title: Kos

text: Despite the incorporation of Kos to the Ptolemaic Kingdom, the island kept its political autonomy (shown in a 3rd-century BC decree found at Kos and well-studied by experts in Greek history). The island was ruled autonomously through to its citizens' assembly and magistrates (the monarch, the prostates, the exegetes, etc). The fact that the city could legislate decrees and apply its own laws shows political independence regarding the Ptolemaic Kingdom. The city-state remained in control of its political institution and civil rights.


title: Kos

text: Kos also became a center of production of unrefined silk, oars and amphorae. Kos economic development during the period can further be exemplified by the 3rd- and 2nd-century BC construction of a theater, a new market with multiple stoas, a temple to Apollo at Alisarna, construction and expansion of the Asclepeion, fortification works at Alisarna and multiple richly decorated houses. In 240 BC, Ziaelas of Bithynia, Seleucus II Callinicus and Ptolemy III Euergetes provided guarantees for the transformation of Kos Asclepeion into an asylum. This decision made Kos a more attractive destination for merchants and pilgrims.


title: Kos

text: Diodorus Siculus (xv. 76) and Strabo (xiv. 657) describe it as a well-fortified port. Its position gave it a high importance in Aegean trade; while the island itself was rich in wines of considerable fame. Under Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies the town developed into one of the great centers in the Aegean; Josephus quotes Strabo to the effect that Mithridates I of the Bosporus was sent to Kos to fetch the gold deposited there by queen Cleopatra of Egypt. Herod is said to have provided an annual stipend for the benefit of prize-winners in the athletic games, and a statue was erected there to his son Herod the Tetrarch ("C. I. G." 2502 ). Paul briefly visited Kos according to .


title: Kos

text: Except for occasional incursions by corsairs and some severe earthquakes, the island's peace has rarely been disturbed. Following the lead of its larger neighbour, Rhodes, Kos generally displayed a friendly attitude toward the Romans; in 53 AD it was made a free city. The island of Kos also featured a provincial library during the Roman period. The island first became a center for learning during the Ptolemaic dynasty, and Hippocrates, Apelles, Philitas and possibly Theocritus came from the area. An inscription lists people who made contributions to build the library in the 1st century AD. One of the people responsible for the library's construction was the Kos doctor Gaius Stertinius Xenophon, who lived in Rome and was the personal physician of the Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero.


title: Kos

text: Older research believed that the island was known in antiquity for the manufacture of transparent light dresses, the . This view goes back to Aristotle, and it has been challenged by modern research. The term "Coae vestes" seems to refer to a type of silk garment and not the site of production (the island of Kos). The origin of the term is ultimately unclear.


title: Kos

text: The bishopric of Kos was a suffragan of the metropolitan see of Rhodes. Its bishop Meliphron attended the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Eddesius was one of the minority Eastern bishops who withdrew from the Council of Sardica in about 344 and set up a rival council at Philippopolis. Iulianus went to the synod held in Constantinople in 448 in preparation for the Council of Chalcedon of 451, in which he participated as a legate of Pope Leo I, and he was a signatory of the joint letter that the bishops of the Roman province of Insulae sent in 458 to Byzantine Emperor Leo I the Thracian with regard to the killing of Proterius of Alexandria. Dorotheus took part in a synod in 518. Georgius was a participant of the Third Council of Constantinople in 680–681. Constantinus went to the Photian Council of Constantinople (879). Under Byzantine rule, apart from the participation of its bishops in councils, the island's history remains obscure. It was governed by a "droungarios" in the 8th–9th centuries, and seems to have acquired some importance in the 11th and 12th centuries: Nikephoros Melissenos began his uprising here, and in the middle of the 12th century, it was governed by a scion of the ruling Komnenos dynasty, Nikephoros Komnenos.


title: Kos

text: Today the ecclesiastical metropolis of Kos remains under the direct authority of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, rather than the Church of Greece, and is also listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.


title: Kos

text: Following the 11th century, Kos passed under Genoese control, although it was a bizantine territory and kept for a while by the Empire of Nicaea. Genoese ruled as protectorate and lasted over four centuries. In the 1320s, Kos nominally formed part of the realm of Genoese Vignolo de Vignoli but then was attacked by Turkish corsairs until about the 16th century, and the Knights Hospitaller were hosted over the island paying a rent to Genoese republic. The last Hospitaller governor of the island was Piero de Ponte. The island passed , on Hospitalier retractment, few more years back to Genoese rule, and then fell to Ottomans in 1566.


title: Kos

text: During the course of the Orlov revolt, a Russian fleet anchored off the Kos castle. On the night of 5 August 1773, the Russians dispatched a landing party intending to capture the castle. They suffered heavy casualties in the ensuing battle and the Russian ships departed Kos two days later, having failed to achieve their objective.


title: Kos

text: According to the Ottoman General Census of 1881/82–1893, the kaza of Kos () had a total population of 12,965, consisting of 10,459 Greeks, 2,439 Muslims and 67 Jews.


title: Kos

text: Kos was transferred to the Kingdom of Italy in 1912 after the Italo-Turkish War. The Italians developed the infrastructures of the island, after the ruinous earthquake of 23 April 1933, which destroyed a great part of the old city and damaged many new buildings. Architect Rodolfo Petracco drew up the new city plan, transforming the old quarters into an archaeological park, and dividing the new city into a residential, an administrative, and a commercial area., In World War II, the island, as Italian possession, was part of the Axis. It was controlled by Italian troops until the Italian surrender in 1943. On that occasion, 100 Italian officers who had refused to join the Germans were executed in what became known as the Massacre of Kos. British and German forces then clashed for control of the island in the Battle of Kos as part of the Dodecanese Campaign, in which the Germans were victorious. German troops occupied the island until 1945, when it became a protectorate of the United Kingdom, which ceded it to Greece in 1947 following the Paris peace treaty.


title: Kos

text: The island is part of a chain of mountains from which it became separated after earthquakes and subsidence that occurred in ancient times. The remnants of these mountains include the islands of Kalymnos and Kappari which are separated by an underwater chasm approximately deep, as well as the volcano of Nisyros and the surrounding islands.


title: Kos

text: There is a wide variety of rocks in Kos which is related to its geographical formation. Prominent among these are the Quaternary layers in which the fossil remains of mammals such as horses, hippopotami and elephants have been found. The fossilised molar of an elephant of gigantic proportions was presented to the Paleontology Museum of the University of Athens.


title: Kos

text: In the late 1920s about 3,700 Turks lived in Kos city, slightly less than 50% of the population, who settled mainly in the west part of the city. Today, the population of the Turkish community in Kos has been estimated at about 2,000 people. A village with significant Turkish population is Platani (Kermentes) near the town of Kos.


title: Kos

text: The people of Kos are predominantly Orthodox Christians – one of the four Orthodox cathedrals in the Dodecanese is located in Kos. In addition, there is a Roman Catholic church on the island and a mosque for the Turkish-speaking Muslim community. The synagogue is no longer used for religious ceremonies as the Jewish community of Kos was targeted and destroyed by occupying German forces in World War II. It has, however, been restored and is maintained with all religious symbols intact and is now used by the Municipality of Kos for various events, mainly cultural.


title: Kos

text: The island has a 14th-century fortress at the entrance to its harbour, erected in 1315 by the Knights Hospitaller, and another from the Byzantine period in Antimachia.


title: Kos

text: The ancient market place of Kos was considered one of the biggest in the ancient world. It was the commercial and commanding centre at the heart of the ancient city. It was organized around a spacious rectangular yard wide and long. It began in the Northern area and ended up south on the central road (Decumanus) which went through the city. The northern side connected to the city wall towards the entrance to the harbour. Here there was a monumental entrance. On the eastern side there were shops. In the first half of the 2nd century BC, the building was extended toward the interior yard. The building was destroyed in an earthquake in 469 AD.


title: Kos

text: In the southern end of the market, there was a round building with a Roman dome and a workshop which produced pigments including Egyptian Blue. Coins, treasures, and copper statues from Roman times were later uncovered by archaeologists. In the western side excavations led to the findings of rooms with mosaic floors which showed beastfights, a theme quite popular in Kos.


title: Kos

text: The synagogue Kahal Shalom of Kos, on 4, Alexandrou Diakou street in the historic city center, was built in 1935. It was designed by architects Armando Bernabiti and Rodolfo Petracco, and was built by the construction company 'De Martis-Sardelli'. The synagogue complex includes the synagogue and the adjacent rabbi's residence, today housing the offices of the organization 'Hippocrates'. The Jewish community of Kos dates from antiquity. An older synagogue was destroyed in the earthquake of April 13, 1933. The new synagogue was constructed in 1935. Following the deportation of nearly 100 members of the Jewish community on Sunday July 23, 1944, the synagogue was abandoned and later purchased by the Municipality in the 1980s. The synagogue has been used as a cultural center by the Municipality of Kos, for lectures and exhibitions. In 2022 the Municipality of Kos and the Central Board of Jewish Communities, commissioned architect Elias V. Messinas to restore the interior of the synagogue, and make possible a dual use of the building for religious services, and cultural activities.


title: Kos

text: The ancient physician Hippocrates is thought to have been born on Kos, and in the center of the town is the Plane Tree of Hippocrates, a dream temple where the physician is traditionally supposed to have taught. The limbs of the now elderly tree are supported by scaffolding. The small city is also home to the International Hippocratic Foundation of Kos and the Hippocratic Museum dedicated to him. Near the Institute are the ruins of Asklepieion, where Herodicus taught Hippocrates medicine.


title: Kos

text: Kos is the setting of the wargaming book 'Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting', written by Michael O. Varhola with co-authors.


