Mark Vincent Perkins (born September 27, 1981) is a Canadian former professional baseball pitcher. He played for the Canada national baseball team in the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classics.

Career
Perkins was selected by Toronto Blue Jays in 18th round of the 2000 Major League Baseball draft. He began his professional career in  with their Class A (Short Season) affiliate, the Auburn Doubledays. After spending  with Auburn, he was promoted to the Class A Charleston Alley Cats and then the Class A-Advanced Dunedin Blue Jays in . He remained in Dunedin for the  season. In , he was promoted the Blue Jays' Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats.

Perkins began to feel soreness in his elbow in 2004. Later, when playing for the Canada national baseball team in the 2006 World Baseball Classic, he injured his elbow while pitching against Mexico. He rehabbed both of these injuries. At the end of spring training with the Blue Jays, Perkins was placed on waivers. On April 12, 2006, he was claimed by the Milwaukee Brewers and immediately placed on their disabled list. After undergoing Tommy John surgery, he was sidelined for the entire 2006 season.

Perkins made his return to baseball in  and was assigned to Milwaukee's Class A-Advanced Brevard County Manatees. During the season, he was promoted to their Double-A Huntsville Stars. During the off-season, he was promoted to their Triple-A Nashville Sounds. Perkins was later released by the Brewers and signed to a minor league contract with the Chicago White Sox on March 29, 2008, but was later released.

Perkins signed with the Camden Riversharks of the Atlantic League for the 2008 season.

Perkins started for Team Canada on March 9 in their game versus Italy at the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

References

External links
"Vince Perkins Statistics". The Baseball Cube. 2 February 2008.

1981 births
Living people
Auburn Doubledays players
Baseball people from British Columbia
Brevard County Manatees players
Camden Riversharks players
Canadian expatriate baseball players in the United States
Charleston AlleyCats players
Criollos de Caguas players
Dunedin Blue Jays players
Canadian expatriate baseball players in Puerto Rico
Huntsville Stars players
Iowa Cubs players
Joliet JackHammers players
Leones de Ponce players
New Hampshire Fisher Cats players
Newark Bears (International League) players
Sportspeople from Victoria, British Columbia
Tennessee Smokies players
World Baseball Classic players of Canada
York Revolution players
2006 World Baseball Classic players
2009 World Baseball Classic players


Kunal Basu (Bengali: কুনাল বসু) is an Indian author of English fiction who has written five novels – The Opium Clerk (2001), The Miniaturist (2003), Racists (2006), The Yellow Emperor's Cure (2011) Kalkatta (2015) and Sarojini’s Mother (2020). The title story of his only collection of short stories, The Japanese Wife (2008), was made into a film by the Indian filmmaker Aparna Sen. Basu has also written four Bengali novels – Rabi-Shankar (2016), Bairer Dorja (2017), Tejoswini O Shabnam (2018) and Angel(2020)

Biography
Kunal Basu was born in Kolkata to Sunil Kumar Basu (a litterateur and publisher and one of the early members of the Communist Party of India) and Chabi Basu (an author and actress). Born to Communist parents, he was brought up on books and enriching conversations at home that was visited by a galaxy of prominent men and women of the day.
He studied Mechanical Engineering at Jadavpur University. Throughout his student life, he was an active member and leader of SFI (Students' Federation of India – The student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)  – CPM) and also an active member of the Communist Party. During his SFI leadership, he carried out many protests, gherao (encirclement), class boycott, and roadblock and demonstration against Samrajjobadi (Imperialist) Western countries, especially against the United States of America.
In between he worked for an advertising agency, in freelance journalism, dabbled in filmmaking, and taught at Jadavpur University for a brief period of 16 months. In 1982, he met and married Susmita. Their daughter, Aparajita, was born soon after.

Following his doctoral degree, he was a professor at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, from 1986 to 1999. His 13 years at McGill were interrupted only by a brief stint at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, in 1989. Since 1999, he has been teaching at Oxford University's Saïd Business School. He has also written financial pieces for business publications such as Fast Company and MIT Sloan Management Review.

Influence and themes
Basu is one of the very few Indian practitioners of historical fiction. Apart from his love of history, it has something to do with the influence of his favourite author, the Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–94). Bankim (himself heavily influenced by Walter Scott) was a writer of historical novels, as were many other Bengali writers of the 19th and 20th centuries whom Basu avidly read as a child, like Ramesh Chandra Dutta and Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay. But more than anything, he has said what draws him most to this genre is the "romantic possibilities of the historical novel", the scope to inhabit other places and times and thus enable the reader to romance the strange.

Bibliography

Novels
The Opium Clerk, 2001
Hiran, the eponymous clerk of the title, is born in 1857: the year of Mutiny and the year his father dies. Brought to Calcutta by his widowed mother he turns out to have few talents, apart from an uncanny ability to read a man's lies in his palm. When luck gets him a job at the auction house, Hiran finds himself embroiled in a mysterious trade, and even more deeply embroiled in the affairs of his nefarious superior, the infamous Mr. Jonathan Crabbe and his opium addicted wife. An unlikely hero, Hiran is caught up in rebellion and war, buffeted by storms at sea, by love and intrigue, innocently implicated in fraud and dark dealings.
The Miniaturist, 2003
Set in the Mughal court of Akbar the Great in the 16th century, this novel tells the story of Bihzad, son of the chief court painter. A child prodigy, Bihzad is groomed to take his father's place in the imperial court but the precocious and brilliant artist soon tires of imperial commissions and develops a grand and forbidden obsession. He leads a dual life – spending his nights painting the Emperor as his lover, and his days recording the Emperor's official biography in miniatures. But rumours about the wild, passionate nature of his secret drawings bring his enemies out into the open, who use his art to destroy him.
Racists, 2006
1855: on a deserted island off the coast of Africa, the most audacious experiment ever envisaged is about to begin. To settle an argument that has raged inconclusively for decades, two scientists decide to raise a pair of infants, one black, one white, on a barren island, exposed to the dangers all around them, tended only by a young nurse whose muteness renders her incapable of influencing them in any way, for good or for bad. They will grow up without speech, without civilisation, without punishment or play. In this primitive environment, the children will develop as their primitive natures dictate.
The Yellow Emperor's Cure, 2011
Lisbon, 1898: philandering surgeon Antonio Maria discovers his beloved father is dying of syphilis, scourge of both rich and poor. Determined to find a cure, Antonio sets sail for Peking in the hope that traditional Chinese medicine has the answer that eludes the West. But when Antonio encounters the alluringly independent Fumi, he finds the first love he cannot leave behind.
Kalkatta, 2015
Jami is the Gigolo King of Kalkatta. Smuggled into India from Bangladesh and given refuge by his uncle, a leader of the ruling Communist Party, he grows up in Zakaria Street—a Little Baghdad of the old—dreaming of becoming a pukka Kalkatta-wallah. When friendship with a local gang disqualifies him from school, he ends up as assistant to a passport forger, and then a masseur. Soon enough, innocent massage leads to 'plus plus treatments', and Kalkatta opens its doors, drawing Jami into the world of the rich and famous, housewives, tourists and travelling executives, and occasionally to high-paying and dangerous 'parties '. Danger looms, too, from rivals and the police, and the ever-present risk of losing his cover. Jami's shadowy double life takes a turn for the unexpected when he meets Pablo, a young boy who suffers from leukemia, and his single mother Mandira. Made to oscillate between his refugee family, the neighbourhood gang, his massage-parlour clients, even the cultured world of Bengali intellectuals inhabited by Mandira, he succeeds in becoming a true Kalkattawallah, but a stranger to himself. Until his love for Pablo threatens to destroy everything, and even drive away from his beloved city.

The cover design of Kalkatta (by Pinaki De) won two awards – the best Cover Design of India award from Oxford Bookstore at the Jaipur Literary Festival in 2016, and the best Cover Design of India award in Publishing Next 2017.

•	Sarojini’s Mother, 2020

Sarojini-Saz-Campbell comes to India to search for her biological mother. Adopted and taken to England at an early age, she has a degree from Cambridge and a mathematician's brain adept in solving puzzles. Handicapped by a missing shoebox that held her birth papers and the death of her English mother, she has few leads to carry out her mission and scant knowledge of Calcutta, her birthplace. Luckily, she has Chiru Sen, an Elvis lookalike, as her guide. Together, Saz and Chiru chase the mirage of a lost mother, helped by Chiru's band members and his friend Suleiman, master bookie of the racecourse.

When luck leads them to a slum, Jamuna, a housemaid with a troubled past, presents herself as the likely candidate. As Saz settles into the routine of slum life, a second candidate, Urvasi, presents herself, emerging from the very opposite end of the spectrum.

With Saz split in half, nothing is spared in the battle between the mothers, moving at a fast clip to the final throw of the dice as rivals await the result of DNA matching from their blood samples. But will the verdict of science settle the puzzle of motherhood for Sarojini? Or will it be left to the judgment of Suleiman the Wise, King of the Racecourse, the bearer of ancient wisdom, to arrive at that supreme revelation? (Synopsis, Penguin India website)

Short story collections
The Japanese Wife (2008)

An Indian man writes to a Japanese woman. She writes back. The pen-friends fall in love and exchange their vows over letters, then live as man and wife without ever setting eyes on each other, their intimacy of words tested finally by life's miraculous upheavals.

The 12 stories in this collection are about the unexpected and about lives that are never quite as ordinary as they seem.
The title story was adapted on celluloid by the renowned filmmaker Aparna Sen, the cast including Indian actors Rahul Bose, Raima Sen and Moushumi Chatterjee, and Japanese actress Chigusa Takaku in the title role.

Bengali novels

Kunal Basu is the only bilingual English-Bengali novelist after Bankimchandra Chatterjee (who had given up writing in English after his first and only English novel, Rajmohan's Wife, 1864).

Basu has written three Bengali novels – Rabi-Shankar (2016), Bairer Dorja (2017) & Tejoswini O Shabnam (2018).

•	Rabi-Shankar, 2016

This novel flits between contemporary and 1970's Calcutta. It is about two individuals who meet accidentally after 30 years. They had been mortal enemies during the Naxal period – one was a police officer and the other, a Naxalite. Each could have killed the other, and came very close to doing so. But 30 years later, the tide has turned, it is a different kind of world. The two individuals are in different stations in life: the ex-Naxal is now part of the affluent upper-middle class; and the police officer is a retired person, living a pretty ordinary life. They are awkward when they meet... and they do things to each other which they hadn't quite planned...

•	Bairer Dorja, 2017

This novel was published by Sananda (a leading Bangla women's magazine) in their 2017 'Pujo-sankha' – their coveted annual Durga puja edition.

