text:
User talk:Bgbot

Please, use the Bgbot's talk page on bg:.

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Bot on Commons
Hallo There is a template for bots for using it in the babelbox. you only need to add

to the userpage of your bot on Commons. With greetings. Augiasstallputzer 13:49, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a automated to all bot operators
Please take a few moments and fill in the data for your bot on Bots/Status Thank you Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 18:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Automated message to bot owners
As a result of discussion on the village pump and mailing list, bots are now allowed to edit up to 15 times per minute. The following is the new text regarding bot edit rates from Bot Policy: "Until new bots are accepted they should wait 30-60 seconds between edits, so as to not clog the recent changes list and user watchlists. After being accepted and a bureaucrat has marked them as a bot, they can edit at a much faster pace. Bots doing non-urgent tasks should edit approximately once every ten seconds, while bots who would benefit from faster editing may edit approximately once every every four seconds." Also, to eliminate the need to spam the bot talk pages, please add Bot owners' noticeboard to your watchlist. Future messages which affect bot owners will be posted there. Thank you. --Mets501 00:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
Hi, You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:13, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Bgbot


text:
User:Spongeboy

A boy, a sponge.

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

title: User:Spongeboy


text:
Pattali Makkal Katchi

Pattali Makkal Katchi (abbreviated as PMK) is a political party in Tamil Nadu, India, founded by S. Ramadoss in 1989 for the Vanniyar caste in northern Tamil Nadu. It is a part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). It contests the elections with the "Ripe Mango" symbol.

The PMK is noted for its involvement in riots and vandalism. A former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalitha, likened the party to a terrorist organisation and threatened to ban it for its frequent involvement in violence and vandalism of public property.

Vanniyar Sangam
S. Ramadoss founded the Vanniyar Sangam in the late 1970s, bringing together a coalition of Vanniyar caste organisations. The Vanniyar Sangam is PMK's parent organisation. The Vanniyar Sangham organised the 1987 Vanniyar reservation agitation demanding Most Backward Caste (MBC) status for Vanniyars. At the peak of the protests, the state was paralysed for a week when thousands of trees were felled, highways blocked and damaged and more than 1,400 houses of the Dalit community were burned down. The police shot 21 protestors. Later, in 1989, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government led by M. Karunanidhi granted MBC status to the Vanniyars, with the associated reservation entitlements in education and employment.

PMK (1989–present)
Ramadoss founded the PMK on 16 July 1989, emerging from the Vanniyar reservation protests of 1987.

Ahead of the 2004 elections, PMK joined the Democratic Progressive Alliance, a broad Tamil political coalition which also included the DMK, Indian National Congress (INC), Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Indian Union Muslim League. The party was able to obtain a significant share of power both in the regional government in Tamil Nadu and the Central Government due to the number of seats it obtained which helped the United Progressive Alliance (UPA-I ) to form the Government.

Following the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the PMK joined the United Progressive Alliance led by the INC. In June 2008, during the final months of the bitter relationship between the DMK and the PMK, the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu severed its ties with the PMK, who were outside supporters of the Karunanidhi Government. However, the DMK did not press for the party's removal from the UPA Government at the centre. On 26 March 2009, PMK declared that, it would join the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) led front and left the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

Ramadoss and his son, Anbumani Ramdoss, were arrested by the Jayalalitha government for their inflammatory speeches, the PMK cadres indulged in violence in April 2013 causing property damages estimated worth ₹600 crores. Jayalalitha likened the party to a “terrorist” organization and claimed they hurled petrol bombs on moving vehicles and caused damages to 850 vehicles including public buses and threatened to ban the party. Ramadoss and his son were released after 12 days in prison.

PMK contested in the 2014 Lok Sabha election in an alliance with BJP-led NDA and its candidate Anbumani Ramadoss won the Dharmapuri Lok Sabha constituency, he was one of two non-AIADMK MPs from Tamil Nadu the other being from its ally BJP.

PMK continued its alliance with AIADMK and BJP in the 2019 Indian general election in Tamil Nadu and contested 7 seats but the party failed to win any seats.

The Madras Institute of Developmental Studies (MIDS) and an reported that the PMK and the Hindu Munnani was involved in the 2019 Ponparappi violence where Dalit women were sexually abused and Dalit houses were attacked and damaged. An NGO Evidence also blamed PMK in the violence because the Dalit colony voted overwhelmingly for VCK.

In November 2020, Ramadoss called for a protest demanding 20% internal reservation for Vanniyars in the MBC category in education and jobs from December 1. During the pro-reservation protests, more than 500 PMK cadres pelted stones on a moving train and blocked traffic when they were blocked from entering Chennai. A bill to create the 10.5% internal reservation to Vanniyars was passed on February 26, 2021, by the AIADMK government. The move was taken ahead of the April 6 assembly elections to appease the PMK, which had threatened to quit the coalition if their demand was not satisfied. In July 2021, the DMK government issued an order to implement 10.5% quota Bill for Vanniyars.

PMK contested in 23 seats in the AIADMK alliance in the 2021 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election and won five seats by securing 4.04%. In the assembly, PMK voted in favour of anti-CAA and anti-farm-law resolutions, but AIADMK and BJP walked out over the matter. PMK left the AIADMK-led alliance for the 2021 local body polls.

Ideology and political positions
The PMK defied Tamil Nadu's Dravidian political culture by explicitly appealing to its caste identification when asking for support. The party has been linked to direct action and protests that have resulted in violence. Between 2012 and 2013, the party ran a campaign against intercaste marriages.

Leaders
The leaders of Pattali Makkal Katchi, who are also the national executives of the party are listed below:

Former ministers

 * 1) Dalit Ezhilmalai - Former central health and family welfare minister (1998-1999)
 * 2) A. K. Moorthy - Former central railway minister (2002-2004)
 * 3) E. Ponnuswamy - Former central petroleum minister (1999-2001)
 * 4) N. T. Shanmugam - Former central Health and family welfare (1999-2000) Former central coal minister (2000-2001) and Former central food processing industries minister (2002-2004)
 * 5) R. Velu - Former central railway minister (2004-2009)
 * 6) Anbumani Ramadoss - Former central health and family welfare minister (2004-2009)

Tamil Nadu
DPA - Democratic Progressive Alliance NDA - National Democratic Alliance TF - Third Front PT - PMK-Tiwari Congress Front

Puducherry
DPA - Democratic Progressive Alliance NDA - National Democratic Alliance TF - Third Front PT - PMK-Tiwari Congress Front

title: Pattali Makkal Katchi


text:
Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers

Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers was a country-comedy band that performed largely in the Midwest United States from the late 1930s into the 1960s.

Members

 * Tom C. Fouts (Captain Stubby) November 24, 1918 – May 26, 2004. Comedy, played novelty instruments, including musical hat rack, tuned toilet seat (gitarlet). Vocalist. Born in Carroll County, Indiana.
 * Dwight E. (Tiny) Stokes November 11, 1920 – January 12, 1999. Lead tenor vocals, played bass. Born in Springfield, Missouri.
 * Jerald R. Richards – Clarinet, flute, bass clarinet, ocarina, tin whistle. Vocals.
 * Sonny Fleming – Played guitar, banjo. Vocalist.
 * Peter Kunatz – Accordion, piano.
 * Gerald (Curley) Myers – Guitar, banjo, vocals.
 * Chuck Kagy – Fiddle, guitar, mandolin.
 * Buddy Ross – Accordion.
 * Tony Walberg – Accordion.

History
Tom C. Fouts, nicknamed Stubby for his stature, left Indiana Central University after a year, and in 1938 formed a band with five friends. The Six Hoosiers specialized in comedy, Fouts playing novelty instruments like a "tuned toilet seat" he called the "gitarlet."

WDAN radio in Danville, Illinois signed them to a contract, and in 1940 held a contest to rename the Six Hoosiers. The $100 prizewinner suggested Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers. (During performances, Fouts would sometimes refer to them as "Captain Stubby and the bucket of tears.")

Appropriately, the band joined the U.S. Navy in 1944, Entertainment Division, going overseas to entertain sailors. After World War II they signed with WLS Radio in Chicago and performed on the popular National Barn Dance, heard throughout the Midwest.

Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers eventually became regulars on the ABC-TV program Polka Go-Round. They also recorded with five labels, performing many of Fouts' songs. With singer Lola Dee, they recorded the Mercury Records single "Padre" and "Takin' The Trains Out". Fouts was host of a syndicated talk show called Captain Stubby's Special Delivery. He also wrote for and performed on the national Don McNeill's Breakfast Club from 1968 until 1971.

Advertising
Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers first performed the original Roto-Rooter jingle on WLS in the early 1950s, and the recorded version became one of the longest-running tunes in the history of advertising, featuring Tom Fouts' bass voice in "Away go Troubles Down the Drain." Shortly before his death at 85 in 2004, he contributed to nostalgic radio spots for Roto-Rooter.

Captain Stubby also sang the 1959 Chicago White Sox fight song, "Let's Go, Go-Go White Sox", and was the voice of Green Giant's Little Sprout.

title: Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers


text:
Forward algorithm

The forward algorithm, in the context of a hidden Markov model (HMM), is used to calculate a 'belief state': the probability of a state at a certain time, given the history of evidence. The process is also known as filtering. The forward algorithm is closely related to, but distinct from, the Viterbi algorithm.