title: Infatuation

text: Infatuation or being smitten is the state of being carried away by an unreasoned passion, usually towards another person for whom one has developed strong romantic feelings. Psychologist Frank D. Cox says that infatuation can be distinguished from romantic love only when looking back on a particular case of being attracted to a person. Infatuation may also develop into a mature love. Goldstein and Brandon describe infatuation as the first stage of a relationship before developing into a mature intimacy. Whereas love is "a warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion to another person", infatuation is "a feeling of foolish or obsessively strong love for, admiration for, or interest in someone or something", a shallower "honeymoon phase" in a relationship. Dr. Ian Kerner, a sex therapist, states that infatuation usually occurs at the start of relationships, is "...usually marked by a sense of excitement and euphoria, and it's often accompanied by lust and a feeling of newness and rapid expansion with a person". Phillips describes how the illusions of infatuations inevitably lead to disappointment when learning the truth about a lover. Adolescents often make people an object of extravagant, short-lived passion or temporary love.


title: Infatuation

text: "It is customary to view young people's dating relationships and first relationships as puppy love or infatuation"; and if infatuation is both an early stage in a deepening sequence of love/attachment, "and" at the same time a potential stopping point, it is perhaps no surprise that it is a condition especially prevalent in the first, youthful explorations of the world of relationships. Thus "the first passionate adoration of a youth for a celebrated actress whom he regards as far above him, to whom he scarcely dares lift his bashful eyes" may be seen as part of an "infatuation with celebrity especially perilous with the young".


title: Infatuation

text: Admiration plays a significant part in this, as "in the case of a schoolgirl crush on a boy or on a male teacher. The girl starts off admiring the teacher ... [then] may get hung up on the teacher and follow him around". Then there may be shame at being confronted with the fact that "you've got what's called a crush on him ... Think if someone was hanging around "you", pestering and sighing". Of course, "sex may come into this ... with an infatuated schoolgirl or schoolboy" as well, producing the "stricken gaze, a compulsive movement of the throat ... an 'I'm lying down and I don't care if you walk on me, babe', expression" of infatuation. Such a cocktail of emotions "may even falsify the 'erotic sense of reality': when a person in love estimates his partner's virtues he is usually not very realistic ... projection of all his ideals onto the partner's personality".


title: Infatuation

text: It is this projection that differentiates infatuation from love, according to the spiritual teacher Meher Baba: "In infatuation, the person is a "passive victim" of the spell of conceived attraction for the object. In love there is an "active appreciation" of the intrinsic worth of the object of love."


title: Infatuation

text: Distance from the object of infatuation—as with celebrities—can help maintain the infatuated state. A time-honoured cure for the one who "has a "tendre" ... infatuated" is to have "thrown them continually together ... by doing so you will cure ... [or] you will know that it is not an infatuation".


title: Infatuation

text: Three types of infatuation have been identified by Brown: the first type is characterized by being "carried away, without insight or proper evaluative judgement, by blind desire"; the second, closely related, by being "compelled by a desire or craving over which the agent has no control" while "the agent's evaluation ... may well be sound although the craving or love remains unaffected by it"; and the third is that of "the agent who exhibits bad judgement and misvaluation for reasons such as ignorance or recklessness".


title: Infatuation

text: In psychoanalysis, a sign that the method is taking hold is "the initial infatuation to be observed at the beginning of treatment", the beginning of transference. The patient, in Freud's words, "develops a special interest in the person of the doctor ... never tires in his home of praising the doctor and of extolling ever new qualities in him". What occurs, "it is usually maintained ... is a sort of false love, a shadow of love", replicating in its course the infatuations of "what is called true love".


title: Infatuation

text: Some psychoanalysts, however, claim that it is wrong to convince the patient "that their love is an illusion ... that it's not you she loves. Freud was off base when he wrote that. It "is" you. Who else could it be?"—thereby taking "the question of what is called true love ... further than it had ever been taken".


title: Infatuation

text: Conversely, in countertransference, the therapist may become infatuated with his/her client: "very good-looking ... she was the most gratifying of patients. She made literary allusions and understood the ones he made ... He was dazzled by her, a little in love with her. After two years, the analysis ground down to a horrible halt".


title: Infatuation

text: Infatuations need not only involve people, but can extend to objects, activities, and ideas. "Men are always falling in love with other men ... with their war heroes and sport heroes": with institutions, discourses and role models. Thus for example Jung's initial unconditional devotion' to Freud's theories and his 'no less unconditional veneration' of Freud's person' was seen at the time by both men as a 'quasi-religious infatuation' to ... a cult object"; while Freud in turn was "very attracted by Jung's personality", perhaps "saw in Jung an idealized version of himself": a mutual admiration society—"intellectually infatuated with one another".


title: Infatuation

text: But there are also collective infatuations: "we are all prone to being drawn into "social phantasy systems"". Thus, for instance, "the recent intellectual infatuation with structuralism and post-structuralism" arguably lasted at least until "September 11 ended intellectual infatuation with postmodernism" as a whole.


title: Infatuation

text: Economic bubbles thrive on collective infatuations of a different kind: "all boom-bust processes contain an element of misunderstanding or misconception", whether it is the "infatuation with ... becoming the latest dot.com billionaire", or the one that followed with subprime mortgages, once "Greenspan had replaced the tech bubble with a housing bubble". As markets "swung virtually overnight from euphoria to fear" in the credit crunch, even the most hardened market fundamentalist had to concede that such "periodic surges of euphoria and fear are manifestations of deep-seated aspects of human nature"—whether these are enacted in home-room infatuations or upon the global stage.


title: Infatuation

text: Shakespeare's sonnets have been described as a "Poetics for Infatuation"; as being dominated by one theme, and "that theme is infatuation, its initiation, cultivation, and history, together with its peaks of triumph and devastation"—a lengthy exploration of the condition of being "subject to the appropriate disorders that belong to our infatuation ... the condition of infatuation". In Turgenev's "First Love", a novella from 1860, 16-year-old Woldemar becomes rapturously infatuated with Zinaida, the beautiful daughter of a princess who lives next to his house. Even though she does spend time with him, his intense infatuation is unrequited and he sinks into depression.


title: Penal colony

text: A penal colony or exile colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general population by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory. Although the term can be used to refer to a correctional facility located in a remote location, it is more commonly used to refer to communities of prisoners overseen by wardens or governors having absolute authority.


title: Penal colony

text: Historically penal colonies have often been used for penal labour in an economically underdeveloped part of a state's (usually colonial) territories, and on a far larger scale than a prison farm.


title: Penal colony

text: With the passage of the Transportation Act 1717, the British government initiated the penal transportation of indentured servants to Britain's colonies in the Americas. British merchants would be in charge of transporting the convicts across the Atlantic, where in the colonies their indentures would be auctioned off to planters. Many of the indentured servants were sentenced to seven year terms, which gave rise to the colloquial term "His Majesty's Seven-Year Passengers". It is estimated that some 50,000 British convicts were sent to the Americas this way, and the majority landed in the Chesapeake Colonies of Maryland and Virginia. Transported convicts represented perhaps one-quarter of Britons that left the country during the 18th century. The colony of Georgia, for example, was first founded by James Oglethorpe who originally intended to use prisoners taken largely from debtors' prisons, creating a "Debtor's Colony," where the prisoners could learn trades and work off their debts. Even though this largely failed, the idea that the state was founded as a penal colony has persisted, both in popular history and local folklore.


title: Penal colony

text: When that avenue closed after the outbreak of American Revolutionary War in 1776, British prisons started to become overcrowded. Since immediate stopgap measures proved themselves ineffective, in 1785 Britain decided to use parts of what is now known as Australia as penal settlements. Leaving Portsmouth, England on 13 May 1787, the First Fleet transported the first ~800 convicts and ~250 marines to Botany Bay. Australian penal colonies in late 18th century included Norfolk Island and New South Wales, and in early 19th century also Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and Moreton Bay (Queensland).


title: Penal colony

text: Advocates of Irish Home Rule or trade unionism (the Tolpuddle Martyrs) sometimes received sentences of deportation to the Australian colonies. Without the allocation of the available convict labour to farmers, to pastoral squatters, and to government projects such as roadbuilding, colonisation of Australia may not have been possible, especially considering the considerable drain on non-convict labor caused by several gold rushes that took place in the second half of the 19th century after the flow of convicts had dwindled and (in 1868) ceased.


title: Penal colony

text: Bermuda, off the North American continent, was also used during the Victorian period. Convicts housed in hulks were used to build the Royal Naval Dockyard there, and during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), Boer prisoners-of-war were sent to the archipelago and imprisoned on one of the smaller islands.


title: Penal colony

text: In British India, the colonial government established various penal colonies. Two of the largest ones were on the Andaman Islands and Hijli. In the early days of settlement, Singapore Island was the recipient of Indian convicts, who were tasked with clearing the jungles for settlement and early public works.


title: Penal colony

text: France sent criminals to tropical penal colonies including Louisiana in the early 18th century. Devil's Island in French Guiana, 1852–1939, received forgers and other criminals. New Caledonia and its Isle of Pines in Melanesia (in the South Sea) received transported dissidents like the Communards, Kabyles rebels as well as convicted criminals between the 1860s and 1897.


title: Hang Sơn Đoòng

text: Sơn Đoòng cave (, : ), in Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park, Bố Trạch District, Quảng Bình Province, Vietnam, is one of the world's largest natural caves.


title: Hang Sơn Đoòng

text: Located near the Laos–Vietnam border, Hang Sơn Đoòng has an internal, fast-flowing subterranean river and the largest cross-section of any cave, worldwide, as of 2009, believed to be twice that of the next largest passage. It is the largest known cave passage in the world by volume.


title: Hang Sơn Đoòng

text: Its name, Hang Sơn Đoòng, is variously translated from Vietnamese as 'cave of the mountain river' or 'cave of mountains behind Đoòng [village]'.


title: Hang Sơn Đoòng

text: As a solutional cave, it was formed in soluble limestone and is believed to be between 2 and 5 million years old.


