text:
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz (22 October 1783 –18 September 1840) was a French early 19th-century polymath born near Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire and self-educated in France. He traveled as a young man in the United States, ultimately settling in Ohio in 1815, where he made notable contributions to botany, zoology, and the study of prehistoric earthworks in North America. He also contributed to the study of ancient Mesoamerican linguistics, in addition to work he had already completed in Europe.

Rafinesque was an eccentric and erratic genius. He was an autodidact, who excelled in various fields of knowledge, as a zoologist, botanist, writer and polyglot. He wrote prolifically on such diverse topics as anthropology, biology, geology, and linguistics, but was honored in none of these fields during his lifetime. Indeed, he was an outcast in the American scientific community and his submissions were automatically rejected by leading journals. Among his theories were that ancestors of Native Americans had migrated by the Bering Sea from Asia to North America, and that the Americas were populated by black indigenous peoples at the time of European contact.

Biography
Rafinesque was born on 22 October 1783, in Galata, a suburb of Constantinople. His father, F. G. Rafinesque, was a French merchant from Marseilles; his mother, M. Schmaltz, was of German descent and born in Constantinople. His father died in Philadelphia about 1793. Rafinesque spent his youth in Marseilles, and was mostly self-educated; he never attended university. By the age of 12, he had begun collecting plants for an herbarium. By 14, he had taught himself Greek and Latin because he needed to follow footnotes in the books he was reading in his paternal grandmother's libraries. In 1802, at the age of 19, Rafinesque sailed to Philadelphia in the United States with his younger brother. They traveled through Pennsylvania and Delaware, where he made the acquaintance of most of the young nation's few botanists.

In 1805, Rafinesque returned to Europe with his collection of botanical specimens, and settled in Palermo, Sicily, where he learned Italian. He became so successful in trade that he retired by age 25 and devoted his time entirely to natural history. For a time Rafinesque also worked as secretary to the American consul. During his stay in Sicily, he studied plants and fishes, naming many newly discovered species of each. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1808.

Career in the United States
Rafinesque had a common-law wife. After their son died in 1815, he left her and returned to the United States. When his ship Union foundered near the coast of Connecticut, he lost all his books (50 boxes) and all his specimens (including more than 60,000 shells). Settling in New York, Rafinesque became a founding member of the newly established Lyceum of Natural History. In 1817, his book Florula Ludoviciana or A Flora of the State of Louisiana was strongly criticized by fellow botanists, which caused his writings to be ignored. By 1818, he had collected and named more than 250 new species of plants and animals. Slowly, he was rebuilding his collection of objects from nature.

In the summer of 1818, in Henderson, Kentucky, Rafinesque made the acquaintance of fellow naturalist John James Audubon, and stayed in Audubon's home for some three weeks. Audubon, although enjoying Rafinesque's company, took advantage of him by practical jokes involving fantastic, made-up species.

In 1819, Rafinesque became professor of botany at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he also gave private lessons in French, Italian, and Spanish. He was loosely associated with John D. Clifford, a merchant who was also interested in the ancient earthworks that remained throughout the Ohio Valley. Clifford conducted archival research, seeking the origins of these mounds, and Rafinesque measured and mapped them. Some had already been lost to American development.

He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1820.

Rafinesque started recording all the new species of plants and animals he encountered in travels throughout the state. He was considered an erratic student of higher plants. In the spring of 1826, he left the university after quarreling with its president.

He traveled and lectured in various places, and endeavored to establish a magazine and a botanic garden, but without success. He moved to Philadelphia, a center of publishing and research, without employment. He published The Atlantic Journal and Friend of Knowledge, a Cyclopædic Journal and Review, of which only eight issues were printed (1832–1833). He also gave public lectures and continued publishing, mostly at his own expense.

Death
Rafinesque died of stomach and liver cancer in Philadelphia on 18 September 1840. The cancer may have been induced by Rafinesque's self-medication years before with a mixture containing maidenhair fern. He was buried in a plot in what is now Ronaldson's Cemetery. In March 1924, what were thought to be his remains were transported to Transylvania University and reinterred in a tomb under a stone inscribed, "Honor to whom honor is overdue."

Biology
Rafinesque published 6,700 binomial names of plants, many of which have priority over more familiar names. The quantity of new taxa he produced, both plants and animals, has made Rafinesque memorable or even notorious among biologists.

Rafinesque applied to join one of the western scientific expeditions organized by President Thomas Jefferson, but received notice of appointment to the Dunbar and Hunter Expedition only after his arrival in Sicily. After studying the specimens collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition, he assigned scientific names to the black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus), the white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus), and the mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus).

Evolution
Rafinesque was one of the first to use the term "evolution" in the context of biological speciation.

Rafinesque proposed a theory of evolution before Charles Darwin. In a letter in 1832, Rafinesque wrote:

"The truth is that Species and perhaps Genera also, are forming in organized beings by gradual deviations of shapes, forms and organs, taking place in the lapse of time. There is a tendency to deviations and mutations through plants and animals by gradual steps at remote irregular periods. This is a part of the great universal law of perpetual mutability in everything. Thus it is needless to dispute and differ about new genera, species and varieties. Every variety is a deviation which becomes a species as soon as it is permanent by reproduction. Deviations in essential organs may thus gradually become new genera."

In the third edition of On the Origin of Species published in 1861, Charles Darwin added a Historical Sketch that acknowledged the ideas of Rafinesque.

Rafinesque's evolutionary theory appears in a two-page article in the 1833 spring issue of the Atlantic Journal and Friend of Knowledge (a journal founded by himself). Rafinesque held that species are not fixed; they gradually change through time. He used the term "mutations". He believed that evolution had occurred "by gradual steps at remote irregular periods." This has been compared to the concept of punctuated equilibrium. He also held that the same processes apply to humans.

Walam Olum
In 1836, Rafinesque published his first volume of The American Nations. This included Walam Olum, a purported migration and creation narrative of the Lenape (also known by English speakers as the Delaware Indians). It told of their migration to the lands around the Delaware River. Rafinesque claimed he had obtained wooden tablets engraved and painted with indigenous pictographs, together with a transcription in the Lenape language. Based on this, he produced an English translation of the tablets' contents. Rafinesque claimed the original tablets and transcription were later lost, leaving his notes and transcribed copy as the only record of evidence.

For over a century after Rafinesque's publication, the Walam Olum was widely accepted by ethnohistorians as authentically Native American in origin, but as early as 1849, when the document was republished by Ephraim G. Squier, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an ethnologist who had worked extensively in Michigan and related territories, wrote to Squier saying that he believed the document might be fraudulent. In the 1950s, the Indiana Historical Society published a "retranslation" of the Walam Olum, as "a worthy subject for students of aboriginal culture".

