text:
Pulpwood

Pulpwood can be defined as timber that is ground and processed into a fibrous pulp. It is a versatile natural resource commonly used for paper-making but also made into low-grade wood and used for chips, energy, pellets, and engineered products.

Pulpwood can be derived from most types of trees. Categorizing trees into hardwood and softwood is the easiest way to characterize types of paper produced from pulpwood.

Hardwoods are raw material that are preferred for pulp used in printing papers. It has small dimensions in its fibres, which can be useful for small-scale uniformity, opacity, and surface smoothness, all important for printing paper.

Softwoods are the preferred raw material for strong papers, due to the length and slimness of the fibres. Low-density softwoods, such as firs with thin-walled fibres are preferred for papers with high demands for bonding-related strength characteristics. Some of these characteristics include tensile, burst, and surface strength.

Trees raised specifically for pulp production account for 15% of world pulp production, while old growth forests account for 9% and second/third plus generation forests account for the balance.

Hardwood applications
Hardwood has anatomical structural differences to softwood, which influences physical properties, durability, workability, and bonding. Different types of cells complete the three main tasks in hardwoods compared to softwoods. The main tasks include stabilization, water conduit, and storage. Hardwood applications can be sectioned into four areas:

 * Solid wood products
 * Wood-based materials
 * Use after modification
 * Supplemental services

Solid wood products
Hardwoods (such as oak) are the preferred raw material for joists, roof structures and timber frames. The use of solid hardwoods has decreased during the last couple centuries, most likely due to the development of wood-based materials that allow for larger constructions not limited to the size of trees.

Trees of any size can be used for pulpwood, but trees that are 5-9 inches in diameter at breast height are normally used. These trees are cut after a saw timber harvest or as a separate operation to thin a crowded stand. Low-quality stands are completely harvested for pulpwood to regenerate the forest to more desirable species, as well as larger trees with disease or defects that prevent their use for lumber.

Additional fields of application include playgrounds, wood-facings, railway sleepers, bridges, and more. Furniture is another application of hardwood. Furniture made of pure solid wood is relatively rare. Most parts of furniture such as table boards, shelves or cabinet doors belong to wood-based materials because of their glued components. Solid wood can be used for chairs, tables, beds, upholstery frames, sideboards, cabinets, bathtubs, and more.

Hardwood is also used for interior work, such as parquet flooring, doors, and windows. Hardwood is especially preferred for parquet flooring. Tree species in darker colours are commonly used to give the flooring a "used look," for visual appeal. Solid wood is used for front doors and windows, while internal doors are mainly made of wood-based panels.

Wood-based materials
Wood-based materials can be separated into a few different types. These include solid wood, ply, particle, and fibre materials. Solid wood materials are used as beam or panels. Typical tree species used for solid wood materials include beech, oak, birch, alder and chestnut. Hardwoods are commonly used for nonstructural products such as plywood. '''

Structural products such as cross laminated timber, are mainly composed of softwoods. Particle materials are ideal to use low-rate timber assortments and saw mill waste. Types of particle materials include particle board, mineral-bonded wood composites, oriented strand board, laminated strand lumber, and oriented strand lumber.

Fibre materials include fibreboards, insulating fibreboards, wood particle mouldings and wood plastic composites. The quality and processing of fibreboards and insulating fibreboards are influenced by the fibre percentage, the geometrical structural of the fibre, and the specific chemical composition of wood. The fibres of hardwoods are short, smooth and thin, and are suited for the dry production process because they do not mat. Ironically, hardwoods are barely used for fibreboards and insulating fibreboards.

Use after modification
The purposes of wood modification are dimensional stabilization and resistance increase. Wood can be modified in a multitude of ways, including but not limited too; chemical modification, heat treatment, ammonia treatment, electrodialysis, and more.

Chemical modification, heat treatment, and impregnation (with salts, metals, monomers and polymers) are the most used methods.

Supplemental services
Hardwood can be used in other ways outside of physical wood structures and paper. It can be used as a substance, such as through food production. The sawdust of beech and oak is used to grow edible mushrooms. Oak, beech and maple are used to cure meat or fish, while oak staves, chips and powder add aroma to wine. The sawdust of oak and robinia can be used to filter elements such as copper, nickel, zinc and cadmium. It can also be added to plastics. 60% of linoleum flooring consists of sawdust.

Wood can also be used as an energy source, with sawmill waste and low-rate timber. Combustion, wood gasification, and production of bioethanol are the three main ways hardwood is used for energy.

Combustion: split billets, chips and wood pellets. High-density wood species burn down slower, and the heat value depends on wood moisture content. Burning rate decreases with increasing density.

Wood gasification (synthetic natural gas and biomass to liquid): synthesis gas production is done by wood smouldering.

Bioethanol: start off by the splitting of cellulose and hemicelluloses in sugar by enzymes and acids, then the fermentation of the sugar with the aid of microorganisms. Lastly, the distillation and dewatering creates the bioethanol.

Softwood applications
Softwoods come from gymnosperm trees that consists of needles and cones. When a sample of softwood is observed under a microscope, they appear to have no (visible) pores because of the presence of tracheids. Tracheids are a primitive element of xylem (fluid-conducting tissues). They consist of a single elongated cell and a secondary cellulosic wall containing a thick layer of lignin. Medullary rays and tracheids transport water and produce sap. Approximately 80% of timber comes from softwood, such as cedar trees, Douglas fir, juniper, pine, and many more.

Although they are called 'softwood,' trees, they are not actually softer (in texture) in comparison to hardwood trees. The term just refers to wood that comes from gymnosperms or conifers. Some hardwood trees are even softer than specific softwood tree species.

Softwoods are used in wood manufacturing as well, and are sometimes preferred over hardwoods depending on the product being constructed. An important characteristic that softwoods have that make them a suitable pulpwood to build with, is that they can easily absorb any kind of finish. They can become very resistance and last for a long time (centuries). Softwoods tend to be cheaper than hardwood due to their growth rate and development being faster. They are versatile, strong, and can be managed easily. Some of the biggest softwood forests can be found in Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia.

Types of softwoods
Cedarwood: One of the most resistance and durable softwoods. Cedarwood is originally from the Mediterranean area and is highly resistant to water, bacteria, fungi, and insects. Their impressive resistance ability comes from the woods natural scent, which is sweet and pleasant. Its insect-repellent properties make cedar-wood ideal for the manufacturing of internal furniture, such as chests, boxes, and closets. The woods insulating properties make it suitable to be used for roofing material. Western Red Cedar is used to make musical instruments such as guitars and violins, due to its colour and resistance to warping and cracking.

Pinewood: Mostly found in the Northern Hemisphere, this type of wood is mainly used for domestic applications. It is resistance to shrinkage, swelling, and warping. It is used for outdoor wooden projects, such as decks. A disadvantage of pinewood is that over time, the wood could splinter, and items constructed from the specific type of pinewood used for making outdoor furniture/decks should be checked annually to prevent any risks to the people using them.

Firwood: This type of wood comes from Douglas Fir trees, and can be found in North America, Europe, North Africa, and Asia. It is strong and resistant to abrasion, and can be used for a diverse array of products. Some include furniture, doors, windows, and larger-scale items such as bridge parts, log homes, and commercial buildings. It can also be used for boat-building and aircraft construction, due to its sturdy and stable nature.

Redwood: This is mainly used for outdoor applications because of its resistance to weather conditions, insects, and rot. As a result of these characteristics, it is a premium building wood. It is another type of wood used to build decks, because of its natural strength, stability, and lifespan (can last a long time).

Products
Pulpwood can be used for a multitude of different uses, some of them already mentioned above. Some of the main products it is used for is listed below.

Paper
Paper production is the most common and main use for pulpwood. Paper can be produced from both hardwood and softwood trees, and each species for both types of trees have specific and unique properties that make the type of paper and other products produced differ. The short fibres of hardwoods trees produce smoother and more uniform paper, like printing paper. Softwood trees have longer fibres that produce industrial papers like newsprint.

Wood is broken down mechanically or chemically. After the breakdown process, fibres (composed of two kinds of cellulose) and lignin are leftover. Lignin is the glue or cement that holds the fibres in wood together. Simply putting it, wood pulp is a large amount of individual wood fibres with the lignin removed. Wood pulp is naturally between dark brown to light grey in colour. Dark brown wood pulp is used for paper bags and boxes, and bleaching the pulp produces higher grades of paper (among other products).