title: Hang Sơn Đoòng

text: The entrance to Hang Sơn Đoòng was found in 1991 by a local man named Hồ Khanh, while searching for agarwood, a valuable timber. Although he initially went to investigate further, he was discouraged upon approach by the sound of rushing water and the strong wind issuing from the entrance. Not thinking it to be of any great importance, by the time he returned to his home he had forgotten the exact location of the entrance. Later, he mentioned his discovery in passing to two members of the British Cave Research Association who were exploring in the local area. They asked him to attempt to rediscover the entrance, which he eventually managed to do in 2008, and in 2009 he led an expedition from the BCRA to the entrance.


title: Hang Sơn Đoòng

text: This expedition, conducted between 10 and 14 April 2009, performed a survey of the cave and gave its volume as . Their progress in exploring the cave's full length was stopped by a large, high flowstone-coated wall, which the expedition named the Great Wall of Vietnam. The expedition returned in March 2010 and successfully traversed the wall, which allowed the explorers to reach the end of the cave passage. They estimated that the overall length of the cave system exceeded .


title: Hang Sơn Đoòng

text: Formed in Carboniferous/Permian limestone, the main Sơn Đoòng cave passage is the largest known cave passage in the world by volume – , according to BRCA expedition leader Howard Limbert. It is more than long, high and wide. Its cross-section is believed to be twice that of the next largest passage, in Deer Cave, Malaysia. The cave runs for approximately and is punctuated by two large dolines, areas where the ceiling of the cave has collapsed. The dolines allow sunlight to enter sections of the cave, resulting in the growth of trees as well as other vegetation.


title: Hang Sơn Đoòng

text: By mid-2019, it became clear that the cave is connected by its underground river with a nearby cave called Hang Thung. This increases the effective volume of the cave by more than .


title: Hang Sơn Đoòng

text: The cave contains some of the tallest known stalagmites in the world, which are up to tall. Behind the Great Wall of Vietnam were found cave pearls the size of baseballs, an abnormally large size. The cave's interior is so large that it could fit an entire New York block inside, including skyscrapers, or could have a Boeing 747 fly through it without its wings touching either side.


title: Hang Sơn Đoòng

text: In early August 2013, the first tourist group explored the cave on a guided tour at a cost of US$3,000 each. Permits are required to access the cave and are made available on a limited basis, limited to January to August. After August, heavy rains cause river levels to rise, making the cave largely inaccessible. , only Oxalis Adventure Tours have permission to enter the cave for tourism purposes.


title: Hang Sơn Đoòng

text: Plans were considered to build a cable car through the cave. The proposed system would be long, and cost between US$112 and $211 million. However, the plans were opposed by environmentalists and locals because of the damage mass tourism could cause to the cave and local environment. The plan was ultimately cancelled by local government.


title: Engineered wood

text: Engineered wood, also called mass timber, composite wood, man-made wood, or manufactured board, includes a range of derivative wood products which are manufactured by binding or fixing the strands, particles, fibres, or veneers or boards of wood, together with adhesives, or other methods of fixation to form composite material. The panels vary in size but can range upwards of and in the case of cross-laminated timber (CLT) can be of any thickness from a few inches to or more. These products are engineered to precise design specifications, which are tested to meet national or international standards and provide uniformity and predictability in their structural performance. Engineered wood products are used in a variety of applications, from home construction to commercial buildings to industrial products. The products can be used for joists and beams that replace steel in many building projects. The term "mass timber" describes a group of building materials that can replace concrete assemblies. Broad-base adoption of mass timber and their substitution for steel and concrete in new mid-rise construction projects over the coming decades could help mitigate climate change.


title: Engineered wood

text: Typically, engineered wood products are made from the same hardwoods and softwoods used to manufacture lumber. Sawmill scraps and other wood waste can be used for engineered wood composed of wood particles or fibers, but whole logs are usually used for veneers, such as plywood, medium-density fibreboard (MDF), or particle board. Some engineered wood products, like oriented strand board (OSB), can use trees from the poplar family, a common but non-structural species.


title: Engineered wood

text: Alternatively, it is also possible to manufacture similar engineered bamboo from bamboo; and similar engineered cellulosic products from other lignin-containing materials such as rye straw, wheat straw, rice straw, hemp stalks, kenaf stalks, or sugar cane residue, in which case they contain no actual wood but rather vegetable fibers.


title: Engineered wood

text: Flat-pack furniture is typically made out of man-made wood due to its low manufacturing costs and its low weight.


title: Engineered wood

text: There are a wide variety of engineered wood products for both structural and non-structural applications. This list is not comprehensive, and is intended to help categorize and distinguish between different types of engineered wood.


title: Engineered wood

text: Wood structural panels are a collection of flat panel products, used extensively in building construction for sheathing, decking, cabinetry and millwork, and furniture. Examples include plywood and oriented strand board (OSB). Non-structural wood-based panels are flat-panel products, used in non-structural construction applications and furniture. Non-structural panels are usually covered with paint, wood veneer, or resin paper in their final form. Examples include fibreboard and particle board.


title: Engineered wood

text: Plywood, a wood structural panel, is sometimes called the original engineered wood product. Plywood is manufactured from sheets of cross-laminated veneer and bonded under heat and pressure with durable, moisture-resistant adhesives. By alternating the grain direction of the veneers from layer to layer, or "cross-orienting", panel strength and stiffness in both directions are maximized. Other structural wood panels include oriented strand boards and structural composite panels.


title: Engineered wood

text: Oriented strand board (OSB) is a wood structural panel manufactured from rectangular-shaped strands of wood that are oriented lengthwise and then arranged in layers, laid up into mats, and bonded together with moisture-resistant, heat-cured adhesives. The individual layers can be cross-oriented to provide strength and stiffness to the panel. Similar to plywood, most OSB panels are delivered with more strength in one direction. The wood strands in the outermost layer on each side of the board are normally aligned into the strongest direction of the board. Arrows on the product will often identify the strongest direction of the board (the height, or longest dimension, in most cases). Produced in huge, continuous mats, OSB is a solid panel product of consistent quality with no laps, gaps, or voids. OSB is delivered in various dimensions, strengths, and levels of water resistance.


title: Engineered wood

text: Medium-density fibreboard (MDF) and high-density fibreboard (hardboard or HDF) are made by breaking down hardwood or softwood residuals into wood fibers, combining them with wax and a resin binder, and forming panels by applying high temperature and pressure. MDF is used in non-structural applications.


title: Engineered wood

text: Particle board is manufactured from wood chips, sawmill shavings, or even sawdust, and a synthetic resin or another suitable binder, which is pressed and extruded. In recent time, research have shown that durable particle board can be produced from agricultural waste products, such as rice husk or guinea corn husk. Particleboard is cheaper, denser, and more uniform than conventional wood and plywood and is substituted for them when the cost is more important than strength and appearance. A major disadvantage of particleboard is that it is very prone to expansion and discoloration due to moisture, particularly when it is not covered with paint or another sealer. Particle board is used in non-structural applications.


title: Engineered wood

text: Structural composite lumber (SCL) is a class of materials made with layers of veneers, strands, or flakes bonded with adhesives. Unlike wood structural panels, structural composite lumber products generally have all grain fibers oriented in the same direction. The SCL family of engineered wood products are commonly used in the same structural applications as conventional sawn lumber and timber, including rafters, headers, beams, joists, rim boards, studs, and columns. SCL products have higher dimensional stability and increased strength compared to conventional lumber products.


title: Engineered wood

text: Laminated veneer lumber (LVL) is produced by bonding thin wood veneers together in a large billet, similar to plywood. The grain of all veneers in the LVL billet is parallel to the long direction (unlike plywood). The resulting product features enhanced mechanical properties and dimensional stability that offer a broader range in product width, depth, and length than conventional lumber.


title: Engineered wood

text: Parallel strand lumber (PSL) consists of long veneer strands laid in parallel formation and bonded together with an adhesive to form the finished structural section. The length-to-thickness ratio of strands in PSL is about 300. A strong, consistent material, it has a high load-carrying ability and is resistant to seasoning stresses so it is well suited for use as beams and columns for post and beam construction, and for beams, headers, and lintels for light framing construction.


title: Engineered wood

text: Laminated strand lumber (LSL) and oriented strand lumber (OSL) are manufactured from flaked wood strands that have a high length-to-thickness ratio. Combined with an adhesive, the strands are oriented and formed into a large mat or billet and pressed. LSL and OSL offer good fastener-holding strength and mechanical-connector performance and are commonly used in a variety of applications, such as beams, headers, studs, rim boards, and millwork components. LSL is manufactured from relatively short strands—typically about long—compared to the strands used in PSL. The length-to-thickness ratio of strands is about 150 for LSL and 75 for OSL.


title: Engineered wood

text: I-joists are ""-shaped structural members designed for use in floor and roof construction. An I-joist consists of top and bottom flanges of various widths united with webs of various depths. The flanges resist common bending stresses, and the web provides shear performance. I-joists are designed to carry heavy loads over long distances while using less lumber than a dimensional solid wood joist of a size necessary to do the same task. As of 2005, approximately half of all wood light framed floors were framed using I-joists.


title: Engineered wood

text: Mass timber, also known as engineered timber, is a class of large structural wood components for building construction. Mass timber components are made of lumber or veneers bonded with adhesives or mechanical fasteners. Certain types of mass timber, such as nail-laminated timber and glue-laminated timber, have existed for over a hundred years. Mass timber has enjoyed increasing popularity in the past decade, due to growing concern around the sustainability of building materials, and interest in prefabrication, off site construction, and modularization, for which mass timber is well suited. The various types of mass timber share the advantage of faster construction times as the components are manufactured off-site, and pre-finished to exact dimensions for simple on-site fastening. Mass timber has been shown to have structural properties competitive with steel and concrete, opening the possibility to build large, tall buildings out of wood. Extensive testing has demonstrated the natural fire resistance properties of mass timber primarily due the creation of a char layer around a column or beam which prevents fire from reaching the inner layers of wood. In recognition of the proven structural and fire performance of mass timber, the International Building Code, a model code that forms the basis of many North American building codes, adopted new provisions in the 2021 code cycle that permit mass timber to be used in high-rise construction up to 18 stories.


