title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: Another notable grave containing what has been identified as the remains of a seeress was excavated by archaeologists in Hagebyhöga in Östergötland, Sweden. The grave contained female human remains interred with an iron wand or staff, a carriage, horses, and Arabic bronze jugs. The grave also contained a small silver figurine of a woman with a large necklace, which has been interpreted by archaeologists as representing the goddess Freyja, a deity strongly associated with seiðr, death, and sex.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: In Scandinavian sources, seeresses work as diviners using a practice called seiðr on a ritual platform called "seiðhjallr" (see below), which is associated with shamanism. They also take part in other activities, but they do not appear to perform sacrifices. They are described as ritual specialists travelling from settlement to settlement, sometimes with a group of followers, and late sources tell that they received payment for their services.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: In the Roman era, the Germanic word for chanting was similar to the reconstructed Proto-Germanic form *"ʒalđran", which later evolved into Old Norse "galdr" ("song, charm; witchcraft, sorcery"), OHG "galtar" ("incantation, charm") and Old English "ʒealdor" with the same meaning, also rendered as "galdor" ("sound, song, incantation, spell, enchantment"). It is derived from *"ʒalanan", which became ON "gala" ("to crow, sing"), OHG "galan" ("to incantate") and OE "ʒalan" ("to sing"). It is related to the English "nightingale" and "yell", to Latin "gallus" ("cock") and it appears in ON "gylfra" ("witch"). The many uses of chanting are revealed in the words that are derived from "galdr", such as "galdrabók" ("book of magic"), "galdrasmiðja" ("objects used for magic"), "galdravél" ("a magic device"), "galdrahríð" ("magic storm"), "galdrastafir" ("magical characters") and "valgaldr" (a kind of Odinic necromancy). The modern Swedish word "galen" ("crazy", literally "having been chanted") is derived from the word for this practice.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: Other names for the songs are "varðlok(k)ur" and "seiðlæti", where the latter simply means "seiðr songs". The former term is more complex, and scholars such as Cleasby and Vigfússon, Tolley, Strömbäck and Price have derived it from "vǫrðr" ("guard, protector"). Several scholars have also compared it to the Scotting dialect word "warlock", and scholars such as Cleasby, Vigfússon and Strömbäck consider it to be the origin of the Scottish word. Katherine Morris translates the word as "warlock-song".


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: In "Eiríks saga rauða", the songs are said to be sung or spoken by the seeresses' followers, but at the same time there is only one woman who knows them and sings them. Price argues that since the name appears with two spellings (depending on the manuscript), it is possible to interpret the name in two ways, either by referring to "loka" ("fastening") or "lokka" ("lure"). He interprets the spelling "varðlokkur" as meaning "to lure the spirits", and "varðlokur" as meaning "locking the spirits under the seeress' power". In this way the term can be simultaneously interpreted as attracting the spirits and locking them under the summoner's power, and probably also securing them as protection against hostile entities. In the poem "Grógaldr", "urðarlokkur", the norn of fate Urðr's "lokkur", are said to protect a person on all sides, and they are also likely bound to that individual. Tolley points out that the form "urðarlok(k)ur" for these protective spells is probably a reinterperation of an older "vǫrðlokur" ("ward spells"), or more likely another possible form with the same meaning, "varðarlokur" ("spells of warding").


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: The chants appear to have been sung with a high pitch, and they are reported to have been pleasing to the ear. In the "Laxdœla saga", the sweetness of a chant ("seiðlæti") lures a boy to his death, as intended, and a pleasing sound would also have been understood as attracting spirits to the summoner. Price suggests that the nearest equivalent to these high pitched and pleasing chants are the traditional Swedish herding calls ("lockrop" in modern Swedish, which still contains the linguistic element "lokk"-).


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: While the "varðlok(k)ur" (mentioned above) attracted protective spirits that provided information to the enchantress, there were animal spirits that were sent out to collect information for her, and to perform other tasks. Consequently, the task of the sorceress was to control spirits, and the name that appears to have been used for these spirits and for several other aspects in sorcery is "gandr" (pl. "gandir"); the relationship between the extended meanings of "gandr" is complex and a matter of discussion among scholars. The original meaning appears to be "something which is connected with the soul of the magician and can be sent out from him or her in sleep or extasy".


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: According to de Vries, the origin of "gandr" is a word "gan"- meaning "magic", of which there was an ablaut grade "gin"- (in English there is still a semantic relationship between the ablaut grades "swam" and "swim", and "sat" and "sit") that may be found in the name of the primordial chasm "Ginnungagap" ("space filled with magic powers"), and on the migration age Björketorp and Stentoften runestones, it appears in the sense "magically powerful" in Proto-Norse "ginnarunaʀ" ("powerful runes"). It was also used as an intensifier in the compounds "ginnregin" ("great powers", i.e. the gods) and "ginnheilagr" ("extremely holy"). As a noun it meant "falsehood" and "deception", while the verb "ginna" meant "to dupe or to fool someone".


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: The "gan"- ablaut grade was combined with the suffix -"đra"-, the same as in "galdr", from "gala", "chant" (see section on "Chanting", above). Tolley argues that the original meaning cannot have included "staff", but rather that it would have meant "sorcerer spirit" from which would have been derived the additional meanings "wand", "wolf" and "serpent" (Jörmungandr). The "sorcerer's spirit" ("gandr") could be summoned or sent out to gather information; this spirit is in animal form, but possibly not always. The extension to the meanings "wolf" and "serpent" is due to the fact that spirits had animal form, and the term "gandreið" originally meant the ride of a sorcerer on a spirit in animal form such as that of a wolf. Supernatural creatures could also use wolves as steeds; later the term came to refer to the sorcerer riding on a staff.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: In Old Norse sources, the noun "gandreið" and the verb "renna gand" (or "renna gǫndum") can refer to going out to gather information in a non-corporeal sense, but it can also refer to magically flying on a staff in a physical sense. Price disagrees with Tolley's argument that "staff" was not part of the original meaning of "gandr" and suggests that the staff/wand ("gandr" or "gǫndull") was part of the ritual of summoning and releasing the "gandir" ("spirits") for the purpose of clairvoyance or prophesy, and sometimes in order to harm people. The use of the staff may have implied sexual magic and sexual acts while it was used, and the staff was possibly also ridden in order to hurt enemies.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: Some examples of aggressive projection are also preserved in Old English poems, such as the "Nine Herbs Charm", "Against a Dwarf" and ""Wið færstice"". Especially the last poem contains many Germanic pagan elements that are also found in Old Norse sources, such as sorceresses ("hægtessan"), elves ("ylfa"), Æsir gods ("esa"), the magic of smiths, and the presence of women that are like Valkyries.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: During the eighth decade of the first century, the Semnonian seeress Ganna succeeded the Bructerian seeress Veleda as the leader of an alliance of Germanic tribes when the latter had been captured and deported by the Romans. Her name "Ganna" is usually linked to the ON word "gandr" – Simek comments that instead of being a reference to a wand as her tool or insignia, her name may be a reference to her function among the Germanic tribes (like Veleda's name). Sundqvist also comments that the name may have referred instead to her abilities, like de Vries who connects her name directly to the grade "gin(n)"- (see above).


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: There are two ways in which the seeress conveys the acquired information to the audience. One of them is by having a seizure during the trance and gasping for air with a wide open mouth ("Hrólfs saga kraka" and "Hauks þáttr hábrókar"). She delivers her prophesy during the trance, and it may be said that a song appears from elsewhere in her mouth ("Ǫrvar-Odds saga" and "Hrólfs saga kraka"). In "Hrólfs saga kraka", it is in the beginning of the trance that she breathes in, and Tolley considers that this may represent a breathing in of spirits rather than her letting out her soul. Price comments that as far as textual criticism is concerned, this detail can not have been borrowed from those of the neighbouring Fenno-Ugric peoples, because the closest practitioners are the Yukaghir people on the other side of Eurasia, whose practices were inaccessible for the saga writers.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: The other situation occurs when the seeress has returned from her trance and tells about it while awake ("Eiríks saga rauða" and "Vatnsdœla saga").


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: There appears to be a continuity between elements such as the first century Bructerian seeress Veleda's tower and the "seiðhjallr" that played an important role in Scandinavian sources. The word "seiðhjallr" means "incantation scaffold", for performing magic.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: The notion of ecstatic experience induced or complemented by the use of intoxicants in the context of Nordic pagan religion is not new, and there have been several attempts to reconstruct such practices. Little evidence to confirm the Viking Age ingestion of hallucinogens such as psilocybin mushrooms or other entheogens has been found, with the exception of two archaeological finds:


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: Several hundred seeds of henbane were found in grave 4 at Fyrkat. Their presence in the grave is likely significant, and the herb's deliriant properties suggest aspects of the rituals that might have been performed with it. There are many medieval accounts describing henbane's use as an ingredient in witches' ointments, used when a sorceress wished to change physical form. Henbane contains the psychoactive drug scopolamine, and when consumed as a tea, or when its juice is made into a topical salve and rubbed into the skin, especially around the armpits and chest, hallucinations can be experienced. A strong sensation of flight is often felt, which remains vivid for several hours. "Bilsenkraut", the German name of henbane, is derived from the Indo-European "bhelena"; according to some sources, it originally meant "plant of madness". The proto-Germanic "bil" seems to have meant "vision, hallucination" or "magical power."


