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Raymond Damadian

Raymond Vahan Damadian (March 16, 1936 – August 3, 2022) was an American physician, medical practitioner, and inventor of the first nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) scanning machine.

Damadian's research into sodium and potassium in living cells led him to his first experiments with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) which caused him to first propose the MR body scanner in 1969. Damadian discovered that tumors and normal tissue can be distinguished in vivo by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) because of their prolonged relaxation times, both T1 (spin-lattice relaxation) or T2 (spin-spin relaxation). Damadian was the first to perform a full-body scan of a human being in 1977 to diagnose cancer. Damadian invented an apparatus and method to use NMR safely and accurately to scan the human body, a method now well known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Damadian received several prizes. In 2001, the Lemelson-MIT Prize Program bestowed its $100,000 Lifetime Achievement Award on Damadian as "the man who invented the MRI scanner." He went on to collaborate with Wilson Greatbach, one early developer of the implantable pacemaker, to develop an MRI-compatible pacemaker. The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia gave its recognition of Damadian's work on MRI with the Bower Award in Business Leadership. He was also named Knights of Vartan 2003 "Man of the Year". He received a National Medal of Technology in 1988 and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989.

Early life
Raymond Vahan Damadian (Ռայմոնտ Վահան Տամատեան) was born in New York City, to an Armenian family. His father Vahan was a photoengraver who had immigrated from what is now Turkey, while his mother Odette (née Yazedjian) was an accountant. He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1956, and an M.D. degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City in 1960. He studied the violin at Juilliard for 8 years, and played in Junior Davis Cup tennis competitions.

He met his future wife, Donna Terry, while he had a job as a tennis coach. She invited him to the 1957 Billy Graham crusade at Madison Square Garden, and he responded to the altar call. Raymond and Donna married a year after he finished medical school, and they had three children. Raymond said that he first became interested in detecting cancer when, as a boy of 10, he saw his maternal grandmother, with whom he was very close, die painfully of breast cancer.

Magnetic resonance imaging
Damadian's early work on NMR concerned investigating potassium ions inside cells. He found that the potassium relaxation times were much shorter compared with aqueous solutions of potassium ions. This suggested that potassium was not free but complexed to 'fixed-charge' counter-ions, as he had previously determined.

He and other researchers independently investigated the signals of 1H NMR in cells, and found that the relaxation times were much shorter than in distilled water. This was consistent with ordering of a large part of the water by adsorption onto macromolecular surfaces. Damadian predicted that cancerous cells would have longer relaxation times, both because of the disordering of malignant cells and because of their elevated potassium levels, since the potassium ions would be 'structure-breaking' to the ordered water fraction.

In a 1971 paper in the journal Science, SUNY Downstate Medical Center professor Damadian reported that tumors can be detected in vivo by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) because of much longer relaxation times than normal tissue. He suggested that these differences could be used to detect cancer, even in the early stages where it would be most treatable, though later research would find that these differences, while real, are too variable for diagnostic purposes. However, Damadian in his seminal paper claimed only that his method was a detection tool, making no claim about being a diagnostic tool, but intended that it would provide a non-invasive way of detecting cancers and monitoring the effectiveness of their therapy.

In 1974, he received the first patent in the field of MRI when he patented the concept of NMR for detecting cancer after filing an application in 1972. As the National Science Foundation notes, "The patent included the idea of using NMR to 'scan' the human body to locate cancerous tissue." However, it did not describe a method for generating pictures from such a scan or precisely how such a scan might be done. However, Damadian's recognition that NMR relaxation time can be used to distinguish different tissue types and malignant tissue is what gives MRI its contrast to tissue types.

In the 1950s, Herman Carr reported creating a one-dimensional magnetic resonance (MR) image. Prompted by Damadian's report on the potential medical uses of NMR, Paul Lauterbur expanded on Carr's technique and developed a way to generate the first MRI images, in 2D and 3D, using gradients. Peter Mansfield from the University of Nottingham then developed a mathematical technique that would allow scans to take seconds rather than hours and produce clearer images than Lauterbur had. While Lauterbur and Mansfield focused on animals and human limbs, Damadian built the first full-body MRI machine and produced the first full magnetic resonance imaging ("MRI") scan of the human body, albeit using a "focused field" technique that differs considerably from modern imaging. According to a Wall Street Journal article, Damadian's initial methods were flawed for practical use, relying on a point-by-point scan of the entire body and using relaxation rates, which turned out to not be an effective indicator of cancerous tissue. However, the same article pointed out, "Nevertheless, his observation of T1 and T2 differences in cancerous tissue was a Eureka moment for Paul Lauterbur." Furthermore, Damadian's seminal paper documented in its Table 2 that T1 relaxation times were different, beyond experimental uncertainty, across all his samples over different healthy tissues: rectus muscle, liver, stomach, small intestine, kidney, and brain. This showed the way to accurate imaging of the body's soft tissues for the first time; X-ray imaging was severely deficient for soft tissue analysis because the difference in absorption was so small (<4%). So when in the court case Fonar v. General Electric, GE's attorneys made the same claim that relaxations times were also prolonged in non-cancerous tissue, so were not a good diagnostic, Fonar's attorneys responded that it was unfair to punish Damadian because his methods detected even more features than he had intended. Indeed, even today, 90% of MRI scans on patients produce images that are relaxation dependent, either T1- or T2-dependent images.

First human MRI body scan
On July 3, 1977, the first MRI body exam was performed on a human being (the first human scan was performed by Peter Mansfield's team in Nottingham a year earlier, on fellow author Andrew Maudsley's finger). It took almost five hours to produce one image: a 106-voxel point-by-point scan of Larry Minkoff's thorax. The images were rudimentary by modern standards. Damadian, along with colleagues Larry Minkoff and Michael Goldsmith took seven years to reach this point. They named their original machine "Indomitable" to capture the spirit of their struggle to do what many said could not be done, though no systems would ever use Damadian's method. His technique of imaging was never made into a practically usable method and has therefore never been used in MR imaging as we know it today.

His patent followed on the heels of rumors already floating throughout the scientific community of Lauterbur's proposed idea of using NMR in vivo (still in the human body, an imaging device). However, in 1969, Damadian had previously proposed NMR as a method for external scanning of internal cancers in the body, i.e. in vivo:

 * I am very much interested in the potential of NMR spectroscopy for early non-destructive detection of internal malignancies. … I will make every effort myself, and through collaborators, to establish that all tumors can be recognized by their potassium relaxation times or H2O-proton spectra and proceed with the development of instrumentation and probes that can be used to scan the human body externally for early signs of malignancy. Detection of internal tumors during the earliest states of their genesis should bring us very close to the total eradication of the disease.

Though it would later turn out to be irreproducible, in his 1971 Science paper, Damadian showed different NMR signals for tumors and different tissue types:

 * In principle, nuclear magnetic resonance [NMR] techniques combine many of the desirable features of an external probe for the detection of internal cancer.

This was clearly influential, as Lauterbur wrote in 1986:

 * … the attention of the medical community was first attracted by the report of Damadian that some animal tumors have remarkably long water proton relaxation times.
 * … even long normal tissues differed markedly among themselves in NMR relaxation times, and I wondered whether there might be some way to noninvasively map out such quantities within the body.

Thus it was the discovery of strongly variant relaxation times that led to Lauterbur's quest to represent these relaxation time differences graphically. Without these differences, unknown until Damadian's work, there would be nothing to make an image with. Hence a book on MRI history, which included chapters on both Damadian and Lauterbur, Chapter 8 entitled, "Raymond V. Damadian: Originator of the Concept of Whole-Body NMR Scanning (MRI) and Discoverer of the NMR Tissue Relaxation Differences That Made It Possible." The book pointed out the importance of both men:

 * Because of the contributions of Dr. Raymond Damadian and Dr. Paul Lauterbur, magnetic resonance imaging has become the most powerful and reliable diagnostic tool in medicine...
 * Millions of people the world over enjoy a higher quality of life and many lives have been saved, thanks to the contributions of Damadian and Lauterbur.

 * NMR scanning resulted from two essential steps. They were taken by the two great MRI pioneers of this volume, Dr. Raymond Damadian and Dr. Paul Lauterbur. Dr. Damadian provided the first step, the discovery of tissue NMR signal differences from which the image is made and the first concept of an NMR body scanner that would utilize these signal differences to detect disease in the human body. Dr. Lauterbur provided the next step of visualizing these signal differences as an image and supplied the first method for acquiring these signals at practical speeds. It does not seem likely that MRI could have come to pass without the key steps contributed by both scientists.

 * Without Damadian's discovery, it could not be known that serious diseases like cancer could be detected by an NMR scanner or that tissue NMR signals possessed sufficient contrast to create medically useful images. Without Lauterbur's contribution, development of a practical method for visualizing these signal differences as an image might have occurred much less efficiently. Moreover, the incredible amount of courage and pugnacity shown by Damadian, working alone with only two students, without any consistent granting, thus leading him to do most of the development of his system as a self-made man learning when required, electronics, machining, welding and many other technologies in order to build his first prototype, is exemplary for any researcher. This have to be compared with the working conditions of Lauterbur or Mansfield, both working with comfortable fundings in spacious laboratories with many colleagues and students. At least from the point of view of the merit, the work of Damadian, indeed, is considerable. …

 * Recognizing their achievements, the President of the United States awarded the nation's highest honor in technology, the National Medal of Technology, jointly to Dr. Damadian and Dr. Lauterbur for the development of MRI. In presenting the award on July 15, 1988, President Ronald Reagan cited both scientists 'for their independent contributions in conceiving and developing the application of magnetic resonance technology to medical uses including whole-body scanning and diagnostic imaging.

