The Sutliff Bridge is a bridge over the Cedar River at Sutliff, a Johnson County community near Lisbon, Iowa, United States. A Parker truss bridge, it was built in 1897 and 1898 at a cost of approximately $12,000. J. R. Sheely was the engineer for the original Sutliff Bridge. After a modern replacement was built over the Cedar in 1983, the bridge was slated for destruction, but it was ultimately saved, and on May 15, 1998, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Although the bridge remained a celebrated location for locals and for visitors from across Iowa, including a 5k foot race beloved as the “worst road race in America", it succumbed to massive floods in the second week of June 2008: while the river normally flowed many feet below the bottom of the bridge, the floods topped the bridge's deck, and one of the bridge's spans was washed away on June 13 as the surrounding countryside was inundated with vast amounts of water. It is estimated that restoring the bridge will cost $1.7 million. Most of this money would come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with the rest coming from donations and local governments; both FEMA and the Johnson County Board of Supervisors have agreed in principle to repair the bridge. The bridge reconstruction was supervised by VJ Engineering of Coralville, Iowa, and construction was completed by Iowa Bridge and Culvert of Washington, Iowa. In October 2012 a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held, opening the bridge to public use for the first time in four years.

See also
List of bridges documented by the Historic American Engineering Record in Iowa
List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa

References

External links
Photographs of the bridge collapse

Johnson County survey on replacing the span

Bridges completed in 1897
Transportation buildings and structures in Johnson County, Iowa
Road bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa
Historic American Engineering Record in Iowa
National Register of Historic Places in Johnson County, Iowa
Parker truss bridges in the United States


Thawi is an administrative ward in the Kondoa District of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. In 2016 the Tanzania National Bureau of Statistics report there were  11,737 people in the ward, from 10,799 in 2012.

References

Kondoa District
Wards of Dodoma Region


Mnenia is an administrative ward in the Kondoa District of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. In 2016 the Tanzania National Bureau of Statistics report there were 12,529 people in the ward, from 11,528 in 2012.

References

Kondoa District
Wards of Dodoma Region


Soera is an administrative ward in the Kondoa District of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. It has four administrative villages Humai, Bukulu, Soera and Kwadinu. In 2016 the Tanzania National Bureau of Statistics report there were 8,277 people in the ward, from 7,616 in 2012.

Many of the Kondoa Rock-Art Sites, that are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, are located within the Soera Ward. The Fenga site is in the ward that include one of the most known paintings of people trying to capture large animals, including elephants.

References

Kondoa District
Wards of Dodoma Region


William Lamon Harkness (August 8, 1858 – May 10, 1919) was an American businessman and inheritor of a large share of Standard Oil.

Early life
William Lamon Harkness was born in Bellevue, Ohio, the son of Daniel M. Harkness, who was the half-brother of both Henry Flagler and Stephen V. Harkness, both founders of Standard Oil, and his wife Isabella Harkness.  Upon his father Daniel's death in 1896, he inherited a large share in Standard Oil, a company in which his father had been an early shareholder. He is also a cousin of noted philanthropist Edward Harkness who also benefitted from his father's involvement with Standard Oil.

He attended Bellevue Public Schools in Bellevue, Ohio and The Brooks Military School in Cleveland. In 1881, Harkness graduated from Yale University.

Life
In 1896, he moved from Cleveland, Ohio to a home at 12 East 53rd Street in New York City.  He also owned a country home, Dosoris, at Glen Cove on Long Island. A yachtsman and sportsman, he was a member of The Union Club of Cleveland, The Metropolitan Club New York, New York Yacht Club, the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club and Piping Rock Club.

In August 1911, while in command of his steam yacht Gunilda on Lake Superior, he ran her aground, due to his failure in recognising a requirement for a pilot and then compounding the matter by not hiring tugs at the appropriate time. She would sink in days. He put in a claim against the ship's insurer, Lloyd's of London for about $132,000 dollars, and received $100,000 compensation.

Philanthropy

Shortly before his death, Harkness donated $400,000 to Yale University. The William L. Harkness Hall at Yale University was completed in 1927 as the gift of Mr. W.L.  Harkness, B.A. 1881, and his family. It is a Collegiate Gothic building of Aquia sandstone with Ohio sandstone trim and contains offices and lecture & recitation rooms for the French, German, and Music departments. William Adams Delano was the architect.

Personal life

Harkness was married to Edith Hale (1863–1947), daughter of Edwin B. Hale, a prominent banker from Cleveland. Together, they were the parents of:

 Louise Hale Harkness (b. 1897), who married David Sinton Ingalls (1899–1985) in 1922. His mother, Jane Taft, was the niece of President William Howard Taft. He was the grandson of railroad executive Melville E. Ingalls, and great-grandson of industrialist David Sinton.
 William Hale Harkness (1900–1954), who married Elisabeth Grant in 1932, and later on October 1, 1947, he married Rebekah Semple West Pierce (1915–1982).

Harkness died in New York City in 1919 and was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.  He left an estate of $53,439,437, which would be approximately $ in  dollars, of which $37,272,254 was stock in Standard Oil. He left half of his estate including his houses at 12 West 53rd in New York and Dosoris at Glen Cove, NY to his wife Edith Hale Harkness. The remaining half was divided between his daughter Louise Hale Harkness and his son William Hale Harkness.

References

Sources
 Klein, Henry H. Dynastic America and Those Who Own It (1921) reprint 2003 Kessinger Publishing.

1858 births
1915 deaths
Yale University alumni
Businesspeople from Cleveland
People from Bellevue, Ohio
William L.
Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York)
People from Turtle Bay, Manhattan
People from Glen Cove, New York


Masange is an administrative ward in the Kondoa district of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. According to the 2002 census, the ward has a population of 12,348.

References

Kondoa District
Wards of Dodoma Region


Kikilo is an administrative ward in the Kondoa district of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. In 2016 the Tanzania National Bureau of Statistics report there were 10,127 people in the ward, from 9,318 in 2012.

References

Kondoa District
Wards of Dodoma Region


Bereko is an administrative ward in the Kondoa district of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. According to the 2002 census, the ward has a total population of 3,147.

References

Kondoa District
Wards of Dodoma Region


Kisese is an administrative ward in the Kondoa district of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. According to the 2002 census, the ward has a total population of 9,810.

References

Kondoa District
Wards of Dodoma Region


Kikore is an administrative ward in the Kondoa district of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. According to the 2002 census, the ward has a total population of 10,438.

References

Kondoa District
Wards of Dodoma Region


Makorongo is an administrative ward in the Chemba District of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. According to the 2002 census, the ward has a total population of 12,835.

References

Wards of Dodoma Region


Ovada is an administrative ward in the Chemba District of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. According to the 2002 census, the ward had a total population of 9,544.

References

Wards of Dodoma Region


The 97th Pennsylvania House of Representatives District is located in Lancaster County. Steven Mentzer has represented the 97th district in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives since 2013.

District Profile
District 97 includes the following areas:
 Lititz
 Manheim Township (PART, Districts 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23)
 Warwick Township

Warwick Township has two bridges named to the National Register of Historic Places: The Buck Hill Farm Covered Bridge, and Zook's Mill Covered Bridge.

The 97th District is home to the town of Lititz; a small town voted "American's coolest town" in 2013.

U.S. Open Champion Jim Furyk won a Pennsylvania State Golf Championship while attending Maheim Township High School.

Representatives

Recent election results

References

External links

https://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/dc10map/SLD_RefMap/lower/st42_pa/sldl42097/DC10SLDL42097_001.pdf
http://www.redistricting.state.pa.us/CensusDisplay.cfm?Plan=2011-Revised-Final&District=97&DistBody=H

Government of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
97


The Daggs Falls is a plunge waterfall on Spring Creek that is located in the Darling Downs region of Queensland, Australia.

Location and features
The falls are located east of the town of  and descend from the McPherson Range, north of the Queensland/New South Wales border. The falls are situated directly on the roadside and there is a lookout provided.