title: Engineered wood

text: Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is a versatile multi-layered panel made of lumber. Each layer of boards is placed perpendicular to adjacent layers for increased rigidity and strength. It is relatively new and gaining popularity within the construction industry as it can be used for long spans and all assemblies, e.g. floors, walls, or roofs.


title: Engineered wood

text: Glue-laminated timber (glulam) is composed of several layers of dimensional timber glued together with moisture-resistant adhesives, creating a large, strong, structural member that can be used as vertical columns or horizontal beams. Glulam can also be produced in curved shapes, offering extensive design flexibility.


title: Engineered wood

text: Dowel laminated timber (DLT) is a less known type of mass timber product.  It is made by placing multiple boards of softwood lumber next to each together, each with a hole so that a hardwood dowel can be friction fitted through all of them.  As the hardwood dowel dries to reach an equilibrium moisture content with the softwood lumber, it expands into the surrounding boards creating a connection.  The use of a dowel connection eliminates the need for any metal fasteners or adhesives.


title: Engineered wood

text: Nail laminated timber (NLT) is a mass timber product that consists of parallel boards fastened with nails. It can be used to create floors, roofs, walls, and elevator shafts within a building. It is one of the oldest types of mass timber, being used in warehouse construction during the Industrial Revolution. Like DLT, no chemical adhesives are used, and wood fibers are oriented in the same direction.


title: Engineered wood

text: Structural composite lumber (SCL) can be categorized into two different types of products: laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and laminated strand lumber (LSL).  SCL is created by gluing smaller pieces of wood together to create one solid structural member.  Of the two SCL products, LVLs are more common than LSLs.  While LVLs use wood veneers and LSLs use timber strands, they are both suited for residential construction and can be used as beams joists, studs, and rafters.


title: Engineered wood

text: Engineered wood flooring is a type of flooring product, similar to hardwood flooring, made of layers of wood or wood-based composite laminated together. The floor boards are usually milled with a tongue-and-groove profile on the edges for consistent joinery between boards.


title: Engineered wood

text: The lamella is the face layer of the wood that is visible when installed. Typically, it is a sawn piece of timber. The timber can be cut in three different styles: flat-sawn, quarter-sawn, and rift-sawn.


title: Engineered wood

text: New techniques have been introduced in the field of engineered wood in recent years. Natural wood is being transformed in laboratories through various chemical and physical treatments to achieve tailored mechanical, optical, thermal, and conduction properties, by influencing the wood’s structure.


title: Engineered wood

text: Densified wood can be made by using a mechanical hot press to compress wood fibers, sometimes in combination with chemical modification of the wood. These processes have been shown to increase the density by a factor of three. This increase in density is expected to enhance the strength and stiffness of the wood by a proportional amount. More recent studies have combined chemical processes with traditional mechanical hot press methods. These chemical processes break down lignin and hemicellulose that are found naturally in the wood. Following dissolution, the cellulose strands that remain are mechanically hot compressed. Compared to the three-fold increase in strength observed from hot pressing alone, chemically processed wood has been shown to yield an 11-fold improvement. This extra strength comes from hydrogen bonds formed between the aligned cellulose nanofibers.


title: Engineered wood

text: The densified wood possessed mechanical strength properties on par with steel used in building construction, opening the door for applications of densified wood in situations where regular strength wood would fail. Environmentally, wood requires significantly less carbon dioxide to produce than steel.


title: Engineered wood

text: Removing lignin from wood has several other applications, apart from providing structural advantages. Delignification alters the mechanical, thermal, optical, fluidic and ionic properties and functions of the natural wood and is an effective approach to regulating its thermal properties, as it removes the thermally conductive lignin component, while generating a large number of nanopores in the cell walls which help reduce temperature change. Delignified wood reflects most incident light and appears white in color. White wood (also known as “nanowood”) has high reflection haze, as well as high emissivity in the infrared wavelengths. These two characteristics generate a passive radiative cooling effect, with an average cooling power of over a 24-hour period, meaning that this wood does not "absorb" heat and therefore only emits the heat embedded in it. Moreover, white wood not only possesses a lower thermal conductivity than natural wood, and it has better thermal performance than most commercially available insulating materials. The modification of the mesoporous structure of the wood is responsible for the changes in wood performance.


title: Engineered wood

text: White wood can also be put through a compression process, similar to the process mentioned for densified wood, which increases its mechanical performance compared to natural wood (8.7 times higher in tensile strength and 10 times higher in toughness). The thermal and structural advantages of nanowood make it an attractive material for energy-efficient building construction. However, the changes made in the wood’s structural properties, like the increase in structural porosity and the partially isolated cellulose nanofibrils, damage the material’s mechanical robustness. To deal with this issue, several strategies have been proposed, with one being to further densify the structure, and another to use cross-linking. Other suggestions include hybridizing natural wood with other organic particles and polymers to enhance its thermal insulation performance.


title: Engineered wood

text: Using similar chemical modification techniques to chemically densified wood, wood can be made extremely moldable using a combination of delignification and water shock treatment. This is an emerging technology and is not yet used in industrial processes. However, initial tests show promising advantages in improved mechanical properties, with the molded wood exhibiting strength comparable to some metal alloys.


title: Engineered wood

text: Transparent wood composites are new materials, currently only made at the laboratory scale, that combines transparency and stiffness via a chemical process that replaces light-absorbing compounds, such as lignin, with a transparent polymer.


title: Engineered wood

text: With the global population growing at the rate, it is right now, there is going to be an enormous demand for new housing, commercial buildings, and infrastructure to sustain everyone.  The main materials used to build these buildings are steel and concrete, but they emit tons of carbon dioxide () into the atmosphere which is not good for the environment.  A material that has the potential to reduce carbon emissions is engineered wood if it replaces steel concrete as the primary material in the construction of buildings. Not only do buildings made from engineered wood act as a carbon sink, but they also produce less emissions in the manufacturing process than steel and cement, which both emit a lot of due to the chemical processes involved in their manufacturing. For example, in 2014, steel and cement production accounted for about 1320 megatonnnes (Mt) and 1740 Mt respectively, which made up about 9% of global emissions that year. In a study that did not take the carbon sequestration potential of engineered wood into account, it was found that roughly 50 Mt e (carbon dioxide equivalent) could be eliminated by 2050 with the full uptake of a hybrid construction system utilizing engineered wood and steel. When considering the added effects that carbon sequestration can have over the lifetime of the material, the emissions reductions of engineered wood is even more substantial, as laminated wood that is not incinerated at the end of its lifecycle absorbs around 582 kg of /m, while reinforced concrete emits 458 kg /m and steel 12.087 kg /m.


title: Engineered wood

text: There is not a strong consensus for measuring the carbon sequestration potential of wood. In life-cycle assessment, sequestered carbon is sometimes called biogenic carbon. ISO 21930, a standard that governs life cycle assessment, requires the biogenic carbon from a wood product can only be included as a negative input (i.e. carbon sequestration) when the wood product originated in a sustainably managed forest. This generally means that wood needs to be FSC or SFI-certified to qualify as carbon sequestering.


title: Engineered wood

text: Engineered wood products are used in a variety of ways, often in applications similar to solid wood products:


title: Engineered wood

text: Engineered wood products may be preferred over solid wood in some applications due to certain comparative advantages:


title: Engineered wood

text: Plywood and OSB typically have a density of . For example, plywood sheathing or OSB sheathing typically has a surface density of . Many other engineered woods have densities much higher than OSB.


title: Engineered wood

text: A more inclusive term is "structural composites". For example, fiber cement siding is made of cement and wood fiber, while cement board is a low-density cement panel, often with added resin, faced with fiberglass mesh.


title: Engineered wood

text: While formaldehyde is an essential ingredient of cellular metabolism in mammals, studies have linked prolonged inhalation of formaldehyde gases to cancer. Engineered wood composites have been found to emit potentially harmful amounts of formaldehyde gas in two ways: unreacted free formaldehyde and the chemical decomposition of resin adhesives. When exorbitant amounts of formaldehyde are added to a process, the excess will not have any additive to bond with and may seep from the wood product over time. Cheap urea-formaldehyde (UF) adhesives are largely responsible for degraded resin emissions. Moisture degrades the weak UF molecules, resulting in potentially harmful formaldehyde emissions. McLube offers release agents and platen sealers designed for those manufacturers who use reduced-formaldehyde UF and melamine-formaldehyde adhesives. Many oriented strand board (SB) and plywood manufacturers use phenol-formaldehyde (PF) because phenol is a much more effective additive. Phenol forms a water-resistant bond with formaldehyde that will not degrade in moist environments. PF resins have not been found to pose significant health risks due to formaldehyde emissions. While PF is an excellent adhesive, the engineered wood industry has started to shift toward polyurethane binders like pMDI to achieve even greater water resistance, strength, and process efficiency. pMDIs are also used extensively in the production of rigid polyurethane foams and insulators for refrigeration. pMDIs outperform other resin adhesives, but they are notoriously difficult to release and cause buildup on tooling surfaces.


title: Engineered wood

text: Some engineered wood products, such as DLT, NLT, and some brands of CLT, can be assembled without the use of adhesives using mechanical fasteners or joinery. These can range from profiled interlocking jointed boards, proprietary metal fixings, nails or timber dowels.


title: Engineered wood

text: Throughout the years mass timber was used in buildings, codes were added to and adopted by the International Building Code (IBC) to create standards for them for the proper use and handling. For example, in 2015, CLT was incorporated into the IBC. The 2021 IBC is the latest issue of building codes, and has added three new codes regarding construction with timber material.  The new three construction types go as follows, IV-A, IV-B, and IV-C, and they allow mass timber to be used in buildings up to 18, 12, and nine stories respectively.


title: Engineered wood

text: Plyscrapers are skyscrapers that are either partially made of wood or entirely made of wood. Around the world, there have been many different plyscrapers built including Ascent MKE building and the Stadthaus building.