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: Four seeds of the mind-altering plant cannabis sativa were found in the Oseberg ship burial, among the piles of pillows thrown into the prow of the ship when the grave was robbed. A single seed of cannabis was also found embedded in a clump of decayed leather, bound by a thin woollen cord, apparently the remains of a small leather pouch with a draw-string; it is possible that all the seeds were originally contained in this bag. The pouch was too small to hold enough seeds for planting, suggesting that they might have had symbolic significance, and could have been connected with the higher status woman's religious functions.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: All over the world cats are often linked to magical practices, and the goddess Freyja, who was the first divinity reported to have practiced magic, was associated with cats. Cats and catskins appear to have been important symbols for the seeresses. In "Eiríks saga rauða", the account of Þorbjörg lítilvölva tells that her ritual dress had a black lambskin hood that was lined with white catskin and on her hands she wore catskin gloves. Ellis Davidson argues that the catskin represents the seeresses' helping animal spirits (see the section on magical "projection", above), and Price connects these cat spirits with the cats that pull Freyja's wagon.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: The most opulent female grave from the Viking Age is the extremely rich Oseberg ship burial from the first half of the 9th c. that contained two women. Although previously considered to be the grave of a queen, several scholars, such as Stine Ingstad, Neil Price and Leszek Gardeła note that the finds indicate that it was instead the grave of a seeress. In addition to a staff and cannabis it contained a chest with catskins, and a wagon that had one end decorated with nine cats (a significant number), animals sacred to Freyja , which suggests that it was a reference to the goddess whose wagon is pulled by cats, according to "Gylfaginning" and "Skáldskaparmál". About 50 graves from Medelpad, the Mälaren Valley and Gotland, most of which are identified as the graves of wealthy women, contain lynx skins; it has been argued that these powerful women had a special connection with the goddess Freyja.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: The seeresses rarely appear in the earliest Scandinavian written sources, such as runestones and skaldic poetry, and they do not appear in place names which suggests a marginal position in society; older research has cast them in a negative light. Simek comments that all our sources on Germanic seeresses have passed through the filter of Roman and Christian interpretations. The Romans interpreted them as similar to their augurs, while the Christian writers considered them to be "more or less witches". In sources from the Christian era, their rituals are described as suspicious and sometimes evil. This attitude can even be seen in some Eddic lays, and in the "Ynglinga saga", Snorri Sturluson writes that their practice was so evil that "manly men considered it to shameful to practise it, and so it was taught to priestesses". It is possible that the Christian scribes wanted to minimize and deprecate them and their rites and turn them into an oddity. Price comments that the associations with Freyja and the Vanir gods lingered for a long time in Christian medieval Scandinavia, but the Viking Age views were replaced by negative views influenced by Christian attitudes towards female sexuality as something dangerous that had to be contained. This was related to the same fears that later led to witchcraft hysteria, manifested as what Ellis Davidson referred to as “the sinister light which played round [Freyja’s] cult for the story-tellers of a Christian age”.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: Modern archaeological finds, however, do not confirm that the North Germanic seeresses had a marginal position at the bottom of society as depicted by older scholarship and Christian sources, but instead they suggest the contrary. The seeresses have been cast in a new light by a recent detailed analysis of "Landnámabók", the "Íslendingasögur" and the "Íslendingaþættir", which point out that the practitioners of magic were respected and well integrated in society. They were often connected to the highest echelons of society, they were free and they owned land. In a Norwegian setting they usually belong to Norwegian families, and in Iceland they do not live in caves or on islands, but in settlements with other people. Nor are they described as perverted or as sexual deviants. Moreover, archaeological studies from Norway and Sweden, such as that of the Oseberg burial, show that they belonged to the highest elite and were part of aristocratic society.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: The seeresss tradition did not disappear, at least not during the Middle Ages. Mitchell writes in his book "Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages" (2011) that not even the most triumphalist Christian, nor even the most sceptic scholar, can deny the continued survival of the practices of these women. However, it is also clear that during centuries of transmission, their practices changed through external influences, and evolved. Attitudes also changed and sorcery was increasingly considered to be witchcraft during the Middle Ages, and by the 15th century society appears no longer to have distinguished between sorcesses and healers such as midwives and wise women. The witch was inherently evil, she could fly to the sabbath and have intercourse with the devil, and she ate infants.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: The "Malleus Maleficarum" extended the concept of "witch" to more women, and concepts that used to be separate – folklore and witchcraft - merged with the concept of heresy. Morris argues that without this book there would probably never have been witch-hunts, and that the printing press helped spread the notion of diabolical witchcraft from the ecclesiastical elite to a larger part of the population. This was also the time of the revival of "high magic" during the renaissance, but the Church did not separate the two and persecuted both the "low magic" and "high magic" as heresy. About eighty per cent of those accused of witchcraft were women, and the accusations included Devil worship, having sex with the Devil, sex both oral and anal, incest and cannibalism of infants. Morris comments that the accusations reveal more about the inquisitors than about the women who were accused. The accusations were characterized by ecclesiastical attitudes towards female sexuality, and it is notable that the practices they were accused of were preventive to procreation. Morris argues that the evolution from Germanic pagan seeresses to witches during the witch-hunts is a case study in how attitudes towards magic were affected by the change of religion.


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: The concept of the Germanic seeress has had influence in a variety of areas of popular culture. For example, in 1965, the Icelandic scholar Sigurður Nordal coined the Icelandic language term for computer—"tölva"— by blending the words "tala" (number) and "völva".


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: The seeress Veleda has inspired a number of artworks, including German writer Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's 1818 novel "Welleda und Ganna", an 1844 marble statue by French sculptor Hippolyte Maindron, an illustration, "Veleda, die Prophetin der Brukterer", by K. Sigrist, and Polish-American composer Eduard Sobolewski's 1836 opera "Velleda".


title: Seeress (Germanic)

text: Practitioners of Germanic Heathenry, the modern revival of Germanic paganism, seek to revive the concept of the Germanic seeress.


title: Shaista Khan

text: Mirza Abu Talib (22 November 1600 – 1694), better known as Shaista Khan, was a general and the subahdar of Mughal Bengal. A maternal uncle to the emperor Aurangzeb, he acted as a key figure during his reign. Shaista Khan initially governed the Deccan, where he clashed with the Maratha Ruler Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. However, he was most notable for his tenure as the governor of Bengal from 1664 to 1688. Under Shaista Khan's authority, the city of Dhaka and Mughal power in the province attained its greatest heights. His achievements include constructions of notable mosques such as the Sat Gambuj Mosque and masterminding the conquest of Chittagong. Shaista Khan was also responsible for sparking the outbreak of the Anglo-Mughal War with the English East India Company.


title: Shaista Khan

text: According to the diary of William Hedges, the first governor of the East India Company in Bengal, the birthday of Shaista Khan was on 22 November.


title: Shaista Khan

text: Khan was of Persian origin. His grandfather Mirza Ghiyas Beg and father Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan were the wazirs of the Mughal emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan, respectively. He also had familial connections with the imperial dynasty, having been a paternal nephew of the empress Nur Jahan and the brother of the empress Mumtaz Mahal. Jahangir awarded the title of Mirza to Shaista Khan in recognition of his family's service and position in the Mughal court.


title: Shaista Khan

text: Khan trained and served with the Mughal army and court, winning multiple promotions and being appointed governor of various provinces. He also developed a reputation as a successful military commander and grew close to his nephew, the prince Aurangzeb, when the duo fought against the kingdom of Golconda.


title: Shaista Khan

text: After Aurangzeb's accession to the Mughal throne in 1659, he sent Shaista Khan as viceroy of the Deccan with a large army to enforce the treaty the Mughals had signed with the Adilshahi of Bijapur. Through the treaty the Adilshahi had ceded territory that it had previously captured from the Ahmadnagar Sultanate, to the Mughals. However, the territory was also fiercely contested by Maratha ruler, Shivaji who had acquired a reputation after his killing of Adilshahi general, Afzal Khan in 1659. In January 1660, Shaista Khan arrived at Aurangabad and quickly advanced, seizing Pune, the centre of Shivaji's realm. He also captured the fort of Chakan and Kalyan and north Konkan after heavy fighting with the Marathas. Shaista Khan camped at Lal Mahal, Palace in Pune where Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj spent his childhood. The Maratha were banned from entering the city of Pune and Mughal distance from the locals turned out to be an error. On the evening of 5 April 1663, a wedding party had obtained special permission for holding a procession. Shivaji and many of his nearly 400 men disguised as the bridegroom's procession members entered Pune. Others entered in small parties dressed as labourers and soldiers of Maratha generals serving under Shaista Khan. After midnight, they raided the Nawab's compound and then entered the palace in an attempt to assassinate him.


title: Shaista Khan

text: The Marathas broke into the courtyard of the palace and slaughtered the palace guards. The Nawab lost three fingers in a skirmish with Shivaji, while his son who was getting married was killed in an encounter with the Marathas in the palace courtyard. Taking advantage of the confusion and darkness, the Marathas escaped the palace and Pune, despite the widespread camping of Mughal forces. Shocked by the sudden and bold terror attack in the city, Aurangzeb angrily transferred Shaista Khan to Bengal, even refusing to give him audience at the time of transfer as was the custom.


title: Shaista Khan

text: On the death of Mir Jumla II in 1663, Shaista Khan was appointed the Subedar of Bengal. As governor, he encouraged trade with Europe, Southeast Asia and other parts of India. He consolidated his power by signing trade agreements with European powers. Despite his powerful position he remained loyal to Aurangzeb, often mediating trade disputes and rivalries. He banned the English East India Company from Bengal in 1686, beginning the Anglo-Mughal War. In 1678, Prince Muhammad Azam Shah was appointed the Subedar of Bengal. In 1680, Shaista Khan was again appointed as the Subedar of Bengal. He served his first term from 1663 to 1678 and his second term from 1680 to 1688.


title: Shaista Khan

text: Shaista Khan encouraged the construction of modern townships and public works in Dhaka, leading to a massive urban and economic expansion. He was a patron of the arts and encouraged the construction of majestic monuments across the province, including mosques, mausoleums and palaces that represented the finest in Indo-Sarcenic and Mughal architecture. Khan greatly expanded Lalbagh Fort, Chowk Bazaar Mosque, Saat Masjid and Choto Katra. He also supervised the construction of the mausoleum for his daughter Bibi Pari.


