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Lloyd Maines

Lloyd Wayne Maines (born June 28, 1951) is an American country music record producer, musician and songwriter. He was inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame as one of the first three members, the other two being Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan. He is the father of Natalie Maines who is best known as the lead singer of The Chicks.

Life and career
Maines was born and raised in Lubbock, Texas, and is now based in Austin, Texas.

Arguably best known as a pedal steel player, Maines is a multi-instrumentalist who has also performed and/or recorded playing dobro, electric and acoustic guitar, mandolin, lap steel guitar, banjo and bell tree. He toured and recorded as a member of the Joe Ely Band and has also played with Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Butch Hancock, Terry Allen, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Golden Bear, and other Texas musicians. Maines was a member of The Maines Brothers Band in the late 1970s and early 1980s and has contributed to alt-country releases, including Uncle Tupelo's Anodyne and Wilco's debut, AM.

Maines began producing some of his own music, branching out beginning with other country artists, early on starting with Terry Allen's seminal 1979 album, Lubbock (On Everything). He has produced and worked on recording projects with numerous artists, including the Bad Livers, Richard Buckner, Roger Creager, Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel, Pat Green, Butch Hancock, Wayne Hancock, Terri Hendrix, Rita Hosking, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Intocable, Robert Earl Keen, the Lost Gonzo Band, Bob Livingston, Charlie Robison, Owen Temple, Two Tons of Steel, Jerry Jeff Walker, The Waybacks, Dale Watson and Martin Zellar. He frequently tours with Terri Hendrix throughout the United States, and is a major part of her band and production as an artist.

Maines won a Grammy Award for Best Country Album in 2003 as producer of the album Home by The Chicks' (formerly known as the Dixie Chicks). As the father of Natalie Maines, lead singer of The Chicks, he was instrumental in bringing the current lineup of bandmates together in 1995, which jump-started their sudden popularity and change in sound. Susan Gibson's "Wide Open Spaces", which had been sent to Maines, proved to be a hit from their debut album, and has remained their signature song.

As of 2020, Lloyd Maines, on guitars, has accompanied singer/songwriter Terri Hendrix live and in recordings since 1997 and her second album.

Maines has twice been inducted into the West Texas Walk of Fame — in 1993 as a member of the Maines Brothers Band and in 2012 in his own name.

Archival Materials

 * Steve Maines papers, 1964-2015, at Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University

title: Lloyd Maines


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User talk:Getkashyap

Hi, I am Guha S Kashyap. More about me in my blog at LiveJournal : http://www.livejournal.com/users/g_wind125/

Do leave your messages for me, here. Thanks!

Welcome
Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! -- Hoary 11:35, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * Help pages
 * Tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Manual of Style

Vandalism reversion
You did fine with Word processor. Thank you! I don't want to seem as if I'm trying to upstage you, but I think I improved it a bit; if you're interested, see the talk page of Word processor. But I wouldn't have made the change if you hadn't written the note there, so even if I did improve on your work, my improvement is thanks to you. -- Hoary 11:35, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Upstage me? No way! :) I'm not exactly new here, but i haven't really contributed much here either. I would be grateful if you could tell me how/where i missed the right article and reverted to something older. (I reverted the version that was topmost, so i'm guessing there's something I missed...). Thanks for the feedback. --getkashyap 07:50, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

 * OK then: For any article, talk page, user page, or user talk page, there's a "history" tab. Click this and you see a list of all the changes. You can compare any two. Something in what you said impelled me to try take a look, and I then happened to notice that the version to which you (very commendably) reverted the page was itself degraded from the version before that. So I re-reverted it, to that earlier version. -- Hoary 08:14, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

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

title: User talk:Getkashyap


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Hilbert College

Hilbert College is a private Franciscan college in Hamburg, New York. The college is named after Colette Hilbert of the Franciscan Sisters of Saint Joseph, who founded the school in 1957 to train teachers. Hilbert College enrolls approximately 800 students and grants both undergraduate and master's degrees.

Academics
Hilbert College offers 17 bachelor's degree programs on a semester schedule with summer sessions available. The graduate program operates on five-week sessions and was begun in 2011.

60 acre suburban campus that consists of 11 buildings and several athletic fields. Franciscan Hall, the main administrative building, was opened in 1997. Bogel Hall and McGrath Library were the first buildings to open when the college moved from the FSSJ Motherhouse to the new Hamburg campus in 1969. St. Joseph Residence Hall and the Campus Center opened the following year. The college later added four new apartment-style residence buildings (2003); Trinity Hall (2009), Paczesny Hall (2006), and the Swan Auditorium (2006).

History
Hilbert College is named after Mother Colette Hilbert, founder of the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph, which became the college's founding congregation in 1897 In 1957, the community founded Immaculata Teacher Training School to prepare and educate its members for service. The name would be changed to Immaculata College in 1960. In 1964, the college charter was amended to admit laywomen. Three years later, a new campus was constructed beside the Motherhouse of the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph. In 1969, having broadened its curriculum to include degrees outside of teacher training and expanded its enrollment to include both men and women, the institution officially became known as Hilbert College.

In 1992, Hilbert joined the NCAA and began to offer four-year degrees for the first time. Hilbert added its first graduate programs in 2011 as well as adult and evening bachelor-level programs in 2012. In 2021, Hilbert launched a new division for online programs, Hilbert College Global, and announced the expansion of its athletics programs to include football, men and women's track & field, and women's ice hockey.

Student life
In 2024, Hilbert's student body is 56 percent female, 44 percent male; 90 per cent of students are undergraduates and 57 percent of all students are white. Eighty-seven percent of students are from Western New York and 85 percent are full-time students; approximately 40 percent are first-generation college students.

The college has 30 student-run clubs and organizations. Hilbert also has nearly 300 housing spaces in two residence halls and four campus apartments. The campus dining hall is in the upper level of the Campus Center.

In 2021, the most common undergraduate programmes were Forensic Science &Technology, Criminal Justice & Law Enforcement Administration, and Digital Communication & Multimedia.

Athletics
Hilbert College's athletic teams compete in Division III of the NCAA and are collectively known as the Hawks. As of fall 2022, the Hilbert College athletic association chairs 18 intercollegiate teams. Men's sports include: baseball, basketball, cross country, football, lacrosse, soccer, track & field and volleyball. Women's sports include: basketball, bowling, cross country, ice hockey, soccer, softball, track & field and volleyball. The college also chairs mixed golf.

The baseball, basketball, women’s bowling, cross country, golf, soccer, softball and volleyball compete in the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference.

The Hafner Recreation Center features a gymnasium that serves as the home court for the Hawks basketball and volleyball programs.

The FSSJ Field Complex opened on Hilbert's campus in September 2021, encompassing a 330’/400’/330’ baseball diamond and a 200’/225/200’ softball diamond. The FSSJ Complex was named in recognition of the college's founding congregation, the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph.

Hilbert College has sent two teams to the NCAA National Division III Championship Tournament. The women's basketball program earned league championships, with back-to-back titles in the 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 seasons.

Notable alumni and staff

 * Joseph Giglio ’75 - New York State assemblyman.
 * Nadia Shahram - attorney and writer

title: Hilbert College


text: Template:Municipalities Liechtenstein

title: Template:Municipalities Liechtenstein


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Peter Strauss Ranch

The Peter Strauss Ranch is a regional park unit of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area - and operated by the National Park Service as Peter Strauss Ranch Park. It is located in the central Santa Monica Mountains — on Mulholland Highway near Agoura Hills, Southern California, in the Western United States. The ranch is named after the actor Peter Strauss, who was the last private owner-resident of the property. Much of the ranch was destroyed during the Woolsey Fire in November 2018.

Geography
The Peter Strauss Ranch Park is noted for its extensive California oak woodlands and montane chaparral habitats traversed by a walking path and hiking trail. The moister area along Triunfo Creek has a riparian zone density of plants and animals. The park's habitats represent the California chaparral and woodlands Ecoregion - with the diverse species of the flora of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Recreational facilities, beyond trails, also include guided nature walks and programs, a swimming pool and the Lake Enchanto Dam, and a stone ranch house with a large terrazzo patio available for outdoor social events, including concerts, weddings, picnics, and art exhibits.

History
The area was inhabited by the Chumash people for up to 8,000 years. After Spanish colonization of Alta California, it was taken to become part of the Rancho Las Virgenes land grant. After California became one of the United States in 1850, the area was surveyed in 1881 to confirm the grant's land patent. A California live oak (Quercus agrifolia) that was used as a marker in the survey still stands, just west of the swimming pool, with an upside-down letter "T" still visible in the bark.

