title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: Throughout 1983, Bockwinkel faced challengers such as Pat Patterson, Rick Martel, Baron von Raschke, Jerry Lawler, Wahoo McDaniel, and Brad Rheingans. In April 1983, Bockwinkel defended his title against Hulk Hogan once more at the Super Sunday supercard in the St. Paul Civic Center, which was attended by over 18,000 fans with over 4,000 more fans watching on closed-circuit television in the Roy Wilkins Auditorium. Hogan won the bout (and the title) by pinfall following a leg drop, but subsequently AWA president Stanley Blackburn overturned the decision on the basis that Hogan had thrown Bockwinkel over the top rope (an illegal maneuver in the AWA), infuriating fans. Behind the scenes, disputes between Hogan and Verne Gagne led Hogan to depart the AWA later that year to return to the WWF, where he was swiftly made WWF Champion and became a global star. In July 1983, Bockwinkel returned to All Japan Pro Wrestling as part of its "Grand Champion Carnival III" tour, facing opponents such as Genichiro Tenryu and Jumbo Tsuruta.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: Bockwinkel began 1984 with defences against challengers such as Dino Bravo, Jerry Lawler, and Brad Rheingans. He had a short feud with his former ally Blackjack Lanza, who left the Heenan Family after being berated by Bobby Heenan for losing to Greg Gagne; Bockwinkel also faced Lanza and his new partner Blackjack Mulligan in a series of tag team matches. In February 1984, Bockwinkel returned to All Japan Pro Wrestling as part of its "Excite Series" tour; on February 23 in the Kuramae Kokugikan in Tokyo, Bockwinkel faced NWA International Heavyweight Champion Jumbo Tsuruta in a title versus title match with Terry Funk as the guest referee. The bout was won by Tsuruta, bringing Bockwinkel's third reign as champion to an end. Similarly to Otto Wanz in 1982, Tsuruta's victory reportedly came about after All Japan Pro Wrestling owner Giant Baba paid Verne Gagne a "sizeable sum of money" for Tsuruta to have a short reign as AWA World Heavyweight Champion.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: In spring 1984, Bockwinkel unsuccessfully attempted to regain the AWA World Heavyweight Championship from Jumbo Tsuruta in a series of bouts. After Rick Martel won the title from Tsuruta in May 1984, Bockwinkel was his first challenger. In July 1984, Bockwinkel formed a tag team with Mr. Saito and began a lengthy feud with The Fabulous Ones that lasted to the end of the year. In September 1984, Bockwinkel's long-time manager Bobby Heenan left the AWA to join the World Wrestling Federation, ending their decade-long association. In December 1984, Bockwinkel returned to All Japan Pro Wrestling, participating in that year's World's Strongest Tag Determination League with Harley Race as his partner.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: Bockwinkel and Saito continued to team in early 1985, facing teams such as Curt Hennig and Larry Hennig, The Road Warriors, and The High Flyers (Greg Gagne and Jim Brunzell) before separating in April 1985 when Mr. Saito left the AWA due to legal issues. That same month, Bockwinkel reformed his tag team with Ray Stevens. In July 1985, the team was joined by Larry Zbyszko, with the trio feuding with Greg Gagne and Sgt. Slaughter. At the inaugural SuperClash supercard event on September 28, 1985 in Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois - which was attended by over 20,000 people - Bockwinkel competed on the undercard in a six-man tag team match, teaming with Stevens and Zbyszko in a loss to Curt Hennig, Greg Gagne, and Scott Hall. In November and December 1985, Bockwinkel once again participated in the All Japan Pro Wrestling World's Strongest Tag Determination League, teaming with Curt Hennig.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: On the December 3, 1985 episode of "AWA on ESPN", Zbyszko faced Greg Gagne with Bockwinkel on color commentary at ringside. The match ended in a disqualification when Zbyszko struck Gagne in the midsection with a "nunchaku". Following the match, Zbyszko struck Gagne in the back of the head, then hit Bockwinkel as he remonstrated with him. The angle saw the alliance between Zbyszko and Bockwinkel end, with Bockwinkel turning face for the first time since joining the AWA in 1970. In January 1986, Bockwinkel challenged NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair at the Winnipeg Arena in Winnipeg, Manitoba; the bout ended in a double count out. Bockwinkel faced Zbyszko in a series of increasingly violent matches throughout early 1986, including Texas death matches and steel cage matches.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: In April 1986, Bockwinkel began challenging AWA World Heavyweight Champion Stan Hansen. At the WrestleRock 86 supercard event in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bockwinkel defeated Hansen by disqualification (meaning the title did not change hands). After Hansen no-showed a scheduled title defence against Bockwinkel due to a prior touring commitment with All Japan Pro Wrestling, Verne Gagne stripped him of the title and Bockwinkel was named the new champion (by forfeiture) for a fourth and final time on June 28, 1986 at the age of 52. A disgruntled Hansen defended the title belt in Japan, then upon his return to the United States ran it over with his car and mailed the fragments to Gagne.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: Throughout the remainder of 1986, Bockwinkel defended the title against Larry Zbyszko and other challengers such as Boris Zhukov, Nord the Barbarian, and Scott Hall, as well as wrestling Curt Henning to a time limit draw in an hour-long bout. In 1987, he faced challengers such as Leon White, The Super Ninja, Austin Idol, and Colonel DeBeers. His fourth and final reign as AWA World Heavyweight Champion ended on May 2, 1987 when he lost to Curt Hennig at SuperClash II in the Cow Palace in San Francisco, California. The match ended in controversial fashion due to interference by Larry Zbyszko, who handed a roll of coins to Hennig to use on Bockwinkel. Verne Gagne had reportedly originally intended to reverse the decision and return the title to Bockwinkel, but decided to keep the title on Hennig due to the strong reception to him during the match and a desire to prevent Hennig from leaving the AWA for the World Wrestling Federation.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: Bockwinkel wrestled his final match for the AWA on August 2, 1987, unsuccessfully challenging Curt Hennig. In August and September 1987 he made his final appearances with All Japan Pro Wrestling as part of its "Summer Action Series II" tour. On November 16, he participated in a World Wrestling Federation battle royal at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey alongside multiple other veteran wrestlers, with former NWA World Heavyweight Champion Lou Thesz prevailing. Bockwinkel subsequently retired from professional wrestling, marking the end of a career that spanned four decades.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: With the American Wrestling Association declining, in 1987 Bockwinkel approached the World Wrestling Federation and was hired as a road agent. He also serving as a color commentator for occasional televised events after having been introduced at an arena show by Bobby Heenan as his replacement for the night. In December 1987, he served as special guest referee for a bout between Randy Savage and The Honky Tonk Man. He was released in 1989 due to budget cuts, after which he began working in financial services.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: Bockwinkel made a return to the ring for one night in December 1990, facing Masa Saito in a bout for New Japan Pro-Wrestling held in the Hamamatsu Arena in Hamamatsu, Japan. He made a second return in May 1992, wrestling Billy Robinson to a time limit draw in a exhibition match for UWF International held in the Yokohama Arena in Yokohama, Japan. Bockwinkel wrestled his last ever match on May 23, 1993 for World Championship Wrestling at the pay-per-view (which featured multiple veteran wrestlers), going to a time limit draw with former NWA World Heavyweight Champion Dory Funk Jr.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: In 1994, Bockwinkel became the on-screen commissioner of World Championship Wrestling. His run as commissioner quietly ended in the summer of 1995, although he was last mentioned as commissioner on a November 1995 edition of "WCW Monday Nitro" when WCW attorney Nick Lambrose stripped The Giant of the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. He was released by WCW in December 1995.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: In 2000, Bockwinkel and Yoshiaki Fujiwara served as commissioners for a short-lived shoot-style promotion, the Japan Pro Wrestling Association.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: On March 29, 2010, Bockwinkel made a guest appearance on WWE "Raw", where he was one of several "legends" at ringside for a lumberjack match between Christian and Ted Dibiase.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: Bockwinkel was known for his technical wrestling ability and in-ring psychology. Bob Backlund wrote in his autobiography that "Nick had a great head for the game, a wonderful sense of ring psychology, and an uncanny ability to use his intelligence and cockiness to get under the people's skin. He was a terrific representative for the AWA and was the key player in the success of the AWA for a long time." Backlund goes on to say, "He was a very intelligent, well-spoken, and cocky heel, and his in-ring skills were right up there with the very best in the business." In the book "50 Greatest Professional Wrestlers of All Time: The Definitive Shoot", author Larry Matysik named Bockwinkel the 18th greatest professional wrestler, writing "he was an athlete, he could wrestle, and his psychology was second to none." Professional wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer described Bockwinkel as "a first-rate worker". Fellow wrestler Jim Wilson described Bockwinkel as "one of wrestling's truly smooth workers with a repertoire of moves executed fluidly, believably and without a hint of pain for his opponents." Bockwinkel was reportedly considered by the National Wrestling Alliance as a candidate to be NWA World Heavyweight Champion in the late-1970s but withdrew his name from contention due to regarding the travelling schedule of the champion to be too arduous. Richard Berger described Bockwinkel as "a poster boy for what was right about wrestling" who was "a technical maestro, capable of working smoothly and comfortably with most any opponent regardless of that man's style or limitations".


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: Bockwinkel was known for his calm, charismatic, articulate promos, which distinguished him from many of his contemporaries. "I used to use the four, five or six syllable words as best I could," Bockwinkel was quoted as saying in the book "The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Heels". "If I ran across one I didn't know, I had a little dictionary. I would have this little dictionary, with 70 or 80 words, that I would always be perusing. I had it with me all the time. Automatically, some of these words just starting coming to me in my interviews because I was familiar with them." Richard Berger described Bockwinkel as a "master orator" who spoke "candidly, clearly and intelligently". In 2008, Chris Jericho based his new villainous wrestling persona on Bockwinkel. In his autobiography "The Best in the World" Jericho wrote, "The WWE had recently released an AWA retrospective DVD, and while watching it, I remembered how great a heel Bockwinkel was. He wore suits for all his interviews and used ten-dollar words that went over the average fans' heads, pissing them off markedly. Here was this pompous blowhard using the fancy talk and wearing the fancy suits, claiming to be the best because he was the World Champion, which was the truth."