Since the late 20th century, studies especially in linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, and textual analyses suggest that the Walam Olum account was largely or entirely a fabrication. Scholars have described its record of "authentic Lenape traditional migration stories" as spurious. After the publication in 1995 of David Oestreicher's thesis, The Anatomy of the Walam Olum: A 19th Century Anthropological Hoax, many scholars concurred with his analysis. They concluded that Rafinesque had been either the perpetrator, or perhaps the victim, of a hoax. Other scholars, writers, and some among the Lenape continue to find the account plausible and support its authenticity.

Study of prehistoric cultures
Rafinesque made a notable contribution to North American prehistory with his studies of ancient earthworks of the Adena and Hopewell cultures, especially in the Ohio Valley. He was the first to identify these as the "Ancient Monuments of America". He listed more than 500 such archaeological sites in Ohio and Kentucky. Rafinesque never excavated; rather, he recorded the sites visited by careful measurements, sketches, and written descriptions. Only a few of his descriptions were published, with his friend John D. Clifford's series "Indian Antiquities", eight long letters in Lexington's short-lived Western Review and Miscellaneous Magazine (1819–1820). Clifford died suddenly in 1820, ending his contributions.

Rafinesque's work was used by others. For instance, he identified 148 ancient earthworks sites in Kentucky. All sites in Kentucky that were included by E. G. Squier and Davis in their notable Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848), completed for the Smithsonian Institution, were first identified by Rafinesque in his manuscripts.

Rafinesque also made contributions to Mesoamerican studies. The latter were based on linguistic data, which he extracted from printed sources, mostly those of travelers. He designated as Taino, the ancient language of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Others later also used the term to identify the ethnicity of indigenous Caribbean peoples.

Although mistaken in his presumption that the ancient Maya script was alphabetical in nature, Rafinesque was probably first to insist that studying modern Mayan languages could lead to deciphering the ancient script. In 1832, he was the first to partly decipher ancient Maya. He explained that its bar-and-dot symbols represent fives and ones, respectively.

Legacy
According to historian George Daniels, Rafinesque was a brilliant but erratic naturalist who roamed the American wilderness. His style was offputting to the emerging professionalization of science and achievements were controversial at the time and by historians ever since. By 1820, he was virtually an outcast in the scientific community as all the important publications rejected his submissions. The two leading American scientists of the day, Benjamin Silliman and Asa Gray, were harshly critical. Modern historians agree that Rafinesque was often hasty, and tried to claim credit properly due to other researchers. Scientists were troubled that his theory of evolution – long before Darwin – seemed to be based more on his speculation and exaggerations than on solid research. Despite all his faults, says Daniels, "he made enormous contributions to the natural history phase of American science...with the establishment of 34 genera and 24 species of American fishes." He was also a brilliant teacher at Transylvania University.
 * In 1838, the white-spotted lantern fish was named Collettia rafinesquii in his honour by Anastasio Cocco; it has since been moved to Diaphus rafinesquii.
 * In 1841, Thomas Nuttall named a new genus Rafinesquia after Rafinesque. He felt indebted to the naturalist, who had inspired his work and given Nuttall's Flora a positive review. The genus now contains two species, Rafinesquia californica Nutt. (California plumeseed or California chicory) and Rafinesquia neomexicana A. Gray (desert chicory or plumeseed).
 * In 1892, James Hall and J. M. Clarke proposed the genus name Rafinesquina in honor of Rafinesque for a number of fossil brachiopod species then belonging to genus Leptaena; the genus is now in the family Rafinesquinidae.

Published works

 * 1810: Indice d'ittiologia siciliana ossia catalogo metodico dei nomi latini, italiani, e siciliani dei pesci, che si rinvengono in Sicilia disposti secondo un metodo naturale eseguito da un appendice che contiene la descrizione di alcuni nuovi pesci siciliani. Opuscolo del signore C.S. Rafinesque Schmaltz. Messina. 70 pp. + 2 plates.
 * 1810: Caratteri di Alcuni Nuovi Generi e Nuove Specie di Animali e Piante della Sicilia. Palermo.
 * 1814: Specchio delle Scienze. Palermo.
 * 1814: Précis des Découvertes et Travaux Somiologiques. Palermo.
 * 1814: Principes Fondamentaux de Somiologie. Palermo.
 * 1815: Analyse de la Nature ou tableau de l'univers et des corps organisés. Palermo, 223 pp.
 * 1815–1840: Autikon Botanikon. Philadelphia.
 * 1817: Florula ludoviciana; or, A flora of the state of Louisiana. New York: C. Wiley & Co.
 * 1818: Description of three new genera of fluviatile fish, Pomoxis, Sarchirus and Exoglossum. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 1, 417–422. (Read 1 and 8 December 1818) (BHL link)
 * 1819: "Dissertation on Water-Snakes", published in the London Literary Gazette.
 * 1820: Ichthyologia Ohiensis. Lexington.
 * 1824: Ancient History, or Annals of Kentucky. Frankfort.
 * 1825: Neogenyton. Lexington.
 * 1828–1830: Medical Flora, a Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America (two volumes). Philadelphia.
 * 1830:
 * 1832: American Florist
 * 1832:
 * 1832–1833: Atlantic Journal and Friend of Knowledge. Philadelphia.
 * 1833: Herbarium Rafinesquianum. Philadelphia.
 * 1836: A Life of Travels. Philadelphia.
 * 1836: Pars Prima, Pars Secunda, Pars Tertia & Pars IV Et Ult.
 * 1836: The American Nations (two volumes). Philadelphia.
 * 1836: A Life of Travels and Researches in North America and South Europe
 * 1836: "The World", a poem.
 * 1836–1838: New Flora and Botany of North America (four parts). Philadelphia.
 * 1837: Safe Banking
 * 1837: Notes to Thomas Wright's Original Theory, or New Hypothesis of the Universe.
 * 1838: Genius and Spirit of the Hebrew Bible. Philadelphia.
 * 1838: Alsographia Americana. Philadelphia.
 * 1838: The American Monuments of North and South America. Philadelphia.
 * 1838: Sylva Telluriana. Philadelphia.
 * 1839: Celestial Wonders and Philosophy of the Visible Heavens.
 * 1840: The Good Book (Amenities of Nature). Philadelphia.
 * 1840: Pleasure and Duties of Wealth.