20th century
In the early 20th century, the automobile manufacturer Harry Miller, famous for his patented master carburetor featured at the Indianapolis 500, purchased the ranch as a weekend retreat from his factory and residence in Los Angeles. In 1926, Miller built the current stone ranch house, the look-out tower, and the aviary. He held grand parties there during Prohibition, having someone watch for the cops from the tower. The man would then run to the house to warn them to put the booze away. Miller also maintained a private zoo on the grounds. During the Great Depression, Miller suffered financial ruin after attempting to build aircraft engines, forcing him to sell the property.

In the mid-1930s, the property was purchased by Warren Shobert and Arthur Edeson, who renamed the property "Shoson" and transformed it into a recreational fairyland resort for children and adults. The Lake Encanto Dam, creating Lake Encanto, was constructed on Triunfo Creek. The resort was later renamed "Lake Enchanto." Competition from other, larger amusement parks and resorts led to the decline of Lake Enchanto, which fell into disrepair and closed around 1960.

In 1976, actor Peter Strauss purchased the property after being moved by the area's natural beauty while filming the mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man at nearby Malibu Lake. Strauss restored the property to a more natural look and lived there until 1983, when he sold it to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. The National Park Service purchased the ranch in 1987.

Woolsey Fire damage
On November 14, 2018, the Los Angeles Times published images showing ruined structures on the site and reported that the Ranch was reduced to "charred remnants." The stage was rebuilt in the natural amphitheater and concerts resumed in 2022.

title: Peter Strauss Ranch


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Cazenovia College

Cazenovia College was a private college in Cazenovia, New York. Founded as the Genesee Seminary in 1824 and sponsored by the Methodist Church in 1894, the college adopted the name of Cazenovia Seminary. It was reorganized in 1942 after church sponsorship was withdrawn and was Cazenovia College for Women from 1961 to 1982, when the college became co-educational again. It closed on June 30, 2023, due to poor finances and other economic issues.

History
Cazenovia College began in 1824 as the Genesee Seminary and was the second Methodist seminary to be established in the United States. Between 1904 and 1931, it functioned as a secondary school for local young people, an arrangement that ended when Cazenovia Central High School was built. It was sponsored by the Methodist Church but was a non-sectarian institution. It was initially located in the old Madison County Courthouse. Cazenovia was co-educational from its foundation. The seminary was created at the instigation of George Peck and several other prominent clergymen in the area. In 1839, the seminary initiated a three year course, as it was called, which was focused at the education of women. The seminary also had a missionary course, and in 1843 Sophronia Farrington (class of 1828) went out as the first female missionary to Africa, under the auspices of the Young Men's Missionary Society of Boston. This was the earliest foreign mission established by the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Later the institution was known as Cazenovia Seminary. It was known as the Oneida and Genesee Conference Seminary, the Oneida Conference Seminary, and the Central New York Conference Seminary over the years. It did not officially adopt the name Cazenovia Seminary until 1894 but the name was at times used from its inception and is often used to refer to it at any time before it became a college.

In 1942 church sponsorship of Cazenovia was withdrawn and it was reorganized to include a junior college program as well as the prep school with the name of Cazenovia Junior College. It then became Cazenovia College for Women in 1961. In 1982 it returned to being co-educational and adopted its final name, Cazenovia College, although it was not recognized as a bachelor's degree-granting institution until 1988. In 2019 it began its first graduate program, a Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

In September 2022, after a failed attempt to refinance debt, the college defaulted on a $25 million bond payment owed to the Madison County Capital Resource Corporation. On December 7, 2022, it was announced that the school would permanently close, citing poor finances as the main reason. In April 2023, the entire campus was put up for sale by A&G Real Estate Partners. The final commencement occurring on May 13, 2023. In addition, there was an online-only session of summer classes ending June 25, 2023 with a final closure date of June 30, 2023. The final president of the college was David Bergh. The college's records are maintained by nearby Le Moyne College.

In July 2023 it was announced that the New York State Police would use the former campus as a temporary home of a state police training academy. The state police plan to use the site for the next two years while the campus is on the market to be sold.

Athletics
The Cazenovia athletic teams were called the Wildcats. The college was a member of the NCAA Division III ranks, primarily competing in the North Atlantic Conference (NAC) from 2020–21 until its closure. The Wildcats previously competed in the North Eastern Athletic Conference (now known as the United East Conference) from 2004 to 2020.

Cazenovia competed in 16 intercollegiate varsity sports. Men's sports included baseball, basketball, cross country, golf, lacrosse, soccer and swimming & diving, while women's sports included basketball, cross country, golf, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming & diving, equestrian and volleyball. There was also a co-ed eSports team. At various times, Cazenovia also had men's crew, equestrian, tennis and volleyball, as well as women's cheerleading, crew and tennis teams, but they no longer existed at the time of the college's closure in 2023.

Notable alumni

 * Lisle C. Carter – First president of the University of the District of Columbia (UDC)
 * Carole Cole – CEO of King Cole Productions
 * Lucinda L. Combs – First female physician to serve in China for the Women's Foreign Ministry Society
 * Sophronia Farrington Cone – First female missionary to Africa
 * Nathan Smith Davis – First editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association
 * Wallace B. Douglas – Minnesota lawyer, judge, and state representative
 * L. Fidelia Woolley Gillette – One of the first women to be ordained Universalist minister in the United States and the first woman ordained of any denomination in Canada
 * Joseph B. Hamilton – Wisconsin lawyer, judge, and state senator
 * Lewis Hartsough – Methodist minister and gospel song writer/composer
 * Joseph E. Irish – Wisconsin clergyman and state senator
 * William C. McDonald – governor of New Mexico
 * John Philip Newman – bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church; previously three times the chaplain of the United States Senate
 * John W. North – Pioneer statesman and founder of Riverside, California
 * Daniel D. Pratt – United States Senator from Indiana
 * Rodney S. Rose – Pastor, father of Bayonne Whipple
 * Leland Stanford – Industrialist, governor of California and U.S. Senator; founder of Stanford University
 * Thomas Condon - Geologist, Congregational minister
 * John E. Burton – Wisconsin businessman and mining financier
 * James Wilson Seaton – American lawyer and legislator
 * Harvey A. Truesdell – New York businessman and assemblyman
 * Jimmy Van Heusen – American songwriter
 * Daniel C. Van Norman – Canadian educator, clergyman, and school founder
 * David F. Wilber – United States Representative from New York
 * Barbara W. Woodlee – Former president of Kennebec Valley Community College, the first female president in both the state technical college and community college systems

title: Cazenovia College


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User:ElBenevolente

The Benevolent One, known throughout the Spanish speaking world as El Benevolente is a human currently residing in the United States. E used to spend too much time on Wikipedia. Eir interests include technology, pharmacology, politics, aviation, philosophy, and mathematics. For some reason, e often refers to emself in the third person using Spivak pronouns.

 * "It is clear by now that the people who have had the most radical effect on American politics in our time are not political ideologues or student protesters with long hair and copies of Karl Marx under their arms. The radicals who have changed the nature of politics in America are entrepreneurs in dark suits and grey ties who manage the large television industry in America. They did not mean to turn political discourse into a form of entertainment. They did not mean to make it impossible for an overweight person to run for high political office. They did not mean to reduce political campaigning to a 30-second TV commercial. All they were trying to do is to make television into a vast and unsleeping money machine. That they destroyed substantive political discourse in the process does not concern them." -- Neil Postman

title: User:ElBenevolente


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Palos Verdes blue

The Palos Verdes blue (Glaucopsyche lygdamus palosverdesensis) is a small endangered butterfly native to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in southwest Los Angeles County, California, United States. As its distribution has been proven to be limited to one single site, it has one of the best claims to being the world's rarest butterfly.

Overview
The Palos Verdes blue (G. l. palosverdesensis) is a localized subspecies of the silvery blue (G. lygdamus), which ranges over much of North America. It was described in 1977, shortly before it became one of the second groups of butterflies to be listed under the US Endangered Species Act in 1980. It is distinguished from other subspecies of G. lygdamus by its slightly different patterning on the underside of the wing and an earlier flight period. The subspecies was described from the southern slope of the Palos Verdes Peninsula in coastal Los Angeles County.