title: Engineered wood

text: The Ascent MKE building was built in 2022 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and is the tallest high-rise building using different mass timber components in combination with some steel and concrete.  This plyscraper is 87 meters tall and has 25 stories.


title: Engineered wood

text: The Stadthaus building is a residential building built in 2009 in Hackney, London.  It has 9 stories reaching 30 meters tall.  It uses CLT panels as load-bearing walls and floor ‘slabs’.


title: Engineered wood

text: The Mistissini Bridge built in Quebec, Canada, in 2014 is a 160-meter-long bridge that features both glulam beams and CLT panels.  The bridge was designed to cross over the Uupaachikus Pass.


title: Engineered wood

text: The Placer River Pedestrian Bridge built in Alaska, United States, in 2013.  It spans long and is located in the Chugach National Forest.  This bridge features glulam as it was used create the trusses.


title: Engineered wood

text: The Glenwood CLT Parking Garage in Springfield, Washington, is going to be a garage that features CLT.  It will be 4 stories tall and hold 360 parking spaces.  The parking garage however is under construction , and the year of competition is not yet known.


title: Billboard Music Awards

text: The "Billboard" Music Awards are honors given out annually by "Billboard", a publication covering the music business and a music popularity chart. The "Billboard" Music Awards show has been held annually since 1990, with the exception of the years 2007 through 2010. The event was formerly staged in December but since returning in 2011, it has been held in May.


title: Billboard Music Awards

text: Unlike other awards, such as the Grammy Award, which determine nominations as a result of the highest votes received by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the "Billboard" Music Awards finalists are based on album and digital songs sales, streaming, radio airplay, touring, and social engagement. These measurements are tracked year-round by "Billboard" and its data partners, including MRC Data and Next Big Sound. The 2018 awards were based on the reporting period of April 8, 2017 through March 31, 2018. Awards are given for the top album, artist and single in a number of different music genres.


title: Billboard Music Awards

text: From 1989 to 2006, the show had the same categories and category names every year. In 2011, for the first time, all of the awards were renamed to "Top [award title]". The "of the year" portion of each category title no longer exists, and many of the awards have been further renamed. Other awards, including both "crossover" awards (No. 1 Classical Crossover Artist and No. 1 Classical Crossover Album) were discontinued. As of 2017, there are two fan-voted categories.


title: Billboard Music Awards

text: The general categories are Top Artist, Top Billboard 200 Album, Top Hot 100 Song and Top New Artist. These categories highlighted in each award and other categories are divided by genre.


title: Billboard Music Awards

text: The record for most "Billboard" Music Awards won by a female artist is held by Taylor Swift who has won 29 awards. The record for most "Billboard" Music Awards won by a group is held by BTS who have won 12 awards.


title: Billboard Music Awards

text: Since its inception (created by Rick Garson, Paul Flattery & Jim Yukich), the BMAs had been telecast on the Fox network; however due to contractual expirations and other unforeseen circumstances, the awards were cancelled for 2007. Plans for a new version of the awards in 2008 (in association with AEG Live) fell through, and the BMAs were not held until 2011.


title: Billboard Music Awards

text: On February 17, 2011, "Billboard" announced that it would bring the BMAs back to television, moving from its original home on Fox to its new network, ABC, on May 22, 2011. A new award statuette was created by New York firm Society Awards. Dick Clark Productions, which is co-owned with "Billboard", began producing the ceremony in 2014. On November 28, 2017, it was announced that the "Billboard" Music Awards would be moving from ABC to NBC beginning in 2018 under a multi-year contract.


title: Billboard Music Awards

text: The 2020 ceremony, originally scheduled for April 29, was postponed indefinitely on March 17 due to coronavirus-related public assembly concerns. On August 14, 2020, it was announced that the 2020 ceremony had been rescheduled to October 14.


title: California grizzly bear

text: The California grizzly bear (Ursus arctos californicus) is an extinct population or subspecies of the brown bear, generally known (together with other North American brown bear populations) as the grizzly bear. "Grizzly" could have meant "grizzled" that is, with golden and grey tips of the hair or "fear-inspiring" (as a phonetic spelling of "grisly"). Nonetheless, after careful study, naturalist George Ord formally classified it in 1815 – not for its hair, but for its character – as "Ursus horribilis" ("terrifying bear"). Genetically, North American brown bears are closely related; in size and coloring, the California grizzly bear was much like the Kodiak bear of the southern coast of Alaska. In California, it was particularly admired for its beauty, size, and strength. The grizzly became a symbol of the Bear Flag Republic, a moniker that was attached to the short-lived attempt by a group of U.S. settlers to break away from Mexico in 1846. Later, this rebel flag became the basis for the state flag of California, and then California was known as the "Bear State".


title: California grizzly bear

text: A 1953 researcher stated, "The specific status of North American brown bears (or grizzly bears) is one of the most complex problems of mammalian taxonomy. The difficulty stems directly from the work of Merriam (1918), who concluded that there are 86 forms of grizzlies (and brown bears) in North America."


title: California grizzly bear

text: North American brown bears were taxonomically grouped as a species apart from other bear species, until DNA testing revealed that they should properly be grouped in the same species as the other brown bears. Grizzlies living in California had been classified by Merriam into many subspecies, but the only genetically anomalous grouping in North America is the ABC Islands bears.


title: California grizzly bear

text: Prior to Spanish settlement in the second half of the 1700s, it is estimated that 10,000 grizzly bears inhabited what is modern-day California. It is thought that the bears lived across almost the entirety of the state, save its most southeastern and northeastern corners. Probably the southernmost records for this subspecies are from the Sierra de Juárez, during the 18th century. The bears ate a diverse diet from California's varied climates, ranging from plant sources like grasses, seeds, and berries, and acorns, to animal sources such as deer, salmon, steelhead, and carrionincluding beached whale carcasses.


title: California grizzly bear

text: Europeans' first recorded encounters with California grizzly bears are found in diaries kept by several members of the 1769 Portola expedition, the first European land exploration of what is now the state of California. Several place names that include the Spanish word for bear ("oso") trace their origins back to that first overland expedition (e.g. Los Osos). As the settled frontier of New Spain was extended northward, settlers began to populate California and establish large cattle herds as the main industry. The ranchers' domesticated livestock were easy prey for the grizzly bears roaming freely across the state. By eating their livelihood and scaring them, the grizzlies became enemies of the rancheros. "Vaqueros" hunted the grizzlies, often roping and capturing them to be pitted against other animals in public battles.


title: California grizzly bear

text: The California grizzly was an enormous bear. Father Pedro Font, an early missionary, described the local grizzly bears, writing, "He was horrible, fierce, large, and fat." In the 1800s, multiple newspaper accounts mentioned bears weighing well over . The hind foot of one particular adult male grizzly was measured at long by wide, and claws were often wide by long. In 1866, a grizzly bear described as weighing as much as was killed in what is present-day Valley Center, California. The incident was recalled in 1932 by Catherine E. Lovett Smith, who witnessed the bear's killing on her family's ranch when she was six years old. If its measurements are accurate, this particular bear was the biggest bear ever found in California and, indeed, one of the largest specimens of any bear species ever recorded. (Other sources confirm Lovett Smith's account of the bear, but differ as to its exact size.) Her telling of that bear is part of the oral history of "Bear Valley", the original name for Valley Center. The bear ranged as far south as the Big Sur region of central California. Frank Post, born in 1859 on the Soberanes Ranch in Big Sur, remembered when his family lived at Soberanes Creek, during the American Civil War – and the "Great Sur Bears".


title: California grizzly bear

text: In the late 1700s, Spanish ranchers placed a poisoned "bait ball" made of suet or swine entrails filled with a lethal dose of strychnine which they hung from the branches of a tree within reach of the bear but out of reach of dogs and children. Mexican settlers captured bears for bear and bull fights and they also sold their skins for 6 to 10 pesos to trading ships. Bear Trap Canyon near Bixby Creek was one of their favorite sites for trapping grizzly bears along the central California coast.


title: California grizzly bear

text: Bear-baiting events flourished as popular spectacles in 19th century California. Bloody fights that pitted bears against bulls often inspired betting as to whether the bear or the bull would win. One persistently popular, but false phrase origin story related to these fights stems from famous 19th-century newspaperman Horace Greeley. While visiting California Greeley allegedly witnessed such a fight, and supposedly gave the modern stock market its "bear" and "bull" nicknames based on the fighting styles of the two animals: the bear swipes downward while the bull hooks upward. In truth, the phrase's origins predate Greeley's 1859 journey to California by at least 100 years, but the myth of the California connection persists.


title: California grizzly bear

text: European settlers paid bounties on the bears who regularly preyed on livestock until the early 20th century. Absolom (Rocky) Beasley hunted grizzly bears throughout the Santa Lucia Mountains and claimed to have killed 139 bears in his lifetime. Noted California mountain man Seth Kinman claimed to have shot over 800 grizzly bears in a 20 year period in the areas surrounding present day Humboldt County. One prospector in Southern California, William F. Holcomb (nicknamed "Grizzly Bill" Holcomb), was particularly well known for hunting grizzly bears in what is now San Bernardino County.


title: California grizzly bear

text: During September 1897, in the mountains between Inwood and Mt. Lassen, Shasta County, 21-year-old Elias Weigart and his dog encountered a huge California grizzly whose front track measured 11 inches and the rear, 19. The bear died after Weigart emptied his Winchester 38-55 into the beast at close range.


title: California grizzly bear

text: The last hunted California grizzly bear was shot in Tulare County, California, in August 1922, although no body, skeleton or pelt was ever produced. Less than 75 years after the discovery of gold in 1848, almost every grizzly bear in California had been tracked down and killed. In 1924, what was thought to be a grizzly was spotted in Sequoia National Park for the last time and thereafter, grizzlies were never seen again in California.


title: California grizzly bear

text: California still has habitat that can sustain about 500 grizzlies. In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service received and rejected a petition to reintroduce grizzly bears to California. In 2015, the Center for Biological Diversity launched a petition aimed at the California state legislature to reintroduce the grizzly bear to the state. The California grizzly bear has been considered as a possible candidate for attempts at de-extinction, through the proposed use of back-breeding, cloning and genetic engineering to recreate extinct species.