Introduction
The forward and backward algorithms should be placed within the context of probability as they appear to simply be names given to a set of standard mathematical procedures within a few fields. For example, neither "forward algorithm" nor "Viterbi" appear in the Cambridge encyclopedia of mathematics. The main observation to take away from these algorithms is how to organize Bayesian updates and inference to be computationally efficient in the context of directed graphs of variables (see sum-product networks).

For an HMM such as this one: this probability is written as $$p(x_t | y_{1:t} )$$. Here $$x(t)$$ is the hidden state which is abbreviated as $$x_t$$ and $$y_{1:t}$$ are the observations $$1$$ to $$t$$.

The backward algorithm complements the forward algorithm by taking into account the future history if one wanted to improve the estimate for past times. This is referred to as smoothing and the forward/backward algorithm computes $$p(x_t | y_{1:T} )$$ for $$1 < t < T$$. Thus, the full forward/backward algorithm takes into account all evidence. Note that a belief state can be calculated at each time step, but doing this does not, in a strict sense, produce the most likely state sequence, but rather the most likely state at each time step, given the previous history. In order to achieve the most likely sequence, the Viterbi algorithm is required. It computes the most likely state sequence given the history of observations, that is, the state sequence that maximizes $$p(x_{0:t}|y_{0:t})$$.

Algorithm
The goal of the forward algorithm is to compute the joint probability $$p(x_t,y_{1:t})$$, where for notational convenience we have abbreviated $$x(t)$$ as $$x_t$$ and $$(y(1), y(2), ..., y(t))$$ as $$y_{1:t}$$. Once the joint probability $$p(x_t,y_{1:t})$$ is computed, the other probabilities $$p(x_t|y_{1:t})$$ and $$p(y_{1:t})$$ are easily obtained.

Both the state $$x_t$$ and observation $$y_t$$ are assumed to be discrete, finite random variables. The hidden Markov model's state transition probabilities $$p(x_t|x_{t-1})$$, observation/emission probabilities $$p(y_t|x_t)$$, and initial prior probability $$p(x_0)$$ are assumed to be known. Furthermore, the sequence of observations $$y_{1:t}$$ are assumed to be given.

Computing $$p(x_t,y_{1:t})$$ naively would require marginalizing over all possible state sequences $$\{x_{1:t-1}\}$$, the number of which grows exponentially with $$t$$. Instead, the forward algorithm takes advantage of the conditional independence rules of the hidden Markov model (HMM) to perform the calculation recursively.

To demonstrate the recursion, let

 * $$\alpha(x_t) = p(x_t,y_{1:t}) = \sum_{x_{t-1}}p(x_t,x_{t-1},y_{1:t})$$.

Using the chain rule to expand $$p(x_t,x_{t-1},y_{1:t})$$, we can then write

 * $$\alpha(x_t) = \sum_{x_{t-1}}p(y_t|x_t,x_{t-1},y_{1:t-1})p(x_t|x_{t-1},y_{1:t-1})p(x_{t-1},y_{1:t-1})$$.

Because $$y_t$$ is conditionally independent of everything but $$x_t$$, and $$x_t$$ is conditionally independent of everything but $$x_{t-1}$$, this simplifies to

 * $$\alpha(x_t) = p(y_t|x_t)\sum_{x_{t-1}}p(x_t|x_{t-1})\alpha(x_{t-1})$$.

Thus, since $$p(y_t|x_t)$$ and $$p(x_t|x_{t-1})$$ are given by the model's emission distributions and transition probabilities, which are assumed to be known, one can quickly calculate $$\alpha(x_t)$$ from $$\alpha(x_{t-1})$$ and avoid incurring exponential computation time.

The recursion formula given above can be written in a more compact form. Let $$a_{ij}=p(x_t=i|x_{t-1}=j)$$ be the transition probabilities and $$b_{ij}=p(y_t=i|x_t=j)$$ be the emission probabilities, then

 * $$\mathbf{\alpha}_t = \mathbf{b}_t^T \odot \mathbf{A} \mathbf{\alpha}_{t-1}$$

where $$\mathbf{A} = [a_{ij}]$$ is the transition probability matrix, $$\mathbf{b}_t$$ is the i-th row of the emission probability matrix $$\mathbf{B} = [b_{ij}]$$ which corresponds to the actual observation $$y_t = i$$ at time $$t$$, and $$\mathbf{\alpha}_t = [\alpha(x_t=1),\ldots, \alpha(x_t=n)]^T$$ is the alpha vector. The $$\odot$$ is the hadamard product between the transpose of $$\mathbf{b}_t$$ and $$\mathbf{A} \mathbf{\alpha}_{t-1}$$.

The initial condition is set in accordance to the prior probability over $$x_0$$ as

 * $$\alpha(x_0) = p(y_0|x_0)p(x_0)$$.

Once the joint probability $$\alpha(x_t) = p(x_t,y_{1:t})$$ has been computed using the forward algorithm, we can easily obtain the related joint probability $$p(y_{1:t})$$ as

 * $$p(y_{1:t}) = \sum_{x_t} p(x_t, y_{1:t}) = \sum_{x_t} \alpha(x_t)$$

and the required conditional probability $$p(x_t|y_{1:t})$$ as

 * $$p(x_t|y_{1:t}) = \frac{p(x_t,y_{1:t})}{p(y_{1:t})} = \frac{\alpha(x_t)}{\sum_{x_t} \alpha(x_t)}.$$

Once the conditional probability has been calculated, we can also find the point estimate of $$x_t$$. For instance, the MAP estimate of $$x_t$$ is given by

 * $$\widehat{x}_t^{MAP} = \arg \max_{x_t} \; p(x_t|y_{1:t}) = \arg \max_{x_t} \; \alpha(x_t),$$

while the MMSE estimate of $$x_t$$ is given by

 * $$\widehat{x}_t^{MMSE} = \mathbb{E}[x_t|y_{1:t}] = \sum_{x_t} x_t p(x_t|y_{1:t}) = \frac{\sum_{x_t} x_t \alpha(x_t)}{\sum_{x_t} \alpha(x_t)}.$$

The forward algorithm is easily modified to account for observations from variants of the hidden Markov model as well, such as the Markov jump linear system.

Pseudocode

 * 1) Initialize
 * $$t = 0$$,
 * transition probabilities, $$p(x_t|x_{t-1})$$,
 * emission probabilities, $$p(y_t|x_t) $$,
 * observed sequence, $$y_{1:T}$$
 * prior probability, $$\alpha(x_0)$$
 * 1) For $$t = 1$$ to $$T$$
 * $$\alpha(x_t) = p(y_t|x_t)\sum_{x_{t-1}}p(x_t|x_{t-1})\alpha(x_{t-1})$$.
 * 1) Return $$p(x_T|y_{1:T})= \frac{\alpha(x_T)}{\sum_{x_T} \alpha(x_T)}$$

Example
This example on observing possible states of weather from the observed condition of seaweed. We have observations of seaweed for three consecutive days as dry, damp, and soggy in order. The possible states of weather can be sunny, cloudy, or rainy. In total, there can be $$3^3=27$$ such weather sequences. Exploring all such possible state sequences is computationally very expensive. To reduce this complexity, Forward algorithm comes in handy, where the trick lies in using the conditional independence of the sequence steps to calculate partial probabilities, $$\alpha(x_t) = p(x_t,y_{1:t}) = p(y_t|x_t)\sum_{x_{t-1}}p(x_t|x_{t-1})\alpha(x_{t-1})$$ as shown in the above derivation. Hence, we can calculate the probabilities as the product of the appropriate observation/emission probability, $$p(y_t|x_t)$$ ( probability of state $$y_t$$ seen at time t from previous observation) with the sum of probabilities of reaching that state at time t, calculated using transition probabilities. This reduces complexity of the problem from searching whole search space to just using previously computed $$\alpha$$'s and transition probabilities.

Complexity
Complexity of Forward Algorithm is $$\Theta(nm^2)$$, where $$m$$ is the number of hidden or latent variables, like weather in the example above, and $$n$$ is the length of the sequence of the observed variable. This is clear reduction from the adhoc method of exploring all the possible states with a complexity of $$\Theta(nm^n)$$.

Variants of the algorithm

 * Hybrid Forward Algorithm: A variant of the Forward Algorithm called Hybrid Forward Algorithm (HFA) can be used for the construction of radial basis function (RBF) neural networks with tunable nodes. The RBF neural network is constructed by the conventional subset selection algorithms. The network structure is determined by combining both the stepwise forward network configuration and the continuous RBF parameter optimization. It is used to efficiently and effectively produce a parsimonious RBF neural network that generalizes well. It is achieved through simultaneous network structure determination and parameter optimization on the continuous parameter space. HFA tackles the mixed integer hard problem using an integrated analytic framework, leading to improved network performance and reduced memory usage for the network construction.

 * Forward Algorithm for Optimal Control in Hybrid Systems: This variant of Forward algorithm is motivated by the structure of manufacturing environments that integrate process and operations control. We derive a new property of the optimal state trajectory structure which holds under a modified condition on the cost function. This allows us to develop a low-complexity, scalable algorithm for explicitly determining the optimal controls, which can be more efficient than Forward Algorithm.

 * Continuous Forward Algorithm: A continuous forward algorithm (CFA) can be used for nonlinear modelling and identification using radial basis function (RBF) neural networks. The proposed algorithm performs the two tasks of network construction and parameter optimization within an integrated analytic framework, and offers two important advantages. First, the model performance can be significantly improved through continuous parameter optimization. Secondly, the neural representation can be built without generating and storing all candidate regressors, leading to significantly reduced memory usage and computational complexity.