Four other waterfalls are located in the area surrounding Killarney, including the Queen Mary Falls, Teviot Falls, Browns Falls and Upper Browns Falls.

See also

 List of waterfalls of Queensland

References

Waterfalls of Queensland
Darling Downs
Plunge waterfalls


The magoja is a type of long jacket worn with hanbok, the traditional clothing of Korea, and is usually worn on top of the jeogori (short jacket). It is also called magwae and while it was originally a male garment, it is now considered a unisex article of clothing. The magoja was originally a Manchu style of clothing, but was introduced after Heungseon Daewongun, father of King Gojong, returned from political exile in Manchuria in 1887. The magoja is derived from the magwae (magua in Chinese) that he wore at that time to protect against the cold weather of the region. Due to its warmth and the fact that it's easy to wear, the magoja's popularity spread throughout Korea. It is also called "deot jeogori" ().

The magoja does not have git (깃, a band of fabric that trims the collar) or goreum (고름, coat strings), unlike the jeogori and durumagi (overcoat). The men's magoja has seop (섶, overlapped column on the front) and its length is longer than women's magoja, so that both sides are open at the bottom. Most magoja are made of silk and are adorned with one or two buttons  which are usually made from amber. In a male magoja, buttons are attached to the right side, while on women's magoja they are attached to the left.

At first, women wore the magoja for style rather than comfort and it was particularly popular among the Kaeseong people. The color for these silk women's magojas tend to be neutral in order to harmonize with other garments such as the jeogori and chima (a voluminous skirt), the two main parts of the female hanbok. In spring and autumn, a pastel tone is used for the women's magoja so that wearers can wear it over a jeogori for style. As for men's magoja worn during spring and summer, jade, green, gray, dark grey are used.

See also
Hanbok
Jeogori
Magua (clothing)
Po

References

Korean clothing


The 1976 Australian Touring Car Championship was a CAMS sanctioned Australian motor racing title for Group C Touring Cars. It was the 17th running of the Australian Touring Car Championship. The championship began at Symmons Plains Raceway on 29 February and ended at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit on 28 November in the longest season in the history of the series. 1976 saw a substantial change to the ATCC calendar which was expanded to eleven rounds, incorporating the end-of-season long distance Australian Championship of Makes races for the first time. These races included Sandown's Hang Ten 400 and the Phillip Island 500K, although notably not the Bathurst 1000.

After contesting only selected rounds of the 1975 championship, Allan Moffat won his second Australian Touring Car Championship in 1976. He won the Calder, Oran Park and Adelaide rounds, building up a mid-season points lead that his rivals could not bridge. At the Hang Ten 400 at Sandown in September, Moffat re-launched his team as the Moffat Ford Dealers team with a new Ford XB Falcon GT, built after Moffat's original car and transporter were destroyed by fire on the way to the Adelaide round in June. Moffat borrowed the Ford Falcon of John Goss for the Adelaide and Lakeside rounds to stay in the series until the new car was built.

Barry Seton, driving a Ford Capri in the Up to 3000 cc class, was Moffat's main title threat for most of the year, winning his class four times, with a best finish of sixth outright at Sandown. Seton lost second place in the championship to Colin Bond when the Holden Torana driver won the final race of the season at Phillip Island. Bond had previously won at Sandown and Lakeside, but had mechanical failures that Moffat, even in his borrowed machinery, did not.

Drivers
The following drivers competed in the 1976 Australian Touring Car Championship.

Calendar
The 1976 Australian Touring Car Championship was contested over eleven rounds.

Class system
Cars competed in two classes, based on engine capacity:
 Up to 3000 cc
 3001 to 6000 cc

Points system
Championship points were awarded to drivers on the following basis:

Points were only awarded to a driver where the car had completed 75% of race distance and was running at the completion of the final lap.

Only the best two results from the four long distance races could be counted by each driver.

Championship standings

Points scored in the long distance races which were not retained for championship totals are shown in the above table within double brackets.

Australian Championship of Makes
The 1976 Australian Championship of Makes was contested over a four-round series, staged concurrently with the final four rounds of the Australian Touring Car Championship. It was the sixth championship for manufacturers to be awarded by CAMS, and the first to be contested under the Australian Championship of Makes name. The title was won by General Motors-Holden's.

Class system
Cars competed in four classes based on engine capacity.
 Up to 1300 cc
 1301 to 2000 cc
 2001 to 3000 cc
 3001 to 6000 cc

Points system
Championship points were awarded in each class on a 9, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 basis, with the results of all four races counting towards the championship.

References

Australian Touring Car Championship seasons
Touring Cars


Atavachron is the fourth studio album by guitarist Allan Holdsworth, released in 1986 through Enigma Records (United States) and JMS–Cream Records (Europe). It features Holdsworth's first recorded use of the SynthAxe, an instrument which would be featured prominently on his future albums. The album's title and seventh track, as well as the cover art, are references to the Atavachron alien time travel device from the Star Trek episode "All Our Yesterdays". "Funnels" refers to the three funnels of the .

Critical reception

John W. Patterson of AllMusic awarded Atavachron four stars out of five, describing it as "semi-progressive" with a "symphonic element" and praising it as "clear evidence of the genius Holdsworth was demonstrating release after release". He also highlighted the use of the SynthAxe, as well as praising the "beautiful female vocals" of Rowanne Mark, who makes her first of two appearances on a Holdsworth album; the other being Secrets (1989).

Track listing

Personnel
Allan Holdsworth – guitar, SynthAxe, engineering, mixing, production
Rowanne Mark – vocals (track 7)
William Edward Childs – keyboard (tracks 2, 5)
Alan Pasqua – keyboard (tracks 3, 4, 6)
Gary Husband – drums (tracks 1, 2, 4, 6)
Chad Wackerman – drums (tracks 3, 7)
Tony Williams – drums (track 5)
Jimmy Johnson – bass

Technical
Robert Feist – engineering, mixing
Dan Humann – engineering, mixing
Bernie Grundman – mastering
Francois Bardol – cover art

References

External links
Atavachron at therealallanholdsworth.com (archived)

Allan Holdsworth albums
1986 albums
Enigma Records albums


The Elabana Falls is a cascade waterfall that is located within Lamington National Park in the South East region of Queensland, Australia.

Location and features
Access to the falls is via walking tracks from Green Mountains (O'Reilly's), including the Box Forest circuit and the Toolona Creek circuit.

See also

 List of waterfalls of Queensland

References

External links

South East Queensland
Cascade waterfalls
Waterfalls in Lamington National Park


Carroll William "Boardwalk" Brown (February 20, 1889 – February 8, 1977) was a Major League Baseball pitcher. He was born on February 20, 1889, in Woodbury, New Jersey, and attended Woodbury Junior-Senior High School. He batted and threw right-handed, and was 178 pounds. Boardwalk played three seasons with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1911–1913. In 1914 he played for both the A's and the New York Yankees and again in 1915 with the Yankees. In his career, Brown had a 38–40 record in 133 games with an ERA of 3.47 and 251 strikeouts.

References

External links

1889 births
1977 deaths
Major League Baseball pitchers
Baseball players from New Jersey
New York Yankees players
Philadelphia Athletics players
Sportspeople from Woodbury, New Jersey
New Britain Perfectos players
Waterbury Champs players
Memphis Chickasaws players
Woodbury Junior-Senior High School alumni


The 1975 Australian Touring Car Championship was a CAMS sanctioned Australian motor racing title open to Group C Touring Cars. The championship began at Symmons Plains and ended at Lakeside after seven rounds. It was the 16th Australian Touring Car Championship.

The Championship was won by Colin Bond driving a Holden Torana.