title: California grizzly bear

text: The California grizzly bear is one of the state's most visible and enduring symbols, adorning both the state flag and seal. The Bear Flag first flew in 1846 as a symbol of the short-lived California Republic. A second version was adopted as the state flag by the state legislature in 1911. The bear symbol became a permanent part of the state seal in 1849. The California grizzly bear was designated the official state animal in 1953. The bear is celebrated in name and as mascot of the sports teams of the University of California, Berkeley (the California Golden Bears), and of the University of California, Los Angeles (the UCLA Bruins) and in the mascot of University of California, Riverside (Scottie the Bear, dressed in a Highland kilt). The California Maritime Academy operates a training ship named Golden Bear.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The Audi RS 4 is the high-performance variant of the Audi A4 range produced by Audi Sport GmbH for AUDI AG, a division of the Volkswagen Group. It sits above the Audi S4 as the fastest, most sports-focused car based on the A4's "B" automobile platform. The RS 4 was reintroduced in 2012, based on the A4 Avant instead of the sedan as did the original model.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The original B5 version was produced only as an Avant, Audi's name for an estate car/station wagon. The second version, the B7, was released initially as a four-door five-seat saloon/sedan, with the Avant following a short while later. A two-door four-seat Cabriolet version was subsequently added.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The "RS" initials are taken from the German "RennSport"—literally translated as "racing sport", and is the Audi marque's highest trim level, positioned above the "S" model specification of Audi's regular model line-up. Like other Audi "RS" cars, the RS 4 pioneers some of Audi's latest advanced technology. It is only available with Audi's Torsen-based "trademark" quattro permanent four-wheel drive system.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Its main market competitors include the BMW M3, Mercedes-Benz C63, Lexus IS-F (formerly) and Cadillac ATS-V (now Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing).


title: Audi RS 4

text: The original B5 Audi RS 4 Avant quattro ("Typ" 8D) was introduced by Audi in late 1999, for main production and sale from 2000, as the successor to the Porsche / Quattro GmbH joint venture-developed Audi RS2 Avant. Like its predecessor, the RS 4 was available only as an Avant and was built on an existing platform, in this case, the Volkswagen Group B5 platform shared with the A4 and S4. Retail price was around DM 103,584. The RS 4 was available for sale in most of Europe, parts of Asia and in some Latin American countries.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Although related to the B5 S4, many of the outer body panels were altered, with wider front and rear wheel arches to allow for the wider axle track on the RS 4. With unique front and rear bumpers and side sills, and the rear spoiler from the S4 Avant, the aerodynamic modifications achieved a drag coefficient of C 0.34. Although the B5 S4 came in a saloon car body style, the B5 RS 4 was only available in the Avant version.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Luggage space, measured according to the industry standard VDA method was with the rear seats in the upright position, and with the seats folded flat.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The engine was developed from the 2.7 litre 90° V6 'biturbo' used in the B5 S4. It displaced and had five valves per cylinder. The engine was developed and manufactured in the UK by Cosworth Technology. It featured aluminium alloy ALSi7Mg cylinder heads, cast by Cosworth, with enlarged intake ports and smaller exhaust ports, two parallel BorgWarner K04-series turbochargers, two larger side-mounted intercoolers, dished piston crowns, stronger connecting rods, larger intake ducting, an enlarged exhaust system, and a re-calibrated engine management system. The modifications increased the engine's output from and of torque to at 7,000 rpm and at 6,000 rpm. The engine was controlled by a Bosch Motronic ME 7.1 electronic engine control unit, using a Bosch 'E-Gas' electronic drive by wire throttle. It had multipoint sequential fuel injection, a mass airflow sensor, and six individual ignition coils. The engine oil was cooled by oil to water and oil to air coolers.


title: Audi RS 4

text: A six-speed manual transmission (parts code prefix: 01E, identification code: FDP) (gear ratios—1st: 3.500, 2nd: 1.889, 3rd: 1.320, 4th: 1.034, 5th: 0.806, 6th: 0.684), cooled by a NACA duct in the engine undertray, and Audi's Torsen-based quattro system, using the Torsen T-1 "automatic torque biasing" center differential, with a 50:50 default bias were standard. Final drive ratio was 4.111.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The RS 4 has a curb weight of . It can accelerate from 0- in 4.9 seconds, 0- in 11.3 seconds, and 0- in 17.0 seconds. The top speed is electronically limited to .


title: Audi RS 4

text: Brakes were also developed jointly in house by Audi's quattro GmbH, not by Porsche as with its predecessor, the RS2. At the front they were radially vented and floating cast iron discs, diameter and thick, with double-piston floating calipers, and at the rear by discs with a single-piston floating caliper. The RS 4 needed less than to come to a full stop from a speed of .


title: Audi RS 4

text: The standard wheels were 18 inch alloy wheels (8½×18" "9-spoke"), with 255/35 ZR18 high performance tyres. Optional "winter" alloy wheels were also available, at 18 inch (7½J×18"), with tyres.


title: Audi RS 4

text: There was no RS 4 built on the Audi "B6" platform, which served as the basis for the Audi A4 between 2001 and 2005. However, the second Audi RS 4 quattro ("Typ" 8E) was built on Audi's "B7" platform, by quattro GmbH in Neckarsulm, Germany. It was unveiled in February 2005 at Audi's 'quattro Night' celebration at the company headquarters in Ingolstadt, Germany.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The RS 4 became available to European customers in mid-2006. It was introduced at the 2006 North American International Auto Show in January, and arrived in June 2006 in North America. The production run of the B7 RS 4 was 2006 to 2008 inclusive, although only 2007 and 2008 model year were sold in the United States. Approximately 10,000 B7 RS 4s were built, of which around 2,000 are in the USA.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The B7 RS 4 Cabriolet was sold in Europe from late 2006 to 2008. It was also available in the US in limited numbers per year and sold at a premium of $2000 over the list.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Audi factory numbers indicate that the B7 RS 4 saloon can accelerate from in 4.8 seconds, and arrive at in 16.6 seconds. Most European magazines recorded results in line with the November 2009 comparison of "ultimate sedans" in "Road & Track", which recorded a 0 to time of 4.5 seconds. For the Avant, is reached in 4.9 seconds. Top speed for all variants is "officially" electronically limited to .


title: Audi RS 4

text: The B7 RS 4 is an almost complete departure from previous Audi "RS" cars, as it was initially available as a four-door five-seat saloon/sedan; with a five-door five-seat Avant, and two-door four-seat Cabriolet versions arriving later. Only the Audi RS 6 had taken this similar route (saloon and Avant) before, unlike the previous RS 4 and RS2, which were available exclusively as Avants.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Constructed from fully galvanised steel unibody, the B7 RS 4 uses aluminium for its front wings (fenders) and bonnet (hood). The saloon version features a drag coefficient (C) of 0.31, from a frontal area of 2.17 m.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The B7 RS 4 differs visually from the standard B7 S4, by having even wider flared front and rear wheel arches (fenders), to allow for a wider axle track. Over the B7 A4, it also includes two larger frontal side air intakes (for the two additional side-mounted coolant radiators). The B7 RS 4 also includes optional adaptive headlights, which swivel around corners in conjunction with steering wheel movements. An acoustic parking system with front and rear sensors is also a standard fitment. Unique carbon fiber interior trims, along with a lap timer within the central Driver Information System, aluminium pedal caps and footrest, and RS 4 logos complete the look.


title: Audi RS 4

text: In the saloon, luggage space, measured according to the VDA 'block method', is with the rear seats in the upright position, and with the seats folded flat (dependent on specification). For the Avant, is available with the seats upright (under the retractable load cover), and being available with the rear seats folded flat (loaded to the roofline). Kerb weight of the saloon variant starts at .


title: Audi RS 4

text: A Bose ten-speaker sound system, with 190 watt output and automatic dynamic noise compensation, with "Concert II" radio and single CD player is standard equipment. Additional options include the "Symphony II" system which features twin radio tuners, a single-slot loading six-CD changer, and a cassette player all integrated into a double-DIN sized unit. The RNS-E "Audi Navigation System plus" DVD-ROM GPS was also available.


title: Audi RS 4

text: To achieve maximum body stiffness with controlled deformation crumple zones, the B7 RS 4 features laser beam welding of major seams of the high-strength steel body shell, which helps improve overall structural rigidity, particularly in the "passenger cell", over traditional spot welding methods.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Two-stage driver and front-seat passenger frontal airbags are standard, as is Audi's "side guard" head protection curtain airbag system. This latter system completely covers all of the side windows, from the front "A" pillar to the rear "C-" or "D pillars". The Recaro shell-type RS race bucket seats (not available in North American markets) include electrically inflatable upper and lower side bolsters and adjustable lumbar support. In North America, the only front seats available are the more traditional Recaro seats (identical to those in the B6 and B7 S4), which include lower side airbags. Lower side airbags are optional for the standard-fit Recaro rear seats. Front and outer rear seatbelts include pyrotechnic belt pretensioners.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The 32v V8 engine of the B7 RS 4 is based on the previous all-alloy 40v V8 from the B6 S4, and shares many parts, and Fuel Stratified Injection, with the 4.2 FSI V8 engine in the Q7. The engine includes new cylinder block construction, and is a highly reworked, high-revving variant (redline at 8,000 rpm; rev limit of 8,250 rpm).