title: Shaista Khan

text: Upon his arrival in Bengal, Shaista Khan was faced with putting down the Arakanese pirates. He began by rebuilding the Mughal navy, increasing its Bengal fleet to 300 battle-ready ships within a year. He also made strenuous diplomatic efforts to win the support of the Dutch East India Company as well as Portugal, which was supporting Arakan with resources and troops. With active Dutch military support, Shaista Khan led Mughal forces on an assault on the island of Sandwip, which lay in Arakanese control. Mughal forces succeeded in capturing the island in November 1665.


title: Shaista Khan

text: Shaista Khan gained a considerable advantage when a conflict erupted between the Arakanese and the Portuguese. The Portuguese, led by Captain Moor, set fire to Arakanese fleets and fled to Bhulua where Thanadar Farhad Khan gave them refuge. Farhad then sent them off to Shaista. By promptly offering protection and support, Shaista secured the aid of the Portuguese against the Arakanese.


title: Shaista Khan

text: In December 1665, Shaista Khan launched a major military campaign against Chittagong, which was the mainstay of the Arakanese kingdom. The imperial fleet consisted of 288 vessels of their own and about 40 vessels of the Firingis (Portuguese) as auxiliaries. Ibn Hussain, Shaista Khan's admiral, was asked to lead the navy, while the subahdar himself took up the responsibility of supplying provisions for the campaign. He also ordered Farhad Khan and Mir Murtaza to take the land route. The overall command was given to Buzurg Ummed Khan, a son of Shaista Khan. The Mughals and the Portuguese held sway in the following naval battle. The conquered territory to the western bank of Kashyapnadi (Kaladan river) was placed under direct imperial administration. The name of Chittagong was changed to Islamabad and it became the headquarters of a Mughal faujdar. Khan also re-asserted Mughal control over Cooch Behar and Kamarupa.


title: Shaista Khan

text: Upon his victory against the Arakanese, he ordered the release of thousands of Bengali peasants being held captive by the Arakanese forces.


title: Shaista Khan

text: In his late years, Shaista Khan left Dhaka and returned to Delhi. His legacy was the expansion of Dhaka into a regional centre of trade, politics and culture; a thriving and prosperous city from a small township. It is said that he made currency of Bangladesh 'Taka' so strong that eight 'mon' (around 295 kilogram) processed rice or 'chaal' could be bought with one taka.


title: Shaista Khan

text: The Shaista Khan Mosque is a massive standing monument to Shaista Khan, built on his palace grounds. Incorporating unique elements of Bengali and Mughal architecture, it is a major tourist attraction and a valued historical monument protected by the Government of Bangladesh today.


title: Concerns and controversies at the 2022 Winter Olympics

text: The 2022 Winter Olympics took place between the 4 and 20 February 2022 and were hosted by in China in the capital city of Beijing. The country selected was the subject of various concerns and controversies about their cost, environmental impact, censorship, espionage, COVID-19, sportswashing, and human rights issues.


text: There have been diplomatic boycotts of the Olympics largely due to the human rights situation in China, and the Uyghur genocide in particular. Additional reasons for diplomatic boycotts include China's alleged politicization of the games.


text: American sportscaster Bob Costas criticized the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) decision to award the games to China saying "The IOC deserves all of the disdain and disgust that comes their way for going back to China yet again" referencing China's human rights record.


text: After winning two gold medals and returning to his home country of Sweden skater Nils van der Poel criticized the IOC's selection of China as the host saying "I think it is extremely irresponsible to give it to a country that violates human rights as blatantly as the Chinese regime is doing." He had declined to criticize China before leaving for the games saying "I don’t think it would be particularly wise for me to criticize the system I’m about to transition to, if I want to live a long and productive life."


text: Several cities withdrew their applications during the bidding process, citing the high costs or the lack of local support to host the 2022 games, leaving Almaty in Kazakhstan and Beijing as the only candidate cities by 1 October 2014.


text: The decision to bid for the Olympics was controversial in China (and outside), because Beijing itself, and especially some of the proposed outdoor venues, would not have reliable snowfall in winter for snow sports. Concerns have been raised that snow may need to be transported to the venues at great cost and with uncertain environmental consequences.


text: Some commentators alleged that one of the early promotional songs for the 2022 Winter Olympics, "The Snow and Ice Dance", sung by Sun Nan and Tan Jing, had suspicious similarities with "Let It Go", one of the songs from the 2013 Disney film, "Frozen". A Chinese media outlet cited technical analysis of the two songs: both songs employ a piano as the major instrument, have similar prelude chords and an eight-beat introduction, and they run at almost exactly the same tempo.


text: Several countries declined to send any diplomats or official representatives to the games. The following countries have either specifically called their non-attendance a "boycott" or have explicitly stated that their non-attendance is due to human rights concerns:


text: The following countries also did not send any official representatives, but stated that their non-attendance was due to the COVID-19 pandemic or explicitly denied that they considered their non-attendance to be a diplomatic boycott:


text: After China had won the bid to host the 2022 Olympics, many Tibetan protesters had criticized the IOC for allowing China to host the games again due to its policies against Tibetans. In the aftermath of the 2019 leak of the Xinjiang papers, the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, China's hostage diplomacy and the Uyghur genocide, calls were made for a boycott of the 2022 Games. In November 2021 the disappearance of former Olympian Peng Shuai after she made allegations of sexual assault against Zhang Gaoli, former Vice Premier of China and a high ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member, has put pressure on the International Olympic Committee.


text: Some human rights organizations have called for a diplomatic boycott that would mean countries not sending their heads of state or high-ranking officials to the Olympics but still sending athletes. In a 30 July 2020 letter, the World Uyghur Congress urged the IOC to reconsider holding the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing because of the Uyghur genocide. The World Uyghur Congress does not support a full boycott; instead, they want athletes to use the games as a chance to raise awareness about the Uyghur genocide, similar to the way that athletes have raised the profile of the Black Lives Matter movement. The IOC met with activists in late 2020 about their request to move the Olympics. In March 2021, the IOC president Thomas Bach opposed a boycott, which would also damage the IOC image and finances, and said that the IOC must stay out of politics. On 14 October 2021, the executive vice-president of the IOC, John Coates, said that the IOC would not challenge the Chinese government over the issue of the Uyghurs, stating that it was "not within the IOC's remit".


text: On 23 June 2021 (Olympic Day), multiple Tibetan, Uyghur, Hongkonger, Chinese, Taiwanese and Southern Mongolian representatives staged protests in 50 cities worldwide, calling for a mass boycott.


text: On 7 September 2021, human rights groups called on Olympics broadcasters, including NBC, to cancel the broadcasting plans for 2022 Olympics due to China's human rights issue.


text: In January 2022, it was reported that the United States is considering legislation to strip the IOC of its federal tax-exempt status in response to the IOC's "refusal to challenge China on human rights abuses".


text: More than 200 human rights organizations have voiced support for a boycott of the games. Groups protesting the games have called them the "Genocide Games."


text: In October 2018, Senator Marco Rubio, on behalf of the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, asked that China be deprived of the hosting rights for the 2022 Olympics due to the "dire human rights situation" there. In September 2020, United States Senator Rick Scott spoke with the IOC Vice President about reconsidering the IOC's decision to host the 2022 Winter Olympics in China. On 25 February 2021, U.S. Representative John Katko stated that China is "a country that's engaged in genocide" and called upon the United States to boycott participation in the 2022 Winter Olympics. In March 2021, Senator Mitt Romney called for an "economic and diplomatic boycott" of the 2022 Winter Olympics, in which U.S. athletes would still participate, but no American spectators or dignitaries would attend. In May 2021, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called for a diplomatic boycott and said heads of state should not "honor China" by attending the Olympic Games. In July 2021, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China called on the IOC to relocate or postpone the games.


text: In April 2021, it was reported that the Biden administration was "not discussing any joint boycott with allies and partners."


text: In a survey taken in August 2021, 49 percent of Americans believe that China's human rights record should prevent it from hosting the winter Olympics in 2022 and 33 percent are not sure.


text: On 18 November 2021, President Joe Biden said the U.S. is "considering" a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Some, like US senator Tom Cotton, called for a full boycott of the games, which would bar U.S. athletes from competing and bar U.S. companies from sponsoring the games. Due to a change in the last version of the Olympic Charter, a full boycott by the United States, like the one at the 1980 Summer Olympics, could result in the most severe punishment, which is the suspension by the National Olympic Committee for 2 years of the Olympic Games, a similar situation to what happened with North Korea in the 2020 games.


text: On 6 December 2021, White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, announced that the Biden administration would initiate a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics and the 2022 Winter Paralympics. The diplomatic boycott would bar all US government officials from attending the games in an official capacity. The White House cited China's mistreatment of the Uyghur people as the reason for the boycott. The White House said it stopped short of a full boycott, because "it would not be fair to punish athletes who have trained for years".


text: On 27 December 2021, the Chinese foreign ministry said it has received visa applications for 18 US officials to attend the games. The US said that the visa applications were consistent with its diplomatic boycott as the applicants would only be providing "consular and diplomatic security services" to its athletes.


text: China's alleged use of coercive diplomacy against Australia has led to increased calls within Australia to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics. In November 2020, Australian Senators Jacqui Lambie and Rex Patrick officially proposed a boycott, but their proposal was voted down. Australia has decided that no Australian based politician or officials will be attending the games, and Canberra has also refused to sign the Olympic Truce for the 2022 Winter Olympics.


text: On 7 December 2021, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated that Australia would join with the United States in the diplomatic boycott of the 2022 games. He stated that it was "human rights abuses," referencing the ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China's Xinjiang region, as well as "many other issues that Australia has consistently raised". He went on to state that it was "no surprise" that Canberra would do this following consistent deterioration of relations between Canberra and Beijing. Morrison also stated that the decision was "in Australia's national interest," and that it is the "right thing to do."