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: Bockwinkel was inducted into the "Wrestling Observer Newsletter" Hall of Fame in 1996 (as part of the inaugural class), the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum in 2003, the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame in 2007, the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2009, and the National Wrestling Alliance Hall of Fame in 2016. In 2007, magazine "Pro Wrestling Illustrated" gave Bockwinkel its Stanley Weston Award (a lifetime achievement award). In 2009, the Cauliflower Alley Club gave Bockwinkel its Iron Mike Mazurki Award.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: For the first half of his career, Bockwinkel was a classic babyface, at one point being billed as "Young Nicky Bockwinkel, the old ladies' favorite". In the second half of his career, he portrayed a "cocky, uppity Beverly Hills California heel" and a "pompous blowhard". Phil Nowick described him as "a classic cheating heel who was seemingly unbeatable no matter how big of a pounding he took".


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: Bockwinkel used a variety of finishing moves over his career, including a piledriver and the "Oriental Sleeper" (a sleeper hold). His other signature moves included an armlock, leglock, and shoulderbreaker.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: In 1967, Bockwinkel appeared in the episode "I Was a 99-Pound Weakling" of the television series "The Monkees". In 1969, he appeared in the episode "Savage Sunday" of the show "Hawaii Five-O". In 1968, Bockwinkel appeared as a contestant on the NBC game show "Hollywood Squares", winning a Pontiac Firebird, a deluxe kitchen set, and $1,300 in cash.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: On June 22, 1957, Bockwinkel married Susan Tranchitella, with whom he had two daughters. The couple divorced in 1967. Bockwinkel remarried in 1972 to Darlene Hampp, with the marriage lasting until his death.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: In 2007, Bockwinkel was elected President of the Cauliflower Alley Club, a non-profit fraternal organization of professional wrestlers. He stepped down in 2014 due to health issues, being replaced by B. Brian Blair.


title: Nick Bockwinkel

text: Bockwinkel died from undisclosed causes on the evening of November 14, 2015 at the age of 80. Prior to his death he had been suffering from memory loss. He was survived by his wife Darlene, his two children from his first marriage, two grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. His remains were cremated in Las Vegas and a memorial mass was held at St. Joseph Croatian Catholic Church in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, on November 21, 2015.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: Kurt Wallander () is a fictional Swedish police inspector created by Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell (1948 – 2015). He is the protagonist of many thriller/mystery novels set in and around the town of Ystad, south-east of the city of Malmö, in the southern province of Scania. Wallander has been portrayed on screen by the actors Rolf Lassgård, Krister Henriksson, Sir Kenneth Branagh and Adam Pålsson.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: Wallander was born in 1948. His mother died when he was about 14. After completing national service, he joined the police. As a young police officer, he was nearly killed when a drunk whom he was questioning stabbed him with a butcher's knife (this is mentioned in the account of his first case). He has a sister, Kristina. Wallander was once married, but his wife Mona left him and he has since had a difficult relationship with his rebellious only child, Linda, who barely survived a suicide attempt when she was fifteen. He also has issues with his father, an artist who has painted the same landscape 7,000 times for a living; the elder Wallander strongly disapproved of his son's decision to join the police force and frequently derides him for it.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: Wallander is a great fan of opera; while in his car he regularly listens to recordings of famous opera singers such as Maria Callas, and when he can find the time goes to opera performances, sometimes crossing over to Copenhagen, Denmark for this purpose. At one time, Wallander had dreamed of making opera his life, leaving the police force and becoming the impresario of his friend, Sten Widén, a tenor who aspired to sing opera. But Widén's voice was not good enough and the dream came to naught—a crushing disappointment in Wallander's life (as in Widén's).


title: Kurt Wallander

text: Inspector Wallander has few close friends and is known for his less-than-desirable lifestyle; he consumes too much alcohol and junk food, exercises very little, and sometimes struggles with anger. He frequently regards the crimes he investigates on a very personal level, throwing himself into catching criminals and going against the orders of his superiors to try to solve a case, often with negative effects on his emotional stability.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: Over the years he has grown increasingly disillusioned with his work and often wonders whether he should have become a police officer at all. He was once falsely sued and harassed for police brutality and still lives with the guilt of having shot and killed a man in the fog, an act which drove him into depression and nearly led to his resignation. His relationships with his colleagues are tentative; they are alternately amazed by his intellect and frustrated by his brusque manner and aggressive tactics.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: He is frequently at loose ends socially and with his family. After the breakup of his marriage, he had an affair with Annette Brolin, the prosecutor with whom he was working on some cases — but she was married and had children, and would not consider divorcing for his sake ("Faceless Killers"). In later years, he maintains a somewhat inconsistent romantic relationship with Baiba Liepa, a woman in Riga, Latvia, whom he met while investigating a murder there, until it eventually dissolves. Over the course of the series he is diagnosed with diabetes, and towards the end of his career he suffers from memory lapses, discovering he has developed Alzheimer's disease, with which his father was also afflicted.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: The following Kurt Wallander novels have been translated into English. They are listed in the order that they were originally published in Sweden:


title: Kurt Wallander

text: The following novel features Wallander's daughter Linda in the lead, while he is a secondary character:


title: Kurt Wallander

text: It was intended as the first of a spinoff trilogy. However Mankell was so distraught after the suicide of Johanna Sällström, the actress playing the character at the time in the Swedish TV series, that he decided to abandon the series after only the first novel.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: The order that the novels occur in the "timeline of the series" is shown below (with the title of the English translation shown in parentheses). Note that there is some overlap in the timeline among the novels as there are three separate series.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: Between 1994 and 2007, all nine Wallander novels published at the time were made into films in Sweden starring Rolf Lassgård as Wallander:


title: Kurt Wallander

text: From 2005 to 2006, 13 new stories, starring Krister Henriksson as Kurt Wallander and Johanna Sällström as Linda Wallander, were produced. The first film, based on "Before the Frost", was released in cinemas. The rest are original stories not based on any of Mankell's books, and were released on DVD, with the exception of "Mastermind" which was also released in cinemas.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: Two of these films were directed by BAFTA award-winning Swedish director Jonas Grimås, who outside Sweden is best known for his work on British television such as the 1990s crime drama "Second Sight" (Kingdom of the Blind) starring Clive Owen, police drama series "Heartbeat", and "Hamish Macbeth".


title: Kurt Wallander

text: Yellow Bird announced in March 2008 that 13 new Swedish language Wallander films were to be made with Krister Henriksson. Production started in 2008. These new films were to have a more political slant than the previous films starring Henriksson. The first production in the second series, , was given a cinematic launch in Sweden on 9 January 2009 before being released on DVD. The theme over the closing credits is "Quiet Night", sung by Anna Ternheim. The remaining were scheduled to be released on DVD during early 2010:


title: Kurt Wallander

text: A third series consisting of six episodes was released in 2013. This is the last season with Krister Henriksson. In these final episodes, Kurt Wallander suffers from memory problems because of Alzheimer’s disease, and he cannot continue to work as a policeman.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: The novels have also been adapted as twelve television films for the BBC, produced by Yellow Bird and Left Bank Pictures. The series stars Kenneth Branagh as Wallander. The episodes have not been filmed in the order in which the original novels were published, resulting in changes to the backstories of the lead characters in the films. The first series consisted of the novels "Sidetracked", "Firewall" and "One Step Behind". These three were shot on location in Ystad in the summer of 2008, with a combined budget of £6 million ($12 million). They aired in late 2008 on the BBC.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: A second series of Wallander adaptations was commissioned by the BBC from the same production team in 2008. Broadcast in January 2010, the second series was composed of adaptations of "Faceless Killers", "The Man Who Smiled", and "The Fifth Woman".


title: Kurt Wallander

text: The third series began shooting in Ystad and Riga, Latvia in the Summer of 2011 and continued into the winter. Broadcast in July 2012, it consists of adaptations of "An Event in Autumn", "The Dogs of Riga" and "Before the Frost". While the novel "Before the Frost" has Wallander's daughter Linda as its protagonist detective, the story was adapted for television so that Wallander himself became the lead.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: The BBC "Wallander" series concluded in May 2016 with a three-episode fourth series consisting of an adaptation of "The White Lioness" and a two-episode adaptation of Mankell's final Wallander novel, "The Troubled Man".


title: Kurt Wallander

text: Mankell's friend and writer Jan Guillou used Kurt Wallander in the 10th book of his Carl Hamilton-series . Guillou and Mankell also co-wrote the Swedish crime-drama mini series "Talismanen" and here we also encounter Kurt Wallander as a supporting character, this time portrayed by actor Lennart Jähkel.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: Starting in September 2020, streaming service Netflix launched a new English-language series based on the character, entitled "Young Wallander". The series depicts Wallander (Adam Pålsson) as a rookie detective in present-day Malmö, as opposed to the usual setting of Ystad. The show is not based on any of the novels, nor does it feature any of the familiar supporting characters from Mankell's works.


title: Kurt Wallander

text: "Young Wallander" is a Swedish-UK co-production, with Pålsson the sole Swedish actor, amidst a mostly British cast. In November 2020, the series was renewed for a second season.