•	Tejoswini O Shabnam, 2018

Set in New York, Iraq and Bengal, this novel is a story of two sisters who accidentally find each other in the backdrop of an ongoing war, bringing to the fore a murky story of human trafficking in the Gulf.
This book has been translated into English as The Endgame by Arunava Sinha (Picador Books India, 2019).

From a literary history point of view, this translation is very interesting and has a special literary significance—because it is not the English translation of a book by a vernacular writer, but the work of an established English novelist in his own bhasha having a fresh life in English.

Translations of Basu's work

Kunal Basu's novels have been translated into several foreign languages.

January 2020 saw Chitrakar – the Hindi translation of his second novel, The Miniaturist – being published by Vani Prakashan. The translation has been done by Prabhat Milind.

Non-fiction

Intimacies, 2011

Kunal Basu collaborated with photographer Kushal Ray for this book. It contains 8000 photographs, all of them shot inside a 12-room house with 10 residents – who have lost out in the race for success. Poised between fiction and facts, Basu's narrative brings to life the remarkable world of the photographer and the photographed

See also
 List of Indian writers

References
 An adopted daughter comes back to India looking for her biological mother in this novel – an excerpt from Sarojini's Mother, 21 Jan 2020
 Page 9 - Sangbad Pratidin 16-05-19 – an Interview, 16 May 2019
 Kolkata grabbed me in my innards: Kunal Basu – an Interview, June 2016
 Writing India Anew: Indian English Fiction  2000-2010 | IIAS – "Of Art & the Artist: Kunal Basu’s The Miniaturist as a Mughal/Modern Novel", by Rituparna Roy. In Writing India Anew: Indian English Fiction 2000–2010. Eds. Krishna Sen & Rituparna Roy. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (AUP/ICAS Series), 2013. pp. 111–126.
Romancing the Strange: The Fiction of Kunal Basu. Ed. Subir Dhar et al. Calcutta: SSEI/TGI, 2004.

External links

Kunal Basu official website
Kalkatta novel

1956 births
Living people
Writers from Kolkata
21st-century British novelists
Academics of Saïd Business School
Bengali writers
British male novelists
Fellows of Green Templeton College, Oxford
Academic staff of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta
Indian male novelists
20th-century Indian novelists
Jadavpur University alumni
Novelists from West Bengal
20th-century Indian male writers
21st-century Indian male writers


The Oregon high desert is a region of the U.S. state of Oregon located east of the Cascade Range and south of the Blue Mountains, in the central and eastern parts of the state. Divided into a southern region and a northern region, the desert covers most of five Oregon counties and averages  above sea level. The southwest region is part of the Great Basin and the southeast is the lower Owyhee River watershed. The northern region is part of the Columbia Plateau, where higher levels of rainfall allow the largest industry on private land to be the cultivation of alfalfa and hay. Public land within the region is owned primarily by the Bureau of Land Management, which manages more than  including five rivers designated as Wild and Scenic.

While the high desert is somewhat dry, it is only arid relative to Western Oregon. The region averages  of annual rainfall; the Alvord Desert, however, receives only  of rain each year. Contrary to its name, most of the high desert is not dry enough to truly qualify as desert, and biologically, most of the region is classified as shrubland or steppe.

At  above sea level, the summit of Steens Mountain is the highest point in the high desert. The broad fault-block mountain is characteristic of the basin and range plate tectonics of the high desert. About 16 million years ago, during the early Miocene epoch, lava flows from volcanic eruptions covered about half the surface area of Oregon. The Earth's crust then began stretching, giving way to further volcanic activity from 15 million to 2 million years ago. Several ice ages over this time formed the large lakes in the high desert.

The climate of the high desert provides habitat for mammals such as pronghorn, coyote, mule deer, black-tailed jackrabbit, and cougar. Birds common in the region include sage-grouse, California quail, and prairie falcon. The western juniper is the most common tree in the region, and big sagebrush and common woolly sunflower are the region's most widespread plants.

Geography

The high desert of Oregon is located in the central and southeastern part of the state. It covers approximately , extending approximately  from central Oregon east to the Idaho border and  from central Oregon south to the Nevada border.  Most of the region is located in Crook, Deschutes, Harney, Lake, and Malheur counties.

The high desert is named as such for its generally high elevation, averaging about  across the region. It is bordered by the eastern foothills of the Cascade Range to the west. The Blue Mountains are the geographical boundary to the north, marking the northern end of the high desert's semi-arid plateau. The southern high desert is part of North America's Basin and Range Province, which extends south through Nevada and Arizona and into Mexico. It contains large alkali lakes and tall cliffs, some with a prominence of more than . Steens Mountain, in Harney County, is the highest point within the region; its summit is  above sea level. To the east, the high desert country of the Columbia Plateau extends across the Snake River and into Idaho.

A number of rivers flow through the high desert region. These include the Deschutes River and its tributary the Crooked River, as well as the Malheur, Owyhee, and John Day rivers, which are all within the Columbia River watershed. Because the high desert encompasses the portion of the hydrographic Great Basin located in Oregon, smaller rivers in the high desert flow into closed basins. The Chewaucan River, the Donner und Blitzen River, and the Silvies River each flow into some of the high desert's salt lakes.

Land use

The largest landowner in eastern Oregon is the U.S. government. The Bureau of Land Management administers over  in the bureau's Burns, Lakeview, Prineville, and Vale districts, most of which are in the state's high desert country. In addition, Congress has designated specific sections of the Crooked, Deschutes, Donner und Blitzen, Malheur, and Owyhee rivers as part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

Agriculture is the largest industry in the region. Livestock ranches utilize large tracts of private and government land for grazing. Ranchers raise cattle and sheep in many parts of the region. Because of low rainfall, most crops require irrigation. Agricultural crops include alfalfa and other hay crops, wheat, oats, barley, potatoes, onions, sugar beets, and mint.

Geology

Between 17 and 15 million years ago, magma from deep beneath eastern Oregon rose to the Earth's surface, causing a period of significant volcanic activity. A series of lava floods erupted from fissures near the Oregon–Idaho–Washington border. The resulting lava flows traveled up to  from their source. Some individual flows covered as much as  to a depth of . Eventually, these lava flows covered half the state of Oregon, creating a formation known as the Columbia River Basalt Group, the geologic foundation beneath much of the high desert.

After the original eruptions subsided, the Earth's crust began to stretch and crack. Between 15 and 2 million years ago, this created hundreds of new volcanoes that added additional layers of lava on top of the Columbia River Basalt and left behind hundreds of lava tubes. These new flows blanketed the southeastern third of the state. Many of the volcanoes and smaller cinder cones from this period still exist in eastern Oregon. Afterwards, subsequent rifting produced large fault-block mountains throughout the region. The escarpment-type mountains and high-elevation valleys created by these faults produced the basin and range landscape that makes up much of Oregon's high desert country.

During the last 2 million years, a series of ice ages altered the landscape. As each ice sheet melted, runoff and increased rainfall filled many of the region's closed basins, forming large pluvial lakes. The Goose Lake, Harney, and Klamath basins were filled along with many other smaller basins. Some of the lakes covered as much as . However, as the climate became drier, these large lakes shrank away. Goose Lake, Harney Lake, Malheur Lake, Summer Lake, Lake Abert, and the Warner Lakes are remnants of ancient pluvial lakes.

Climate

Annual precipitation throughout Oregon's high desert region is relatively low, averaging less than  per year in most areas. Bend, the region's largest city, only receives  of precipitation per year. Burns receives roughly  of precipitation annually, while Rome, in central Malheur County, and the official weather station at Whitehorse Ranch in southern Harney County receive only  in an average year. Some of the mountainous areas, however, receive significantly more precipitation as snowfall. For example, the high-elevation city of Lakeview has an average annual snowfall of nearly .

The majority of high desert areas receive most precipitation in the winter months, decreasing steadily through late summer into the fall. Some areas in the eastern and southern parts of the region receive peak precipitation in the late spring and early summer. For example, at Hart Mountain in Lake County, the wettest time of the year is March through June. The driest months throughout Oregon's high desert are July through September, though there are still isolated thunderstorms during that period.

History

Native peoples and Euro-American settlement

The indigenous people of the high desert region are the Northern Paiute people. These Native Americans were once semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers who relied on nuts, roots, seeds, berries, eggs, and animals such as deer, pronghorn, geese, quail, rabbits, and bear, following their food to high and low elevations depending on the time of year. They make sandals, traps, and fishing nets, and weave baskets. Made out of sagebrush, willow, tule plant, Indian hemp, and sumac fibers, the baskets are tight enough to carry water. Archaeological evidence from near Fort Rock has shown that people wove baskets in the area at least 9,000 years ago.

Throughout the 18th century and into the early 19th century, the Northern Paiute had numerous conflicts with tribes who lived to the northwest. The Wasco-Wishram and other Chinook tribes often encroached on the high desert landscape of the Northern Paiute territory. After one such incident in 1811, the Northern Paiute migrated north to the Columbia River and attacked Wasco canoes. Around this time, the Northern Paiute numbered approximately 7,500. The Snake War, a war between the natives and Euro-American settlers in the region in the 1860s, killed roughly two-thirds of the Northern Paiute population. The settlers won the war and then set aside the Malheur Reservation for the Northern Paiute and other Oregon Native American tribes.

Settlers who had traveled to Oregon along the Oregon Trail began to live in the high desert region in the 1850s and 1860s after they had begun farming and logging in the Willamette Valley and other lands in western Oregon. Thousands of these emigrants reached the area from the west, crossing the Cascade Range to make land claims in eastern Oregon. The high desert area was settled by Euro-Americans later than western Oregon was in part because of Elijah White's failure to find a pass east through the Cascades. Once they had claimed more land, pioneers and members of the American government negotiated treaties with natives in the high desert and elsewhere in Oregon, often forcing them off their native lands and onto reservations.

In 1866, American soldiers established Camp Warner, a military camp near present-day Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge in Lake County. They were sent from Boise, Idaho, to build a military camp in the high desert, and they built it east of the Warner Lakes because they doubted that they could cross the series of wetlands. Maj. Gen. George Crook disapproved of the soldiers' decision. He built a road across the lakes and moved the camp to the western side of them.

Of the four major cities in the high desert, Prineville was established earliest. Its post office originally opened under the name "Prine" in 1871. It was named for Barney Prine, a whisky and metal merchant in the area. Lakeview's post office was then established in 1876. At that time, Goose Lake was larger, and it was visible from the post office. The Burns post office opened in 1884 and the city was established in 1891. It was named for the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Bend's name was derived from the phrase "Farewell Bend," the location where pioneers traveling through the area last saw the Deschutes River. The Bend post office was established in 1904.