Chemical Wood Pulp
The chemical method of breaking down wood pulp to make paper is more commonly used and energy efficient compared to the mechanical method. In the chemical method, the wood chips are 'cooked' in large tanks. The tanks are called digesters, and are like pressure cookers. Chemicals, referred to as 'cooking liquor' help break down wood chips into a mass of fibres. The chemicals used are: 1) sulfite salts with an excess of sulfur dioxide and 2) caustic soda and sodium sulfide (kraft process). The lignin of the wood is made soluble, resulting in fibre separation into whole fibres. Further purification by bleaching can also be done. Purifying the pulp by bleaching and by alkaline extraction is called alpha or dissolving pulp. This type of pulp is used for speciality papers, for rayon and cellulose film production, and for cellulose derivatives (nitrate and acetate.)

Mechanical Pulp
With mechanical pulping, machines are used to grind wood chips into pulp, creating a pulp that retains most of its lignin. Due to the short fibres created by this process, the resulting paper is mostly used for newspapers, phone books, and other low-strength paper. Mechanical pulp can also be referred to as ground-wood pulp, and the grinding process starts by subjecting wood to an abrading action, either by pressing the wood against a revolving grinding stone or by passing chips through a mill.

Pulp grinders are usually powered by electric motors and automatically loaded. Most ground-wood pulp flows directly to an adjacent paper mill for use as stock. It is then formed into a sheet on a cylindrical vacuum filter, then pressed in a hydraulic press to a moisture content of about 50 percent. The pressed sheets result in the formation of bales.

Pellets
Pulpwood also produces wood pellets, which can be used for heating homes and electricity production. They can be formed by the grinding of biomass (in the form of unused tree tops), sawdust, or even entire trees, then compressed into small pellets to be stored, transported, and fed into boilers and furnaces. Softwood species are preferred to make wood pellets due to the resin content required to bind the particles together.

Firewood
Firewood is the oldest use of pulpwood. Poor quality trees are put to better use and burned as a crude energy source as heat, light and cooking fuels. Coppicing refers to the ancient and traditional woodland management technique that involves cutting trees at their base and creating a stool for new shoots to grow. During the stone age, coppicing was done to manage forests for the production of firewood fuels.

Biofuel
Biofuels refer to fuels derived from plant materials or manure. They are currently under debate whether they are a safe and environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels as a source of energy. The carbon in plants is produced by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, and burning biofuels/plant-derived fuels puts the same amount of CO2 back into the atmosphere.

Generating heat and electricity from wood-fuel is a complicated process.

 * 1) It starts off by drying the wood, followed by pyrolysis (which is heating in the absence of oxygen) to produce gasses.
 * 2) Next, the gasses are purified and burnt to generate electricity

The ash created during the pyrolysis process contains nutrients that could provide a plant fertilizer, but it could also contain contaminants from the soils of the trees origin site.

Some of the potential sources of wood-fuel include early thinnings from commercial plantations, the residues from timber harvesting and arboricultural activities, coppicing and sawmills.

Logging
Early pulpwood operations were based on logging operations for sawn lumber. Transporting the log to the saw mill was a major problem, and using water to transport the lumber proved to be a successful tactic. Water transportation was the cheapest and only link between the mill and the tree site. As the search for accessible trees continued towards the sources of rivers, driving capacity was improved by various forms of river improvement. Dams were one of the methods of river improvement, as well as the use of impounded water to increase the natural flow of the river.

In the logging of mixed forest stands, the better trees are usually used for sawlogs for lumber production, while the inferior trees and components are harvested for pulpwood production. Pulpwood usually derives from four types of woody materials in a mixed logging operation:
 * Open-grown trees, that are heavily branched low on the trunk, and so make poor sawlogs.
 * Dead or diseased trees.
 * Tops cut from trees harvested for sawlogs (branches are rarely used since they contain little usable wood after the bark has been removed).
 * Small trees, too small to harvest for sawlogs.

Natural forest stands may also be harvested solely for pulpwood where, for various reasons, the value of the trees as sawlogs is low. This may be due to the predominant species in the forest stand (for example, some aspen forests in northern North America), or to the relative proximity of the nearest sawmill or pulp mill.

Plantations
To help feed pulp and paper mills, vast monocultures of conifers eucalyptus, acacia, and other species are being established both in the North and South, where fast tree growth, inexpensive land and labour, and lavish subsidies combine to make wood cheaper. A exotic trees invade native woodlands, grasslands, farmlands and pastures, consequences in most countries include impoverishment, environmental degradation, and rural strife.

Plantations are full of trees similar to forests, but they differ greatly. A forest is a complex, self-regenerating system, consisting of soil, water, microclimates, energy, a diverse ecosystem with a wide variety of plants and animals in mutual relation. In contrast, a commercial plantation is a cultivated area whose species and structure have been simplified dramatically to produce only a few goods, such as lumber, fuel, resin, oil or fruit. The trees in a plantation have a small range of species and ages, and require extensive and consistent human intervention.

Pulpwood is also harvested from tree farms established for the specific purpose of growing pulpwood, with little or minimal sawlog production. Monoculture of species intended specifically for pulpwood include loblolly and slash pines in the southern USA; various species of eucalyptus (most commonly Eucalyptus globulus and Eucalyptus grandis) in Latin America, Iberian Peninsula, Australia, south-east Asia.

Plantations normally replace crops, grasslands, or scrub forests. Since they are used for commercial necessities, they are established on healthy soil, with their objective being short cycles of rapid growth that requires a certain level of fertility and water supply. Therefore, they tend to occupy areas already being used by local people.

Salvage cuttings
Salvage cuts after forest fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, or other natural disasters are often used for pulpwood. An alternative source of wood for use in Kraft pulping is recovered lumber from demolition, industrial processing of wood and wooden pallets.

Salvage cutting is the removal of trees that have been killed or damaged by insects, disease, wind, ice, snow, volcanic activity, or wildfire. The purpose of salvage cutting is to recover the economic value of trees before they decay. Dead trees decay quickly, and the timing of salvage cutting is crucial to capture as much economic value as possible. Post-fire salvage cutting helps manage fuels and future fire behaviour, as long as logging slash is treated after the harvest.

Wood residuals
Saw residuals are used as pulpwood. The most important of these are the side cuttings from lumber edger. This gives wood with almost only sapwood and no heartwood. The sapwood is easier to pulp. due to a more open structure and less content of extractive than the heartwood. The fibre length of sapwood is generally longer than the fibre length of heartwood. The sapwood is also normally lighter and that is an advantage when producing mechanical pulp as less bleaching of wood pulp is needed.

Sawdust gives very short fibres that are suitable as part of the furnish for paper tissue and writing papers. Saw blades have become thinner and with smaller teeth making the sawdust too small as fibre source.

Alternative uses
Sugar cane byproducts and bamboo are used in the commercial production of toilet paper.

Wood pulp has many modern-day uses other than paper-making and the other applications mentioned in the "Softwood Applications," and "Hardwood Applications" sections. Their uses can range from hygiene products to innovation medical products.

Wood can also be used as raw material for new bio-products, such an environmentally friendly textile manufacturing technologies. There are a few ways pulpwood is being used to develop technologies that consume less energy and fewer chemicals.

 * 1) Pulp can be processed mechanically to produce tiny micro-fibrillated cellulose, which can be used to make fibres without any solvents.
 * 2) Pulp is dissolved in an ionic fluid, then pressed to form thin strands that can be used to make yarn
 * 3) Fibres are first separated, then the material becomes a liquid and converted into textile fibres.

title: Pulpwood


text:
Laramie Mountains

The Laramie Mountains are a range of moderately high peaks on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains in the U.S states of Wyoming and Colorado. The range is the northernmost extension of the line of the ranges along the eastern side of the Rockies, and in particular of the higher peaks of the Front Range directly to the south. North of the range, the gap between the Laramie range and the Bighorn Mountains provided the route for historical trails, such as the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, and the Pony Express.

The Laramie Mountains begin in northern Colorado and extend discontinuously into southeastern Wyoming between Cheyenne and Laramie and northward to Casper. (By some definitions the Laramies are only in Wyoming.) They are named after the Laramie River, which cuts through the range from southwest to northeast and joins the North Platte River east of the range in eastern Wyoming. The mountains in turn give their name to the Laramide orogeny, the uplift of the North American Plate approximately 70 million years ago that created the present Rocky Mountains.

The highest portions of the Laramie mountains are mostly in public ownership, forming part of the Medicine Bow-Routt and Roosevelt National Forests.

Geography
The mountains consist of a series of Precambrian Sherman granite monadnocks rising above a broad erosion surface that form extensive unwooded parks whose surfaces are generally at about 7000 ft above sea level. The high peaks of the range, which are much lower than those commonly associated with the Rocky Mountains, rise abruptly above the surrounding peneplain to altitudes between 8000 ft and 9500 ft above sea level, with the exceptions of Laramie Peak in Wyoming which tops out at 10274 ft and South Bald Mountain in Colorado rising to 11007 ft. The granitic soils were formed from the erosion of the surrounding monadnocks and have an effective depth of less than 12 in.