title: Strychnine poisoning

text: Strychnine poisoning can be fatal to humans and other animals and can occur by inhalation, swallowing or absorption through eyes or mouth. It produces some of the most dramatic and painful symptoms of any known toxic reaction, making it quite noticeable and a common choice for assassinations and poison attacks. For this reason, strychnine poisoning is often portrayed in literature and film, such as the murder mysteries written by Agatha Christie.


title: Strychnine poisoning

text: The probable lethal oral dose in humans is 1.5 to 2 mg/kg. Similarly, the median lethal dose for dogs, cats, and rats ranges from 0.5 to 2.35 mg/kg.


title: Strychnine poisoning

text: Ten to twenty minutes after exposure, the body's muscles begin to spasm, starting with the head and neck in the form of trismus and risus sardonicus. The spasms then spread to every muscle in the body, with nearly continuous convulsions, and get worse at the slightest stimulus. The convulsions progress, increasing in intensity and frequency until the backbone arches continually. Convulsions lead to lactic acidosis, hyperthermia and rhabdomyolysis. These are followed by postictal depression. Death comes from asphyxiation caused by paralysis of the neural pathways that control breathing, or by exhaustion from the convulsions. The subject usually dies within 2–3 hours after exposure.


title: Strychnine poisoning

text: declining. I felt better, but my lower limbs were as cold as ice, and the calf muscles kept tense and were


title: Strychnine poisoning

text: There is no specific antidote for strychnine. "The convulsions are often triggered by stimuli – when your body senses something, neurons want to fire, and if they aren’t controlled seizures occur – so patients are generally kept in quiet, dark rooms." Treatment of strychnine poisoning involves an oral application of an activated charcoal infusion which serves to absorb any poison within the digestive tract that has not yet been absorbed into the blood. Anticonvulsants such as phenobarbital or diazepam are administered to control convulsions, along with muscle relaxants such as dantrolene to combat muscle rigidity. If the patient survives past 24 hours, recovery is probable.


title: Strychnine poisoning

text: The treatment for strychnine poisoning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was to administer tannic acid which precipitates the strychnine as an insoluble tannate salt, and then to anaesthetise the patient with chloroform until the effects of the strychnine had worn off.


title: Strychnine poisoning

text: Strychnine is easily quantitated in body fluids and tissues using instrumental methods in order to confirm a diagnosis of poisoning in hospitalized victims or to assist in the forensic investigation of a case of fatal overdosage. The concentrations in blood or urine of those with symptoms are often in the 1–30 mg/L range.


title: Strychnine poisoning

text: Strychnine poisoning in animals occurs usually from ingestion of baits designed for use against rodents (especially gophers and moles) and coyotes. Rodent baits are commonly available over-the-counter, but coyote baits are illegal in the United States. However, since 1990 in the United States most baits containing strychnine have been replaced with zinc phosphide baits. The most common domestic animal to be affected is the dog, either through accidental ingestion or intentional poisoning.


title: Strychnine poisoning

text: The onset of symptoms is 10 to 120 minutes after ingestion. Symptoms include seizures, a "sawhorse" stance, and opisthotonus (rigid extension of all four limbs). Death is usually secondary to respiratory paralysis. Treatment is by detoxification using activated charcoal, pentobarbital for the symptoms, and artificial respiration for apnea.


title: Strychnine poisoning

text: In most western nations a special license is needed to use and possess strychnine for agricultural use.


title: Azimuthal equidistant projection

text: The azimuthal equidistant projection is an azimuthal map projection. It has the useful properties that all points on the map are at proportionally correct distances from the center point, and that all points on the map are at the correct azimuth (direction) from the center point. A useful application for this type of projection is a polar projection which shows all meridians (lines of longitude) as straight, with distances from the pole represented correctly. The flag of the United Nations contains an example of a polar azimuthal equidistant projection.


title: Azimuthal equidistant projection

text: While it may have been used by ancient Egyptians for star maps in some holy books, the earliest text describing the azimuthal equidistant projection is an 11th-century work by al-Biruni.


title: Azimuthal equidistant projection

text: The projection appears in many Renaissance maps, and Gerardus Mercator used it for an inset of the north polar regions in sheet 13 and legend 6 of his well-known 1569 map. In France and Russia this projection is named "Postel projection" after Guillaume Postel, who used it for a map in 1581. Many modern star chart planispheres use the polar azimuthal equidistant projection.


title: Azimuthal equidistant projection

text: A point on the globe is chosen as "the center" in the sense that mapped distances and azimuth directions from that point to any other point will be correct. That point, ("φ", "λ"), will project to the center of a circular projection, with "φ" referring to latitude and "λ" referring to longitude. All points along a given azimuth will project along a straight line from the center, and the angle "θ" that the line subtends from the vertical is the azimuth angle. The distance from the center point to another projected point "ρ" is the arc length along a great circle between them on the globe. By this description, then, the point on the plane specified by ("θ","ρ") will be projected to Cartesian coordinates:


title: Azimuthal equidistant projection

text: The relationship between the coordinates ("θ","ρ") of the point on the globe, and its latitude and longitude coordinates ("φ", "λ") is given by the equations:


title: Azimuthal equidistant projection

text: When the center point is the north pole, "φ" equals formula_3 and "λ" is arbitrary, so it is most convenient to assign it the value of 0. This assignment significantly simplifies the equations for "ρ" and "θ" to:


title: Azimuthal equidistant projection

text: With the circumference of the Earth being approximately , the maximum distance that can be displayed on an azimuthal equidistant projection map is half the circumference, or about . For distances less than distortions are minimal. For distances the distortions are moderate. Distances greater than are severely distorted.


title: Azimuthal equidistant projection

text: If the azimuthal equidistant projection map is centered about a point whose antipodal point lies on land and the map is extended to the maximum distance of the antipode point smears into a large circle. This is shown in the example of two maps centered about Los Angeles, and Taipei. The antipode for Los Angeles is in the south Indian Ocean hence there is not much significant distortion of land masses for the Los Angeles centered map except for East Africa and Madagascar. On the other hand, Taipei's antipode is near the Argentina–Paraguay border, causing the Taipei centered map to severely distort South America.


title: Azimuthal equidistant projection

text: Azimuthal equidistant projection maps can be useful in terrestrial point to point communication. This type of projection allows the operator to easily determine in which direction to point their directional antenna. The operator simply finds on the map the location of the target transmitter or receiver (i.e. the other antenna being communicated with) and uses the map to determine the azimuth angle needed to point the operator's antenna. The operator would use an electric rotator to point the antenna. The map can also be used in one way communication. For example if the operator is looking to receive signals from a distant radio station, this type of projection could help identify the direction of the distant radio station. In order for the map to be useful, the map should be centered as close as possible about the location of the operator's antenna.


title: Azimuthal equidistant projection

text: Azimuthal equidistant projection maps can also be useful to show ranges of missiles, as demonstrated by the map on the right.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a spontaneous process of symmetry breaking, by which a physical system in a symmetric state spontaneously ends up in an asymmetric state. In particular, it can describe systems where the equations of motion or the Lagrangian obey symmetries, but the lowest-energy vacuum solutions do not exhibit that same symmetry. When the system goes to one of those vacuum solutions, the symmetry is broken for perturbations around that vacuum even though the entire Lagrangian retains that symmetry.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: By definition, spontaneous symmetry breaking requires the existence of physical laws (e.g. quantum mechanics) which are invariant under a symmetry transformation (such as translation or rotation), so that any pair of outcomes differing only by that transformation have the same probability distribution. For example if measurements of an observable at any two different positions have the same probability distribution, the observable has translational symmetry.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs when this relation breaks down, while the underlying physical laws remain symmetrical.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Conversely, in explicit symmetry breaking, if two outcomes are considered, the probability distributions of a pair of outcomes can be different. For example in an electric field, the forces on a charged particle are different in different directions, so the rotational symmetry is explicitly broken by the electric field which does not have this symmetry.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Phases of matter, such as crystals, magnets, and conventional superconductors, as well as simple phase transitions can be described by spontaneous symmetry breaking. Notable exceptions include topological phases of matter like the fractional quantum Hall effect.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Typically, when spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs, the observable properties of the system change in multiple ways. For example the density, compressibility, coefficient of thermal expansion, and specific heat will be expected to change when a liquid becomes a solid.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Consider a symmetric upward dome with a trough circling the bottom. If a ball is put at the very peak of the dome, the system is symmetric with respect to a rotation around the center axis. But the ball may "spontaneously break" this symmetry by rolling down the dome into the trough, a point of lowest energy. Afterward, the ball has come to a rest at some fixed point on the perimeter. The dome and the ball retain their individual symmetry, but the system does not.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: In the simplest idealized relativistic model, the spontaneously broken symmetry is summarized through an illustrative scalar field theory. The relevant Lagrangian of a scalar field formula_1, which essentially dictates how a system behaves, can be split up into kinetic and potential terms,


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: It is in this potential term formula_2 that the symmetry breaking is triggered. An example of a potential, due to Jeffrey Goldstone is illustrated in the graph at the left.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: for any real "θ" between 0 and 2"π". The system also has an unstable vacuum state corresponding to . This state has a U(1) symmetry. However, once the system falls into a specific stable vacuum state (amounting to a choice of "θ"), this symmetry will appear to be lost, or "spontaneously broken".


