet era command posts in the Moscow region. In spite of this, the primary command posts for the Strategic Rocket Forces remains Kuntsevo in Moscow and the secondary is the Kosvinsky Mountain in the Urals. The facility at Kosvinsky, finished in early 1996, was designed to resist US earth-penetrating warheads and serves a similar role as the American Cheyenne Mountain Complex.

Further command centers, according to globalsecurity.org, include one near Chekhov, which is the Russian General Staff wartime command post, buried deep underground, and Sharapovo(ru) about 80 km south of Moscow, built in the 1950s, Sharapovo is believed to have been the primary backup command center for the Soviet era leadership. Both Chekhov and Sharapovo are each suggested to have the capability to accommodate about 30,000 individuals, As an alternative to Sharapovo, a secondary political leadership base is located at Chaadayevka, some 650 kilometers southeast of Moscow near the city of Penza.

There is also said to be as many as 12 underground levels beneath the Russian capital of Moscow to protect the government in the Kremlin, known as the Main Directorate of special programs of the President (Glavnoye Upravlenie Specialnih Program: GUSP) (ru) the direct successor of the 15th Directorate of the KGB, which was established in 1977, GUSP is said to oversee, amongst other sites, a parallel track line alongside the Moscow metro, known as the 'Kremlin line' Metro-2 or D-6 to be used in an emergency. Two destinations of this system are suggested to be the old KGB headquarters, now the FSB headquarters, at Lubyanka Square, and the second being regarded as an enormous underground leadership bunker adjacent to Moscow State University. Another alleged subterranean destination, apart from the aforementioned underground town at Ramenki/Moscow State University is Vnukovo-2 airport. Despite official Russian state ambiguity, it is speculated that many of the Moscow bunkers are linked by an underground railway line.

Sweden
In case of war, the Riksdag can convene somewhere else than in the capital, and if necessary, a War Delegation will replace the Riksdag. The War Delegation consists of the Speaker and 50 members of the Riksdag. The government can put a number of enabling acts in force to regulate for example rationing, export and seizing of property. If the government is unable to carry out its duties the Riksdag may decide on the formation of a new government. Likewise, if the Riksdag and the War Delegation are unable to carry out its duties, the government can assume the powers of the Riksdag, but with some limitations.

During the Cold War, the Klara skyddsrum ("Klara shelter" or "Klara bunker") was built underneath Stockholm. The bunker is designed to accommodate two thirds of the government and between 8,000 and 12,000 civilians in the case of a military attack on Stockholm. It is designed as a very large, two-story oval, with multiple entrances. During peacetime, parts of it are used as a parking garage. Sweden built over 65,000 fallout shelters in regular houses, and every county had at least one large hard-rock underground bunker that controlled a number of smaller bunkers that were located in the municipalities.

Turkey
There is little public knowledge about continuity of government in Turkey. The cabinet and presidential offices, based in the capital of Ankara, have secondary sites in Istanbul and İzmir.

United Kingdom
The primary British COG headquarters is at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. The Central Government War Headquarters was previously maintained in a quarry complex near Corsham, Wiltshire. The above-ground support facility was RAF Rudloe Manor.

Service command centres are Northwood for the Royal Navy Trident SSBN force, and RAF High Wycombe for the Royal Air Force.

United States
Continuity of the national government was first threatened in late 1776, when British forces advanced toward the Continental capital at Philadelphia. On December 9, the Continental Congress passed a resolution in anticipation of a British capture:

"Resolved: That in case this Congress shall be under the necessity of removing from Philadelphia, it shall be adjourned to Baltimore."

The Congress was adjourned as planned three days later. Other relocations followed during the course of the Revolutionary War.

For most of its existence, the United States operated without a standing continuity plan. When British forces burned Washington in 1814, Secretary of State James Monroe received only a few hours' notice to remove the government records. Although his staff saved many valuable records, much was nonetheless destroyed, and the next administration encountered a great deal of confusion.

In 1952, President Truman ordered all federal offices to develop their own continuity plans for the event of a civil defense emergency. Plans have been maintained and adapted since then, at times requiring the construction of secret facilities such as the emergency Congress facility in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The current continuity policy is defined in National Security Policy Directive 51 and its implementation plan. The continuity plan was activated for the first time during the September 11, 2001 attacks and then again during the January 6 United States Capitol attack. Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs) are draft classified executive orders, proclamations, and messages to Congress that are prepared for the President of the United States to exercise or expand powers in anticipation of a range of emergency hypothetical worst-case scenarios, so that they are ready to sign and put into effect the moment one of those scenarios comes to pass.

The United States presidential line of succession is the order in which officials of the United States federal government assume the powers and duties of the office of president of the United States if the incumbent president becomes incapacitated, dies, resigns, or is removed from office. It was adopted in 1947, and last revised in 2006. The designated survivor is an individual in the line of succession, chosen to stay away from events such as State of the Union addresses and presidential inaugurations.

title: Continuity of government


text:
Aigun

Aigun (Manchu: aihūn; Айгунь) was a historic Chinese town in northern Manchuria, situated on the right bank of the Amur River, some 30 km south (downstream) from the central urban area of Heihe (which is across the Amur from the mouth of the Zeya River and Blagoveschensk).

The Chinese name of the town, which literally means "Bright Jade", is a transliteration of the Manchu (or Ducher) name of the town.

Today the former city of Aigun is called Aihui Town ( aihūn hoton) and is part of Aihui District, which in turn is part of the prefecture-level city of Heihe. Heihe is one of the major cities in Heilongjiang Province.

History
The predecessor of Aigun was a town of the indigenous Ducher people of the Amur Valley, located on the left (northeastern - now Russian) bank of the Amur River. The site of this town, whose name was reported by the Russian explorer Yerofey Khabarov as Aytyun (Айтюн) in 1652, is currently known to archaeologists as the Grodekovo site (Гродековское городище), after the nearby village of Grodekovo. It is thought to have been populated since around the end of the 1st or the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD.

Some sources report a Chinese presence on the middle Amur – a fort existed at Aigun for about 20 years during the Yongle era on the left (northwestern) shore of the Amur downstream from the mouth of the Zeya River. This Ming Dynasty Aigun was located on the opposite bank to the later Aigun that was relocated during the Qing Dynasty.

The Ducher town was probably vacated when the Duchers were evacuated by the Manchu Chinese Qing Dynasty to the Sungari or Hurka in the mid-1650s. In 1683-85 the Manchus re-used the site as a base for their campaign against the Russian fort of Albazin.

After the capture of Albazin in 1685 or 1686, the Manchus relocated the town to a new site on the right (southwestern) bank of the Amur, about 3 mi downstream from the original site. The new site occupied the location of the former village of a Daurian chief named Tolga. The city became known primarily under its Manchu name Saghalien Ula Hotun or Hoton (Manchu: Sahaliyan Ula Hoton), and sometimes also under the Chinese translation of this name, Heilongjiang Cheng (黑龍江城). Both names mean "Black River City", but by the 19th century the name "Aigun" again became more current in the western languages.

For a number of years after 1683, Aigun served as the capital (the seat of the Military Governor) of Heilongjiang Province, until the capital was moved to Nenjiang (Mergen) in 1690, and later to Qiqihar. Aigun, however, remained the seat of the Deputy Lieutenant-General (Fu dutong), responsible for a large district covering much of the Amur Valley within the province of Heilongjiang as it existed in those days.

As a part of a nationwide Sino-French cartographic program, Aigun (or, rather, Saghalien Ula hoton) was visited ca. 1709 by the Jesuits Jean-Baptiste Régis, Pierre Jartoux, and Xavier Ehrenbert Fridelli, who found it a well-defended town, serving as the base of a Manchu river fleet controlling the Amur River region. Surrounded by numerous villages on the fertile riverside plain, the town was well provisioned with foodstuffs.