Three principal life zones are represented in the Laramies: Upper Sonoran, Transition and Canadian. Some early sources indicated that the Hudsonian Zone occurs on Laramie Peak but there is nothing distinctive about either the flora or fauna on the top of this peak, for it consists of nothing but a large granite outcrop. On the eastern and north eastern slopes of the range the prairie/mountain transition is very gentle at the south end (between Cheyenne and Laramie) and much more abrupt and broken farther north. The elevation is lowest, about 4500 ft (1370 m), along the North Platte River. On the western slopes the total relief is much less, as the floors of the three intermontane basins that border the Laramies on this side (Shirley, Hanna and Laramie basins) rarely drop below 7000 ft. An extensive high plain and semi-desert extends from the Laramie Mountains south west as far as the Shirley Mountains. The Laramie Basin separates the Laramie Mountains from the Medicine Bow Mountains to the south and west, and its floor is above 7000 ft except for a few depressions and blowouts (such as Cooper Lake).

The Laramie Mountains are bisected by the Laramie River, which cuts a canyon through the mountains roughly due west of Wheatland, and then continues its generally eastward course to join the North Platte River near the town of Fort Laramie. The division marks the southern end of the continuous coniferous forest in the range, and separates the range into two parts. The southern part is generally drier and much more open, with little or no forest except for the southern end at Pole Mountain and surrounding area, where the interesting granite outcrops at Vedauwoo provide climbing practice and grand picnic scenery.

The range is prominently visible from Interstate 25 between Casper and Cheyenne. Interstate 80 and the Union Pacific Railroad cross the range between Cheyenne and Laramie on an outlying ramp of the High Plains called the "Gangplank".41.09889°N, -105.11278°W

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

title: Laramie Mountains


text:
Talk:Skink

Diversity
I'm confused by the seemingly conflicting statements in the first paragraph: skinks are the "most diverse" group of lizards, but they're the "second largest" family behind geckos. Wouldn't the latter statement invalidate the former? Rexodus (talk) 15:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I've also noticed this conflicting information. Both skinks AND geckos can't both be the most diverse. I'm changing this to "one of" for now since it seems to be in accurate. --Jpsowin (talk) 14:50, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Common names
It would be nice if a common name or two were included in with the scientific Latin name on the list so that the layman can more easily find a particular skink article (f-lined skink, broadheaded skink, coal skink, ground skink, etc). I think they were once included but were edited out of the list. Thanks.

Real skink stories
During a storm the other day, I noticed a baby skink crawling by my window. I nudged him onto my hand and then he moved down my arm and closed his eyes while resting on my lower forearm near my elbow. I then walked outside to let him go in the garden. As soon as let him go, he came running back to me and jumped on my foot and crawled up my leg and I let him back on my arm. The skink wanted to stay with me, therefore I own all of j00. 67.233.161.208 (talk) 01:48, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

One day, I was watching TV when a little blue tailed skink was sitting on the outside of the window. I walked on outside to see what was going on. I looked closely, it had no tail. Therefore, it was a male. The skink ran away. Next morning, when my grandfather was fixing his truck, The same skink went under the chair. Knowing he would stay, I named him Shadowstripe the blue-tailed porch skink.

penny lizard redirection
I don't know how to set this up but it might be practical to redirect searches for 'penny lizard(s)' to this page.Danieljames626 01:17, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Southern 5-lined skink and cat poisoning
Here in eastern North Carolina, the "blue tail" or common 5 lined skink has anecdotally been identified as being poisoness to cats. I learned this when my own cat (a lizard hunter) came home tripping out with vertigo and was "drunk" for a week! Apparently, vets and local cat owners all know of this but I can not find a bit of real info about the condition. Has Anyone ever heard of this? Oh, and though the cat is fine, his head is still tilted to one side, which apparently is a common permanent side effect of the presumed (but unidentified)neurotoxin involved.

Green blood
Hi..Where would i find the information about the reason for skinks peculiar colored blood ... green  I would like to knw more about the chemical recactions which lead to this green color... and its metabolism. mruna_a there are no such thing of any blood in skinks - devan powers

House pets
Does anyone have any info regarding Skinks as house pets? The article mentions them, but does not go into detail about them. Help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bishoppendragon (talk • contribs) 21:25, 11 February 2009 (UTC) The Skink/Sandveld bites harder than a common lizard. If you get one, don't take it out of it's cage. The cage should have A lid, too. This is because they are good climbers and fast runners. Here is a little info about the Blue Tailed Skink. I reccomend getting a female one because they cannot lose their tail.

Spiders eat them
I believe that this: is the source of the part about spiders eating skinks. I'd like to see a better source — anyone know of any? Thanks Sue D. Nymme (talk) 00:09, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

House crashing skinks?
I'd like to know HOW I keep getting these guys in my house, this is the second time I've caught one now, any ideas what I need to do to stop this? 67.187.91.103 (talk) 22:11, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

The picture of the skink
just thought I should say that the main picture of a skink (although a good picture) is incorrectly labelled, as it should be labeled Eulamprus quoyii or Eastern water skink rather than Egernia coventryi or the eastern mourning skink —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mike of Wikiworld (talk • contribs) 19:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

 * I replaced the image with a different one. DGERobertson (talk) 21:05, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

 * Great picture - but ironically also incorrectly labeled (now corrected). Thats an Eastern bluey (T. scincoides scincoides - enlarged anterior temporal scales, bandit-mask temporal stripe behind eye, distinct transverse banding), not a Blotched (T. nigrolutea - cheek scales of uniform size, no bandit-mask, reticulate pattern on back).Ozraptor4 (talk) 17:25, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Bla Bla Bla, guys. I have a skink in my backyard, and I will take a real picture of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.233.161.208 (talk) 01:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Distribution
I can't find the Distribution section. Can someone add it?--TangoFett (talk) 03:59, 17 April 2010 (UTC) All I know is vthat they come out in Summer, often around Sopchoppy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.233.161.208 (talk) 01:17, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

File:Trachylepis maculilabris mating.jpg to appear as POTD soon
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Trachylepis maculilabris mating.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on November 1, 2011. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2011-11-01. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :) Thanks!  howcheng  {chat} 20:22, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Number of species
I also raised this on the Gecko discussion page, but am I missing something? On the Skink page it says "With about 1200 described species, the Scincidae are the second most diverse family of lizards, exceeded only by the Gekkonidae (or geckos)" but on the Gecko page it says "Geckos are the second most species rich group of lizards (after skinks), with close to 1,500 different species worldwide" - which is right? Manbilong (talk) 09:22, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Skink with eggs
I am pretty sure that does not show a skink with ITS eggs, but rather eggs that it is busy sizig up with a view to feeding on them. There is no way that eggs this size could come out of its cloaca. Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 15:44, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Accuracy Issue regarding largest skink.
Accuracy of Largest species...Shouldn't this actually be 81 cm for the largest size it can reach as stated on the wiki for the Solomon Islands Skink — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.238.129.202 (talk) 22:14, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

I just caught the same problem. The page for the Solomon Islands Skink reads: 'The Solomon Islands skink is the world's largest species of extant skink; adults can reach a length of 32 inches (81 cm) from nose to the tip of their tail when fully grown, with the tail accounting for more than half this length.' RobotBoy66 (talk) 12:26, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

There are two common ways to measure length: nose to tail and nose to vent. The Solomon Islands skink article uses nose to tail measurements, while this article's paragraph on skink sizes uses nose to vent. - rco 2022-06-03 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.60.137.30 (talk) 19:58, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Skink


text:
Talk:National Air and Space Museum

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 February 2019 and 15 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jordan.wallen, Sam.morrison15, Kasey Prevette.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Samples
i changed "the only lunar rock sample available to the public" to "one of the only...samples...". there's a moon rock at Space Center Houston, which is the public visitor's center next to Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. i'm not positive if there are any more public moon rocks out there, so i didn't specify "one of the two" or anything.

Changed the bell X1 and concorde to clarify
I changed the Bell X1 line to add "Powered level flight" as dating back to well before Chuck's flight several people have been recorded to go supersonic in dives, not many survived.

(Actually no one is KNOWN to have actually "gone supersonic and survived" before Yeager, much less have it recorded, though different stories do float around about American, British, and German pilots who MIGHT have done so.)

Also added the "Air France" to the Concorde line to clarify this is not the British Airways varient which has several notable diferences.

Also by the way the Concorde displayed is still intact with engines and un-modified. So many others of these now decomissioned aircraft are on display without engines and obvious cut-lines for transportation, to me these are no longer the real thing just a pile of scrap.