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: In fact, any other choice of "θ" would have exactly the same energy, and the defining equations respect the symmetry but the ground state (vacuum) of the theory breaks the symmetry, implying the existence of a massless Nambu–Goldstone boson, the mode running around the circle at the minimum of this potential, and indicating there is some memory of the original symmetry in the Lagrangian.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: In particle physics, the force carrier particles are normally specified by field equations with gauge symmetry; their equations predict that certain measurements will be the same at any point in the field. For instance, field equations might predict that the mass of two quarks is constant. Solving the equations to find the mass of each quark might give two solutions. In one solution, quark A is heavier than quark B. In the second solution, quark B is heavier than quark A "by the same amount". The symmetry of the equations is not reflected by the individual solutions, but it is reflected by the range of solutions.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: An actual measurement reflects only one solution, representing a breakdown in the symmetry of the underlying theory. "Hidden" is a better term than "broken", because the symmetry is always there in these equations. This phenomenon is called "spontaneous" symmetry breaking (SSB) because "nothing" (that we know of) breaks the symmetry in the equations. By the nature of spontaneous symmetry breaking, different portions of the early Universe would break symmetry in different directions, leading to topological defects, such as two-dimensional domain walls, one-dimensional cosmic strings, zero-dimensional monopoles, and/or textures, depending on the relevant homotopy group and the dynamics of the theory. For example, Higgs symmetry breaking may have created primordial cosmic strings as a byproduct. Hypothetical GUT symmetry-breaking generically produces monopoles, creating difficulties for GUT unless monopoles (along with any GUT domain walls) are expelled from our observable Universe through cosmic inflation.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Chiral symmetry breaking is an example of spontaneous symmetry breaking affecting the chiral symmetry of the strong interactions in particle physics. It is a property of quantum chromodynamics, the quantum field theory describing these interactions, and is responsible for the bulk of the mass (over 99%) of the nucleons, and thus of all common matter, as it converts very light bound quarks into 100 times heavier constituents of baryons. The approximate Nambu–Goldstone bosons in this spontaneous symmetry breaking process are the pions, whose mass is an order of magnitude lighter than the mass of the nucleons. It served as the prototype and significant ingredient of the Higgs mechanism underlying the electroweak symmetry breaking.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: The strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces can all be understood as arising from gauge symmetries, which is a redundancy in the description of the symmetry. The Higgs mechanism, the spontaneous symmetry breaking of gauge symmetries, is an important component in understanding the superconductivity of metals and the origin of particle masses in the standard model of particle physics.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: The term "spontaneous symmetry breaking" is a misnomer here as Elitzur's theorem states that local gauge symmetries can never be spontaneously broken. Rather, after gauge fixing, the global symmetry (or redundancy) can be broken in a manner formally resembling spontaneous symmetry breaking.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: One important consequence of the distinction between true symmetries and "gauge symmetries", is that the massless Nambu–Goldstone resulting from spontaneous breaking of a gauge symmetry are absorbed in the description of the gauge vector field, providing massive vector field modes, like the plasma mode in a superconductor, or the Higgs mode observed in particle physics.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: In the standard model of particle physics, spontaneous symmetry breaking of the gauge symmetry associated with the electro-weak force generates masses for several particles, and separates the electromagnetic and weak forces. The W and Z bosons are the elementary particles that mediate the weak interaction, while the photon mediates the electromagnetic interaction. At energies much greater than 100 GeV, all these particles behave in a similar manner. The Weinberg–Salam theory predicts that, at lower energies, this symmetry is broken so that the photon and the massive W and Z bosons emerge. In addition, fermions develop mass consistently.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Without spontaneous symmetry breaking, the Standard Model of elementary particle interactions requires the existence of a number of particles. However, some particles (the W and Z bosons) would then be predicted to be massless, when, in reality, they are observed to have mass. To overcome this, spontaneous symmetry breaking is augmented by the Higgs mechanism to give these particles mass. It also suggests the presence of a new particle, the Higgs boson, detected in 2012.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Superconductivity of metals is a condensed-matter analog of the Higgs phenomena, in which a condensate of Cooper pairs of electrons spontaneously breaks the U(1) gauge symmetry associated with light and electromagnetism.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Dynamical symmetry breaking (DSB) is a special form of spontaneous symmetry breaking in which the ground state of the system has reduced symmetry properties compared to its theoretical description (i.e., Lagrangian).


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Dynamical breaking of a global symmetry is a spontaneous symmetry breaking, which happens not at the (classical) tree level (i.e., at the level of the bare action), but due to quantum corrections (i.e., at the level of the effective action).


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Dynamical breaking of a gauge symmetry is subtler. In the conventional spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking, there exists an unstable Higgs particle in the theory, which drives the vacuum to a symmetry-broken phase. (See, for example, electroweak interaction.) In dynamical gauge symmetry breaking, however, no unstable Higgs particle operates in the theory, but the bound states of the system itself provide the unstable fields that render the phase transition. For example, Bardeen, Hill, and Lindner published a paper that attempts to replace the conventional Higgs mechanism in the standard model by a DSB that is driven by a bound state of top-antitop quarks. (Such models, in which a composite particle plays the role of the Higgs boson, are often referred to as "Composite Higgs models".) Dynamical breaking of gauge symmetries is often due to creation of a fermionic condensate — e.g., the quark condensate, which is connected to the dynamical breaking of chiral symmetry in quantum chromodynamics. Conventional superconductivity is the paradigmatic example from the condensed matter side, where phonon-mediated attractions lead electrons to become bound in pairs and then condense, thereby breaking the electromagnetic gauge symmetry.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Most phases of matter can be understood through the lens of spontaneous symmetry breaking. For example, crystals are periodic arrays of atoms that are not invariant under all translations (only under a small subset of translations by a lattice vector). Magnets have north and south poles that are oriented in a specific direction, breaking rotational symmetry. In addition to these examples, there are a whole host of other symmetry-breaking phases of matter — including nematic phases of liquid crystals, charge- and spin-density waves, superfluids, and many others.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: There are several known examples of matter that cannot be described by spontaneous symmetry breaking, including: topologically ordered phases of matter, such as fractional quantum Hall liquids, and spin-liquids. These states do not break any symmetry, but are distinct phases of matter. Unlike the case of spontaneous symmetry breaking, there is not a general framework for describing such states.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: The ferromagnet is the canonical system that spontaneously breaks the continuous symmetry of the spins below the Curie temperature and at , where "h" is the external magnetic field. Below the Curie temperature, the energy of the system is invariant under inversion of the magnetization "m"(x) such that . The symmetry is spontaneously broken as when the Hamiltonian becomes invariant under the inversion transformation, but the expectation value is not invariant.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Spontaneously-symmetry-broken phases of matter are characterized by an order parameter that describes the quantity which breaks the symmetry under consideration. For example, in a magnet, the order parameter is the local magnetization.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Spontaneous breaking of a continuous symmetry is inevitably accompanied by gapless (meaning that these modes do not cost any energy to excite) Nambu–Goldstone modes associated with slow, long-wavelength fluctuations of the order parameter. For example, vibrational modes in a crystal, known as phonons, are associated with slow density fluctuations of the crystal's atoms. The associated Goldstone mode for magnets are oscillating waves of spin known as spin-waves. For symmetry-breaking states, whose order parameter is not a conserved quantity, Nambu–Goldstone modes are typically massless and propagate at a constant velocity.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: An important theorem, due to Mermin and Wagner, states that, at finite temperature, thermally activated fluctuations of Nambu–Goldstone modes destroy the long-range order, and prevent spontaneous symmetry breaking in one- and two-dimensional systems. Similarly, quantum fluctuations of the order parameter prevent most types of continuous symmetry breaking in one-dimensional systems even at zero temperature. (An important exception is ferromagnets, whose order parameter, magnetization, is an exactly conserved quantity and does not have any quantum fluctuations.)


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: Other long-range interacting systems, such as cylindrical curved surfaces interacting via the Coulomb potential or Yukawa potential, have been shown to break translational and rotational symmetries. It was shown, in the presence of a symmetric Hamiltonian, and in the limit of infinite volume, the system spontaneously adopts a chiral configuration — i.e., breaks mirror plane symmetry.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: For spontaneous symmetry breaking to occur, there must be a system in which there are several equally likely outcomes. The system as a whole is therefore symmetric with respect to these outcomes. However, if the system is sampled (i.e. if the system is actually used or interacted with in any way), a specific outcome must occur. Though the system as a whole is symmetric, it is never encountered with this symmetry, but only in one specific asymmetric state. Hence, the symmetry is said to be spontaneously broken in that theory. Nevertheless, the fact that each outcome is equally likely is a reflection of the underlying symmetry, which is thus often dubbed "hidden symmetry", and has crucial formal consequences. (See the article on the Goldstone boson.)


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: When a theory is symmetric with respect to a symmetry group, but requires that one element of the group be distinct, then spontaneous symmetry breaking has occurred. The theory must not dictate "which" member is distinct, only that "one is". From this point on, the theory can be treated as if this element actually is distinct, with the proviso that any results found in this way must be resymmetrized, by taking the average of each of the elements of the group being the distinct one.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: The crucial concept in physics theories is the order parameter. If there is a field (often a background field) which acquires an expectation value (not necessarily a "vacuum" expectation value) which is not invariant under the symmetry in question, we say that the system is in the ordered phase, and the symmetry is spontaneously broken. This is because other subsystems interact with the order parameter, which specifies a "frame of reference" to be measured against. In that case, the vacuum state does not obey the initial symmetry (which would keep it invariant, in the linearly realized Wigner mode in which it would be a singlet), and, instead changes under the (hidden) symmetry, now implemented in the (nonlinear) Nambu–Goldstone mode. Normally, in the absence of the Higgs mechanism, massless Goldstone bosons arise.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: The symmetry group can be discrete, such as the space group of a crystal, or continuous (e.g., a Lie group), such as the rotational symmetry of space. However, if the system contains only a single spatial dimension, then only discrete symmetries may be broken in a vacuum state of the full quantum theory, although a classical solution may break a continuous symmetry.