History
The forward algorithm is one of the algorithms used to solve the decoding problem. Since the development of speech recognition and pattern recognition and related fields like computational biology which use HMMs, the forward algorithm has gained popularity.

Applications
The forward algorithm is mostly used in applications that need us to determine the probability of being in a specific state when we know about the sequence of observations. The algorithm can be applied wherever we can train a model as we receive data using Baum-Welch or any general EM algorithm. The Forward algorithm will then tell us about the probability of data with respect to what is expected from our model. One of the applications can be in the domain of Finance, where it can help decide on when to buy or sell tangible assets. It can have applications in all fields where we apply Hidden Markov Models. The popular ones include Natural language processing domains like tagging part-of-speech and speech recognition. Recently it is also being used in the domain of Bioinformatics. Forward algorithm can also be applied to perform Weather speculations. We can have a HMM describing the weather and its relation to the state of observations for few consecutive days (some examples could be dry, damp, soggy, sunny, cloudy, rainy etc.). We can consider calculating the probability of observing any sequence of observations recursively given the HMM. We can then calculate the probability of reaching an intermediate state as the sum of all possible paths to that state. Thus the partial probabilities for the final observation will hold the probability of reaching those states going through all possible paths.

Softwares

 * Hidden Markov Model R-Package contains functionality for computing and retrieving forward procedure
 * momentuHMM R-Package provides tools for using and inferring HMMs.
 * GHMM Library for Python
 * The hmm package Haskell library for HMMS, implements Forward algorithm.
 * Library for Java contains Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence algorithm implementations.

title: Forward algorithm


text:
User:Ghazal ag aa

سلام خوبین؟

title: User:Ghazal ag aa


text:
Norman Hipel

Norman Otto Hipel (March 21, 1890 – February 16, 1953) was a Canadian politician, noted for his service as Minister of Labour for Ontario in the cabinet of Mitchell Hepburn. He served as MLA for Waterloo South.

Personal background and career
Hipel was born in rural Waterloo Township, Ontario near Breslau, Ontario on 21 March 1890, to parents Henry Hipel and Louisa Pelz. He received formal education at the Riverbank School and the Breslau Public School, but he left school early to help support his family, and began work as a store clerk in a Kitchener, Ontario dry goods store. He returned home in 1906 to learn carpentry from his father, and by 1911 had become a building contractor and, in 1913, he moved to Preston, Ontario, and in 1920 started his own construction company, N. O. Hipel Ltd, with ten employees, five horses and a portable sawmill. The company specialized in buildings that required large, uninterrupted floor space. In 1928 his company developed patents on barn and skating rink construction, and built a large number of arenas including the Hespeler Memorial Arena erected in 1947.

Hipel was a member of the Preston Board of Trade, the Ontario Club and was a president and director of the South Waterloo Agricultural Society. He was also a director on the Waterloo County Health Association board, and at the time of his death was also the Preston representative for the South Waterloo Memorial Hospital, now known as the Cambridge Memorial Hospital.

Politics
Hipel began his political career in 1921 when he ran for and was elected to the Preston town council. In 1922 he became the town's reeve, and served as mayor in 1923 and 1924. In 1930 he ran successfully as the Ontario Liberal Party candidate to represent Waterloo South in the Ontario Legislature, and was re-elected in 1934. He served as Speaker of the House from 1935 to 1938, and was chosen to represent Ontario at the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937. In 1938 Hipel was appointed Minister of Labour for Ontario in the cabinet of Mitchell Hepburn. As Minister of Labour, he organized the Farm Service Force to help in the harvesting of crops during World War II, and in 1939 he opened the Aircraft Mechanics Training School in Galt, where thousands were trained in radio operation and aircraft maintenance for the war effort. With help from the federal government, he also organized the War Emergency Training Program, providing education in manufacturing skilled required in the production of war materials. Hipel also served as Ontario Minister of Lands and Forests in 1941 and 1943. In this position, Hipel set aside forest lands and established a school at Dorset for the training of forest rangers. He also authorized the first large scale conservation project, known as the Ganaraska watershed area. In 1942 and 1943 he served as Provincial Secretary and Registrar of Ontario, and was elected President of the Ontario Liberal Association in 1947. Hipel ran unsuccessfully in the 1948. He also ran, unsuccessfully, for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party in 1950 receiving only 12 votes on the first ballot.

External links and references

 * City of Cambridge Hall of Fame Norman O. Hipel.
 * City of Cambridge Hall of Fame Norman O. Hipel.

title: Norman Hipel


text:
User:Chiral

I'm a doctorial course student interested in supramolecular chemistry and materials science.

Now I'm thinking about which topic I can contribute.

title: User:Chiral


text:
List of foreign delegations at 24th PCF Congress (1982)

The following foreign delegations attended the 24th Congress of the French Communist Party in 1982:

 * Afghanistan - People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)
 * Angola - Movimiento Popular de Libertação de Angola - Partido do Trabalho (MPLA-PT)
 * Algeria - National Liberation Front (FLN)
 * Argentina - Communist Party of Argentina (PCA)
 * Australia - Communist Party of Australia (CPA)
 * Austria - Kommunistische Partei Österreichs (KPÖ)
 * Bahrain - National Liberation Front - Bahrain
 * Belgium - Parti Communiste de Belgique (PCB)
 * Benin - People's Revolutionary Party of Benin (PRPB)
 * Bolivia - Partido Comunista de Bolivia (PCB)
 * Brazil - Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB)
 * Britain - Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB)
 * Bulgaria - Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP)
 * Cambodia - People's Revolutionary Party of Kampuchea (PRPK)
 * Canada - Communist Party of Canada (CPC)
 * Cape Verde - African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV)
 * Central African Republic - Front Patriotique Oubanguien - Parti du Travail de Centrafrique
 * Chad - Front National de Libération du Tchad (FROLINAT)
 * Chile - Partido Comunista de Chile (PCCh)
 * Chile - Socialist Party of Chile (PS)
 * China - Communist Party of China (CPC)
 * Colombia - Colombian Communist Party (PCC)
 * Comoros - Front National Uni des Komoriens-Union des Komoriens (FNUK)
 * Congo - Parti Congolais du Travail (PCT)
 * Cuba - Communist Party of Cuba (PCC)
 * Cyprus - Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL)
 * Czechoslovakia - Komunistická Strana Československa (KSČ)
 * Denmark - Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti (DKP)
 * Dominica - Popular Independence Committee (PIC)
 * Dominican Republic - Dominican Communist Party (PCD)
 * DPRK - Workers' Party of Korea (WPK)
 * East Timor - Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente (FRETILIN)
 * Ecuador - Partido Comunista de Ecuador (PCE)
 * Egypt - Egyptian Communist Party (ECP)
 * Egypt - National Progressive Unionist Party (al-Tagammu)
 * El Salvador - Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional (FMLN)
 * El Salvador - Partido Comunista de El Salvador (PCES)
 * Ethiopia - Commission for Organizing the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia (COPWE)
 * Finland - Suomen kommunistinen puolue (SKP)
 * German Democratic Republic - Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED)
 * Greece - Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
 * Greece - Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK)
 * Grenada - New Jewel Movement (NJM)
 * Guadeloupe - Parti Communiste Guadeloupéen (PCG)
 * Guinea - Parti Démocratique de Guinée (PDG-RDA)
 * Guinea-Bissau - Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC)
 * Guyana - People's Progressive Party (PPP)
 * Haiti - Unified Party of Haitian Communists (PUCH)
 * Hungary - Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt (MSzMP)
 * Iraq - Iraqi Communist Party (ICP)
 * Iran - Tudeh Party of Iran
 * Ireland - Communist Party of Ireland (CPI)
 * Israel - Communist Party of Israel (Rakah)
 * Italy - Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI)
 * Japan - Japanese Communist Party (JCP)
 * Jordan - Communist Party of Jordan
 * Laos - Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP)
 * Lebanon - Lebanese Communist Party (LCP/PCL)
 * Lebanon - Progressive Socialist Party (PSP)
 * Lebanon - Mouvement National Libanais (MNL)
 * Libya - General People's Congress (GPC)
 * Luxembourg - Parti Communiste Luxembourgeois (PCL)
 * Madagascar - Front National pour la Défense de la Révolution (FNDR)
 * Mali - Front Malien de la Révolution et la Démocratie
 * Malta - Partit Komunista Malti (CPM)
 * Martinique - Martinican Communist Party (PCM)
 * Mexico - Mexican Unified Socialist Party (PSUM)
 * Mongolia - Mongolian People's Party (MPRP)
 * Morocco - Parti du Progrès et du Socialisme (PPS)
 * Morocco - Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires (USFP)
 * Mozambique - Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO)
 * Namibia - South-West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO)
 * Netherlands - Communistische Partij van Nederland (CPN)
 * Nicaragua - Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN)
 * Nigeria - Socialist Party of Working People of Nigeria
 * Norway - Norges Kommunistiske Parti (NKP)
 * Pakistan - Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP)
 * Palestine - Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
 * Panama - Partido del Pueblo de Panamá
 * Paraguay - Partido Comunista Paraguayo (PCP)
 * People's Democratic Republic of Yemen - Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP)
 * Poland - Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR)
 * Portugal - Partido Comunista Português (PCP)
 * Puerto Rico - Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño (PSP)
 * Réunion - Communist Party of Réunion (PCR)
 * Romania - Romanian Communist Party (PCR)
 * Oman - Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman (PFLO)
 * San Marino - Partito Comunista Sammarinese (PCS)
 * San Marino - Partito Socialista Sammarinese (PSS)
 * Spain - Communist Party of Spain (PCE)
 * South Africa - African National Congress (ANC)
 * Sudan - Sudanese Communist Party (SCP)
 * Sweden - Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna
 * Syria - Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party
 * Syria - Syrian Communist Party (SCP)
 * Tunisia - Parti Communiste Tunisien (PCT)
 * Turkey - Türkiye Komünist Partisi (TKP)
 * Uruguay - Partido Comunista del Uruguay (PCU)
 * United States - Communist Party USA (CPUSA)
 * USSR - Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)
 * West Germany - Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (DKP)
 * West Germany - Sozialistische Einheitspartei Westberlins
 * Western Sahara - Frente Popular para la Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro (POLISARIO)
 * Yemen Arab Republic - National Liberation Front of Yemen Arab Republic (NLF)
 * Yugoslavia - Savez Komunista Jugoslavije (SKJ)


text:
Sor Mañón

The Sor River or Sor Mañón flows between the provinces of A Coruña and Lugo, in the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain. It is 49 km long.