In 1878, the Bannock people and northern Shoshone tribes participated in the Bannock War, a war against Euro-American settlers in the region over the destruction of camas root—a major source of food for the natives—by settlers' hogs. The Bannock and the Northern Paiute suffered from violence during the conflict, and once the settlers had won the war, the natives were allotted into various reservations. The Northern Paiute were sent to the Yakama Indian Reservation and in later years have been dispersed throughout several reservations in the western United States.

Euro-American settlers created the  Burns Paiute Reservation, just north of Burns, in 1897. The reservation was established in 1972. It is home to the descendants of the Wada Tika band of Northern Paiutes. As of 1992, it had 356 members. As of 1980, there were 57 descendants of the Northern Paiute tribe living outside of the reservation.

Place names
In the 19th century, Oregon's high desert area was called the Great Sandy Desert (a misnomer, as there is very little sand in the region), the Rolling Sage Plain, and the Artemisia Desert. Over the years, the region has also been known as Oregon's Empty Quarter, the Great Wide Open, and Oregon's Cowboy Country. Today, many local residents call it the Oregon Outback. However, the old names are occasionally still used. A 1996 National Geographic magazine "Map of the United States Physical Landscape" used the pioneer name, Great Sandy Desert, to identify the southeastern quarter of Oregon. However, the region is most commonly known as Oregon's "High Desert". "High Desert" is the official name for a plain in Deschutes County, as recognized by the United States Board on Geographic Names. Variant names for the high desert are "Great Sandy Desert" and "Rolling Sage Plains".

Flora and fauna

The Oregon Badlands Wilderness,  east of Bend, has vegetation typical of the high desert region. The native plants are adapted to survive on less than  of rain per year. The area is dominated by big sagebrush and rabbitbrush along with hardy grasses like Idaho fescue, bluebunch wheatgrass, and bunchgrass. In the spring, there are native wildflowers such as yellow Oregon sunshine, dwarf purple monkeyflower, sulfur buckwheat, Indian paintbrush, and mariposa lilies. Other high desert wildflowers common throughout the region include buttercups, larkspur, phlox, primroses, and coral mallow. The Oregon Badlands Wilderness also contains the oldest known tree in Oregon, a western juniper estimated to be more than 1,600 years old.

Hundreds of animal species are found in Oregon's high desert environment. In the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge alone, there are over 300, including 239 bird species and 42 mammals. Throughout the high desert region, mule deer, pronghorn, coyotes, American badgers, and black-tailed jackrabbits are common. Elk, bighorn sheep, cougars, bobcats, gray foxes, red foxes, North American porcupines, and North American beavers are also found in some parts of the high desert.

Smaller mammals native to the area include long-tailed weasels, woodchucks, cottontail rabbits, pygmy rabbits, golden-mantled ground squirrels, antelope squirrels, Townsend's ground squirrels, yellow-pine chipmunks, Ord's kangaroo rats, and northern pocket gophers. Mice species include Great Basin pocket mouse, northern grasshopper mouse, western harvest mouse, deer mouse, meadow mouse, and creeping vole. There are also numerous bat species that live in Oregon's high desert country.

Common high desert birds include sage-grouse, quail, and sage thrasher. Near high desert lakes and in riparian areas, there are American dusky flycatchers, yellow warblers, orange-crowned warblers, house wrens, spotted towhees, Brewer's blackbirds, western meadowlarks, swallows, and nighthawks. Mountain chickadees, Cassin's finches, black-headed grosbeaks, green-tailed towhees, yellow-rumped warblers, MacGillivray's warblers, mountain bluebirds, common ravens, northern flickers, and white-headed woodpeckers are common in parts of the region. Birds of prey include owls, hawks, prairie falcons, golden eagles, and bald eagles.

See also

Columbia Plateau
Northern Basin and Range (ecoregion)
Oregon High Desert Grotto

References

Works cited

 —
 —

External links
High Desert Museum
Oregon Public Broadcasting program on Reub Long's Oregon Desert
Oregon Public Broadcasting program on Abert Lake
Oregon Public Broadcasting program on Desert Plants
Oregon Natural Desert Association

Deserts and xeric shrublands in the United States
Deserts of Oregon
Great Basin deserts
Regions of Oregon


Merton Abbey was a railway station in Merton on the Tooting, Merton and Wimbledon Railway. It was opened in 1868 and closed on 1 January 1917. It was reopened by the Southern Railway (SR) on 27 August 1923.

When the City & South London Railway (now part of the London Underground's Northern line) was extended from Clapham Common to Morden in 1926, it opened stations at Colliers Wood and South Wimbledon. The new Underground stations captured much of Merton Abbey station's traffic and led to its closure to passengers on 3 March 1929. The station remained open for goods services until 1 May 1972 and goods trains continued to run to a nearby private siding serving the Lines Brothers ("Tri-ang") toy factory until 1975. After closure of the passenger service, the junction at Tooting Junction was removed on 10 March 1934 and the up line from Merton Park on 3 November 1935.

The site of the station lies under a road, the Merantun Way. The only indication of its former existence is that the former station approach road is still called Station Road.

See also
List of closed railway stations in London

References

External links
closed station marked on 1948 one inch to one mile map
Disused stations - with more detailed history, map and photos

Disused railway stations in the London Borough of Merton
Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1868
Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1917
Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1923
Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1929
Former Tooting, Merton and Wimbledon Railway stations


As seen on TV is a marketing phrase used to represent products advertised on television.

As seen on TV may also refer to:

 As Seen on TV (TV series), a 2009 British panel game show
 "As Seen on TV" (SpongeBob SquarePants), an episode in season 3 of SpongeBob SquarePants
 As Seen on TV, an EP by Primer 55, reissued as Introduction to Mayhem

See also
 As Seen on Television, a 2004 EP by +/-
 Ass Seen on TV, a 1997 split album by Gob and Another Joe
 Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV, a 1985-1987 British comedy television series


Teddy Boy is an EP by French electro house artist Kavinsky released on January 16, 2006.

Track listing
 "Testarossa Autodrive" – 3:38
 "Testarossa Autodrive" (Mr. Oizo Autodrive T42) – 3:21
 "Transistor" – 1:23
 "The Crash" – 1:48
 "Testarossa Nightdrive" – 3:27
 "Testarossa Autodrive" (Arpanet Nightdrive Rework) – 3:45
 "Ghost Transistor" – 4:14

Charts

References

External links
https://www.discogs.com/Kavinsky-Teddy-Boy-EP/master/188632

2006 EPs
Kavinsky EPs


The Wyre Light was a  tall iron screw-pile lighthouse marking the navigation channel to the town of Fleetwood, Lancashire, England.

History
The lighthouse was designed by Alexander Mitchell, an Irish engineer who developed the screwpile concept. It was the first screwpile lighthouse ever to be lit. Although construction of the Maplin Sands Light on the northern bank of the Thames estuary had started before Wyre Light, the latter was completed in a much shorter period of time. These lights inspired other similar constructions such as the Thomas Point Shoal Light in the United States.

The Wyre Light stood  offshore on the 'North Wharf Bank', sandbanks which mark the 'Lune Deep' and the navigation channel of the Wyre. The Wyre Light along with a pair of on shore lighthouses, the Beach Lighthouse and the Pharos provided a navigational guide to shipping entering the Wyre estuary.

The Light's base consisted of seven wrought iron piles embedded in the sands. Each was  long with cast-iron screw bases  in diameter. The six corner piles formed a hexagonal platform of  diameter. (The seventh pile served as a centre pillar.) The platform supported the lantern and a two-storey building to house the keeper. Construction began in 1839 and the lantern was lit on 6 June 1840. The building was destroyed by fire in 1948 and not replaced. After the fire, the beacon was made automatic and eventually replaced by a lighted buoy in 1979, leaving behind a derelict structure.

On 25 July 2017, the lighthouse partially collapsed into the sea.

See also

 Maplin Sands
 Screw-pile lighthouse
 List of lighthouses in England

References

Sources
 H N Denham, Sailing directions from Port Lynas to Liverpool...  Mawdsley, Liverpool, 1840

External links

 History of the type

Lighthouses completed in 1840
Buildings and structures in Fleetwood
Lighthouses in England


Rhinocyllus conicus is a species of true weevil. It is best known as a controversial agent of biological pest control which has been used against noxious thistles in the genera Carduus, Cirsium, Onopordum, and Silybum.

The adult weevil is black and covered in a thin black and yellowish mottled coat of hairs. It is a short-snouted beetle up to 6 millimeters in total body length. The female lays over 100 eggs on or near the bracts of the thistle flower head. She covers the eggs with masticated plant tissue to protect them from predators. When the white larva emerges from its egg it burrows into the flower head and feeds on the flower parts and developing seeds. As it grows it deposits frass and chewed plant tissue on the walls of its chamber, producing a rigid protective shell in which it will pupate. Pupation takes up to two weeks and when the weevil emerges as an adult it remains inside the chamber for a few more weeks before tunneling out of the plant.

Damage to the plant occurs mainly from larval destruction of the flower head, which prevents seed production. Some larvae tunnel through the upper stem instead of chambering in a flower head; this can also be destructive to the plant. Adults do some damage as well when they feed on the foliage. Thistles which reproduce only via seed, such as musk thistle, are controlled well by this weevil and its seed head destroying larvae. Some thistles are able to reproduce vegetatively, and while they are impacted as well, they can sometimes survive.

This weevil is native to Eurasia and North Africa. It was first introduced to the United States for thistle biocontrol in 1969, and it is now widely established in that country. The weevil was found to be very effective in reducing the spread of invasive thistles, particularly musk thistle, but also welted, Italian, bull, milk, and other thistles. However, the weevil will also readily attack native thistles of genus Cirsium, in some cases contributing to population decline. It is for this reason that this weevil is no longer recommended for distribution as a biocontrol agent. Further releases of the weevil are prohibited in many areas.

References

 Coombs, E. M., et al., Eds. (2004). Biological Control of Invasive Plants in the United States. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 365.

External links
 TAMU Biocontrol Profile
 Cornell Biocontrol Profile

Lixinae
Insects used for control of invasive plants
Biological pest control beetles
Beetles described in 1792


Angren (; ; ) is a district-level city in Tashkent Region, eastern Uzbekistan. The city is located on the Angren River  to the east of Tashkent. The City of Angren was created in 1946 from the villages of Jigariston, Jartepa, Teshiktosh, and Qoʻyxona which had emerged in the rich Angren coal basin during World War II. It has an area of  and the population of the city is 191,300 (2021).