title: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

text: On October 7, 2008, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics to three scientists for their work in subatomic physics symmetry breaking. Yoichiro Nambu, of the University of Chicago, won half of the prize for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in the context of the strong interactions, specifically chiral symmetry breaking. Physicists Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa, of Kyoto University, shared the other half of the prize for discovering the origin of the explicit breaking of CP symmetry in the weak interactions. This origin is ultimately reliant on the Higgs mechanism, but, so far understood as a "just so" feature of Higgs couplings, not a spontaneously broken symmetry phenomenon.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Robert Samuel Langer Jr. FREng (born August 29, 1948) is an American chemical engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, inventor and one of the twelve Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: He was formerly the Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering and maintains activity in the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT. He is also a faculty member of the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer holds over 1,400 granted or pending patents. He is one of the world's most highly cited researchers and his h-index is now 305 with currently over 376,000 citations. He is a widely recognized and cited researcher in biotechnology, especially in the fields of drug delivery systems and tissue engineering.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: He is the most cited engineer in history and 2nd most cited individual in any field, having authored over 1,500 scientific papers, and is also a prolific entrepreneur, having participated in the founding of over 40 biotechnology companies including Moderna.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer's research laboratory at MIT is the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world; maintaining over $10 million in annual grants and over 100 researchers. He has been awarded numerous leading prizes in recognition of his work.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer was born August 29, 1948, in Albany, New York, US. He is an alumnus of The Milne School and received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University in chemical engineering. He earned his Sc.D. in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974. His dissertation was entitled "Enzymatic regeneration of ATP" and completed under the direction of Clark K. Colton. From 1974–1977 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Children's Hospital Boston and at Harvard Medical School under Judah Folkman. Langer and his wife, Laura, a fellow MIT graduate, have three children.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer is widely regarded for his contributions to medicine and biotechnology. He is considered a pioneer of many new technologies, including controlled release systems and transdermal delivery systems, which allow the administration of drugs or extraction of analytes from the body through the skin without needles or other invasive methods.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer worked with Judah Folkman at Boston Children's Hospital to isolate the first angiogenesis inhibitor, a macromolecule to block the spread of blood vessels in tumors. Macromolecules tend to be broken down by digestion and blocked by body tissues if they are injected or inhaled, so finding a delivery system for them is difficult. Langer's idea was to encapsulate the angiogenesis inhibitor in a noninflammatory synthetic polymer system that could be implanted in the tumor and control the release of the inhibitor. He eventually invented polymer systems that would work. This discovery is considered to lay the foundation for much of today's drug delivery technology.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer also worked with Henry Brem of the Johns Hopkins University Medical School on a drug-delivery system for the treatment of brain cancer, to deliver chemotherapy directly to a tumor site. The wafer implants that he and his teams have designed have become increasingly more sophisticated, and can now deliver multiple drugs, and respond to stimuli. In 2019, he and his team developed and patented a technique whereby microneedle tattoo patches could be used to label people with invisible ink to store medical information subcutaneously. This was presented as a boon to "developing nations" where lack of infrastructure means an absence of medical records. The technology uses a "quantum dot dye that is delivered, along with a vaccine, by a microneedle patch."


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer is regarded as the founder of tissue engineering in regenerative medicine. He and the researchers in his lab have made advances in tissue engineering, such as the creation of engineered blood vessels and vascularized engineered muscle tissue. Bioengineered synthetic polymers provide a scaffolding on which new skin, muscle, bone, and entire organs can be grown. With such a substrate in place, victims of serious accidents or birth defects could more easily grow missing tissue. Such polymers can be biocompatible and biodegradable.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer is involved in several projects related to diabetes. Alongside Daniel G. Anderson, he has contributed bioengineering work to a project involving teams from MIT, Harvard University and other institutions, to produce an implantable device to treat type 1 diabetes by shielding insulin-producing beta cells from immune system attacks. He is also part of a team at MIT that have developed a drug capsule that could be used to deliver oral doses of insulin to people with type 1 diabetes.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer is the youngest person in history (at 43) to be elected to all three American science academies: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine. He was also elected as a charter member of National Academy of Inventors. He was elected as an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2010.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer has received more than 220 major awards. He is one of three living individuals to have received both the U.S. National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: He has received numerous other awards, including the 10th Annual Heinz Award in the category of Technology, the Economy and Employment (2003), In 2013 he was awarded the IRI Medal alongside long-time friend George M. Whitesides for outstanding accomplishments in technological innovation that have contributed broadly to the development of industry and the benefit of society. He also received the Rusnano prize that year. He has also given 137 named lectures and commencement speeches.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer has honorary degrees from 40 universities from around the world including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia University.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Robert Langer has been involved in the founding of many companies, more than twenty in partnership with the venture capital firm Polaris Partners. Success of these companies and Langer's contribution has been detailed by Harvard Business Review:


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer is a member of the Advisory Board of Patient Innovation, a nonprofit, international, multilingual, free venue for patients and caregivers of any disease to share their innovations. He is also a member of the Xconomists, an ad hoc team of editorial advisors for the tech news and media company, Xconomy.


title: Robert S. Langer

text: Langer is featured in two different exhibits at Boston's Logan Airport. At terminal C (near Gate 8) in the exhibit '4 centuries of Massachusetts Innovation', Langer and Judah Folkman are listed for 'Cancer breakthrough-1st cancer blood vessel inhibitor'. In terminal E, Massachusetts innovators-Transforming the world, Langer is featured as "Revolutionary Biomedical Technology through Development of Controlled Drug Delivery Systems" (near Gate 12).


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The Blackfeet Nation (, ), officially named the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, is a federally recognized tribe of Siksikaitsitapi people with an Indian reservation in Montana. Tribal members primarily belong to the Piegan Blackfeet (Ampskapi Piikani) band of the larger Blackfoot Confederacy that spans Canada and the United States.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The Blackfeet Indian Reservation is located east of Glacier National Park and borders the Canadian province of Alberta. Cut Bank Creek and Birch Creek form part of its eastern and southern borders. The reservation contains 3,000 square miles (7,800 km), twice the size of the national park and larger than the state of Delaware. It is located in parts of Glacier and Pondera counties.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The Blackfeet settled in the region around Montana beginning in the 17th century. Previously, they resided in an area of the woodlands north and west of the Great Lakes. Pressure exerted by British traders at James Bay in present day Canada on the Algonquin-speaking tribes in the area drove the Blackfeet out onto the Northern Plains. They eventually acquired firearms and horses, and became a formidable example of the classic Plains Indian culture. They were a powerful force, controlling an area that extended from current day Edmonton, Alberta Province, nearly to Yellowstone National Park, and from Glacier Park to the Black Hills of South Dakota. The Badger-Two Medicine area is a significant sacred site for the tribe.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: In the late 19th century, Blackfeet territory was encroached on by European Americans and Canadians, and various branches of the people were forced to cede lands and ultimately move to smaller Indian reservations in the United States and reserves in Canada. Adjacent to their reservation, established by Treaty of 1896, are two federally controlled areas: the Lewis and Clark National Forest, set up in 1896, which contains the Badger-Two Medicine area, an area of ; and Glacier National Park, both part of the tribal nation's former territory. The Badger-Two Medicine area is sacred to the Blackfeet people. This sacred part of the Rocky Mountain Front was excluded from Blackfeet lands in a Treaty of 1896, but they reserved access, hunting and fishing rights. Since the early 1980s, when the Bureau of Land Management approved drilling rights leases without consultation with the tribe, the Blackfeet have worked to protect this sacred area, where they practiced their traditional religious rituals.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The United States federal government suspended all leasing activities for drilling in this area in the 1990s, and in 2007 the Bush administration made permanent a moratorium on issuing new permits. Many leaseholders had already relinquished their leases, and in November 2016 the Department of Interior announced the cancellation of the 15 drilling rights leases held by Devon Energy Corporation in the Badger-Two Medicine area. The Blackfeet had documented that the area was not a "wilderness," as the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex was designated in 1964, but a "human landscape" shaped by and integral to their culture.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: Elevations in the reservation range from a low of to a high of at Chief Mountain. Adjacent mountains include Ninaki Mountain and Papoose. The eastern part of the reservation is mostly open hills of grassland, while a narrow strip along the western edge is covered by forests of fir and spruce. Free-ranging cattle are present in several areas, sometimes including on roadways.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: Several waterways drain the area with the largest being the St. Mary River, Two Medicine River, Milk River, Birch Creek and Cut Bank Creek. There are of streams and eight major lakes on the reservation.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The reservation is east of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana, which contains the Badger-Two Medicine area, sacred to the Blackfeet people. The Badger-Two Medicine area is at the Rocky Mountain Front of the national forest. The Blackfeet call the Rocky Mountains the "Backbone of the World". Their names for peaks include Morning Star, Poia, Little Plume, Running Crane, Spotted Eagle, Kiyo, Scarface, Elkcalf Bullshoe, and Curly Bear.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The 2010 census reported a population of 10,405 living on the reservation lands. The population density is 3.47 people per square mile (1.34 people/km²).


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The Blackfeet Nation has 16,500 enrolled members. The main community is Browning, Montana, which is the seat of tribal government. Other towns serve the tourist economy along the edge of the park: St. Mary and East Glacier Park Village, which has an Amtrak passenger station and the historic Glacier Park Lodge. Small communities include Babb, Kiowa, Blackfoot, Seville, Heart Butte, Starr School, and Glacier Homes.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The tribe has an oral history of 10,000 years in this region. It recounts the sacred nature of their central place, the Badger-Two Medicine area, known as their site of creation and origin.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The Rocky Mountain Front near Birch Creek The Badger-Two Medicine is "covered by the Treaty of 1896, which gives Blackfeet tribal members the right to hunt and fish in any portion of the area in accordance with state law and cut wood for domestic use. Blackfeet treaty claims as well as spiritual and cultural uses of the Badger-Two Medicine are pre-existing rights ... Blackfeet tribal members have used the Badger-Two Medicine and its waters for hundreds of years for vision quests and for other religious and cultural purposes."