The Palos Verdes blue butterfly was thought to be driven to extinction in 1983, primarily by development of its habitat. The last three to six known individuals were seen and photographed in March, 1983, but the site they occupied was scraped shortly after for fire control. In 1994, the butterfly was rediscovered by Rick Rogers, Rudi Mattoni, and Timothy Dahlum at the Defense Fuel Support Point in San Pedro, which is located on the northern (inland) side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. This new population lays eggs on an additional food plant (common deerweed, Lotus scoparius) but shares physical and behavioral characteristics with the other now-extinct populations.

Taxonomy and systematics
Glaucopsyche lygdamus palosverdesensis is a subspecies of Glaucopsyche lygdamus (the "silvery blue"), a species of butterfly found throughout North America. There are currently 11 subspecies of silvery blue. G. lygdamus palosverdesensis was first described in the 1970s and was distinguished from other G. lygdamus by its faster and early flight, wing color and wing spot patterns.

Morphology
The Palos Verdes blue butterfly has a wingspan of only 25 –. The male has a bright silvery-blue dorsal wing outlined in a narrow line of black, while the female's dorsal wing is a more brownish-gray colour. Both males and females have gray ventral wings with dark spots surrounded by white rings.

Habitat
G. lygdamus palosverdesensis persists particularly on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, 15 miles south of Los Angeles, in a coastal sage scrub habitat. This subspecies is locally monophagous, or particular to one species of food plant. The entire subspecies was originally thought to be particular only to the locoweed or rattlepod (Astragalus trichopodus lonchus), but the population rediscovered in 1994 used common deerweed (Lotus scoparius) as its larval food plant. These two types of plants are fast becoming scarce on the Palos Verdes Peninsula because of housing development. Retention of these larval food plants is essential for conservation of the Palos Verdes blue.

Life stages
Oviposition, laying of eggs on the larval food plant, occurs only once a breeding season for the Palos Verdes blue. There are at least four larval instars, or stages of development. After 7 to 10 days the larvae emerge and crawl to the base of the food plant where they pupate. Pupae remain in diapause until emerging as adults. The flight period and reproductive period occur together, beginning in late January and ending in early May. It is rare to see the Palos Verdes blue far from its home food patch, but research shows that males cover more distance and have longer periods of flight. Palos Verdes blues are a diurnal and panmictic subspecies. They are also non-migratory and very particular in their use of larval food plants. Their adult lifespan is only five days.

Relationships with other species
Interspecific competition may occur with other lycaenid butterflies for the larval food plant. A mutualism between ants and larvae has been observed during the instars of butterfly development. G. l. palosverdesensis has a host-parasite relationship with its larval food plants, Astragalus lonchus and Lotus scoparius. Predation by western yellowjackets (Vespula pensylvanica) on the Palos Verdes blue has also been observed at the Defense Fuel Point location.

Laws
G. lygdamus palosverdesensis was listed as an "endangered species" by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service on July 2, 1980. This listing also included city-owned critical habitat, plus comments and recommendations for species conservation. Insects are not currently protected by California laws.

Threats
The main threat to the Palos Verdes blue has been habitat destruction due to weeds and rototilling, which has negative effects on the essential larval food plants. Recreational, commercial, or residential development of the Palos Verdes Peninsula is also a major concern in preservation of the food plants.

Court case
In 1982, the city of Rancho Palos Verdes bulldozed the then most extensive known habitat of the butterfly to build a baseball field, an act believed to have been a principal cause of the die-off of the subspecies before its rediscovery in 1994. The US Fish and Wildlife Service maintained that the city was "well aware" of the butterfly and the site status. According to the Los Angeles Times, the mayor of the city "said no one complained about butterfly destruction until grading had been completed." In 1987, the city was charged by the federal government with violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The case was dismissed later that year by a federal court, which said a municipality was not a person for purposes of the ESA, and thus could not be held criminally responsible. The following year, the US Congress responded by amending the act to include any "individual, corporation, partnership, trust, association, or any other private entity; or any officer, employee, agent, department, or instrumentality of the Federal Government, of any State, municipality, or political subdivision of a State, or of any federal government; any State, municipality, or political subdivision of a State; or any other entity subject to the jurisdiction of the United States."

Reintroduction
The Palos Verdes Peninsula is split into the north and south slopes. On the north slope, reintroduction is suggested based on presence of deerweed (Lotus scoparius) and a native plant index number. The only habitat known so far on the north slope is the Defense Fuel Support Point location. The south slope has many more historic sites of Palos Verdes blue, which are all suggested for reintroduction, including any more sites containing locoweed (Astragalus). Particular sites of reintroduction and rehabilitation of the Palos Verdes blue include Defense Fuel Support Point in San Pedro and the Linden H. Chandler Preserve. In conjunction with other organizations, the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy is installing and maintaining coastal sage scrub habitat on the slopes around the fuel tanks to benefit the blue butterfly. The Urban Wildlands Group, a nonprofit organization "dedicated to the conservation of species, habitats, and ecological processes in urban and urbanizing areas", conducts the captive breeding program. This program is a collaboration with Moorpark College and is directed by Moorpark College professor Dr. Jana Johnson.

Since that time, the Defense Logistics Agency, which operates the facility, has funded habitat restoration and a breeding program for the blue butterfly. Honey, produced on the premises, is provided to the captive rearing program so the butterflies are able to feed on the same food source as its wild companions. Major Jason Pike, an entomologist for the Defense Logistics Agency who has been monitoring the project, commented, "The military takes its responsibilities for endangered species on its properties very seriously, and DLA is pleased to provide support for the blue butterfly project."

Mass rearing
Mass rearing of the Palos Verdes blue has been taking place since rediscovery in 1994. The mass rearing is conducted for conservation purposes, reintroduction and prevention of extinction. The mass rearing takes place in "tent" cages containing both known larval food plants. It has been variably successful. In 2008, 2,400 butterflies were raised in a laboratory at Moorpark College. In addition to accepting the conditions of the butterflies' protected status, landowners seeking to house the butterflies needed to prove they could provide sufficient numbers of "yellow-flowering deer weed plants."

Modeling
Although population viability analysis models are often very important for predicting the outcome of conservation efforts, there have been many problems with using population viability analysis models to predict Palos Verdes blue populations. This type of modeling has proved inconclusive mainly because the Palos Verdes blue utilizes habitat so variably, depending on climatic and successional changes. So far, the appropriate habitat has been hard to find, and expert intuition has often been wrong. Long-term population studies are not available to provide this information because of the many local extinctions and declining numbers of this subspecies. For this reason, the subspecies long-term viability is very difficult to predict.

Key conservationists
Current conservation efforts are supported by the Defense Logistics Agency and the U.S. Navy and implemented by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy, The Urban Wildlands Group, and The Butterfly Project led by biologist Jana J. Johnson at Moorpark College. The Youth Environmental Service program of the Palos Verdes / South Bay Audubon Society and other volunteer groups have provided help weeding and establishing habitat for the butterfly. The Youth Environmental Service (YES) program started in 2012 and focuses on conserving the Linden H. Chandler Preserve, where they work on restoring native plants for the Palos Verdes blue butterfly.

title: Palos Verdes blue


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Free monoid

In abstract algebra, the free monoid on a set is the monoid whose elements are all the finite sequences (or strings) of zero or more elements from that set, with string concatenation as the monoid operation and with the unique sequence of zero elements, often called the empty string and denoted by ε or λ, as the identity element. The free monoid on a set A is usually denoted A∗. The free semigroup on A is the subsemigroup of A∗ containing all elements except the empty string. It is usually denoted A+.

More generally, an abstract monoid (or semigroup) S is described as free if it is isomorphic to the free monoid (or semigroup) on some set.

As the name implies, free monoids and semigroups are those objects which satisfy the usual universal property defining free objects, in the respective categories of monoids and semigroups. It follows that every monoid (or semigroup) arises as a homomorphic image of a free monoid (or semigroup). The study of semigroups as images of free semigroups is called combinatorial semigroup theory.

Free monoids (and monoids in general) are associative, by definition; that is, they are written without any parenthesis to show grouping or order of operation. The non-associative equivalent is the free magma.

Natural numbers
The monoid (N0,+) of natural numbers (including zero) under addition is a free monoid on a singleton free generator, in this case the natural number 1. According to the formal definition, this monoid consists of all sequences like "1", "1+1", "1+1+1", "1+1+1+1", and so on, including the empty sequence. Mapping each such sequence to its evaluation result and the empty sequence to zero establishes an isomorphism from the set of such sequences to N0. This isomorphism is compatible with "+", that is, for any two sequences s and t, if s is mapped (i.e. evaluated) to a number m and t to n, then their concatenation s+t is mapped to the sum m+n.