Damadian's machine is now in the Smithsonian Institution. As late as 1982, there were a handful of MRI scanners in the entire United States; today there are thousands.

Fonar Corporation
In 1978, Damadian formed his own company, Fonar (which stood for "Field Focused Nuclear Magnetic Resonance"), for the production of MRI scanners, and in 1980, he produced the first commercial one. Damadian's "focused field" technology proved significantly less efficient and slower than Lauterbur's gradient approach. His scanner, named "Indomitable," failed to sell. Fonar eventually abandoned Damadian's technique in favor of the methods adopted by Lauterbur and Mansfield. Damadian and Fonar enforced the royalties on patents held by Damadian. They settled with many large companies, but a case against General Electric went to the Federal Circuit, which upheld a $129 million ruling against GE for violation of Damadian's patents. Damadian said that the judgment money was all put back into Fonar for research and development purposes.

Damadian was the company's largest shareholder, with 8% of stock worth $6.5 million. Despite owning only 8% of the stock, he maintained almost 100% control of the company through a separate class of shares (Class C) that only Damadian controlled 2007. Damadian later collaborated with Wilson Greatbatch, one early developer of the implantable pacemaker, to develop an MRI-compatible pacemaker. He invented a stand-up MRI system and has 15 MRI scanning centers across the United States. There are a number of independent MRI centers that use this technology both in the U.S. and around the world. The company conceived and built the world's first Upright Multi-Positional MRI, which was recognized as The "Invention of the Year" in 2007 by the Intellectual Properties Owners Association Education Foundation.

Creationism
Damadian was a lifelong Christian. In the February 4, 2014, Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate, Damadian was one of the scientists who recorded themselves on video professing a belief in young Earth creationism for Answers in Genesis president Ken Ham to cite.

Death
Damadian died on August 3, 2022, at the age of 86 from cardiac arrest.

Awards and honors
Damadian received a National Medal of Technology in 1988 and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989. His original MRI full-body scanner was given to the Smithsonian Institution in the 1980s and is now on loan and on display at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Ohio. In 2001, the Lemelson-MIT Prize Program bestowed its $100,000 Lifetime Achievement Award on Damadian as "the man who invented the MRI scanner."

The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia gave its recognition of Damadian's work on MRI with the Bower Award in Business Leadership. He was named the Knights of Vartan 2003 "Man of the Year." In September 2003, he was honored with the Innovation Award in Bioscience from The Economist.

Nobel Prize controversy
In 2003, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield for their discoveries related to MRI. Although Nobel rules allow for the award to be shared by up to three recipients, Damadian was not given the prize. The controversy over who played what part in the development of the MRI had gone on for years prior to the Nobel announcement, and many in the scientific community felt that the Nobel had not been awarded for the MRI for so long due to debate over Damadian's role in its development.

Damadian said that credit should go to "me, and then Lauterbur," and Lauterbur felt that only he should get credit. In 1997 the National Academy of Sciences commissioned a timeline of MRI milestones, and four of the 12 in an initial draft were attributed to Damadian. At the final publication in 2001, longer than any other publication in the series had ever been taken, none of the milestones was attributed to Damadian. The text said that Damadian's methods had "not proved clinically reliable in detecting or diagnosing cancer." After Damadian's lawyers sent the NAS a threatening letter, the text on the NAS website was revised, but not to Damadian's satisfaction. Damadian said in 2002, "If I had not been born, would MRI have existed? I don't think so. If Lauterbur had not been born? I would have gotten there. Eventually."

The New York Times wrote:"The issue has been the subject of a dispute between Dr. Damadian and Dr. Lauterbur and has been known for years in academic circles, with some fearing that the Nobel committee would steer clear of magnetic resonance imaging altogether because of the Swedes' supposed distaste for controversial discoveries. Dr. Lauterbur, 74, is not in good health, and the committee may have decided that its prize, which cannot be given posthumously, needed to be awarded for the discovery now or never.'."

After the announcement of Lauterbur and Mansfield's Nobels, between October and November 2003, an ad hoc group called "The Friends of Raymond Damadian" (formed by Damadian's company FONAR ) took out full-page advertisements in The New York Times twice, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and one of the largest newspapers in Sweden, Dagens Nyheter protesting his exclusion with the headline "The Shameful Wrong That Must Be Righted" in an attempt to get the Nobel Committee to change its mind and grant him a share of the Prize.

Damadian suggested that Lauterbur and Mansfield should have rejected the Nobel Prize unless Damadian was given joint recognition. Supporting Damadian were various MRI experts including John Throck Watson, Eugene Feigelson, V. Adrian Parsegian, David Stark, and James Mattson. New York Times columnist Horace Freeland Judson criticised this behavior, noting that there is "no Nobel Prize for whining" and that many deserving candidates who may have had better claims than Damadian, such as Lise Meitner, Oswald Avery, and Jocelyn Bell, had been previously denied a share of the Nobel. However, he had to admit that Erwin Chargaff, whose two rules were instrumental in the discovery of DNA's structure, was very vocal about his omission, and Fred Hoyle was irate about Jocelyn Bell's exclusion.

Others pointed out that while Damadian had hypothesized that NMR relaxation times might be used to detect cancer, he did not develop (nor did he suggest) the current way of creating images. Since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Lauterbur and Mansfield for the development of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Damadian's exclusion makes more sense. Some felt that research scientists sided with Lauterbur because he was one of their own, while Damadian was a physician who had profited greatly from his early patents. Charles Springer, an expert in MRI at Oregon Health and Science University, said that if a poll was taken of the academic community, most would agree with the Nobel Committee's conclusions. And Mansfield wrote in his autobiography that "the person who really missed out" on winning the prize was Erwin Hahn for his contribution to the principles of spin echoes.

Chemist George Kauffman argued that Damadian deserved the Nobel: Undoubtedly, both Damadian and Lauterbur made major contributions to MRI imaging and scanning. Without Damadian's relaxation discoveries that showed sharp discrimination between tissues and particularly a serious disease like cancer, there would have been no reason to entertain or even consider a method for displaying the relaxation differences so that they could be visualized as an image. Furthermore, except for the relaxation differences discovered by Damadian, there would be no reason to expect that such an image would show anything, i.e., that any tissue NMR contrast existed with which to make an image. Science and technology are two distinctly different enterprises. Science is the branch of knowledge dedicated to compiling factual information and understanding natural phenomena. It precedes technology, and technology cannot advance without it. Without science's new knowledge of natural phenomena, technology's new methods for exploiting and taking advantage of nature's secrets cannot be created. The new scientific information is necessarily the first step.

Moreover, there is no doubt that Damadian's seminal discovery preceded Lauterbur's developments.

Philosopher Michael Ruse writing for the Metanexus Institute suggested that Damadian might have been denied a Nobel prize because of his creationist views, saying: "I cringe at the thought that Raymond Damadian was refused his just honor because of his religious beliefs. Having silly ideas in one field is no good reason to deny merit for great ideas in another field. Apart from the fact that this time the Creation Scientists will think that there is good reason to think that they are the objects of unfair treatment at the hands of the scientific community."

Damadian himself said, "Before this happened, nobody ever said to me 'They will not give you the Nobel Prize for Medicine because you are a creation scientist'. If people were actively campaigning against me because of that, I never knew it."

In his 2015 memoir Gifted Mind, Damadian suggested the Nobel committee may have rejected him because of his religious beliefs.

title: Raymond Damadian


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Coutances Cathedral

Coutances Cathedral (Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Coutances) is a Gothic Catholic cathedral constructed from 1210 to 1274 in the town of Coutances, Normandy, France. It incorporated the remains of an earlier Norman cathedral.

It is the seat of the Bishop of Coutances and Avranches and was previously that of the Bishop of Coutances.

Standing 80 metres (295 ft) tall, it dominates the town and can be seen from as far away as the island of Jersey. It is a classic example of the Gothic style of Normandy in its use of long, straight, vertical lines.

History
The construction of the first church or cathedral in Coutances in the 5th century is credited to Saint Ereptiolus, traditionally also the first bishop. This cathedral was destroyed during the invasion of the Normans in the 9th century.

The site lay waste for about 150 years but, in the mid-11th century, Robert, bishop of Coutances, undertook the rebuilding of the cathedral in the Romanesque or Norman style, starting with the nave. Robert died shortly afterward, but the work was carried forward by Geoffrey de Montbray, his successor as bishop, appointed in 1048. Geoffrey was on good terms with William, Duke of Normandy (later known as the Conqueror), who attended the consecration of the new cathedral in 1056. The bishop subsequently accompanied William on the conquest of England. The cathedral benefited greatly from the enormous profits of this conquest.

The Romanesque cathedral suffered later from a serious fire. In 1210 Bishop Hugues de Morville started to build the present Gothic cathedral, retaining the dimensions and much of the fabric of the Romanesque building. Substantial remains of it underlie many of the walls and towers of the present cathedral.