It was at Aigun in May 1858 that Nikolay Muravyov concluded the Aigun Treaty, according to which the left bank of the Amur River was conceded to Russia.

During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, for a few weeks Aigun was the center of military action directed against the Russians. On July22, Aigun was captured by Russian troops.

In 1913 Aigun became the county seat of the newly created Aigun County (瑷珲县, Àihuī Xiàn), which was renamed Aihui County (爱辉县, Àihuī Xiàn, the pronunciation remained unchanged) in December 1956.

The Manchus of the Chinese capital Peking (now known as Beijing) were influenced by the Chinese dialect spoken in the area to the point where pronouncing Manchu sounds was hard for them, and they pronounced Manchu according to Chinese phonetics, while in contrast, the Manchus of Aigun could both pronounce Manchu sounds properly and mimick the sinicised pronunciation of Peking Manchus, since they learned the Pekinese pronunciation from either studying in Peking or from officials sent to Aigun from the capital, and they could tell them apart, using the Chinese influenced Pekinese pronunciation when demonstrating that they were better educated or their superior stature in society.

On November15, 1980, Heihe City was created, and on June6, 1983, Aihui County was abolished and merged into the Heihe City.

Commemoration
There are a number of historical sites in today's Aihui Town (30 km south of downtown Heihe) related to the historical Aigun. They include Aihui Ancient City (瑷珲古城), Aihui Heroic Defenders' of the Fatherland Garden (瑷珲卫国英雄园, Àihuī Wèiguó Yīngxióng Yuán), and Aihui History Museum (瑷珲历史陈列馆, Àihuī Lìshǐ Chénliè Guǎn).

title: Aigun


text:
Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange

The Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange Program, also known by the acronym MATRIX, was a U.S. federally funded data mining system originally developed for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement described as a tool to identify terrorist subjects.

The system was reported to analyze government and commercial databases to find associations between suspects or to discover locations of or completely new "suspects". The database and technologies used in the system were housed by Seisint, a Florida-based company since acquired by LexisNexis.

The Matrix program was shut down in June 2005 after federal funding was cut in the wake of public concerns over privacy and state surveillance.

History
Matrix was the brainchild of Hank Asher, a businessman in the data aggregation field. Asher reportedly contacted Florida police immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks, claiming he could find the hijackers as well as other potential terrorists. Asher reportedly offered to make available the database and technology that could do the job quickly, for free, supplied by the company he owned and operated: Seisint.

Control of the system was handed over to law enforcement officials, although Seisint continued to house and operate it on their behalf. After a demonstration of the system at the White House in January 2003 Matrix received US$4 million in grants from the U.S. Justice Department and the program was earmarked US$8 million by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The program snowballed, as states signed up to participate, including Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Ohio and Utah. California and Texas joined then exited the program, citing privacy and security concerns. The U.S. federal government and the CIA was cited as likely future users.

The program's similarity to the Total Information Awareness (TIA) federally funded initiative that was terminated following public concerns contributed to Matrix's demise. Matrix came under scrutiny by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which made Freedom of Information Act requests in Florida, where the program originated, and to the federal government on 30 October 2003. The ACLU followed this up with simultaneous information requests in Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania for information about those states' participation in Matrix.

The ACLU's requests sought to find out the information sources that Matrix was drawing upon, who had access to the database and how it is being used. As well as the funding and operations described here, the ACLU's requests revealed that Matrix would perform an almost identical function to the banned TIA. Matrix would bind together government and commercial databases to allow federal and state law enforcement entities to conduct detailed searches on individuals.

Public revelation of the projects funding caused an uproar in the media and states began withdrawing their support. The Matrix program was finally shut down in June 2005 after federal funding was cut in the wake of public concerns over privacy and state surveillance.

Seisint retained the technology used to operate Matrix. Both Seisint and its Matrix technology are now owned by LexisNexis.

Function
The Matrix website stated that the data would include criminal histories, driver's license data, vehicle registration records, and public data record entries. Other data was thought to include credit histories, driver's license photographs, marriage and divorce records, social security numbers, dates of birth, and the names and addresses of family members, neighbors and business associates. All of this information is available to the government without the need for a warrant. The ACLU pointed out that the type of data that the Matrix compiles could be expanded to include information in commercial databases encompasses such as purchasing habits, magazine subscriptions, income and job histories.

Matrix would combine these government records and information from commercial databases in a data warehouse. Dossiers would be reviewed by specialized software to identify anomalies using 'mathematical analysis'. When anomalies are spotted, they would be scrutinized by personnel who would search for evidence of terrorism or other crimes.

Like the TIA, Matrix would use data mining where searches for patterns in this data (including the 'anomalies') would be used to identify individuals possibly involved in terrorist or other criminal activity. Congressional critic Paula B. Dockery pointed out that like the TIA, this kind of 'data mining' may be ineffective, and have severe downsides, including its privacy costs.

Data from Matrix would be transferred through the Regional Information Sharing Systems network, an existing secure law enforcement network used to transmit sensitive information among law enforcement agencies. The network was linked to High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, United States Attorneys' Offices, other federal agencies and several state law enforcement systems.


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List of numeral system topics

This is a list of Wikipedia articles on topics of numeral system and "numeric representations"

See also: computer numbering formats and number names.

Arranged by base

 * Radix, radix point, mixed radix, base (mathematics)
 * Unary numeral system (base 1)
 * Binary numeral system (base 2)
 * Negative base numeral system (base −2)
 * Ternary numeral system numeral system (base 3)
 * Balanced ternary numeral system (base 3)
 * Negative base numeral system (base −3)
 * Quaternary numeral system (base 4)
 * Quater-imaginary base (base 2$\sqrt{−1}$)
 * Quinary numeral system (base 5)
 * Senary numeral system (base 6)
 * Septenary numeral system (base 7)
 * Octal numeral system (base 8)
 * Nonary (novenary) numeral system (base 9)
 * Decimal (denary) numeral system (base 10)
 * Negative base numeral system (base −10)
 * Duodecimal (dozenal) numeral system (base 12)
 * Hexadecimal numeral system (base 16)
 * Vigesimal numeral system (base 20)
 * Sexagesimal numeral system (base 60)
 * Hexadecimal numeral system (base 16)
 * Vigesimal numeral system (base 20)
 * Sexagesimal numeral system (base 60)

title: List of numeral system topics


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Oxonium ion

In chemistry, an oxonium ion is any cation containing an oxygen atom that has three bonds and 1+ formal charge. The simplest oxonium ion is the hydronium ion (H3O+).

Alkyloxonium
Hydronium is one of a series of oxonium ions with the formula RnH3−nO+. Oxygen is usually pyramidal with an sp3 hybridization. Those with n = 1 are called primary oxonium ions, an example being protonated alcohol (e.g. methanol). In acidic media, the oxonium functional group produced by protonating an alcohol can be a leaving group in the E2 elimination reaction. The product is an alkene. Extreme acidity, heat, and dehydrating conditions are usually required. Other hydrocarbon oxonium ions are formed by protonation or alkylation of alcohols or ethers (R−C−$+ O$−R1R2).

Secondary oxonium ions have the formula R2OH+, an example being protonated ethers.

Tertiary oxonium ions have the formula R3O+, an example being trimethyloxonium. Tertiary alkyloxonium salts are useful alkylating agents. For example, triethyloxonium tetrafluoroborate, a white crystalline solid, can be used, for example, to produce ethyl esters when the conditions of traditional Fischer esterification are unsuitable. It is also used for preparation of enol ethers and related functional groups.