Kleene star
In formal language theory, usually a finite set of "symbols" A (sometimes called the alphabet) is considered. A finite sequence of symbols is called a "word over A", and the free monoid A∗ is called the "Kleene star of A". Thus, the abstract study of formal languages can be thought of as the study of subsets of finitely generated free monoids.

For example, assuming an alphabet A = {a, b, c}, its Kleene star A∗ contains all concatenations of a, b, and c:
 * {ε, a, ab, ba, caa, cccbabbc, ...}.

If A is any set, the word length function on A∗ is the unique monoid homomorphism from A∗ to (N0,+) that maps each element of A to 1. A free monoid is thus a graded monoid. (A graded monoid $$M$$ is a monoid that can be written as $$M=M_0\oplus M_1\oplus M_2 \cdots$$. Each $$M_n$$ is a grade; the grading here is just the length of the string. That is, $$M_n$$ contains those strings of length $$n.$$ The $$\oplus$$ symbol here can be taken to mean "set union"; it is used instead of the symbol $$\cup$$ because, in general, set unions might not be monoids, and so a distinct symbol is used. By convention, gradations are always written with the $$\oplus$$ symbol.)

There are deep connections between the theory of semigroups and that of automata. For example, every formal language has a syntactic monoid that recognizes that language. For the case of a regular language, that monoid is isomorphic to the transition monoid associated to the semiautomaton of some deterministic finite automaton that recognizes that language. The regular languages over an alphabet A are the closure of the finite subsets of A*, the free monoid over A, under union, product, and generation of submonoid.

For the case of concurrent computation, that is, systems with locks, mutexes or thread joins, the computation can be described with history monoids and trace monoids. Roughly speaking, elements of the monoid can commute, (e.g. different threads can execute in any order), but only up to a lock or mutex, which prevent further commutation (e.g. serialize thread access to some object).

Conjugate words
We define a pair of words in A∗ of the form uv and vu as conjugate: the conjugates of a word are thus its circular shifts. Two words are conjugate in this sense if they are conjugate in the sense of group theory as elements of the free group generated by A.

Equidivisibility
A free monoid is equidivisible: if the equation mn = pq holds, then there exists an s such that either m = ps, sn = q (example see image) or ms = p, n = sq. This result is also known as Levi's lemma.

A monoid is free if and only if it is graded (in the strong sense that only the identity has gradation 0) and equidivisible.

Free generators and rank
The members of a set A are called the free generators for A∗ and A+. The superscript * is then commonly understood to be the Kleene star. More generally, if S is an abstract free monoid (semigroup), then a set of elements which maps onto the set of single-letter words under an isomorphism to a monoid A∗ (semigroup A+) is called a set of free generators for S.

Each free monoid (or semigroup) S has exactly one set of free generators, the cardinality of which is called the rank of S.

Two free monoids or semigroups are isomorphic if and only if they have the same rank. In fact, every set of generators for a free monoid or semigroup S contains the free generators, since a free generator has word length 1 and hence can only be generated by itself. It follows that a free semigroup or monoid is finitely generated if and only if it has finite rank.

A submonoid N of A∗ is stable if u, v, ux, xv in N together imply x in N. A submonoid of A∗ is stable if and only if it is free. For example, using the set of bits { "0", "1" } as A, the set N of all bit strings containing an even number of "1"s is a stable submonoid because if u contains an even number of "1"s, and ux as well, then x must contain an even number of "1"s, too. While N cannot be freely generated by any set of single bits, it can be freely generated by the set of bit strings { "0", "11", "101", "1001", "10001", ... } – the set of strings of the form "10n1" for some nonnegative integer n (along with the string "0").

Codes
A set of free generators for a free monoid P is referred to as a basis for P: a set of words C is a code if C* is a free monoid and C is a basis. A set X of words in A∗ is a prefix, or has the prefix property, if it does not contain a proper (string) prefix of any of its elements. Every prefix in A+ is a code, indeed a prefix code.

A submonoid N of A∗ is right unitary if x, xy in N implies y in N. A submonoid is generated by a prefix if and only if it is right unitary.

Factorization
A factorization of a free monoid is a sequence of subsets of words with the property that every word in the free monoid can be written as a concatenation of elements drawn from the subsets. The Chen–Fox–Lyndon theorem states that the Lyndon words furnish a factorization. More generally, Hall words provide a factorization; the Lyndon words are a special case of the Hall words.

Free hull
The intersection of free submonoids of a free monoid A∗ is again free. If S is a subset of a free monoid A* then the intersection of all free submonoids of A* containing S is well-defined, since A* itself is free, and contains S; it is a free monoid and called the free hull of S. A basis for this intersection is a code.

The defect theorem states that if X is finite and C is the basis of the free hull of X, then either X is a code and C = X, or

 * C| ≤ |X| − 1.

Morphisms
A monoid morphism f from a free monoid B∗ to a monoid M is a map such that f(xy) = f(x)⋅f(y) for words x,y and f(ε) = ι, where ε and ι denote the identity elements of B∗ and M, respectively. The morphism f is determined by its values on the letters of B and conversely any map from B to M extends to a morphism. A morphism is non-erasing or continuous if no letter of B maps to ι and trivial if every letter of B maps to ι.

A morphism f from a free monoid B∗ to a free monoid A∗ is total if every letter of A occurs in some word in the image of f; cyclic or periodic if the image of f is contained in {w}∗ for some word w of A∗. A morphism f is k-uniform if the length |f(a)| is constant and equal to k for all a in A. A 1-uniform morphism is strictly alphabetic or a coding.

A morphism f from a free monoid B∗ to a free monoid A∗ is simplifiable if there is an alphabet C of cardinality less than that of B such the morphism f factors through C∗, that is, it is the composition of a morphism from B∗ to C∗ and a morphism from that to A∗; otherwise f is elementary. The morphism f is called a code if the image of the alphabet B under f is a code. Every elementary morphism is a code.

Test sets
For L a subset of B∗, a finite subset T of L is a test set for L if morphisms f and g on B∗ agree on L if and only if they agree on T. The Ehrenfeucht conjecture is that any subset L has a test set: it has been proved independently by Albert and Lawrence; McNaughton; and Guba. The proofs rely on Hilbert's basis theorem.

Map and fold
The computational embodiment of a monoid morphism is a map followed by a fold. In this setting, the free monoid on a set A corresponds to lists of elements from A with concatenation as the binary operation. A monoid homomorphism from the free monoid to any other monoid (M,•) is a function f such that where e is the identity on M. Computationally, every such homomorphism corresponds to a map operation applying f to all the elements of a list, followed by a fold operation which combines the results using the binary operator •. This computational paradigm (which can be generalized to non-associative binary operators) has inspired the MapReduce software framework.
 * f(x1...xn) = f(x1) • ... • f(xn)
 * f = e

Endomorphisms
An endomorphism of A∗ is a morphism from A∗ to itself. The identity map I is an endomorphism of A∗, and the endomorphisms form a monoid under composition of functions.

An endomorphism f is prolongable if there is a letter a such that f(a) = as for a non-empty string s.

String projection
The operation of string projection is an endomorphism. That is, given a letter a ∈ Σ and a string s ∈ Σ∗, the string projection pa(s) removes every occurrence of a from s; it is formally defined by

 * $$p_a(s) = \begin{cases}

\varepsilon & \text{if } s=\varepsilon, \text{ the empty string} \\ p_a(t) & \text{if } s=ta \\ p_a(t)b & \text{if } s=tb \text{ and } b\ne a.  \end{cases}$$

Note that string projection is well-defined even if the rank of the monoid is infinite, as the above recursive definition works for all strings of finite length. String projection is a morphism in the category of free monoids, so that

 * $$p_a\left(\Sigma^*\right)= \left(\Sigma-a\right)^*$$

where $$p_a\left(\Sigma^*\right)$$ is understood to be the free monoid of all finite strings that don't contain the letter a. Projection commutes with the operation of string concatenation, so that $$p_a(st)=p_a(s)p_a(t)$$ for all strings s and t. There are many right inverses to string projection, and thus it is a split epimorphism.

The identity morphism is $$p_\varepsilon,$$ defined as $$p_\varepsilon(s)=s$$ for all strings s, and $$p_\varepsilon(\varepsilon)=\varepsilon$$.

String projection is commutative, as clearly

 * $$p_a(p_b(s))=p_b(p_a(s)).$$

For free monoids of finite rank, this follows from the fact that free monoids of the same rank are isomorphic, as projection reduces the rank of the monoid by one.