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: In 2002, the Department of Interior declared roughly two-thirds — almost 90,000 acres (36,000 ha) — of the Badger-Two Medicine area along the Rocky Mountain Front as eligible for listing as a Traditional Cultural District in the National Register of Historic Places. This was a recognition of its importance to the Blackfeet. They used an ethnographer to document their oral history of use and practices, and in 2014 used this information to negotiate with stakeholders over leases for drilling rights that had been made in the area.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The nation celebrates North American Indian Days, an annual festival held on pow wow grounds, near the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning. Adjacent to the reservation's eastern edge is the city of Cut Bank.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: Because of its isolated location, residents of the reservation have suffered high unemployment. As of May 2016, the Montana Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) Program Preliminary Non-Seasonally Adjusted Data reports the rate is 11.0% on the reservation (for comparison, at the same time, unemployment was 3.6% for Montana and 4.5% for the U.S.).


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: In 2001, the BIA reported 69 percent unemployment among registered members of the tribe. Among those who were employed that year, 26% earned less than the poverty guideline.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The major income source of the reservation is petroleum and natural gas leases on the oil fields on tribal lands. In 1982, there were 643 producing oil wells and 47 producing gas wells.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The reservation also has a significant tourist industry. Other economic activities include ranching and a small lumber industry, which supported the Blackfeet Indian Writing Company pencil factory in Browning.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: Farms located at least partially on the reservation reported a total income of $9 million in 2002. A total of 354 farms covered , the majority of the reservation's land. Most of these farms or ranches were family-owned, including the 198 farms owned by Native Americans.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: Eighty percent of the land was used for raising beef cattle, which produced eighty percent of farm income. Other livestock included hogs, and chickens, with only small numbers of dairy cattle, bison, horses, and sheep.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: Of the used for growing crops, only , or 13%, were irrigated. Crops raised included wheat, barley, and hay with a smaller amount of oats.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: Members of the tribe work seasonally in wildfire firefighting, a source of considerable individual income. In 2000, some 1,000 Blackfeet worked as firefighters, including the elite Chief Mountain Hotshots team. Firefighting income brought in $6.1 million that year. However, this income is highly variable depending on the severity of the wildfire season.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: On April 30, 2010, the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council (BTBC) approved three major initiatives totaling $5.5 million. The revenue was to be derived from payments for oil exploration from Newfield Production Co. The BTBC approved a $200 special per capita payments for all 16,500 members, initial funding for a new grocery store in Browning, and more than $1 million for land acquisition within the reservation to return property to tribal control.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The Blackfeet Nation runs the sovereign government on the reservation through its elected Tribal Business Council. For many years Earl Old Person led the council. Old Person was also the honorary chief of the tribe. It provides most services, including courts, child welfare, employment assistance, wildlife management, health care, education, land management, and senior services, as well as garbage collection and water systems. They worked with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs to replace native police with federal officers in 2003 because of problems in the local force.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The reservation includes several types of land use. Of the total , are held in trust for enrolled tribal members, are held directly by the tribe, and are "Government Reserve", mostly irrigation projects and the Cut Bank Boarding School Reserve. The remaining are "Fee lands," which is taxable and may be privately owned by the tribe, tribe members or non-tribe members.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: The tribe leases some of its communal land for homes, farms, grazing, and commercial uses. They offer leases to tribe members prior to non-members. The tribe has the right of first refusal; all private land offered for sale within the reservation must be offered to the tribe first. If they decline to purchase it, they grant a waiver permitting purchase by non-Native parties.


title: Blackfeet Nation

text: There are no paved north-south roads in Glacier National Park. Access to sites on the east side of the park is provided by U.S. Route 89, which runs through the reservation to the Canada–US border, crossing near Chief Mountain. It provides access to the Canadian sister national park, Waterton Lakes. Both east-west routes for the park travel through the reservation, as does the passenger train service on Amtrak's "Empire Builder". Several hiking trails continue out of the park and across the reservation; they require Blackfeet-issued permits for use.


title: Susan Yeagley

text: Yeagley was born in Nashville, Tennessee. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Southern California.


title: Susan Yeagley

text: She portrayed Jessica Wicks in nine episodes of the comedy television series "Parks and Recreation" between 2009 and 2015. She had guest roles on television series "ER", "Friends", "Reno 911!", "Curb Your Enthusiasm", "Miracles", "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "The Sarah Silverman Program". She also had small roles in "Almost Famous", "Coyote Ugly", "The Thin Pink Line", and others.


title: Susan Yeagley

text: Yeagley married actor Kevin Nealon on September 3, 2005, in Bellagio, Italy. She gave birth to their first child, a son, in January 2007 in Santa Monica, California.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: Nisargadatta Maharaj (17 April 1897 – 8 September 1981), born Maruti Shivrampant Kambli, was an Indian guru of nondualism, belonging to the Inchagiri Sampradaya, a lineage of teachers from the Navnath Sampradaya and Lingayat Shaivism.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: The publication in 1973 of "I Am That", an English translation of his talks in Marathi by Maurice Frydman, brought him worldwide recognition and followers, especially from North America and Europe.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: Nisargadatta was born on 17 April 1897 to Shivrampant Kambli and Parvati bai, in Bombay. The day was also "Hanuman Jayanti", the birthday of Hanuman, hence the boy was named 'Maruti', after him. His parents were followers of the Varkari sampradaya, an egalitarian Vaishnavite bhakti tradition which worships Vithoba. His father, Shivrampant, worked as a domestic servant in Mumbai and later became a petty farmer in Kandalgaon.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: Maruti Shivrampant Kambli was brought up in Kandalgaon, a small village in the Sindhudurga district of Maharashtra, with his two brothers, four sisters and deeply religious parents. In 1915, after his father died, he moved to Bombay to support his family back home, following his elder brother. Initially he worked as a junior clerk at an office but quickly he opened a small goods store, mainly selling beedis (leaf-rolled cigarettes) and soon owned a string of eight retail shops. In 1924 he married Sumatibai and they had three daughters and a son.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: In 1933, he was introduced to his guru, Siddharameshwar Maharaj, the head of the Inchegiri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya, by his friend Yashwantrao Baagkar. His guru told him, "You are not what you take yourself to be...". Siddharameshwar initiated him into the Inchegiri Sampradaya, giving him meditation-instruction and a mantra, which he immediately began to recite. Siddharameshwar gave Nisargadatta instructions for self-enquiry which he followed verbatim, as he himself recounted later:


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: Following his guru's instructions to concentrate on the feeling "I Am", he used all his spare time looking at himself in silence, and remained in that state for the coming years, practising meditation and singing devotional bhajans:


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: After an association that lasted hardly two and a half years, Siddharameshwar Maharaj died on 9 November 1936. In 1937, Maharaj left Mumbai and travelled across India. After eight months he returned to his family in Mumbai in 1938. On the journey home his state of mind changed, realizing that "nothing was wrong anymore." He spent the rest of his life in Mumbai, maintaining one shop to earn an income.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: Between 1942 and 1948 he suffered two personal losses, first the death of his wife, Sumatibai, followed by the death of his daughter. He started to give initiations in 1951, after a personal revelation from his guru, Siddharameshwar Maharaj.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: After he retired from his shop in 1966, Nisargadatta Maharaj continued to receive and teach visitors in his home, giving discourses twice a day, until his death on 8 September 1981 at the age of 84, of throat cancer.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: Nisargadatta gave talks and answered questions at his humble flat in Khetwadi, Mumbai, where a mezzanine room was created for him to receive disciples and visitors. This room was also used for daily chantings, bhajans (devotional songs), meditation sessions, and discourses.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: Cathy Boucher notes that the Inchagiri Sampradaya emphasized mantra meditation from its inception in the early 19th century, but that the emphasis shifted toward a form of Self-enquiry with Sri Siddharameshwar. Nevertheless,


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: Boucher also notes that Nisargadatta adopted a different mode of instruction, through questions and answers, for his western disciples. Many of Nisargadatta Maharaj's talks were recorded, and formed the basis of "I Am That" as well as of the several other books attributed to him.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: Nisargadatta was critical of a merely intellectual approach to nondual Truth. He had a strong devotional zeal towards his own guru, and suggested the path of devotion, Bhakti yoga, to some of his visitors, as he believed the path of knowledge, Jnana yoga was not the only approach to Truth. Nisargadatta also emphasized love of Guru and God, and the practice of mantra repetition and singing bhajans, devotional songs.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: According to Timothy Conway, Nisargadatta often read Marathi scriptures: Nath saint Jnanesvar's Amritanubhava and Jnanesvari (Gita Commentary); Varkari Sants, namely Eknatha's Bhagavat ("Eknathi Bhagavata", a rewrite of the "Bhagavad Purana"), Ramdas' Dasbodha, and Tukaram's poems; but also the Yoga Vasistha, Adi Shankara's treatises, and some major Upanishads.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: Nisargadatta taught what has been called "Nisarga Yoga" (Nisarga can be translated as "nature"). In "I Am That", Nisarga Yoga is defined as living life with "harmlessness," "friendliness," and "interest," abiding in "spontaneous awareness" while being "conscious of effortless living." The practice of this form of Yoga involves meditating on one's sense of "I am", "being" or "consciousness" with the aim of reaching its ultimate source prior to this sense, which Nisargadatta called the "Self".