Oxatriquinane and oxatriquinacene are unusually stable oxonium ions, first described in 2008. Oxatriquinane does not react with boiling water or with alcohols, thiols, halide ions, or amines, although it does react with stronger nucleophiles such as hydroxide, cyanide, and azide.

Oxocarbenium ions
Another class of oxonium ions encountered in organic chemistry is the oxocarbenium ions, obtained by protonation or alkylation of a carbonyl group e.g. R−C=$+ O$−R′ which forms a resonance structure with the fully-fledged carbocation R−$+ C$−O−R′ and is therefore especially stable:

Gold-stabilized species
An unusually stable oxonium species is the gold complex tris[triphenylphosphinegold(I)]oxonium tetrafluoroborate, [(Ph3PAu)3O][BF4], where the intramolecular aurophilic interactions between the gold atoms are believed responsible for the stabilisation of the cation. This complex is prepared by treatment of Ph3PAuCl with Ag2O in the presence of NaBF4:

 * 3 Ph3PAuCl + Ag2O + NaBF4 → [(Ph3PAu)3O]+[BF4]− + 2 AgCl + NaCl

It has been used as a catalyst for the propargyl Claisen rearrangement.

Relevance to natural product chemistry
Complex bicyclic and tricyclic oxonium ions have been proposed as key intermediates in the biosynthesis of a series of natural products by the red algae of the genus Laurencia.

Several members of these elusive species have been prepared explicitly by total synthesis, demonstrating the possibility of their existence. The key to their successful generation was the use of a weakly coordinating anion (Krossing's anion, [Al(pftb)4]−, pftb = perfluoro-tert-butoxy) as the counteranion. As shown in the example below, this was executed by a transannular halide abstraction strategy through the reaction of the oxonium ion precursor (an organic halide) with the silver salt of the Krossing's anion Ag[Al(pftb)4]•CH2Cl2, generating the desired oxonium ion with simultaneous precipitation of inorganic silver halides. The resulting oxonium ions were characterized comprehensively by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy at low temperature (−78 °C) with support from density functional theory computation.

These oxonium ions were also demonstrated to directly give rise to multiple related natural products by reacting with various nucleophiles, such as water, bromide, chloride, and acetate.

title: Oxonium ion


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Anne Heggtveit

Anne Heggtveit, (born January 11, 1939) is a former alpine ski racer from Canada. She was an Olympic gold medallist and double world champion in 1960.

Early years
Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Heggtveit was raised in New Edinburgh, one of the oldest areas of the city. She was encouraged into alpine skiing by her father, Halvor Heggtveit, a Canadian cross-country champion who qualified for the Winter Olympics in 1932, but did not compete. Her parents had emigrated from Norway to North Dakota. She learned to ski at Camp Fortune ski area in the nearby Gatineau Hills of Quebec, northwest of Ottawa, and was a student at Lisgar Collegiate Institute in Ottawa. Heggtveit was a ski racing prodigy, invited at age seven to serve as a forerunner to a downhill race at Lake Placid in 1946.

Racing career
At the age of 15 in 1954, Heggtveit first gained international attention when she became the youngest winner ever of the Holmenkollen giant slalom event in Norway. She also won the slalom and giant slalom at the United States national junior championships, and finished ninth in the downhill and seventh in the slalom at the World Championships in March at Åre, Sweden. After leading the top half of the giant slalom, she fell twice near the finish was well back in 31st, which dropped her final placing in the combined to 14th.

Although Heggtveit suffered several injuries between 1955 and 1957, she still earned a spot on Canada's Olympic team at age 17 in 1956 at Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.

At a time when Europeans dominated alpine skiing, Heggtveit was inspired by the breakthrough performance of teammate Lucile Wheeler of Quebec, who won Olympic bronze in the downhill in 1956, and three medals at the World Championships in 1958 at Bad Gastein, Austria. Wheeler won gold in the downhill and giant slalom events, and took silver in the combined. Heggtveit finished in the top ten in three events, with an eighth in the slalom, seventh in the downhill, and sixth in the combined.

At the 1960 Winter Olympic Games in Squaw Valley, California, Heggtveit won Canada's first-ever Olympic skiing gold medal. Her victory in the Olympic slalom also made her the first non-European to win the world championship in slalom and combined. Heggtveit was the first North American to win the Arlberg-Kandahar Trophy, the most prestigious and classic event in alpine skiing.

World Championship results
From 1948 through 1980, the Winter Olympics were also the World Championships for alpine skiing.

At the World Championships from 1954 through 1980, the combined was a "paper race" using the results of the three events (DH, GS, SL).

Honors
Heggtveit was awarded the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada's outstanding athlete of 1960. She was also the first recipient of the John Semmelink Memorial Award in November 1961, named for her fallen teammate. Her performance on the world stage was again recognized in 1976 when she was made a member of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor.

Heggtveit was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1960, the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 1971, and was among the first group inducted into the new Canadian Ski Hall of Fame in 1982.

Heggtveit has a road named after her at the Blue Mountain Ski Resort in the Town of the Blue Mountains, west of Collingwood, Ontario. She also has a ski run named after her at Camp Fortune, an extremely difficult double black diamond run.

Anne Heggtveit was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 1995.

She was in the first induction of the Lisgar Collegiate Institute Athletic Wall of Fame, as part of the 160th Anniversary celebrations.

Personal
Following her competitive career, Heggtveit married James Ross Hamilton in August 1961, and resided in Quebec. They had two children and later relocated to nearby Vermont in the United States. She was later an accountant and photographer.

She is sister to Alexander Heggtveit, MD, cardiac pathologist with ties to Brooklyn, NY, Ottawa, Hamilton, and Seaforth, Ontario, and great-aunt to Katie Heggtveit, granddaughter of Alexander, a social entrepreneur with ties to Toronto, Ontario, currently living in Nashville, Tennessee since 2023, recently inducted into the Toronto Sport Hall of Honor.

title: Anne Heggtveit


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E40

E40 may refer to:
 * Nimzo-Indian Defense, Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings code
 * European route E40, a road extending from France to Kazakhstan
 * E-40 (born 1967), American rapper
 * GE E40, a locomotive
 * E40, the name for the fuel blend of 40% ethanol and 60% gasoline
 * E40 screw, a type of Edison screw
 * HMS E40, a 1916 British E class submarine

title: E40


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Confederation Party

Confederation Party was a term for the parties supporting Canadian confederation in the British colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland in the 1860s when politics became polarized between supporters and opponents of Confederation. The Confederation parties were accordingly opposed by Anti-Confederation parties in those three jurisdictions. A conference was held on September 1, 1864, in Charlottetown when the Province of Canada became interested in it. John A. Macdonald was a huge promoter of Confederation and even made an alliance with his political rival, George Brown to make it happen.

In New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the Confederation parties became Conservative parties aligned with the federal Liberal-Conservative Party of Sir John A. Macdonald (generally known simply as Conservatives), while Anti-Confederation parties became Liberals. This approximated the political dichotomy that existed prior to Confederation although, because of the realignment, some former Liberals became Conservatives and vice versa.

The acceptance of the Confederation Party was greatly influenced by the American Civil War. Other reasons were an aggressive American foreign policy and the Fenian Raids of 1866.

Some of the Maritime provinces were worried that the autonomy would be weakened if they took up the Confederation. It was also feared that the French-Canadian interests would be weakened if the Confederation was embraced in Canada East (modern-day Quebec).

title: Confederation Party


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Jesselyn Radack

Jesselyn Radack (born December 12, 1970) is an American national security and human rights attorney known for her defense of whistleblowers, journalists, and hacktivists. She graduated from Brown University and Yale Law School and began her career as an Honors Program attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice.

She is notable for defending prominent whistleblowers, including National Security Agency whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Thomas Drake, each of whom was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, as well as for her own experience as a whistleblower at the U.S. Department of Justice.