String projection is idempotent, as

 * $$p_a(p_a(s))=p_a(s)$$

for all strings s. Thus, projection is an idempotent, commutative operation, and so it forms a bounded semilattice or a commutative band.

The free commutative monoid
Given a set A, the free commutative monoid on A is the set of all finite multisets with elements drawn from A, with the monoid operation being multiset sum and the monoid unit being the empty multiset.

For example, if A = {a, b, c}, elements of the free commutative monoid on A are of the form
 * {ε, a, ab, a2b, ab3c4, ...}.

The fundamental theorem of arithmetic states that the monoid of positive integers under multiplication is a free commutative monoid on an infinite set of generators, the prime numbers.

The free commutative semigroup is the subset of the free commutative monoid that contains all multisets with elements drawn from A except the empty multiset.

The free partially commutative monoid, or trace monoid, is a generalization that encompasses both the free and free commutative monoids as instances. This generalization finds applications in combinatorics and in the study of parallelism in computer science.

title: Free monoid


text:
Wells College

Wells College was a private liberal arts college in Aurora, New York, located in the Finger Lakes region of New York. The college had cross-enrollment with Cornell University and Ithaca College. For much of its history it was a women's college. It was within the Aurora Village–Wells College Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The college was closed by the board of trustees and president of the college at the end of the Spring 2024 semester, citing financial difficulties. The closure process was expected to continue through the end of 2024.

History

The college was established as a women's college in 1868, called Wells Seminary, by Henry Wells, co-founder of Wells Fargo and the American Express Company. Wells had the building for Wells Seminary constructed on property he donated, declining an invitation from Ezra Cornell to build a new campus in the (relatively) more cosmopolitan Ithaca. Two years later, in 1870, the seminary adopted the name, Wells College. On August 9, 1888, the college's main building burned to the ground. The building was replaced in 1890 by the so-called new Main Building, designed by architect William Henry Miller. In 1906, Henry Wells' 1852 mansion, Glen Park, was purchased by the Alumnae Association and given to the college for its use.

In 1886, Frances Folsom, Wells Class of 1885, married President Grover Cleveland and became the youngest First Lady of the United States. She was the only First Lady to have her wedding in the White House, and she was the first First Lady to have graduated from college. Frances Cleveland (later Preston, after her second marriage) served on the college's board of trustees for 50 years.

In 1965, Walter Netsch designed the Louis Jefferson Long Library. The design of this award-winning building inspired two other buildings on campus, Barler Music Hall and Campbell Art Building.

Coeducation
After 136 years as a historically women's college, the Wells College Office of the President and the Board of Directors announced on October 2, 2004, the decision that, to increase enrollment, the institution would become a co-educational in 2005, with no prior involvement from student body or alumni. Students and alumni protested against the change. Some parents of students also became involved in the protests. Some of the students said that their protests were patterned after ones at Mills College in the early 1990s. A website called Wells for Women was established to organize support. After the college's decision to adopt coeducation was approved by its board, students filed a lawsuit, which the courts rejected.

Financial difficulties
In 2020, the president of Wells College, Jonathan Gibralter, sent a letter to the college community reporting that financial issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic threatened the college's future, writing, "If New York State continues its mandate that our campus remain closed through all or part of the [2020] fall semester, Wells simply will not receive enough revenue to continue operations." With about 15% of Wells College's operating revenue coming from its Italy-based study abroad program, COVID-19-related impacts significantly affected the college's finances.

On April 29, 2024, the college president and the chair of the college's board of trustees announced that the college would close at the end of the spring 2024 semester due to financial difficulties. Manhattanville University will maintain the college's transcripts, business records, and other important artifacts.

The closure began May 31, 2024, "with full closure expected by the end of [2024]". On July 1, 2024, Susan Henking was appointed president to oversee the closure.

Academics
In 2023, U.S. News ranked Wells at 152 (tied) among liberal arts colleges nationally. Additionally, U.S. News ranked Wells at 10 (tied) in Top Performers on Social Mobility.

Wells College had several study abroad programs, most notably in Florence, Italy. It had created centers in sustainability, business and entrepreneurship, and book arts. Undergraduate students were required to participate in at least two internships during their time at Wells, one of which had to be off-campus.

Wells had an honor code to which all students subscribed. By signing the Honor Code, Wells students pledged "not to lie, cheat, steal, deceive, or conceal in the conduct of their collegiate life". Wells allowed students to have take-home exams and to work in their residence hall rooms, at the library, or on the dock by the lake, rather than only in classrooms.

Athletics

As a member of the Private College Athletic Conference throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Express sports teams of the college captured four consecutive conference championships in women's tennis (1977–78, 1978–79, 1979–80, 1980–81). They also won titles in women's bowling (1978–79, 1979–80). Wells, which officially became an NCAA Division III institution prior to the 1986–87 athletic season, joined the Atlantic Women's Colleges Conference (AWCC) prior to the 1996–97 athletic season. In 1996, the Wells women's soccer team captured the school's only AWCC championship title. At the time, Wells offered six intercollegiate athletic sports: field hockey, softball, women's lacrosse, women's soccer, women's swimming and women's tennis. In 2005, as part of the Board of Trustees' decision to accept men to the traditionally all-women's college, Wells incorporated men's soccer, men's swimming, and men's and women's cross country into their athletic cadre. Prior to the 2007–08 academic year, the Express teams were invited to join the North Eastern Athletic Conference (NEAC) and compete against 14 other schools in the East Region. In joining the NEAC, Wells competed for conference championships and the opportunity to receive an automatic qualifier to participate in the NCAA tournament in select sports. Ultimately, Wells captured six conference championships in the NEAC. Men's swimming won the first league title in 2009–10, and earned a second title in 2012–13. Women's swimming have won three consecutive conference championships, during the 2011–12, 2012–13, and 2013–14 seasons. Men's basketball won the NEAC championship in 2010–11 and was the first team from Wells to participate in the NCAA Tournament.

In the 2018–2019 season, the Wells men's volleyball team made it to the Elite 8 (Quarterfinals) in the NCAA Division III Men's Volleyball Tournament before falling to Stevens Institute of Technology. In the 2019–2020 season, the Wells College women's swim team won first place in the NEAC swimming championships. In 2021, the NEAC rebranded and became the United East, adding St. Mary's College of Maryland. For the next two athletic seasons, Wells was a member of the United East Conference. In 2022, the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference and Wells announced the Express would become full time members at the start of the 2023-2024 school year.

As of the 2021–22 athletic season, Wells offered 15 NCAA Division III varsity sports, including field hockey, men's and women's basketball, men's and women's lacrosse, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's swimming, men's and women's volleyball, men's and women's cross country, softball, and baseball. Athletics were offered with half a PE (physical education) credit earned for each season completed.

Deans

 * Helen Fairchild Smith (1894-1905)

Presidents

 * Thomas J. Preston, Jr. (1912; pro temp) – married Frances Folsom Cleveland, widow of Grover Cleveland
 * Frances "Sissy" Farenthold (1976-1980)
 * Robert A. Plane (1991-1995)
 * Lisa Marsh Ryerson (1995-2013)
 * Thomas E. J. de Witt (2013-2015; interim)
 * Jonathan Gibralter (2015-2024)
 * Susan Henking (2024-present)

Notable alumnae

 * Helen Barolini, author of novels and essays
 * Mary Beckerle, executive director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute; a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
 * Frances R. Brown, college dean and president
 * Frances Folsom Cleveland (1885), wife of President Grover Cleveland and First Lady of the United States
 * Emily M. J. Cooley, religious and temperance leader
 * Edith Kinney Gaylord (1939), journalist and former president of the National Women's Press Club
 * Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter, translator of Thomas Mann's works
 * Laura Nader (1952), Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley
 * Lisa Marsh Ryerson (1981), president of Wells College and Southern New Hampshire University
 * Pleasant Rowland (1962), founder of Pleasant Company and creator of the American Girl brand of dolls and books
 * Grace Carew Sheldon (1875), journalist, author, editor, businesswoman
 * Faith Whittlesey (1960), politician, US Ambassador to Switzerland
 * Helena Zachos (1875), faculty member at Cooper Union