In popular culture
John Jeremiah Sullivan's essay La-Hwi-Ne-Ski: Career of an Eccentric Naturalist, which appears in his 2011 collection, Pulphead, chronicles the life and times of Rafinesque.

title: Constantine Samuel Rafinesque


text:
User:Starx

About Me
Mostly intrested in audio stuff, some math intrests too. But I don't often make huge contributions. Mostly I help out by reverting vandalism, voting on vfd's, sometimes a little cleanup.

Major Contributions
I don't have too many, most of my time is spent over on vfd or making minor edits. But I have some stuff planned to write and I want to start working on the cleanup page some more, so this will get bigger.

Aritcles I've written

 * Pulse-density modulation

Articles I've cleaned up

 * Continuity (Rewrote, merging in info from continuity error)

My Sandbox
$$\int_0^1\frac{x^b - x^a}{\ln x}dx$$

$$\frac{1}{2}\int_{-\pi/2}^{\pi/2}\left(\frac{9}{9 + 5\cos\theta}\right)^2d\theta$$

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

title: User:Starx


text:
Leopold von Schrenck

Peter Leopold von Schrenck (Леопольд Иванович фон Шренк; 1826 – 8 January 1894) was a Russian zoologist, geographer and ethnographer.

Biography
Schrenck came from a Baltic German family, and was born and raised in the Khotin Manor House, Sumsky Uyezd, Kharkov Governorate. He received his doctorate from the Imperial University of Dorpat, and then studied natural science in Berlin and Königsberg. He joined the crew of the Aurora (Russian Imperial Navy frigate) in the circumnavigation of the world.

In 1853 Schrenck was sent by the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences to explore the Amurland on board the schooner Vostok. He reached the mouth of the Amur in September 1854 with the botanist Carl Maximowicz. In February 1855 he visited Sakhalin and then explored the Amur in the spring and summer. In 1856 he returned overland to Europe, via Lake Baykal. He published his findings in his Reisen und Forschungen im Amur-Lande in den Jahren 1854-56, in two quarto volumes, 1858–60, with more than 350 pages on birds. In later years Schrenck turned his attention to the study of the native peoples of Russia. On 10 November, 1879 he was appointed director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St Petersburg.

A number of animals are named after Schrenck, including the following species.
 * Schrenck's limpet, Notoacmea schrenckii
 * Amur sturgeon, Acipenser shrenckii
 * Manchurian black water snake, Elaphe schrenckii
 * Schrenck's bittern, Ixobrychus eurhythmus
 * A butterfly, Apatura schrenckii.

Selected publications

 * Über die Luchsarten des Nordens und ihre geographische Verbreitung. Ein Beitrag zur zoologischen Geographie (On the lynx species of the North and their geographical distribution. A contribution to zoological geography), Dissertation Dorpat 1849
 * Reisen und Forschungen im Amur-Lande in den Jahren 1854–1856 (Travels and researches in Amurland in the years 1854–1856), 4 vols., St. Peterburg 1858–1900 (in several editions)
 * Vols. 1 & 2 Zoologie (Zoology)
 * Vol. 3 Die Völker des Amurlandes (The peoples of the Amurland; the posthumously published Gilyak-German and Goldish-German dictionaries were edited by Wilhelm Grube.)
 * Vol. 4 Meteorologische Beobachtungen (Meteorological observations)
 * Die von der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften ausgerüstete Expedition nach den neusibirischen Inseln und dem Jana-Lande : Zur Vorgeschichte der Expedition (The expedition to the New Siberian Islands and the Yana Land, equipped by the Imperial Academy of Sciences: On the history of the expedition), St. Petersburg 1887

title: Leopold von Schrenck


text:
Ulitsa Sezam

Ulitsa Sezam (Russian: Улица Сезам) is the Russian production of the children's television program Sesame Street. The show was first released in 1996 and went off the air in 2010.

History
In 1993 Sesame Workshop recruited Natasha Lance Rogoff to produce Ulitsa Sezam. It was funded by Russian advertising agency VideoArt and the U.S. Agency for International Development. A total of 279 Russians were recruited to help develop and produce the series, and the show's budget totaled US$6 million. Production began in 1994.

The initial creation of this series proved difficult with a myriad of complications like cultural clashes with prospective native talent, many of whom were resistant to emulating the American style of puppetry created by Jim Henson. Instead, they proposed native puppetry material that the producers like Rogoff could not accept as they were too violent, frightening, or went against the educational curriculum of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW).

Another problem involved different approaches to script writing. Some of the first scripts produced by the Russian team included "lecturing, tough-talking adults," which CTW pushed back on. Other scripts tended towards fantasy or the idea of leaving the country. In response, CTW encouraged the script writers to "create a childhood that they [envisioned] for a future generation of Russians", rather than to try and emulate their own childhoods.

Cultural clashes were also present during auditions; most of the children auditioning for the show "sat back in their chairs and started to sing very sad songs," which startled the American producers.

There were other problems like the assassinations of some of the production's local business partners, serious financial difficulties by the production's major local producer, and a military raid on the studio in which vital materials were seized.

The series debuted on October 22, 1996, on TV channels NTV and ORT. The show was nominated for a TEFI award in 1997, but lost to perennial favorite Good Night, Little Ones!.

Second season
The second season on "optimism" was filmed in 1999 and broadcast in 2000 on NTV and STS.

Third season
The third season began filming in September 2001 and was aired in November on STS.

The main theme of the third season was "Diversity in the world". Several celebrities were guests on the show, including actors Leo Durov and Mary Aronov, composer Grigory Gladkov, and opera singer Vyacheslav Voynorovsky.

Fourth season
In 2006, the show celebrated its tenth anniversary. Filming of the new fourth season took place in early 2006 in the pavilion "Mosfilm". The premiere of the new season was broadcast on STS channel in September 2006.

The city yard set was re-vamped to reflect a more realistic depiction of modern-day urban Russia. An intact oak tree grows in the center of this courtyard, and windows from surrounding houses face each other so neighbors can pop their heads out to greet one another. The set includes a creative art center and a playground with an urban backdrop of buildings that was made grittier, a bit grey, with Khrushchev-style buildings in the background. Businka and Kubik's rooms change into a two-story house with a balcony.

New cast members included Yamila and Altin, two sisters recently arrived in Russia from Kazakhstan. The show also tackled the issue of adoption by introducing a young boy named Kolya who was adopted by Aunt Dinara and her husband, Uncle Jura.

Season 4 introduced a new recurring segment inspired by Prairie Dawn's art show from Play with Me Sesame where Businka shows artwork done by kids.

Celebrity guests for the season included TV presenter Tina Kandelaki, actress Olga Prokofiev ("My Fair Nanny"), Ekaterina Guseva, Vladimir Turchinsky (Dynamo Moscow), Natasha Podolsk, Varvara, Vladimir Asimov, and children's group "Fidget".