text: After it was revealed that People's Liberation Army regimental commander Qi Fabao, who led the Chinese troops during skirmishes against Indian troops during the 2020 Galwan Valley clash, would be one of the torchbearers during the opening ceremony of the games, Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi stated: "It is indeed regrettable that the Chinese side has chosen to politicize an event like the Olympics". Bagchi also stated that the "chargé d'affaires" of the Embassy of India in Beijing will not attend the opening or closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics. The CEO of Prasar Bharati, India's public broadcaster, announced that they will not air the 2022 Winter Olympics opening and closing ceremony.


text: Qi Fabao had been captured in June 2020 by Indian forces when he tried to mount an attack on Indian forces in the Galwan Valley, according to an investigative report by the Australian newspaper "The Klaxon". According to the report, 38 Chinese troops drowned in the early stages of the 15–16 June face-off between Indian and Chinese forces while attempting to cross the Galwan River at Line of Actual Control in the dark. The Chinese government accepted four casualties.


text: In a non-binding motion in February 2021, the Canadian House of Commons called for the IOC to move the Olympics to a new location. In a nationwide survey conducted in March 2021, 54% of Canadians said the country should boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, while 24% believed it should not and 21% were not sure.


text: In July 2021, the European Parliament and the Parliament of the United Kingdom voted in favor of a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics.


text: On 19 November 2021, 17 members of the Lithuanian national parliament Seimas released an official letter encouraging Lithuania to withdraw from the 2022 Olympics due human rights violations in China. Daina Gudzinevičiūtė, president of National Olympic Committee of Lithuania, released a statement that Olympic games should be politically neutral and confirmed that committee has no plans to boycott the games. Lithuania's president, Gitanas Nauseda, released a statement confirming the Lithuanian diplomatic boycott on 3 December 2021. This was due to concerns of human rights abuses in China.


text: On 8 December 2021, the United Kingdom and Canada joined the United States and Australia, whom both announced diplomatic boycotts of the 2022 Winter Olympics.


text: In January 2022, the governments of Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands separately announced that they will not send diplomats to the games.


text: In February 2021, the Chinese Communist Party-owned tabloid "Global Times" warned that China could "seriously sanction any country that follows a boycott." In March 2021, Chinese spokesperson Guo Weimin stated that any attempt to boycott the Olympics would be doomed to fail. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also told the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell that they should attend the games to "enhance exchanges on winter sport," and to "foster new highlights" in bilateral cooperation.


text: On 29 November 2021, Chinese media reported that China reportedly does not plan to invite Western politicians who threaten a diplomatic boycott to the Beijing Winter Olympics.


text: The IOC has stated that the diplomatic boycotts are "a purely political decision for each government, which the IOC in its political neutrality fully respects." It has also stated that the award of hosting the games does not signal agreement with the host country's political or social situation or its human rights standards. When prompted by Agence France-Presse, the IOC responded: "We've repeatedly said it: the IOC isn't responsible for the government. It only gives the rights and opportunity for the staging of the Olympic Games. That doesn't mean we agree with all the politics, all the social or human rights issues in the country. And it doesn't mean we approve of all the human rights violations of a person or people." This position has generated criticism, with Jules Boykoff accusing the IOC of hypocrisy by saying that it ignores its charter that promotes equality and anti-discrimination when it is convenient to do so and that the IOC has shown an "unfortunate propensity for turning away from human rights atrocities to make sure that the games go on."


text: On 8 September 2021, after the IOC suspended the North Korean NOC for not being present at the 2020 Summer Olympics, there was speculation about whether the IOC was also intending to send a message to nations considering a boycott of the games that they could be banned from participation in future Olympic Games if they chose to boycott this edition. On 14 October 2021, the executive vice-president of the IOC, Australian John Coates, said that the IOC would not challenge the Chinese government over the issue of the Uyghurs, stating that it was "not within the IOC's remit".


text: However, during the opening ceremony, IOC president, Thomas Bach had called for the end of various types of discrimination during his speech indirectly referring to the human rights abuses in China. On 17 February 2022 towards the end of the Games, when a BOCOG spokesperson referred to questions about Xinjiang as "lies", the IOC reminded BOCOG to remain politically neutral.


text: Athletes participating have said, the games "are not living up to the hype — especially considering how China promised the world a “streamlined, safe and most splendid Games.” Team officials from delegations including Belgium, Germany and the Russian Olympic Committee have all brought up issues facing their athletes in quarantine hotels, among them no internet, low-quality food, insufficient facilities and no training equipment.


text: Polish short track speed skater Natalia Maliszewska posted on Twitter, "I don’t believe in anything anymore. In no tests. No games. It’s a big joke for me" after a series of mistakes by Chinese officials conducting COVID-19 tests on her. Meanwhile, Finnish men's ice hockey team's coach Jukka Jalonen accused China of not respecting the human rights of athlete Marko Anttila, who had not received food and was under a lot of stress while in quarantine.


text: On February 2, Belgian skeleton athlete Kim Meylemans posted on social media and was in tears about the conditions she faced while in quarantine. Meylemans was supposed to be transported to the village after her time in quarantine was over, but was transported to a different quarantine facility instead. After the video was posted, Belgian Olympic team officials and the International Olympic Committee had to intervene, and Meylemans was moved to the Athletes Village in Yanqing. Moreover, Dirk Schimmelpfennig, Germany's chef de mission called the hotel accommodations provided for Olympic gold medalist in Nordic Combined Eric Frenzel as “unreasonable".


text: The food being served at the games was also criticized. During the men's downhill event in alpine skiing, German coach Christian Schweiger said the following, “the catering is extremely questionable. I would have expected that the Olympic Committee is capable of providing hot meals, there are crisps, some nuts and chocolate and nothing else. This shows a lack of focus on high-performance sport”. Also, Russian Olympic Committee biathlete Valeria Vasnetsova posted on social media that she was served the same food for all three meals and posted "My stomach hurts, I’m very pale and I have huge black circles around my eyes". Vasnetsova said she was only able to eat the pasta served as the rest of the food was inedible. The United States delegation brought extra food, such as bags of pasta, anticipating issues with the food at the games. Also, a manager from a restaurant in the 'bubble' for the games admitted the food served there was 'disgusting' and only low quality packaged food items were available at the Main Media Centre. The International Olympic Committee would release a statement acknowledging the issues raised by athletes, "particularly with regard to food temperature, variety and portion size”.


text: Other complaints included the weather conditions at the games, with athletes raising complaints about competing in unsafe weather conditions. The Swedish team requested the races be moved to earlier in the day to protect athletes from the cold weather. This was done after athlete Frida Karlsson nearly fainted at the conclusion of the women's skiathlon cross-country race. Some athletes resorted to putting tape on their faces and noses to protect them from the bitter cold.


text: On 9 December 2019, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russia from all international sport for a period of four years, after the Russian government was found to have tampered with lab data that it provided to WADA in January 2019 as a condition of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency being reinstated. As a result of the ban, WADA will allow individually cleared Russian athletes to take part in the 2022 Winter Olympics under a neutral banner, as instigated at the 2018 Winter Olympics. The title of the neutral banner was yet to be determined; WADA Compliance Review Committee head Jonathan Taylor stated that the IOC would not be able to use "Olympic Athletes from Russia" (OAR) as it did in 2018, emphasizing that neutral athletes cannot be portrayed as representing a specific country.


text: Russia later filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against the WADA decision. The Court of Arbitration for Sport, on review of Russia's appeal of its case from WADA, ruled on 17 December 2020, to reduce the penalty that WADA had placed from four to two years. Instead of banning Russia from sporting events, the ruling allowed Russia to participate at the Olympics and other international events, but for a period of two years, the team cannot use the Russian name, flag, or anthem and must present themselves as "Neutral Athlete" or "Neutral Team". The ruling does allow for team uniforms to display "Russia" on the uniform as well as the use of the Russian flag colors within the uniform's design, although the name should be up to equal predominance as the "Neutral Athlete/Team" designation.


text: The IOC announced on 19 February 2021 that Russia would compete in both the 2020 Summer Olympics (which was postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and 2022 Winter Olympics under the acronym "ROC", after the name of the Russian Olympic Committee. The ROC team would be represented by the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee. On 22 April 2021, the IOC approved a fragment of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 to be used in place of the Russian national anthem.


text: Russia was criticised for its troop build-up near the Ukrainian border. There were also calls to remove Russia from the Olympics sports committees. On 24 February 2022, Russia commenced a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, resulting in further sporting sanctions against the country.


text: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in changes in qualifying for curling and women's ice hockey due to the cancellation of tournaments in 2020. The World Curling Federation proposed that qualification for curling be based on placement in the 2021 world championships and a dedicated qualification tournament to complete the field (in place of points earned across the 2020 and 2021 world championships). The IIHF based its qualification for the women's tournament upon existing IIHF World Rankings, without holding the 2020 Women's World Championship. The Asian Winter Games was also not held before this Olympics, potentially affecting the qualifications for some athletes.


text: On 23 December 2021, the National Hockey League (NHL) announced it will not be sending players to the Games, citing health and safety concerns, and a need to use the timeframe of the Olympics to make up the large number of games postponed since December 2021 due to Omicron variant.


text: During the bidding process, critics questioned the Beijing bid, citing that the proposed outdoor venue sites do not have reliable snowfall in winter for snow sports. Concerns have been raised that snow may need to be transported to the venues at great cost and with uncertain environmental consequences.


text: The 2021 global energy crisis has intensified pressures on China ahead of the Winter Olympics. Al-Jazeera reported that "China’s energy crisis is partially of its own making as President Xi Jinping tries to ensure blue skies at the Winter Olympics in Beijing next February and show the international community he’s serious about de-carbonizing the economy."


text: The environmental impact of hosting the Games near Beijing has been questioned. Some of the proposed venues will be adjacent to the Songshan National Nature Reserve and part of the same mountain system, and the environmental impact on the nature reserve of construction, and artificially covering parts of the mountain with snow, is uncertain. The Government of China has responded to these concerns by expanding the nature reserve by 31% of its original size.