The 1975 championship was one of the most controversial in the history of the title with series leader Allan Grice disqualified from the fifth round at Surfers Paradise for a technical infringement. He continued racing under appeal, but the penalty was upheld and Grice lost all points gained from the final three rounds. Reigning champion Peter Brock parted company with the Holden Dealer Team before the series began and raced in a privately funded Holden Torana during the season. Colin Bond, driving a Holden Torana for the Marlboro Holden Dealer Team took victory at the opening round at Symmons Plains Raceway, and end of season wins at Adelaide International Raceway and Lakeside International Raceway saw Bond move past Grice and Bob Morris on points to win the championship. 2000cc class competitor Christine Gibson, driving a factory supported Alfa Romeo 2000 GTV, led the series mid-season after taking four class wins, but had disqualification problems of her own and Bond regained the points advantage by season's end. Gibson's effort however remains to this day (2014) the best performance by a woman in Australian Touring Car Championship history.

Drivers
The following drivers competed in the 1975 Australian Touring Car Championship.

Calendar
The 1975 Australian Touring Car Championship was contested over a seven-round series with one race per round.

Classes
Cars competed in two classes:
 Up to and including 2000cc
 Over 2000cc

Points system
Championship points were awarded on a 9–6–4–3–2–1 basis for the first six positions in each class at each round. Bonus points were awarded on a 4–3–2–1 basis for the first four outright positions at each round.

Championship results

References

Australian Touring Car Championship seasons
Touring Car Championship


Wurmbea dioica, commonly known as early Nancy, is a species of plant in the family Colchicaceae and is endemic to Australia. It is a herb with three linear to thread-like leaves and usually two to seven white flowers with a purple or greenish nectary band.

Description
Wurmbea dioica is a herb that typically grows to a height of  and has three linear to thread-like or tapering leaves  long and  wide with a sheathing base. Individual plants may have male-only, female-only or both male and female flowers and sometimes bisexual flowers. There are up to fifteen flowers on each plant, each with six elliptic white tepals  long. Each tepal has a purple to greenish or white nectary band one-quarter to half the length from its base. The stamens are half to two-thirds as long as the tepals and the anthers are about  long and red or purple. Flowering occurs mainly from June to November and the fruit is a capsule  long.

Taxonomy
This species was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown who gave it the name Anguillaria dioica and published the description in Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen. In 1877, Ferdinand von Mueller changed the name to Wurmbea dioica in Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae.

The names of three subspecies are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:
 Wurmbea dioica subsp. alba T.D.Macfarl. has all-white tepals;
 Wurmbea dioica subsp. brevifolia R.J.Bates is distinguished by its short, egg-shaped upper leaf and pink-edged tepals;
 Wurmbea dioica (R.Br.) F.Muell. subsp. dioica has an elongated upper leaf with a tapering or thread-like tip and a purple nectary band.

Distribution and habitat
Wurmbea dioica is widespread and common in all six Australian states and the Australian Capital Territory but is not known from the Northern Territory. It grows in a wide variety of habitats. Subspecies dioica is the most common subspecies, occurring in all eastern states, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. Subspecies brevifolia is found in Victoria and South Australia, growing in drier places that subsp. dioica, and subsp. alba is restricted to Western Australia where it grows in winter-wet swamps and around granite rocks.

References

dioica
Monocots of Australia
Flora of New South Wales
Flora of Queensland
Flora of South Australia
Flora of Tasmania
Flora of Victoria (state)
Angiosperms of Western Australia
Taxa named by Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773)
Plants described in 1810
Taxa named by Ferdinand von Mueller


William David Davies, often known as W. D. P. Davies, (18 January 1897 – 7 July 1969) was a Welsh Presbyterian minister and writer on theological topics. After becoming the first Welsh student to obtain a Bachelor of Divinity degree from the University of Oxford, he turned down an offer to become a theology tutor at Oxford, along with a college fellowship, preferring to become a Presbyterian minister. He wrote various theological works and was regarded as an excellent scholar as well as a powerful preacher.

Life
Davies was the only son of a Presbyterian minister, Isaac Davies, and his wife.  He was born in Glyn Ceiriog, Denbighshire, in north Wales but moved with his parents to Rhyd Ddu in Snowdonia, Bryn-rhos and Bangor, Caernarfonshire.  Davies studied at the county school in Caernarfon and at the Friars School, Bangor before winning a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford.  During the First World War, he was a conscientious objector and carried out agricultural work on the Llyn Peninsula, preaching in Pwllheli during this time.  When the war was over, he returned to Oxford, obtaining second class Honour Moderations in Literae Humaniores and a first class Bachelor of Arts degree in theology.  After further study, he obtained a Bachelor of Divinity degree, becoming the first Welsh non-conformist to be awarded the degree by the University of Oxford.  He refused the offer of a fellowship and appointment as a tutor in theology at the university, since the terms of appointment included his becoming a member of the Church of England and Davies had by this time decided to become a Presbyterian minister.

Davies was regarded as a powerful preacher, as well as an excellent scholar. He was ordained in 1923 and ministered in London until 1926, before moving to Cardiff, where he served until 1928. In that year he was appointed Professor of the History of Religions and the Philosophy of Religion at the United Theological College Aberystwyth.  His publications included works on religious topics:  (1932),  (1934), and a book on the Epistle to the Ephesians (1933).  He resigned from the Theological College in 1933, after events showed that he was suffering from a disturbance of mind: he had a split personality for the rest of his life.  He moved around, living in Neath and Machynlleth and in other places as a writer for the Welsh language newspaper Y Cymro.  During this time, he wrote various essays and poems and began to call himself "W. D. P. Davies", saying that the "P" stood for "sinner" (), but it may have derived from his wife Margaret's maiden name (Palmer).  He spent a few months in charge of the churches in Llangadfan, Montgomeryshire but this was not a success.  He was given the opportunity to recover by the Ithon Road Presbyterian Church in Llandrindod Wells, where he died on 7 July 1969.

References

1897 births
1969 deaths
People educated at Friars School, Bangor
Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford
British conscientious objectors
Welsh conscientious objectors
Welsh Christian pacifists
Calvinist pacifists
Welsh Presbyterian ministers
Welsh Calvinist and Reformed theologians
People from Denbighshire
20th-century British Presbyterian ministers


Sand is the fifth studio album by guitarist Allan Holdsworth, released in 1987 through Relativity Records (United States) and JMS–Cream Records (Europe).

Critical reception

Thom Jurek of AllMusic awarded Sand four stars out of five, calling it one of Holdsworth's "most innovative and texturally beautiful" albums to date and highlighting his extensive use of the SynthAxe.

Track listing

Personnel
Allan Holdsworth – guitar, SynthAxe, engineering, mixing, production
Alan Pasqua – keyboard
Gary Husband – drums (tracks 1, 3)
Chad Wackerman – drums (tracks 4, 5), percussion (track 6)
Jimmy Johnson – bass (except track 6)
Biff Vincent – Roland Octapad bass (track 6)
John England – sound effects

Technical
Dan Humann – engineering, mixing
Robert Feist – engineering, mixing
Bernie Grundman – mastering
Francois Bardol – cover art

References

External links
Sand at therealallanholdsworth.com (archived)
Allan Holdsworth "Sand" at Guitar Nine

Allan Holdsworth albums
1987 albums
Relativity Records albums


Kim and Reggie Harris are a folk music duo based in upstate New York.

They have released five CDs on the Appleseed Recordings label, and one on the Folk Era label.

References

External links
Official Website

American folk musical groups
Musical duos from New York (state)
Folk music duos
Married couples


Xiao Fu (; 732 – June 23, 788), courtesy name Lüchu (履初), was a Chinese politician during the Tang dynasty, serving as a chancellor during the reign of Emperor Dezong.

Background
Xiao Fu was born in 732, during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong.  He was from a prominent clan that descended from the imperial house of Liang Dynasty, and his grandfather Xiao Song was a chancellor during Emperor Xuanzong's reign.  His father was Xiao Song's son Xiao Heng (蕭衡), and his mother was Princess Xinchang, a daughter of Emperor Xuanzong, making him a grandson of Emperor Xuanzong as well.  As the Xiao clan was greatly honored, his brothers and cousins all competed having the best clothes, horses, and decorations, while Xiao Fu dressed plainly.  He also was often studying in his room, alone, and his friends were all writers or Confucian scholars.  His uncle Xiao Hua, who was a chancellor during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong's son Emperor Suzong, was impressed by him, and often stated, "This child will surely glorify this clan."  Due to his being the son of a princess, he was, early in his career, made a Gongmenlang (宮門郎), in charge of the office of the palace gates (宮門局, Gongmenju).  He was later made the director of transportation for the crown prince (太子僕, Taizi Pu).