V2 - First human made object in space?
I thought I saw on the history channel that some shells from large Artillery pieces in World War I were able to leave the atmospehere. Would one of those be the first human made object in space instead? Mabey lets find out below!
 * The V-2_rocket article notes a trajectory peak of 80km. Information on the Paris gun of WWI notes a ceiling of 40km (mentioned as "highest prior to the V-2"), and I expect Germany's WWII-era large artillery pieces were similar.  The artillery pieces might have been able to reach the V-2's operational ceiling if they could have been angled directly upwards.  However, it would appear that the V-2's space claim results from post-war modifications (extra stages and the like) that boosted its ceiling to ~400km (I believe the internationally recognized limit is 100km). Lomn 18:42:04, 2005-08-10 (UTC)

image gallery
i'm going to remove the gallery tag, WP:IG: "Images are typically interspersed individually throughout an article near the relevant text (see WP:MOSIMAGES). However, the use of galleries may be appropriate in Wikipedia articles where a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images. The images in the gallery collectively must have encyclopedic value and add to the reader's understanding of the subject" Accotink2  talk 15:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Reassessment
Article reassessed as C because it is not fully referenced.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:19, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Focus/Name
This article blurs the distinction between the "National Air and Space Museum" and its National Mall Building. It seems pretty clear from the Smithsonian's site that they use the term National Air and Space Museum to refer to the Mall, UHC, and Graber Facility. Given the present top hat, it seems I'm not the only one to notice that the status quo is confusing. Two solutions occur to me:

 * 1) Split the article and create an new one for specifics of the National Mall Building and collections.  The present article is rewritten to cover non-building specific and early history, common issues and of course summarize and link to the facility specific articles.
 * 2) Rewrite this article so that there is a clear delineation.  The National Mall Building specifics should be consolidated in their own section, after general topics and an introduction of the separate facilities.

Comments? --J Clear (talk) 14:01, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

 * The blurred distinction accurately represents the way people think of NASM, in general. Perhaps there is no need to change the article in a radical manner. Of your two suggestions, #2 involves the least disruption. Suggestion #1 would have us create an article with an oddly disambiguated title, such as National Air and Space Museum (building), unpopular and hard to sell. Much of the focus of NASM, as far as the general public is concerned, is centered on the NASM Mall building, so combining the building and the museum articles reflects that perspective. Binksternet (talk) 14:23, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Wonderful place, but should the nation be specified
in the title? Midgley (talk) 16:21, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
 * There is no other "National Air and Space Museum" in the world that I am aware of. See also National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, National Institute of Standards and Technology, etc., etc., etc. —Diiscool (talk) 17:32, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

title: Talk:National Air and Space Museum


text:
Gotha G.V

The Gotha G.V was a heavy bomber used by the Luftstreitkräfte (Imperial German Air Service) during World War I. Designed for long-range service and built by Gothaer Waggonfabrik AG, the Gotha G.V was used principally as a night bomber.

Development
Operational use of the Gotha G.IV demonstrated that the incorporation of the fuel tanks into the engine nacelles was a mistake. In a crash landing the tanks could rupture and spill fuel onto the hot engines. This posed a serious problem because landing accidents caused 75% of operational losses. In response Gothaer produced the G.V, which housed its fuel tanks inside the fuselage. The smaller engine nacelles were mounted on struts above the lower wing.

The Gotha G.V pilot seat was offset to port, with the fuel tanks immediately behind. This blocked the connecting walkway that previously on earlier machines allowed crew members to move between the three gun stations. All bombs were carried externally in this model.

The base variant of G.V offered no performance improvement over the G.IV. The G.V was up to 450 kg (990 lb) heavier than the G.IV due to additional equipment and the use of insufficiently seasoned timber. The Mercedes D.IVa engines could not produce the rated 190 kW (260 hp) due to inferior quality of fuel.

Gotha tunnel
The Gotha included an important innovation in the form of a "gun tunnel", whereby the underside of the rear fuselage was arched, early versions allowing placement of a rearward-facing machine gun, protecting against attack from below, removing the blind spot. Later versions expanded the tunnel to remove the lower gun, providing a slot in the upper fuselage that allowed the rear gunner to remain stationary.

Operational history
The G.V entered service in August 1917. For the performance reasons aforementioned, it generally could not operate at altitudes as high as the G.IV.

G.Va
In February 1918, Gothaer tested a compound tail unit with biplane horizontal stabilizers and twin rudders. The new tail unit, known as the Kastensteuerung, improved the aircraft's marginal directional control on one engine. The resulting G.Va subvariant incorporated the new tail, as well as a slightly shorter forward fuselage with an auxiliary nose landing gear. All 25 G.Va aircraft were delivered to Bogohl 3, the new designation for the former Kagohl 3.

G.Vb
Carried an increased payload compared to the earlier G.Va, and operated at a maximum takeoff weight of 4,550 kg (10,030 lb). To reduce the danger of flipping over during landing, Gothaer introduced the Stossfahrgestell ("shock landing gear"), a tandem two-bogie main landing gear. The Stossfahrgestell proved so good that it was fitted to all G.Vs in Bogohl 3. Some G.Vb aircraft also had Flettner servo tabs on the ailerons to reduce control forces.

Idflieg ordered 80 G.Vb aircraft, the first being delivered to Bogohl 3 in June 1918. By the Armistice, all 80 aircraft were built but the last batch did not reach the front and was delivered direct to the Allied special commission.

Operators

 * German Empire
 * Luftstreitkräfte

title: Gotha G.V


text: Talk:SAS

title: Talk:SAS


text:
Pallium (disambiguation)

A pallium is an ecclesiastical vestment worn by the Pope, metropolitans, and primates of the Catholic Church

Pallium may also refer to:
 * Pallium (Roman cloak), a rectangular length of cloth worn in Ancient Rome
 * Pallium (neuroanatomy), layers of grey and white matter that cover the upper surface of the cerebrum in vertebrates
 * Mantle, the dorsal body wall of molluscs, and the similar structure in brachiopods and cephalopods

title: Pallium (disambiguation)


text:
Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings

The Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings (ECO) is a reference work describing the state of opening theory in chess, originally published in five volumes from 1974 to 1979 by the Serbian company Šahovski Informator (Chess Informant). It is currently undergoing its fifth edition. ECO may also refer to the opening classification system used by the encyclopedia.

Overview
Both ECO and Chess Informant are published by the Belgrade-based company Šahovski Informator. The moves are taken from thousands of master games and from published analysis in Informant and compiled by the editors, most of whom are grandmasters, who select the lines which they consider most relevant or critical. The chief editor since the first edition has been Aleksandar Matanović(1930-2023). The openings are provided in an ECO table that concisely presents the opening lines considered most critical by the editors. ECO covers the openings in more detail than rival single volume publications such as Modern Chess Openings and Nunn's Chess Openings, but in less detail than specialized opening books.

The books are intended for an international audience and contain only a small amount of text, which is in several languages. The bulk of the content consists of diagrams of positions and chess moves, annotated with symbols, many of them developed by Chess Informant. Chess Informant pioneered the use of Figurine Algebraic Notation to avoid the use of initials for the names of the pieces, which vary between languages.

Instead of the traditional names for the openings, ECO has developed a coding system that has also been adopted by other chess publications. There are five main categories, "A" to "E", corresponding to the five volumes of the earlier editions, each of which is further subdivided into 100 subcategories, for a total of 500 codes. The term "ECO" is often used as a shorthand for this coding system. ECO code is a registered trademark of Chess Informant.

Volume A: Flank openings

 * English Opening
 * Benoni Defence
 * Dutch Defence
 * Réti Opening
 * Benko Gambit
 * Old Indian Defence
 * Bird's Opening
 * Anti-Indian systems (Trompowsky Attack, Torre Attack, Richter–Veresov Attack)
 * Irregular openings, etc.

Volume B: Semi-Open Games other than the French Defence

 * Sicilian Defence
 * Caro-Kann Defence
 * Pirc Defence
 * Alekhine's Defence
 * Modern Defence
 * Scandinavian Defence, etc.

Volume C: Open Games and the French Defence

 * Ruy Lopez
 * French Defence
 * Petrov's Defence
 * Vienna Game
 * Centre Game
 * King's Gambit
 * Philidor Defence
 * Italian (Giuoco Piano, Evans Gambit, Hungarian Defence, and Two Knights)
 * Scotch Game
 * Four Knights Game, etc.
 * King's Pawn Opening, etc. (covers unusual/rare 1. e4 openings such as the Elephant Gambit and Ponziani Opening).