There were several large coal mines and factories in Angren during Soviet times. Following the collapse of the USSR, the majority of these factories were abandoned. A lack of professionals and machinery, mismanagement, and falling income levels — all contributed to this downfall. While Angren was once an important industrial center, the collapse caused it to turn into a ghost town for a while. However, in the recent days, Angren has developed and still is developing.

Still, Angren has retained some of its industrial importance. The city is home to a once considerable and still functioning coal mining industry. It also has a large construction-materials industry, a rubber processing plant, and a power station.
There are a few supermarkets across the town. Angren University was founded in January, 2023.

History
The current name of the city is a Russification of the Persian word  which means "blacksmiths." In 1936, first geological explorations were carried out in the Angren Valley. In 1940, the first coal mine was built in the area and it became operational in 1942. In 1941, Angren and Tashkent were connected with a railway line.

During World War II, several settlements, namely, the villages of Jigariston, Jartepa, Teshiktosh, and Qoʻyxona grew up in the area. On June 13, 1946, the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR issued a decree to create the City of Angren from these settlements. In his book The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn mentioned Angren as one of the Soviet towns that grew up next to a gulag labor camp.

Later it turned out that most of the city had been built above coal seams. Therefore, in 1956 Angren was moved to a different area  to the south-west of its original location.

Angren was an important industrial city in the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the USSR, the majority of ethnic Russians and Tatars living in Angren left the city. There were many experienced workers among those who left. In the 1990s, almost all of the factories in the city were closed down as a result of a lack professionals, disruption of Soviet trade routes, ageing machinery, and mismanagement. Nowadays Angren is often referred to as a ghost town.

Geography
Angren is located in the eastern part of Tashkent region, on the Angren River  to the east of Tashkent. On the north-west of Angren is the Chatkal Range. On the south and south west of the city is the Kurama Range. The mountains that surround Angren rise up to  above sea level.

The territory of the city of Angren includes the city Yangiobod and the urban-type settlements Krasnogorsk, Nurobod, Bekobod, Ohangaron, Chirchiq and Yangiyoʻl.

Climate
The weather is relatively cool and  pleasantly windy.
Angren has a hot, dry-summer continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dsa) with cold winters and hot summers. The average July temperature is . The mean temperature in January is .

Demographics
Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Angren had a significant Russian population. The population of the city declined in the 1990s because of poor living conditions, unemployment, and mass emigration. In 2005, Angren had a population of 130,000. Uzbeks, Tajiks and Russians are the largest ethnic groups.
However, the population has been increasing steadily for the past few years because of the migration of people from other regions of the country.

Economy
Angren has retained some of its industrial importance. The city is home to a once considerable and still functioning coal mining industry. Angren's coal reserves represent almost one quarter of Central Asia's coal supplies. Two thirds of Angren's coal is extracted using the surface mining method. The city also has a large construction-materials industry, a rubber processing plant, and a power station.

Education
The Angren Pedagogical Institute was the largest higher education institute in Angren. The city is also home to technical and medical universities, several academic lyceums, three music schools, and one sports school.

Notable people
 Bakhtiyar Gulyamov - Current Ambassador of Uzbekistan to the United States
 Alexander Geynrikh - a regular for the Uzbekistan national football team
 Ilyos Zeytulayev - a regular for the Uzbekistan national football team
 Osman Pashayev - Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar journalist.

References

External links

 Angren Info, Unofficial website of Angren
 Ghost town, A photo gallery of Angren

Cities and towns built in the Soviet Union
Cities in Uzbekistan
Populated places in Tashkent Region


Jeremiah Keith Pharms (born June 24, 1978) is a former American football fullback/linebacker in the Arena Football League (AFL). He was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the fifth round of the 2001 NFL Draft. He played two seasons for the New York Dragons (2006–2007).

References

External links
Washington Huskies profile

1978 births
Living people
American football fullbacks
American football linebackers
Washington Huskies football players
New York Dragons players
Players of American football from Sacramento, California


The Pepsi Globe is the logo for Pepsi, named for the red, white, and blue design in a sphere-like shape. It is one of the most recognizable logos in the world.

History
The Globe has its origins in the 1940s, when Pepsi unveiled a new bottle cap that featured the script Pepsi wordmark in the white field of a waving tricolor meant as a show of U.S. patriotism during World War II. An illustration of that bottle cap became Pepsi's primary logo around 1945, and remained even when the script wordmark was replaced with a modern sans-serif wordmark in 1962.

The literal depiction of the bottle cap was retired in favor of an simplified representation in 1973, at which point the wordmark was made smaller to fit fully within the perimeter of the disc. Diet Pepsi was given a unique striped version of the Globe in 1984, and the standard Globe underwent a minor update in 1987.

A 1991 redesign moved the wordmark from within the Globe to above it, dramatically reducing the size and prominence of the Globe. In 1997, the red bar was removed as Pepsi adopted all-blue packaging, and visually detailed the Pepsi Globe to appear three-dimensional. This was the first logo officially named the “Pepsi Globe.” The design was refined in August 2003 when the typeface was updated and the Pepsi Globe became more detailed. This version remained mostly the same in 2008 when Pepsi redesigned the packaging once more to show different backgrounds on each can, though the color remained blue.

2008 redesign by Arnell Group
In October 2008, Pepsi announced it had contracted New York–based brand consultancy agency Arnell Group to redesign many of its products for 2009. Initial unveiling of the newly designed globe came in the form of a leaked 27-page design proposal entitled BREATHTAKING Design Strategy, which used such over-the-top language that some suggested that it was part of a viral marketing scheme. The globe underwent its most dramatic transformation to date, with the white band losing its rotationally symmetric wave in favor of an irregular form suggestive of a smile or the letter P. The wordmarks was made all-lowercase and changed to a geometric sans-serif type, a design highly similar to that used for Diet Pepsi in the 1970s and 1980s.

Initially the width of the "smile" was varied across products, with the narrowest assigned to Diet Pepsi and the widest assigned to Pepsi Max, but by 2010 all variants except Pepsi Throwback were using the standard version of the Globe.

2023 redesign
On March 28, 2023, PepsiCo unveiled a new Pepsi Globe, which launched in the US on August 23rd of that year. The new design is strongly referential to the 1973 Globe and restores the centred wordmark. The wordmark, as well as other accompanying brand elements, is black rather than blue for the first time since the bottlecap image was replaced by the abstract Globe. This logo has started the phase-in process on Pepsi products on August 23, 2023.

References

External links

PepsiCo
Trademarks
Drink company logos
Symbols introduced in the 1940s
Soft drink logos
Commercial logos


Punnad is a village in Kannur district in the state of Kerala, India.

Location
Punnad is near Iritty and it is within Iritty Municipality and Iritty Taluk. Punnad is situated beside the Tellicherry-Coorg road,  from Tellicherry, and  from Kannur.

History
Punnad was a part of Kingdom of Kottayam, Malabar Province.

Economy
There is a branch of State Bank of India at Punnad. Several traditional art forms are still practiced in the village, including those only found in the North Malabar area, such as Theyyam, Kalampaattu and Kolkkali.

The main mode of living for people the Punnad in the 2000s includes farming, Kooli thozhil (Coolie), Indian Army servants, teaching, various jobs in abroad(including Gulf countries).

Communal Clashes
There has been some communal violence over the years from 2005 till almost 2010, including political clashes and murders. Aswini Kumar's murder and Yakub's murder an after result of one of these clashes.

Religious Worship Places
Important temples in Punnad include Punnattappan Temple, Kuzhumbil Bhagavathi Kshethram, Kottathe Kunnu Vaireekhathakan Bhagavathi Temple, Chelappur Sree Subrahmanya Temple, Sree Muthappan Matappura-Punnad. There are many places practising Theyyam i.e., Thavilakutti Sree Sasthappan Kshethram, Parangad Pottan Thira, Pothiyadam Muchilott Bhagavathi Temple, Porakkalath Kavu, Kallangod Maramangalam, Thavilakuti Malayappura, Kiliyangad and Punnad Malayappura. Iritty Municipal office and the Keezhur village office are also situated in Punnad. We can see Muslim Juma Masjid nearby Punnad bus station and other two small Masjid, one in Meethale Punnad and one in Keezhu Kunnu.

Education
Most of the students study in L.P. and U.P. school in Punnad. There are CBSE and Kerala Higher education Schools nearby the village. There is a primary health centre at Eduppile Kunnu (a place in Punnad), it is 4KM away from Punnad -in Iritty or Mattannur. SBT, Cooperative Bank and Vanitha Banks are the main banking services available in this village.

Meethale Punnad U.P. school, Punnad LP School and Niveditha Vidyalam are the schools in Punnad. Founder of Meethale Punnad U.P. school was Kannan Gurkal. He lighted the lamp of education in this village and his mission was continued by his sons (late) Raman Master and (late) Sreedharan master. The other followers and leaders of this endeavour are (late)K. Achuthan Master(HM, Punnad.L.P.School), Kesavan Master (manager, Punnad L.P.S), Balan master (HM, MPUPS), M.R. Raghavan (Peon, MPUPS), K.R. Karunakaran, Kelumaster etc.

Notable people
Political leaders: Uppi Sahib

Freedom fighters: Appa Nair

Transportation
The national highway passes through Kannur town. Mangalore and Mumbai can be accessed on the northern side and Cochin and Thiruvananthapuram can be accessed on the southern side.  The road to the east of Iritty connects to Mysore and Bangalore.  The nearest railway stations are Kannur Railway Station and Thalassery Railway Station on Mangalore–Palakkad line. There are airports at Mangalore and Calicut. There is a new airport: Kannur International Airport near Mattannur, which is  away from Punnad.

References

Villages near Iritty


Schloss Taxis (originally known as Burg Trugenhofen) is a privately owned castle in Dischingen in the Heidenheim district of Baden-Württemberg in Germany.  The castle is owned by the princely house of Thurn und Taxis and is not open for visitors.

History
Originally built in the 13th century for the von Trugenhofen family, the castle was later owned by the Öttingern, the Helfenstein and the Katzenstein families.  In 1734, it was inherited by the princely house of Thurn and Taxis. The family expanded the Burg (a medieval fortification) into a Schloss (English: castle; an ornate and comfortable building).  In addition to expanding the original buildings, English gardens and terraces were added.

References

External links
  (German) Schloss Taxis on Castle Inventory.de
  City of Dischingen website

Schloss Taxis


Waimā is a community in the south Hokianga area of Northland, New Zealand. State Highway 12 runs through the area. The Waima River flows through the Waima Valley into the Hokianga Harbour. Rawene is to the north west, and Kaikohe is to the north east.