The river has an impressive waterfall called Augas Caídas in Mañon parish.

The river Sor is the only river with salmon in Galicia, since unlike others it has not yet been dammed to form a reservoir for hydroelectric generation.

The estuary of the River Sor is the Ria do Barqueiro, 5 km long. The river environment, geomorphology, and nearby landscape are of considerable interest.

title: Sor Mañón


text:
Nieczuja coat of arms

Nieczuja is a Polish coat of arms that was used by many szlachta families in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Blazon
Gules, a Brunâtre stock or tree stub, with three lopped branches on the dexter, and two on the sinister (rarely reversed), all proper, debruised of a cross or sword in chief, also proper.

Out of a crest coronet, between two vols, the arms of the shield is repeated.

There is also older version of Nieczuja coat of arms. Azure, an Argent stock or tree stub, with four lopped branches on the dexter, and four on the sinister, all proper, debruised, of a cross or sword in chief, also proper.

Notable bearers
Notable bearers of this coat of arms include:

 * Krzysztof Grzymułtowski (1620–1687), voivod of Poznań, diplomat and member of the Sejm
 * Wespazjan Kochowski (1633–1700), historian, philosopher and baroque poet
 * Walenty Łukawski (1743–1773), rotmistrz, member of Bar Confederation
 * Józef Chłopicki (1771–1854), baron, General of Napoleon
 * Henryk Dembiński (1791–1864), engineer, traveler and general
 * Stanisław Witkiewicz (1851–1915), painter, architect, writer and art theoretician
 * Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885–1939), painter, writer and philosopher
 * Józef z Kocięcina Kocięcki
 * Marek Nieczuja-Ostrowski
 * Paweł Jan Kazimierz Nieczuja-Ostrowski, born into the family of Nieczuja
 * Sebastian Waldemar Wierzbicki, member of Polish Nobleman Federation (Zwiazek Szlachty Polskiej)

title: Nieczuja coat of arms


text:
User:Rob Thomas

I live in Johannesburg and I love the place! I also love my country, South Africa. My single greatest mission with Wikipedia is to dispel the myths about Johannesburg, written by any ill-informed ignoramus who lives in some far-flung place in the Northern Hemisphere, and whose total experience of the city is a trip to the TV room.

We usually encourage our Rotary Exchange students to have T-shirts made with the following information printed on them before they go overseas:

On the front:

Hi! I'm from South Africa.
 * 1. Yes, it IS possible to come from Africa and be White.
 * 2. Yes, we DO have running water, freeways and skyscrapers.
 * 3. No, I CANNOT say hello to your cousin Joe who's visiting Cairo, because it's a city of 15 million people 8 hours away by plane.
 * 4. No, we do NOT have elephants roaming in the streets, or pet lions named Simba.

And, of course, on the back:

(Thanks for not asking any stupid questions.)

Since Wikipedia is an impartial, factually accurate resource for citizens of the world, I want to ensure that a reader will get a "real feel" for Johannesburg and South Africa, that is both truthful and honest.

title: User:Rob Thomas


text:
Viking lander biological experiments

In 1976 two identical Viking program landers each carried four types of biological experiments to the surface of Mars. The first successful Mars landers, Viking 1 and Viking 2, then carried out experiments to look for biosignatures of microbial life on Mars. The landers each used a robotic arm to pick up and place soil samples into sealed test containers on the craft.

The two landers carried out the same tests at two places on Mars' surface, Viking 1 near the equator and Viking 2 further north.

The experiments

The four experiments below are presented in the order in which they were carried out by the two Viking landers. The biology team leader for the Viking program was Harold P. Klein (NASA Ames).

Gas chromatograph — mass spectrometer
A gas chromatograph — mass spectrometer (GCMS) is a device that separates vapor components chemically via a gas chromatograph and then feeds the result into a mass spectrometer, which measures the molecular weight of each chemical. As a result, it can separate, identify, and quantify a large number of different chemicals. The GCMS (PI: Klaus Biemann, MIT) was used to analyze the components of untreated Martian soil, and particularly those components that are released as the soil is heated to different temperatures. It could measure molecules present at a level of a few parts per billion.

The GCMS measured no significant amount of organic molecules in the Martian soil. In fact, Martian soils were found to contain less carbon than lifeless lunar soils returned by the Apollo program. This result was difficult to explain if Martian bacterial metabolism was responsible for the positive results seen by the Labeled Release experiment (see below). A 2011 astrobiology textbook notes that this was the decisive factor due to which "For most of the Viking scientists, the final conclusion was that the Viking missions failed to detect life in the Martian soil."

Experiments conducted in 2008 by the Phoenix lander discovered the presence of perchlorate in Martian soil. The 2011 astrobiology textbook discusses the importance of this finding with respect to the results obtained by Viking as "while perchlorate is too poor an oxidizer to reproduce the LR results (under the conditions of that experiment perchlorate does not oxidize organics), it does oxidize, and thus destroy, organics at the higher temperatures used in the Viking GCMS experiment. NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay has estimated, in fact, that if Phoenix-like levels of perchlorates were present in the Viking samples, the organic content of the Martian soil could have been as high as 0.1% and still would have produced the (false) negative result that the GCMS returned. Thus, while conventional wisdom regarding the Viking biology experiments still points to "no evidence of life", recent years have seen at least a small shift toward "inconclusive evidence"."

According to a 2010 NASA press release: "The only organic chemicals identified when the Viking landers heated samples of Martian soil were chloromethane and dichloromethane -- chlorine compounds interpreted at the time as likely contaminants from cleaning fluids." According to a paper authored by a team led by Rafael Navarro-González of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, "those chemicals are exactly what [their] new study found when a little perchlorate -- the surprise finding from Phoenix -- was added to desert soil from Chile containing organics and analyzed in the manner of the Viking tests." However, the 2010 NASA press release also noted that: "One reason the chlorinated organics found by Viking were interpreted as contaminants from Earth was that the ratio of two isotopes of chlorine in them matched the three-to-one ratio for those isotopes on Earth. The ratio for them on Mars has not been clearly determined yet. If it is found to be much different than Earth's, that would support the 1970s interpretation." Biemann has written a commentary critical of the Navarro-González and McKay paper, to which the latter have replied; the exchange was published in December 2011. In 2021 the chlorine isotope ratio on Mars was measured by the Trace Gas Orbiter and found to be almost indistinguishable from the terrestrial ratio, leaving the interpretation of the GCMS results inconclusive.

Gas exchange
The gas exchange (GEX) experiment (PI: Vance Oyama, NASA Ames) looked for gases given off by an incubated soil sample by first replacing the Martian atmosphere with the inert gas helium. It applied a liquid complex of organic and inorganic nutrients and supplements to a soil sample, first with just nutrients added, then with water added too. Periodically, the instrument sampled the atmosphere of the incubation chamber and used a gas chromatograph to measure the concentrations of several gases, including oxygen, CO2, nitrogen, hydrogen, and methane. The scientists hypothesized that metabolizing organisms would either consume or release at least one of the gases being measured.

In early November 1976, it was reported that "on Viking 2, the gas exchange experiment is producing analogous results to those from Viking 1. Again, oxygen disappeared once the nutrient solution came into contact with the soil. Again, carbon dioxide began to appear and still continues to evolve".

Labeled release
The labeled release (LR) experiment (PI: Gilbert Levin, Biospherics Inc.) gave the most promise for exobiologists. In the LR experiment, a sample of Martian soil was inoculated with a drop of very dilute aqueous nutrient solution. The nutrients (7 molecules that were Miller-Urey products) were tagged with radioactive 14C. The air above the soil was monitored for the evolution of radioactive 14CO2 (or other carbon-based ) gas as evidence that microorganisms in the soil had metabolized one or more of the nutrients. Such a result was to be followed with the control part of the experiment as described for the PR below. The result was quite a surprise, considering the negative results of the first two tests, with a steady stream of radioactive gases being given off by the soil immediately following the first injection. The experiment was done by both Viking probes, the first using a sample from the surface exposed to sunlight and the second probe taking the sample from underneath a rock; both initial injections came back positive. Sterilization control tests were subsequently carried out by heating various soil samples. Samples heated for 3 hours at 160 °C gave off no radioactive gas when nutrients were injected, and samples heated for 3 hours at 50 °C exhibited a substantial reduction in radioactive gas released following nutrient injection. A sample stored at 10 °C for several months was later tested showing significantly reduced radioactive gas release.