While working at the Justice Department, she disclosed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) committed an ethics violation in their interrogation of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban", captured during the United States invasion of Afghanistan, without an attorney present. Radack alleged that the Department of Justice attempted to suppress that information. The Lindh case was the first major terrorism prosecution after 9/11. Her experience is chronicled in her memoir, TRAITOR: The Whistleblower and the "American Taliban", and in the documentary Silenced.

Radack is the director of National Security & Human Rights at ExposeFacts' Whistleblower and Source Protection Program. She has been widely published and quoted regarding whistleblowing, surveillance, Internet freedom and privacy. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the L.A. Times, Washington Post, Guardian, The Nation, Legal Times, and numerous law journals. She frequently appears in the press, including on the major television networks, NPR, PBS, CNN, Al Jazeera, and the BBC.

Early life and education
Radack was born in Washington, D.C., and attended Brown University. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year and graduated in 1992 as a triple major in American civilization, women's studies, and political science, with honors in all three majors. While in college, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

In 1995 Radack graduated from Yale Law School and, through the Attorney General's Honors Program, joined the Department of Justice. When the Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office (PRAO) was created in 1999, she served as a legal advisor until leaving Justice in April 2002.

Initial inquiry into Lindh case
On December 7, 2001, Radack received an inquiry from Justice Department counterterrorism prosecutor John DePue, regarding the ethical propriety of interrogating Lindh in Afghanistan without Lindh's legal representative being present. He told her that Lindh's father had retained a lawyer for his son; Lindh was not aware of this arrangement. Radack responded that interrogating him was not authorized by law. The principle at issue was that a person represented by a lawyer cannot be contacted by agents of the Justice Department, including the FBI, without permission of that lawyer. According to Radack, the advice she gave had been approved by Claudia Flynn, then head of PRAO, and Joan Goldfrank, a senior PRAO attorney.

The FBI proceeded to question Lindh without Lindh's lawyer having given permission. DePue informed Radack of the interrogation on December 10, 2001, and she advised him that Lindh's "interview may have to be sealed or only used for national security purposes; however, I don't have enough information yet to make that recommendation".

Radack continued to research the issue until December 20, 2001, when Flynn told her to drop the matter, because Lindh had been "Mirandized". It was later learned that the FBI agent who read Lindh the Miranda warning had, when noting the right to counsel, ad-libbed: "Of course, there are no lawyers here".

U.S. government statements on Lindh's legal rights
On January 15, 2002, five weeks after the interrogation, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that a criminal complaint was being filed against Lindh. "The subject here is entitled to choose his own lawyer", Ashcroft said, "and to our knowledge, has not chosen a lawyer at this time". On February 5, 2002, Ashcroft announced Lindh's indictment, saying that his rights "have been carefully, scrupulously honored".

In early 2004 Radack said that she disagreed with Ashcroft's view but could see its logic, that because Lindh did not pick the lawyer himself, the lawyer did not represent him at the time of interrogation and therefore the questioning did not violate Lindh's rights. "You can debate it one way or another," she said. In early 2005 Radack recalled her reaction to Ashcroft's statements more starkly: "I knew that wasn't true".

Poor performance review
On February 4, 2002, the day before the Lindh indictment was announced, Flynn gave Radack an unscheduled, "blistering" performance evaluation, despite Radack having received a merit raise the year before. The evaluation covered December 27, 2000, to September 30, 2001, two months prior to the Lindh inquiry, and did not mention the Lindh case, but it criticized her legal judgment in issues related to the case, as well as in other matters. Flynn had not yet signed the review. She advised Radack to find another job, or the review would be put in Radack's official personnel file. Radack, who had planned on being a career civil servant, soon found a new job outside of government, at the law firm Hawkins, Delafield & Wood, from which she was effectively fired in November 2002 for refusing to either sign an affidavit stating that she had not leaked the government documents, or resign.

Missing emails
On March 7, 2002, while Radack was still working at PRAO, the lead prosecutor in the Lindh case, Randy Bellows, messaged Radack that there was a court order for all of the Justice Department's internal correspondence about Lindh's interrogation. He said that he had two of her messages and asked if there were more.

Radack immediately became concerned that the court order had been deliberately concealed from her. She had written more than a dozen emails on the subject, and neither of the ones Bellows had received copies of reflected her fear that the FBI's actions had been unethical and that Lindh's confession, which was the basis for the criminal case, might have to be sealed. After checking the hard-copy file, Radack said the files were tampered with to include only three of her emails; official records indicated that only those three emails were received by the Lindh prosecutors, but which emails DOJ supplied to the court and when cannot be determined as the court records were sealed. Radack confided in a senior colleague, former U.S. Attorney Donald McKay, who examined the file and told her that it had been "purged".

With the assistance of technical support, Radack then recovered 14 email messages from her computer archives and gave them to Flynn with a cover memorandum. When Flynn asked Radack why the messages weren't in the file, Radack said she didn't know, and her supervisor said "Now I have to explain why PRAO should not look bad for not turning them over," indicating her belief that Radack had overlooked the additional correspondence when originally turning over the messages and attempted to correct her error by presenting the recovered emails while asserting ethical misconduct. Radack took home a copy of the recovered emails to ensure they wouldn't "disappear" again.

Which emails the Department of Justice supplied to the court, and when, cannot be determined directly because the court placed them under seal. In March 2003 investigative journalist Jane Mayer of The New Yorker reported that "[a]n official list compiled by the prosecution confirms that the Justice Department did not hand over Radack's most critical e-mail in which she questioned the viability of Lindh's confession until after her confrontation with Flynn".

On December 31, 2003, Radack requested the court appoint a special prosecutor to probe the alleged suppression of the emails. The government responded that it had supplied the emails to the court in its initial response to the court order seeking them, i.e., on March 1, 2002. The description of the 24 documents (probably including duplicates) provided to the court at that time matches Radack's emails, including the one that states interviewing Lindh is not authorized by law. DePue, the recipient of the emails, also had copies and states that they were submitted to the court. The judge rejected Radack's request as "impertinent".

In 2004 Radack filed suit against the government (see below). In 2005, the court found that "[t]hough Flynn informed Radack that she would send the emails to Bellows, Radack maintains that she had a 'good faith belief' that this never occurred...Radack was mistaken, for in filings submitted to the Virginia District Court on March 1, 2002, and March 11, 2002, Bellows turned over thirty-three PRAO-related documents, including Radack's fourteen emails, ex parte and under seal, for in camera review".

Disclosure to Newsweek of emails believed to have been purged
Radack resigned from the Justice Department on April 5, 2002. In June 2002 she heard a broadcast on NPR stating that the Department said they had never taken the position that Lindh was entitled to counsel during his interrogation. She later wrote, "I knew this statement was not true. It also indicated to me that the Justice Department must not have turned over my e-mails to the Lindh court ... because I did not believe the Department would have the temerity to make public statements contradicted by its own court filings, even if those filings were in camera." She reasoned that "disclosure of my e-mails would advance compliance with the Lindh court's discovery order while also exposing gross mismanagement and abuse of authority by my superiors at the Justice Department." After hearing the broadcast, Radack sent the emails to Michael Isikoff, a Newsweek reporter, who had been interviewed in the NPR story. He then wrote an article about the Lindh case emails, quoting Radack but not naming her as the source of what he called "internal e-mails obtained by Newsweek."