History and culture

Pre-European settlement

In 1810, an encounter at Waimā during the Musket Wars resulted in the death of the Ngā Puhi chief Te Tauroto. Te Whareumu was killed and Muriwai mortally wounded in a skirmish in March 1828.

The chief of the sub tribe Te Mahurehure and Te Urikaiwhare was Mohi Tawhai (d.1875), who was a signatory to the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and was known as the peace maker of the North.

European settlement
Waimā was the site of a Wesleyan mission in the mid-19th century. In the 1870s timber milling commenced in the area.

In 1898, people of Waimā refused to pay a tax on dogs, and marched on Rawene in the Dog Tax War.

Marae

Waimā has four Ngāpuhi marae. Moehau Marae, Ōtātara Marae and Ohinewai meeting house; and Tuhirangi Marae are affiliated with the hapū of Te Māhurehure. Te Raukura Marae is affiliated with both Te Māhurehure and Te Rauwera.

In October 2020, the Government committed $325,525 from the Provincial Growth Fund to upgrade Tuhirangi Marae, creating 1 jobs.

Demographics
Waimā is included in the Waima Forest statistical area, which covers  and had an estimated population of  as of  with a population density of  people per km2.

Waima Forest had a population of 1,095 at the 2018 New Zealand census, an increase of 222 people (25.4%) since the 2013 census, and an increase of 66 people (6.4%) since the 2006 census. There were 318 households, comprising 585 males and 510 females, giving a sex ratio of 1.15 males per female. The median age was 34.3 years (compared with 37.4 years nationally), with 285 people (26.0%) aged under 15 years, 216 (19.7%) aged 15 to 29, 465 (42.5%) aged 30 to 64, and 129 (11.8%) aged 65 or older.

Ethnicities were 32.1% European/Pākehā, 82.5% Māori, 8.8% Pacific peoples, 2.7% Asian, and 0.3% other ethnicities. People may identify with more than one ethnicity.

The percentage of people born overseas was 5.5, compared with 27.1% nationally.

Although some people chose not to answer the census's question about religious affiliation, 38.9% had no religion, 38.1% were Christian, 12.1% had Māori religious beliefs, 0.3% were Buddhist and 2.5% had other religions.

Of those at least 15 years old, 66 (8.1%) people had a bachelor's or higher degree, and 210 (25.9%) people had no formal qualifications. The median income was $17,600, compared with $31,800 nationally. 33 people (4.1%) earned over $70,000 compared to 17.2% nationally. The employment status of those at least 15 was that 231 (28.5%) people were employed full-time, 108 (13.3%) were part-time, and 123 (15.2%) were unemployed.

Notable people

William Satchell, novelist and poet.

Education

Waima School, renamed to Te Kura O Waima, is a coeducational full primary (years 1–8) school and has a roll of  students as of  The school was founded in 1881. During the Dog Tax War of 1898, the government army of 120 men set up camp at Waima School.

Notes

External links

Photographs of Waima held in Auckland Libraries' heritage collections.

Hokianga
Populated places in the Northland Region


The Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art (in Portuguese: Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul Ado Malagoli - MARGS) is an art museum in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. It is located in the centre of Porto Alegre. Its eclectic building, national heritage, is one of the most noteworthy historic buildings in Porto Alegre. Its design is usually attributed to Theodor Wiederspahn, a German-Brazilian architect, although important local historian and artist Fernando Corona ascribes it to Germano Gundlach.

History

The museum was formally created by the state government through Decree 5065, in 1954, without any seat or collection. Soon afterwards the state Secretary of Culture, José Mariano de Freitas Beck, invited Ado Malagoli, a renowned painter born in São Paulo who had just arrived in Porto Alegre in order to teach at the Institute of Fine Arts, to lead the organization and establishment of the museum.

Malagoli started gathering some paintings dispersed among the state institutions and, provided with funds, purchased other pieces in São Paulo, mainly of stars of Brazilian painting as well as of some European authors, and in Rio Grande do Sul, from local contemporary artists. The museum finally opened to the public in 1955, installed in the foyer of São Pedro Theatre, showing those first acquisitions, some 120 pieces. In the 1960s the museum moved to an apartment on Salgado Filho Street, and in 1978 to its current building, which was adapted to receive staff and collection. At this time the collection had expanded to comprise over one thousand works, most of them donated, since the state funds ceased to be granted after Malagoli resigned in 1959.

In the 90's the building underwent major restoration and renewal of its equipment, becoming able to receive international exhibitions, like as tapestries from Musée d'Orsay, paintings from the Uffizi and Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, pieces of decorative art from the Petit Palais, and other important institutions.

Collections
The museum currently houses a collection of over 2,600 objects of nearly all kinds of visual arts. The collection's core is formed by art from Rio Grande do Sul, being specially important the paintings and works on paper. Major local artists in the collection are Iberê Camargo, Pedro Weingärtner, Vasco Prado, José Lutzenberger, Carlos Petrucci, Luiz Maristany de Trias, João Fahrion, Ado Malagoli, Glênio Bianchetti, Carlos Scliar and Libindo Ferrás. There is also a little but interesting collection of Brazilian art, with pieces by Cândido Portinari, Emiliano di Cavalcanti, Lasar Segall, Arthur Timótheo da Costa, Antônio Parreiras and others, and some nice paintings from European masters of the end of the 19th century.

External links
Official website (in Portuguese)
Images and text from the exhibition MARGS Collection - Historic Evolution (in Portuguese)

Art museums and galleries in Brazil
Culture in Rio Grande do Sul
Museums in Porto Alegre
Art museums established in 1955
1955 establishments in Brazil
National heritage sites of Rio Grande do Sul


Carrollton Township is one of twenty townships in Carroll County, Missouri, USA.  As of the 2000 census, its population was 4,355.

Carrollton Township was established in 1872, and named after the community of Carrollton.

Geography
Carrollton Township covers an area of  and contains one incorporated settlement, Carrollton (the county seat).  According to the USGS, it contains three cemeteries: Mount Zion, Saint Marys and Willis Chapel.

The stream of Cottonwood Branch runs through this township.

References

 USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)

External links
 US-Counties.com
 City-Data.com

Townships in Carroll County, Missouri
Townships in Missouri


Andoque (or Andoke) are an indigenous people in Colombia. They live along the Aduche tributary of the Japurá River. The people refer to themselves as Pʌʌsiʌʌ́ hʌ, meaning ‘People of the Axe’.

Language and culture
The Andoque language is a language isolate and is extinct in Peru. The culture values "sacred plants" and a ritual called "Yuruparí." The "Yuruparí" ritual concerns their transcendent vision of cosmology. The Yuruparí ritual makes men initiates "die" then be "reborn" as members of the tribe.

Religion and oral history
The various bee species originated from the nasal bone of Heron-of-the-Center when he was consumed by fire while wearing a jaguar-skin. Tapirs of various colors originated from "the star people, who are bees and wasps", when they ate the body of a honey-drinking old man, who "fell into a trap" which had been dug by his own son.

Notes

References
Fabio Jara : "Bees and Wasps : Ethno-Entomological Notions and Myths among the Andoke of the Caquetá River". In :- LATIN AMERICAN INDIAN LITERATURES JOURNAL, Vol. 11 (1995)

Indigenous peoples in Colombia
Circum-Caribbean tribes
Witoto


was one of four principal naval shipyards owned and operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

History

The Sasebo Naval District was established at Sasebo, Nagasaki in 1886, as the third of the naval districts responsible for the defense of the Japanese home islands. After the establishment of the navy base, a ship repair facility was established in 1889 with a dry dock. With the addition of equipment and facilities for ship production by 1897, the "Sasebo Shipyards" were officially established, and renamed the "Sasebo Naval Arsenal" in 1903. Construction of the arsenal was supervised by the French engineer Louis-Émile Bertin.

In 1913, a 250-ton crane was installed, and the shipbuilding facilities expanded to permit the construction of large warships. With the mothballing of the Maizuru Naval Arsenal due to restrictions by the Washington Naval Treaty, much of the design and prototype work for new classes of destroyers and torpedo boats formerly done at Maizuru was shifted to Sasebo. The facilities at Sasebo were also used for the conversion of the Akagi and Kaga from battleships to aircraft carriers.

The Imperial Japanese Navy employed some 50,000 people at the Sasebo Naval Arsenal at the peak of World War II, constructing and refitting destroyers, light cruisers, submarines and other various naval vessels. The 21st Naval Air Arsenal (Dai-Nijuichi Kaigun Kokusho), established jointly at Sasebo and Omura, produced a total of 966 aircraft. The facilities at Sasebo were used for repairs on the battleships Yamato and Musashi during the Pacific War.

After the surrender of Japan, On September 22, 1945, the 5th Marine Division landed at Sasebo, and in June 1946, United States Fleet Activities Sasebo was formally established on a portion of the former Sasebo Naval Arsenal. The remaining portion of the shipyards was given into civilian hands with the establishment of Sasebo Heavy Industries in 1946. Sasebo Heavy Industries is one of Japan's few remaining active shipbuilders.

Ship class produced at Sasebo Naval Arsenal

Destroyers

World War I

 Kamikaze-class (1905): Yūgure, Yūdachi, Mikazuki, Nowaki
 Kaba-class: Sakaki
 Momo-class:  Momo, Yanagi
 Enoki-class: Maki, Keyaki

World War II

 Kamikaze-class (1922): Yūnagi
 Mutsuki-class: Mutsuki, Mikazuki
 Fubuki Type-1(Fubuki-class): Shinonome, Uranami
 Fubuki Type-2(Ayanami-class): Asagiri, Akebono, Oboro
 Fubuki Type-3(Akatsuki-class): Akatsuki
 Hatsuharu-class: Hatsuharu, Wakaba
 Shiratsuyu-class: Shiratsuyu, Yūdachi
 Asashio-class: Asashio, Natsugumo
 Kagerō-class: Yukikaze, Isokaze
 Akizuki-class: Harutsuki, Natsuzuki, Michitsuki(Unfinished), Ōtsuki(Unfinished)

Cruisers

 Tenryū-class: Tatsuta
 : ,
 : ,
 Experimental cruiser
 : , ,

Submarines

 Type B: , , , , , ,
 Type C: , , , ,
 Sentoku class: ,
 Kaidai-type: , , , , ,
 Kaichū-type: , , , , ,

Aircraft carriers

 :

References

External links
History of US Fleet Activities Sasebo

Imperial Japanese Navy
Shipbuilding companies of Japan
Defunct companies of Japan
Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force bases
Shipyards building World War II warships


The Assay Office is a historic building at 210 Main Street in Boise, Idaho.  It is significant for its role in the history of mining in Idaho, and was the first major federal government building in the Idaho Territory. During the first half of the 1860s, Idaho's gold production was the third highest in the nation.  Due to the difficulty of transporting bulky, heavy ores the long distance to the nearest U.S. Mint in San Francisco, there was great demand for an assaying office in Idaho.  Gold and other precious metals are not mined in a pure form.  In order to place a value on an ore, the precious metal must be separated from the impurities.  This is what an assay office does.