A CNN article from 2000 noted that "Though most of his peers concluded otherwise, Levin still holds that the robot tests he coordinated on the 1976 Viking lander indicated the presence of living organisms on Mars." A 2006 astrobiology textbook noted that "With unsterilized Terrestrial samples, though, the addition of more nutrients after the initial incubation would then produce still more radioactive gas as the dormant bacteria sprang into action to consume the new dose of food. This was not true of the Martian soil; on Mars, the second and third nutrient injections did not produce any further release of labeled gas." The 2011 edition of the same textbook noted that "Albet Yen of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has shown that, under extremely cold and dry conditions and in a carbon dioxide atmosphere, ultraviolet light (remember: Mars lacks an ozone layer, so the surface is bathed in ultraviolet) can cause carbon dioxide to react with soils to produce various oxidizers, including highly reactive superoxides (salts containing O2−). When mixed with small organic molecules, superoxidizers readily oxidize them to carbon dioxide, which may account for the LR result. Superoxide chemistry can also account for the puzzling results seen when more nutrients were added to the soil in the LR experiment; because life multiplies, the amount of gas should have increased when a second or third batch of nutrients was added, but if the effect was due to a chemical being consumed in the first reaction, no new gas would be expected. Lastly, many superoxides are relatively unstable and are destroyed at elevated temperatures, also accounting for the "sterilization" seen in the LR experiment."

In a 2002 paper published by Joseph Miller, he speculates that recorded delays in the system's chemical reactions point to biological activity similar to the circadian rhythm previously observed in terrestrial cyanobacteria.

On 12 April 2012, an international team including Levin and Patricia Ann Straat published a peer reviewed paper suggesting the detection of "extant microbial life on Mars", based on mathematical speculation through cluster analysis of the Labeled Release experiments of the 1976 Viking Mission.

Pyrolytic release
The pyrolytic release (PR) experiment (PI: Norman Horowitz, Caltech) consisted of the use of light, water, and a carbon-containing atmosphere of carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2), simulating that on Mars. The carbon-bearing gases were made with carbon-14 (14C), a heavy, radioactive isotope of carbon. If there were photosynthetic organisms present, it was believed that they would incorporate some of the carbon as biomass through the process of carbon fixation, just as plants and cyanobacteria on earth do. After several days of incubation, the experiment removed the gases, baked the remaining soil at 650 °C (1200 °F), and collected the products in a device which counted radioactivity. If any of the 14C had been converted to biomass, it would be vaporized during heating and the radioactivity counter would detect it as evidence for life. Should a positive response be obtained, a duplicate sample of the same soil would be heated to "sterilize" it. It would then be tested as a control and should it still show activity similar to the first response, that was evidence that the activity was chemical in nature. However, a nil, or greatly diminished response, was evidence for biology. This same control was to be used for any of the three life detection experiments that showed a positive initial result. The initial assessment of results from the Viking 1 PR experiment was that "analysis of the results shows that a small but significant formation of organic matter occurred" and that the sterilized control showed no evidence of organics, showing that the "findings could be attributed to biological activity." However, given the persistence of organic release at 90 °C, the inhibition of organics after injecting water vapor and, especially, the lack of detection of organics in the Martian soil by the GCMS experiment, the investigators concluded that a nonbiological explanation of the PR results was most likely. However, in subsequent years, as the GCMS results have come increasingly under scrutiny, the pyrolytic release experiment results have again come to be viewed as possibly consistent with biological activity, although "An explanation for the apparent small synthesis of organic matter in the pyrolytic release experiment remains obscure."

Scientific conclusions
Organic compounds seem to be common, for example, on asteroids, meteorites, comets and the icy bodies orbiting the Sun, so detecting no trace of any organic compound on the surface of Mars came as a surprise. The GC-MS was definitely working, because the controls were effective and it was able to detect traces of chlorine, attributed to the cleaning solvents that had been used to sterilize it prior to launch. A reanalysis of the GC-MS data was performed in 2018, suggesting that organic compounds may actually have been detected, corroborating with data from the Curiosity rover. At the time, the total absence of organic material on the surface made the results of the biology experiments moot, since metabolism involving organic compounds were what those experiments were designed to detect. The general scientific community surmises that the Viking's biological tests remain inconclusive, and can be explained by purely chemical processes.

Despite the positive result from the Labeled Release experiment, a general assessment is that the results seen in the four experiments are best explained by oxidative chemical reactions with the Martian soil. One of the current conclusions is that the Martian soil, being continuously exposed to UV light from the Sun (Mars has no protective ozone layer), has built up a thin layer of a very strong oxidant. A sufficiently strong oxidizing molecule would react with the added water to produce oxygen and hydrogen, and with the nutrients to produce carbon dioxide (CO2).

Norman Horowitz was the chief of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory bioscience section for the Mariner and Viking missions from 1965 to 1976. Horowitz considered that the great versatility of the carbon atom makes it the element most likely to provide solutions, even exotic solutions, to the problems of survival of life on other planets. However, he also considered that the conditions found on Mars were incompatible with carbon based life.

In August 2008, the Phoenix lander detected perchlorate, a strong oxidizer when heated above 200 °C. This was initially thought to be the cause of a false positive LR result. However, results of experiments published in December 2010 propose that organic compounds "could have been present" in the soil analyzed by both Viking 1 and 2, since NASA's Phoenix lander in 2008 detected perchlorate, which can break down organic compounds. The study's authors found that perchlorate can destroy organics when heated and produce chloromethane and dichloromethane as byproduct, the identical chlorine compounds discovered by both Viking landers when they performed the same tests on Mars. Because perchlorate would have broken down any Martian organics, the question of whether Viking found organic compounds is still wide open, as alternative chemical and biological interpretations are possible.

In 2013, astrobiologist Richard Quinn at the Ames Center conducted experiments in which amino acids reacting with hypochlorite, which is created when perchlorate is irradiated with gamma rays, seemed to reproduce the findings of the labeled-release experiment. He concluded that neither hydrogen peroxide nor superoxide is required to explain the results of the Viking biology experiments. A more detailed study was conducted in 2017 by a team of researchers including Quinn. While this study was not specifically designed to match the data from the LR experiment, it was found that hypochlorite could partially explain the control results, including the 160 °C sterilization test. The authors stated "Further experiments are planned to characterize the thermal stability of hypochlorite and other oxychlorine species in the context of the LR experiments."

Controversy
Before the discovery of the oxidizer perchlorate on Mars in 2008, some theories remained opposed to the general scientific conclusion. An investigator suggested that the biological explanation of the lack of detected organics by GC-MS could be that the oxidizing inventory of the H2O2-H2O solvent well exceeded the reducing power of the organic compounds of the organisms.

It has also been argued that the Labeled Release (LR) experiment detected so few metabolising organisms in the Martian soil, that it would have been impossible for the gas chromatograph to detect them. This view has been put forward by the designer of the LR experiment, Gilbert Levin, who believes the positive LR results are diagnostic for life on Mars. He and others have conducted ongoing experiments attempting to reproduce the Viking data, either with biological or non-biological materials on Earth. While no experiment has ever precisely duplicated the Mars LR test and control results, experiments with hydrogen peroxide-saturated titanium dioxide have produced similar results.

While the majority of astrobiologists still conclude that the Viking biological experiments were inconclusive or negative, Gilbert Levin is not alone in believing otherwise. The current claim for life on Mars is grounded on old evidence reinterpreted in the light of recent developments. In 2006, scientist Rafael Navarro demonstrated that the Viking biological experiments likely lacked sensitivity to detect trace amounts of organic compounds. In a paper published in December 2010, the scientists suggest that if organics were present, they would not have been detected because when the soil is heated to check for organics, perchlorate destroys them rapidly producing chloromethane and dichloromethane, which is what the Viking landers found. This team also notes that this is not a proof of life but it could make a difference in how scientists look for organic biosignatures in the future. Results from the current Mars Science Laboratory mission and the under-development ExoMars program may help settle this controversy.

In 2006, Mario Crocco went as far as proposing the creation of a new nomenclatural rank that classified some Viking results as 'metabolic' and therefore representative of a new form of life. The taxonomy proposed by Crocco has not been accepted by the scientific community, and the validity of Crocco's interpretation hinged entirely on the absence of an oxidative agent in the Martian soil.

According to Gilbert Levin and Patricia Ann Straat, investigators of the LR experiment, no explanation involving inorganic chemistry as of 2016 is able to give satisfactory explanations of the complete data from the LR experiment, and specifically address the question of what active agent on the soil samples could be adversely affected by heating to approximately 50 °C and destroyed with long-term storage in the dark at 10 °C, as data suggest.

Critiques
James Lovelock argued that the Viking mission would have done better to examine the Martian atmosphere than look at the soil. He theorised that all life tends to expel waste gases into the atmosphere, and as such it would be possible to theorise the existence of life on a planet by detecting an atmosphere that was not in chemical equilibrium. He concluded that there was enough information about Mars' atmosphere at that time to discount the possibility of life there. Since then, methane has been discovered in Mars' atmosphere at 10ppb, thus reopening this debate. Although in 2013 the Curiosity rover failed to detect methane at its location in levels exceeding 1.3ppb. later in 2013 and in 2014, measurements by Curiosity did detect methane, suggesting a time-variable source. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, launched in March 2016, implements this approach and will focus on detection, characterization of spatial and temporal variation, and localization of sources for a broad suite of atmospheric trace gases on Mars and help determine if their formation is of biological or geological origin. The Mars Orbiter Mission has also been attempting – since late 2014 – to detect and map methane on Mars' atmosphere. A press commentary argued that, if there was life at the Viking lander sites, it may have been killed by the exhaust from the landing rockets. That is not a problem for missions which land via an airbag-protected capsule, slowed by parachutes and retrorockets, and dropped from a height that allows rocket exhaust to avoid the surface. Mars Pathfinder's Sojourner rover and the Mars Exploration Rovers each used this landing technique successfully. The Phoenix Scout lander descended to the surface with retro-rockets, however, their fuel was hydrazine, and the end products of the plume (water, nitrogen, and ammonia) were not found to have affected the soils at the landing site.

title: Viking lander biological experiments


text:
Talk:Grub (search engine)

GFDL notice: part of this article was originally at Grub and authored by Geoffrey

License?
Anyone know what the license for Grub is?