title: Audi RS 4

text: The same engine base was used for the Audi R8 when Audi chose to build their first supercar. However, the camshaft drive system was moved to the front of the block for the mid-engine R8.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The engine has increased crankcase breathing, a low-pressure fuel return system and a baffled oil sump, to prevent engine lubricant cavitation at high engine speeds and high-G cornering. It has four valves per cylinder (instead of five on the earlier variant) and two overhead camshafts on each cylinder bank (making it "quad cam"), which are driven by roller chains with variable valve timing for both inlet and exhaust camshafts, along with a cast magnesium alloy fixed tract length intake manifold with adjustable tumble flaps (to improve low engine speed combustion). On 98 RON (93 AKI) Super-Unleaded petrol it produces at 7,800 rpm, giving it a specific power output of per litre. Based on a kerb weight of , this results in a power-to-weight ratio of 0.184 kW per kg. Exhaust gas escapes through two '4-into-2-into-1' fan-branch steel exhaust manifolds and four high-flow catalytic converters, into twin oval tail pipes with dynamic silencer/muffler valves. The engine is controlled by two Bosch DI-Motronic electronic engine control units (working as 'master' and 'slave', because of the high-revving nature of the engine). The ignition system uses eight individual single-spark coils using mapped direct ignition. The saloon version produces 322-329 grams of CO per kilometre (g/km), and the Avant starts from 324 g/km.


title: Audi RS 4

text: A 6-speed Getrag manual transmission is the only transmission available. The gear ratios are 1st: 3.667, 2nd: 2.211, 3rd: 1.520, 4th: 1.133, 5th: 0.919, 6th: 0.778.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The Audi B7 RS 4 was the only "RS" Audi powered by a naturally aspirated engine until the Audi RS 5 was presented at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. The RS 5 uses the same 4.2-litre high revving V8. The RS 5 featured an optional 7-speed "S-Tronic" dual clutch automatic.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Another focus of the B7 RS 4 was on the introduction of the latest development of Audi's quattro permanent four-wheel drive system. This utilised the 'third generation' asymmetric/dynamic Torsen 'automatic torque biasing' centre differential, featuring a 'default' 40:60 front-to-rear torque split under normal conditions. Audi stressed that this would result in a more neutral response in corners and a more dynamic driving experience. Also, a more aggressive Torque Bias Ratio (TBR) was used, and set to 4:1, as opposed to 2:1 (and later variants 3:1 TBR) on standard A4. That means that one side of the differential can handle up to 80%, while the other side would have to only handle 20% of applied torque.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Traction is assisted by way of "Electronic Differential Lock" (EDL), which monitors the rotational speeds of the left and right wheels across an individual axle, and if one wheel should rotate faster than the other (exceeding the pre-defined parameters), indicating loss of traction, or "wheel spin" on one wheel, the EDL applies the brakes to that individual spinning wheel, and thus results in transferring torque across the open differential to the wheel on the other side deemed to have grip, hence traction.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The B7 RS 4 also incorporates Audi's "Dynamic Ride Control" "Sports Suspension" mechanism. The dampers/shock absorbers are made for Audi by KW, and central reservoirs/valves made by KYB.


title: Audi RS 4

text: In the RS 4 suspension, a fluid hydraulic linkage between diagonally opposing front and rear suspension dampers (left front to right rear, and vice versa) is used to counteract vehicle pitch and roll. Lightweight magnesium/aluminium alloy multi-link suspension arms (four arm with virtual steering axis up front, and trapezoidal arm with unequal length track control arms at the rear) locate each wheel in a controllable fashion, whilst minimising unsprung masses. Hollow tubular anti-roll bars are standard front and rear. Compared to standard [B7 A] models, the RS 4 features a lower ride height. An optional "Sports Suspension Plus" lowers the car by a further , and marginally further stiffens the damper rates.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The standard brakes on the RS 4 are of two-piece construction. The cast-iron discs are cross-drilled and radially ventilated and float on aluminium alloy disc hubs. The two-piece disc construction reduces unsprung mass and also reduces the transmission of heat generated by the brakes to the wheel bearings. The front discs are in diameter and thick with Brembo monoblock eight-piston fixed calipers.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The rear brakes are drilled, vented and floating by iron discs with single piston floating calipers and an integrated mechanical handbrake mechanism.


title: Audi RS 4

text: A lighter and more performant "Audi ceramic" front brake system was an option from 2007 model year onwards (and only with 19 inch wheels). It comprised cross-drilled, radially vented and floating Carbon fibre-reinforced Silicon Carbide composite SGL Carbon discs, diameter and thick, with grey Brembo monoblock six-piston fixed aluminium calipers.


title: Audi RS 4

text: In the UK and Japan, the standard wheels are 19 inch alloy wheels () with tyres. This 19" wheel and tyre package was an option for the North American, and some European markets.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The North American Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) crash-tested the B7 RS 4's sibling, the B7 A4, and awarded it "Double Best Pick" for frontal and side crashes—beating rivals such as the BMW 3 Series, the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, however at the 2012 session of the SOT (small overlap test) the A4 was rated Poor, rating applying up to the 2016 MY. ()


title: Audi RS 4

text: The Audi RS 4 won "Top Gear"'s Most Surprising Car of the Year in 2005. In 2007, the Audi RS 4 was the winner in the "World Performance Car" category of the International World Car of the Year (WCOTY).


title: Audi RS 4

text: The Audi RS 4 Avant quattro was unveiled at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show and was based on the B8 A4 Avant. The RS 4 Avant uses the Volkswagen MLB platform, and shares the same powertrain as the RS 5 Coupé.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Compared to the related B8 S4, the RS 4 features larger bumper air dams and features double exhaust tailpipes compared to the S4's double twin (quadruple) exhaust tailpipes. Wider arches allow for a wider axle and wheels. A completely remodelled front bumper cover with honeycomb grill compared to the standard A4 and S4 as well as remodelled rear bumper with honeycomb detailing and minor air diffuser.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The interior is largely the same but the flat-bottom steering wheel is covered entirely in perforated leather with RS badging on the steering wheel and gear stick. The interior dashboard and door liners are also detailed with carbon fibre inserts as standard although there were options to change this to aluminium or piano black.


title: Audi RS 4

text: SuperSport seats covered partly with leather part Alcantara were standard in the B8 RS 4 but as with the B7, there was a winged backed bucket seat option. It was also an option to order the seats covered entirely with leather.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The RS 4 is powered by a 4.2L FSI V8 engine producing and allowing the car to accelerate from in 4.7 seconds. The RS 4 Avant is available with a 7-speed dual-clutch S-Tronic transmission.


title: Audi RS 4

text: New for the B8 are 'wavy' vented and floating cast iron discs, diameter and thick, with 6-piston Brembo floating calipers, and at the rear by discs with a single-piston floating caliper.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The standard wheels were 19 inch with 235/40 R19 Pirelli P-Zero tyres. Optional 20" rotor design or 10 spoke alloy wheels were also available with 265/35 R20 Pirelli P-Zero tyres.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Amongst the options available for the B8 RS 4, are ceramic brakes, allowing the car to perform heavy braking without having brake fade.


title: Audi RS 4

text: A sports pack was available which included a Sports exhaust identifiable by black exhaust tips in the rear bumper, and Dynamic Ride Control suspension. The Sports pack also came with the 20" rotor design wheels as standard.


title: Audi RS 4

text: In February 2014, Audi announced a tribute to the original RS 2 Avant on its 20th anniversary by releasing a limited run of the Nogaro Selection Limited Edition. The changes were entirely cosmetic with black trim and roof rails, red brake calipers, and blue Alcantara detailed interior (seats, door lining, blue carbon weave elements & blue stitching) as well as the limited edition Nogaro Blue paint exterior. It retailed at approximately 10% more than the standard model.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The new RS 4 Avant was unveiled at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show. Noticeable changes include a more angular exterior and newly designed wheels. The new RS 4 Avant is powered by a 2.9 TFSI V6 twin-turbo engine producing and of torque. This means that the new RS4 B9 produces the same power as the previous model (B8) while making more torque (extra 170 Nm) from a smaller displacement engine, resulting in better fuel efficiency and acceleration.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Unlike the B8 RS 4, which had a 7-speed dual-clutch S-Tronic transmission, the new RS 4 Avant is available with an 8-speed 'Tiptronic' automatic transmission.


title: Audi RS 4

text: The B7 RS 4 was planned to replace the C5 RS6 in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Speed World Challenge, but after Champion Racing had prepared the car, it was decided not to compete in the series, due to rule changes imposed by the SCCA on Audi concerning 4WD systems, wheel size, and engine power output. Rather than scrapping the fully built Speed World Challenge RS 4, Champion Racing and Audi used the car as a part of the American Le Mans Series Vitesse Program, which highlights the technology link between race cars and conventional series production road cars.


title: Audi RS 4

text: Six RS 4s are openly campaigned in the Superstars Series by Audi Sport Italia. Audi RS 4 Quattro driver Gianni Morbidelli won the 2007 and 2008 championships.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: Zubin Mehta (born 29 April 1936) is an Indian conductor of Western classical music. He is music director emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) and conductor emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: Mehta's father was the founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, and Mehta received his early musical education from him. When he was 18, he enrolled in the Vienna state music academy, from which he graduated after three years with a diploma as a conductor. He began winning international competitions and conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic at age 21. Beginning in the 1960s, Mehta gained experience by substituting for celebrated maestros throughout the world.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: Mehta was music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1961 to 1967 and of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1962 to 1978, the youngest music director ever for any major North American orchestra. In 1969, he was appointed Music Adviser to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and in 1981 he became its Music Director for Life. From 1978 to 1991, Mehta was music director of the New York Philharmonic. He was chief conductor of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence from 1985 to 2017.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: He is an honorary citizen of both Florence and Tel Aviv and was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997 and of the Bavarian State Opera in 2006. The title of Honorary Conductor was bestowed on him by numerous orchestras throughout the world. More recently, Mehta made several tours with the Bavarian State Opera and kept up a busy schedule of guest conducting appearances. In December 2006, he received the Kennedy Center Honor and in October 2008 he was honored by the Japanese Imperial Family with the Praemium Imperiale.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, during the British Raj, the older son of Mehli (1908–2002) and Tehmina (Daruvala) Mehta. His native language is Gujarati. His father was a self-taught violinist who founded and conducted the Bombay Symphony Orchestra and later the American Youth Symphony, which he conducted for 33 years after moving to Los Angeles. His father had previously lived in New York to study with violinist Ivan Galamian, a noted teacher who also taught Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. His father returned to Bombay as an accomplished violinist of the Russian school. Mehta has said that on many occasions when he conducts in the U.S., someone approaches him to say, "You don't know how much I loved your father!".