The building
In 1869, Congress appropriated $75,000 to build an assay office in Boise, Idaho.  The city block site bounded by Main, First, Idaho and Second was donated by Alexander Rossi, a prominent citizen of Boise.  Ground was broken in 1870, and the building was completed in 1871. The builder was John R. McBride, Chief Justice of Idaho. The building featured a cupola for ventilation and the interior doors were equipped with iron cages.  The first floor of the building held the assayers offices, vaults and safes, assaying and melting rooms (furnaces), laboratory and reagents storage.  The second floor was devoted to living quarters for the chief assayer.  There was a parlor, pantry, dining room, kitchen and three bedrooms.  The basement housed fuel and supply rooms, guards' quarters and wells.

Operations
All equipment was finally in place by the time of the first assay on March 2, 1872.  Builder John R. McBride was appointed Superintendent of the Assay Office.  Alexander Rossi, who donated the land, was temporary Chief Assayer. By this time, mining was in a slump due to the playing out of surface mines.  This slump lasted about a decade until further gold strikes were made in the northern part of the state.  In 1887, the advent of the railroad in Idaho and an influx of capital made deep mining possible.  A few years after opening, the Assay Office had begun purchasing gold on behalf of the U.S. government. By 1895, deposits were over one million dollars.  For the next eleven years they averaged over one and a half million dollars per year. Renovations on the building in 1889 and 1890 included a new fence, new floors, a hot and cold water system and electric lights.

Subsequent uses
The Assay Office closed in 1933 and the building was turned over to the United States Forest Service for use as offices.  Renovations at that time included removing the iron bars from the windows, adding windows to the back wall, removal of the vaults and assaying furnaces and rearrangement of partitions.  The Assay Office was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961, recognizing its significant role in the state's development.
In 1972 the building was turned over to the Idaho State Historical Society. It currently houses the State Historical Preservation Office and the Archaeological Survey of Idaho.

See also
List of National Historic Landmarks in Idaho
National Register of Historic Places listings in Ada County, Idaho

References

National Historic Landmarks in Idaho
Government buildings completed in 1871
Alfred B. Mullett buildings
Buildings and structures in Boise, Idaho
Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Idaho
Idaho State Historical Society
National Register of Historic Places in Boise, Idaho
Product-testing organizations


Eugene "Debbs" Potts (10 December 1909 – 19 December 2003) was an Oregon state legislator, public administrator, and founder of Historic Pottsville.  Potts operated a farm machinery business and owned several small saw mills. He served twenty-four years in the Oregon State Senate which included 196 days as acting governor.  He was also the first chairman of the Oregon Lottery Commission.

Early life

Potts was born on 10 December 1909 in Buzzard Roost, California (a temporary logging camp in Shasta County) while his parents were traveling to Oregon.  His father named him after socialist political leader Eugene V. Debs.  He attended grade school in a one-room school in Summer Lake, Oregon.  He went to high school for two years in Paisley, Oregon and then moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon where he graduated from Grants Pass Union High school in 1928.

During World War II, Potts served on active duty as a Chief Petty Officer in the United States Navy and then remained in the Navy Reserve for 20 years. After the war, he moved to Grants Pass, Oregon where he ran a machinery business and later a small sawmill.  Over the next several decades, Potts owned or operated sawmills in Klamath Falls, Lake of the Woods, Bonanza, Keno, Upper Klamath Lake, Jump-off-Creek, and O’Dell Lake.

Public service

Potts entered local politics as a Democrat, and was elected mayor of Grants Pass in 1958.  He served one two-year term as mayor prior to being elected to the Oregon State Senate in 1960.  He was elected to a total of six four-year terms serving until 1984.  During that time, his peers elected him Senate president twice.

While Potts was a Democrat, his conservative political views made Republican senators his natural allies on many issues.  During the 1967–68 and 1969-70 legislative session, Democrats held a majority of seats in the Senate.  However, Potts and several other conservative Democrats joined the Republican caucus to organize the Senate.  With the help of Republicans, Potts became Senate president.  In return, Republicans gained control of key senate committees, and along with Potts, directed the legislative agenda.

Until the Oregon constitution was changed in 1972, the Senate president served as acting governor whenever the governor left the state.  As a result, Potts served as governor when Governor Tom McCall traveled outside Oregon.  During his tenure as Senate president, Potts served as Oregon’s governor a total of 196 days.

After Oregon voters approved a state-run lottery in 1984, Governor Victor Atiyeh appointed Potts as the first chairman of the Oregon Lottery Commission.  Potts served as the commission’s chairman for 19 years from 1985 until 2003, helping the lottery become the state’s second-largest source of general fund revenue. Potts died from a fall from his porch on December 19, 2003, shortly after retiring from the lottery commission.

Legacy

On 2 February 2004, Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, former Governor Atiyeh, and former Congressman Robert Smith eulogized Potts at a special memorial service held in the senate chamber at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem, Oregon.  In 2005, the Oregon legislature directed that the Oregon Lottery Commission building in Salem be official named the Debbs Potts Oregon State Lottery Commission Building.  This is in addition to a bridge previously named in his honor by the Oregon Transportation Commission.  Today, the E.D. "Debbs" Potts Memorial Bridge carries traffic over the Rogue River in Grants Pass.

Potts is the founder of Historic Pottsville, a replica of a small Oregon town of the early 1900s.  Pottsville is a  site north of Merlin, Oregon.  Potts began developing Pottsville in 1959 to celebrate Oregon’s Centennial.  Pottsville includes a pioneer store, post office, church, blacksmith shop, cabins, and other historical buildings.  It has a large collection of Oregon political memorabilia.  In addition, early twentieth century logging equipment and farm machines are on outdoor display at Pottsville. Potts continued to work on Pottsville until his death.

References

1909 births
2003 deaths
People from Shasta County, California
People from Grants Pass, Oregon
Politicians from Klamath Falls, Oregon
People from Lake County, Oregon
People from Josephine County, Oregon
Presidents of the Oregon State Senate
20th-century American politicians


The 2008 Illinois Republican presidential primary was held on February 5, 2008. Illinois was one of 24 States holding a primary or caucus on Super Tuesday, 2008. Delegates from each of Illinois' 19 congressional districts are selected by direct election. In addition, the primary ballot also contains a preference poll that lists the presidential candidates. 10 at-large delegates and 3 party leader delegates were elected at the State Convention and officially went to the Republican Convention unpledged.

Results

*Candidate withdrew prior to the primary

See also
 2008 Illinois Democratic presidential primary
 2008 United States presidential election in Illinois
 2008 Republican Party presidential primaries

References

Illinois
Republican primary
2008 Super Tuesday
Illinois Republican primaries


The Thysville Caves are a cave complex in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, located near the town of Mbanza-Ngungu (formerly Thysville). The cave complex is fed by tributaries of the Lower Congo River, and extends across an area of 750 square kilometers.

Flowing water carries nutrients from the surface into the caves, which nourishes aquatic life adapted to the lightless environment. The caves are home to an endemic blind cyprinid fish, Caecobarbus geertsii, listed as vulnerable in the IUCN Red List. The caves are relatively unknown scientifically, and may be home to other endemic fish and invertebrate species.

References
 Toham, Andre Kamdem et al., eds. (2006). A Vision for Biodiversity Conservation in Central Africa: Biological Priorities for Conservation in the Guinean-Congolian Forest and Freshwater Region. World Wildlife Fund, Washington DC. Page A-52.

Freshwater ecoregions
Congo River
Ecoregions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Caves of the Democratic Republic of the Congo


Arapongas is a municipality within the state of Paraná, South Region, Brazil. It is located in the Metropolitan area of Londrina, Microregion Apucarana and Mesoregion North Central Paranaense, being located at a distance of 386 km from the state capital, Curitiba. It occupies an area of approximately 382 km. In 2020, its population was estimated by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in 124,810 inhabitants, the sixteenth-most populous city of Paraná, and second-most populous metropolitan area of Londrina.

History
Situated in the Northern Paraná region, was born by the company's initiative to Northlands Paraná, pioneered the settlement of the region. As well as the cities founded by the company, had all its development based on a master plan. Its creator and founder was William da Fonseca Brabason Davids, director of Northlands Company of Paraná, which at the time of Arapongas Foundation held the post of Mayor of Londrina. In 1935, the French dealer René Cellot and her daughter Jeanine Cellot bought the first lots of land, intended for urban construction. Thus, on 28 September 1935, Rene Cellot and her daughter settled with a home business in the same place where today is the building of Banco Bradesco S / A (former Brazilian Discount Bank S / A), the av. Spies. In the same year it opened and sold the first lot to the Brazilian agricultural farmer Floriano Freire. Immediately, several other farmers, from different nationalities, have taken up residence in the place and settled down with trading houses.

In the following years were populated the plots intended for colonies formed by Japanese and Slavic immigrants, coming thus in 1937, the Colonies Orleans Hope and already populated, which greatly contributed to the progress and expansion of new equity.

Spies remained part of the municipality of Londrina until 1943, when it was created the municipality of Rolândia, which happened to belong, by the way as judicial district, created by Law No. 199 of 30 December 1943, which It approved the new administrative division of Paraná, to take effect in the 1943–1947 five-year period. Due to lack of transport, the district grew slowly, this problem is further aggravated due to restrictions motivated by World War II. Under these conditions, by the year 1945, the district headquarters had about 600 houses and was served by the then Road São Paulo-Parana Iron, who shortly after was built, to become part of the heritage of Paraná Traffic Network – Santa Catarina. Nevertheless, the people of Arapongas continued to fight bravely for their progress and well-being, getting to be an entity with the name of the Society of Friends of Arapongas to strive for their independence, progress and development. And so, as a result of these efforts, the State Government, by Law No. 2 of 10 October 1947, creating the city of Arapongas dismembering him Rolândia and raising its headquarters to a city.

That time, the city had a total area of 2007 square kilometers and consisted of administrative districts of the municipal seat, Astorga and Sabáudia.

A few days after the publication of Law No. 2 of 10 October 1947, he was sworn in as interim Mayor Joseph Simonetti which remained until the inauguration of the first elected mayor, Julio Junqueira, on November 9, 1947, by a coalition of parties opposition. Possession of Julius Junqueira took place thirty days after the election.