During Emperor Daizong's reign
During the Guangde era (763-764) of Emperor Suzong's son Emperor Daizong, there was a span of poor harvests, causing food prices to rise.  With the Xiao clan being a large one and needing funds to pay for food, the clan considered selling an ancestral property in Zhaoying County (昭應, near the capital Chang'an).  The chancellor Wang Jin heard that the property contained beautiful trees and springs and wanted the property, and thus sent his brother Wang Hong (王紘) to meet Xiao Fu.  Wang Hong stated to Xiao, "You, sir, have talent that shall land you greater offices.  If you offer your manor to my brother, he will surely help you achieve that."  Xiao Fu responded, "I, an imperial servant, am selling this ancestral property because of poverty, to aid the widows and young of the clan.  If I trade it for a high position such that I let my clan folks be frozen or starved, I would not be doing what even a commoner should be doing."  Wang Jin was angered by these remarks and removed Xiao from his office, and he spent the next several years at home.  Despite this, he was not distressed.  He later returned to government service and became a low-level official at the executive bureau of government (尚書省, Shangshu Sheng). Yet later, he served as the prefect of Chang Prefecture (常州, in modern Changzhou, Jiangsu).

During Emperor Dezong's reign

Prior to chancellorship
In 779, during the reign of Emperor Daizong's son Emperor Dezong, Xiao Fu was made the governor (觀察使, Guanchashi) of Hunan Circuit (湖南, headquartered in modern Changsha, Hunan) as well as the prefect of Hunan's capital Tan Prefecture (in modern Changsha, Hunan).  He later served as the prefect of Tong Prefecture (同州, in modern Weinan, Shaanxi).  At that time, there was a famine in the prefecture, and he opened the food storages that were overseen by the governor of Jingzhao Circuit (京兆, i.e., the Chang'an region) to give to the people, without approval from his superiors.  As a result, he was punished by being reduced in rank.  When his friends visited him to console him, he remarked, "I benefited others.  Is it not right I suffer a minor punishment?"  He was soon made the deputy minister of defense (兵部侍郎, Bingbu Shilang).

In 783, with Li Xilie the military governor (Jiedushi) of Huaixi Circuit (淮西, headquartered in modern Zhumadian, Henan) rebelling against imperial rule, Emperor Dezong, believing that the armies sent against Li Xilie needed a supreme commander to coordinate their actions, commissioned his son Li Yi (李誼) the Prince of Pu to be the supreme commander of the forces against Huaixi, and he gave Xiao the honorary title of minister of census (戶部尚書, Hubu Shangshu), to serve as the secretary general for Li Yi.

However, before Li Yi could depart Chang'an, soldiers from Jingyuan Circuit (涇原, headquartered in modern Pingliang, Gansu), at Chang'an to await deployment to the east against Li Xilie or other warlords, mutinied after they were not awarded as they believed they deserved.  Emperor Dezong fled to Fengtian (奉天, in modern Xianyang, Shaanxi).  Many officials followed him there, including Xiao.  The Jingyuan soldiers supported the general Zhu Ci as their leader, and Zhu initially claimed that he was set to welcome Emperor Dezong back to Chang'an, but soon was planning to take over as emperor.  Meanwhile, Emperor Dezong, finding Fengtian to be too small of a city for him and his followers, wanted to head for Fengxiang (鳳翔, in modern Baoji, Shaanxi), then governed by the former chancellor Zhang Yi but formerly under Zhu's control.  When Xiao heard that Emperor Dezong was intended to head to Fengxiang, he immediately met with Emperor Dezong and warned against it:

Emperor Dezong responded that he had already decided to head to Fengxiang, but on Xiao's objection will remain at Fengtian for one more day.  The next day, news arrived that Zhu's former subordinate Li Chulin (李楚琳) had mutinied, killed Zhang, and taken over Fengxiang.  Soon thereafter, Xiao, was made the minister of civil service affairs (吏部尚書, Libu Shangshu) and given the designation Tong Zhongshu Menxia Pingzhangshi (同中書門下平章事), making him a chancellor de facto, along with Liu Congyi and Jiang Gongfu.

During chancellorship
Zhu Ci, who claimed the title of emperor of his new state of Qin, was soon putting Fengtian under siege, although Fengtian was saved by the major Tang general Li Huaiguang.  Meanwhile, Xiao earnestly sought reform of Emperor Dezong's administration at Fengtian.  He suggested that Emperor Dezong not give eunuchs authorities and recall the eunuchs who were serving as army monitors — a suggestion that greatly displeased Emperor Dezong.  Despite Emperor Dezong's displeasure, Xiao responded:

On one occasion, when Xiao and Lu met Emperor Dezong together, Lu was merely flattering Emperor Dezong and following everything that Emperor Dezong said, and Xiao stated, "Lu Qi's words are wrongful."  This surprised Emperor Dezong, and after the meeting was over, he told his attendants, "Xiao Fu views me lightly."  In spring 784, while he was still at Fengtian, he commissioned Xiao Fu to be the examiner of the southern circuits of the empire and sent him out on a mission to survey those circuits, in order to get Xiao away from him.  When Liu Congyi and many other officials asked that Xiao be kept at the imperial government, Emperor Dezong's suspicions were further aroused that Xiao had induced these other officials into speaking on his behalf, although he did not investigate the matter further.

By late 784, the general Li Sheng had destroyed Zhu's regime, allowing Emperor Dezong to return to Chang'an.  Xiao had also returned from his mission, and he suggested to Emperor Dezong that Chen Shaoyou (陳少遊), the military governor of Huainan Circuit (淮南, headquartered in modern Yangzhou, Jiangsu), who had submitted to Li Xilie during the time Emperor Dezong was away from Chang'an, be replaced by Wei Gao — a Fengxiang officer who had resisted Li Chulin.  Emperor Dezong agreed.  However, Xiao was soon surprised when Liu Congyi stated to him, "Ma Qinxu [(馬欽緒, an eunuch who served as imperial messenger)] informed me that the Emperor wanted me to discuss with you, Lord, your proposal, and then carry it out without informing Li Mian and Lu Han [(two other chancellors who served with Xiao and Liu)].  Can you tell me what your proposal was?"  Xiao, finding it inappropriate that Emperor Dezong was keeping secrets away from Li Mian and Lu, as fellow chancellors, stated:

When Liu informed Emperor Dezong about this, Emperor Dezong was displeased.  Xiao, seeing that he had lost the emperor's favor, offered to resign.  In winter 784, Emperor Dezong removed him from his chancellor position and made him a member of the staff of the Crown Prince Li Song.

After chancellorship
In 787, a scandal involving Princess Gao — the daughter of Emperor Suzong (and thus aunt to Emperor Dezong) and the widow of Xiao Fu's cousin Xiao Sheng (蕭升), whose daughter was the wife and crown prince to Li Song — unfolded, as she was found to have had a large number of young lovers, and she was further accused of using witchcraft.  The scandal nearly caused Li Song to be removed from his crown prince position and forced him to divorce Crown Princess Xiao, and the scandal also enveloped the Xiao household.  Emperor Dezong, still resentful of Xiao Fu, let him keep his rank but exiled him to Rao Prefecture (饒州, in modern Shangrao, Jiangxi).  It was said, though, that Xiao was not distressed and made no complaints.  He died in 788, while still at Rao Prefecture.  His grandson Xiao Zhi later served as a chancellor during the reign of Emperor Yizong.

Notes and references

 Old Book of Tang, vol. 125.
 New Book of Tang, vol. 101.
 Zizhi Tongjian, vols. 228, 229, 231.