text: Concerns over China's human rights record have cast a shadow over Beijing's Olympic Games, including a diplomatic boycott over serious human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the country. Rights experts stated that crackdowns on human rights defenders, which can range from closing social media accounts to enforced disappearances, were typical in the lead up to sensitive events in China, where the Chinese Communist Party kept a tight lid on dissent.


text: Critics say that the 2022 Winter Olympics is being used by the Chinese government for the purpose of sportswashing, a practice by which a country uses sporting events to distract from human rights abuses or other issues.


text: In January 2022 Amnesty International warned the international community against participating in China's sportswashing efforts. According to Amnesty "China is hoping for sportswashing gold and it's vital that every effort is made to counteract that." Amnesty also criticized the IOC directly.


text: According to Amnesty International, Swedish Olympic champion Nils van der Poel gave his Beijing 2022 gold medal to the daughter of a Hong Kong dissident to protest the Chinese Government's devastating human rights record. He won the gold medal in men's 10,000 metre speed skating.


text: Members of the American congress from both major parties have expressed concerns about athlete safety. Retired Olympic cross-country skier Noah Hoffman has also expressed concerns about athlete safety citing China's human rights record and a lack of concern shown by the IOC.


text: In January 2022 the Beijing Organizing Committee warned that "Any behavior or speech that is against the Olympic spirit, especially against Chinese laws and regulations, are also subject to certain punishment."


text: Competitors have been warned by Human Rights Watch that speaking out is not tolerated in China and as a result if they speak out about human rights or other issues in China they face significant legal penalties. For their protection the American team has been shielded from question related to human rights.


text: Uyghur and Tibetan activists have encouraged athletes, sponsors, and other international participants in the games to use the platform to speak out on human rights.


text: On 18 October 2021 activists from Free Tibet and Students for a Free Tibet disrupted the Olympic flame lighting ceremony at Olympia in Greece. Three people, Chemi Lhamo, Fern MacDougal and Jason Leith, were arrested and detained for several days. They were charged and their trial was set to occur immediately before the games opened but it was immediately adjourned and a new date set for 1 December 2022.


text: In January 2022 a protest against China's hosting of the games was held in Washington, D.C. outside the Chinese embassy. Attendees included civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng and New Jersey politician Chris Smith. Smith described the 2022 Olympics as the "Genocide Games."


text: To protest the games and China's human rights record the artist Badiucao created an NFT collection entitled "Beijing 2022 Olympic" which featured works mixing Olympic imagery with human rights messaging.


text: On 4 February, a large protest against the games was held in Istanbul. Protesters included members of Turkey's Uyghur diaspora community. Hundreds of people in several countries protested against China's repression of its Uyghur minority and Tibetans.


text: The Chinese government's internet troll networks were mobilized before the Games to support government messaging. This has included campaigns of intimidation against human rights activists abroad. The Spamouflage network transitioned to primarily push Olympic messaging in December 2021.


text: In the run up to the Olympics, the Chinese government deployed dozens of fake Twitter accounts to push the Government's position in the Peng Shuai scandal and the IOC's involvement. The "New York Times" and "ProPublica" identified a network of more than 3,000 inauthentic-looking Twitter accounts that appeared to be coordinating. Such accounts appeared to operate solely to amplify state media, as most of these accounts were recently created with very few followers, and their activity consisted solely of reposting China comments including from one account called "Spicy Panda" whose cartoons and videos rallied against the Olympic boycott. A Twitter spokesperson said that hundreds of accounts included in the investigation's findings have since been suspended for violating the "platform manipulation and spam policy," which prohibits "coordinated activity that attempts to artificially influence conversations through the use of multiple accounts, fake accounts and automation."


text: For the domestic audience, in what was described as a '“closed loop” of official propaganda, the state carefully [curated] almost anything ordinary Chinese people see or read...[to] the effect [it] has been an Olympics free of scandal or criticism or bad news". For instance, a state media slide show devoted to the men's figure skating competition conspicuously omitted the gold medalist, Nathan Chen of the United States.


text: Domestic Chinese criticism and debate on the potential environmental impacts caused by the Games are censored by the Chinese government on the press and internet. In recent years, censorship has been significantly stepped up. The government has banned, for example, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and, since 2019, Wikipedia.


text: The Citizen Lab report on the My2022 app (see below) discovered a "censorship keywords" list built into the app, and a feature that allows people to flag other "politically sensitive" expressions. The list of words included the names of Chinese leaders and government agencies, as well as references to the 1989 killing of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, and the religious group Falun Gong.


text: On 28 January 2022, a few days before the opening ceremony, the Xuzhou chained woman incident was exposed on Chinese social media. Several media figures, including Han Song from the state-controlled Xinhua News Agency argued that people should be more concerned about the incident than the Winter Olympics. However, to avoid any negative news that could divert the public's attention from the Olympics, Chinese news media outlets were order by authorities to avoid reporting such cases, with many social media posts related to the incident censored. Some people who tried to dig into the story by investigating the case in Feng County were even detained by the police.


text: US athlete Aaron Blunck alleged that he was suspended by Twitter after he praised the 2022 Beijing Olympics. He reposted a fan's comment that read: "Aaron Blunck [is] out here telling the truth and getting punished by his own government." He later also shared a commentator's tweet accusing the US government of causing his account to be shut down: "Twitter has executed the order of the Western ruling cabals... Punishment comes pretty fast." In his Instagram post, he tagged Twitter and asked: "What'd I do?"


text: However, it was revealed that the account had been suspended in September the previous year, over five months prior to the games. Twitter responded to the allegations saying that the account had been suspended in error and had since been recovered.


text: China's espionage of athletes serves its political interests as well as addresses safety and COVID concerns. The smartphone app associated with the games, My2022, has been a particular subject of espionage concern.


text: All attendees to the Games, including athletes, audience members, and media, are required to use the My2022 app purportedly for daily Covid monitoring. The cybersecurity group Citizen Lab, a research institute at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, warned that the My2022 app fails to provide encryption on many of its files, and has security weaknesses that leave users exposed to data breaches. The Citizen Lab disclosed the concerns about the app on 3 December 2021, giving the organizing 15 days to respond and 45 days to fix the issues. A new iOS version of MY2022 was released on 6 January 2022, which failed to fix these problems, while adding a new "Green Health Code", feature that collects more medical data and also lacks SSL certificate validation making it vulnerable to attacks.


text: Numerous Olympic committees, including the British Olympic Association, the Australian Olympic Committee, Canadian Olympic Committee, NOC*NSF, and United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, have recommended that attendees use burner phones, virtual private networks (VPNs), and create email accounts for their time in China, while leaving personal smartphones and laptops at home.


text: Cyber security firm Internet 2.0 has also warned of potential security risks during the Olympics, when it examined the technology sponsors of the Games and their products that show "the sophisticated and broad surveillance culture that exists in China". Internet 2.0 noted that "China's national data security laws are not designed with the Western values of privacy and liberty and do not offer the same level of protection" as the laws allow the government to request access to the user data captured by these products.


text: On 4 February 2022, a Chinese security guard dragged Dutch journalist Sjoerd den Daas away from his camera during a live broadcast. This forced den Daas to interrupt his broadcast. He was not harmed and was able to resume his broadcast elsewhere a few minutes later. It was not immediately clear why Chinese officials decided to forcibly move den Daas in the middle of his broadcast.


text: The IOC described the guard as "overzealous". The IOC's spokesperson said "These things do happen and I think it's a one-off. I hope it's a one-off and we will assure you that within the closed loop you will be able to carry on your work." den Daas criticized the IOC for portraying what had happened as an "isolated incident". Yan Jiarong, spokeswoman for the Beijing Olympics, said "we welcome all the international media" and will protect their legal rights. According to his employer, the Dutch broadcaster NOS, the situation "is increasingly becoming a daily reality for journalists in China".


text: The choice of Qi Fabao, a People's Liberation Army commander who had been seriously injured after participating in the 2020–2021 China–India skirmishes, as one of the torchbearers has been controversial in India. As a result, India joined the diplomatic boycott of the games.


text: Amid human rights scrutiny, China chose a Uyghur athlete to help deliver the Olympic flame. For the final torch lighting, the Olympic flame was placed inside a giant snowflake in the “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium by two athletes, Uyghur cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang from Xinjiang and Nordic combined competitor Zhao Jiawen.


text: Kamaltürk Yalqun, a torchbearer in the 2008 Olympics of Uyghur descent, supported a full boycott of the 2022 games and heavily criticized the Chinese government's treatment of his people.


text: During the opening ceremony and the parade representing the 56 ethnic groups of China, one of the performers, reportedly representing Korean Chinese, wore a "hanbok". The display of the "hanbok" has drawn criticism and anger among some South Koreans and their politicians, who accused China of misappropriating the country's traditional clothing. Lee So-young, MP of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, said he regretted seeing the use of a "hanbok" during the ceremony. Presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung referred to it as cultural appropriation. The opposition People Power Party also called the move a "rude act" and urged the Moon Jae-in government to act tough on China. Hwang Hee, the South Korean Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, attended the ceremony while dressed in a "hanbok" himself.


text: However, some South Koreans saw the "hanbok"-wearing woman as a representation of the estimated 2 million ethnic Koreans living in China and felt that the reactions were unnecessary. The Chinese Embassy in South Korea later responded that China respected the historical and cultural traditions of South Korea and that the "hanbok" belongs to ethnic Koreans everywhere, including those in China.


text: During training at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre in November 2021, Polish luger Mateusz Sochowicz encountered a closed gate despite being given a green light. He suffered a fractured knee cap and a cut to the leg bone. The track team "didn't know what to do", and Sochowicz spent half an hour on the ice before being transported to surgery. Had he not taken evasive action during the run, the incident could have ended in "tragedy". At the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed during training after he lost control and was thrown into a support pole. Following Sochowicz's injury, the International Luge Federation announced additional safety measures such as setting up "blockades at a start height" and installing a screen where lanes merge "to identify the exact position of the switch/barrier".