The new cathedral was completed in 1274 and has remained basically unaltered since. The twin towers rise to almost 80m, and its octagonal lantern tower stands over 57m high.

Some damage was done in the Wars of Religion in 1562 but this was repaired soon after. The roodscreen was removed in the 17th century. In 1794 during the French Revolution much superficial damage was done: statues were removed from their niches whilst others were slashed with swords. The cathedral was used successively as a theatre, a grain store and a Temple of Reason, but despite the losses and damage, survived with its structure intact.

During World War II, although much damage was done to the town of Coutances, the cathedral again escaped almost unscathed.

Building description
Over the entrance is a modern window showing the figures of the cathedral founders of 1048 and 1218 (bishops Geoffroy de Montbray and Hugues de Morville); in the centre is the figure of Saint Ereptiole, believed to have built the first church in Coutances.

In the south aisle is a pillar with a carved capital depicting medieval ladies.

The lantern tower is designed to provide an intense source of light in the centre of the cathedral. Eyes are drawn to the circle at the centre which is meant to represent Heaven, while the earth is the square, and the octagon represents the Resurrection.

Behind the principal altar stand six pairs of pillars supporting the roof, which are said to stand for the Twelve Apostles. The windows date from the 15th century.

The south ambulatory contains the Chapel of Saint Joseph, with a wall painting of 1381 that depicts the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Christ on the Cross, and the Holy Spirit as a dove.

The Chapel of Saint Laud, also in the south ambulatory, is one of the oldest parts of the cathedral, dating from the 13th century. The stained glass window shows details from the life of Saint Lo, including the saint celebrating mass with the dove of the Holy Spirit appearing above the altar. (His helper holds the hem of his robe to prevent him stepping back on to it and tripping.)

The north ambulatory contains the Chapel of Saint Marcouf, with a window showing scenes from the saint's life. The north ambulatory also holds the holy oils (chrism) used during the sacraments of baptism and extreme unction, confirmation, and at the ordination of priests.

The north transept displays a 13th-century stained-glass window showing scenes from the lives of the saints Thomas Becket, George and Blaise.

The floor of the north aisle is laid with medieval tiles decorated with the fleur-de-lys, or lily, the emblem of the French royal family (and a symbol associated with the Virgin Mary). Other tiles show the arms of Castile, next to the fleur-de-lys of France. The baptismal font is located in the north aisle.

The cathedral has had an organ since before 1468. The current organ was built in 1728 and has four keyboards or manuals, 51 stops and a pedal board. The west window is partially hidden by the organ.

Above the south porch are the symbols of the four Evangelists (Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).

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

title: Coutances Cathedral


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Nitrogen trichloride

Nitrogen trichloride, also known as trichloramine, is the chemical compound with the formula NCl3. This yellow, oily, and explosive liquid is most commonly encountered as a byproduct of chemical reactions between ammonia-derivatives and chlorine (for example, in swimming pools). Alongside monochloramine and dichloramine, trichloramine is responsible for the distinctive 'chlorine smell' associated with swimming pools, where the compound is readily formed as a product from hypochlorous acid reacting with ammonia and other nitrogenous substances in the water, such as urea from urine.

Preparation and structure
The compound is prepared by treatment of ammonium salts, such as sal ammoniac with a chlorine source.

Intermediates in this conversion include monochloramine and dichloramine, NH2Cl and NHCl2, respectively.

Like ammonia, NCl3 is a pyramidal molecule. The N-Cl distances are 1.76 Å, and the Cl-N-Cl angles are 107°.

Reactions and uses
The chemistry of NCl3 has been well explored. It is moderately polar with a dipole moment of 0.6 D. The nitrogen center is basic but much less so than ammonia. It is hydrolyzed by hot water to release ammonia and hypochlorous acid.

explodes to give Nitrogen and chlorine gas.

This reaction is inhibited for dilute gases.

Nitrogen trichloride can form in small amounts when public water supplies are disinfected with monochloramine, and in swimming pools by disinfecting chlorine reacting with urea in urine and sweat from bathers.

Nitrogen trichloride, trademarked as Agene, was at one time used to bleach flour, but this practice was banned in the United States in 1949 due to safety concerns.

Safety
Nitrogen trichloride can irritate mucous membranes—it is a lachrymatory agent, but has never been used as such. The pure substance (rarely encountered) is a dangerous explosive, being sensitive to light, heat, even moderate shock, and organic compounds. Pierre Louis Dulong first prepared it in 1812, and lost several fingers and an eye in two explosions. In 1813, an NCl3 explosion blinded Sir Humphry Davy temporarily, inducing him to hire Michael Faraday as a co-worker. They were both injured in another NCl3 explosion shortly thereafter.

title: Nitrogen trichloride


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Talk:Bravo test

In case someone finds their way here, I have done this because a much more comprehensive page on this subject exists at Castle Bravo.

title: Talk:Bravo test


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Category:Beauty pageant contestants

A beauty contest, or beauty pageant, is a competition between people, based largely, though not always entirely, on the beauty of their physical appearance.

title: Category:Beauty pageant contestants


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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pansurrealism

Pansurrealism
There are no hits on any major search engines for this term, but there will be soon if this article stays on wikipedia and gets syndicated... I think that is probably the author's intent, to (ab)use Wikipedia to help popularize a new term. The article currently quotes one of the people editing it, and in my opinion is not likely to ever be Wikipedia-quality text. Delete.  ~leif ☺ HELO 05:14, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC) Maybe I do have several IP's, Our rather large enterprise has an old Cray master computer converted from government use. It may be a method of avoiding surveilance. Anyway, you have a misspelling on your "leif" page - "incresingly." SHR
 * Delete, self-confessed neologism. —Stormie 06:31, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * Clean it and kill it. Delete.--MaxMad 11:02, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Hmm .. a made up branch of surrealism. BJAODN?  At the very least, delete - TB 11:45, Oct 5, 2004
 * Delete - David Gerard 11:50, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Do what you want. As far as a figure like Terrance Lindall creates a new term, it is in the history books. That' what major figures do, redefine. If you are able to follow the logic of the term's creation and if you allow that Lindall has a vast following world wide, you would have to accept the term. but follow your hearts. The term is now valid wordlwide. SHR
 * I'm not saying the term can't ever be "valid", just that it is currently unencyclopedic. If (without the help of wikipedia) this term does come into wide usage, then one day it might deserve an article here. So far that is not the case. And like so many other things you've written, your statement that the "term is now valid wordlwide" is technically not false (who defines "valid"?) but is misleading, and also misspelled. Ultimately, I think your edits consistently show bad faith and I ask you to please stop your (sometimes subtle) trolling of wikipedia. Copying and pasting this VfD page to Talk:Surrealism was not appropriate, nor was calling pro-delete voters "idiots" (see ).   ~leif ☺ HELO 20:00, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Point accepted. Please delete with my good grace. But to say I am abusing Wikipedia to get the term in use is slander. It will be in use anyway. I know you do not like me. But you have a NPOV meaning NEGATIVE point of view. That is not good for your bright career as an editor. Apologies for the "idiot" remark..uncalled for. SHR
 * On the contrary, I do not dislike you; I don't even know who you are. I do however dislike the wikipedia edit history, from several different IP addresses, that I presume to be from the same person (many signed "SHR"). And I stand by my description of much of the said activity as "abuse". Thank you for not arguing further about the deletion of this article, and declaring your "good grace" with regards to it.  ~leif ☺ HELO 22:13, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete, although the history should be kept so future generations can marvel at the irony of Daniel C. Boyer being dismissive about (other people's) surrealistic neologisms -- GWO 15:37, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Where is the irony? Where I am dismissive of this neologism?  Far from it.  Stop making stuff up.  --Daniel C. Boyer 12:51, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Neologism, not notable.   — Gwalla | Talk 19:36, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete indeed. Neologism, not notable. Fire Star 20:22, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete this neologism. --Improv 19:38, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Another Delete vote. --Neschek 16:59, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Delete: Once the neologism does catch on, and when it shows a particularly unique usage, then it should go in Wiktionary, not Wikipedia. Geogre 20:56, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)


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Money illusion

In economics, money illusion, or price illusion, is a cognitive bias where money is thought of in nominal, rather than real terms. In other words, the face value (nominal value) of money is mistaken for its purchasing power (real value) at a previous point in time. Viewing purchasing power as measured by the nominal value is false, as modern fiat currencies have no intrinsic value and their real value depends purely on the price level. The term was coined by Irving Fisher in Stabilizing the Dollar. It was popularized by John Maynard Keynes in the early twentieth century, and Irving Fisher wrote an important book on the subject, The Money Illusion, in 1928.

The existence of money illusion is disputed by monetary economists who contend that people act rationally (i.e. think in real prices) with regard to their wealth. Eldar Shafir, Peter A. Diamond, and Amos Tversky (1997) have provided empirical evidence for the existence of the effect and it has been shown to affect behaviour in a variety of experimental and real-world situations.

Shafir et al. also state that money illusion influences economic behaviour in three main ways:

 * Price stickiness. Money illusion has been proposed as one reason why nominal prices are slow to change even where inflation has caused real prices to fall or costs to rise.
 * Contracts and laws are not indexed to inflation as frequently as one would rationally expect.
 * Social discourse, in formal media and more generally, reflects some confusion about real and nominal value.