--- AM 0 88 (talk) 00:18, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

COI
I have added a COI tag because of the Wikia is not Wikipedia template. Rich Farmbrough, 21:05 5 February 2008 (GMT).

Still operating?
Is Grub still alive? The external link in the wikipedia entry is to grub.org, which has nothing. The other external links, to wikia pages, redirect to more general pages. Seems as if the project is no longer. Can someone confirm? Docmphd (talk) 21:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Grub (search engine). Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070821061921/http://www.wikia.com:80/wiki/Search_Wikia_OSCON to http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia_OSCON

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 09:45, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:Grub (search engine)


text:
Pansy Wong

Pansy Yu Fong Wong (born 1955 ) is a New Zealand former politician.

Wong was a National Party Member of Parliament in the New Zealand House of Representatives from 1996 to 2011. She was New Zealand's first MP and first Cabinet minister of Asian ethnicity and served as Minister for Ethnic Affairs and Minister of Women's Affairs in the Fifth National Government. Wong resigned from Parliament in January 2011 after allegations of misusing parliamentary travel allowances.

Early life and family
Wong was born in Shanghai and raised in a one-room Hong Kong apartment by her mother, Pui Ching Chui, with her two brothers after her parents chose to leave Maoist China. Her father, Hung Shun Tsui, a seaman, was away most of the time for work. In Hong Kong, Wong took the English name Pansy and attended the Queen Elizabeth School.

The family emigrated to Christchurch, New Zealand in 1974, when Wong was aged 19. While working in her parents' fish and chip shop, she studied commerce at University of Canterbury and graduated with a Master of Commerce.

She is married to Malaysian-born businessman Sammy Teck Seng Wong, whom she met at university. Sammy Wong was a justice of the peace from 1998 until his retirement in 2020 and had diverse business interests, including shareholder interests in the education, education, and transport industries.

Wong speaks English, Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese.

Career
Wong's early career was in business and accounting, including a period as chief financial controller at Smiths City. Eventually she turned to governance and worked as a professional director with several government appointments.

In 1989, she was chair of the New Zealand Society of Accountants (Canterbury branch). The same year, she contested the Canterbury Regional Council, in the five-member Fitzgerald constituency, on the Christchurch Action team ticket. Of the ten Christchurch Action regional council candidates that year, Wong was the only one to be elected. During her seven years as a councillor, she chaired the finance committee and became known as the "$6 million woman" for overseeing budget cuts of that amount.

By 1991 Wong had been appointed by the Fourth National Government to the governing council of Lincoln University. She was reappointed to a second term, scheduled to end in February 1997, but she retired early upon her election to Parliament. In 1995, she was also appointed to the New Zealand Tourism Board.

Member of Parliament
Wong was encouraged to stand for Parliament by National MP for Fendalton Philip Burdon. She was selected as a list-only candidate for the National Party ahead of the 1996 general election. Based in Christchurch, she campaigned nationwide amongst Asian communities. Wong was elected as a list MP on 14 October 1996, becoming New Zealand's first ethnically Asian MP. To mark her election, Wong released 130 balloons from the steps of Parliament, symbolising the 130 years since the first Chinese settlers arrived in New Zealand.

In her first term, she was appointed a member of the commerce committee and the justice and law reform committee. Her maiden statement, delivered on 19 March 1997, was described in The Dominion as "a feisty attack on racism against migrants." She criticised the "unfair targeting of Asian immigrants," some of which was instigated by National's new partner in government, the New Zealand First party, but praised what she saw as the increasing acceptance of New Zealand's multiculturalism. Wong rejected suggestions, including from Winston Peters, that she was a "token" representative for the Asian community and later said these events set her ambition of becoming an electorate representative to get a stronger mandate.

She supported Jenny Shipley in the 1997 New Zealand National Party leadership election and was thereafter appointed to shadow the consumer affairs portfolio. Wong took over the sponsorship of the Passive Resistance Sprays Reform Bill, originally in the names of Gail McIntosh and Joy McLauchlan, which would have enabled members of the public to carry items like mace for personal protection; the bill was defeated 52–68 in December 1998. She sought the Christchurch Central candidacy at the 1999 general election, but was unsuccessful. After the election, in which Wong was re-elected as a National Party list MP, she continued as a member of the commerce committee and was appointed spokesperson for energy and ethnic affairs, and associate spokesperson for commerce, in the Shipley shadow cabinet.

Ahead of the 2002 general election, Wong relocated to Auckland to contest the electorate of Auckland Central. She finished second to the incumbent, Judith Tizard. In her third term, Wong became deputy chair of the governance administration committee. She was spokesperson for ethnic affairs and tourism in the English shadow cabinet until 2003. The ethnic affairs portfolio was disestablished under Bill English's successor Don Brash and Wong was made National's liaison with the Asian community and allocated associate spokesperson roles related to education, immigration and revenue. She was returned as a list MP for the fourth time at the 2005 general election and was assigned the spokesperson portfolios in ethnic affairs and accident compensation by new leader John Key.

As National's ethnic affairs spokesperson, Wong was outspoken for Asian communities. She advocated for more lenient immigration rules, like easier language tests, to support a greater number of Asian migrants into New Zealand. She dismissed the Labour government's 2002 apology to the Chinese community for the historic poll tax as staged and paternalistic, although was criticised for upsetting the descendants of those affected who had worked to secure the apology. Wong, who was a proponent of Asian integration within New Zealand and did not believe there should be a stand-alone ethnic affairs ministry, continued to face political attacks on the basis of her ethnicity and accent.

Wong won the new electorate of Botany in the 2008 general election. Wong's decision to change to Botany was based partly on the fact that 33% of the Botany electorate is Asian. She left Parliament in early 2011.

Minister in the Fifth National Government
After the 2008 general election, Wong was appointed Minister for Ethnic Affairs, Minister of Women's Affairs, Associate Minister for ACC, and Associate Minister for Energy and Resources in the Fifth National Government. She said her appointment as New Zealand's first Asian Cabinet minister showed "New Zealand is a tolerant country where anyone can be accepted and succeed." In June 2009 she was additionally appointed an associate minister in the disability issues portfolio. While minister, Wong took ten overseas trips on ministerial business.

Wong's ministerial career ended in scandal when it was claimed she improperly used her status to help her husband's business interests while travelling in China. She resigned her positions when it emerged her husband, Sammy Wong, had accompanied her on ministerial visits overseas to conduct his business activities and used the address of her electoral office as the registered address for his businesses. An investigation concluded there was no systemic abuse of MPs' travel entitlements but ordered some costs to be repaid by the Wongs. The events led to a review and change to the entitlements. The Auditor-General considered investigating, but initially declined. However, an audit investigation into the Wongs was launched in 2011 which recommended further repayments, as well as law changes regarding MPs' expenses and entitlements, be made.

On 14 December 2010, Wong announced she would also resign from Parliament, effective from mid-January. She gave her valedictory statement on the same day. Jami-Lee Ross replaced her in the 2011 Botany by-election. She was succeeded in her ministerial portfolios by Hekia Parata.

Awards and honours
In 1993, Wong was awarded the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal.

On 15 September 2011 Wong was granted the right to retain the title of "the Honourable" for her lifetime in recognition of her term as a member of the Executive Council.

title: Pansy Wong


text:
Street children

Street children are poor or homeless children who live on the streets of a city, town, or village. Homeless youth are often called street kids, or urchins; the definition of street children is contested, but many practitioners and policymakers use UNICEF's concept of boys and girls, aged under 18 years, for whom "the street" (including unoccupied dwellings and wasteland) has become home and/or their source of livelihood, and who are inadequately protected or supervised. Street girls are sometimes called gamines,  a term that is also used for Colombian street children of either sex.

Some street children, notably in more developed nations, are part of a subcategory called thrown-away children, consisting of children who have been forced to leave home. Thrown-away children are more likely to come from single-parent homes. Street children are often subject to abuse, neglect, exploitation, or, in extreme cases, murder by "clean-up squads" that have been hired by local businesses or police.

Statistics and distribution
Street children can be found in a large majority of the world's famous cities, with the phenomenon more prevalent in densely populated urban hubs of developing or economically unstable regions, such as countries in Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.

According to a report from 1988 of the Consortium for Street Children, a United Kingdom-based consortium of related non-governmental organizations (NGOs), UNICEF estimated that 100 million children were growing up on urban streets around the world. Fourteen years later, in 2002 UNICEF similarly reported, "The latest estimates put the numbers of these children as high as one hundred million". More recently the organization added, "The exact number of street children is impossible to quantify, but the figure almost certainly runs into tens of millions across the world. It is likely that the numbers are increasing." In an attempt to form a more reliable estimate, a statistical model based on the number of street children and relevant social indicators for 184 countries was developed; according to this model, there are 10 to 15 million street children in the world. Although it produced a statistically reliable estimate of the number of street children, the model is highly dependent on the definition of “street children,” national estimates, and data collected on the development level of the country, and it is thus limited in range. The one hundred million figure is still commonly cited for street children, but is not based on currently available academic research. Similarly, it is debatable whether numbers of street children are growing globally, or whether it is the awareness of street children within societies that has grown.