Volume D: Closed Games and Semi-Closed Games

 * (including Grünfeld Defence but not other Indian Defenses)

 * Queen's Gambit
 * Accepted
 * Declined (Slav, Orthodox, Tarrasch, Tartakower, Albin Countergambit, etc.)
 * Grünfeld Defence
 * Queen's Pawn Game, etc.

Volume E: Indian Defences

 * (other than Grünfeld Defence and Old Indian Defence)

 * Nimzo-Indian Defence
 * Queen's Indian Defence
 * King's Indian Defence
 * Catalan Opening
 * Bogo-Indian Defence, etc.

A

 * White first moves other than 1.e4, 1.d4 (A00–A39)
 * 1.d4 without 1...d5, 1...Nf6 or 1...f5: Atypical replies to 1.d4 (A40–A44)
 * 1.d4 Nf6 without 2.c4: Atypical replies to 1...Nf6 (A45–A49)
 * 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 without 2...e6, 2...g6: Atypical Indian systems (A50–A79)
 * 1.d4 f5: Dutch Defence (A80–A99)

B

 * 1.e4 without 1...c6, 1...c5, 1...e6, 1...e5 (B00–B09)
 * 1.e4 c6: Caro–Kann Defence (B10–B19)
 * 1.e4 c5: Sicilian Defence (B20–B99)

C

 * 1.e4 e6: French Defence (C00–C19)
 * 1.e4 e5: Double King Pawn games (C20–C99)

D

 * 1.d4 d5: Double Queen Pawn games (D00–D69)
 * 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 with 3...d5: Grünfeld Defence (D70–D99)

E

 * 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6: Indian systems with ...e6 (E00–E59)
 * 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 without 3...d5: Indian systems with ...g6 (except Grünfeld) (E60–E99)

First edition
The first edition was published in the following years:
 * Volume A: 1979
 * Volume B: 1975
 * Volume C: 1974
 * Volume D: 1976
 * Volume E: 1978

Second edition
The second edition was published in the following years:
 * Volume A: 1996
 * Volume B: 1984
 * Volume C: 1981
 * Volume D: 1987
 * Volume E: 1991

Third edition
The third edition was published in the following years:
 * Volume A: 1999
 * Volume B: 1997
 * Volume C: 1997
 * Volume D: 1998
 * Volume E: 1998

Fourth edition
The fourth edition was published in the following years:
 * Volume A: 2001
 * Volume B: 2002
 * Volume C: 2000
 * Volume D: 2004
 * Volume E: 2008

Fifth edition
The fifth edition was published in the following years:
 * Volume C: 2006
 * Volume B part 1 [ECO codes: B00–B49]: 2020
 * Volume B part 2 [ECO codes: B50-B99]: 2021

title: Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings


text:
The Spy Who Loved Me (novel)

The Spy Who Loved Me is the ninth novel and tenth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published by Jonathan Cape on 16 April 1962. It is the shortest and most sexually explicit of Fleming's novels, as well as the only Bond novel told in the first person. Its narrator is a young Canadian woman, Viv Michel. Bond himself does not appear until two-thirds of the way through the book, arriving at precisely the right moment to save Viv from being raped and murdered by two criminals. Fleming wrote a prologue to the novel giving the character Viv credit as a co-author.

The story uses a recurring motif of Saint George against the dragon, and contains themes of power, and the moral ambiguity between those acting with good and evil intent. As the narrator who tells her own backstory and expresses her emotions and motives, Viv has been described as the best realised and most rounded female character in the Bond canon. The reviewers were largely negative, with some expressing a desire for a return to the structure and form of the previous Bond novels. In a letter to his editor after the reviews had been published, Fleming reflected that "the experiment has obviously gone very much awry".

Following the negative reactions of critics, Fleming attempted to suppress elements of the novel: he blocked a paperback edition in the United Kingdom and, when he sold the film rights to Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, they were permitted to use the title but none of the plot of the book. In the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me, the tenth in the Eon Productions series, only the title and the character of one of the villains, Jaws, is taken from in the book. The film was the third to star Roger Moore as Bond. A heavily adapted version of The Spy Who Loved Me appeared in The Daily Express newspaper in daily comic strip format between 1967 and 1968; a British paperback edition of the novel was published after Fleming's death.

Plot summary
Fleming structured the novel in three sections—"Me", "Them" and "Him"—to describe the phases of the story. In the prologue he described the origin of the manuscript:

"I found what follows lying on my desk one morning. As you will see, it appears to be the first-person story of a young woman, evidently beautiful and not unskilled in the arts of love. According to her story, she appears to have been involved, both perilously and romantically, with the same James Bond whose secret service exploits I myself have written from time to time. With the manuscript was a note signed 'Vivienne Michel' assuring me that what she had written was 'purest truth and from the depths of her heart'. I was interested in this view of James Bond, through the wrong end of the telescope so to speak, and after obtaining clearance for certain minor infringements of the Official Secrets Act I have much pleasure in sponsoring its publication."

Me Vivienne "Viv" Michel, a young Canadian woman, narrates her own story, detailing her past love affairs. The first was with Derek Mallaby: the couple had sex in a field after being thrown out of a cinema in Windsor for indecent exposure. Their physical relationship ended that night, and Viv was subsequently rejected when Mallaby sent her a letter from Oxford University, where he was studying, saying he was forcibly engaged to someone else by his parents. Viv's second love affair was with her German employer, Kurt Rainer, by whom she eventually became pregnant. She informed Rainer and he paid for her to go to Switzerland to have an abortion, telling her that their affair was over. After the procedure, Viv returned to her native Canada and started on a journey through North America. She stopped in the Adirondack Mountains to work at the Dreamy Pines motel, in the employ of the managers Jed and Mildred Phancey.

Them At the end of the vacation season, the Phanceys entrust Viv with looking after the motel for the night before the owner, Mr. Sanguinetti, can arrive to take inventory and close it up for the winter. Two mobsters, "Sluggsy" Morant and the steel-toothed Sol "Horror" Horowitz, both of whom work for Sanguinetti, arrive and say they are there to look over the motel for insurance purposes. The two have been hired by Sanguinetti to burn down the motel so that he can make a fraudulent insurance claim. The blame for the fire would fall on Viv, who was to perish in the incident. The men immediately start harassing Viv, making crude passes and aggressively asking her to dance; when she says she does not want to, they attack her, intending to rape her, when the door buzzer interrupts them.

Him The British secret service agent James Bond appears at the door asking for a room, having had a flat tyre while passing. Bond soon realises that Horror and Sluggsy are mobsters and that Viv is in danger. Bond pressures the gangsters into providing him a room. Bond tells Viv that he is in America in the wake of Operation Thunderball and had been detailed to protect a Russian nuclear expert who defected to the West. That night Sluggsy and Horror set fire to the motel and attempt to kill Bond and Viv. A gun battle ensues and, during their escape, Horror and Sluggsy's car crashes into a lake. Bond and Viv retire to bed, but Sluggsy is still alive and makes a further attempt to kill them, before Bond shoots and kills him.

Viv wakes to find Bond gone, leaving a note in which he promises to send her police assistance and which he concludes by telling her not to dwell too much on the ugly events through which she has just lived. As Viv finishes reading the note, a large police detachment arrives. After taking her statement, the officer in charge of the detail reiterates Bond's advice, but also warns Viv that all men involved in violent crime and espionage, regardless of which side they are on—including Bond himself—are dangerous and that Viv should avoid them. Viv reflects on this as she drives off at the end of the book, continuing her tour of America; despite the officer's warning, she still devotes her thoughts to Bond.

Background and writing history
By January 1961 the author Ian Fleming had published eight books in the preceding eight years: seven novels and a collection of short stories. A ninth book, Thunderball, was being edited and prepared for production; it was released at the end of March 1961. Fleming travelled to his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica in January to write The Spy Who Loved Me. He followed his usual practice, which he later outlined in Books and Bookmen magazine: "I write for about three hours in the morning ... and I do another hour's work between six and seven in the evening. I never correct anything and I never go back to see what I have written ... By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day." He found writing The Spy Who Loved Me easier than any of his other books.

Fleming returned to London in March that year with a 113-page typescript, the shortest of any of the Bond books. Few alterations were made to the story before publication. After the book was published he wrote to Michael Howard, his editor at Jonathan Cape, to explain why he had changed his approach:

I had become increasingly surprised to find that my thrillers, which were designed for an adult audience, were being read in schools, and that young people were making a hero out of James Bond ... So it crossed my mind to write a cautionary tale about Bond, to put the record straight in the minds particularly of younger readers. It was impossible to do this in my usual narrative style and I therefore invented the fiction of a heroine through whom I could examine Bond from the other end of the gun barrel, so to speak. This I did by telling the story in her own words of her upbringing and love life, which consisted of two incidents, both of which were of a strongly cautionary nature.