Money illusion can also influence people's perceptions of outcomes. Experiments have shown that people generally perceive an approximate 2% cut in nominal income with no change in monetary value as unfair, but see a 2% rise in nominal income where there is 4% inflation as fair, despite them being almost rational equivalents. This result is consistent with the 'Myopic Loss Aversion theory'. Furthermore, the money illusion means nominal changes in price can influence demand even if real prices have remained constant.

Explanations and implications
Explanations of money illusion generally describe the phenomenon in terms of heuristics. Nominal prices provide a convenient rule of thumb for determining value and real prices are only calculated if they seem highly salient (e.g. in periods of hyperinflation or in long term contracts).

Some have suggested that money illusion implies that the negative relationship between inflation and unemployment described by the Phillips curve might hold, contrary to more recent macroeconomic theories such as the "expectations-augmented Phillips curve". If workers use their nominal wage as a reference point when evaluating wage offers, firms can keep real wages relatively lower in a period of high inflation as workers accept the seemingly high nominal wage increase. These lower real wages would allow firms to hire more workers in periods of high inflation.

Money illusion is believed to be instrumental in the Friedmanian version of the Phillips curve. Actually, money illusion is not enough to explain the mechanism underlying this Phillips curve. It requires two additional assumptions. First, prices respond differently to modified demand conditions: an increased aggregate demand exerts its influence on commodity prices sooner than it does on labour market prices. Therefore, the drop in unemployment is, after all, the result of decreasing real wages and an accurate judgement of the situation by employees is the only reason for the return to an initial (natural) rate of unemployment (i.e. the end of the money illusion, when they finally recognize the actual dynamics of prices and wages). The other (arbitrary) assumption refers to a special informational asymmetry: whatever employees are unaware of in connection with the changes in (real and nominal) wages and prices can be clearly observed by employers. The new classical version of the Phillips curve was aimed at removing the puzzling additional presumptions, but its mechanism still requires money illusion.

title: Money illusion


text:
Talk:Vladimír Špidla

=Comments=

NPOV dispute
"... Stanislav Gross whose government will however not differ much from the previous one and was officially appointed on August 4. After a short hesitation Špidla accepted nomination to the European Commission.

''Špidla is considered a part of CSSD's left wing (though he's strongly anti-communist); in foreign policy, he has always been strongly pro-European and supports further integration. His generally accepted image is a man of personal integrity and honesty (putting him at the top of Czech politicians) but a dry technocrat who couldn't communicate his undeniable statesman's vision to the public and wasn't even able to keep his own party in line as his predecessor did. His acceptance of the commission post was criticised as a "golden parachute", ousting the previous comparatively popular commissary appointed by his own government, but also as running away from his battle to steer the course of CSSD and Czech politics."''

PROPHECIES IN WIKIPEDIA (viz Gross and his government) ? PHRASES FROM (antiCSSD) MEDIA, such as "golden parachute" ? And "...was criticised... " BY WHOM, WHAT ? Have you thoroughly read everything regarding to NPOV of wikipedia contributors ? Will YOU try to make more NPOV revision OR not ? Radoneme OCT 4, 2004

 * 1) Re Gross and his government: will not differ much, as in does not in composition and program.
 * 2) Golden parachute as a convenient, generally used shortcut term.
 * 3) Was criticised, yes, by anti-CSSD media or political oopponents as well as pundits with some claim of impartiality; dissenting voices, even with an obvious agenda of their own, can't be ignored.
 * Yes, I have read the NPOV instructions thorougly (though of course hardly every single sentence ever written on that topic).
 * 1) I don't see how to re-phrase this material so that you would consider it "more NPOV"; make some concrete suggestion and we'll see whether we can agree on that. --Malyctenar 05:19, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I just arrived on this page and the above paragraph also struck me as insufficiently neutral. The parts I think are subjective value judgements are:
 * "His generally accepted image is a man of personal integrity and honesty"
 * "putting him at the top of Czech politicians" -- suggesting a particular subjective characterisation of other Czech politicians)
 * "a dry technocrat" -- would everyone agree with this?
 * "his undeniable statesman's vision" -- would everyone agree with this?
 * "wasn't even able to keep his own party in line" -- this needs some references to back it up
 * "criticised as a golden parachute" -- this part is totally fine as long as it has a reference to such criticism, plus an attempt to present the other side of the argument too.

Randywombat (talk) 10:43, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Vladimír Špidla


text:
Dracunculiasis

Dracunculiasis, also called Guinea-worm disease, is a parasitic infection by the Guinea worm, Dracunculus medinensis. A person becomes infected by drinking water contaminated with Guinea-worm larvae that reside inside copepods (a type of small crustacean). Stomach acid digests the copepod and releases the Guinea worm, which penetrates the digestive tract and escapes into the body. Around a year later, the adult female migrates to an exit site – usually the lower leg – and induces an intensely painful blister on the skin. Eventually, the blister bursts, creating a painful wound from which the worm gradually emerges over several weeks. The wound remains painful throughout the worm's emergence, disabling the affected person for the three to ten weeks it takes the worm to emerge.

There is no medication to treat or prevent dracunculiasis. Instead, the mainstay of treatment is the careful wrapping of the emerging worm around a small stick or gauze to encourage and speed up its exit. Each day, a few more centimeters of the worm emerge, and the stick is turned to maintain gentle tension. Too much tension can break and kill the worm in the wound, causing severe pain and swelling. Dracunculiasis is a disease of extreme poverty, occurring in places with poor access to clean drinking water. Prevention efforts center on filtering drinking water to remove copepods, as well as public education campaigns to discourage people from soaking affected limbs in sources of drinking water, as this allows the worms to spread their larvae.

Accounts consistent with dracunculiasis appear in surviving documents from physicians of Greco-Roman antiquity. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, dracunculiasis was widespread across much of Africa and South Asia, affecting as many as 48 million people per year. The effort to eradicate dracunculiasis began in the 1980s following the successful eradication of smallpox. By 1995, every country with endemic dracunculiasis had established a national eradication program. In the ensuing years, dracunculiasis cases have dropped precipitously, with 14 cases reported worldwide in 2023. 15 previously endemic countries have eradicated dracunculiasis, leaving the disease endemic in four countries: Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, and South Sudan. If the eradication program succeeds, dracunculiasis will become the second human disease eradicated, after smallpox. D. medinensis can also infect dogs, cats, and baboons, though animal cases are also falling due to eradication efforts. Other Dracunculus species cause dracunculiasis in reptiles worldwide and in mammals in the Americas.

Cause

Dracunculiasis is caused by infection with the roundworm Dracunculus medinensis. D. medinensis larvae reside within small aquatic crustaceans called copepods. Humans typically get infected when they unintentionally ingest copepods while drinking water. In some cases, infected copepods are consumed by fish or frogs, which are then consumed by humans or other animals, passing along the D. medinensis larvae. During digestion the copepods die, releasing the D. medinensis larvae. The larvae exit the digestive tract by penetrating the stomach and intestine, taking refuge in the abdomen or retroperitoneal space (behind the organs near the back of the abdomen). Over the next two to three months the larvae develop into adult male and female worms. The male remains small at 4 cm long and 0.4 mm wide; the female is comparatively large, often over 100 cm long and 1.5 mm wide. Once the worms reach their adult size they mate, and the male dies. Over the ensuing months, the female migrates to connective tissue or along bones, and continues to develop.

About a year after the initial infection, the female migrates to the skin, forms an ulcer, and emerges. When the wound touches fresh water, the female spews a milky-white substance containing hundreds of thousands of larvae into the water. Over the next several days as the female emerges from the wound, she can continue to discharge larvae into surrounding water. The larvae are eaten by copepods, and after two to three weeks of development, they are infectious to humans again.

Signs and symptoms
The first signs of dracunculiasis occur around a year after infection, as the full-grown female worm prepares to leave the infected person's body. As the worm migrates to its exit site – typically the lower leg – some people have allergic reactions, including hives, fever, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Upon reaching its destination, the worm forms a fluid-filled blister under the skin. Over 1–3 days, the blister grows larger, begins to cause severe burning pain, and eventually bursts, leaving a small open wound. The wound remains intensely painful as the worm slowly emerges over several weeks to months.

If an affected person submerges the wound in water, the worm spews a white substance releasing its larvae into the water. As the worm emerges, the open blister often becomes infected with bacteria, resulting in redness and swelling; the formation of abscesses; or, in severe cases, gangrene, sepsis, or tetanus. When the secondary infection is near a joint (typically the ankle), the damage to the joint can result in stiffness, arthritis, or contractures.

Infected people commonly harbor multiple worms – on average 1.8 worms per person, but as many as 40 – which will emerge from separate blisters at the same time. 90% of worms emerge from the legs or feet. However, worms can emerge from anywhere on the body.

Diagnosis
Dracunculiasis is diagnosed by visual examination – the thin white worm emerging from the blister is unique to this disease. Dead worms sometimes calcify and can be seen in the subcutaneous tissue by X-ray.