732 births
788 deaths
Chancellors under Emperor Dezong of Tang


William John Dakin (23 July 1883 – 2 April 1950) was a zoologist who is remembered for the large number of his students who achieved prominence in the area of zoology and for the number of books and papers he wrote on many scientific fields.

Dakin was born in Toxteth, a suburb of Liverpool, England in 1883, as the son of William and Elizabeth Dakin. His father was a coal merchant.

Studying at the University of Liverpool he attained his BSc with first class honours in Zoology in 1905, his MSc in 1907 and his DSc in 1911 on osmotic pressure and the blood of fishes.

In 1912 Dakin applied and was appointed as the chair of Biology at the recently established University of Western Australia. Before arriving to take his post Dakin married Catherine Lewis in 1913.
While at UWA Dakin published The Elements of Animal Biology in 1918, chaired the extension committee, twice visited the Houtman Abrolhos and was the president of the Royal Society of Western Australia.

Dakin was Professor of Zoology at the University of Sydney from 1929 to 1947.

A frequent contributor to early issues of Walkabout, among the books he wrote was Whalemen Adventurers (1934), a history of whaling in Australia. A revised edition was issued in 1938; it was reissued by Sirius Books in 1963.

Legacy
In 1977 a $2000 bequest from his wife was granted to the University of Sydney in his memory. Known as the "William John Dakin Memorial Prize in Zoology", it is awarded annually to a Zoology student attaining first class honours in biology.

References

External links

1883 births
1950 deaths
People from Toxteth
20th-century Australian zoologists
Scientists from Liverpool
Royal Society of Western Australia
Australian maritime historians
20th-century Australian historians
Academic staff of the University of Sydney
Challis professor


The Onion Futures Act is a United States law banning the trading of futures contracts on onions as well as "motion picture box office receipts".

In 1955, two onion traders, Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga, cornered the onion futures market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The resulting regulatory actions led to the passing of the act on August 28, 1958. , it remains in effect.

The law was amended in 2010 to add motion picture box office futures to the list of banned futures contracts, in response to lobbying efforts by the Motion Picture Association of America.

History

Onion trading
Onion futures trading began on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in the mid-1940s as an attempt to replace the income lost when the butter futures contract ceased. By the mid-1950s, onion futures contracts were the most traded product on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. In 1955, they accounted for 20% of its trades.

Market manipulation
In the fall of 1955, Siegel and Kosuga bought so many onions and onion futures that they controlled 98% of the available onions in Chicago. Millions of pounds (thousands of tonnes) of onions were shipped to Chicago to cover their purchases. By late 1955, they had stored  of onions in Chicago. They soon changed course and convinced onion growers to begin purchasing their inventory by threatening to flood the market with onions if they did not. Siegel and Kosuga told the growers that they would hold the rest of their inventory in order to support the price of onions.

As the growers began buying onions, Siegel and Kosuga accumulated short positions on a large number of onion contracts. They also arranged to have their stores of onions reconditioned because they had started to spoil. They shipped them outside of Chicago to have them cleaned and then repackaged and re-shipped back to Chicago. The "new" shipments of onions caused many futures traders to think that there was an excess of onions and further drove down onion prices in Chicago. By the end of the onion season in March 1956, Siegel and Kosuga had flooded the markets with their onions and driven the price of  of onions down to 10 cents a bag. In August 1955, the same quantity of onions had been priced at $2.75 a bag. So many onions were shipped to Chicago in order to depress prices that there were onion shortages in other parts of the United States.

Siegel and Kosuga made millions of dollars on the transaction due to their short position on onion futures. At one point, however,  of onions were selling in Chicago for less than the bags that held them. This drove many onion farmers into bankruptcy. A public outcry ensued among onion farmers who were left with large amounts of worthless inventory. Many of the farmers had to pay to dispose of the large amounts of onions that they had purchased and grown.

Regulatory action
In the aftermath of the crash, many commentators characterized Kosuga's actions as unprincipled gambling. The abrupt change in prices gained the attention of the Commodity Exchange Authority. Soon they launched an investigation and the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture and House Committee on Agriculture held hearings on the matter.

During the hearings, the Commodity Exchange Authority stated that it was the perishable nature of onions which made them vulnerable to price swings. Then-congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan sponsored a bill, known as the Onion Futures Act, which banned futures trading in onions. The bill was unpopular among traders, some of whom argued that onion shortages were not a crucial issue since they were used as a condiment rather than a staple food. The president of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, E. B. Harris, lobbied hard against the bill. Harris described it as "burning down the barn to find a suspected rat". The measure was passed, however, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill in August 1958.  Thus, onions were excluded from the definition of "commodity" in the Commodity Exchange Act.

Impact

Effect on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
After the ban was enacted, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the ban unfairly restricted trade. After a federal judge ruled against them, they declined to appeal to the Supreme Court and the ban stood.

The loss of a lucrative trading product was devastating to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The other products that were traded, including futures contracts on eggs, turkeys, and potatoes, were not large enough to support the exchange. This led to the emergence of new leadership who pioneered a different strategy, expanding the exchange's traded products to include futures contracts on pork bellies and frozen concentrate orange juice. These proved to be popular products and eventually restored lost popularity to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Effect on price volatility
The ban has provided academics with a unique opportunity to study the effect of an active futures market on commodity prices. Experts have been divided on the effect that onion futures trading has on the volatility of onion prices.

Holbrook Working published a study in 1960 which argued that price volatility declined after the futures market for onions was introduced in the 1940s. Working cited this study as proof of the efficient-market hypothesis. In 1963, this theory was lent more support by a study published by Roger Gray. Gray, an expert in agricultural futures markets and professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University, concluded that onion price volatility increased after the Onion Futures Act was passed.

Aaron C. Johnson published a study in 1973 that contradicted Gray's findings. He found that onion price volatility in the 1960s was the lowest of any decade on record. Financial journalist Justin Fox noted that even though onion prices in the 1960s might have been more stable due to better weather or advances in transportation methods: "There was certainly no clear evidence from the onion fields to support the presumption that speculative markets got prices right."

In the 2000s, onion prices were significantly more volatile than corn or oil prices. This volatility led the son of a farmer who initially lobbied for the ban to advocate a return to onion futures trading.

See also
Title 7 of the United States Code
Market manipulation

References

Bibliography

External links
Text of the law
Futures regulation before the CFTC

1958 in American law
Onions
Short selling
United States federal commodity and futures legislation
1958 in Illinois


The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE) is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted on 4 August 2009, which describes the modalities of the importance of free and compulsory education for children between the age of 6 to 14 years in India under Article 21A of the Indian Constitution. India became one of 135 countries to make education a fundamental right of every child when the act came into force on 1 April 2010. The title of the RTE Act incorporates the words ‘free and compulsory’. ‘Free education’ means that no child, other than a child who has been admitted by his or her parents to a school which is not supported by the appropriate Government, shall be liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses which may prevent him or her from pursuing and completing elementary education. ‘Compulsory education’ casts an obligation on the appropriate Government and local authorities to provide and ensure admission, attendance and completion of elementary education by all children in the 6-14 age group. With this, India has moved forward to a rights based framework that casts a legal obligation on the Central and State Governments to implement this fundamental child right as enshrined in the Article 21A of the Constitution, in accordance with the provisions of the RTE Act.17.

History

Present Act has its history in the drafting of the Indian constitution at the time of Independence but is more specifically to the Constitutional Amendment of 2002 that included the Article 21A in the Indian constitution making Education a fundamental Right. This amendment, however, specified the need for a legislation to describe the mode of implementation of the same which necessitated the drafting of a separate Education Bill. It is the 86th amendment in the Indian Constitution.

A rough draft of the bill was prepared in year 2005. It caused considerable controversy due to its mandatory provision to provide 25% reservation for disadvantaged children in private schools. The sub-committee of the Central Advisory Board of Education which prepared the draft Bill held this provision as a significant prerequisite for creating a democratic and egalitarian society. Indian Law commission had initially proposed 50% reservation for disadvantaged students in private schools.