Fleming found writing the Bond novels increasingly arduous and had thoughts of finishing the series by killing Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me, but changed his mind while writing. The novel is described by Fleming's biographer Andrew Lycett as Fleming's "most sleazy and violent story ever". This, writes Lycett, may have been a reflection of Fleming's state of mind at the time, particularly his ongoing marital difficulties: he was having an affair with his neighbour on Jamaica, Blanche Blackwell, and his wife, Ann was in a relationship with Hugh Gaitskell, the Leader of the British Labour Party. Fleming also had a strained professional relationship with the writer and director, Kevin McClory, with whom he was working on a film treatment which eventually Fleming published as the novel Thunderball.

Although Fleming did not date the events within his novels, John Griswold and Henry Chancellor—both of whom wrote books for Ian Fleming Publications—identified different timelines based on events and situations within the novel series as a whole. Chancellor put the events of The Spy Who Loved Me in 1960; Griswold considers the story to have taken place in October 1961.

Plot inspirations
For The Spy Who Loved Me, Fleming borrowed from his surroundings and experiences, as he had done with all his writing up to that point. The Dreamy Pines Motel in the Adirondacks was based on one Fleming would drive past on the way to a friend's Black Hole Hollow Farm in Vermont; Viv is seduced by Derek, a public school boy, in the Royalty Kinema, Windsor, in the same way Fleming—while at the nearby public school Eton—seduced a woman and lost his virginity in the same establishment. Her time with Derek in the area around Cookham, Berkshire, is similar to Fleming's activities and experiences while he was at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

As he had done in his previous novels, Fleming borrowed names from his friends and associates to use in his book: Robert Harling, a colleague at The Sunday Times, gave his name to a printer in the story while another minor character, Frank Donaldson, was named after Jack Donaldson, a friend of Ann Fleming. One of Fleming's neighbours in Jamaica was Vivienne Stuart, whose first name Fleming used for the novel's central character.

Characters
The novelist Raymond Benson—who later wrote a series of Bond novels—sees Vivienne Michel as the best-realised female characterisation undertaken by Fleming, partly because the story is told in the first-person narrative with the first third of the novel dedicated to her biography. Benson notes that while Viv has been a victim of life in the past, she is wilful and tough too. Viv is not a fashionable stylish woman of the 1950s, but one who likes camping, fishing and other outdoor activities; Chancellor states that in this respect, she is, like Bond, an ideal from Fleming's imagination.

The academic Christine Bold considers that Viv demonstrates a naïve view of life, and that the character reinforces Fleming's misogynistic view of women as they had been portrayed in the earlier Bond stories. Bold sees that Viv "underwrites Bond's sexual dominance over women" by sleeping with him after he saves her. It is at this point in the novel that Fleming (as Viv) writes "All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken." The claim was one for which Fleming was criticised. The opinion of the journalist Ben Macintyre is that "Fleming was not seriously defending rape, or even semi-rape, but trying to shock by reinforcing the idea of Bond's essential cruelty. If so, he shocked far more than he intended, and he still does". Despite her rescue from near-rape and death, the author Nick Stone thinks that:

"... at the end there is very little resolution for Vivienne, and next to no catharsis. The reader is left with the sense that she will only add the scars of her 'night of screaming terror' at the hands of the villains to those inflicted from her past."

The other characters in the novel are given less attention by Fleming. The historian Jeremy Black describes how Viv's second lover, Kurt, is a caricature of a German—a cruel racist with little capacity for love or affection—who forces her to have an abortion before ending their affair. According to Black, the two thugs, Sluggsy and Horror, are "comic-book villains with comic-book names". Their characters are not given the same status as other villains in Bond stories, but are second-rate professional killers which, the writer Matthew Parker thinks, makes them more believable in the story. Chancellor considers the novel's absence of a supervillain makes this one of Fleming's weaker works.

Style
The Spy Who Loved Me is distinct from the other Bond novels in not being a spy story, and without that aspect "the full panoply of a Bond novel, animated by his presence, is absent", according to Black. Black sees the closest equivalent in the Bond canon is "Quantum of Solace", the 1960 short story about marital relations Fleming wrote in the style of W. Somerset Maugham, a writer he greatly admired. The absence of the spy element in The Spy Who Loved Me, and the concentration on Viv's early life, ensures the novel is the closest Fleming gets to kitchen sink realism in the Bond canon, as well as being the most sexually explicit of all of Fleming's novels.

Benson analyses Fleming's writing style and identifies what he describes as the "Fleming Sweep": a stylistic point that sweeps the reader from one chapter to another using narrative hooks at the end of chapters to heighten tension and pull the reader into the next: Benson considers that the Sweep in The Spy Who Loved Me was still present, although the manuscript is ostensibly written by Viv.

The literary analyst LeRoy L. Panek observes that The Spy Who Loved Me is a love story; in this, the novel "simply codifies a number of tendencies present in all ... [Fleming's] fiction". Panek argues that there are strong elements of romance in Casino Royale, Diamonds are Forever, Goldfinger, Thunderball and Dr. No. When analysed from the romantic viewpoint, the threat of Viv's rape from the two gangsters is held in counterpoint to the consensual sex between her and Bond.

Themes
Bold sees Bond as a deus ex machina when he appears in the novel. As with several other Bond stories, the concept of Bond as Saint George against the dragon underlies the storyline to The Spy Who Loved Me, with Bond rescuing the maiden from imminent danger; Viv refers to Bond's appearance directly connecting Bond to the medieval legend:

"Apart from the excitement of his looks, his authority, his maleness, he had come from nowhere, like the prince in the fairy tales, and he had saved me from the dragon. But for him, I would now be dead, after suffering God knows what before. He could have changed the wheel on his car and gone off, or, when danger came, he could have saved his own skin. But he had fought for my life as if it had been his own. And then, when the dragon was dead, he had taken me as his reward."

The question of good and evil is raised in the novel, with the police captain warning Viv that there is no practical difference between good and bad in the murky world in which both Bond and organised crime operate. Benson notes that when Viv first saw Bond, she thought he was another of the gangsters. Black agrees, and also sees the misuse of power by those with dark motives in the novel, and the vulnerable being challenged and trapped by manipulative and powerful forces. Before the police officer's conversation with Viv, Bond also discusses with her the question of good and evil and says there was little value in his job and his way of life, concluding:

"It's nothing but a complicated game, really. But then so's international politics, diplomacy—all the trappings of nationalism and the power complex that goes on between countries. Nobody will stop playing the game. It's like the hunting instinct."

Publication history
The Spy Who Loved Me was released in the UK on 16 April 1962 as a hardcover edition by the publishers Jonathan Cape; it was 221 pages long. To continue the conceit that Viv had given the script to Fleming, she was listed as a co-author of the work. As he had with all of the previous first editions, the artist Richard Chopping undertook the cover art. He raised his fee from the 200 guineas (£210) he had charged for Thunderball to 250 guineas (£262.50). The artwork included a Fairbairn–Sykes commando knife; Fleming borrowed one owned by his editor, Michael Howard at Jonathan Cape, as a model for Chopping. The Spy Who Loved Me was published in the US by Viking Books in April 1962; it was 211 pages long. In the US the story was also later published in Stag magazine, with the title changed to Motel Nymph.

Fleming later said of The Spy Who Loved Me that "the experiment has obviously gone very much awry". Because of the sexual content in the novel, it was banned in a number of countries, including in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, South Africa and Australia.

The reception to the novel was so bad that Fleming requested there should be no reprints or paperback version of the book. For the British market no paperback version appeared until Pan Books published a copy in May 1967, after Fleming's death in 1964. This sold 517,000 copies before the end of the year, the best first-year sales of any of Fleming's works, with the exception of Thunderball, which sold 808,000 copies. Since its initial publication the book has been issued in numerous hardback and paperback editions, translated into several languages and, as at 2024, has never been out of print. In 2023 Ian Fleming Publications—the company that administers Fleming's literary works—had the Bond series edited as part of a sensitivity review to remove or reword some racial or ethnic descriptors. The phrase "sweet tang of rape" from The Spy Who Loved Me was retained in the new release. The release of the bowdlerised series was on the 70th anniversary of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel.