Content
One of the show's primary goals was to teach children about living in a democratic and diverse society, particularly with the recent fall of the Soviet Union. Other goals included instilling pride in children's culture and traditions, and to display a supportive environment in which children could feel secure. Children from different ethnic groups, as well as disabled and deaf children, were included in different segments. Cultural content included traditional Russian dances, instruments, and foods.

In addition to original content produced in Moscow, the show also featured Russian-dubbed clips of Sesame Street, Elmo's World, Global Grover and Play with Me Sesame; these comprised about 30-50% of the show's content.

The series is set in a Russian courtyard with a playground, surrounded by a mixture of traditional, rural, and urban architecture.

Characters
Human characters included:

 * Aunt Dasha, who lives in a traditional cottage and preserves Russian folklore and traditions
 * Katya, an 8-year old girl who is fond of classical music.
 * Katya's mother, a physician
 * Katya's father, a repair man

Muppet characters included:
 * Zeliboba (Зелибоба), a nine-foot furry blue Dvorovoi (tree spirit) who enjoys dancing, can smell music, and tries hard to be polite. He slightly resembles a hound in some aspects (long muzzle, floppy ears and a keen sense of smell), and always wears a long fuzzy cloak that looks somewhat like a regal mantle decorated with leaves and fluffy catkins.
 * Businka (Бусинка), "bead", is a bright pink monster who finds joy in everything.
 * Kubik (Кубик), "cube", is an orange monster who is the resident pensive problem-solver.
 * Kermit
 * Korzhik, the series' version of Cookie Monster
 * Vlas and Enik, the series' versions of Bert and Ernie
 * Znak, the series' version of Count von Count

Episodes
The first season consisted of 52 half-hour episodes, which were broadcast over the show's first two years on air. The pilot episode shown to the press in January 1996 showed children from various Russian ethnic groups exploring Moscow's Pet Market.

By the time of 2005, the program had 3 seasons consisting of 156 half-hour episodes in total.

Legacy
In 2022 the original producer, Natasha Lance Rogoff, released a non-fiction book, Muppets in Moscow, detailing the show's production.

title: Ulitsa Sezam


text:
User talk:Abjörne

Anþóný Björne, I hope to spend a lot of time with my team mates to create Renglish language pages here =).

Welcome to Wikipedia! If you want, you can drop us a note at New user log to introduce yourself.

I'm afraid one of your early contributions has already been listed on votes for deletion, see Votes for deletion/Renglish. Please don't take this personally, it's part of the process of learning what Wikipedia is and happened to me too, so I know how it feels.

Before you start doing a lot of editing, you'll want to take the Tutorial. It gives all the basic info you'll need as you start contributing.

You can sign your name on talk pages by using " " for your username and " ~ " for your username and a timestamp.

If you have any other questions about the project then check out Help or add a question to the Help desk.

Or feel free to drop me a question or comment on my talk page if I can help in any way. Andrewa 17:27, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Abjörne


text:
Alexander von Middendorff

Alexander Theodor von Middendorff (Алекса́ндр Фёдорович Ми́ддендорф; tr. ; 18 August 1815 – 24 January 1894 ) was a Russian zoologist and explorer of Baltic German and Estonian extraction. He is known for his expedition 1843–45 to the extreme north and east of Siberia, describing the effects of permafrost on the spread of animals and plants.

Early life
Middendorff's mother Sophia Johanson (1782–1868), the daughter of an Estonian farmer, had been sent to Saint Petersburg for education by her parents. There she met with the future director of the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, Theodor Johann von Middendorff (1776–1856), whose father was a Baltic German pastor in Karuse, Estonia. As the two young people came from different social ranks and were unable to marry each other, their daughter Anette (b. 1809) and son Alexander were born out of wedlock. Alexander was born on 18 August 1815 in St. Petersburg, but could not be baptized until six months later in the Estonian Lutheran Congregation of St. Petersburg, as the German Lutheran Congregation of St. Petersburg had not agreed to perform the baptism. In the accompanying paperwork, Middendorff's parents registered themselves as a married couple. In order to escape the attention of the public, the mother and son returned to Estonia, where they settled at the Pööravere Mansion. Only in 1824, when the young Middendorff was ready to go to school, was his status legitimized when his parents finally married. (Note: Although his father Theodor was Baltic German, Middendorff's middle name is sometimes spelled as "Theodorowitsch", a German corruption of the Russian patronymic Федорович (Fyodorovich); "-ovich" meaning "the son of" the person (father) whose name precedes it.)

Education
Middendorff received his early education from tutors in Reval and at a gymnasium in Saint Petersburg. From 1832 he pursued a medical degree at the Imperial University of Dorpat where his professors included Georg Friedrich Parrot, Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov, Hermann Martin Asmuss, and Alexander Friedrich von Hueck. Middendorff graduated in 1837 with a dissertation (written in Latin) on polyps in the bronchi. He then undertook further studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, University of Vienna, and University of Breslau.

Explorer and scientist
In 1839, under the patronage of Karl Ernst von Baer, he became assistant professor of zoology at Kiev University.

In the summer of 1840, Baer asked Middendorff to join his second expedition to Novaya Zemlya (the first one took place in 1837). Due to stormy conditions the expedition failed to reach Novaya Zemlya, but Baer and Middendorff explored Russian and Norwegian Lapland, as well as the Barents and White Seas. Middendorff was tasked with crossing on foot the Kola Peninsula and mapping the peninsula from Kola to Kandalaksha while collecting zoological and botanical material.

Baer suggested Middendorff to the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences as leader of a follow-up expedition and supplied extended expedition instructions in 1842/43 in a print-ready typescript. They comprised over 200 pages and a permafrost map of Eurasia. From 1843 to 1845, Middendorff travelled with these instructions, to the Taymyr Peninsula and then along the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk and entered the lower Amur River valley (which at this time was Chinese territory). He published his findings in Reise in den äußersten Norden und Osten Sibiriens (Travels in the extreme north and east of Siberia) in German (1848–1875), which included an account of the effects of permafrost on the spread of animals and plants. He also wrote Die Isepiptesen Russlands (1855), an account of bird migration in Russia, and a monograph on molluscs, Beiträge zu einer Malacozoologia Rossica (1847–1849), in which he coined the term radula.