text: In early 2022, Huang Yu-Ting garnered much controversy after a video that she posted on 23 January, went viral of her wearing an outfit labeled "China" during practice, and she was later criticised heavily by Taiwanese netizens, especially those with pan-green political views, who had flooded her Facebook and Instagram account with hate comments. In response, Huang claimed on Instagram that the outfit was a gift from an athlete who was on the Chinese team, whom she befriended in Germany. She also posted a Taylor Swift music video, "Shake It Off," which is famed for its lyrics, "Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate," and she wrote alongside the video, "My dear haters, this song is for you."


text: Huang later removed the video post of her wearing the outfit, due to the social media backlash that came afterwards. According to a translation by the "South China Morning Post", Huang separately made a post on Facebook where she wrote, "Thank you to everyone who cheered me up...I have removed the video due to too many unnecessary private messages!..."Sport is sport and in the world of sports, we do not differentiate between nationalities. After the Games, we all are good friends."


text: Ho Chih-wei, a Legislative Yuan member of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) criticised Huang Yu-Ting, calling her "brainless" and demanding that she "shut up", as well as supporting a law that would punish athletes such as Huang with bans from sport events. Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang from the ruling DPP called for an investigation and punishment for Huang.


text: National identity is a highly sensitive issue in Taiwan. After the communist forces won the Chinese Civil War, the mainland was not represented at the Olympics, and the only Chinese team competing came from Taiwan. After most nations and the UN switched their recognition to Beijing, however, Taiwan has been competing as Chinese Taipei.


text: Nordic combined remained the only Winter discipline that women could not compete in, with World Cup champion Tara Geraghty-Moats quoted as saying, "The IOC (International Olympic Committee) lets transgendered people into the Olympics in all sports, but not women into all sports." The International Ski Federation has said that it has been developing women's Nordic combined and intends for it to be added to the Olympic programme in the future. A previous request was rejected in 2018. According to the IOC, female quota positions for the 2022 Winter Games increased from 41 per cent to 45.44 per cent.


text: During the mixed team normal hill event of ski jumping, the previous Olympic medalists, Daniela Iraschko-Stolz of Austria, Katharina Althaus of Germany, and Sara Takanashi of Japan, as well as the former world championship medalists Anna Odine Stroem and Silje Opseth of Norway were all disqualified prior to the start due to the concern that their jumpsuits were not tight enough. According to the officials at the event, jumpsuits had to fit tight enough to not yield the advantage over air, which was part of the newly updated International Ski Federation (FIS) regulations. The Japanese, Austrian, Norwegian, and German teams all suffered the heavy impact as their disqualified athletes automatically received 0 point for failing to make an attempt, which placed the four teams in fourth, fifth, eight, and ninth place respectively, while the Russian and Canadian teams capitalized on that and won silver and bronze medals respectively.


text: After the game, Althaus expressed her dissatisfaction with the disqualification, emphasizing that she wore the same jumpsuit which was approved for the individual normal hill event that took place two days before. Clas Brede Bråthen, the former ski jumper and manager of the Norwegian team who had the two team members disqualified, also raised the complaint, claiming the event as one of the sport's darker days. Bråthen added that "this is something we should have cleaned up in before the Olympics". After her disqualification, Opseth also said "I am just shocked. I do not understand anything about what happened today". Takanashi deeply apologized for her suit violation as the Japanese team could have been in the medal zone if it was not for her disqualification. After the controversy, Aga Baczkowska from FIS told the Norway's media NRK that the inspections at the event followed the new regulation. Baczkowska stated that it was the responsibility of the participating athletes to ensure that their jumpsuits were in compliance.


text: In the semi final heat of the 2000 metre mixed team relay in short-track speed-skating, the United States was disqualified after narrowly finishing in the second place behind Hungary. This allowed the Chinese team, who came in third, to claim the second place and advance to the finals to eventually win the gold medal. According to the officials at the event, the team was disqualified for causing the "interference inside the track with skaters coming in to take an exchange" upon the replay review. Ryan Pivirotto, the skater who was identified as the cause of the penalty, stated "The call came to me, on what I did. I don't even know really what I did, because there was no contact". Maame Biney, who was representing the United States in the Olympics but did not participate in the relay, found the decision to be an "interesting call". Andrew Heo, another member of the relay team, said "Obviously things didn't work out, but I think we believe that we belonged there. And I think we could've done really well in the final".


text: During the Heat 1 of the semi-finals in the men's 1000 metres short track speedskating event, Hwang Dae-heon of South Korea was disqualified after finishing first, which was followed in the Heat 2 by his countryman Lee June-seo being disqualified for a lane change that caused contact. As a result of their disqualifications, Li Wenlong and Wu Dajing of China advanced to the Final A race. In the Final A race, Shaolin Sándor Liu from Hungary was disqualified after crossing the finish line first, ultimately resulting in Ren Ziwei and Li Wenlong of China who finished after Liu to be awarded with the gold and silver medal, respectively. After the event, both the South Korean and the Hungarian team filed protests to the International Skating Union.


text: The International Skating Union (ISU) received and rejected the two protests from Hungary and South Korea on February 7, 2022. The ISU stated that the decisions in regards to any disqualification for rule violations cannot be challenged, adding that their Chief Referee had reviewed the incident with the Video Referee and stood by the final decisions. According to the ISU, Hwang Dae-heon was disqualified for the "illegal late pass causing contact" while the disqualification of Shaolin Sándor Liu was due to a "straight lane change from inside to out causing contact" and an "arm block at the finish". The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee later filed an official appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.


text: After the close-up video of the incident surfaced on Reddit, some viewers of the quarter-finals in the women's 500 metres short track speedskating event noticed and accused the Chinese skater Fan Kexin of reaching over the leg of another competitor to flick a track marker at the Canadian skater Alyson Charles, which seemingly caused Charles to trip and crash along with Fan during the race. While no call was made on the incident, Charles was advanced to the semi finals after it was assessed that she was impeded by another Canadian skater Florence Brunelle who got disqualified. Fan, who came in third after the crash, failed to advance.


text: During the 5000 metres relay event, also in short track speed skating, in the semifinals of the event, the Chinese team fell with 10 laps to go. This happened at a point in the race where Pascal Dion (from Canada) and a Chinese skater had their skates come into contact. The team was advanced to the A final, with no team disqualified during the race. The Chinese team were advanced, even though they finished last in the race and there was no impeding action on the team.


text: In the men's snowboard slopestyle, Canada's Max Parrot had won the gold medal and China's Su Yiming won the silver. However the medal results stirred controversy on social media when BBC commentator Ed Leigh believed the gold medal should have been awarded to Su, and pointed out that Parrot, during his frontside 1440 in his second run, had actually committed a 'cardinal sin' by grabbing his knee instead of the board, and should have been deducted for it, but the judges had apparently failed to spot it. Replays showed him "failing to grab his board and instead clutching around his lower leg, meaning that the maneuver was incomplete and should have been marked down. Leigh wrote in the BBC, "The judges have put execution at such a premium that something like that should have cost him two or three points. So the gold has gone wrong there. ... I think Su Yiming actually took the gold there. This is a mistake on the judges' part."


text: Moreover, bronze medalist Mark McMorris felt he had the best run of the day, and should have been the gold medalist, "but knowing that I kind of had the run of the day and one of the best rounds of my life and the whole industry knows what happened". Parrot, acknowledged the error and still felt like he deserved the gold medal, "But in the end, it's a judged sport and the fact is I had the most technical run of the day on pretty much every feature". Lead judge for the event, Iztok Sumatic said, "there are so many factors. All I can say, in Max's defence, regarding this specific run, is that it was still an insane run. He killed it, especially on the rails." Ultimately the blame lay with the organiziers, who failed to provide multiple angles of the event. Parrot reviewed the runs by the three medalists and, "he spotted three "little mistakes" during McMorris' turn, and also noted a few errors by Su", while Parrot, "didn't have any mistakes on five of the six features, and on the one jump, I had a bigger mistake".


text: Public outrage was sparked by the controversially low judgment of Japanese snowboarder Ayumu Hirano's second run scoring which had made commentators and fans cry "foul" on the judges. Hirano then had to repeat the exceptional performance in his third run, and successfully landing the very "dangerous" triple cork again, this time under greater public scrutiny of the judges, and moving from second place to winning the gold medal.


text: In the men's 500 metres speed skating event, a false start was called in the last two heats, one of which included current World Cup champion Laurent Dubreuil. This was questioned by 1992 Winter Olympics Champion Bart Veldkamp, who called it "very suspicious". According to Yetta Claytone of the Taylor Daily Press, due to the false start, Dubreuil had to be more cautious on his start, and his reaction time was slower than the initial start. According to Sportnieuws.nl, a false start would have disrupted the athletes' concentration, and also used up energy. However, Dubreuil believed the false start shouldn't be used as an excuse as it was, "something that's totally possible to overcome and that it shouldn't make a difference".


text: The medal ceremony for the figure skating team event, originally scheduled for Tuesday, 8 February, was delayed over what International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams described as a situation that required "legal consultation" with the International Skating Union. Several media outlets reported on Wednesday that the issue was over a positive test, held in December 2021, for trimetazidine by the ROC's Kamila Valieva, which was officially confirmed on February 11. The results are pending investigation. The Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), previously under suspension from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) since 2015 for its years of serving solely to hide the positive doping results of Russian athletes (re-instated in September 2018), cleared Valieva on February 9, a day after the December test results were released, two months after the test. The IOC, WADA, and International Skating Union (ISU) are appealing RUSADA's decision.


text: On February 14, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that Valieva should be allowed to compete in the women's single event, deciding that preventing her from competing "would cause her irreparable harm in the circumstances", though her gold medal in the team event was still under consideration. The favorable decision from the court was made in part due to her age, as minor athletes are subject to different rules than adult athletes. The IOC announced that the medal ceremony would not take place until the investigation is over and there is a concrete decision whether to strip Russia of their medals.