Comprehensive street level research, completed in the year 2000 in Cape Town proved that international estimates of tens of thousands of street children living on the streets of Cape Town were incorrect. This research proved, that even with street children begging at every intersection, rivers of street children sleeping on the pavements at night, and with gangs of street children roaming around the streets, there were less than 800 children living on the streets of greater Cape Town at this time. This insight enabled a whole new approach to street children to be developed, one not based on the provision of basic care to masses of street children, but one focused on helping individual children, on healing, educating, stabilizing, and developing them permanently away from street life, as well as managing the exploitation of street children and the support factors that keep them on the street.

History

In 1848, Lord Ashley referred to more than 30,000 "naked, filthy, roaming lawless, and deserted children" in and around London, UK. Among many English novels featuring them as a humanitarian problem are Jessica's First Prayer by Sarah Smith (1867) and Georgina Castle Smith's Nothing to Nobody (1872).

By 1922, there were at least seven million homeless children in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic due to the devastation from World War I and the Russian Civil War (see "Orphans in the Soviet Union"). Abandoned children formed gangs, created their own argot, and engaged in petty theft and prostitution.

Causes
The causes of this phenomenon are varied, but are often related to domestic, economic, or social disruption. This includes, but is not limited to: poverty; breakdown of homes and/or families; political unrest; acculturation; sexual, physical or emotional abuse; domestic violence; being lured away by pimps, internet predators, or begging syndicates; mental health problems; substance abuse; and sexual orientation or gender identity issues. Children may end up on the streets due to cultural factors. For example, some children in parts of the Congo and Uganda are made to leave their families on suspicion of being witches who bring bad luck. In Afghanistan, young girls who are accused of "honor crimes" that shame their families and/or cultural practices may be forced to leave their homes ‒ this could include refusing an arranged marriage, or even being raped or sexually abused, if that is considered adultery in their culture.

Kenya
UNICEF works with CARITAS and with other non-governmental organizations in Kenya to address street children. Rapid and unsustainable urbanization in the post-colonial period, which led to entrenched urban poverty in cities such as Nairobi, Kisumu, and Mombasa is an underlying cause of child homelessness. Rural-urban migration broke up extended families which had previously acted as a support network, taking care of children in cases of abuse, neglect, and abandonment.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has reported that glue sniffing is at the core of "street culture" in Nairobi, and that the majority of street children in the city are habitual solvent users. Research conducted by Cottrell-Boyce for the African Journal of Drug and Alcohol Studies found that glue sniffing amongst Kenyan street children was primarily functional – dulling the senses against the hardship of life on the street – but it also provided a link to the support structure of the ‘street family’ as a potent symbol of shared experience.

South Africa
Street Children are legally protected by the South African Children's Act, Act 38 of 2005, which defines street children as "children living, working and begging on the street" and as "Children in need of Care and Protection". South Africa has done much to address street children and the South African government now partially funds street children organisations. Parents of vulnerable children can access a monthly child care grant, and organisations have developed effective street outreach, drop-in centres,  therapeutic residential care, and prevention and early intervention services for street children.

Comprehensive Street level research, completed in the year 2000 in Cape Town, proved that international estimates of tens of thousands of street children living on the street were incorrect. This research proved, that even with street children begging at every intersection, rivers of street children sleeping on the pavements at night, and with gangs of street children roaming around the streets, there were less than 800 children living on the streets of greater Cape Town at this time. This insight enabled a whole new approach to street children to be developed, one not based on the provision of basic care to masses of street children, but one focused on helping individual children, on healing, educating, stabilizing, and developing them permanently away from street life, as well as managing exploitation of street children and support factors that keep them on the street.

This approach has effectively reduced the number of children living on the streets of Cape Town by over 90%, even with over 200 children continuing to move onto the street each year. It has also seen absconding-from-care rates decline to less than 7%, and the success rate for getting children off the street has reached 80 to 90%. The number of street-vulnerable children, that is the number of chronically neglected, sexually and physically abused, traumatized community children, remains however unacceptably high, with school drop-out rates a real concern and with schools battling to deal with the high number of traumatised children they have to contend with.

Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone was considered to be the poorest nation in the world, according to the UN World Poverty Index 2008.

Whilst the current picture is more optimistic – World Bank projections for 2013/14 ranked Sierra Leone as having the second fastest-growing economy in the world – a prevalent lack of child rights and extreme poverty remain widespread.

There are close to 50,000 children relying upon the streets for their survival, a portion of them living full-time on the streets. There are also an estimated 300,000 children in Sierra Leone without access to education. Often neglected rural areas – of which there are many – offer little or no opportunity for children to break from the existing cycle of poverty.

Bangladesh

No recent statistics on street children in Bangladesh are available. UNICEF puts the number above 670,000 referring to a study conducted by Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, "Estimation of the Size of Street Children and their Projection for Major Urban Areas of Bangladesh, 2005". About 36% of these children are in the capital city Dhaka according to the same study. Though Bangladesh improved the Human Capital Index over the decades, (HDI is 0.558 according to the 2014 HDR of UNDP and Bangladesh at 142 among 187 countries and territories), these children still represent the absolute lowest level in the social hierarchy. The same study projected the number of street children to be 1.14m in year 2014.

India
India has an estimated one million or more street children in each of the following cities: New Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai. When considering India as a whole, there are over eleven million children who earn their living off the streets in cities and rural areas. It is more common for street children to be male and the average age is fourteen. Although adolescent girls are more protected by families than boys are, when girls do break the bonds they are often worse off than boys are, as they are lured into prostitution. Due to the acceleration in economic growth in India, an economic rift has appeared, with just over thirty-two per cent of the population living below the poverty line. Owing to unemployment, increasing rural-urban migration, the attraction of city life, and a lack of political will, India has developed one of the largest child labor forces in the world.

Indonesia
According to a 2007 study, there were over 170,000 street children living in Indonesia. In 2000, about 1,600 children were living on the streets of Yogyakarta. Approximately five hundred of these children were girls from the ages of four–sixteen years of age. Many children began living on the streets after the 1997 Asian financial crisis in Indonesia. Girls living on the street face more difficulties than boys living on the street as often girls are abused by the street boys because of the patriarchal nature of the culture. "They abuse girls, refuse to acknowledge them as street children, but liken them to prostitutes." Many girls become dependent on boyfriends; they receive material support in exchange for sex.

The street children in Indonesia are seen as a public nuisance. "They are detained, subjected to verbal and physical abuse, their means of livelihood (guitars for busking, goods for sale) confiscated, and some have been shot attempting to flee the police."

Iran
There are between 60,000 and 200,000 street children in Iran (2016).

Pakistan
The number of street children in Pakistan is estimated to be between 1.2 million and 1.5 million. Issues like domestic violence, unemployment, natural disasters, poverty, unequal industrialization, unplanned rapid urbanization, family disintegration and lack of education are considered the major factors behind the increase in the number of street children. Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) carried out a study which presented 56.5% of the children interviewed in Multan, 82.2% in Karachi, 80.5% in Hyderabad and 83.3% in Sukkur were forced to move on to the streets after the 2010 and 2011 floods.

Philippines
According to the 1998 report titled "Situation of the Youth in the Philippines", there are about 1.5 million street children in the Philippines, 70% of which are boys. Street children as young as ten years old can be imprisoned alongside adults under the country's Vagrancy Act; in past cases, physical and sexual abuse have occurred as a result of this legislation.

Vietnam
According to The Street Educators' Club, the number of street children in Vietnam has shrunk from 21,000 in 2003 to 8,000 in 2007. The number dropped from 1,507 to 113 in Hanoi and from 8,507 to 794 in Ho Chi Minh City. There are currently almost four hundred humanitarian organizations and international non-governmental organizations providing help to about 15,000 Vietnamese children.

North Korea
Ever since the North Korean famine in the 1990s, North Korea has hosted a large population of homeless children known as kotjebi, or "flower swallows" in Korean. In 2018, Daily NK reported that the government was interning kotjebi in kwalliso camps and that the children there were beginning to suffer from malnutrition due to low rations. In 2021 the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that hundreds of homeless orphans "volunteered" to work in manual labor projects, raising concerns over the possibility that homeless North Korean children were being conscripted into forced labor projects. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization also reported that homeless children faced increasing risks of starvation due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent food security crisis.

Greece
Greece's street child activity is heavily connected with human trafficking. In 2003, street children located in state-run facilities had disappeared. The disappearance is suspected to be linked to human trafficking. The numbers have decreased in recent years, and Greece has taken "legislative action to criminalize human trafficking and related crimes", though Amnesty International reports that the problem still exists, and there is a failure of government protection and justice of trafficked children.

Begging and other street activities have been outlawed in Greece since 2003, but the recent unemployment hike has increased levels of these actions.

There are few programs for displaced children in Greece, which created a street child problem in the early 2000s. Giving foster parents to special needs children is not something the Greek government has done, leading to higher numbers of physically or mentally disabled street children. There are also deterrents for working and poor parents in Greece making them more willing to force their children to the streets. For example, orphans are given financial benefits, but if they live in state-run facilities they cannot receive these benefits. For working parents to get government subsidies, they often have to have more than one child.