Treatment
There is no medicine to kill D. medinensis or prevent it from causing disease once within the body. Instead, treatment focuses on slowly and carefully removing the worm from the wound over days to weeks. Once the blister bursts and the worm begins to emerge, the wound is soaked in a bucket of water, allowing the worm to empty itself of larvae away from a source of drinking water. As the first part of the worm emerges, it is typically wrapped around a piece of gauze or a stick to maintain steady tension on the worm, encouraging its exit. Each day, several centimeters of the worm emerge from the blister, and the stick is wound to maintain tension. This is repeated daily until the full worm emerges, typically within a month. If too much pressure is applied, the worm can break and die, leading to severe swelling and pain at the site of the ulcer.

Treatment for dracunculiasis also includes regular wound care to avoid infection of the open ulcer. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends cleaning the wound before the worm emerges. Once the worm begins to exit the body, the CDC recommends daily wound care: cleaning the wound, applying antibiotic ointment, and replacing the bandage with fresh gauze. Painkillers like aspirin or ibuprofen can help ease the pain of the worm's exit.

Outcomes
Dracunculiasis is a debilitating disease, causing substantial disability in around half of those infected. People with worms emerging can be disabled for the three to ten weeks it takes the worms to fully emerge. When worms emerge near joints, inflammation or infection of the affected area can result in permanent stiffness, pain, or destruction of the joint. Some people with dracunculiasis have continuing pain for 12 to 18 months after the worm has emerged. Around 1% of dracunculiasis cases result in death from secondary infections of the wound.

When dracunculiasis was widespread, it often affected entire villages at once. Outbreaks occurring during planting and harvesting seasons severely impaired a community's agricultural operations – earning dracunculiasis the descriptor "empty granary disease" in some places. Communities affected by dracunculiasis also see reduced school attendance as children of affected parents must take over farm or household duties, and affected children may be physically prevented from walking to school for weeks.

Infection does not create immunity, so people can repeatedly experience dracunculiasis throughout their lives.

Prevention
There is no vaccine for dracunculiasis, and once infected with D. medinensis there is no way to prevent the disease from running its full course. Consequently, efforts to reduce the burden of dracunculiasis focus on preventing the transmission of D. medinensis from person to person. A mainstay of eradication efforts is the improvement of drinking water. Nylon filters, finely woven cloth, or specialized filter straws can all remove copepods from drinking water, eliminating transmission risk. Water sources can also be treated with temephos, which kills copepods, and contaminated water can be treated via boiling. Where possible, open sources of drinking water are replaced by deep wells that can serve as new sources of clean water. Public education campaigns inform people in affected areas how dracunculiasis spreads and encourage those with the disease to avoid soaking their wounds in bodies of water that are used for drinking.

Epidemiology
Dracunculiasis is now rare, with 14 cases reported worldwide in 2023 and 13 in 2022. This is down from 27 cases in 2020 and dramatically less than the estimated 3.5 million annual cases in 20 countries in 1986 – the year the World Health Assembly called for dracunculiasis's eradication. Dracunculiasis remains endemic in three countries: Chad, Mali, and South Sudan.

Dracunculiasis is a disease of extreme poverty, occurring in places where there is poor access to clean drinking water. Cases tend to be split roughly equally between males and females, and can occur in all age groups. Within a given place, dracunculiasis risk is linked to occupation; people who farm or fetch drinking water are most likely to be infected.

When dracunculiasis was widespread, it had a seasonal cycle, though the timing varied by location. Along the Sahara desert's southern edge, cases peaked during the mid-year rainy season (May–October) when stagnant water sources were more abundant. Along the Gulf of Guinea, cases were more common during the dry season (October–March) when flowing water sources dried up.

History
Diseases consistent with the effects of dracunculiasis are referenced by writers throughout antiquity. Plutarch's Symposiacon refers to a (lost) description by the 2nd century BCE writer Agatharchides concerning a "hitherto unheard-of disease" in which "small worms issue from [people's] arms and legs ... insinuating themselves between the muscles [to] give rise to horrible sufferings". Greco-Roman and Arabic physicians, including Galen, Rhazes, and Avicenna, also wrote of diseases consistent with dracunculiasis; though there was some disagreement as to the nature of the disease, with some attributing it to a worm, while others considered it to be a corrupted part of the body emerging.

Some have proposed links between dracunculiasis and other prominent ancient texts and symbols. In a 1674 treatise on dracunculiasis, Georg Hieronymous Velschius ascribed serpentine figures in several ancient icons to Dracunculus, including Greek sculptures, signs of the zodiac, Arabic lettering, and the Rod of Asclepius, a common symbol of the medical profession. Similarly, parasitologist Friedrich Küchenmeister proposed in 1855 that the "fiery serpents" that plague the Hebrews in the Old Testament represented dracunculiasis. In 1959, parasitologist Reinhard Hoeppli proposed that a prescription in the Ebers papyrus – a medical text written around 1500 BCE – referred to the removal of a Guinea worm, an identification endorsed ten years later by the physician and Egyptologist Paul Ghalioungui; this would make the Ebers papyrus the oldest known description of the disease.

Carl Linnaeus included the Guinea worm in his 1758 edition of Systema Naturae, naming it Gordius medinensis. The name medinensis refers to the worm's longstanding association with the Arabian Peninsula city of Medina, with Avicenna writing in his The Canon of Medicine (published in 1025) "The disease is commonest at Medina, whence it takes its name". In Johann Friedrich Gmelin's 1788 update of Linnaeus' Systema Naturae, Gmelin renamed the worm Filaria medinensis, leaving Gordius for free-living worms. Henry Bastian authored the first detailed description of the worm itself, published in 1863. The following year, in his book Entozoa, Thomas Spencer Cobbold used the name Dracunculus medinensis, which was enshrined as the official name by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature in 1915. Despite longstanding knowledge that the worm was associated with water, the lifecycle of D. medinensis was the topic of protracted debate. Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko filled a major gap with his 1870 publication describing that D. medinensis larvae can infect and develop inside copepods. The next step was shown by Robert Thomson Leiper, who described in a 1907 paper that monkeys fed D. medinensis–infected copepods developed mature Guinea worms, while monkeys directly fed D. medinensis larvae did not.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, dracunculiasis was widespread across nearly all of Africa and South Asia, though no exact case counts exist from the pre-eradication era. In a 1947 article in the Journal of Parasitology, Norman R. Stoll used rough estimates of populations in endemic areas to suggest that there could have been as many as 48 million cases of dracunculiasis per year. In 1976, the WHO estimated the global burden at 10 million cases per year. Ten years later, as the eradication effort was beginning, the WHO estimated 3.5 million cases per year worldwide.

Eradication

The campaign to eradicate dracunculiasis began at the urging of the CDC in 1980. Following smallpox eradication (last case in 1977; eradication certified in 1981), dracunculiasis was considered an achievable eradication target since it was preventable with only behavioral changes and less common than many similar diseases of poverty. In 1981, the steering committee for the United Nations International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (a program to improve global drinking water from 1981 to 1990) adopted the goal of eradicating dracunculiasis as part of their efforts. The following June, an international meeting termed "Workshop on Opportunities for Control of Dracunculiasis" concluded that dracunculiasis could be eradicated through public education, drinking water improvement, and larvicide treatments. In response, India began its national eradication program in 1983.

In 1986, the 39th World Health Assembly issued a statement endorsing dracunculiasis eradication and calling on member states to craft eradication plans. The same year, the Carter Center began collaborating with the government of Pakistan to initiate its national program, which then launched in 1988. By 1996, national eradication programs had been launched in every country with endemic dracunculiasis: Ghana and Nigeria in 1989; Cameroon in 1991; Togo, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Uganda in 1992; Benin, Mauritania, Niger, Mali, and Côte d'Ivoire in 1993; Sudan, Kenya, Chad, and Ethiopia in 1994; Yemen and the Central African Republic in 1995.

Each national eradication program had three phases. The first phase consisted of a nationwide search to identify the extent of dracunculiasis transmission and develop national and regional plans of action. The second phase involved the training and distribution of staff and volunteers to provide public education village-by-village, surveil for cases, and deliver water filters. This continued and evolved as needed until the national burden of disease was very low. Then, in a third phase, programs intensified surveillance efforts with the goal of identifying each case within 24 hours of the worm emerging and preventing the person from contaminating drinking water supplies. Most national programs offered voluntary in-patient centers, where those affected could stay and receive food and care until their worms were removed.

In May 1991, the 44th World Health Assembly called for an international certification system to verify dracunculiasis eradication country-by-country. To this end, in 1995 the WHO established the International Commission for the Certification of Dracunculiasis Eradication (ICCDE). Once a country reports zero cases of dracunculiasis for a calendar year, the ICCDE considers that country to have interrupted Guinea worm transmission, and is then in the "precertification phase". If the country reports zero cases in each of the next three calendar years, the ICCDE sends a team to the country to assess the country's disease surveillance systems and to verify the country's reports. The ICCDE can then formally recommend the WHO Director-General certify a country as free of dracunculiasis.

Since the initiation of the global eradication program, the ICCDE has certified 15 of the original endemic countries as having eradicated dracunculiasis: Pakistan in 1997; India in 2000; Senegal and Yemen in 2004; the Central African Republic and Cameroon in 2007; Benin, Mauritania, and Uganda in 2009; Burkina Faso and Togo in 2011; Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, and Nigeria in 2013; and Ghana in 2015. In 2020, the 76th World Health Assembly endorsed a new guidance plan, the Roadmap for Neglected Tropical Diseases 2021–2030, which sets a 2027 target for eradication of dracunculiasis, allowing certification by the end of 2030.