The first mayor faced several political problems and even revoked his mandate, that is delivered through a skillful political maneuvering. On January 16, 1948, was installed the region, created just before, in the category of first indentation, and two years later was elevated directly to the rank of third indentation. The first was Judge Ismael Dorneles de Freitas, and the first public prosecutor was Marcolino Leite de Paula e Silva. On July 22, 1951, was elected Mayor John Cernichiaro, which like its predecessor struggled with serious problems of political order. Yet Arapongas continued to progress. In this period he started the paving of the city's public parks; generates the set of City Hall; opened several roads and created numerous city schools.

Twice we had John Cernichiaro ordered the forfeiture of his mandate, and twice two Presidents of the City Council tried to take over the duties of the Mayor, only not succeeding because of the boldness and bravery of the Mayor who resisted even the strength to maneuver Town Council. Finally, using the higher court, John Cernichiaro had won the case, continue in power until the end of his term. In 1952, the first newspaper in the city of Arapongas District 'was inaugurated by Ennio Prosdocimi. Spies missed the territory of Astorga district, which was dismembered and transformed into autonomous municipality. The measure implemented by the state government had no good effect, so much so that the twenty councilors who sit on the City Council, five resigned his mandate in protest. In 1954, the city suffered another break up, with the creation of Sabáudia municipality, the old district of the territory of the same name. With this loss, the municipality reduced the district area and district headquarters.

Notwithstanding the territorial losses, Arapongas turned out to demonstrate entrepreneurial dynamism above the regional average, been developing an extensive industrial park furniture and gifts, today is an important furniture manufacturing hub for the rest of southern Brazil. This happened after the 1970s, when the sudden collapse of the coffee crop in northern Paraná due to heavy frost forced the region's cities to seek new economic basis. The low-cost furniture industry, especially upholstery, soon proved a path with great potential to expand consumption, which led to a proliferation of companies in a well-designed (and pioneer in the region) industrial park. In this sector, the Arapongas polo eventually rivaling the furniture industry in Curitiba, this more traditional but very based on handmade carpentry and therefore less competitive. This industrialization process is the basis of population and economic growth of the city, which is gradually enhancing their commercial and service sectors, occupying virtually equivalent position to Apucarana in the region.

Geography

Climate
Subtropical Humid Mesothermal, hot summers with rain falling mostly trend (average temperature above 22 °C), winters with little frequent frosts (average temperature below 18 °C) without defined dry season.

Relief
 Relief predominantly flat with slight elevations.
 Rivers: Ribeirão Pirapó, Lageado Stream, Stream Tres Bocas, Stream of Tight, Basin dos Bandeirantes.

Demography
Between 2000 and 2010, the population of Arapongas grew at an annual average rate of 2.00%, while in Brazil was 1.17% in the same period. In this decade, the city's urbanization rate increased from 95.74% to 97.79%. In 2010 lived in the city, 104,150 people.

Between 1991 and 2000, the city's population grew at an annual average rate of 3.16%. At UF, this rate was 1.39%, while in Brazil was 1.63% in the same period. In the decade, the city's urbanization rate increased from 92.98% to 95.74%.

Between 2000 and 2010, the dependency ratio in the city rose from 47.22% to 41.23% and the rate of aging, from 6.16% to 8.09%.
 Economically active population of Arapongas: 57,754 (55.45%) (IBGE – Demographic Census 2010).

Tropic of Capricorn
The Tropic of Capricorn is a parallel situated south of the equator and her imaginary line crosses the territory of Arapongas, in BR-369, exit to Apucarana. On site there is a composite structure of shoulders and a landmark, where travelers from different parts of Brazil and South America usually stop to register his year here, through photos and videos, or out of curiosity.

Education
Currently, the city has a total of 25 municipal schools, 14 state schools, 16 children's educational centers, 12 private teaching centers, and five universities.

According to the ENEM 1500, the College Prisma is the county's school better positioned to Note 25.83, and the 758 in the overall standings of Paraná.

First school
The School Group Caravelas Marquis, former School of Arapongas Group, was founded in 1943, even before the city of Arapongas be created in the government of Mayor Miguel Blasi, of Londrina and the governor of the state Moysés Lupion. It was built thanks to the efforts of the pioneers: Antonio Garcez Novaes, Deodato Antero France and others who organized raising materials, as well as hand-to-work done by villagers.

Special education
CAE "Service Center and expertise to the Visually Impaired and Hearing". It works within the Caravelas Marquis State College one Expertise Center students with Hearing Impairment and Visual. There they develop projects for inclusion and overcoming limits.

Higher education
Spies has five schools: one public and four private
 UAB – Open University of Brazil
 Unopar – North Paraná University
 Cesumar – University Center of Maringa
 Unipar – University Paranaense.
 Rhema School Education – Rhema Group Education.

Transport

Road

Airway
Alberto Bertelli Airport, known as Arapongas Airport (IATA: APX – ICAO: SSOG) is a Public Airport administered by the city of Arapongas, with up to 200 takeoffs and landings per month.

The airport is located 5 km northwest from downtown Arapongas. There are currently no scheduled flights operating in this airport airlines.

Fleet
In 2015 Arapongas fleet is the first state's largest tenth with 76,262 vehicles (October 2015 position).

Culture

Theatres
The most important theaters are:
 Cine Teatro Maua;
 Teatro Vianinha;
 Teatro Hideo Mihara – Colégio Marquês de Caravelas;

Cinemas
The most important are:
 Cine Mauá
 Cine Gracher (a 3D room and two rooms in digital format Stadium) –  Havan Arapongas;

Museums
The Museum of Art and History of Arapongas (MAHRA), located in a historic building, which housed from 1955 to 2010, the municipal administration, the Mahra tells the story of Arapongas through photos and documents that are part of a rich historical collection that is now accessible to the population. The museum will also be venue for major exhibitions by local artists and guests from other regions.

Sports
The Municipal Stadium José Luis Chiapin is a football stadium with a capacity of 10,440 people. Known as Stadium of birds due to the huge flow of birds in the city, and the city itself have the Bird City nickname, is the home of Arapongas Esporte Clube and Grêmio Sports Araponguense, underwent a refurbishment in April 2009 to Arapongas games in the Access Division of the Paranaense Football Championship.

The city of Arapongas has two clubs in the Campeonato Paranaense, the Arapongas Esporte Clube and Grêmio Araponguense. In the past there were others too, like Arapongas Football Club and the Athletic Association Arapongas.

Tourism

Parque dos Pássaros
The Parque dos Pássaros was created in 2000 by the city of Arapongas. When created, several schools have helped with their students to plant trees and to leave our park as it is today and bringing more a place for leisure Arapongas

The name was given by a child in a municipal contest schools, integrated to decide the park's name, in which various names were mentioned and Bird Park was chosen.

There we find a variety of entertainment such as: Walking inside the park; Football field inside the park; Skate park, bike, etc.; Fishing (when released for public employees).

In 2014, was made major reforms in the park, from paintings, exchange picket fences, lighting, species management, fruit tree planting, maintenance of flora and fauna, cleaning malls, among others.

Praça Mauá
Dr. Julio Square Junqueira was the first to be built in Arapongas, was named after Dr. Julio Junqueira named after the first mayor of Arapongas.

Located in the city center, the square is popularly called Praça Mauá. It also contains a children's playground.

Expoara
The Arapongas Exhibition Pavilion – Expoara – is the largest complex in southern Brazil in area for large trade shows and events. Headquartered in the city of Arapongas (northern Parana) – the second-largest furniture hub in Brazil – and the BR 369 which is the main highway to the south, the Expoara is in the Mercosur route, covering a radius of 100 km – between the cities of Londrina and Maringa – a population of 2 million.

Built in 1997, the pavilion was built to accomplish great fair for the furniture sector as Movelpar – Fair of the State of Paraná Furniture – event that is among the three largest trade fairs in the country, and the FIQ International Fair of Quality in Machines, Raw Materials and Accessories for the Furniture Industry, biannual events that attract exhibitors and visitors from the furniture sector nationwide.

Designed on a flat area, Expoara can be divided into various sizes, meeting the need for different formats of events. The pavilion has 44 000 m2, designed on a plot of 150 000 m2, as well as complete infrastructure for events – electricity, hydro, sewer and telephone in all stands – offers a food court with restaurants for 600 people, sound system, equipped auditorium for 300 seats and 5,000 parking spaces.

Economy
Its economy is one of the fastest growing in the state, due mainly in agriculture and furniture sector, as the city is the second-largest center of these activities in the country.

Spies attracted new businesses and companies in other industries for their economy, several companies took interest in the city, an example is the Havan, the store is located in BR 369, s / n, received investment of R $35 million and generated 200 jobs direct in the city and region; Location was done in a cinema with a 3D room and two rooms in digital format Stadium by the company Cine Gracher. The city received two fast-food franchise Subway network; Havan one inside the store and another in the center. Madero Container settled attached Arapongas the Havan and all invested R $1.5 million in the unit that serves 5,000 people per month.

Arapongas had a strong economy in 2007, growing by 10.3%, while Brazil has grown at an average of 5%, this colossal development comes mainly from agriculture and its polo furniture which is the second-largest in Brazil the forecast is that Arapongas reaches the level that today is its neighbor city Apucarana in 2015 and Londrina in 2028, its rapid growth makes it one of the fastest-growing cities in the state.

Notable people
Luciano Pagliarini – Brazilian cyclist.
Ademar Aparecido Xavier Júnior – Brazilian footballer.
Wilson Aparecido Xavier Júnior – Brazilian footballer.

References

External links
Arapongas's official site

Populated places established in 1947
1947 establishments in Brazil


Thomas Talbott is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He is best known for his advocacy of trinitarian universalism.

The 2003 book Universal Salvation?: The Current Debate presents Talbott's defense of Trinitarian universalism together with responses from various fields theologians, philosophers, church historians and other religious scholars supporting or opposing Talbott's universalism.

Talbott contributed the chapter on "Universalism" for The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology.

Universalist argument
Talbott has offered three propositions which many traditional Christians believe are biblically based but Talbott considers cannot all be true at the same time:
 God is entirely loving and wills that all people be reconciled to Him in relationship.
 God is totally sovereign over human destinies.
 Most people will experience endless, conscious torment in hell.