Romania

The phenomenon of street children in Romania must be understood within the local historical context. In 1966, in communist Romania, ruler Nicolae Ceauşescu outlawed contraception and abortion, enacting an aggressive natalist policy, in an effort to increase the population. As families were not able to cope, thousands of unwanted children were placed in state orphanages where they faced terrible conditions. The struggle of families was made worse in the 1980s, when the state agreed to implement an austerity program in exchange for international loans, leading to a dramatic drop in living standards and to food rationing; and the fall of communism in December 1989 meant additional economic and social insecurity. Under such conditions, in the 1990s, many children moved onto the streets, with some being from the orphanages, while others being runaways from impoverished families. During the transition period from communism to market economy in the 1990s, social issues such as those of these children were low on the government's agenda. Nevertheless, by the turn of the century things were improving. A 2000 report from the Council of Europe estimated that there were approximately 1,000 street children in the city of Bucharest. The prevalence of street children has led to a rapidly increasing sex tourism business in Romania; although, efforts have been made to decrease the number of street children in the country. The 2001 documentary film Children Underground documents the plight of Romanian street children, in particular their struggles with malnutrition, sexual exploitation, and substance abuse. In the 1990s, street children were often seen begging, inhaling 'aurolac' from sniffing bags, and roaming around the Bucharest Metro. In the 21st century, the number of children living permanently on the streets dropped significantly, although more children worked on the streets all day, but returned home to their parents at night. By 2004, it was estimated that less than 500 children lived permanently in the streets in Bucharest, while less than 1,500 worked in the streets during the day, returning home to their families in the evening. By 2014, the street children of the 1990s were adults, and many were reported to be living 'underground' in the tunnels and sewers beneath the streets of Bucharest, with some having their own children.

Russia
In 2001, it was estimated that Russia had about one million street children, and one in four crimes involved underage individuals. Officially, the number of children without supervision is more than 700,000.

According to UNICEF, there were 64,000 homeless street children brought to hospitals by various governmental services (e.g. police) in 2005. In 2008, the number was 60,000.

Sweden
In 2012, unaccompanied male minors from Morocco started claiming asylum in Sweden. In 2014, 384 claimed asylum. Knowing that their chances of receiving refugee status was slim, they frequently ran away from the refugee housing to live on the streets.

In 2016, of the estimated 800 street children in Sweden, Morocco is the most prevalent country of origin. In 2016, the governments of Sweden and Morocco signed a treaty to facilitate their repatriation to Morocco. Efforts by authorities to aid the youth were declined by the youth who preferred living on the street and supporting themselves by crime. Morocco was initially reluctant to accept the repatriates, but as they could be identified using the Moroccan fingerprint database, repatriation could take place once Moroccan citizenship had been proven. Of the 77 males Morocco accepted, 65 had stated a false identity when claiming asylum to Sweden.

Turkey
Of Turkey's 30,891 street children, 30,109 live in Istanbul, research conducted by the Turkish Prime Ministry's Human Rights Presidency (BİHB) has shown. Of the street children, 20 were identified in Ankara, and Turkey's third-largest city, İzmir, had none. Kocaeli Province was reported to have 687 street children while Eskişehir has 47. The research also revealed that 41,000 children are forced to beg on the streets, more than half of whom are found in Istanbul. Other cities with high figures include Ankara (6,700), Diyarbakır (3,300), Mersin (637) and Van (640).

Based on unofficial estimates, 88,000 children in Turkey live on the streets, and the country has the fourth-highest rate of underage substance abuse in the world. 4 percent of all children in Turkey are subject to sexual abuse, with 70 percent of the victims being younger than 10. Contrary to popular belief, boys are subject to sexual abuse as frequently as girls. In reported cases of children subject to commercial sexual exploitation, 77 percent of the children came from broken homes. Twenty-three percent lived with their parents, but in those homes domestic violence was common. The biggest risk faced by children who run away and live on the street is sexual exploitation. Children kidnapped from southeastern provinces are forced into prostitution here. Today, it is impossible to say for certain how many children in Turkey are being subjected to commercial sexual exploitation, but many say official information is off by at least 85 percent.

United States
The number of homeless children in the US grew from 1.2 million in 2007 to 1.6 million in 2010. The United States defines homelessness per the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act. The number of homeless children reached record highs in 2011, 2012, and 2013 at about three times their number in 1983. An "estimated two million [youth] run away from or are forced out of their homes each year" in the United States. The difference in these numbers can be attributed to the temporary nature of street children in the United States, unlike the more permanent state in developing countries.

In the United States 83% of "street children" do not leave their state of origin. If they do leave their state of origin they are likely to end up in large cities, notably New York City, Los Angeles, Portland, and San Francisco. In the United States, street children are predominantly Caucasian, female, and 42% identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT).

The United States government has been making efforts since the late 1970s to accommodate this section of the population. The Runaway and Homeless Youth Act of 1978 made funding available for shelters and funded the National Runaway Switchboard. Other efforts include the Child Abuse and Treatment Act of 1974, the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, and the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. There has also been a decline in arrest rates in street youth, dropping in 30,000 arrests from 1998 to 2007. Instead, the authorities are referring homeless youth to state-run social service agencies.

Honduras
In Honduras between 1998 and 2002, hundreds of street children were reportedly abducted, tortured and murdered by police and civilian "cleanup squads".

South America
According to some estimates made in 1982 by UNICEF, there were forty million street children in Latin America, most of whom work on the streets, but they do not necessarily live on the streets. A majority of the street children in Latin America are males between the ages of 10 and 14. There are two categories of street children in Latin America: home-based and street-based. Home-based children have homes and families to return to, while street-based children do not. A majority of street children in Latin America are home-based.

Brazil
The Brazilian government estimates that the number of children and adolescents in 2012 who work or sleep on the streets was approximately 23,973, based on results from the national census mandated by the Human Rights Secretariat of the Presidency (SDH) and the Institute for Sustainable Development (Idesp).

Australia
As of 2016, around 24,200 Australian youth were listed as homeless. The majority of homeless youth are located in the State of New South Wales. Youth homelessness has been subject to a number of independent studies, some calling for the Australian Human Rights Commission to conduct an inquiry on the matter.

Responses by governments
While some governments have implemented programs to deal with street children, the general solution involves placing the children into orphanages, juvenile homes, or correctional institutions. Efforts have been made by various governments to support or partner with non-government organizations. In Colombia, the government has tried to implement programs to put these children in state-run homes, but efforts have largely failed, and street children have become a victim group of social cleansing by the National Police because they are assumed to be drug users and criminals. In Australia, the primary response to homelessness is the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP). The program is limited in its effectiveness. An estimated one in two young people who seek a bed from SAAP are turned away because services are full.

Public approaches to street children
There are four categories of how societies deal with street children: correctional model, rehabilitative model, outreach strategies, and preventive approach. There is no significant benefit when comparing therapeutic interventions such as cognitive behavioural therapy and family therapy with standard services such as drop-in center.

 * The correctional model is primarily used by governments and the police. They view children as a public nuisance and risk to security of the general public. The objective of this model would be to protect the public and help keep the kids away from a life of crime. The methods this model uses to keep the children away from the life of crime are the juvenile justice system and specific institutions.
 * The rehabilitative model is supported by churches and NGOs. The view of this model is that street children are damaged and in need of help. The objective of this model is to rehabilitate children into mainstream society. The methods used to keep children from going back to the streets are education, drug detoxification programs, and providing children with a safe family-like environment.
 * The outreach strategy is supported by street teachers, NGOs, and church organizations. This strategy views street children as oppressed individuals in need of support from their communities. The objective of the Outreach strategy is to empower the street children by providing outreach education and training to support children.
 * The preventive approach is supported by NGOs, the coalition of street children, and lobbying governments. They view street children's poor circumstances from negative social and economic forces. In order to help street children, this approach focuses on the problems that cause children to leave their homes for the street by targeting parents' unemployment, poor housing campaign for children's rights.

NGO responses
Non-government organizations employ a wide variety of strategies to address the needs and rights of street children. One example of an NGO effort is "The Street Children‘s Day", launched by Jugend Eine Welt on 31 January 2009 to highlight the situation of street children. The "Street Children's Day" has been commemorated every year since its inception in 2009.

Street children differ in age, gender, ethnicity, and social class, and these children have had different experiences throughout their lifetimes. UNICEF differentiates between the different types of children living on the street in three different categories: candidates for the street (street children who work and hang out on the streets), children on the streets (children who work on the street but have a home to go to at night), and children of the street (children who live on the street without family support).[45]

Horatio Alger's book, Tattered Tom; or, The Story of a Street Arab (1871), is an early example of the appearance of street children in literature. The book follows the tale of a homeless girl who lives by her wits on the streets of New York City. Other examples from popular fiction include Kim, from Rudyard Kipling's novel of the same name, who is a street child in colonial India. Gavroche, in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, Fagin's crew of child pickpockets in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, a similar group of child thieves in Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord, and Sherlock Holmes' "Baker Street Irregulars" are other notable examples of the presence of street children in popular works of literature.

During the mid-1970s in Australia, a number of youth refuges were established. These refuges were founded by local youth workers, providing crisis accommodation, and soon began getting funding from the Australian government. In New South Wales, these early refuges include Caretakers Cottage, Young People's Refuge, and Taldemunde among others. Within years of their founding, these refuges began receiving funding from the Department of Family and Community Services.

title: Street children