Other animals
In addition to humans, D. medinensis can infect domestic dogs and cats and wild olive baboons. Infections of domestic dogs have been particularly common in Chad, where they helped reignite dracunculiasis transmission in 2010. Animals are thought to become infected by eating a transport host, likely a fish or amphibian. As with humans, control efforts have focused on preventing infection by encouraging people in affected areas to bury fish entrails, as well as to identify and tie up dogs and cats with emerging worms so that they cannot access drinking water sources until after the worms have emerged. Animal infections are rapidly falling, with 2,000 recorded infections in 2019, 1,601 in 2000, and 863 in 2021. Domestic ferrets can be infected with D. medinensis in laboratory settings, and have been used as an animal disease model for human dracunculiasis.

Other Dracunculus species can infect snakes, turtles, and other mammals. Animal infections are most widespread in snakes, with nine different species of Dracunculus described in snakes in the United States, Brazil, India, Vietnam, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Benin, Madagascar, and Italy. The only other reptiles affected are snapping turtles, with cases of infected common snapping turtles described in several US states and a single infected South American snapping turtle described in Costa Rica. Infections of other mammals are limited to the Americas. Raccoons in the US and Canada are most widely impacted, particularly by D. insignis; however, Dracunculus worms have also been reported in American skunks, coyotes, foxes, opossums, domestic dogs, domestic cats, and (rarely) muskrats and beavers.

title: Dracunculiasis


text:
MS Marco Polo

MS Marco Polo was a cruise ship originally built as ocean liner Aleksandr Pushkin in 1965 by Mathias-Thesen-Werft, East Germany  for the Soviet Union's Baltic Shipping Company. After major alterations and additions, the ship operated as Marco Polo for the Orient Lines from 1993 to 2008. It last sailed for UK-based Cruise & Maritime Voyages and its German subsidiary Transocean Tours. After Cruise & Maritime Voyages entered administration in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was sold at auction by CW Kellock & Co. Ltd. for US$2,770,000 on 22 October 2020; it was subsequently resold and in January 2021 was beached at Alang, India and scrapped.

Design and construction
Aleksandr Pushkin was constructed at VEB Mathias-Thesen-Werft in Wismar, East Germany. She was the second ship of the Ivan Franko-class passenger ship (also referred to as "poet" or "writer" class), named after the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. The construction of this class featured some notable differences from contemporary ships built in the west. Amongst other things they offered cabins for six people and had three taps in the bathrooms - for hot, cold and sea water - Both of these features had long since been abandoned in western liners. The ships also featured certain forward-looking features, such as all outside accommodation for both passengers and the crew, and an indoor/outdoor swimming pool with a sliding glass roof. To enable the ships to navigate through broken ice, they were constructed with greater hull strength and stability than usual in passenger ships of this size. The Ivan Franko-class ships were built with use as troopships in mind. Due to this they had unusually large provision and storage areas, enabling a cruising range of over 10000 nmi. As a more visible sign of potential military use, the ships were equipped with unusually powerful deck lifting gear, apparently to be able to transport armoured vehicles on board. As built, the ship carried between 650-766 passengers in two classes, with different sources providing different figures. Additionally there were provisions for 500 cabinless passengers.

According to a deck plan printed for the passenger agency of Helsinki in 1971, the Alexandr Pushkin could carry 668 passengers, 520 in Tourist Class and 148 in First Class. Tourist Class cabin were furnished with either two or four bunks, one or two wardrobe, a sofa, a table and one or two chairs, along with a washing basin ; the sanitary facilities were shared among the passengers. These rooms were located on the four lowest decks (B/Promenade Deck, C/Main Deck, Second and Third Deck). In First Class, all staterooms were furnished with two beds or a "sofa bed and upper pullman berth", a table, a chair, a sofa and a nightstand. They also had a private bathroom with a shower, a toilet and a washing basin. Staterooms 101 to 104 on the Boat Deck, looking towards the bow, were deluxe ones, with a desk and its armchair, their own telephone as well as a bath instead of a shower. On the rear of the Promenade Deck were located staterooms 277 and 279, sharing their full bathroom as these two had baby cribs. All cabins had portholes or windows. For the passenger facilities, they were located on the upper decks. The restaurant was on the C deck ; on the B Deck you would have the "Kalinka" shop, the gymnasium, the sauna bath as well as the children's play room and swimming pool. The A Deck, or Saloon Deck, was filled with amenities. For the bow to the stern, you would have : the Music Saloon, with its piano and dance floor ; the "North Palmyra Café" and the "Café Penguin" ; the "Beriozka" shop and an information kiosk, followed by the post counter ; the Cinema ; the Smoking Saloon with its "Friendship bar" and play room ; the Library ; the two hairdressers and finally the Swimming Pool and another bar, the "Rusalka bar" (Mermaid's bar). An outside dancing floor was located on the Boat Deck and on the Bridge Deck, there was the Verandah with the "White Nights" bar.

From 1972 onwards the Ivan Franko-class ships were rebuilt. In the first stage the cargo facilities were eliminated and the forward superstructure extended, allowing for additional public spaces. Stabilizers were also installed in this stage. In the second stage the cabins were re-configured to include berths for all passengers. In a refit during the 1970s a discothèque was added on board Aleksandr Pushkin, making her the first Soviet ship to have one.

Service as Aleksandr Pushkin
Aleksandr Pushkin entered service in 1965 with the Baltic Shipping Company, one of the three principal Soviet passenger shipping companies (the other two being the Black Sea Shipping Company and the Far Eastern Shipping Company). Reports about her service in the Soviet fleet are fragmentary and conflicting, partly due to some information still being classified by the Russians. Most sources state she was used to inaugurate the Baltic Shipping Company's regular trans-Atlantic service between Montreal, Quebec, Canada and Leningrad, and later on used for cruising. Other sources give a more detailed, but somewhat conflicting, accounts. Philip Dawson's book The Liner - Retrospective & Renaissance gives the full route as Leningrad—Helsinki—Copenhagen—London (Tilbury)—Quebec City—Montreal, in addition to which the ship was used for cruising from Montreal to Saint Pierre and Miquelon, The Bahamas and Cuba during the summer months. According to the book, the ship carried just 36 passengers on her first transatlantic crossing. According to Cruisepage.com, she spent only the summer months on Leningrad—Montreal service, while the rest of the year she was used either on crossing from Leningrad to Havana, Cuba or cruising under charter to western companies. Fakta om Fartyg offers a somewhat different account, stating that the ship originally entered service as a cruise ship in 1965, moving to the Leningrad—Montreal route in only April 1966, then spending summers from 1967 until 1979 in Leningrad—Bremerhaven—Montreal route and the rest of the year cruising, and from 1979 exclusively on cruise traffic. It does seem likely the ship called in Helsinki and London on her transatlantic crossings, as according to an article in Helsingin Sanomat Alexandr Pushkin was popular amongst Finnish passengers sailing to London and Canada; she was the only ship offering crossings from Finland to Canada and the only liner in Helsinki—London service at the time. Although not mentioned in any source, photographic evidence shows that Aleksandr Pushkin's superstructure was enlarged during her 1972 rebuilding, with the forward superstructure expanded and rear promenade decks built in.

Aleksandr Pushkin was chartered to the West Germany-based Transocean Tours in 1979, ending her transatlantic service. At this point she was one of just three passenger liners in transatlantic service, alongside Cunard Line's Queen Elizabeth 2 and Polish Ocean Lines' Stefan Batory. In addition to the liner and cruise service, two sources mention that Alexandr Pushkin was also used in service of the Soviet Navy, particularly in interventions into African countries.

In 1985, her charter to Transocean Tours ended and Aleksandr Pushkin was transferred from the Baltic Shipping Company to the Far Eastern Shipping Company,  who promptly chartered her to CTC Cruises for cruising from Europe and Australia. In 1990, her charter to CTC Cruises ended and she was laid up at Singapore. In 1991, the ship was sold to Orient Lines - the brainchild of cruise lines and hotels entrepreneur Gerry Herrod - and renamed Marco Polo.

Service as Marco Polo
Following the purchase by Orient Lines, Marco Polo sailed to Neorion Shipyard, Greece,  where her engines were reconditioned by Sulzer Diesels. Following this she was moved to Perama Shipyard, Greece, where a near-total reconstruction of the ship commenced. Externally this resulted in notable extension of the rear superstructure and heightening of the funnel to maintain the proportions of the ship. Internally the ship was almost entirely rebuilt under the guidance of naval architect Knud Hansen and interior designers Michael and Agni Katzourakis. In addition to the more visual changes, the ship was fitted with Denny Brown stabilizers, additional diesel engines and brought up to the latest IMO and SOLAS standards. The refit took 2$1/2$ years; various sources estimate the cost as between US$20m and $60m.