On 7 May 2014, The Supreme Court of India ruled that Right to Education Act is not applicable to Minority institutions.

Passage

The bill was approved by the cabinet on 2 July 2009. Rajya Sabha passed the bill on 20 July 2009 and the Lok Sabha on 4 August 2009. It received Presidential assent and was notified as law on 26 August 2009 as The Children's Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act. The law came into effect in the whole of India except the state of Jammu and Kashmir from 1 April 2010, the first time in the history of India a law was brought into force by a speech by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In his speech, Dr. Singh stated, "We are committed to ensuring that all children, irrespective of gender and social category, have access to education. An education that enables them to acquire the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes necessary to become responsible and active citizens of India." It has now come into force in Jammu and Kashmir after its reorganisation into a Union Territory of India in 2019.

The RTE Act provides for the right of children to free and compulsory education till completion of elementary education in a neighbourhood school. It clarifies that ‘compulsory education’ means obligation of the appropriate government to provide free elementary education and ensure compulsory admission, attendance and completion of elementary education to every child in the six to fourteen age group. ‘Free’ means that no child shall be liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses which may prevent him or her from pursuing and completing elementary education.

It makes provisions for a non-admitted child to be admitted to an age-appropriate class.

It specifies the duties and responsibilities of appropriate Governments, local authority and parents in providing free and compulsory education, and sharing of financial and other responsibilities between the Central and State Governments.

It lays down the norms and standards relating inter alia to pupil-teacher ratios (PTRs), buildings and infrastructure, school-working days, teacher-working hours.

It provides for rational deployment of teachers by ensuring that the specified pupil-teacher ratio is maintained for each school, rather than just as an average for the State or District or Block, thus ensuring that there is no urban-rural imbalance in teacher postings. It also provides for prohibition of deployment of teachers for non-educational work, other than decennial census, elections to local authority, state legislatures and parliament, and disaster relief.

It provides for appointment of appropriately trained teachers, i.e. teachers with the requisite entry and academic qualifications.

It prohibits (a) physical punishment and mental harassment; (b) screening procedures for admission of children; (c) capitation fee; (d) private tuition by teachers and (e) running of schools without recognition.

It provides for development of curriculum in consonance with the values enshrined in the Constitution, and which would ensure the all-round development of the child, building on the child's knowledge, potentiality and talent and making the child free of fear, trauma and anxiety through a system of child friendly and child centered learning.

Highlights
The RTE act requires surveys that will monitor all neighbourhoods, identify children requiring education, and set up facilities for providing it.
The World Bank education specialist for India, Sam Carlson, has observed:
 The RTE Act is the first legislation in the world that puts the responsibility of ensuring enrolment, attendance and completion on the Government.  It is the parents' responsibility to send the children to schools in the US and other countries.
The Right to Education of persons with disabilities until 18 years of age is laid down under a separate legislation- the Persons with Disabilities Act. A number of other provisions regarding improvement of school infrastructure, teacher-student ratio and faculty are made in the Act.

Implementation and funding
Education in the Indian constitution is a concurrent issue and both centre and states can legislate on the issue. The Act lays down specific responsibilities for the centre, state and local bodies for its implementation. The states have been clamouring that they lack financial capacity to deliver education of appropriate standard in all the schools needed for universal education. Thus it is clear that the central government (which collects most of the revenue) will be required to subsidise the states.

A committee set up to study the funds requirement and funding initially estimated that Rs 1710 billion or 1.71 trillion (US$38.2 billion) across five years was required to implement the Act, and in April 2010 the central government agreed to sharing the funding for implementing the law in the ratio of 65 to 35 between the centre and the states, and a ratio of 90 to 10 for the north-eastern states. However, in mid 2010, this figure was upgraded to Rs. 2310 billion, and the center agreed to raise its share to 68%.
There is some confusion on this, with other media reports stating that the centre's share of the implementation expenses would now be 70%. At that rate, most states may not need to increase their education budgets substantially.

A critical development in 2011 has been the decision taken in principle to extend the right to education till Class X (age 16) and into the preschool age range. The CABE committee is in the process of looking into the implications of making these changes.

Advisory Council on Implementation
The Ministry of HRD set up a high-level, 14-member National Advisory Council (NAC) for implementation of the Act. The members include:
 Kiran Karnik, former president of NASSCOM
 Krishna Kumar, former director of the NCERT
 Mrinal Miri, former vice-chancellor of North-East Hill University
 Yogendra Yadav – social scientist. India
Sajit Krishnan Kutty Secretary of The Educators Assisting Children's Hopes (TEACH)India.
 Annie Namala, an activist and head of Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion
Sheikh Abubakr Ahmad, vice-president of Muslim Education Society, Kerala.

Status of implementation
A report on the status of implementation of the Act was released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development on the one-year anniversary of the Act, and again till 2015. The report admits that 1.7 million children in the age group 6-14 remain out of school and there's a shortage of 508,000 teachers country-wide. A shadow report by the RTE Forum, representing the leading education networks in the country led by Ambarish Rai (a prominent activist), however, challenging the findings pointing out that several key legal commitments are falling behind schedule. The Supreme Court of India has also intervened to demand implementation of the Act in the Northeast. It has also provided the legal basis for ensuring pay parity between teachers in government and government aided schools

Haryana Government has assigned the duties and responsibilities to Block Elementary Education Officers–cum–Block Resource Coordinators (BEEOs-cum-BRCs) for effective implementation and continuous monitoring of implementation of Right to Education Act in the State.

Precedents
It has been pointed out that the RTE act is not new.  Universal adult franchise in the act was opposed since most of the population was illiterate.
Article 45 in the Constitution of India was set up as an act:
The state shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years. As that deadline was about to be passed many decades ago, the education minister at the time, M C Chagla, memorably said:
Our Constitution fathers did not intend that we just set up hovels, put students there, give untrained teachers, give them bad textbooks, no playgrounds, and say, we have complied with Article 45 and primary education is expanding... They meant that real education should be given to our children between the ages of 6 and 14 – M.C. Chagla, 1964

In the 1990s, the World Bank funded a number of measures to set up schools within easy reach of rural communities.  This effort was consolidated in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan model in the 1990s. RTE takes the process further, and makes the enrolment of children in schools a state prerogative.

Criticism
The act has been criticised for being hastily drafted, not consulting many groups active in education, not considering the quality of education, infringing on the rights of private and religious minority schools to administer their system, and for excluding children under six years of age. Many of the ideas are seen as continuing the policies of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan of the 2000s, and the World Bank funded District Primary Education Programme DPEP of the '90s, both of which, while having set up a number of schools in rural areas, have been criticised for being ineffective and corruption-ridden.

The quality of education provided by the government school system is not good. While it remains the largest provider of elementary education in the country, forming 80% of all recognised schools, it suffers from shortage of teachers and infrastructural gaps.  Several habitations lack schools altogether. There are also frequent allegations of government schools being riddled with absenteeism and mismanagement and of appointments made on political convenience. Despite the allure of free lunch in the government schools, many parents send their children to private schools. Average schoolteacher salaries in private rural schools in some States (about Rs. 4,000 per month) are considerably lower than those in government schools. As a result, the proponents of low-cost private schools critique the government schools as being poor value for money.

Children attending the private schools are seen to be at an advantage,  forming a discrimination against the weakest sections who are forced to go to government schools. Furthermore, the system has been criticised as catering to the rural elites who are able to afford school fees in a country where a large number of families live in absolute poverty.
The act has been criticised as discriminatory for not addressing these issues. Well-known educationist Anil Sadgopal said of the hurriedly drafted act:
It is a fraud on our children. It gives neither free education nor compulsory education. In fact, it only legitimises the present multi-layered, inferior quality school education system where discrimination shall continue to prevail.

Entrepreneur Gurcharan Das noted that 54% of urban children attend private schools, and this rate is growing at 3% per year. "Even the poor children are abandoning the government schools. They are leaving because the teachers are not showing up." However, other researchers have countered the argument by saying that the evidence for higher standard of quality in private schools often disappears when other factors (like family income and parental literacy) are accounted for.