Baer's expedition instructions had the German title „Materialien zur Kenntniss des unvergänglichen Boden-Eises in Sibirien“ (=materials for the knowledge of the perennial ground ice in Siberia). Although print-ready in 1943, the text remained lost for more than 150 years. Thus in 2001 the discovery and annotated publication of the typescript in the library archives of the University of Giessen was a scientific sensation. The full text of the expedition instructions is available online (234 pages). The editor Lorenz King added to the facsimile reprint a preface in English, two colour permafrost maps of Eurasia. The text is introduced with detailed comments and references on additional 66 pages written by the Estonian historian Erki Tammiksaar.

In 1870 Middendorff visited the Baraba steppe and in 1878 the Fergana Valley.

Personal life and death
Middendorf was married to Hedwig. His son Ernst von Middendorff was also an ornithologist.

Middendorf died in 1894 at Hellenorm, Kreis Dorpat, in Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire (now Valga County, Estonia).

Legacy
Middendorff's grasshopper warbler, Cape Middendorff of Novaya Zemlya, Kodiak bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi), and Middendorff Bay of the Taymyr Peninsula are named after him. He coined the term aufeis.

title: Alexander von Middendorff


text:
Shalom Sesame

Shalom Sesame is an anglicized variation of Rechov Sumsum (רחוב סומסום), the Israeli version of Sesame Street, which originally aired in 1983. Shalom Sesame was produced in 1986 and between 1990 and 1991 for the direct-to-video market in the United States, aimed at introducing Israel and Judaism to children that are not necessarily fluent in the Hebrew language, since Rechov Sumsum is completely done in Hebrew. Beginning in April 1988, the Shalom Sesame episodes were broadcast on PBS following their video releases.

It includes characters from both Sesame Street and Rechov Sumsum, the Hebrew/Arabic version of Sesame Street, produced and aired in Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Jordan.

Also, as with the American series, the series featured special guests well known to American viewers. Guests included Itzhak Perlman, Bonnie Franklin, Mary Tyler Moore, Mandy Patinkin, Alan King, Joan Rivers, Nell Carter, Jerry Stiller, Jeremy Miller, Anne Meara, Tracey Gold, B.B. King, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Paul Shaffer.

In October 2010, a new 12-part Shalom Sesame series began, with stars including Jake Gyllenhaal, Christina Applegate, Debra Messing, Greg Kinnear, Anneliese van der Pol, and Cedric the Entertainer. The new series added Mahboub, an Arab Israeli Muppet, and other new characters from the 2006 revival of Rechov Sumsum. It also features the Israeli singer Ayal Ingedashet, of Ethiopian Jewish background, as the human character Lamlam in each series. The only revival episodes broadcast on PBS Kids were "Chanukah: The Missing Menorah" and "It's Passover, Grover!" It was directed by Aaron Kaplan who followed by directing all the local sesame series thereafter.

Characters from Rechov Sumsum

 * Kipi Ben Kipod, (קיפי בן קיפוד) (translated means Kippi son of Hedgehog) a pink, giant, cheerful and optimistic porcupine analogous to Big Bird, he has a pet goat named Sheba. Kippi first appeared on Rechov Sumsum in 1983, and Kippi also appeared in Barrio Sésamo as Espinete, A big, human-sized pink hedgehog that does not wear clothes during the day, despite having used disguises (including a wizard, Dracula and a superhero called Super Espi).
 * Moishe Oofnik, Oscar the Grouch's cousin
 * Brosh, an orange monster who likes cleaning
 * Mahboub, a young blue monster who speaks both Hebrew and Arabic
 * Avigail, a young pink monster who likes to play and is happy with everyone

Characters from Sesame Street

 * Bert and Ernie a.k.a. "Benz and Arik"
 * Count von Count a.k.a. "Mar Sofer"
 * Cookie Monster a.k.a. "Ugifletzet"
 * Kermit the Frog a.k.a. "Kermit haTzfardea"
 * Grover, a blue monster from Sesame Street a.k.a "Croovy"

Books

 * Shalom Sesame Presents a Chanukah Party for Kippi is a book written by Louise Follow based on the Shalom Sesame series. It was published by Comet International as a paperback in August 1995. (ISBN 1-884857-06-X).
 * It's a Mitzvah, Grover! by Tilda Balsley (Author), Ellen Fischer (Author), Tom Leigh (Illustrator), ISBN 0761375627
 * Grover and Big Bird's Passover Celebration by Tilda Balsley (Author), Ellen Fischer (Author), Tom Leigh (Illustrator), ISBN 0761384928
 * The Count's Hanukkah Countdown by Tilda Balsley (Author), Ellen Fischer (Author), Tom Leigh (Illustrator), ISBN 0761375570

1986 series

 * 1) "The Land of Israel"
 * 2) "Tel Aviv"
 * 3) "Kibbutz"
 * 4) "The People of Israel"
 * 5) "Jerusalem"

1990 series

 * 1) "Chanukah"
 * 2) "Sing Around the Seasons"
 * 3) "Journey to Secret Places"

1991 series

 * 1) "Aleph-Bet Telethon"
 * 2) "Passover"
 * 3) "Kids Sing Israel"

2010 series

 * 1) "Welcome to Israel"
 * 2) "Chanukah: The Missing Menorah"

2011 series

 * 1) "Shabbat Shalom, Grover!"
 * 2) "Grover Plants a Tree"
 * 3) "Mitzvah on the Street"
 * 4) "Be Happy, It's Purim!"
 * 5) "It's Passover, Grover!"
 * 6) "Grover Learns Hebrew"
 * 7) "Countdown to Shavuot"
 * 8) "The Sticky Shofar"
 * 9) "Monsters in the Sukkah"
 * 10) "Adventures in Israel"

Home media
In the 1990s, the entire series was released on home video, in the VHS format.

In the mid-2000s, SISU Home Entertainment, a U.S. marketer and distributor of Israeli and Jewish video, audio, book, and multimedia properties] released the entire series on a five-disc DVD set, available as a set or per disc.

title: Shalom Sesame


text:
Talk:Agnes Nitt

Should this be merged into Witches (Discworld)? -- ALoan 16:53, 11 May 2004

 * Done it. (And added retrospective attribution for the above). -- ALoan 23:19, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Agnes Nitt


text:
Mark Johnston (racehorse trainer)

Mark Johnston (born 10 October 1959) is a Scottish racehorse trainer based in Middleham, North Yorkshire, England.

Born in Glasgow, he studied at the University of Glasgow and is a qualified vet. He started training at a stable near Louth, Lincolnshire in 1987, and his first winner was Hinari Video at Carlisle He has been training in Middleham since 1988 when he purchased Kingsley House (often falsely attributed to be the former home of Charles Kingsley, author of The Water Babies).

In 2004 he won the 1,000 Guineas with Attraction. Other successful horses he has trained are Mister Baileys, winner of the 2,000 Guineas, Shamardal, 2004 European Champion Two-Year-Old, and Double Trigger, winner of the Ascot Gold Cup.