In 1993, following completions of the conversion, Marco Polo began a varying itinerary of cruises all over the world, including more unusual destinations such as South-East Asia, Africa, and Antarctica. In 1998, Orient Lines was sold to Norwegian Cruise Lines. Marco Polo's cruises continued as before, but as a result of the NCL deal MS Crown Odyssey joined her in the Orient Lines fleet in 2000, turning the company into a two-ship brand. However, Crown Odyssey left the Orient fleet in 2003, and Marco Polo became again the sole ship of the brand. Since 2005 she has also been the sole surviving Ivan Franko-class vessel, the other sisters having sunk or been scrapped. In 2008 Norwegian Cruise Line sold Marco Polo to the Greece-based Global Maritime Group, which chartered the ship to the Germany-based Transocean Tours. Marco Polo replaced MS Arielle in the Transocean Tours fleet, operating cruises out of the United Kingdom and Germany. The sale of Marco Polo also meant the end of the Orient Lines brand. Transocean Tours said that they planned to operate the ship until 2012 at least. On 6 July 2009 Marco Polo called at Invergordon, Easter Ross, Scotland on a cruise outbound from Tilbury in Essex. During a health inspection by the local port health officials up to 150 passengers were discovered to have been infected with what was presumed to be norovirus; the number of infected passengers and crew subsequently rose to 400. Also on 6 July a 74-year-old passenger died of a heart attack on board the ship. According to reports from the local health officials he had serious underlying health problems, and it was not known if a norovirus infection contributed to his death. On 7 July Transocean Tours decided to cancel the remainder of Marco Polo's ten-day cruise after consulting NHS Highland. Reportedly the company gave the passengers an option to either stay with the ship until she returned to Tilbury on 11 July or to return to their homes earlier by a specially arranged charter train. On 8 July three infected people remained in Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.

Some reports indicate that passengers on board Marco Polo's previous cruise, which terminated in Tilbury on 4 July, might also have been infected with norovirus. However, according to Transocean Tours the ship was inspected upon return to Tilbury and no infections were found, although some passengers during the cruise did suffer from gastroenteritis. The London Port Health Authority stated that they were not informed of illness on board the ship when it docked at Tilbury, and Transocean Tours could consequently face legal action.

Despite Transocean Tours' intention of keeping the ship in its fleet until 2012, reports emerged in August 2009 that Marco Polo would be chartered to the newly founded, UK-based Cruise & Maritime Voyages for five years from 2 January 2010. Her planned itineraries included cruises from the UK to South America during the northern hemisphere winter months, and from the UK to Northern Europe and the Mediterranean during the summer months.

On 13 March 2013 Cruise & Maritime voyages announced that Marco Polo would be terminating one of her northern lights cruises and go into dry dock for inspection and minor repairs after striking an uncharted object under command of the local pilot minutes after sailing from Sortland on 9 March 2013. Her cruise terminated in Antwerp with passengers being transferred to Tilbury and London via the Channel Tunnel or ferry by coach.

On 14 February 2014 a passenger died and sixteen people were injured after a freak wave struck the ship in the English Channel during a storm. One seriously injured passenger was taken off by helicopter. The ship was heading to Tilbury with 735 passengers and 349 crew on board.

Marco Polo has been the subject of a television programme in the series Mighty Cruise Ships (a spin-off of Mighty Ships) which documented the 2013 voyage to St Petersburg, Russia, and the Baltic States. The ship ran into a force 10 gale in The Baltic.

On 1 November 2014, while docking at the port of Leknes in Lofoten, Norway, a strong breeze sent the cruise ship off course, resulting in the ship running aground at coordinates 68.12208°N, 13.56687°W.

On 20 July 2020, Cruise & Maritime Voyages entered administration. The company's administrators sold Marco Polo at auction for US$2,770,000 on 22 October 2020. Plans for Offshore Solutions Unlimited to return her to service were not realised, nor were announced plans by the buyer, Highseas Ltd., to convert her into a floating hotel in Dubai. She was resold two months later for approximately $4 million to an Indian company, reached the scrapyards of Alang, India on 13 January 2021 and was beached and scrapped. Scrapping commenced on 28 March 2021.

title: MS Marco Polo


text:
Ambassador College

Ambassador College (1947–1997) was a four-year liberal arts college run by the Worldwide Church of God. The college was established in 1947 in Pasadena, California, by radio evangelist Herbert W. Armstrong, leader of what was then the Radio Church of God, later renamed the Worldwide Church of God. The college was approved by the State of California to grant degrees.

In 1960 a second campus was opened at Bricket Wood, Hertfordshire, England, and in 1964 a third campus was opened in Big Sandy, Texas. At the time Ambassador closed for financial reasons in May 1997, it had operated for 50 years and had become regionally accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

History
The history of Ambassador College was tied to the development of the Radio/Worldwide Church of God. The name Radio Church of God was initially selected, in the 1930s, because Herbert Armstrong started the church as a radio program in Eugene, Oregon. The ministry grew to include publishing, and congregations were formed, first in the United States and then gradually in other countries—hence, the eventual name change to "Worldwide Church of God."

After Armstrong moved his operations to California, he founded Ambassador College in 1947. The college began acquiring lavish mansions on Orange Grove Blvd. in Pasadena, culminating in the acquisition of the Hulett C. Merritt mansion, formerly belonging to an iron ore mining magnate, in the late 1950s. Hulett Merritt was the Chairman of US Steel and made his millions on the Mesabi Iron Range in Minnesota. Hulett Merritt's estate "Villa Merritt Ollivier" in Pasadena was built on four acres for $1,100,000 in 1905–08. This area on South Orange Grove Avenue was referred to locally as "Millionaires' Row" (per the City of Pasadena's Architectural and Historical Survey of 1997). Mr. Merritt's mansion was located at 99 Terrace Drive and bounded on the north by Olcott Place and on the west by South Orange Grove Avenue. After Hulett Sr.'s death in January 1956, the property was purchased by Herbert W. Armstrong from Hulett's four surviving grandchildren in October 1956 because it was adjacent to Ambassador College. Villa Merritt Ollivier was renamed "Ambassador Hall", and Ambassador College subsequently obtained permission to close Terrace Drive. Thereafter, the residence and street address for the former Villa Merritt Ollivier was renamed Ambassador Hall, 100 S. Orange Grove Blvd., Pasadena.

This mansion, with a sunken Italian garden, a rosewood-paneled room, and a basement swimming pool, became the centerpiece of the campus until the Auditorium was built. The college built two modern classroom buildings flanking Ambassador Hall, and the formal Italian sunken garden, with a plaza in the center, joined the three buildings and the garden into an academic center. Hulett Sr.'s former mansion was also featured as the opening scene in the old TV show The Millionaire, looking upward from the tree-lined steps towards the hill with the mansion and towering palms above. The Pasadena 1997 Architectural Survey stated at Page 2.1–33: "The Hulett C. Merritt' House is significant as the residence of one of Pasadena's most celebrated millionaires and foremost residents of South Orange Grove Blvd."

The college was designed to prepare youth for life and service in the church. In the earliest days of Ambassador, male students frequently graduated into the ministry of the church. By the 1970s, that occurred less frequently. As the church grew in membership in the 1960s and 1970s, a smaller and smaller proportion of applicants could be accepted, some applicants having to wait years for acceptance.

The motto of the college was Recapturing True Values. Although most students of the college were associated with the church, it was not a strict requirement. Nonetheless, the students and faculty were primarily those with church affiliation.

Throughout most of its history, Ambassador operated under state approval or its international equivalent. Regional accreditation was not sought, primarily because it required that the college have a functioning board that was separate and distinct from the church's administration. Armstrong resisted this requirement, apparently concerned that such a separation would result in the truth of God, as he believed it to be and taught it, being watered down at an Ambassador that would become increasingly secular. He held this opinion despite the fact that numerous accredited colleges and universities around the country were operated by the Catholic Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and other Christian denominations without those organizations being required to alter church teachings.

The final phase of Ambassador began in the late 1970s and was characterized by constant uncertainty and indecision. The Ambassador campus at Bricket Wood, Hertfordshire, England, was closed in 1974, as operating funds were deemed necessary for other functions of the Worldwide Church of God. For similar reasons, the Texas campus was shuttered in 1977, and all students who wished to be were offered the opportunity to transfer to the original campus in Pasadena, California. In the interim, the decision had been made by church leadership to pursue regional accreditation in California. However, in 1978 President Garner Ted Armstrong, son of college founder Herbert Armstrong, announced that everything would be moving back to the Texas campus, with the California facility becoming a graduate school. Within months, however, the younger Armstrong was ousted from all positions in the church and college owing to an unrelated scandal, and Herbert Armstrong, recovered from a heart attack, announced that Ambassador was closing its doors altogether.

That stance was softened just as quickly, however, and the decision was made to continue operating Ambassador as a scaled-down academic institution more in line with a bible college. Beginning in August 1978, new incoming students were offered a one-year course ("Diploma in Biblical Studies"), with graduation thereafter, on September 4, 1979. Eventually, Ambassador returned to full four-year status, operating with state approval, but still without regional accreditation. Accreditation was something Armstrong did not agree with.

In 1981, Herbert Armstrong decided to reopen the Texas campus, which was still owned by the church. In 1985 he decided to close that campus again. In January 1986 Armstrong died, and his successor as church leader, Joseph W. Tkach, decided to keep the Texas campus open.

The roller coaster of closings and openings was possible only because Ambassador was not regionally accredited. State approval to grant degrees (a requirement in most states, including California and Texas) is all that had been sought by the institution.