title: Zubin Mehta

text: Mehta has described his childhood as surrounded by music at home all the time, and has said he probably learnt to speak Gujarati and sing around the same time. He says his father had a strong influence on him, and he listened to his quartet daily after his father returned from the USA after the Second World War. Mehta was first taught to play violin and piano by his father. When he reached his early teens, his father allowed him to lead sectional rehearsals of the Bombay Symphony, and at sixteen, he was conducting the full orchestra during rehearsals.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: Mehta graduated from St. Mary's School, Mumbai and went on to study medicine at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, at the urging of his mother, who wanted him to take up a more "respectable" profession than music. At age eighteen, he dropped out after two years to move to Vienna, one of Europe's music centers, in order to study music under Hans Swarowsky at the state music academy. He lived on $75 per month, and was a contemporary of conductor Claudio Abbado and conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: He remained at the academy for three years, during which time he also studied the double bass, which he played in the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Swarowsky recognized Mehta's abilities early on, describing him as a "demoniac conductor" who "had it all". While still a student, after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he organized a student orchestra in seven days and conducted it in a concert at a refugee camp outside Vienna.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: Mehta graduated in 1957 when he was 21 with a diploma in conducting. In 1958 he entered the Liverpool International Conductor's Competition with 100 contestants and took first prize. The prize included a year's contract as associate conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which he conducted in 14 concerts, all of which received rave reviews.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: He then was a 2nd-place prizewinner at the summer academy at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts. At that competition he attracted the notice of Charles Munch, then the conductor of the Boston Symphony, who later helped his career. In 1958, he boldly programmed an all-Schoenberg concert, which did so well that he accepted further bookings. That same year he also married a Canadian voice student, Carmen Lasky, whom he met in Vienna.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: During 1960 and 1961, Mehta was asked to substitute for celebrated maestros throughout the world, receiving high critical acclaim for most of those concerts. In 1960, he conducted a series for the Vienna Symphony and later that summer made his New York conducting debut leading the New York Philharmonic.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In 1960, with the help of Charles Munch, Mehta became the chief conductor and Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1967. By 1961, he had already conducted the Vienna, Berlin and Israel Philharmonic orchestras. In 1962, he took the Montreal Symphony on a concert tour to Russia, Paris and Vienna. Mehta was most apprehensive about his concert in Vienna, which he said was considered the "capital of Western music". His single concert there received a 20-minute ovation, 14 curtain calls, and two encores.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In 1961, he was named assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (LAP), although the orchestra's music director designate, Georg Solti, was not consulted on the appointment, and resigned in protest. The orchestra had been without a permanent conductor for four years when Mehta started directing it.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: Mehta was named Music Director of the orchestra and held the post from 1962 to 1978. When he began his first season with the orchestra in 1962, he was 26, the youngest person ever to hold that title. And as he had also conducted the Montreal Symphony during those early years, he became the first person ever to direct two North American symphony orchestras at the same time.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: As the LAP's first conductor in four years, Mehta worked to polish its overall sound to something closer to the Vienna Philharmonic's. He succeeded in making its sound warmer and richer by fostering competition among the musicians, shifting assignments, giving promotions and changing seating arrangements. He also inspired the musicians; 21-year-old cellist Jacqueline du Pré said, "He provides a magic carpet for you to float on." Cellist Kurt Reher recalls Mehta's first rehearsal with the orchestra: "within two beats we were entranced. It seemed this young man had the ability, the musical knowledge of a man of 50 or 55."


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In 1965, after Mehta's debut with the Metropolitan Opera's performance of "Aida", music critic Alan Rich wrote, "Mehta brought to the conducting of the score a kind of bedazzlement that has no peer in recent times ... It was a lunging, teeming, breathless performance that still had plenty of breath." He subsequently conducted the Met in performances of "Carmen", "Tosca", and "Turandot".


title: Zubin Mehta

text: For Montreal's Expo 67, he conducted both the Montreal and the Los Angeles orchestras together for a performance of Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique". Also that year he conducted the world premier of Marvin David Levy's "Mourning Becomes Electra".


title: Zubin Mehta

text: By May 1967, his schedule was becoming overcrowded and he resigned his Montreal post. That fall he took the 107-member Los Angeles Philharmonic on an eight-week tour, including engagements in Vienna, Paris, Athens, and Bombay. By 1968, his popularity kept him busier than the year before, including 22 weeks of concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, three operas at the Met, television appearances in the U.S. and Italy, five recording sessions, and guest appearances at five festivals and with five orchestras. "Time" magazine put him on its cover in January 1968. In 1969 his schedule remained equally active.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In 1970 Mehta performed with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention on Zappa's "200 Motels" and Edgar Varese's Intergrales, at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion basketball stadium with an audience of 12,000. There is no authorized recording, though some bootlegs exist.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In 1978, Mehta became the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the New York Philharmonic and remained there until his resignation in 1991.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: He became music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) in 1977. He began the first of many guest appearances with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) in 1961. In 1966, he toured with the orchestra, and during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, he rushed back to Israel to conduct several special concerts to "demonstrate solidarity" with its people.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: He was appointed IPO's Music Advisor in 1969, Music Director in 1977, and was made its Music Director for Life in 1981.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: During his five-decade connection with the IPO, he has conducted it in thousands of concerts in Israel and abroad. He conducted concerts with the IPO in South Lebanon in 1982, after which Arabs rushed onstage to hug the musicians. He conducted it during the Gulf War in 1991, when the audience brought gas masks; in 2007, it played for an entirely Arab audience in Nazareth. He claims to have a "deep kinship" with Israel's musicians and the "spirit and tradition of the Jewish people". He adds that conducting the IPO is "something I do for my heart". Recalling those earlier years, he says, "How I would love to see that sight again today, of Arabs and Jews hugging each other. I'm a positive thinker. I know this day will come."


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In 1978, Mehta left the Los Angeles Philharmonic to become music director for the New York Philharmonic (NYP). Among the reasons he wanted to direct the NYP was that it allowed him to experiment with new ideas, such as taking the orchestra to Harlem. There, they played at the Abyssinian Baptist Church each year. Accompanying the orchestra with Mehta for various concerts were Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, and Kathleen Battle. He stayed with NYP until 1991.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: From 1985 to 2017, Mehta was chief conductor of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence. From 1998 until 2006, he was music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The Munich Philharmonic named him its Honorary Conductor. Since 2005, Mehta has been the main conductor of the Palau de les Arts, the new opera house of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències in Valencia, Spain.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: While he was the conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Mehta commissioned Ravi Shankar's Concerto No. 2 for sitar and orchestra. Following New York performances, the concerto was later recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In 1998 he went to Munich where he began directing the Bavarian State Opera, because, he said, it provided "another panorama for me, to be involved in the running of an opera house".


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In 1990, he conducted the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Orchestra del Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in the first ever Three Tenors concert in Rome, joining the tenors again in 1994 at the Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles. In between those appearances, he conducted the historic 1992 production of "Tosca" in which each act took place in the actual setting and at the actual time specified in the score. This production starred Catherine Malfitano in the title role, Plácido Domingo as Cavaradossi and Ruggero Raimondi as Baron Scarpia. Act I was telecast live from Rome's Basilica of Sant'Andrea della Valle on Saturday, 11 July, at noon (Central European Daylight Saving Time); act II was telecast later that evening from the Palazzo Farnese at 9:40 p.m.; act III was telecast live on Sunday, 12 July, at 7:00 am from the Castel Sant'Angelo, also known as Hadrian's Tomb.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In June 1994, Mehta performed the Mozart Requiem with the members of the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the ruins of Sarajevo's National Library, in a fundraising concert for the victims of armed conflict and remembrance of the thousands of people killed in the Yugoslav Wars. On 29 August 1999, he conducted Mahler's Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection"), at the vicinity of Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar, with the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra sitting alongside each other.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: He toured India (Mumbai) in 1984 with the New York Philharmonic, and again in November–December 1994 with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, along with soloists Itzhak Perlman and Gil Shaham. In 1997 and 1998, Mehta worked in collaboration with Chinese film director Zhang Yimou on a production of Giacomo Puccini's opera "Turandot", which they took to Florence and to Beijing, where it was staged in its actual surroundings in the Forbidden City, with over 300 extras and 300 soldiers, for nine historic performances. The making of this production was chronicled in the documentary "The Turandot Project", which Mehta narrated.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: On 26 December 2005, the first anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, Mehta and the Bavarian State Orchestra performed for the first time in Chennai (formerly Madras) at the Madras Music Academy. This tsunami memorial concert was organized by the German consulate in Chennai along with the Max-Mueller Bhavan/Goethe-Institut. 2006 was his last year with the Bavarian State Orchestra.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In 2011, Mehta's performance with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at The Proms in London was picketed and interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters, which caused the BBC to halt the live radio relay of the concert, the first such incident in Proms history. In September 2013, Mehta appeared with the Bavarian State Orchestra at a special concert, "Ehsaas e Kashmir", organized by the German Embassy in India, at Mughal Gardens, Srinagar. Mehta and the orchestra renounced their usual fees for this concert.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In October 2015, he returned to Chennai to perform with the Australian World Orchestra (AWO) at the Madras Music Academy.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In 2016, the Harbin Symphony Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performed two concerts conducted by Mehta in the frame of 33rd Harbin Summer Music Festival at Harbin Concert Hall.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In December 2016, the Israel Philharmonic announced that Mehta would conclude his tenure as music director in October 2019. He now has the title of music director emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic.


title: Zubin Mehta

text: In August 2022 Mehta will be conducting the Australian World Orchestra (AWO) in Sydney and Melbourne at Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House and Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne. He will also be conducting the AWO at the Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC Proms 2022.