Problem of evil
In the September 1987 edition of the periodical Christian Scholar's Review, Talbott sought, as he explains in a more recent comment, "to make some ideas then current in the philosophical literature available to a wider audience of non-philosophers." He sought to explain, for example, how Alvin Plantinga's Free Will Defense had transformed the way in which contemporary philosophers approach the so-called problem of evil and why, in particular, even atheistic philosophers came to abandon the claim that evil is logically inconsistent with the existence of God. But at the end of this article, Talbott also ventured into more controversial territory, suggesting ways in which even the tragic suffering of innocent children might contribute, in the end, to the future blessedness of all people (including the children who suffer). In accordance with his affirmation of universal reconciliation, he thus expressed the hopeful belief that "every innocent child who suffers will one day look upon that suffering as a privilege because of the joy it has made possible: the joy of knowing that one has been used by God in the redemption of others, the joy of that final union or reunion in which love's triumph is complete and all separation from others is finally overcome. I would ask but two things of those who [might understandably] reject such a view: first, that they resist the temptation to moralize, and second, that they consider the alternatives carefully."

Others have, not surprisingly, roundly criticized and even ridiculed such a view. According to John Beversluis, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Butler University, for example, Talbott's view is "so outrageous...that I will not dignify it with a reply....If Talbott is right, he is logically committed and morally obliged to oppose everyone dedicated to alleviating world hunger, ridding the world of terrorism, finding a cure for cancer...and so forth." But in an equally hard-hitting reply, Talbott dismisses this claim by comparing it to a more precise claim of the following form: "If Talbott is right in accepting [proposition] p (where p is specifically identified), then Talbott is logically committed to q." He then points out that a cogent argument in the present context would require two things of Beversluis: "first, that he identify a relevant instance of p, and second, that he make some attempt to deduce q from p. But Beversluis," Talbott insists, "does not so much as identify the proposition that he claims logically commits me to the moral obligation he alleges; much less does he make the required deduction."

Talbott acknowledges, however, that his optimistic view could be regarded as a case of wishful thinking. But he goes on to contrast hope with despair, arguing that, unlike despair, hope is compatible with a healthy skepticism.

Works

Thomas Talbott (2022). Understanding the Free-Will Controversy. Cascade Books. ISBN 1-7252-6836-1

Notes

References

External links
http://www.thomastalbott.com/
http://www.willamette.edu/~ttalbott/

Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Willamette University faculty
21st-century Protestant theologians
American Christian universalists
20th-century Christian universalists
21st-century Christian universalists
Christian universalist theologians
20th-century Protestant theologians
Portland State University alumni
Fuller Theological Seminary alumni
University of California, Santa Barbara alumni
American Christian theologians
Protestant philosophers
Philosophers of religion


Apricitabine (INN, codenamed AVX754 and SPD754, sometimes abbreviated to ATC) is an experimental nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI)  against HIV. It is structurally related to lamivudine and emtricitabine, and, like these, is an analogue of cytidine.

History
It was first developed by BioChem Pharma (where it was called BCH10618). BioChem Pharma was then sold to Shire Pharmaceuticals (where apricitabine was called SPD754). Shire then sold the rights to develop the drug to Avexa Pharmaceuticals, an Australian pharmaceutical company. , apricitabine has closed its phase III clinical trial, and has been granted fast track status by the United States Food and Drug Administration.

Avexa announced its decision to end work on apricitabine in May 2010, which Avexa spent more than A$100 million ($90 million) developing and was in the final of three stages of patient studies usually needed for U.S. regulatory approval. Grounds for the shutdown included the inability to find commercial partners for global licensing, concerns about legal protections of the drug in the US market, and difficulty confirming the effectiveness of the drug in patients where other retroviral drugs masked key indicators.

In March 2011 it was announced by the company to the Australian Stock Exchange that the FDA had agreed that a new, shorter, single Phase III trial design, including about 300 patients dosed for 2 weeks, was required before approval.  A similar agreement with the EMA was announced in March 2012.

In November 2011 the company sought to extend its patents over apricitabine and was in discussions for fast-track approval with European regulators. The company also indicated that clinical trials had shown better-than-expected results from simultaneous provision of the drug alongside two other marketed drugs when compared to those drugs with lamivudine, another NRTI.

Avexa's latest update in 2013 reported that the drug was still in phase IIb trials and had not yet started phase III.

Dosage
As a monotherapy, 1200 mg apricitabine per day reduced the viral load by up to 1.65 logs (45 fold) in a small, 10-day randomized controlled trial.  An 800 mg dose twice a day is being used in later studies.

Adverse effects
Apricitabine appears to be well tolerated. The most common side effects associated with its use were headache (although there was no significant difference between participants who took apricitabine and those given a placebo), nasal congestion, and muscle pain. In a six-month trial, common adverse effects were nausea, diarrhea, elevated blood levels of triglycerides, and upper respiratory infection—similar to those of lamivudine; apricitabine was not associated with abnormal lipase levels, bone marrow suppression, or liver and kidney toxicity. No patients in either study had to stop taking apricitabine because of side effects.

Drug resistance
In vitro, apricitabine is effective against NRTI-(lamivudine and zidovudine)-resistant virus strains, including M184V and multiple thymidine analogue mutations (TAMs).

In early studies, no mutations causing drug resistance were observed. Newer trials showed that apricitabine may induce K65R mutations, resulting in resistance against didanosine and tenofovir.

In clinical studies, apricitabine has been good at reducing viral loads while apparently producing little selection pressure, resulting in the addition of no further mutations in treatment-experienced patients with common pre-existing mutations, including M184V or K65R or TAMs (M41L, M184V, and T215Y).

References

Nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitors
Pyrimidones
Oxathiolanes
Experimental drugs
Hydroxymethyl compounds


SS Fingal was a Norwegian merchant ship of 2,137 tons which was sunk during World War II off the coast of Australia.

Brief history
Fingal was built at Moss Værft, Norway 1923.

In December 1941, the steamer had been damaged by Japanese bombing when en route between Rangoon and Calcutta.

In May 1943, Fingal was under charter to the Australian Government. She was sailing from Sydney to Darwin shipping cargo and ammunition escorted by , crewed by 31 men, mainly Scandinavian, apart from six Australians including two Royal Australian Navy gunners.

At about 1:35pm off Nambucca Heads, New South Wales on 5 May 1943, two torpedoes fired from the Japanese submarine I-180 struck the side of her hull. Fingal sank within a minute and Patterson dropped depth charges and immediately left the area.

Survivors from the sinking ship clung to debris. A RAAF Avro Anson DG696 from No. 71 Squadron, crewed by Sergeant Geoffery Gillmore (pilot), Flying Officer Max Sharrad (Navigator) and Sergeant J "Poppa" Hall (WAG), operating out of Coffs Harbour was escorting her at the time, flying about  ahead of the ship. DG696 saw that she had been hit by a torpedo, returned to the area, found the survivors and advised Patterson. The survivors were picked up after spending four hours in the sea; 19 of the crew survived. Patterson dropped off the survivors at Newcastle at 9:00am on 6 May 1943.

Twelve men were killed in the sinking, including the captain, chief officer and all the engineers.

References

External links

Ships built in Moss, Norway
Steamships of Norway
1923 ships
1943 in Australia
Shipwrecks of the Mid North Coast Region
Ships sunk by Japanese submarines
World War II shipwrecks in the Pacific Ocean
World War II merchant ships of Australia
Iron and steel steamships of Australia
Maritime incidents in May 1943


Stampidine is an experimental nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI) with anti-HIV activity.

It is a derivative of stavudine (d4T, brand name Zerit), and has been designed to avoid dependence on the rate limiting step of phosphorylation of stavudine to stavudine monophosphate. This is governed by the supply of thymidine kinase that is available, and stavudine is poorly phosphorylated to its monophosphate form in thymidine kinase-deficient cells.

Preclinical pharmacology
Stampidine exhibited:
subnanomolar to low nanomolar in vitro antiretroviral potency against genotypically and phenotypically NRTI-resistant primary clinical HIV isolates, non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI)-resistant HIV-1 isolates, clinical non-B subtype HIV-1 isolates (subtypes A, C, F, and G) originating from South America, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa with resistance to stavudine, adefovir and tenofovir, as well as recombinant HIV clones containing common patterns of RT mutations responsible for NRTI resistance such as multiple TAMs plus M184V, multiple TAMs plus T69 insertion, and Q151 complex,
 favorable safety profile in mice, rats, dogs, and cats, and
 promising prophylactic in vivo antiretroviral activity in Hu-PBL-SCID mice as well as therapeutic anti-retroviral activity in FIV-infected domestic cats.

Stampidine epigenetically modulates the host transcriptome in a unique manner, silences expression of a distinct set of genes encoding transcription factors and signal transduction molecules, and prevents HIV infection from distorting and disrupting key cellular transcriptional networks.  At nanomolar concentrations that are 4-logs lower than those achieved at its non-toxic dose levels in mice, rats, cats, and dogs, stampidine switched off genes for several HDFs that are required for HIV replication in T-cells. Notably, stampidine reversed the effects of HIV exposure on the host transcriptome regardless of NRTI-sensitivity or RT mutations of the HIV isolate used and inhibited the replication of 17 NRTI-resistant HIV-1 strains, including recombinant HIV clones containing common patterns of RT mutations responsible for NRTI resistance, in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) with subnanomolar-nanomolar IC50 values.

Unlike available antiretroviral agents that disrupt a specific step in the life cycle of HIV, stampidine has the potential to abrogate all steps in the life cycle of HIV.

References

Nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitors
Pyrimidinediones
Dihydrofurans
Phosphoramidates
Amino acid derivatives
Organobromides
Methyl esters
Experimental drugs


Elvucitabine is an experimental nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI), developed by Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for the treatment of HIV infection.

Elvucitabine belongs to a class (group) of HIV drugs called nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs). NRTIs block an HIV enzyme called reverse transcriptase. (An enzyme is a protein that starts or increases the speed of a chemical reaction). By blocking reverse transcriptase, NRTIs prevent HIV from multiplying and can reduce the amount of HIV in the body.

Elvucitabine is similar in chemical structure to the FDA-approved NRTIs lamivudine (brand name Epivir) and emtricitabine (brand name Emtriva). However, in vitro studies have suggested that elvucitabine may work on certain HIV strains against which other NRTIs, such as lamivudine and emtricitabine, no longer work. (In vitro studies are studies done in test tubes or other laboratory equipment and not on animals or humans).

Studies have also suggested that elvucitabine may be effective against hepatitis B virus (HBV). Mechanism of action of Elvucitabine ; reveals that it acts by inhibiting reverse transcriptase which interferes with generation of DNA copies of viral RNA.

Currently, it is in Phase II clinical trials.

References

Dihydrofurans
Nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitors
Organofluorides
Pyrimidones
Experimental drugs
Hydroxymethyl compounds