However, the dynamics of higher education in the United States soon began to have an effect on independent, unaccredited colleges like Ambassador. For many years, regional accreditation was not required for colleges to open in various states—only state approval was needed. By the late 1980s, however, many states began to require that a college, after having operated for a certain number of years, would have to either move from state approval to regional accreditation or be closed. Ambassador was at a crossroads, in that it had to seek regional accreditation or be reduced to a bible college offering diplomas rather than recognized degrees or else close its doors for good.

The board of regents of Ambassador, still consisting of members of the Worldwide Church of God, decided to merge all operations at one location and seek regional accreditation. The decision was made to separate the college from the church's base of operations in California and move all college operations to the Big Sandy, Texas, campus. The California college closed permanently in 1990. Students at the Pasadena campus and many faculty members who were pursuing advanced degrees were transferred to the Big Sandy campus, which was in the midst of a construction boom to accommodate the influx of new personnel and to support the regional accreditation efforts. Ambassador College at Big Sandy, Texas, began the process of applying for regional accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Accreditation was granted in 1994. That same year the college underwent a name change to Ambassador University. This new period of transformation was short-lived, however. For decades Ambassador did not have an endowment fund separate from the church. School officials had begun the process of establishing the first dedicated operating endowment in Ambassador's history, but there was not sufficient time to build the endowment. Doctrinal controversy within the Worldwide Church of God led to numerous splits and church spinoffs, and the resulting decrease in membership and contributions to the church led to a rapid decline in the annual financial subsidy the church had historically provided to the university. In December 1996 the university's board of regents voted to close the institution once and for all. In May 1997, with the university having just concluded its 50th anniversary year, Ambassador closed its doors. However, the Ambassador College legacy lived on in the form of Grace Communion Seminary (an educational institution affiliated with Grace Communion International (GCI), a member of the National Association of Evangelicals). Grace Communion Seminary is a business name of Ambassador College (AC), and a California non-profit religious corporation with federal 501(c)(3) status, founded in 1947 at Pasadena, California, as a church-related liberal arts college. In 1990 AC transferred its student body to an affiliated campus in Texas. In 2003 Ambassador College, doing business as Ambassador College of Christian Ministry, began offering courses online in areas of biblical studies, theology, and Christian ministry, providing a diploma and a graduate program. Since 2005 the diploma program, under the name of Ambassador College of Christian Ministry, has continued as a GCI training program in Christian ministry, administered under the auspices of the GCI affiliate in Australia at www.ambascol.org. Grace Communion Seminary, administered from Glendora, California, limits its educational programs to graduate level courses in pastoral ministry. All programs are open to academically qualified men and women who desire to expand their education in biblical studies and theology and their service in pastoral ministry in the evangelical tradition.

Pasadena campus (1947–1990)
Aside from being the identified sponsor of The World Tomorrow radio broadcast for a time (although the costs for the broadcast were paid by the church), the college in Pasadena became locally well known for its Ambassador Auditorium worship and concert venue, which for 20 years was host to many renowned artists from classical music to jazz. The concert series closed in 1995. The auditorium was largely unused for a decade until a portion of the Ambassador campus was sold to interdenominational Maranatha High School and a smaller portion, including the auditorium, to HRock Church.

In September 2006, the Pasadena City Council approved the redevelopment of the remaining Ambassador campus space into the "Westgate Pasadena" complex, a large mixed-use development consisting of 820 condos and apartments as well as 22000 sqft of commercial space. In June 2008, a large portion of a related project on the other side of the freeway was foreclosed. The Westgate project was unaffected.

In the Fall of 2010, TBS released the Glory Daze about 1980s college life which was filmed in the buildings and on the campus of the former Ambassador College in Pasadena. In 2013, TBS released the reality show King of the Nerds, also filmed on the campus.

The former Fine Arts and Science buildings were demolished in 2013 with the Hall of Administration following suit in early 2016.

Bricket Wood, UK campus (1960–1974)
The Bricket Wood campus operated for 14 years at Hanstead House, a few miles north of London. The estate had belonged to Annie Henrietta Yule and her daughter Gladys, who used it for their Arabian horse breeding farm, the Hanstead Stud. The college operated in the house and grounds for fourteen years. Leading administrators on the campus included Ernest L. Martin, Roderick C. Meredith, Ronald L. Dart, and Raymond F. McNair.

It closed in 1974, and was sold shortly thereafter to the Central Electricity Generating Board. It was used as a management training facility, first by CEGB and then HSBC, closing in 2011. It is currently being developed for housing.

Big Sandy, Texas campus (1964–1977, 1981–1997)
The history of the Big Sandy campus can be divided into seven periods:
 * 1) Its use by the Radio Church of God as a festival center for the Feast of Tabernacles, a local church congregation site, and Imperial Schools campus (1952–1974),
 * 2) The initial period that the campus was open as a four-year college, 1964–1977,
 * 3) The period in which the college was closed but continued to be used as a church meeting site, 1977–1981,
 * 4) The reopening of the facility as a two-year junior college, 1981–1989,
 * 5) The return of the facility as a four-year college (as a consolidated campus), 1989–1997,
 * 6) Its closure in 1997, after which it remained vacant until it was sold in 2001 to the Green Family Trust of Oklahoma City (owners of Hobby Lobby stores), and
 * 7) Its donation in 2001 to the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which opened it as the training facility for its International ALERT Academy, and later relocated its operations from the Chicago area to the facility.

The Big Sandy campus opened in the fall of 1964. Since the early 1950s, the campus had been used as a location for the annual Feast of Tabernacles. The campus closed in the fall of 1977, with students and faculty transferred to the Pasadena campus.

During the period from 1977 to 1981, the campus was used as a feast site and was used by the local congregation of the Worldwide Church of God. After several near sales of the property, the decision was made to reopen in the fall of 1981.

For a while, the Big Sandy campus included an organic farm, consistent with the college's emphasis upon personal health and bodily purity.

When the campus reopened, it initially served as a two-year junior college, with students having the opportunity to apply to transfer to Pasadena after two years. In the fall of 1989, the campus returned to a four-year format.

In the fall of 1990, students and staff from Pasadena were transferred, as plans were underway to seek accreditation. Numerous buildings were constructed almost overnight, including five dormitories, an administration building, a music building and lecture hall, and an office building. Accreditation was achieved in the summer of 1994. However, doctrinal division began to occur a year later in December 1995, ultimately leading to the closure of the campus in 1997.

The campus now serves as the headquarters of the Institute in Basic Life Principles and several of its umbrella ministries, and was used to accommodate refugees from Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005. The campus golf course, renamed Embassy Hills Golf Course, is now open to the public.

AICF – Ambassador International Cultural Foundation
Ambassador College also sponsored archaeological excavations in Israel. Together with a related Ambassador International Cultural Foundation it sponsored both the Ambassador Auditorium concert series and many appearances by Herbert Armstrong in the company of world statesmen and women. The two organizations also jointly sponsored educational projects in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Jordan. Armstrong International Cultural Foundation is a non-profit, humanitarian organization sponsored by the Philadelphia Church of God and headquartered on the Herbert W. Armstrong College campus in Edmond, Oklahoma.

The two-pronged concept behind all of the foundation's goals and activities is: 1) that man is a unique being, possessing vast mental, physical and spiritual potentials—the development of which should be aided and encouraged, and 2) that it is the responsibility of all men to attend to and care for the needs of their fellow men, a precept professed by the vast majority of religions of the world—appropriately summed up in three biblical words: “Love thy neighbor.”

The foundation has sponsored several activities in Jerusalem. In 2006, the foundation began supplying volunteers and aid to Dr. Eilat Mazar's ground-breaking excavation of King David's palace in Jerusalem. It has also helped refurbish Liberty Bell Park in the heart of the city, a project Herbert W. Armstrong had started

Successor institutions
Several Ambassador graduates and former administrators have led efforts to replicate the school in other settings.

When Ambassador closed in 1997, the Worldwide Church of God established the Ambassador Center at Azusa Pacific University. This later gave way to the online Ambassador College of Christian Ministry, which was headed by Ambassador's last president, Russell K. Duke. The graduate program was given then name Grace Communion Seminary. Russell Duke was the president until 2015; Gary W. Deddo was the president until December 2021. Michael Morrison is now the President.

Former WCG minister Gerald Flurry established Imperial College in Edmond, Oklahoma, based a great deal on the Ambassador model. To avoid confusion with Imperial College of London, the school is now Herbert W. Armstrong College. One of the campus landmarks is a rock considered to have been used by Herbert W. Armstrong as a "prayer rock" when he lived in Oregon. The campus' Armstrong Auditorium features two Baccarat candelabra purchased from Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena in 2004, and a bronze swan sculpture (Swans in Flight by Sir David Wynne) purchased from the Big Sandy campus in 2009. In 2015, a second HWAC campus was opened at Edstone, U.K., near Stratford-Upon-Avon.

The United Church of God established the Ambassador Bible College at its Ohio headquarters. The program is not accredited.

Garner Ted Armstrong, president of Ambassador from 1975 to 1978, established Imperial Academy in Tyler, Texas. However, student enrollment was quite small and the program is now defunct.

Roderick C. Meredith established the online Living University in the fall of 2007. The university is based at the Living Church of God's headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. The chief executive officer is Dr. Michael P. Germano, former vice president of academic affairs at Ambassador.

Notable alumnus

 * Garner Ted Armstrong

title: Ambassador College