text: By 9 March 2022, Travis Tygart of the USADA reported that Valieva had not requested that her "B" sample be tested, apparently accepting the results of initial testing and relying on her explanation that the banned substance TMZ belonged to her grandfather and only accidentally contaminated or became mixed into her own use of allowed nutrients and supplements. Tygart further stated that as a minor Valieva could still be either fully exculpated or given a warning concerning her testing positive depending on the extent of findings in the on-going RUSADA investigation of doping. According to Tygart, an adverse finding against her as a first offense could still be assessed as a two-year suspension, which is half of the suspension time which could be assessed for adults.


text: The U.S. speedskater Joey Mantia alleged that the South Korean speedskater Lee Seung-hoon made contact by pulling his arm back, costing him the bronze medal during the Mass Start final. Mantia lost by a 0.002-second margin. According to Mantia, he felt contact and told his coach "He got me" after the race. Mantia recalled "Coming up on him, I thought my blade was in front of his, and then he put his back in front of mine. I don't know if there was contact ... it felt like maybe a little bit, maybe not on purpose, but it happens." When asked if he made the contact with Mantia, Lee said he could not remember since he was flustered during the final moment at the finish line. Mantia and his coaches watched the replay several times, and protested that he had been pulled back at the finish line. However, the team did not expect any changes to the result because the Mass Final is a new event with minimal precedent for rules. The United States team lodged a challenge, but Lee was awarded with the bronze medal.


title: Honey Smacks

text: Honey Smacks (formerly known as Sugar Smacks, simply known as Smacks outside the U.S. in international markets) is a sweetened puffed wheat breakfast cereal made by Kellogg's, noted for its high sugar content. It was introduced in the early 1950s. In Britain, a similar cereal is Honey Monster Puffs.


title: Honey Smacks

text: Introduced in 1953, the cereal has undergone several name changes. It started out as "Sugar Smacks". In the 1980s, it was renamed "Honey Smacks", in order to comply with cereals becoming healthier, even though the sugar content stayed the same. In the early 1990s, the word "Honey" was dropped from the name and the product was then simply called "Smacks". That name is still used in Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. However, in the US the name reverted to "Honey Smacks" in 2004.


title: Honey Smacks

text: In Australia, the cereal had been known as Honey Smacks since the 1970s. However, Kellogg's Australia no longer markets the brand.


title: Honey Smacks

text: Presweetened breakfast cereals first appeared in 1939. At the time of its introduction in the early 1950s, Sugar Smacks had the highest sugar content in the US cereal market (55% per weight), surpassing Sugar Crisp (later renamed "Golden Crisp") by competitor Post Cereal which had debuted with what "The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets" would later call "an astonishing sugar content of 51 percent". (The cereals are both sweetened puffed wheat.)


title: Honey Smacks

text: In a 2008 comparison of the nutritional value of 27 cereals, US magazine "Consumer Reports" found that both Honey Smacks and the similar Golden Crisp were still the two brands with the highest sugar content, more than 50 percent (by weight), commenting "There is at least as much sugar in a serving of Kellogg's Honey Smacks [...] as there is in a glazed doughnut from Dunkin' Donuts". "Consumer Reports" recommended parents choose cereal brands with better nutrition ratings for their children.


title: Honey Smacks

text: The product title "Honey Smacks" is inconsistent, with honey being a minor ingredient in the recipe. The ingredient label implies that sugar and dextrose are at least two-thirds of the sugar ingredients by weight. Conversely, the proportion of honey in the recipe could range from trace amounts to one-third.


title: Honey Smacks

text: Kellogg's announced a voluntary recall of certain Honey Smacks packages on June 14, 2018, due to the possible presence of salmonella. Although the recall included only packages with a specific range of expiration dates, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention later advised consumers to avoid eating the cereal entirely. The cereal returned to the shelves in November of that year.


title: Honey Smacks

text: Various clowns served as the advertising mascot from 1953 to 1956, including Cliffy the Clown and Lou Jacobs from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. Ads with these clowns were known for showing them doing the "Sugar Smack Swing".


title: Honey Smacks

text: In 1965, Quick Draw McGraw faced off against The Smackin' Bandit, a llama who traveled in bounding leaps, and would suck the cereal directly out of the box with its floppy lips.


title: Honey Smacks

text: In 1966, the Smackin' Brothers, two cartoon boys who loved to roughhouse, became the new mascots. These ads usually featured the brothers wanting Sugar Smacks but winding up smacking each other instead. Also during 1966, promotional box designs were briefly introduced featuring characters from "Star Trek". Later commercials were similar to most Cheerios commercials as they demonstrated how the cereal was "vitamin-powered". Paul Frees narrated these ads.


title: Honey Smacks

text: In the early 1970s, an Indian Chief appeared briefly, replaced by Dig'em Frog in 1972. He continued as the mascot when the cereal was rechristened Honey Smacks in the early 1980s. In these ads, Dig'em would appear in front of a group of kids, and they would eat some cereal together.


title: Honey Smacks

text: Dig 'em was replaced by an animal more associated with honey, Wally the Bear, in 1986 (1984 in France). These ads featured Wally (not to be confused with the Wally Bear from "Wally Bear and the NO! Gang") pestering a kid eating a bowl of Honey Smacks and doing anything to get some, and the kid would always refuse or just ignore Wally completely. Animated by Kurtz & Friends, these commercials performed poorly since they seemed too much like the Trix commercials, and Dig'em Frog was brought back the following year by popular demand.


title: Honey Smacks

text: During the 1990s, advertising campaigns for the cereal featured Dig'em attempting to have a bowl of Smacks while trying to outsmart his nemesis, Kitty. By 1997, these commercials were discontinued. Dig'em's voice was provided by Len Dresslar and later Frank Welker. While ads for Honey Smacks no longer air in the US, more recent ads in other countries depict Dig'em as a character who is crazily addicted to Smacks.


title: Equivalent weight

text: In chemistry, equivalent weight (also known as gram equivalent) is the mass of one equivalent, that is the mass of a given substance which will combine with or displace a fixed quantity of another substance. The equivalent weight of an element is the mass which combines with or displaces 1.008 gram of hydrogen or 8.0 grams of oxygen or 35.5 grams of chlorine. These values correspond to the atomic weight divided by the usual valence; for oxygen as example that is 16.0 g / 2 = 8.0 g.


title: Equivalent weight

text: For acid–base reactions, the equivalent weight of an acid or base is the mass which supplies or reacts with one mole of hydrogen cations (). For redox reactions, the equivalent weight of each reactant supplies or reacts with one mole of electrons (e) in a redox reaction.


title: Equivalent weight

text: Equivalent weight has the units of mass, unlike atomic weight, which is now used as a synonym for relative atomic mass and is dimensionless. Equivalent weights were originally determined by experiment, but (insofar as they are still used) are now derived from molar masses. The equivalent weight of a compound can also be calculated by dividing the molecular mass by the number of positive or negative electrical charges that result from the dissolution of the compound.


title: Equivalent weight

text: The first equivalent weights were published for acids and bases by Carl Friedrich Wenzel in 1777. A larger set of tables was prepared, possibly independently, by Jeremias Benjamin Richter, starting in 1792. However, neither Wenzel nor Richter had a single reference point for their tables, and so had to publish separate tables for each pair of acid and base.


title: Equivalent weight

text: John Dalton's first table of atomic weights (1808) suggested a reference point, at least for the elements: taking the equivalent weight of hydrogen to be one unit of mass. However, Dalton's atomic theory was far from universally accepted in the early 19th century. One of the greatest problems was the reaction of hydrogen with oxygen to produce water. One gram of hydrogen reacts with eight grams of oxygen to produce nine grams of water, so the equivalent weight of oxygen was defined as eight grams. Since Dalton supposed (incorrectly) that a water molecule consisted of "one" hydrogen and one oxygen atom, this would imply an atomic weight of oxygen equal to eight. However, expressing the reaction in terms of gas volumes following Gay-Lussac's law of combining gas volumes, "two" volumes of hydrogen react with one volume of oxygen to produce two volumes of water, suggesting (correctly) that the atomic weight of oxygen is sixteen. The work of Charles Frédéric Gerhardt (1816–56), Henri Victor Regnault (1810–78) and Stanislao Cannizzaro (1826–1910) helped to rationalise this and many similar paradoxes, but the problem was still the subject of debate at the Karlsruhe Congress (1860).


title: Equivalent weight

text: Nevertheless, many chemists found equivalent weights to be a useful tool even if they did not subscribe to atomic theory. Equivalent weights were a useful generalisation of Joseph Proust's law of definite proportions (1794) which enabled chemistry to become a quantitative science. French chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas (1800–84) became one of the more influential opponents of atomic theory, after having embraced it earlier in his career, but was a staunch supporter of equivalent weights.


title: Equivalent weight

text: Equivalent weights were not without problems of their own. For a start, the scale based on hydrogen was not particularly practical, as most elements do not react directly with hydrogen to form simple compounds. However, one gram of hydrogen reacts with 8 grams of oxygen to give water or with 35.5 grams of chlorine to give hydrogen chloride: hence 8 grams of oxygen and 35.5 grams of chlorine can be taken to be "equivalent" to one gram of hydrogen for the measurement of equivalent weights. This system can be extended further through different acids and bases.