Notable faculty

 * Jesse Bering – psychologist
 * Robert P. T. Coffin – poet
 * Nancy Cole (1931-1932) – mathematician
 * Edward French (1868-1888) – professor of  Latin, literature, chemistry and mathematics. Brother-in-law of Henry Wells.
 * John D. Graham (1932) – painter
 * Emily Ray Gregory (1901-1909) - zoologist
 * Victor Hammer (1939-1948) – artist
 * Robert Hammond (1967-1968) – professor of French literature and cinema
 * Esther Violet Hansen (1924-1930) –  classical scholar who specialized in the Kingdom of Pergamon
 * Paul Hindemith – composer and violist
 * R. Joseph Hoffmann (2006) – historian of religion, humanist activist
 * Temple Rice Hollcroft (1918-1954) – mathematician
 * May Lansfield Keller (1904-1906) - professor of German
 * Paul Henry Lang (1932-1934) – musicologist and conductor
 * J. J. Lankes (1933-1941) – artist
 * Thelma Zeno Lavine (1941-1943) – philosopher
 * Lillian Rosanoff Lieber (1917-1918) – mathematician and author, taught physics at Wells
 * Louise Ropes Loomis (1921-1940) – historian, translator, editor
 * Annie MacKinnon (1896-1901) – mathematician and third woman to earn a mathematics doctorate at an American university
 * William Matthews – poet
 * Alexander Gordon McKay (1949-1950) – Canadian academic who specialized in Vergilian studies
 * Arthur Mizener – English professor
 * Ethel Isabel Moody (1927-1928) – Class of 1926, mathematician
 * Nicholas Nabokov (1936-1941) – composer
 * Helen Brewster Owens (1915-1917) – mathematician
 * Myra Reynolds (1880-1882) – English professor
 * William Stokoe (1946-1955) – English professor
 * Allen W. Trelease (1955-1967) – history professor
 * Mildred Walker (1955-1968) - novelist
 * Margaret Floy Washburn (1894-1900) – psychologist
 * Emil Carl Wilm (1912-1914) – philosopher and psychologist

title: Wells College


text:
Wikipedia talk:List of encyclopedia topics/(10)

What is the purpose of this page? RedWolf 05:25, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC)

 * See List of encyclopedia topics, and Wikipedia talk:List of encyclopedia topics. Basically it's to highlight gaps in the encyclopedia, and to encourage the creation of useful redirects.  fabiform | talk 05:38, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)


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Linear separability

In Euclidean geometry, linear separability is a property of two sets of points. This is most easily visualized in two dimensions (the Euclidean plane) by thinking of one set of points as being colored blue and the other set of points as being colored red. These two sets are linearly separable if there exists at least one line in the plane with all of the blue points on one side of the line and all the red points on the other side. This idea immediately generalizes to higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces if the line is replaced by a hyperplane.

The problem of determining if a pair of sets is linearly separable and finding a separating hyperplane if they are, arises in several areas. In statistics and machine learning, classifying certain types of data is a problem for which good algorithms exist that are based on this concept.

Mathematical definition
Let $$X_{0}$$ and $$X_{1}$$ be two sets of points in an n-dimensional Euclidean space. Then $$X_{0}$$ and $$X_{1}$$ are linearly separable if there exist n + 1 real numbers $$w_{1}, w_{2},..,w_{n}, k$$, such that every point $$x \in X_{0}$$ satisfies $$\sum^{n}_{i=1} w_{i}x_{i} > k$$ and every point $$x \in X_{1}$$ satisfies $$\sum^{n}_{i=1} w_{i}x_{i} < k$$, where $$x_{i}$$ is the $$i$$-th component of $$x$$.

Equivalently, two sets are linearly separable precisely when their respective convex hulls are disjoint (colloquially, do not overlap).

In simple 2D, it can also be imagined that the set of points under a linear transformation collapses into a line, on which there exists a value, k, greater than which one set of points will fall into, and lesser than which the other set of points fall.

Examples
Three non-collinear points in two classes ('+' and '-') are always linearly separable in two dimensions. This is illustrated by the three examples in the following figure (the all '+' case is not shown, but is similar to the all '-' case):

However, not all sets of four points, no three collinear, are linearly separable in two dimensions. The following example would need two straight lines and thus is not linearly separable:

Notice that three points which are collinear and of the form "+ ⋅⋅⋅ — ⋅⋅⋅ +" are also not linearly separable.

Number of linear separations
Let $$T(N, K)$$ be the number of ways to linearly separate N points (in general position) in K dimensions, then $$T(N, K)=\left\{\begin{array}{cc} 2^N & K \geq N \\ 2 \sum_{k=0}^{K-1}\left(\begin{array}{c} N-1 \\ k \end{array}\right) & K 2K$$. In words, one perceptron unit can almost certainly memorize a random assignment of binary labels on N points when $$N \leq 2K$$, but almost certainly not when $$N> 2K$$.

Linear separability of Boolean functions in n variables
A Boolean function in n variables can be thought of as an assignment of 0 or 1 to each vertex of a Boolean hypercube in n dimensions. This gives a natural division of the vertices into two sets. The Boolean function is said to be linearly separable provided these two sets of points are linearly separable. The number of distinct Boolean functions is $$2^{2^{n}}$$where n is the number of variables passed into the function.

Such functions are also called linear threshold logic, or perceptrons. The classical theory is summarized in, as Knuth claims.

The value is only known exactly up to $$n=9$$ case, but the order of magnitude is known quite exactly: it has upper bound $$2^{n^2 - n \log_2 n + O(n)}$$ and lower bound $$2^{n^2 - n \log_2 n - O(n)}$$.

It is co-NP-complete to decide whether a Boolean function given in disjunctive or conjunctive normal form is linearly separable.

Support vector machines
Classifying data is a common task in machine learning. Suppose some data points, each belonging to one of two sets, are given and we wish to create a model that will decide which set a new data point will be in. In the case of support vector machines, a data point is viewed as a p-dimensional vector (a list of p numbers), and we want to know whether we can separate such points with a (p − 1)-dimensional hyperplane. This is called a linear classifier. There are many hyperplanes that might classify (separate) the data. One reasonable choice as the best hyperplane is the one that represents the largest separation, or margin, between the two sets. So we choose the hyperplane so that the distance from it to the nearest data point on each side is maximized. If such a hyperplane exists, it is known as the maximum-margin hyperplane and the linear classifier it defines is known as a maximum margin classifier.

More formally, given some training data $$\mathcal{D}$$, a set of n points of the form

 * $$\mathcal{D} = \left\{ (\mathbf{x}_i, y_i)\mid\mathbf{x}_i \in \mathbb{R}^p,\, y_i \in \{-1,1\}\right\}_{i=1}^n$$

where the yi is either 1 or −1, indicating the set to which the point $$\mathbf{x}_i $$ belongs. Each $$ \mathbf{x}_i $$ is a p-dimensional real vector. We want to find the maximum-margin hyperplane that divides the points having $$y_i=1$$ from those having $$y_i=-1$$. Any hyperplane can be written as the set of points $$\mathbf{x}$$ satisfying

 * $$\mathbf{w}\cdot\mathbf{x} - b=0,$$

where $$\cdot$$ denotes the dot product and $${\mathbf{w}}$$ the (not necessarily normalized) normal vector to the hyperplane. The parameter $$\tfrac{b}{\|\mathbf{w}\|}$$ determines the offset of the hyperplane from the origin along the normal vector $${\mathbf{w}}$$.

If the training data are linearly separable, we can select two hyperplanes in such a way that they separate the data and there are no points between them, and then try to maximize their distance.

title: Linear separability


text:
Quercus agrifolia

Quercus agrifolia, the California live oak, or coast live oak, is an evergreen live oak native to the California Floristic Province. Live oaks are so-called because they keep living leaves on the tree all year, adding young leaves and shedding dead leaves simultaneously rather than dropping dead leaves en masse in the autumn like a true deciduous tree. Coast live oaks may be shrubby, depending on age and growing location, but is generally a medium-sized tree. It grows west of the Sierra Nevada mountain range from Mendocino County, California, south to northern Baja California in Mexico. It is classified in the red oak section of oaks (Quercus sect. Lobatae).

This species is commonly sympatric with canyon live oak (Q. chrysolepis), and the two may be hard to distinguish because their spinose leaves are superficially similar.

Description
Coast live oak typically has a much-branched trunk and reaches a mature height of 10 –. Some specimens may attain an age exceeding 1,000 years. Examples of this include the Grand Oak of Cherry Valley, California, the Encino Oak Tree, which died in the 1990s (part of the stump has been preserved) and the Pechanga Great Oak.

The trunk, particularly for older individuals, may be highly contorted, massive and gnarled. The crown is broadly rounded and dense, especially when aged 20 to 70 years; in later life the trunk and branches are more well defined and the leaf density lower. The oldest specimens might exceed 20 ft in trunk circumference and 100 ft in height.