Critical reception
Critics did not welcome Fleming's experiment with the Bond formula and the historian Black notes that The Spy Who Loved Me had the worst reception of all the Bond books. The Sunday Telegraph, for example, wrote "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! And to think of the books Mr Fleming once wrote!" while The Glasgow Herald thought Fleming's writing career was over: "His ability to invent a plot has deserted him almost entirely and he has had to substitute for a fast-moving story the sorry misadventures of an upper-class tramp, told in dreary detail." Writing in The Observer, Maurice Richardson described the tale as "a new and regrettable if not altogether unreadable variation", going on to hope that "this doesn't spell the total eclipse of Bond in a blaze of cornography". Richardson ended his piece by berating Fleming, asking "why can't this cunning author write up a bit instead of down?" The critic for The Times was not dismissive of Bond, describing him as "less a person than a cult" who is "ruthlessly, fashionably efficient in both love and war". Rather, the critic dismisses the experiment, writing that "the novel lacks Mr. Fleming's usual careful construction and must be written off as a disappointment." The reviewer John Fletcher thought that it was "as if Mickey Spillane had tried to gatecrash his way into the Romantic Novelists' Association".

Philip Stead, writing in The Times Literary Supplement considered the novel's plot to be "a morbid version of that of Beauty and the Beast". The review noted that once Bond arrives on the scene to find Viv threatened by the two thugs, he "solves [the problem] in his usual way. A great quantity of ammunition is expended, the zip-fastener is kept busy and the customary sexual consummation is associated with the kill." Vernon Scannell, as critic for The Listener, considered The Spy Who Loved Me to be "as silly as it is unpleasant". What aggrieved him most, however, was that it was "so unremittingly, so grindingly boring".

The critic for Time lamented the fact that "unaccountably lacking in The Spy Who Loved Me are the High-Stake Gambling Scene, the Meal-Ordering Scene, the Torture Scene, the battleship-grey Bentley and Blades Club". The critic also bemoaned the fact that "among the shocks and disappointments 1962 still has in store ... is the discovery that the cruel, handsome, scarred face of James Bond does not turn up until more than halfway through Ian Fleming's latest book". Anthony Boucher—a critic described by Fleming's biographer, John Pearson, as "throughout an avid anti-Bond and an anti-Fleming man"—meanwhile wrote that the "author has reached an unprecedented low".

Not all reviews were negative. Esther Howard wrote in The Spectator, "Surprisingly Ian Fleming's new book is a romantic one and, except for some early sex in England (rather well done, this) only just as nasty as is needed to show how absolutely thrilling it is for ... the narrator to be rescued from both death and worse – than by a he-man like James Bond. Myself, I like the Daphne du Maurier touch and prefer it this way but I doubt his real fans will."

Adaptations
The previous Bond works were serialised in The Daily Express, but the newspaper turned down the opportunity to publish The Spy Who Loved Me as the story was too unlike the normal Bond books. The novel was adapted as a daily comic strip, written by Jim Lawrence and illustrated by Yaroslav Horak. It was published in The Daily Express from 18 December 1967 to 3 October 1968 and syndicated around the world. The Spy Who Loved Me was the last of Fleming's works to be adapted as a comic strip for the newspaper. The comic strip was reprinted in 2011 by Titan Books in the second volume of The James Bond Omnibus; the anthology also includes The Man with the Golden Gun, You Only Live Twice and Octopussy.

In 1977 the name The Spy Who Loved Me was used for the tenth film in the Eon Productions series. It was the third to star Roger Moore as Bond. Although Fleming had insisted that no film should contain anything of the plot of the novel—and the rights for the use of the name were granted on the basis that only the title was used—the steel-toothed character of Horror was included, renamed for the film as Jaws.

title: The Spy Who Loved Me (novel)


text:
Junkers EF 61

The Junkers EF 61 was a German prototype twin-engined high-altitude bomber aircraft of the 1930s. Only two examples were built, but it provided valuable information on pressure cabins which aided the design of later pressurised aircraft.

Design and development
The pressurised cabin of the Junkers EF 61 was based on that of the Junkers Ju 49. The EF 61 was one of the few German high-altitude bomber and reconnaissance projects before World War II. The project started in September 1935 and the maiden flight took place on 4 March 1937, but on 19 September of that year the EF 61 V1 was destroyed in a crash. The second prototype EF 61 V2 was ready in late 1937 but also crashed in December 1937, even before high-altitude testing had started. After that the project was abandoned. The project eventually led to the high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft of the Junkers Ju 86 type in World War II.

Book

 * Hitler's Luftwaffe: A Pictorial History and Technical Encyclopedia of Hitler's Air Power in World War II (Hardcover)

title: Junkers EF 61


text:
Connected sum

In mathematics, specifically in topology, the operation of connected sum is a geometric modification on manifolds. Its effect is to join two given manifolds together near a chosen point on each. This construction plays a key role in the classification of closed surfaces.

More generally, one can also join manifolds together along identical submanifolds; this generalization is often called the fiber sum. There is also a closely related notion of a connected sum on knots, called the knot sum or composition of knots.

Connected sum at a point
A connected sum of two m-dimensional manifolds is a manifold formed by deleting a ball inside each manifold and gluing together the resulting boundary spheres.

If both manifolds are oriented, there is a unique connected sum defined by having the gluing map reverse orientation. Although the construction uses the choice of the balls, the result is unique up to homeomorphism. One can also make this operation work in the smooth category, and then the result is unique up to diffeomorphism. There are subtle problems in the smooth case: not every diffeomorphism between the boundaries of the spheres gives the same composite manifold, even if the orientations are chosen correctly. For example, Milnor showed that two 7-cells can be glued along their boundary so that the result is an exotic sphere homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to a 7-sphere.

However, there is a canonical way to choose the gluing of $$M_1$$ and $$M_2$$ which gives a unique well-defined connected sum. Choose embeddings $$i_1 : D_n \rightarrow M_1$$ and $$i_2 : D_n \rightarrow M_2$$ so that $$i_1$$ preserves orientation and $$i_2$$ reverses orientation. Now obtain $$M_1 \mathbin{\#} M_2$$ from the disjoint sum
 * $$(M_1 - i_1(0)) \sqcup (M_2 - i_2(0))$$

by identifying $$i_1(tu)$$ with $$i_2((1 - t)u)$$ for each unit vector $$u \in S^{n-1}$$ and each $$0 < t < 1$$. Choose the orientation for $$M_1 \mathbin{\#} M_2$$ which is compatible with $$M_1$$ and $$M_2$$. The fact that this construction is well-defined depends crucially on the disc theorem, which is not at all obvious. For further details, see.

The operation of connected sum is denoted by $$\#$$.

The operation of connected sum has the sphere $$S^m$$ as an identity; that is, $$M \mathbin{\#} S^m$$ is homeomorphic (or diffeomorphic) to $$M$$.

The classification of closed surfaces, a foundational and historically significant result in topology, states that any closed surface can be expressed as the connected sum of a sphere with some number $$g$$ of tori and some number $$k$$ of real projective planes.

Connected sum along a submanifold
Let $$M_1$$ and $$M_2$$ be two smooth, oriented manifolds of equal dimension and $$V$$ a smooth, closed, oriented manifold, embedded as a submanifold into both $$M_1$$ and $$M_2.$$ Suppose furthermore that there exists an isomorphism of normal bundles

 * $$\psi: N_{M_1} V \to N_{M_2} V$$

that reverses the orientation on each fiber. Then $$\psi$$ induces an orientation-preserving diffeomorphism

 * $$N_1 \setminus V \cong N_{M_1} V \setminus V \to N_{M_2} V \setminus V \cong N_2 \setminus V,$$

where each normal bundle $$N_{M_i} V$$ is diffeomorphically identified with a neighborhood $$N_i$$ of $$V$$ in $$M_i$$, and the map

 * $$N_{M_1} V \setminus V \to N_{M_2} V \setminus V$$

is the orientation-reversing diffeomorphic involution

 * $$v \mapsto v / |v|^2$$

on normal vectors. The connected sum of $$M_1$$ and $$M_2$$ along $$V$$ is then the space

 * $$(M_1 \setminus V) \bigcup_{N_1 \setminus V = N_2 \setminus V} (M_2 \setminus V)$$

obtained by gluing the deleted neighborhoods together by the orientation-preserving diffeomorphism. The sum is often denoted

 * $$(M_1, V) \mathbin{\#} (M_2, V).$$

Its diffeomorphism type depends on the choice of the two embeddings of $$V$$ and on the choice of $$\psi$$.

Loosely speaking, each normal fiber of the submanifold $$V$$ contains a single point of $$V$$, and the connected sum along $$V$$ is simply the connected sum as described in the preceding section, performed along each fiber. For this reason, the connected sum along $$V$$ is often called the fiber sum.

The special case of $$V$$ a point recovers the connected sum of the preceding section.