Johnston's horses are known for their front running style and bravery in a finish, two attributes that were best advertised by the exploits of Attraction. He cites Shamardal as the best horse he ever trained, and Attraction as the one he is most proud of.

He reached his 4,000th winner on the flat in Britain when Dominating won at Pontefract on Monday 23 October 2017. He is only the third trainer in either code to reach that figure.

On 23 August 2018 Johnston became the most successful British Flat trainer of all time when Frankie Dettori rode Poet's Society to win the 3.00 at York at odds of 20–1 to give Mark his 4,194 winner. In August 2022 he took his number of winners to 5,000 when Dubai Mile won at Kempton Park.

In January 2022 Johnston's son and assistant trainer, Charlie, joined him as joint training licence holder. As joint trainers the pair were responsible for 176 winners in 2022. In December 2022 Mark Johnston announced that he would step down from the training licence, leaving Charlie as the sole trainer with Mark as assistant trainer. Johnston stressed that he wasn't retiring and the training partnership would continue as before.

The motto of the stable is "Always Trying".

He is married to Deirdre, a former teacher.

Major wins
Great Britain
 * 1,000 Guineas – (1) – Attraction (2004)
 * 2,000 Guineas – (1) – Mister Baileys (1994)
 * Ascot Gold Cup – (4) – Double Trigger (1995), Royal Rebel (2001, 2002), Subjectivist (2021)
 * Cheveley Park Stakes – (1) –  Lumiere (2015)
 * Coronation Stakes – (1) – Attraction (2004)
 * Dewhurst Stakes – (1) – Shamardal (2004)
 * Falmouth Stakes – (1) – Nahoodh (2008)
 * Middle Park Stakes – (2) – Awzaan (2009), The Last Lion (2016)
 * St. James's Palace Stakes – (1) – Bijou d'Inde (1996)
 * Sun Chariot Stakes – (1) – Attraction (2004)

🇫🇷 France
 * Critérium de Saint-Cloud – (2) –  Gear Up (2020), Dubai Mile (2022)
 * Prix Royal-Oak – (1) – Subjectivist (2020)

🇩🇪 Germany
 * Bayerisches Zuchtrennen – (1) – Lady Jane Digby (2010)
 * Preis von Europa – (1) – Jukebox Jury (2009)
 * Rheinland-Pokal – (1) – Yavana's Pace (2002)
 * German 1,000 Guineas – (2) – Nyaleti (2018), Main Edition (2019)

🇮🇪 Ireland
 * Irish 1,000 Guineas – (1) – Attraction (2004)
 * Irish St. Leger – (1) – Jukebox Jury (dead heat 2011)
 * Matron Stakes – (1) – Attraction (2005)
 * Phoenix Stakes – (1) – Princely Heir (1997)

🇮🇹 Italy
 * Gran Criterium – (3) – Lend a Hand (1997), Pearl of Love (2003), Kirklees (2006)

🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
 * Dubai Sheema Classic – (1) – Fruits of Love (1999)

title: Mark Johnston (racehorse trainer)


text: User talk:170.215.110.118

title: User talk:170.215.110.118


text:
User talk:Ab5602

Image
Hello, I'd like to upload this Image:Plaza de armas Nasca-Peru.jpg to Commons to illustrate the spanish article about Nazca but it doesn't have an origin. Could you please tell me where you took it from?. Thank you. AnnaP 00:05, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Hello again, your image is in Commons:Category:Nazca, I realized someone else had already uploaded it when I tried to do it, but the commons is getting so huge that sometimes is really hard to find something when you want to. Thank you for the link to your archive, what a load of beautiful images!. They can be very useful for Peru articles but, of course, only if you give me your permission to upload them to commons and tell me the source or credit and license you want me to add. AnnaP 02:05, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Robert, I'll upload them little by little as there are quite a few. I'm sure I'll need your help to contextualize them because I don't know Peru, and also it'd be interesting to add the museum or exibition where all the pottery and other ornaments are. I'll let you know when I have done. Regards. AnnaP 23:24, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Here is a beutiful photo of the "Plaza de Armas" in Nasca - Peru: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drmad/2627380390/in/pool-peruvianimages —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.175.234.124 (talk) 15:23, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with File:Sanfrancisco 1915 Worlds Fair.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Sanfrancisco 1915 Worlds Fair.jpg. The image has been identified as not specifying the copyright status of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. Even if you created the image yourself, you still need to release it so Wikipedia can use it. If you don't indicate the copyright status of the image on the image's description page, using an appropriate copyright tag, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days. If you made this image yourself, you can use copyright tags like PD-self (to release all rights), (to require that you be credited), or any tag here - just go to the image, click edit, and add one of those. If you have uploaded other images, please verify that you have provided copyright information for them as well.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:
 * Image use policy
 * Image copyright tags

This is an automated notice by STBotI. For assistance on the image use policy, see Media copyright questions. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 04:02, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Harry Rosman

The article Harry Rosman has been proposed for deletion  because of the following concern:
 * WP:1EVENT

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on |the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Meatsgains (talk) 20:46, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

File:Nmi.jpg listed for discussion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Nmi.jpg, has been listed at Files for discussion. Please see the to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 23:20, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Please claim your upload(s): File:Tangerinn.jpg
Hi, This image was seemingly uploaded prior to current image polices, Thank you.

However, as part of ongoing efforts to ensure all media on English Wikipedia is correctly licensed and attributed it would be appreciated if you were able to confirm, that it was your own work, by marking it as own, amending the information added by a third party, and by changing the license to an appropriate "self" variant. You can also add  to the Media by uploader or Presumed self tag(s) if  present to indicate that you've acknowledged the image, and license shown (and updated the information where appropriate).

This will assist those reviewing the many many "free" images on commons that have not yet been transferred to Commons. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 15:11, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Please claim your upload(s): File:Nmi.jpg
Hi, This image was seemingly uploaded prior to current image polices, Thank you.

However, as part of ongoing efforts to ensure all media on English Wikipedia is correctly licensed and attributed it would be appreciated if you were able to confirm, that it was your own work, by marking it as own, amending the information added by a third party, and by changing the license to an appropriate "self" variant. You can also add  to the Media by uploader or Presumed self tag(s) if  present to indicate that you've acknowledged the image, and license shown (and updated the information where appropriate).

This will assist those reviewing the many many "free" images on commons that have not yet been transferred to Commons. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 15:12, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Please claim your upload(s): File:Hockinghills.jpg
Hi, This image was seemingly uploaded prior to current image polices, Thank you.