Radack has said she did not turn the documents over to the court or prosecutors at the time she recovered them because she felt intimidated by Flynn, who had told her to drop the matter. Later, no longer working in government, she reasoned, "I couldn't go to the court because Justice Department lawyers would argue (as they did when I eventually did try to tell my story to the court) that I had no standing. I couldn't go to a Member of Congress because, as a resident of the District of Columbia, I didn't have a voting representative. What I could do is disclose my story to the press--a judicially-sanctioned way of exposing wrongdoing under the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, which provides protection to federal government employees who blow the whistle on what they reasonably believe evidences a violation of any law, rule, or regulation; gross mismanagement; or an abuse of authority".

Radack and some others believe her disclosure of the emails may have contributed to the plea agreement that led to a sentence of 20 years instead of possible multiple life sentences for Lindh. The plea deal was reached on July 15, 2002, a month after the Newsweek article on the emails appeared online and just hours before the hearing to consider the motions to suppress the Lindh interviews was set to begin. According to Lindh defense attorneys, the prosecution first approached them about a plea deal around the beginning of June. On June 14, the day before the emails were disclosed, and June 17, the Lindh defense filed their arguments to suppress all the interviews conducted in Afghanistan, including the ones that Radack had advised might have to be suppressed. The defense reasoning was different from Radack's; it did not assert that Lindh was represented by a lawyer at the time, which was the basis for Radack's advice in the emails.

Justice Department actions against Radack
On June 19, 2002, the Lindh court ordered the Justice Department to file a pleading "addressing whether any documents ordered protected by the Court were disclosed by any person bound by an Order of this court". The Justice Department launched a criminal investigation of Radack that remained open for 15 months. No potential criminal charge was ever specified, but as leaking is not a crime, the most likely charge would have been theft of government property, as she had taken home copies of her emails before she resigned from the PRAO, and her PRAO supervisor later insinuated she was suspected of having removed other files that had gone missing. Radack says an agent of the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) told her new employer and coworkers that she was under criminal investigation and would steal client files.

Radack believes the OIG agent pressured her employer to fire her. The firm was initially supportive, but after it obtained phone records of calls between Newsweek writer Isikoff and the firm's office showing that Radack appeared to be the leaker of government emails, that changed. A partner in the firm, which represented mainly government bond issuers, told her they could not be perceived to have an ex-government lawyer who broke confidence when she thought the client was wrong. When she continued to refuse to sign a statement that she did not leak the emails, she was placed on paid and then unpaid leave.

When Radack was granted unemployment benefits, her now-former employer was assisted by the Justice Department, she says, in challenging the benefits on the grounds of her alleged misconduct and insubordination. She won the appeal.

The Lindh court issued an order on November 6, 2002, concluding that Radack's disclosure did not violate any order of the Court, but this order was not made available to Radack until two years later.

The Department of Justice notified Radack that the criminal investigation was closed on September 11, 2003. On October 31, 2003, the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) sent letters to the bar associations of the two jurisdictions in which she was licensed to practice law referring her for a possible ethics violation. The referrals proposed that in disclosing the emails she may have knowingly revealed information protected by attorney-client privilege. There is disagreement about whether the government or the public is the client of government attorneys. Radack bypassed that issue by invoking the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), which she argues provides the legal basis for an exception to attorney-client privilege, i.e., for disclosure when permitted or authorized by law. The Justice Department responded that the WPA may not apply to former employees, and that it does not authorize any disclosure, only prevents retaliatory personnel actions for certain disclosures.

OPR did not follow its own policies in making the referrals, according to Radack, including in not allowing her to formally respond to its findings. She has contrasted the way she was treated by the Department of Justice and the way the department attorneys who authored the memos giving a purported legal basis for waterboarding and other controversial interrogation methods were treated.

There was never any serious investigation of how Radack's emails disappeared from the PRAO file, she believes, a conclusion reached in part because no investigator questioned her about it. She says the OIG told her attorney they had "looked into" her allegations and they were "not going to pursue it".

The criminal investigation and subsequent ethics referrals prevented Radack from finding suitable work as an attorney for years, she says. The Maryland Bar dismissed the referral February 23, 2005. At the District of Columbia Bar, the referral was not resolved until 2011.

Radack has said that one or more anonymous Justice Department officials "smeared" her in the media as a "traitor", "turncoat", and "terrorist sympathizer" "to alienate me from all my neighbors, all my friends", sometimes specifying it was in The New York Times. In May 2003, Eric Lichtblau reported at The New York Times that "Government officials suspect she is a turncoat who leaked documents on one of their most important investigations, the John Walker Lindh case."

For a time beginning in 2003, Bruce Fein, a noted constitutional scholar and former associate deputy attorney general under Ronald Reagan, represented Radack pro bono. Rick Robinson of Fulbright & Jaworski and Mona Lyons also represented her.

Congressional questions
At a May 7, 2003, hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Ted Kennedy questioned Michael Chertoff, who was before the committee as a nominee for a circuit court judgeship, and who, as an Assistant Attorney General during the period in which Lindh was prosecuted, headed the Justice Department's Criminal Division. Kennedy later said that Chertoff's initial answers about Radack's case were "nonresponsive, evasive and hyper-technical" but that after follow-up questions, Chertoff provided more "direct and forthcoming" answers.

On May 22, Kennedy issued a statement saying, "I am concerned about inconsistencies in the responses Mr. Chertoff provided with respect to the debate over the legality of the interrogation of John Walker Lindh. … I understand that Mr. Chertoff does not believe that Mr. DePue played a major role in the Lindh investigation and prosecution, and does not understand why DePue asked PRAO for its opinion on this matter. Nevertheless, Mr. Chertoff should have fully shared his knowledge regarding this situation from the outset, rather than deny that PRAO was asked for its opinion." Kennedy also said, "Mr. Chertoff has told me that [he] has no knowledge of the facts surrounding Ms. Radack's employment, performance, or departure from the Department, and I take him at his word. Nevertheless, I remain very concerned about Ms. Radack's situation. According to press reports—and the Department has never issued any statement disputing them—Ms. Radack was in effect fired for providing legal advice on a matter involving ethical duties and civil liberties that higher-level officials at the Department disagreed with." In the same statement, Kennedy said he had submitted questions in March to Attorney General Ashcroft about Radack having been "in effect fired for providing legal advice on a matter involving ethical duties and civil liberties that higher-level officials at the Department disagreed with."

On May 23, by a vote of 13 to 0, the committee sent Chertoff's judicial nomination to the full Senate for confirmation. Six Democrats, however, voted "present," saying they wanted more time to review Radack's accusations.

Whistleblower defense lawyer, after DOJ
In the mid-2000s, Radack served on the D.C. Bar Legal Ethics Committee and worked with the ABA Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants.

Law office of Congressman Alan Grayson
From 2006–2008, she worked as a lawyer in the law firm owned by of Congressman Alan Grayson, "Grayon and Kubli", representing government contractors blowing the whistle on fraud in the reconstruction of Iraq.

Government Accountability Project
From 2009–2014, Radack was Homeland Security & Human Rights Director at the Government Accountability Project.

Institute for Public Accuracy
Since 2015, she has been National Security & Human Rights Director of the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts. Radack is one of the attorneys for National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. She was also one of the attorneys who represented National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Andrews Drake, with whom she won the 2011 Sam Adams Award, given annually by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence. They also both won the 2012 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award. She is also the lawyer of whistleblower Brandon Bryant. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Salon, and numerous law journals. She maintains a blog at Daily Kos.