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: The second edition of "I Am That" includes an epilogue titled Nisarga Yoga by Maurice Frydman which includes this passage:Nisargadatta did not prescribe a specific practice for self-knowledge but advised his disciples, "Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't refuse to be what you are." By means of self-enquiry, he advised, "Why don't you enquire how real are the world and the person?". Nisargadatta frequently spoke about the importance of having the "inner conviction" about one's true nature and without such Self-knowledge one would continue to suffer. Nisargadatta claimed that the names of the Hindu deities Shiva, Rama and Krishna were the names of nature (Nisarga) personified, and that all of life arises from the same non-dual source or Self. Remembrance of this source was the core of Nisargadatta's message:The Seven Principles of Nisarga Yoga (As identified by Nic Higham, 2018)


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: Among his best known disciples are Maurice Frydman, Sailor Bob Adamson, Stephen Howard Wolinsky (born 31 January 1950), Jean Dunn, Alexander Smit (Sri Parabrahmadatta Maharaj) (1948-1998), Douwe Tiemersma (7 January 1945 – 3 January 2013), Robert Powell, Timothy Conway, Wayne Dyer and Ramesh Balsekar (1917-2009). A less well known disciple is Sri Ramakant Maharaj (born 8 July 1941), who received the naam mantra from Nisargadatta in 1962, spent the next 19 years with the master. and claims to be "the only Indian direct disciple of Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj" who offers initiation into this lineage. Sachin Kshirsagar, who has published a series of books on Nisargadatta in the Marathi language and also re-published "Master of Self Realization", says to have received the Naam (Mantra) in a dream from Shree Nisargadatta Maharaj on 17 Oct., 2011.


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: David Godman gives the following account of an explanation by Nisargadatta of the succession of Gurus in the Inchagiri Sampradaya:


title: Nisargadatta Maharaj

text: According to David Godman, Nisargadatta was not allowed by Siddharameshwar to appoint a successor, because he "wasn't realised himself when Siddharameshwar passed away." Nisargadatta started to initiate others in 1951, after receiving an inner revelation from Siddharamesvar. Nisargadatta himself explains:


title: Vishrava

text: Vishrava (), also called Vishravas, is the son of Pulastya, and a powerful rishi (sage), as described in the Hindu epic Ramayana. A scholar par excellence, he earned great powers through the performance of tapasya, which in turn, earned him great name and fame amongst his fellow rishis. He is best known for being the father of the primary antagonist of the Ramayana, Ravana.


title: Vishrava

text: The birth of Vishrava is described in the Ramayana. Once, the great sage Pulastya was engaged in austerities in the ashrama of Trinabindu, on the slopes of Mount Meru. Even as he was engaged in a penance in solitude, he was disturbed by a number of youthful maidens, the daughters of other sages, pannagas, as well as apsaras. They played their musical instruments and danced, seeking to divert his attention. Enraged, Pulastya declared that she among them who fell under his gaze would instantly conceive. Terrified of the Brahmin's curse, the girls vanished. During this moment, Manini, the daughter of Trinabindu, who had not been present when the curse was invoked, wandered near the sage, searching for her friends. She found herself pregnant, and rushed to report her condition to her father. The sage Trinabindu requested Pulastya to marry his daughter, and the latter agreed, and so the two lived together in the ashrama. Pleased with his wife's virtuous conduct, Pulastya declared that their child would inherit her virtue, and would be named Vishrava.


title: Vishrava

text: Vishrava grew to become a great sage, devoted to the study of the Vedas, and detached from earthly pleasures. Bharadvaja, in particular, was so impressed with Vishrava, that he gave him his daughter, Ilavida, in marriage. Ilavida bore Vishrava a son, Vaishravana, also called Kubera, the god of wealth, who was subsequently blessed with the rulership of Lanka by Brahma.


title: Vishrava

text: A rakshasa named Sumali urged his daughter, Kaikasi, to seek Vishrava as her husband, promising her that their children would rival Kubera. Kaikasi finds Vishrava while he was performing a yajna, and told him of her father's wish for her to wed him. The cognisant Vishrava informed the beautiful maiden that their children, if produced, would be rakshasas, of cruel exploits. Kaikasi prostrated herself before him, seeking children of his disposition. Vishrava agreed to wed her, though he forewarned her that only their last child would inherit his disposition. Accordingly, Kaikasi gives birth to the terrible rakshasas Ravana, Kumbhakarna, and Shurpanakha, and one virtuous rakshasa who had the characteristics of a Brahmin, Vibhishana.


title: Vishrava

text: When Ravana claimed Lanka for himself, Vishrava counselled Kubera to accede to his step-brother's demand, to avoid conflict. Obeying his father, Kubera retired to Kailasha, and became a lokapala.


title: Sunshine duration

text: Sunshine duration or sunshine hours is a climatological indicator, measuring duration of sunshine in given period (usually, a day or a year) for a given location on Earth, typically expressed as an averaged value over several years. It is a general indicator of cloudiness of a location, and thus differs from insolation, which measures the total energy delivered by sunlight over a given period.


title: Sunshine duration

text: Sunshine duration is usually expressed in hours per year, or in (average) hours per day. The first measure indicates the general sunniness of a location compared with other places, while the latter allows for comparison of sunshine in various seasons in the same location. Another often-used measure is percentage ratio of recorded bright sunshine duration and daylight duration in the observed period.


title: Sunshine duration

text: An important use of sunshine duration data is to characterize the climate of sites, especially of health resorts. This also takes into account the psychological effect of strong solar light on human well-being. It is often used to promote tourist destinations.


title: Sunshine duration

text: If the Sun were to be above the horizon 50% of the time for a standard year consisting of 8,760 hours, apparent maximal daytime duration would be 4,380 hours for any point on Earth. However, there are physical and astronomical effects that change that picture. Namely, atmospheric refraction allows the Sun to be still visible even when it physically sets below the horizon. For that reason, average daytime (disregarding cloud effects) is longest in polar areas, where the apparent Sun spends the most time around the horizon. Places on the Arctic Circle have the longest total annual daytime, 4,647 hours, while the North Pole receives 4,575. Because of elliptic nature of the Earth's orbit, the Southern Hemisphere is not symmetrical: the Antarctic Circle, with 4,530 hours of daylight, receives five days less of sunshine than its antipodes. The Equator has a total daytime of 4,422 hours per year.


title: Sunshine duration

text: Given the theoretical maximum of daytime duration for a given location, there is also a practical consideration at which point the amount of daylight is sufficient to be treated as a "sunshine hour". "Bright" sunshine hours represent the total hours when the sunlight is stronger than a specified threshold, as opposed to just "visible" hours. "Visible" sunshine, for example, occurs around sunrise and sunset, but is not strong enough to excite a standardized sensor. Measurement is performed by instruments called sunshine recorders. For the specific purpose of sunshine duration recording, Campbell–Stokes recorders are used, which use a spherical glass lens to focus the sun rays on a specially designed tape. When the intensity exceeds a pre-determined threshold, the tape burns. The total length of the burn trace is proportional to the number of bright hours. Another type of recorder is the Jordan sunshine recorder. Newer, electronic recorders have more stable sensitivity than that of the paper tape.


title: Sunshine duration

text: In order to harmonize the data measured worldwide, in 1962 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) defined a standardized design of the Campbell–Stokes recorder, called an Interim Reference Sunshine Recorder (IRSR). In 2003, the sunshine duration was finally defined as the period during which direct solar irradiance exceeds a threshold value of 120 W/m.


title: Sunshine duration

text: Sunshine duration follows a general geographic pattern: subtropical latitudes (about 25° to 40° north/south) have the highest sunshine values, because these are the locations of the eastern sides of the subtropical high pressure systems, associated with the large-scale descent of air from the upper-level tropopause. Many of the world's driest climates are found adjacent to the eastern sides of the subtropical highs, which create stable atmospheric conditions, little convective overturning, and little moisture and cloud cover. Desert regions, with nearly constant high pressure aloft and rare condensation—like North Africa, the Southwestern United States, Western Australia, and the Middle East—are examples of hot, sunny, dry climates where sunshine duration values are very high.


title: Sunshine duration

text: The two major areas with the highest sunshine duration, measured as annual average, are the central and the eastern Sahara Desert—covering vast, mainly desert countries such as Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Chad, and Niger—and the Southwestern United States (Arizona, California, Nevada). The city claiming the official title of the sunniest in the world is Yuma, Arizona, with over 4,000 hours (about 91% of daylight time) of bright sunshine annually, but many climatological books suggest there may be sunnier areas in North Africa. In the belt encompassing northern Chad and the Tibesti Mountains, northern Sudan, southern Libya, and Upper Egypt, annual sunshine duration is estimated at over 4,000 hours. There is also a smaller, isolated area of sunshine maximum in the heart of the western section of the Sahara Desert around the Eglab Massif and the Erg Chech, along the borders of Algeria, Mauritania, and Mali where the 4,000-hour mark is exceeded, too. Some places in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula receive 3,600–3,800 hours of bright sunshine annually. The largest sun-baked region in the world (over 3,000 hours of yearly sunshine) is North Africa. The sunniest month in the world is December in Eastern Antarctica, with almost 23 hours of bright sun daily.