However, as part of ongoing efforts to ensure all media on English Wikipedia is correctly licensed and attributed it would be appreciated if you were able to confirm, that it was your own work, by marking it as own, amending the information added by a third party, and by changing the license to an appropriate "self" variant. You can also add  to the Media by uploader or Presumed self tag(s) if  present to indicate that you've acknowledged the image, and license shown (and updated the information where appropriate).

This will assist those reviewing the many many "free" images on commons that have not yet been transferred to Commons. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 15:24, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

File:Hockinghills.jpg listed for discussion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Hockinghills.jpg, has been listed at Files for discussion. Please see the to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Iazyges  Consermonor   Opus meum  16:09, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

title: User talk:Ab5602


text:
TI BASIC (TI 99/4A)

TI BASIC is an ANSI-compliant interpreter for the BASIC programming language built into the 1979 Texas Instruments TI-99/4 home computer and its improved 1981 version, the TI-99/4A.

In contrast to most BASICs found on contemporary microcomputers, TI BASIC does not trace its history to Microsoft BASIC, but was instead a TI-developed interpreter following the emerging Minimal BASIC standard being created by ANSI and ECMA. This was, in turn, based on the original Dartmouth BASIC from the 1960s. There are a number of differences, sometimes subtle, between TI BASIC and the more common MS varieties.

Minimal BASIC lacks a number of features that are commonly found on contemporary BASICs, and Texas Instruments later introduced the TI Extended BASIC cartridge that enhanced the functionality accessible to BASIC users. This included a wide variety of features found in other BASICs, as well as new system functions for sprite handling, sound, and other features of the platform.

As was common on home computers, TI BASIC was used not only for programming but also as a thin operating system. On top of Minimal BASIC, TI added commands for text, graphics, and basic file operations like recording to tape or any other file system. Due to the specifics of the TI-99 platform, TI BASIC was most notable for its extremely slow performance, roughly half that of common machines, but conversely sported high numerical accuracy.

Performance
The TI-99 was based on the TMS9900 microprocessor, a 16-bit design that was originally built to provide a single-chip central processing unit (CPU) in low-end models of their TI-990 minicomputer lineup. The TMS9900 was also suitable for use in a microcomputer, but at that time the rest of the support chips required to build a complete computer were invariably 8-bit, and this included TI's wide catalog of such chips. In a minicomputer, 16-bit support systems were built up of many individual chips, but this was not suitable for a low-cost product. TI thus adopted the solution of making the machine mostly 8-bit and connecting the various support chips to this 8-bit bus, with the TMS9900 reading the bus twice to produce a 16-bit value.

The TMS9900's instruction set architecture was based on 16-bit opcodes, meaning that programs would generally be twice as large as they would be on an 8-bit machine. In the era of expensive memory, this presented a significant cost. To address this, TI created an 8-bit virtual machine with its own language or intermediate representation known as the "Graphic Programming Language", or GPL, that allowed programs to be written in a more compact format. The downside to this approach is that every GPL instruction had to be converted on the fly into one or more underlying TMS9900 instructions. The GPL code itself was stored on the 8-bit side of the machine, further slowing its performance.

For all of these reasons, the machine ran far slower than it was theoretically capable of. This was particularly noticeable in BASIC. Every instruction in the user's program had to be read from 8-bit memory, interpreted using code written in GPL, and then output back over the 8-bit bus again. As a result, TI BASIC had poor performance; on common benchmarks of the era, the TI-99 generally ran half as fast as 8-bit machines like the Commodore PET or Apple II. For instance, running the Byte Sieve in BASIC took 3960 seconds in TI BASIC, while the same test in Applesoft BASIC on the Apple II, ostensibly a much slower machine, took 2806 seconds, about 30% faster that the TI.

Editing and running
Unlike most BASICs of the era, TI BASIC did not provide a full-screen editor. Instead, a line editor was provided, which allowed the user to add or edit one line at a time. Explicit line numbers were used to order each statement. It used a > prompt to indicate the current new line in immediate mode, as opposed to the more common READY. Line numbers ranged from 1 to 32767, inclusive, and entering a line outside that range resulted in the "BAD LINE NUMBER" error. Line entry was aided by the NUMBER command, available only in immediate mode, which entered ascending line numbers, and RESEQUENCE, which renumbered an existing program.

TI BASIC also included a number of debugging commands. BREAK worked something like STOP, stopping execution on certain lines. Unlike STOP, the exit to immediate mode did not occur on the line where BREAK appeared, but on the lines BREAK referred to. For instance, BREAK 130 would cause the program to exit to immediate mode whenever it moved to line 130. This could be used, for example, by inserting a single BREAK at the top of the program to control execution, rather than having to insert it in the middle of the code. UNBREAK turned off existing breakpoints. Additionally, TRACE printed out the line number of the currently executing line in angle-brackets: etc, and UNTRACE turned it off.

Statements
The ANSI-compatible statements of TI BASIC are DATA, DEF, DIM, END, FOR..TO..STEP..NEXT, GOSUB, GOTO, IF..THEN..ELSE, INPUT, LET, NEXT, ON..GOSUB, ON..GOTO, OPTION BASE, PRINT, RANDOMIZE, READ, REM, RESTORE, RETURN, STOP. Most of these operate in the same fashion as their MS counterparts with two additions; RANDOMIZE restarts the random number generator at a given "seed" value, and OPTION BASE sets the first entry in arrays to either 0 or 1, whereas MS is always zero-based. To this standard set it added CALL, CLOSE, DISPLAY and OPEN.

In keeping with the Minimal BASIC standard, IF statements could only perform branches, they could not perform arbitrary statements as was common in almost every other BASIC of the era. For instance, code such as:

is not valid in TI BASIC. Instead, this would have to be performed using multiple lines:

This can easily lead to off-by-one errors if the conversion is not careful about changing the sense of the boolean comparison. TI BASIC did, however, support the ELSE clause:

The PRINT statement used colons to separate items on different lines, in addition to the more common comma or semicolon. This precluded its use as a statement separator, a concept that TI BASIC did not have. This means a line can have only a single statement. Due to the way BASIC interpreters work, GOTO-based loops can be sped up significantly by combining code onto a single line, which avoids having to search through the program for line numbers. This seemingly minor missing feature may result in much slower code, and adding this feature was part of Extended BASIC.

Extensions to the Minimal BASIC system were often not represented directly in BASIC, but were instead accessed via the CALL command and a series of named GPL-based subroutines. For instance, CALL CLEAR clears the screen, and CALL KEY returns the keycode of the currently pressed key on the keyboard. The language lacked PEEK and POKE so there was no official way to create new CALLable code within BASIC, to do this one would require the TI Editor/Assembler, the TI Mini Memory cartridge which included a small assembler, or by using Extended BASIC.