On May 9, 2019, Radack described her client Daniel Everette Hale, an analyst for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, as a "classic whistleblower".

title: Jesselyn Radack


text:
Oxonium

Oxonium may refer to:
 * Oxonium ion, any ion which contains a tricoordinated oxygen atom, RR'R"O+
 * Oxonium, an IUPAC name for the simplest oxonium ion, hydronium, H3O+
 * Oxonium (often abbreviated to Oxon.), sometimes used in university circles as a Latin name for Oxford University in England

title: Oxonium


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Capture the flag

Capture the Flag  (CTF) is a traditional outdoor sport where two or more teams each have a flag (or other markers) and the objective is to capture the other team's flag, located at the team's "base" (or hidden or even buried somewhere in the territory), and bring it safely back to their own base. Enemy players can be "tagged" by players when out of their home territory and, depending on the rules, they may be out of the game, become members of the opposite team, be sent back to their own territory, be frozen in place, or be sent to "jail" until freed by a member of their own team.

Overview
Capture the Flag requires a playing field. In both indoor and outdoor versions, the field is divided into two clearly designated halves, known as territories. Players form two teams, one for each territory. Each side has a "flag", which is most often a piece of fabric, but can be any object small enough to be easily carried by a person (night time games might use flashlights, glowsticks or lanterns as the "flags"). Sometimes teams wear dark colors at night to make it more difficult for their opponents to see them.

The objective of the game is for players to venture into the opposing team's territory, grab the flag, and return with it to their territory without being tagged. The flag is defended mainly by tagging opposing players who attempt to take it. Within their territory players are "safe", meaning that they cannot be tagged by opposing players. Once they cross into the opposing team's territory they are vulnerable to tagging.

Rules for Capture the Flag appear in 1860 in the German gymnastic manual Lehr- und Handbuch der deutschen Turnkunst by Wilhelm Lübeck under the name Fahnenbarlauf. In the 19th century, Capture the Flag was not considered a distinct game, but a variation of the European game "Barlaufen" (Barlauf mit Fahnenraub), played in France and Germany.

Descriptions of Capture the Flag in English appeared in the early 20th century, e. g. in "Scouting for Boys" written in 1908 by Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouting Movement, under the title "Flag Raiding". They also appeared in the 1920 Edition of "The Official Handbook for Boys" published by the Boy Scouts of America.

The flag is usually placed in a visibly obvious location at the rear of a team's territory. In a more difficult version, the flag is hidden in a place where it can only be seen from certain angles. Capturing the flag also might require completing some challenge. For example, the flag could be hidden in the leaves up in a tall tree, and the players have to see the flag, then knock it out and bring it to their base.

Jail
The rules for jail vary from game to game and deal with what happens if a player is tagged in the other team's territory. Either each team can decide a designated area for the other team's players to go to when tagged, or a single jail can be used for both teams. When tagged, a player should be trusted to go to jail on their own, or should need to be escorted, depending on the game. Players can leave the jail after a certain time, for example three minutes, or can leave early if tagged by a teammate. Depending on the game, players can be released on the way to jail, or may have to be in jail before being released.

Capturing the flag
The rules for the handling of the flag also vary from game to game and deal mostly with the disposition of the flag after a failed attempt at capturing it. In one variant, after a player is tagged while carrying the flag, it is returned to its original place. In another variant, the flag is left in the location where the player was tagged. This latter variant makes offensive play easier, as the flag will tend, over the course of the game, to be moved closer to the dividing line between territories. In some games, it is possible for the players to throw the flag to teammates. As long as the flag stays in play without hitting the ground, the players are allowed to pass it.

When the flag is captured by one player, they're not safe from being tagged, unless they trip. Sometimes, the flag holder may not be safe at all, even in their home territory, until they obtain both flags, thus ending the game. Their goal is to return to their own side or hand it off to a teammate who will then carry it to the other side. In most versions the flag may be handed off while running. The game is won when a player returns to their own territory with the enemy flag or both teams' flags. Also, rarely the flag carrier may not attempt to free any of their teammates from jail.

Variants
Alterations may include "one flag" Capture the Flag in which there is a defensive team and an offensive team, or games with three or more flags. In the case of the latter, one can only win when all flags are captured.

Another variation is when the players put bandannas in their pockets with about six inches sticking out. Instead of tagging opponents, players must pull their opponent's bandanna out of their pocket. No matter where a player is when their bandanna is pulled, they're captured and must either go to jail or return to their base before returning to play. In this version there is no team territory, only a small base where the team's flag is kept. To win, one team must have both of the flags in their base.

In some urban settings, the game is played indoors in an enclosed area with walls. There is also an area in the opposing ends for the flag to be placed in. In this urban variation legal checking as in hockey, including against the sideboards, is allowed. A player who commits a foul or illegal check is placed in a penalty box for a specified amount of time, depending on the severity of the foul. A player who deliberately injures an opponent is expelled from the rest of the game. Throwing the flag is allowed in this variation, as long as the flag is caught before it hits the ground. If the flag is thrown to a teammate but hits the ground before it can be caught, the flag is placed from the spot of the throw. If a player throws the flag, but is blocked or intercepted by a player from the opposing team, the flag is placed back at the base.

New technologies have also led to a glow-in-the-dark version of Capture the Flag called Capture the Flag REDUX that includes two glowing orbs as the “flags,” color-coded LED bracelets to differentiate team members, and glowing jail markers.

It is not uncommon for people to play airsoft, paintball, or Nerf variations of Capture the Flag. Typically there are no territories in these versions. Players who are "hit" must sit out a predetermined amount of time before returning to play (respawning).

Stealing sticks
"Stealing sticks" is a similar game played in the British Isles, the United States, and Australia. However, instead of a flag, a number of sticks or other items such as coats or hats are placed in a "goal" on the far end of each side of the playing field or area. As in Capture the Flag, players are sent to a "prison" if tagged on the opponents' side, and may be freed by teammates. Each player may only take one of their opponents' sticks at a time. The first team to take all of the opponents' sticks to their own side wins.

Software and games
In 1984, Scholastic published Bannercatch for the Apple II and Commodore 64 computers. An edutainment game with recognizable capture-the-flag mechanics, Bannercatch allows up to two humans (each alternating between two characters in the game world) to play capture the flag against an increasingly difficult team of four AI bots. Bannercatch's game world is divided into quadrants: home, enemy, and two "no-mans land" areas which hold the jails. A successful capture requires bringing the enemy flag into one team's "home" quadrant. Players can be captured when in an enemy territory, or in "no-mans land" while holding a flag. Captured players must be "rescued" from their designated jail by one of the other members of the team. Fallen flags remain where they dropped until a time-out period elapses, after which the flag returns to one of several starting locations in home territory. The 2D map also features walls, trees and a moving river, enabling a wide variety of strategies. Special locations in the play area allow humans to query the game state (such as flag status) using binary messages.

In 1992, Richard Carr released an MS-DOS based game called Capture the Flag. It is a turn-based strategy game with real time network / modem play (or play-by-mail) based around the traditional outdoor game. The game required players to merely move one of their characters onto the same square as their opponent's flag, as opposed to bringing it back to friendly territory, because of difficulties implementing the artificial intelligence that the computer player would have needed to bring the enemy flag home and intercept opposing characters carrying the flag.

Computer security

In computer security Capture the Flag (CTF), "flags" are secrets hidden in purposefully-vulnerable programs or websites. Competitors steal flags either from other competitors (attack/defense-style CTFs) or from the organizers (jeopardy-style challenges). Several variations exist, including hiding flags in hardware devices.