The leaves are dark green, oval, often convex in shape, 2 – long and 1 – broad; the leaf margin is spiny-toothed (spinose), with sharp thistly fibers that extend from the lateral leaf veins. The outer layers of leaves are designed for maximum solar absorption, containing two to three layers of photosynthetic cells.

These outer leaves are deemed to be small in size to more efficiently re-radiate the heat gained from solar capture. Shaded leaves are generally broader and thinner, having only a single layer of photosynthetic cells. The convex leaf shape may be useful for interior leaves which depend on capturing reflected light scattered in random directions from the outer canopy. The leaf shape may be also useful as condensation surfaces for "dew and mist, which would allow the tree to survive years with limited rainfall".

The flowers are produced in early-to-mid spring; the male flowers are pendulous catkins 5 – long, the female flowers inconspicuous, less than 0.5 cm long, with 1–3 clustered together. The fruit is a slender reddish brown acorn 2 - 3.5 cm long and 1 - 1.5 cm broad, with the basal quarter enclosed in a cupule; unusually for a red oak, the acorns mature about 7–8 months after pollination (most red oak acorns take 18 months to mature).

Recognized varieties
There are two varieties of Quercus agrifolia:

Hybridity
Several hybrids between coast live oak and other red oak species have been documented. Hybrids with interior live oak (Q. wislizenii) are known in many areas in northern California. Coast live oak also hybridizes with Shreve oak (Q. parvula var. shrevei). All these oak species show evidence of introgression with one another.

Etymology
In naming the species, Née compared it to a species illustrated in Leonard Plukenet's Phytographia under the descriptive name "Ilex folio agrifolii americana, forte agria, vel aquifolia glandifera" which Plukenet had compared, in his Almagestum botanicum, to Luigi Anguillara's Agrifolia glandifera, the noun ' Agrifolia ' being a Medieval Latin form of ' Aquifolium ' meaning a holly or holly-leaved oak, and related to the Modern Italian 'Agrifoglio,' meaning 'holly.'

Distribution and habitat

Normally the tree is found on well-drained soils of coastal hills and plains, often near year-round or perennial streams. It may be found in several natural communities including coast live oak woodland, Engelmann oak woodland, valley oak woodland and both northern and southern mixed evergreen forests. While normally found within 100 km of the Pacific Ocean at elevations less than 700 m, in southern California it occasionally occurs at up to 1,500 m in elevation.

It is the only California native oak that thrives in the coastal environment, although it is rare on the immediate shore; it enjoys the mild winter and summer climate afforded by ocean proximity, and it is somewhat tolerant of aerosol-borne sea salt. The coastal fog supplies relief from the rainless California summer heat.

It is the dominant overstory plant of the coast live oak woodland habitat, often joined by California bay laurel and California buckeye north of Big Sur. Associated understory plants include toyon, various manzanitas and western poison-oak.

Ecology
The California oak moth (Phryganidia californica) caterpillar subsists entirely on living and fallen leaves of the Coast Live Oak. In 8–10 year cycles, the caterpillar will appear in sufficient abundance to denude healthy trees. The trees recover, and botanists speculate that the species provide mutual benefit, possibly in the form of fertilizer for the oak. The coast live oak is also the only known foodplant of Chionodes vanduzeei caterpillars.

Live oak trees, among other western oaks, are also known to support acorn woodpeckers, which store their acorns in tree trunks and remove them when they want to eat.

Allergenicity
The pollen of the coast live oak is a severe allergen. Pollination occurs in spring.

Historical

At least twelve distinct cultures of Native Americans are known to have consumed the acorns as a dietary staple. The seeds were ground into meal, which after being washed was boiled into mush or baked in ashes to make bread. A particular usefulness of the tree lies in its ability to yield acorns in winter season as well. In the 18th century, Spaniards in the San Fernando Valley used the wood for charcoal to fire kilns in making adobe. Later this form of charcoal would be utilized in the baking, gunpowder and electric power industries.

In the 18th and 19th centuries shipbuilders sought out the odd angular branches to make special joints. Pioneers moving west would harvest small amounts for making farm implements and wagon wheels, but the greatest impact was the wholesale clearing of oak woodlands to erect sprawling cities such as San Diego and San Francisco. The irregular shape often let the tree escape widespread harvest for building timbers, and also led the early settlers to endow the coast live oak with mystical qualities. Its stateliness has made it a subject of historical landscape painters throughout California modern history since the mid-19th century.

Modern
Coast live oak has also become a common addition to western US landscaping. It is however sensitive to changes in grading and drainage; in particular, it is important to respect the root crown level and avoid adding soil near the trunk when construction or landscaping occurs.

Also, if incorporating it into a landscaping scheme with artificial irrigation, it is important to avoid regular watering within the oak's drip line (canopy), since wet soil in the summer increases infection rates by soil-borne Phytophthora diseases like sudden oak death.

Culture
The coast live oak, especially in its Spanish forms encino or encina, encinitas "little oaks", and encinal "oak grove", gave its name to seven land grants across California and to many communities and geographic features. These include Rancho Los Encinos, the Los Angeles community of Encino, Encinitas near San Diego, and Encinal del Temescal, now the city of Oakland.

Paso Robles (fully 'El Paso de Robles' or 'Pass of the Oaks') also refers to the ubiquitous live oaks in the region as a geographical place name.

title: Quercus agrifolia


text:
Enemy of the people

The terms enemy of the people and enemy of the nation are designations for the political opponents and for the social-class opponents of the power group within a larger social unit, who, thus identified, can be subjected to political repression. In political praxis, the term enemy of the people implies that political opposition to the ruling power group renders the people in opposition into enemies acting against the interests of the greater social unit, e.g. the political party, society, the nation, etc.

In the 20th century, the politics of the Soviet Union (1922–1991) much featured the term enemy of the people to discredit any opposition, especially during the régime of Stalin (r. 1924–1953), when it was often applied to Trotsky. In the 21st century, the former U.S. president Donald Trump (r. 2017–2021) regularly used the enemy of the people term against critical politicians and journalists.

Like the term enemy of the state, the term enemy of the people originated and derives from the, a public enemy of the Roman Empire. In literature, the term enemy of the people features in the title of the stageplay An Enemy of the People (1882), by Henrik Ibsen, and is a theme in the stageplay Coriolanus (1605), by William Shakespeare.

Rome: the Republic and the Empire
The expression enemy of the people dates to Imperial Rome. The Senate declared Emperor Nero a hostis publicus in 68 CE. Its direct translation is "public enemy". Whereas "public" is currently used in English to describe something related to collectivity at large, with an implication towards government or the State, the Latin word "publicus" could, in addition to that meaning, also refer directly to people, making it the equivalent of the genitive of populus ("people"), populi ("popular" or "of the people"). Thus, "public enemy" and "enemy of the people" are, etymologically, near synonyms.

French Revolution
The words ennemi du peuple were used extensively during the French Revolution. On 25 December 1793 Robespierre stated: "The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death". The Law of 22 Prairial in 1794 extended the remit of the Revolutionary Tribunal to punish "enemies of the people", with some political crimes punishable by death, including "spreading false news to divide or trouble the people".

Soviet Union
The Soviet Union made extensive use of the term vrag naroda (враг народа), literally meaning enemy of the people. The term was first used in a speech by Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chairman of the Cheka, after the October Revolution. The Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee printed lists of "enemies of the people", and Vladimir Lenin invoked it in his decree of 28 November 1917: "...all leaders of the Constitutional Democratic Party, a party filled with enemies of the people, are hereby to be considered outlaws, and are to be arrested immediately and brought before the revolutionary court."

Other similar terms were in use as well:
 * enemy of the labourers (враг трудящихся, vrag trudyashchikhsya)
 * enemy of the proletariat (враг пролетариата, vrag proletariata)
 * class enemy (классовый враг, klassovyi vrag), etc.

The term "enemy of the people" was used in the 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union, in Article 131 about public property: "Persons who encroach on public, socialist property are enemies of the people."

The term "enemy of the workers" was formalized in the Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code), and similar articles in the codes of the other Soviet Republics.

At various times these terms were applied, in particular, to Tsar Nicholas II and the Imperial family, aristocrats, the bourgeoisie, clerics, business entrepreneurs, anarchists, kulaks, monarchists, Mensheviks, Esers, Bundists, Trotskyists, Bukharinists, the "old Bolsheviks", the army and police, emigrants, saboteurs, wreckers (вредители, "vrediteli"), "social parasites" (тунеядцы, "tuneyadtsy"), Kavezhedists (people who administered and serviced the Chinese Eastern Railway, abbreviated KVZhD, particularly the Russian population of Harbin, China), and those considered bourgeois nationalists (notably Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Armenian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian nationalists, as well as Zionists and the Basmachi movement).