Functions
Unlike Microsoft BASICs, which used LEFT$, MID$, RIGHT$, and INSTR for manipulating strings, TI BASIC used the ANSI-compliant SEG$ and POS.
 * ABS : Absolute value
 * ASC : ASCII numeric value of the first character of a string
 * ATN : Arctangent
 * CHR$ : Convert a number into a string with an ASCII character
 * COS : Cosine
 * EOF : Test whether the end of a file has been reached
 * EXP : Exponentiation
 * INT : greatest integer less than or equal to the parameter
 * LEN : Length of a string
 * LOG : Natural logarithm
 * POS : First occurrence of a string in another string
 * RND : Pseudorandom number generator
 * SEG$ : Return a substring of a string
 * SGN : Sign function
 * SIN : Sine
 * SQR : Square root
 * STR$ : Convert a number to a string
 * TAN : Tangent
 * VAL : Convert a string to a number

Subprograms
Subprograms are called with CALL statement (e.g. CALL CLEAR).

 * CHAR Definition of graphical characters
 * CLEAR Clears the screen
 * COLOR Defines foreground- and background color for 8 characters
 * GCHAR Reads one character at a specified position from the screen
 * HCHAR Writes a character to a screen position and repeats it horizontally
 * JOYST Returns the position of the joystick
 * KEY Reads from the keyboard without echo on the screen
 * SCREEN Changes the color of the screen
 * SOUND Creates sounds (using a frequency) and noise
 * VCHAR Writes a character to a screen position and repeats it vertically

Extended BASIC

TI BASIC was located in the system's internal ROMs. In 1981, TI released a plug-in ROM cartridge that added additional functions to the existing code, improving the language in a number of ways. Known as Extended BASIC, it was a highly anticipated addition to the platform.

Among the changes was the addition of the ability to have multiple statements on a line. Using multiple statements may improve performance; loops that are implemented in a single line run much faster. Additionally, statements could now span several lines. As the underlying dialect already used the colon for string separators, Extended BASIC used the double-colon for this purpose. Confusingly, as a statement with two colons was also possible in TI BASIC, for instance, PRINT "A"::"B", which would output "A", a blank line and then "B", so these statements required a space to be added in Extended BASIC, PRINT "A": :"B".

Another overdue addition was that IF statements could now perform arbitrary statements, rather than only a GOTO. In Extended BASIC one could write a simple statement like IF X>10 THEN X=X-1. This also worked in the ELSE clause, allowing statements like basic.

Other additions include a small selection of new statements, including ACCEPT, IMAGE, LINPUT, ON BREAK, ON ERROR, ON WARNING, SUB, SUBEND and SUBEXIT. The last three statements are used for structured programming, allowing the creation of named subroutines. Extended BASIC also included a number of new functions and especially CALLable routines. Among the latter was a library of sprite commands, including ones that created motion that continued automatically.

Speech synthesis
When equipped with the TI Speech Synthesizer, TI Extended BASIC users could also generate speech from a predefined vocabulary as easily as writing text on-screen. For example, the following line of text would cause the speech synthesizer to identify the computer:

CALL SAY("HELLO I AM A #TEXAS INSTRUMENTS# T I NINETY NINE FOUR A HOME COMPUTER")

Multi-word phrases are delimited with the # symbol, as  in this example. Using a word not included in the speech synthesizer's built-in vocabulary of 338 words and phrases would cause it to slowly spell out the word. TI's Terminal Emulator II cartridge provided text-to-speech functionality.

title: TI BASIC (TI 99/4A)


text:
Transfer (group theory)

In the mathematical field of group theory, the transfer defines, given a group G and a subgroup H of finite index, a group homomorphism from G to the abelianization of H. It can be used in conjunction with the Sylow theorems to obtain certain numerical results on the existence of finite simple groups.

The transfer was defined by and rediscovered by.

Construction
The construction of the map proceeds as follows: Let [G:H] = n and select coset representatives, say
 * $$x_1, \dots, x_n,\,$$

for H in G, so G can be written as a disjoint union
 * $$G = \bigcup\ x_i H.$$

Given y in G, each yxi is in some coset xjH and so
 * $$yx_i = x_jh_i$$

for some index j and some element hi of H. The value of the transfer for y is defined to be the image of the product
 * $$\textstyle \prod_{i=1}^n h_i $$

in H/H′, where H′ is the commutator subgroup of H. The order of the factors is irrelevant since H/H′ is abelian.

It is straightforward to show that, though the individual hi depends on the choice of coset representatives, the value of the transfer does not. It is also straightforward to show that the mapping defined this way is a homomorphism.

Example
If G is cyclic then the transfer takes any element y of G to y[G:H].

A simple case is that seen in the Gauss lemma on quadratic residues, which in effect computes the transfer for the multiplicative group of non-zero residue classes modulo a prime number p, with respect to the subgroup {1, −1}. One advantage of looking at it that way is the ease with which the correct generalisation can be found, for example for cubic residues in the case that p − 1 is divisible by three.

Homological interpretation
This homomorphism may be set in the context of group homology. In general, given any subgroup H of G and any G-module A, there is a corestriction map of homology groups $$\mathrm{Cor} : H_n(H,A) \to H_n(G,A)$$ induced by the inclusion map $$i: H \to G$$, but if we have that H is of finite index in G, there are also restriction maps $$\mathrm{Res} : H_n(G,A) \to H_n(H,A)$$. In the case of n = 1 and $$A=\mathbb{Z}$$ with the trivial G-module structure, we have the map $$\mathrm{Res} : H_1(G,\mathbb{Z}) \to H_1(H,\mathbb{Z})$$. Noting that $$H_1(G,\mathbb{Z})$$ may be identified with $$G/G'$$ where $$G'$$ is the commutator subgroup, this gives the transfer map via $$G \xrightarrow{\pi} G/G' \xrightarrow{\mathrm{Res}} H/H'$$, with $$\pi$$ denoting the natural projection. The transfer is also seen in algebraic topology, when it is defined between classifying spaces of groups.

Terminology
The name transfer translates the German Verlagerung, which was coined by Helmut Hasse.

Commutator subgroup
If G is finitely generated, the commutator subgroup G′ of G has finite index in G and H=G′, then the corresponding transfer map is trivial. In other words, the map sends G to 0 in the abelianization of G′. This is important in proving the principal ideal theorem in class field theory. See the Emil Artin-John Tate Class Field Theory notes.

title: Transfer (group theory)