Urban gaming
Capture the Flag is among the games that made a comeback among adults in the early 21st century as part of the urban gaming trend (which includes games like Pac-Manhattan, Fugitive, Unreal Tournament and Manhunt). The game is played on city streets and players use cellphones to communicate. News about the games spreads virally through the use of blogs and mailing lists. Urban Capture the Flag has been played in cities throughout North America. One long-running example occurs on the Northrop Mall at the University of Minnesota on Fridays with typical attendance ranging from 50 to several hundred.

title: Capture the flag


text:
Emily Watson

Emily Margaret Watson (born 14 January 1967) is a British actress. She began her career on stage and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1992. In 2002, she starred in productions of Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya at the Donmar Warehouse, and was nominated for the 2003 Olivier Award for Best Actress for the latter. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her debut film role as Bess McNeil in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves (1996) and for her role as Jacqueline du Pré in Hilary and Jackie (1998), winning the British Independent Film Award for Best Actress for the latter. For her role as Margaret Humphreys in Oranges and Sunshine (2010), she was also nominated for the AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

Watson's other films include The Boxer (1997), Angela's Ashes (1999), Gosford Park (2001), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Red Dragon (2002), Equilibrium (2002), The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), Corpse Bride (2005), Miss Potter (2006), Synecdoche, New York (2008), War Horse (2011), The Theory of Everything (2014), Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), The Happy Prince (2018), God's Creatures (2022) and  Small Things Like These (2024). For her role in the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. She won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for playing Janet Leach in the 2011 ITV television biopic Appropriate Adult and was nominated for the International Emmy Award for Best Actress for the 2017 BBC miniseries Apple Tree Yard.

Early life
Watson was born 14 January 1967 in London. Her father, Richard Watson, was an architect, and her mother, Katharine (née Venables), was an English teacher at St David's Girls' School, West London. She has an older sister, Harriet.

Watson was brought up as an Anglican. She has described her childhood-self as 'a nice middle-class English girl ... I'd love to say I was a rebellious teenager, but I wasn't.' She is a childhood friend of actress and writer Clara Salaman, and starred in the screen adaptation of Salaman's novel Too Close.

Watson was educated at St James Independent Schools in west London which were founded by the School of Economic Science. Whilst there, she witnessed "incidents of extreme cruelty" that were "very scarring for people going forward in their lives". She attended the University of Bristol, where she obtained a BA (1988, English). Watson subsequently trained at Drama Studio London. In 2003 she received an honorary MA from Bristol University.

Watson was a member of the School of Economic Science until 1996, when aged 29 she was expelled following her part in Breaking the Waves. She describes the organisation as a "very repressive regime" and a "system where you were supposed to think a certain way and you weren't really allowed to think any other way". Breaking out of it, she says, was a "very powerful release" in her life.

Theatrical career
Watson's career began on the stage. Her theatre credits include The Children's Hour (at the Royal National Theatre), Three Sisters, Much Ado About Nothing and The Lady from the Sea. Watson has also worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company in A Jovial Crew, The Taming of the Shrew, All's Well That Ends Well and The Changeling.

In 2002, she took time off from cinema to play two roles in Sam Mendes' repertory productions of Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night, first at Mendes' Donmar Warehouse in London and later at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her performance was widely acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic and she was nominated for an Olivier Award for Uncle Vanya.

Film debut
Watson was virtually unknown until director Lars von Trier chose her to star in Breaking the Waves (1996) after Helena Bonham Carter dropped out. Watson's performance as Bess McNeill won her the Los Angeles, London and New York Critics' Circle Awards for Best Actress, as well as the US National Society of Film Critics' Award for Best Actress and nominations at the Academy Awards, the British Academy Film Awards, and the Golden Globe Awards.

Subsequent career
Watson came to public notice again in another controversial role, that of cellist Jacqueline du Pré in Hilary and Jackie, for which she learned to play the cello in three months, and received another Oscar nomination. She also played a leading role in Cradle Will Rock, a story of a theatre show in the 1930s, directed by Tim Robbins. Though she won the title role of Frank McCourt's mother in the adaptation of his acclaimed memoir, Angela's Ashes, the film underperformed. In 2001, she appeared with John Turturro in The Luzhin Defence and in Robert Altman's ensemble piece Gosford Park.

The following year, she starred as Reba McClane in the adaptation of Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs prequel, Red Dragon, as the romantic interest of Adam Sandler in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love and in the sci-fi action thriller Equilibrium with Christian Bale.

In 2004, Watson received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance as Peter Sellers's first wife, Anne Howe, in the HBO film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. 2005 saw Watson star in four films: Wah-Wah, Richard E. Grant's autobiographical directorial debut; Separate Lies, directed by Gosford Park writer Julian Fellowes; Tim Burton's animated film Corpse Bride, with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter; and John Hillcoat's Australian Western, The Proposition.

In 2006, Watson took a supporting role in Miss Potter, a biographical drama about children's author Beatrix Potter, from Babe director Chris Noonan, with Ewan McGregor and Renée Zellweger; and also in an adaptation of Thea Beckman's children's novel Crusade in Jeans. In 2007, she appeared in The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, an adaptation of the Dick King-Smith children's novel about the origin of the Loch Ness Monster.

In 2008, Watson starred with Julia Roberts and Carrie-Anne Moss in Fireflies in the Garden, the Lifetime Television movie The Memory Keeper's Daughter (based on the novel with the same name), and in screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. In 2009 she appeared in the film Cold Souls, from first-time director Sophie Barthes, and Within the Whirlwind, a biographical film of Russian poet and Gulag survivor Evgenia Ginzburg from The Luzhin Defence director Marleen Gorris. Watson considers Ginzburg her best recent role; however, the film was not picked up for distribution.

In 2010, she starred in Oranges and Sunshine, a film recounting the true story of children sent into abusive care homes in Australia, directed by Jim Loach, and also the following year (2011) in War Horse, an adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's prizewinning novel, directed by Steven Spielberg. In 2011, she played Janet Leach in the ITV two-part film Appropriate Adult, about serial killer Fred West, for which she won a BAFTA.

In 2014, Watson had supporting roles in The Book Thief, alongside Geoffrey Rush and Sophie Nélisse, and the Oscar-nominated film The Theory of Everything, portraying Jane Wilde, Hawking's mother in law, alongside Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones. In 2015, she had supporting roles in Testament of Youth, alongside Alicia Vikander and Kit Harington, Eduardo Verástegui's Little Boy and A Royal Night Out, in which she portrayed Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. She also received rave reviews for her portrayal of Julie Nicholson in the BBC Drama A Song for Jenny, with experts tipping her to win the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress.

In 2019 she appeared as a nuclear scientist — a composite of several real scientists — in the miniseries Chernobyl.

Watson was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to drama. In 2017, she starred in the BBC mini-series Apple Tree Yard.

Scriptwriting
In 2007, Mood Indigo, a script written by Watson and her husband, was optioned by Capitol Films. The film is a love story set during the Second World War and concerns a young woman who falls in love with a pilot.

Missed roles
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet wrote the character Amélie for Watson to play (Amélie was originally named Emily) but she eventually turned the role down due to difficulties speaking French and a desire not to be away from home. The role made a star of Audrey Tautou. She was also the first choice to play Elizabeth I in Shekhar Kapur's film Elizabeth, the role that won Cate Blanchett an Academy Award nomination.

She is frequently confused with Emma Watson, the actress who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series, due to the similarity of their names. She has stated that she does not correct anyone who makes that mistake, as she is "quite flattered that people think I'm 21".

Charity
Watson is a supporter of the children's charity the NSPCC. In 2004, she was inducted into the society's hall of fame for spearheading the successful campaign to appoint a Children's Commissioner for England. Receiving her award in the crowded House of Commons, she spoke out against the possibility that the Children's Commissioner become a figurehead with little real power. She is also one of the patrons of the London children's charity Scene & Heard. In April 2018, Watson presented Maternity Worldwide as her chosen charity on the BBC Radio 4 Appeal.

Personal life
Watson married Jack Waters, whom she had met at the Royal Shakespeare Company, in 1995. Waters is a former actor who now works as a potter. They have a daughter born in 2005, and a son in 2009. They live in Greenwich, London.

Her mother fell ill with encephalitis shortly before filming commenced on Oranges and Sunshine. Watson returned to London but arrived just after her death.