Public-private partnership
To address these quality issues, the Act has provisions for compensating private schools for admission of children under the 25% quota which has been compared to school vouchers, whereby parents may "send" their children in any school, private or public. This measure, along with the increase in PPP (Public Private Partnership) has been viewed by some organisations such as the All-India Forum for Right to Education (AIF-RTE), as the state abdicating its "constitutional obligation towards providing elementary education".

Infringement on private schools
The Society for Un-aided Private Schools, Rajasthan (in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 95 of 2010) and as many as 31 others petitioned the Supreme Court of India claiming that the act violates the constitutional right of private managements to run their institutions without governmental interference. The parties claimed that providing 25 percent reservation for disadvantaged children in government and private unaided schools is "unconstitutional".

Forcing unaided schools to admit 25% disadvantaged students has also been criticized on the grounds that the government has partly transferred its constitutional obligation to provide free and compulsory elementary education to children on “non-state actors,” like private schools but collected a 2% of the total tax payable for primary education.

On 12 April 2012, a three judge bench of the Supreme Court delivered its 2-1 judgement. Chief Justice SH Kapadia and Justice Swatanter Kumar held that providing the reservation is not unconstitutional but stated that the Act will not be applicable to private minority schools and boarding schools. However, Justice K. S. Panicker Radhakrishnan dissented with the majority view and held that the Act cannot apply to minority and non-minority private schools that do not receive aid from the government.

In September 2012, the Supreme Court declined a review petition on the Act.

In May 2016, the Chetpet-based CBSE school Maharishi Vidya Mandir became embroiled in a scandal over its circumvention of the 25% quota rule. During its admissions cycle, the school told economically weaker parents "the RTE does not exist' and "we do not take these [government RTE] applications." The senior principal also informed the Tamil Nadu Regional Director of the CBSE that he intended to "reject applicants without an email address" and so excluded technically-illiterate parents from seeking admissions. In addition, school officials falsified the distance figures of several poorer candidates to attempt to disqualify them from availing of the scheme.

In 2017, A public interest litigation was filed in the high courts of both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, seeking proper implementation of 25% quota in both the states under RTE act. For which the high courts addressed the governments of both states to take necessary steps for the proper implementation of the act.

Barrier for orphans
The Act provides for admission of children without any certification. However, several states have continued pre-existing procedures insisting that children produce income and caste certificates, BPL cards and birth certificates. Orphan children are often unable to produce such documents, even though they are willing to do so. As a result, schools are not admitting them, as they require the documents as a condition to admission.

References

2009 in education
Education law in India
Children's rights in India
Acts of the Parliament of India 2009
Manmohan Singh administration
Compulsory education


Lupinus nootkatensis, the Nootka lupine, is a perennial plant of the genus Lupinus in the legume family, Fabaceae. It is native to North America.  The Nootka lupine grows up to 60 cm tall. Late in the 18th century it was first introduced to Europe.

The Nootka lupine is common on the west coast of North America, and is one of the species from which the garden hybrids are derived, being valued in Britain and other North-European countries for its tolerance of cool, wet summers. In North America, it grows along roadsides, gravel bars, and forest clearings from the Aleutian Islands and Southcentral Alaska, and along the Alaskan panhandle to British Columbia. Rigorous self-seeders as they are, lupine can often be seen along roadsides and in open meadows, their bright blueish purple flowers catching ones eye from quite a distance. Their long tap roots make transplanting difficult, so sowing seed is preferable.

Taxonomy
The species was first described as Lupinus nootkatensis in 1810 by James Donn in Botanical Magazine, Vol. 32, Page 1311.

On the Plant List the species is divided in two varieties:
 Lupinus nootkatensis var. fruticosus  Sims
 Lupinus nootkatensis var. nootkatensis is the subspecies.

Toxicity
A member of the pea family (Fabaceae), lupines form seeds in fuzzy pods that may be attractive to children. The seeds of the lupine can be toxic, though toxins flush through the system quickly and are not cumulative. However, internal use is not advised.

Nootka lupine in Iceland
In Iceland, the Nootka lupine has been designated an invasive species. The plant was introduced in the first half of the 20th century to combat erosion, speed up land reclamation and help with reforestation. Dense lupine cover and soil fertility can be gained within a relatively short time span, where the growth of the lupine is not limited by droughts. The plant has spread from the loose, eroded soil in which it was originally planted and is now found throughout the lowlands of Iceland.

The lupine is well suited for reclamation of large, barren areas because of its nitrogen fixation and rapid growth. Furthermore, it has an ability to extract phosphorus from compounds in poor soils. In spite of these good qualities, it has a tendency to become dominant and to colonize already vegetated areas such as dwarf shrub-highlands, where it overtakes the natural flora and threatens biodiversity. The growth of the Nootka lupine has led to public debate about its presence in Iceland, with some praising its improvement of soil through nitrogen fixation and the vibrant colour it brings to Iceland's landscape, and others concerned that it will eradicate native flora, particularly the favoured native crowberry and blueberry patches.

The initial expectation was for the Nootka lupine to retreat gradually along with increased fertility of the soil and give way for other species. This is evident on sites in Iceland where the lupine was introduced early, such as in Heiðmörk near Reykjavík. However, plant succession is towards a forb-rich grassland, often dominated by the invasive species Anthriscus sylvestris, meaning that careful management of lupine is necessary to prevent it from colonizing areas where its presence is not desirable.

References

Sources

 Accessed 31 October 2008.
 Biological Diversity in Iceland. National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Ministry for the Environment and the Icelandic Institute of Natural History. 2001.

nootkatensis
Flora of Northern America
Flora of Iceland


Roger Winks Gray (April 21, 1921 – September 5, 1996) was the Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies professor emeritus at Stanford University. He was a noted expert on agricultural futures markets.

Born and raised in Watseka, Illinois, Gray received his A.B. and M.A. from the University of Colorado. In October 1942, he was inducted into the United States Army Reserve at Camp Grant, Illinois as a private. After serving in the US Army, he attended the University of Minnesota, where he received his Ph.D. in 1953. He taught at both Colorado and Minnesota was a research assistant at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was an assistant economist with the Bank of America before joining Stanford in 1954.

Gray's early research concerned the potato market, analyzing the then evident decline in consumption of potatoes, the changing regional pattern of production, and the role of government policy in causing these changes. His research included studies of intertemporal pricing patterns, the causes of market success and failure, the role of speculators and hedgers in futures markets, and whether there is a necessary transfer of a risk premium to speculators. More recently he had studied world food problems, particularly as they relate to trade issues and the appropriate means of dealing with food reserves.

Gray was a consultant for such policy and regulatory bodies as the Chicago Board of Trade, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as well as an expert witness in a number of famous manipulation and tax cases. He was the first to study the feasibility of a futures market in mortgage-backed instruments, the success of which in the 1970s inaugurated the huge growth of the financial futures markets. After his retirement in 1984, he maintained an active schedule as a consultant in the commodities market.

Gray wrote more than 50 professional articles related to commodity futures markets. His major lines of investigation and studies of major regulatory issues affecting futures markets. One study won the American Agricultural Economics Association's annual award for best published research; another was recognized by the Association for its enduring contribution to the literature. Many of his articles continue to be widely used in courses on futures markets.

He published a 1963 study concluding that the Onion Futures Act, which was designed to prevent market manipulation in onion prices by banning onion futures trading, had actually increased onion price volatility.

He died September 5, 1996, in Monterey, California at the age of 76.

References

Sources
Gray Memorial Resolution
Gray, Roger. "Onion Revisited." Journal of Farm Economics, volume 45, number 2, May 1963.
Stanford University Press Release announcing death dated September 24, 1996

1921 births
1996 deaths
20th-century American economists
People from Watseka, Illinois
American consultants
Bank of America people
Economists from Illinois
Stanford University faculty
United States Department of Agriculture people
University of Colorado alumni
University of Minnesota alumni
United States Army soldiers
United States Army reservists


In the mathematical study of functional analysis, the Banach–Mazur distance is a way to define a distance on the set  of -dimensional normed spaces. With this distance, the set of isometry classes of -dimensional normed spaces becomes a compact metric space, called the Banach–Mazur compactum.