Connected sum along a codimension-two submanifold
Another important special case occurs when the dimension of $$V$$ is two less than that of the $$M_i$$. Then the isomorphism $$\psi$$ of normal bundles exists whenever their Euler classes are opposite:

 * $$e\left(N_{M_1} V\right) = -e\left(N_{M_2} V\right).$$

Furthermore, in this case the structure group of the normal bundles is the circle group $$SO(2)$$; it follows that the choice of embeddings can be canonically identified with the group of homotopy classes of maps from $$V$$ to the circle, which in turn equals the first integral cohomology group $$H^1(V)$$. So the diffeomorphism type of the sum depends on the choice of $$\psi$$ and a choice of element from $$H^1(V)$$.

A connected sum along a codimension-two $$V$$ can also be carried out in the category of symplectic manifolds; this elaboration is called the symplectic sum.

Local operation
The connected sum is a local operation on manifolds, meaning that it alters the summands only in a neighborhood of $$V$$. This implies, for example, that the sum can be carried out on a single manifold $$M$$ containing two disjoint copies of $$V$$, with the effect of gluing $$M$$ to itself. For example, the connected sum of a 2-sphere at two distinct points of the sphere produces the 2-torus.

Connected sum of knots
There is a closely related notion of the connected sum of two knots. In fact, if one regards a knot merely as a 1-manifold, then the connected sum of two knots is just their connected sum as a 1-dimensional manifold. However, the essential property of a knot is not its manifold structure (under which every knot is equivalent to a circle) but rather its embedding into the ambient space. So the connected sum of knots has a more elaborate definition that produces a well-defined embedding, as follows.

This procedure results in the projection of a new knot, a connected sum (or knot sum, or composition) of the original knots. For the connected sum of knots to be well defined, one has to consider oriented knots in 3-space. To define the connected sum for two oriented knots:

 * 1) Consider a planar projection of each knot and suppose these projections are disjoint.
 * 2) Find a rectangle in the plane where one pair of sides are arcs along each knot but is otherwise disjoint from the knots and so that the arcs of the knots on the sides of the rectangle are oriented around the boundary of the rectangle in the same direction.
 * 3) Now join the two knots together by deleting these arcs from the knots and adding the arcs that form the other pair of sides of the rectangle.

The resulting connected sum knot inherits an orientation consistent with the orientations of the two original knots, and the oriented ambient isotopy class of the result is well-defined, depending only on the oriented ambient isotopy classes of the original two knots.

Under this operation, oriented knots in 3-space form a commutative monoid with unique prime factorization, which allows us to define what is meant by a prime knot. Proof of commutativity can be seen by letting one summand shrink until it is very small and then pulling it along the other knot. The unknot is the unit. The two trefoil knots are the simplest prime knots. Higher-dimensional knots can be added by splicing the $$n$$-spheres.

In three dimensions, the unknot cannot be written as the sum of two non-trivial knots. This fact follows from additivity of knot genus; another proof relies on an infinite construction sometimes called the Mazur swindle. In higher dimensions (with codimension at least three), it is possible to get an unknot by adding two nontrivial knots.

If one does not take into account the orientations of the knots, the connected sum operation is not well-defined on isotopy classes of (nonoriented) knots. To see this, consider two noninvertible knots K, L which are not equivalent (as unoriented knots); for example take the two pretzel knots K = P(3, 5, 7) and L = P(3, 5, 9). Let K+ and K− be K with its two inequivalent orientations, and let L+ and L− be L with its two inequivalent orientations. There are four oriented connected sums we may form:

 * A = K+ # L+
 * B = K− # L−
 * C = K+ # L−
 * D = K− # L+

The oriented ambient isotopy classes of these four oriented knots are all distinct, and, when one considers ambient isotopy of the knots without regard to orientation, there are two distinct equivalence classes: {A ~ B} and {C ~ D}. To see that A and B are unoriented equivalent, simply note that they both may be constructed from the same pair of disjoint knot projections as above, the only difference being the orientations of the knots. Similarly, one sees that C and D may be constructed from the same pair of disjoint knot projections.

title: Connected sum


text:
Homological conjectures in commutative algebra

In mathematics, homological conjectures have been a focus of research activity in commutative algebra since the early 1960s. They concern a number of interrelated (sometimes surprisingly so) conjectures relating various homological properties of a commutative ring to its internal ring structure, particularly its Krull dimension and depth.

The following list given by Melvin Hochster is considered definitive for this area. In the sequel, $$A, R$$, and $$S$$ refer to Noetherian commutative rings; $$R$$ will be a local ring with maximal ideal $$m_R$$, and $$M$$ and $$N$$ are finitely generated $$R$$-modules.

 * 1) The Zero Divisor Theorem. If $$M \ne 0$$ has finite projective dimension and $$r \in R$$ is not a zero divisor on $$M$$, then $$r$$ is not a zero divisor on $$R$$.
 * 2) Bass's Question. If $$M \ne 0$$ has a finite injective resolution then $$R$$ is a Cohen–Macaulay ring.
 * 3) The Intersection Theorem. If $$M \otimes_R N \ne 0$$ has finite length, then the Krull dimension of N (i.e., the dimension of R modulo the annihilator of N) is at most the projective dimension of M.
 * 4) The New Intersection Theorem. Let $$0 \to G_n\to\cdots \to G_0\to 0$$ denote a finite complex of free R-modules such that $$\bigoplus\nolimits_i H_i(G_{\bullet})$$ has finite length but is not 0. Then the (Krull dimension) $$\dim R \le n$$.
 * 5) The Improved New Intersection Conjecture. Let $$0 \to G_n\to\cdots \to G_0\to 0$$ denote a finite complex of free R-modules such that $$H_i(G_{\bullet})$$ has finite length for $$i > 0$$ and $$H_0(G_{\bullet})$$ has a minimal generator that is killed by a power of the maximal ideal of R. Then $$\dim R \le n$$.
 * 6) The Direct Summand Conjecture. If $$R \subseteq S$$ is a module-finite ring extension with R regular (here, R need not be local but the problem reduces at once to the local case), then R is a direct summand of S as an R-module. The conjecture was proven by Yves André using a theory of perfectoid spaces.
 * 7) The Canonical Element Conjecture. Let $$x_1, \ldots, x_d$$ be a system of parameters for R, let $$F_\bullet$$ be a free R-resolution of the residue field of R with $$F_0 = R$$, and let $$K_\bullet$$ denote the Koszul complex of R with respect to $$x_1, \ldots, x_d$$. Lift the identity map $$R = K_0 \to F_0 = R$$ to a map of complexes. Then no matter what the choice of system of parameters or lifting, the last map from $$R = K_d \to F_d$$ is not 0.
 * 8) Existence of Balanced Big Cohen–Macaulay Modules Conjecture. There exists a (not necessarily finitely generated) R-module W such that mRW ≠ W and every system of parameters for R is a regular sequence on W.
 * 9) Cohen-Macaulayness of Direct Summands Conjecture. If R is a direct summand of a regular ring S as an R-module, then R is Cohen–Macaulay (R need not be local, but the result reduces at once to the case where R is local).
 * 10) The Vanishing Conjecture for Maps of Tor. Let $$A \subseteq R \to S$$ be homomorphisms where R is not necessarily local (one can reduce to that case however), with A, S regular and R finitely generated as an A-module. Let W be any A-module. Then the map $$\operatorname{Tor}_i^A(W,R) \to \operatorname{Tor}_i^A(W,S)$$ is zero for all $$i \ge 1$$.
 * 11) The Strong Direct Summand Conjecture. Let $$R \subseteq S$$ be a map of complete local domains, and let Q be a height one prime ideal of S lying over $$xR$$, where R and $$R/xR$$ are both regular. Then $$xR$$ is a direct summand of Q considered as R-modules.
 * 12) Existence of Weakly Functorial Big Cohen-Macaulay Algebras Conjecture. Let $$R \to S$$ be a local homomorphism of complete local domains. Then there exists an R-algebra BR that is a balanced big Cohen–Macaulay algebra for R, an S-algebra $$B_S$$ that is a balanced big Cohen-Macaulay algebra for S, and a homomorphism BR → BS such that the natural square given by these maps commutes.
 * 13) Serre's Conjecture on Multiplicities. (cf. Serre's multiplicity conjectures.) Suppose that R is regular of dimension d and that $$M \otimes_R N$$ has finite length.  Then $$\chi(M, N)$$, defined as the alternating sum of the lengths of the modules $$\operatorname{Tor}_i^R(M, N)$$ is 0 if $$\dim M + \dim N < d$$, and is positive if the sum is equal to d. (N.B. Jean-Pierre Serre proved that the sum cannot exceed d.)
 * 14) Small Cohen–Macaulay Modules Conjecture. If R is complete, then there exists a finitely-generated R-module $$M \ne 0$$ such that some (equivalently every) system of parameters for R is a regular sequence on M.