Theatre

 * School for Mothers and The Mistake (double-bill of one-act plays), White Bear Theatre, London, 1991
 * All's Well That Ends Well (Royal Shakespeare Company, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon 1992, later Pit Theatre, London, 1993) as Marianna
 * The Taming of the Shrew (Royal Shakespeare Company, Barbican Theatre, London, 1993) as Mrs. Ruth Banks-Ellis
 * The Changeling (Royal Shakespeare Company, Pit Theatre, 1993)
 * A Jovial Crew (Royal Shakespeare Company, Pit Theatre, 1993) as Amie
 * The Lady from the Sea (Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London, 1994) as Hilde Wangel
 * The Children's Hour (Lyttelton Theatre, London, 1994) as Mary Tilford
 * Three Sisters (Out of Joint, 1995)
 * Othello (1996, theatre)
 * Twelfth Night / Uncle Vanya (Donmar Warehouse, 2002 / BAM, 2003)

Radio

 * The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1994, radio)
 * Wuthering Heights (1995, radio series)
 * The Glass Piano (2010, radio drama about Princess Alexandra of Bavaria)

title: Emily Watson


text:
Talk:Polar bear

Territoriality in brown bears
The article states that "unlike brown bears, polar bears are not territorial". I don't think this is a valid comparison, since as far as I know brown bears aren't territorial in the classic sense of the term either, and only engage in conflicts when certain resources are directly threatened by others of their kind. This is also supported by the Wikipedia article about the species. TheBlackCaiman (talk) 12:52, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Polar bear range map
My impression is that Polar bear range map is partly wrong regarding its message that there are polar bears on Greenland's inland ice, see c:File talk:Polar bear range map.png. Unfortunately, both editors involved seem to be inactive since 2018 and 2020 respectively. Is anybody able to modify the map? --Kuhni74 (talk) 09:23, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
 * may I resume my question? --Kuhni74 (talk) 22:19, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Well lmma give it a try
 * Or find somebody to help out Kyle4835 (talk) 16:27, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Conservation status: outdated source
Polar bears are listed as “vulnerable” on this page, but the source for that came out in 2015 (8-9 years ago). Obviously this information can’t be updated without any new data, but we should look for more recent sources on the polar bear’s conservation status. LordOfWalruses (talk) 17:39, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

 * I don't believe there are any newer sources and this pdf explains why. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 16:56, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Dichromat
It states in Characteristics that polar bears are dichromats and lack the cones for green. This was changed sometime since last August, but I haven’t figured out the revision history interface to figure out when.

Mammalian dichromats have cones sensitive to more-or-less blue and more-or-less green, but lack cones sensitive to more-or-less red. If polar bears lacked green-sensitive cones, they would be monochromats, so this is likely vandalism.

The previous text mentioned blue-violet and yellow-green, but lacking a reference, I think it is best simply to specify that they are dichromats, which is linked. Applying human color terms to peak sensitivities in nanometers is somewhat subjective, and unless the specific peaks for polar bears, or at least for Ursidae, have been measured, it’s less than useful.

I’d fix it, but I haven’t done much editing in many years, and I don’t want to just jump into a semi-protected article, especially when the bulk of recent edits have been by a small group of editors. Curtis Clark (talk) 21:06, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

 * The source says that polar bears have L (for yellow but I think this is an error, it should be red) and S cone cells (for blue-violet) and that "humans have an additional cone in the middle that is most sensitive to green, giving us trichromatic vision". LittleJerry (talk) 19:54, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * ? LittleJerry (talk) 13:19, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

 * I found this reference by Peichl. It states that polar bears have L- and S-cones. They don't have M-cones. This seems to be a feature of semi-aquatic mammals including river otters and pygmy hippotamuses. Axl ¤ [Talk] 18:09, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Can some L cones be suited more for yellow light then red? LittleJerry (talk) 21:45, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

 * Hmm, I'm not sure. I found this reference. I shall keep looking. Axl ¤ [Talk] 00:32, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This article appears to confirm what I wrote. Curtis Clark (talk) 06:17, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

 * This article is already an FA. It doesn't need student editors which often do them no good. Try less developed articles please. LittleJerry (talk) 20:35, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Courtesy ping User:Ian (Wiki Ed). Besides Polar bear, the article Abby (The Last of Us) also needs to be removed from students since they are actually maintained by the editors. 2001:4455:3AA:B000:54C6:1FB7:27AA:408 (talk) 12:48, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd second this. We have literally hundreds of thousands of underdeveloped taxon articles that could use some love and would be improved tremendously by a student editor. This in't one of those. I understand that new editors like trying to improve high-traffic articles, but I'd recommend others like warthog, stork, or pangolin as examples of articles that do need some work. AryKun (talk) 14:50, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Pangolin is an irredeemable mess until the scope is narrowed to the only extant family Manidae, same issue for the hyrax page and the Procaviidae family. Maybe it'd be of interest to make move requests someday? PrimalMustelid (talk) 11:57, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Please work on honey badger. Wolverine XI  ( den • 🐾) 14:38, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * That's an excellent replacement and would be much more suitable for a student editor to work on. AryKun (talk) 17:38, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

 * I've complained about this in the past too, with no one listening; there is no need for these assignments to include featured articles, which they can barely improve, but instead often make worse. A general complaint about this should probably be raised in a more central venue where it can be seen by all. FunkMonk (talk) 16:19, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Right now the Dashboard emails students when they assign an FA or GA and ask them to pick a less well-developed article. Sage is working on tool to prevent this at the point where the students assign themselves articles (see this post) which hopefully will be active before too long. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:47, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia male editor bias is surely showing
Well, let's start from the fact that you can't just write anything you want just by providing one very weird source[*], especially when there are so many studies that not only contradict it, but are better structured: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359039968_An_Investigation_of_the_Sociality_and_Behaviour_of_Captive_Polar_Bears_Housed_in_Bachelor_Groups and to an extent https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352948828_Polar_Bear_Maternal_Care_Neonatal_Development_and_Social_Behavior. That study is a joke and an outlier, to quote it to postulate male dominance in polar bears (a documented solitary species, I remind you) is biased and done in bad faith. If you don't edit this nonsense you will only show the title of my topic to be true.

[*] - I can hardly call it a study, since it doesn't even have any method in it, nor any references outside of the author referencing himself, just check it out - https://www.arlis.org/docs/vol1/E/Walrus/Russian/Ovsyanikov.2005.BehaviorPolarBearCoastalCongreg.ZoolZhurnal.pdf - very very ridiulous. Also made by a russian scientist which is very telling, since that country is known for having terrible research (source: I am russian). 95.24.156.222 (talk) 09:50, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

 * The first study observes only 4 male polar bears and so I fail to see how it could say anything about male dominance. The chapter cited is heavily focused on maternal behaviour; what little it says about intersexual interactions consists of talking about hard these are to study and mentioning males forming large aggregations on land, which is mentioned in the article. Your disdain for Russian research aside, you also don't have any reasons for thinking that the 2005 study cited is unreliable. You really think that people are trying to be sexist by talking about how male polar bears twice the size of female ones are dominant over them? AryKun (talk) 11:00, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Polar bear


text:
E55

E55 may refer to:
 * European route E55
 * Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG, a performance car
 * M113 E55, a version of the Mercedes-Benz M113 engine
 * The Nokia E55 mobile phone
 * Nimzo-Indian Defense, Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings code
 * Ocean Ridge Airport (FAA code E55)
 * Tokushima-Nanbu Expressway, Anan-Aki Expressway and Kōchi-Tōbu Expressway, route E55 in Japan
 * E55 road in United Arab Emirates, from Umm al-Quwain to Al Shuwaib.

title: E55