Definitions
If  and  are two finite-dimensional normed spaces with the same dimension, let  denote the collection of all linear isomorphisms   Denote by  the operator norm of such a linear map — the maximum factor by which it "lengthens" vectors. The Banach–Mazur distance between  and  is defined by

We have  if and only if the spaces  and  are isometrically isomorphic. Equipped with the metric δ, the space of isometry classes of -dimensional normed spaces becomes a compact metric space, called the Banach–Mazur compactum.

Many authors prefer to work with the multiplicative Banach–Mazur distance

for which  and

Properties
F. John's theorem on the maximal ellipsoid contained in a convex body gives the estimate:

where  denotes  with the Euclidean norm (see the article on  spaces).
From this it follows that  for all  However, for the classical spaces, this upper bound for the diameter of  is far from being approached. For example, the distance between  and  is (only) of order  (up to a multiplicative constant independent from the dimension ).

A major achievement in the direction of estimating the diameter of  is due to E. Gluskin, who proved in 1981 that the (multiplicative) diameter of the Banach–Mazur compactum is bounded below by  for some universal

Gluskin's method introduces a class of random symmetric polytopes  in  and the normed spaces  having  as unit ball (the vector space is  and the norm is the gauge of ). The proof consists in showing that the required estimate is true with large probability for two independent copies of the normed space

 is an absolute extensor. On the other hand, is not homeomorphic to a Hilbert cube.

See also

Notes

References

 https://planetmath.org/BanachMazurCompactum
 A note on the Banach-Mazur distance to the cube
 The Banach-Mazur compactum is the Alexandroff compactification of a Hilbert cube manifold

Functional analysis
Metric geometry
Metric spaces


Te Quiero (English: I Love You), also known as Te Quiero: Romantic Style In Da World, is the debut album by Panamian singer-songwriter Flex. It was released in late September 21, 2007 in Mexico and Panama and three months later on December 4, 2007 in  United States, peaking at number-one in those three countries. In 2008, it was nominated for a Latin Grammy Award for Best Urban Music Album, which was awarded to Wisin & Yandel's Los Extraterrestres; however, the lead single from this album, "Te Quiero", won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Urban Song. Te Quiero also was nominated for a Lo Nuestro Award for Urban Album of the Year. It won the Billboard Latin Music Award for Latin Rhythm Album of the Year in 2009.

"Te Quiero" was on the Latin Billboard charts all of 2008. It was No. 1 for 20 weeks. Flex performed this song on shows such as the Latin Grammys 2008, Premios Telehit 2008, Cristina, Premios Juventud 2008, One Nation, Vivo, Pepsi Musica, and many more. Thanks to his huge hit, Flex won many awards, received more recognition, and became popular worldwide.

Reception

Jason Birchmeier gave the album two stars. He felt that Flex's vocals were "fair at best" while terrible at "Si No Te Tengo". He also criticized the album as being "short on good songs" and that the romantic feel "becomes increasingly overbearing as the album progresses."

Track listing
The information from Billboard.

Standard edition

Fan edition
A fan edition was released including an extended playlist, which contained the same track listing as the standard edition plus three new versions of his hit single "Te Quiero", along with a DVD with music videos and bonus features. This edition includes versions with Belinda, a DVD with music videos and bonus features, the original and the spanglish version with Belinda have a music video included in this fan edition.

DVD track listing
Menu
"Te Quiero" - Music video
"Sin Tu Amor" - Music video
"Escápate" - Music video
"Te Quiero" - Karaoke
"Te Quiero (Spanglish)" featuring Belinda - Music video
México 2008 Tour
United States, Colombia and Argentina Tour

Chart performance

Sales and certifications

References

2007 debut albums
Flex (singer) albums
Spanish-language albums


The DSR-Precision DSR-50 is a bullpup bolt-action anti-materiel rifle developed and manufactured by DSR-Precision GmbH and chambered in .50 BMG. It is essentially an upscaled DSR-1.

Design and features
The DSR-50 is based on DSR-Precision's earlier DSR-1, and includes modifications necessary to fire the more powerful .50 BMG, including a hydraulic recoil buffer in the buttstock and an innovative muzzle attachment. This muzzle device, described as a 'blast compensator', is a combination sound suppressor and muzzle brake, and is notable in its attempt at moderating the .50 BMG's muzzle blast and recoil, unlike contemporary large-caliber rifles, which are typically equipped with muzzle brakes only. Like the DSR-1, this rifle retains its bullpup configuration, allowing a longer barrel while retaining a shorter overall length (OAL), which is an important consideration for large caliber rounds such as .50 BMG, and focuses the weapon's balance towards the buttstock, compensating for the muzzle's heavy attachments standard on the DSR-50. The DSR-50 also retains some of the DSR-1's features, such as a top mounted bipod, "butt spike" monopod, free-floating barrel, fully adjustable cheekrest and buttstock, and forward magazine holder.

See also
 List of bullpup firearms
 List of sniper rifles

References

.50 BMG sniper rifles
Bolt-action rifles
Bullpup rifles
Post–Cold War weapons of Germany
Sniper rifles of Germany
Anti-materiel rifles


Mazil is the name of a boyar of the landed gentry in Wallachia and Moldavia, having no state or  court function. The title of mazil attested that the bearer was of noble origin ("din os boieresc", literally "of boyar bone"). Mazili often formed separate military cavalry corps. The word derives from Ottoman Turkish mazul "dismissed (from duty)" and ultimately from Arabic maʻzūl.

References

Romanian noble titles


Max Deubel (born 5 February 1935 in Wiehl, Germany) is a German former professional sidecar racer. He was four time FIM Sidecar World Champion and a three-time Isle of Man Sidecar TT winner.

In 1962 Deubel and passenger Emil Hörner were the first sidecar team to lap the Isle of Man TT course at over  per hour. Deubel and Hörner were awarded the 1966 Sidecar World Championship after Fritz Scheidegger and John Robinson were excluded for a fuel irregularity at the Isle of Man TT, but on appeal Scheidegger and Robinson were reinstated three months later. Deubel retired after the 1966 season and has remained involved in motorsport as an FIM official. In 2015, Deubel was named an FIM Legend for his motorcycle racing achievements.

References

External links
Max Deubel profile at www.iomtt.com

Isle of Man TT riders
German motorcycle racers
Living people
1935 births
Sidecar racers


Wurmbea monantha is a perennial herb that is native to  Western Australia. The white to pink flowers are produced between July and September in its native range.

The species was first formally described in 1846 by Austrian botanist Stephen Endlicher in Plantae Preissianae, based on plant material collected from Perth. He gave it the name Anguillaria monantha. The species was transferred to the genus Wurmbea in 1980 by Terry Macfarlane.

The specific epithet, monantha, is a Botanical Latin adjective, monanthus, -a, -um, which describes the plant as being "one-flowered".

References

monantha
Monocots of Australia
Angiosperms of Western Australia
Plants described in 1846
Taxa named by Terry Desmond Macfarlane
Taxa named by Stephan Endlicher


Boulding is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

Aaron Boulding (born 1972), American video game journalist
Elise M. Boulding (1920–2010), Norwegian-American Quaker sociologist and wife of Kenneth E. Boulding
Helen Boulding (born 1978), English singer-songwriter and sister of Michael and Rory Boulding
Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993), English economist, and systems scientist, and husband of Elise Boulding
Mary Boulding (1929–2009), English nun, translator and writer
Michael Boulding (born 1976), English footballer and brother of Helen and Rory Boulding
Rory Boulding (born 1988), English footballer and brother of Michael and Helen Boulding
William Frederick Boulding (born c. 1955), American professor, dean of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University

See also
Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee (1898–1980), African-American physician and activist
Kenneth Boulding's Evolutionary Perspective

English-language surnames