title: Equivalent weight

text: Much more serious was the problem of elements which form more than one oxide or series of salts, which have (in today's terminology) different oxidation states. Copper will react with oxygen to form either brick red "cuprous oxide" (copper(I) oxide, with 63.5 g of copper for 8 g of oxygen) or black "cupric oxide" (copper(II) oxide, with 32.7 g of copper for 8 g of oxygen), and so has "two" equivalent weights. Supporters of atomic weights could turn to the Dulong–Petit law (1819), which relates the atomic weight of a solid element to its specific heat capacity, to arrive at a unique and unambiguous set of atomic weights. Most supporters of equivalent weights - which included the great majority of chemists prior to 1860 — simply ignored the inconvenient fact that most elements exhibited multiple equivalent weights. Instead, these chemists had settled on a list of what were universally called "equivalents" (H = 1, O = 8, C = 6, S = 16, Cl = 35.5, Na = 23, Ca = 20, and so on). However, these nineteenth-century "equivalents" were not equivalents in the original or modern sense of the term. Since they represented dimensionless numbers that for any given element were unique and unchanging, they were in fact simply an alternative set of atomic weights, in which the elements of even valence have atomic weights one-half of the modern values. This fact was not recognized until much later.


title: Equivalent weight

text: The final death blow for the use of equivalent weights for the elements was Dmitri Mendeleev's presentation of his periodic table in 1869, in which he related the chemical properties of the elements to the approximate order of their atomic weights. However, equivalent weights continued to be used for many compounds for another hundred years, particularly in analytical chemistry. Equivalent weights of common reagents could be tabulated, simplifying analytical calculations in the days before the widespread availability of electronic calculators: such tables were commonplace in textbooks of analytical chemistry.


title: Equivalent weight

text: The use of equivalent weights in general chemistry has largely been superseded by the use of molar masses. Equivalent weights may be calculated from molar masses if the chemistry of the substance is well known:


title: Equivalent weight

text: Historically, the equivalent weights of the elements were often determined by studying their reactions with oxygen. For example, 50 g of zinc will react with oxygen to produce 62.24 g of zinc oxide, implying that the zinc has reacted with 12.24 g of oxygen (from the Law of conservation of mass): the equivalent weight of zinc is the mass which will react with eight grams of oxygen, hence 50 g × 8 g/12.24 g = 32.7 g.


title: Equivalent weight

text: Some contemporary general chemistry textbooks make no mention of equivalent weights. Others explain the topic, but point out that it is merely an alternate method of doing calculations using moles.


title: Equivalent weight

text: When choosing primary standards in analytical chemistry, compounds with higher equivalent weights are generally more desirable because weighing errors are reduced. An example is the volumetric standardisation of a solution of sodium hydroxide which has been prepared to approximately 0.1 . It is necessary to calculate the mass of a solid acid which will react with about 20 cm of this solution (for a titration using a 25 cm burette): suitable solid acids include oxalic acid dihydrate, potassium hydrogen phthalate and potassium hydrogen iodate. The equivalent weights of the three acids 63.04 g, 204.23 g and 389.92 g respectively, and the masses required for the standardisation are 126.1 mg, 408.5 mg and 779.8 mg respectively. Given that the measurement uncertainty in the mass measured on a standard analytical balance is ±0.1 mg, the relative uncertainty in the mass of oxalic acid dihydrate would be about one part in a thousand, similar to the measurement uncertainty in the volume measurement in the titration. However the measurement uncertainty in the mass of potassium hydrogen iodate would be five times lower, because its equivalent weight is five times higher: such an uncertainty in the measured mass is negligible in comparison to the uncertainty in the volume measured during the titration (see example below).


title: Equivalent weight

text: For sake of example, it shall be assumed that 22.45±0.03 cm of the sodium hydroxide solution reacts with 781.4±0.1 mg of potassium hydrogen iodate. As the equivalent weight of potassium hydrogen iodate is 389.92 g, the measured mass is 2.004 milliequivalents. The concentration of the sodium hydroxide solution is therefore 2.004 meq/0.02245 L = 89.3 meq/L. In analytical chemistry, a solution of any substance which contains one equivalent per litre is known as a normal solution (abbreviated N), so the example sodium hydroxide solution would be 0.0893 N. The relative uncertainty ("u") in the measured concentration can be estimated by assuming a Gaussian distribution of the measurement uncertainties:


title: Equivalent weight

text: This sodium hydroxide solution can be used to measure the equivalent weight of an unknown acid. For example, if it takes 13.20±0.03 cm of the sodium hydroxide solution to neutralise 61.3±0.1 mg of an unknown acid, the equivalent weight of the acid is:


title: Equivalent weight

text: Because each mole of acid can only release an integer number of moles of hydrogen ions, the molar mass of the unknown acid must be an integer multiple of 52.0±0.1 g.


title: Equivalent weight

text: The term “equivalent weight” had a distinct sense in gravimetric analysis: it was the mass of precipitate which corresponds to one gram of analyte (the species of interest). The different definitions came from the practice of quoting gravimetric results as mass fractions of the analyte, often expressed as a percentage. A related term was the equivalence factor, one gram divided by equivalent weight, which was the numerical factor by which the mass of precipitate had to be multiplied to obtain the mass of analyte.


title: Equivalent weight

text: For example, in the gravimetric determination of nickel, the molar mass of the precipitate bis(dimethylglyoximate)nickel [Ni(dmgH)] is 288.915(7) , while the molar mass of nickel is 58.6934(2) : hence 288.915(7)/58.6934(2) = 4.9224(1) grams of [Ni(dmgH)] precipitate is equivalent to one gram of nickel and the equivalence factor is 0.203151(5). For example, 215.3±0.1 mg of [Ni(dmgH)] precipitate is equivalent to (215.3±0.1 mg) × 0.203151(5) = 43.74±0.2 mg of nickel: if the original sample size was 5.346±0.001 g, the nickel content in the original sample would be 0.8182±0.0004%.


title: Equivalent weight

text: Gravimetric analysis is one of the most precise of the common methods of chemical analysis, but it is time-consuming and labour-intensive. It has been largely superseded by other techniques such as atomic absorption spectroscopy, in which the mass of analyte is read off from a calibration curve.


title: Equivalent weight

text: In polymer chemistry, the equivalent weight of a reactive polymer is the mass of polymer which has one equivalent of reactivity (often, the mass of polymer which corresponds to one mole of reactive side-chain groups). It is widely used to indicate the reactivity of polyol, isocyanate, or epoxy thermoset resins which would undergo crosslinking reactions through those functional groups.


title: Equivalent weight

text: It is particularly important for ion-exchange polymers (also called ion-exchange resins): one equivalent of an ion-exchange polymer will exchange one mole of singly charged ions, but only half a mole of doubly charged ions.


title: Equivalent weight

text: Nevertheless, given the decline in use of the term "equivalent weight" in the rest of chemistry, it has become more usual to express the reactivity of a polymer as the inverse of the equivalent weight, that is in units of mmol/g or meq/g.


title: Ideogram

text: An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as "pictograms".


title: Ideogram

text: The numerals and mathematical symbols are ideograms – 1 'one', 2 'two', + 'plus', = 'equals', and so on (compare the section "Mathematics" below). In English, the ampersand & is used for 'and' and (as in many languages) for Latin ' (as in &c for '), % for 'percent' ('per cent'), # for 'number' (or 'pound', among other meanings), § for 'section', $ for 'dollar', € for 'euro', £ for 'pound', ° for 'degree', @ for 'at', and so on. The reason they are ideograms rather than logograms is that they do not denote fixed morphemes: they can be read in many different languages, not just English. There is not always only a single way to read them and they are in some cases read as a complex phrase rather than a single word.


title: Ideogram

text: In proto-writing, used for inventories and the like, physical objects are represented by stylized or conventionalized pictures, or pictograms. For example, the pictorial Dongba symbols without Geba annotation cannot represent the Naxi language, but are used as a mnemonic for reciting oral literature.


title: Ideogram

text: The term "ideogram" is often used to describe symbols of writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian cuneiform and Chinese characters. However, these symbols represent elements of a particular language, mostly words or morphemes (so that they are logograms), rather than objects or concepts. In these writing systems, a variety of strategies were employed in the design of logographic symbols.


title: Ideogram

text: Pictographic symbols depict the object referred to by the word, such as an icon of a bull denoting the Semitic word "ʾālep" "ox".


title: Ideogram

text: Some words denoting abstract concepts may be represented iconically, but most other words are represented using the rebus principle, borrowing a symbol for a similarly-sounding word. Later systems used selected symbols to represent the sounds of the language, for example the adaptation of the logogram for "ʾālep" "ox" as the letter aleph representing the initial sound of the word, a glottal stop.


title: Ideogram

text: Many signs in hieroglyphic as well as in cuneiform writing could be used either logographically or phonetically. For example, the Sumerian sign DIĜIR () could represent the word "diĝir" 'deity', the god An or the word "an" 'sky'. The Akkadian counterpart could represent the Akkadian stem "il-" 'deity', the Akkadian word "šamu" 'sky', or the syllable "an".


title: Ideogram

text: Although Chinese characters are logograms, two of the smaller classes in the traditional classification are ideographic in origin:


title: Ideogram

text: An example of ideograms is the collection of 50 signs developed in the 1970s by the American Institute of Graphic Arts at the request of the US Department of Transportation. The system was initially used to mark airports and gradually became more widespread.


title: Ideogram

text: Inspired by inaccurate early descriptions of Chinese and Japanese characters as ideograms, many Western thinkers have sought to design universal written languages, in which symbols denote concepts rather than words. An early proposal was "An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language" (1668) by John Wilkins. A recent example is the system of Blissymbols, which was devised by Charles K. Bliss in 1949 and currently includes over 2,000 symbols.


title: Davanagere

text: Davanagere is a city in the centre of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. It is the seventh largest city in the state, and the administrative headquarters of eponymous Davangere district. Hitherto being a cotton hub and hence popularly known before as "the Manchester of Karnataka", the commercial ventures of the city is now dominated by education and agro-processing industries. Davanagere became a separate district in 1997, when it was separated from the erstwhile undivided district of Chitradurga for administration conveniences. Davanagere is known for rich culinary traditions which encompass the diversity of entire Karnataka's dishes due to its geographical position in the state as its centre. Notable among them is its aromatic benne dosey/butter Dosa that is associated with the name of the city.