After 1927, Article 20 of the Common Part of the penal code that listed possible "measures of social defence" had the following item 20a: "declaration to be an enemy of the workers with deprivation of the union republic citizenship and hence of the USSR citizenship, with obligatory expulsion from its territory". Nevertheless, most "enemies of the people" suffered labor camps, rather than expulsion.

Rejection of the phrase
On 25 February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech to the Communist Party in which he identified Stalin as the author of the phrase and distanced himself from it, saying that it made debate impossible. "This term automatically made it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven," Khrushchev said. "It made possible the use of the cruelest repression, violating all norms of [...] legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations ... The formula ‘enemy of the people’ was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals."

Resurgence
For decades afterwards, the phrase "was so omnipresent, freighted and devastating in its use under Stalin that nobody [in Russia] wanted to touch it. ... except in reference to history and in jokes", according to William Taubman in his biography of Khrushchev.

However, the term returned to Russian public discourse in the late 2000s with a number of nationalist and pro-government politicians (most notably Ramzan Kadyrov) calling for restoration of the Soviet approach to the "enemies of the people" defined as all non-system opposition.

On 28 December 2022, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, said that Russians who fled Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and are opposed to the war should be labeled "enemies of society" and barred from returning to Russia.

Cambodia and China
According to Philip Short, an author of biographies of Mao Zedong and Cambodia's Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, in domestic political struggles Chinese and Cambodian communists rarely if ever used the phrase "enemy of the people" as they were very nationalistic and saw it as an alien import.

In 1957, in the speech and in the essay On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, Mao said that: "At the present stage, the period of building socialism, the classes, strata and social groups which favour, support and work for the cause of socialist construction all come within the category of the people, while the social forces and groups which resist the socialist revolution and are hostile to or sabotage socialist construction are all enemies of the people."

Albania
Enemy of the people (Alb: Armiku i popullit) in Albania were the enemy typology of the Communist Albanian government used to denounce political or class opponents. The term is today considered totalitarian, derogatory and hostile. There are still some politicians who use the term on political opponents with the intention of dehumanization.

After the communist takeover, many who were labeled with this term were executed or imprisoned. Enver Hoxha declared religious leaders, landowners, disloyal party officials, clerics and clan leaders as "enemies of the people". This is said to have led to the death of 6,000 people. Thousands were sentenced to death. From 1945 to 1992, around 5,000 men and women were executed and close to 100,000 were sent to prison as they were labeled enemies of the people. Many who were targeted held important leadership positions in the party and state structures of the regime. Hoxha also used the term against the Soviet Union and the US when he spoke: "as to ’Albania being only one mouthful’, watch out, gentlemen, for socialist Albania is a hard bone that will stick in your throat and choke you!". On 1 June 1945, The Albanian Central Commission for the Discovery of Crimes, of War Criminals and Enemies of the People requested the International Commission for the Discovery of Crimes and War Criminals to hand over a number of Albanian war criminals found in concentration camps in Italy such as Bari, Lecce, Salerno and others. In 1954, Hoxha condemned the American and British liberation of Albania calling them "enemies of the people". In the 1960s, many Albanian migrants returned from Austria and Italy after having fled in the 1940s, and despite having been promised not to be punished, were immediately arrested as "enemies of the people". In 1990, Ismail Kadare applied for political asylum in France, which was granted, resulting in him being condemned by Albanian officials as an "enemy of the people".

Nazi Germany
Regarding the Nazi plan to relocate all Jews to Madagascar, the Nazi tabloid Der Stürmer wrote that "The Jews don't want to go to Madagascar – They cannot bear the climate. Jews are pests and disseminators of diseases. In whatever country they settle and spread themselves out, they produce the same effects as are produced in the human body by germs. ... In former times sane people and sane leaders of the peoples made short shrift of enemies of the people. They had them either expelled or killed."

United States in the 1960s
In the United States during the 1960s, organizations such as the Black Panther Party and Students for a Democratic Society were known to use the term. In one inter-party dispute in February 1971, for example, Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton denounced two other Panthers as "enemies of the people" for allegedly putting party leaders and members in jeopardy.

United Kingdom
During the aftermath of the referendum on membership of the European Union, the Daily Mail was criticized for a headline describing judges (in the Miller case) as "Enemies of the People" for ruling that the process for leaving the European Union (i.e. the triggering of Article 50) would require the consent of the British Parliament. The May administration had hoped to use the powers of the royal prerogative to bypass parliamentary approval. The paper issued character assassinations of all the judges involved in the ruling (Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, Sir Terence Etherton, and Lord Justice Sales), and received more than 1,000 complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The Secretary of State for Justice, Liz Truss, issued a three-line statement defending the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, which some saw as inadequate due to the delayed response and failure to condemn the attacks.

Donald Trump
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! 18 February 2017 In 2012, longtime Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell gave a speech at a conference sponsored by Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog group, in which he called the media “the enemy of the American people.” In 2013, Caddell signed on as a contractor for Robert Mercer. On 17 February 2017, hours after meeting Caddell while touring a Boeing aircraft plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, President of the United States Donald Trump declared on Twitter that The New York Times, NBC News, ABC, CBS, and CNN were "fake news" and "the enemy of the American People". Trump repeated the assertion on 24 February at the Conservative Political Action Conference, saying, "A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people and they are. They are the enemy of the people." At a 25 June 2018 rally in South Carolina, Trump singled out journalists as "fake newsers" and again called them "the enemy of the people". Some commentators tried to link these comments to a mass shooting at the offices of a newspaper publisher in Annapolis, Maryland, that took place only days later, on 28 June,  but the incident turned out not to be related. During his term, Trump prevented two CNN White House correspondents, Kaitlan Collins and Jim Acosta, from attending certain events.

On 19 July 2018, following the critical reaction to his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 15 July 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, Trump tweeted "The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media." The New York Times noted Trump's use of this phrase during his "moments of peak criticism" and use of the term by Nazi and Soviet propaganda.

On 2 August 2018, after Trump tweeted "FAKE NEWS media... is the enemy of the American People", multiple international institutions such as the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights criticized Trump for his attacks on the free press. On 16 August 2018, the United States Senate, in a symbolic rebuke to Trump, passed by unanimous consent a resolution affirming that the media is not "the enemy of the people" and reaffirming "the vital and indispensable role the free press serves."

From his inauguration on 20 January 2017 through 15 October 2019, Trump used Twitter to call the news media the "enemy of the people" 36 times. In August 2019, when journalist Jonathan Karl asked him if he feared that his supporters would interpret this as a justification for violence, Trump replied: "I hope they take my words to heart. I believe the press is the enemy of the people." In response to the recount process of the 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia, which certified Joe Biden as the winner of the state, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger an "enemy of the people".

title: Enemy of the people


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Vatera

Vatera is an 8-kilometer long sandy beach in the southern part of Lesbos island. The name (Βατερά) comes from βάτα (vata, meaning "bramble"), in reference to prickly bushes that blocked the old mule-drive access.

It is 55 km in total from Mytilini. The 7 km long, sandy beach here, backed by vegetated hills and looking out to Hios and Psara, offers some of the warmest, cleanest swimming on Lesvos. Several family hotels and taverns with traditional tastes are across the biggest beach on the island.

3 km west you can gaze out to the cape of Agios Fokas, where foundations and columns stubs remain of the temple of Dionysos and an early Christian basilica.

The Vatera area hit the Greek news in 1997 when a palaeontologist, Michael Dermitzakis, confirmed what farmers unearthing bones had long suspected when he announced that the area was a treasure trove of two-million-year-old fossils, belonging to the Late Pliocene. The fossils include bones of stenoid horses (Equus stenonis), mastodons, a baboon-like monkey (Paradolichopithecus) and a giant tortoise (Cheirogaster), the latter the size of a small car.

Around two million years ago, Lesvos was not an island but was joined to the Asian mainland, and the gulf of Vatera was a subtropical shallow sea. The environment of Vatera at that time, was partly forested, partly open woodlands, with meandering rivers through the area flowing to the sea. The animals in question died somewhere near the rivers and their carcasses were transported by the water downstream. They got stuck somewhere at a bend, and sediments covered the remains until they were removed by Dermitzakis' team. In the nearby village of Vrissa, the University of Athens has established a natural history collection dedicated to the palaeontological finds.

title: Vatera