title: Sunshine duration

text: Conversely, higher latitudes (above 50° north/south) lying in stormy westerlies have much cloudier and more unstable and rainy weather, and often have the lowest values of sunshine duration annually. Temperate oceanic climates like those in northwestern Europe, the northwestern coast of Canada, and areas of New Zealand's South Island are examples of cool, cloudy, wet, humid climates where cloudless sunshine duration values are very low. The areas with the lowest sunshine duration annually lie mostly over the polar oceans, as well as parts of northern Europe, southern Alaska, northern Russia, and areas near the Sea of Okhotsk. The cloudiest place in the United States is Cold Bay, Alaska, with an average of 304 days of heavy overcast (covering over 3/4 of the sky). In addition to these polar oceanic climates, certain low-latitude basins enclosed by mountains, like the Sichuan and Taipei Basins, can have sunshine duration as low as 1,000 hours per year, as cool air consistently sinks to form fogs that winds cannot dissipate. Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands is among the cloudiest places in the world with yearly only 840 sunshine hours. Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku south of New Zealand is even cloudier, with only 647 annual sunshine hours, while Bellingshausen Station off the Antarctic Peninsula gets only 591 annual sunshine hours. Also Bear Island (Norway) in the Svalbard Archipelago gets only 595 annual sunshine hours.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: The Moroccan Western Sahara Wall or Berm is an approximately sand wall or berm running south to north through Western Sahara and the southwestern portion of Morocco. It separates the Moroccan-controlled areas (the Southern Provinces) on the west from the Polisario-controlled areas (Free Zone, nominally Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) on the east. The main function of the barriers is to exclude guerrilla fighters of the Polisario Front, who have sought Western Saharan independence since before Spain ended its colonial occupation in 1975, from the Moroccan-controlled western part of the territory.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: According to maps from the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in some places the wall extends several kilometers into internationally recognized Mauritanian territory.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: The Moroccan Western Sahara Wall is also called the Western Sahara berm and the Western Sahara separation barrier.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: The fortifications lie in uninhabited or very sparsely inhabited territory. They consist of sand and stone walls or berms about in height, with bunkers, fences, and landmines throughout. The barrier minebelt that runs along the structure is thought to be the longest continuous minefield in the world. Military bases, artillery posts and airfields dot the Moroccan-controlled side of the wall at regular intervals, and radar masts and other electronic surveillance equipment scan the areas in front of it.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: In all, six lines of berms have been constructed. The main ("external") line of fortifications extends for about . It runs east from Guerguerat on the coast in the extreme south of Western Sahara near the Mauritanian town of Nouadhibou, closely parallelling the Mauritanian border for about , before turning north beyond Techla. It then runs generally northeastward, leaving Guelta Zemmur and Smara, again crossing Mauritanian territory and reaching Hamza in Moroccan-held territory, before turning east and again closely following the Algerian border as it approaches Morocco. A section extends about into southeastern Morocco.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: Significant lines of fortifications also lie deep within the Moroccan-controlled area. Their exact number and location are a source of some confusion for overseas commentators.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: All major settlements in Western Sahara, the capital Laayoune, and the phosphate mine at Bou Craa lie far into the Moroccan-held side.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: The fortifications were progressively built by Moroccan forces starting in 1980, with help from South African, South Korean and Israeli advisors and formally ending on 16 April 1987. The wall was built in six stages, and the area behind the wall was expanded from a small area near Morocco in the north to most of the western and central part of the country gradually. The walls built were:


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: In the summer of 2005, the Moroccan Army accelerated the expulsion (begun in late 2004) of illegal immigrants detained in northern Morocco to the eastern side of the wall, into the Free Zone. The Polisario Front and the MINURSO rescued several dozen lost in the desert, who had run out of water. Others died of thirst. By October, the Polisario had received 22 immigrants in Mehaires, 46 in Tifariti and 97 in Bir Lehlu. They were from African countries (Gambia, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, etc.), except a group of 48 who were from Bangladesh.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: Since 2008, a demonstration called "The Thousand Column" is held annually in the desert against the barrier by international human rights activists and Sahrawi refugees. In the 2008 demonstration, more than 2,000 people (most of them Sahrawis and Spaniards, but also Algerians, Italians, and others) made a human chain demanding the demolition of the wall, the celebration of the self-determination referendum accorded by the UN and the parts in 1991, and the end of the Moroccan occupation of the territory.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: In the 2009 edition, a teenage Sahrawi refugee named Ibrahim Hussein Leibeit lost half of his right leg in a landmine explosion. The incident happened when Leibeit and dozens of young Sahrawis crossed the line into a minefield while aiming to throw stones to the other side of the wall.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: Effectively, after the completion of the wall, Morocco has controlled the bulk of Western Sahara territory that lies to the north and west of it, calling these the kingdom's "Southern Provinces". The Polisario-founded Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic controls the mostly uninhabited "Free Zone", which comprises all areas to the east of the barrier. Units from the United Nations mission MINURSO separate the two sides, and enforce cease-fire regulations on their troops.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: Western attention to the wall, and to the Moroccan annexation of Western Sahara in general, has been minimal, apart from Spain. In Africa, the annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco has attracted somewhat more attention. Algeria supports the Polisario Front "in its long-running desert war to oppose Moroccan control of the disputed area". The Organization of African Unity/African Union (AU) and United Nations have proposed negotiated solutions.


title: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall

text: The AU's stance on Western Sahara led to Morocco's exit from the organization. After a 33-year absence, Morocco rejoined on 30 January 2017, despite 9 member states voting against, but 39 supporting. Morocco was re-admitted with the understanding that Western Sahara will remain an AU member. The membership of relatively wealthy Morocco was welcomed by many members, as the AU has been criticized for being overly dependent on non-African donor funding.


title: Dipygus

text: Dipygus is a severe congenital deformity where the body axis forks left and right partway along the torso with the posterior end (pelvis and legs) duplicated.


title: Dipygus

text: Myrtle Corbin was a dipygus; she married and had five children. In human cases, the inner two of the four hindquarters develop much smaller than normal. This is a type of "teras catadidymum" ("monster twinned below"). Another sort of deformity with extra legs can happen from a degenerated conjoined twin, as may have happened with Frank Lentini with his third leg.


title: Dipygus

text: Dipygus manifests as duplicated lower limbs and could include additional organs or bodily structures.


title: Dipygus

text: Dipygus is caused by genetic, environmental, or teratogenic factors. It occurs early in intrauterine life.


title: Marine expeditionary unit

text: A Marine expeditionary unit (MEU, pronounced as one syllable "" IPA: ) is the smallest air-ground task force (MAGTF) in the United States Fleet Marine Force. Each MEU is an expeditionary quick reaction force, deployed and ready for immediate response to any crisis, whether it be natural disaster or combat mission. Marine amphibious unit (MAU) was the name used until the late 1980s.


title: Marine expeditionary unit

text: Troop strength of a MEU is about 2,200 (normal and peacetime) to 4,400 (mobilization and wartime). A MEU is usually commanded by a colonel, and is deployed from amphibious assault ships. Currently, a MEU embarks personnel and equipment on the amphibious warfare ships of an expeditionary strike group (ESG), which also includes escort warships and submarines to protect them from air, surface, and submarine threats. For further protection and strong air support, an ESG is often deployed along with one or more carrier strike groups.


title: Marine expeditionary unit

text: The MEU is unique in that its air and ground combat elements are combined with a logistics combat element under one commander; other services do not unite the command of air and ground forces until much higher command levels.


title: Marine expeditionary unit

text: The MEU's ground combat element also combines artillery, light armor, and tanks at a much lower level than was common in the Army until the development of the brigade combat team early in the War on Terror, with a similar concept, the combat command, being utilized in World War II.


title: Marine expeditionary unit

text: This air-ground task force concept is designed to thoroughly exploit the combat power inherent in air and ground assets by closely integrating them into a single force. The MEU brings all the supplies and logistical support it needs to sustain itself for quick mission accomplishment or to pave the way for any follow-up forces. This self-sustainment allows more flexibility in disposition and operations of forces, and allows the MEU to initiate operations sooner and let support catch up later, without having to wait for external logistical support to begin a mission. Deployments on U.S. Navy amphibious assault ships allows MEUs to seabase around the globe, ready for deployment at short notice.


title: Marine expeditionary unit

text: Many types of equipment are, or will soon, undergo a transitory phase as they are replaced. Some examples include the Amphibious Combat Vehicle replacing the AAV-7, the F-35 Lightning II replacing the AV-8B Harrier, and the CH-53K King Stallion replacing the CH-53E.


title: Marine expeditionary unit

text: The ground combat element (GCE) is based on the "battalion landing team" ("BLT"), an infantry battalion reinforced with an artillery battery, amphibious assault vehicle platoon, combat engineer platoon, light armored reconnaissance company, reconnaissance platoon, and other units as the mission and circumstances require. The total strength is approximately 1,100 members, including Navy sailors.


title: Marine expeditionary unit

text: The Maritime Special Purpose Force is a subgroup of the MEU, formed for low-profile missions. The MSPF force consists of four elements: an assault platoon (a direct action platoon augmented from Force Recon), a security platoon (a selected infantry platoon from the battalion landing team), reconnaissance and surveillance assets, and a headquarters section. The total strength is approximately 350 members, including Navy sailors.


title: Marine expeditionary unit

text: The aviation combat element (ACE) is a USMC composite squadron (reinforced) composed of a medium tiltrotor squadron augmented with detachments of heavy, light, and attack helicopters, one detachment of amphibious flight-deck-capable jets, and a Marine air control group detachment with tactical air command, air traffic control, direct air support, and anti-aircraft assets, as well as wing headquarters, wing communications, and wing support squadron personnel. Total strength is approximately 600 troops.


title: Marine expeditionary unit

text: The logistics combat element (LCE) (formerly "combat service support element" or "CSSE") is based on the MEU combat logistics battalion (CLB) (formerly "MEU service support group" or "MSSG"). It contains all the logistics specialists and equipment necessary for the MEU to support and sustain itself for up to 15 days in an austere expeditionary environment. It includes service support (postal and disbursing), medical, dental, intermediate maintenance, intermediate supply (consumables and secondary reparable), transportation (distribution and landing support), explosive ordnance disposal, utilities production and distribution, bulk fuels, internal communications, and various other technical experts. It consists of approximately 300 members, including Navy sailors.


title: Marine expeditionary unit

text: The command element (CE), which includes the MEU commander and his supporting staff, provides command and control over the other three elements. It includes specialized detachments for air naval gunfire liaison, reconnaissance, surveillance, specialized communications, radio reconnaissance (SIGINT), electronic warfare, Marine Corps Intelligence and counterintelligence, law enforcement, and public affairs missions. The overall strength is about 200 members, including Navy sailors.