title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: In this chapter, lasting two years, the protagonist has a son whose personality depends on his mother. The protagonist's house will now have a kitchen and dining room, and will also gain a refrigerator and two bathrooms. The main room now has an additional bed and a toy box containing a sketch pad. The dig site also gets bigger. Some characters' appearances has changed and new people (consisting of Kate, Grant, Samantha, and Dr. Hardy) move in. An additional house is now in the village. If the protagonist does not marry Nami, she will leave town. Van now sells toys that can be put in the toy box and a goat (which also comes with a milker), which may only be purchased in spring. Galen has moved, and now lives in a shack on hill beside Vesta's farm. Nina has died of natural causes and her grave is beside Galen's shack. Dr. Hardy now lives in Galen's old house, to which the protagonist can have a chance to meet him. Starting from this chapter, the protagonist may receive a cat from Romana if she is befriended, the toddler can be picked up and played with, a sentient plant named Tartan may be acquired if Takakura is befriended, an alarm clock may be obtained from Grant if he is befriended, ducks may show up at the protagonist's farm if a pond is owned, a sickle can be obtained from Dr. Hardy and a fishing pole from Galen if they are befriended, Grant may inform the protagonist that he now has a job in a city located outside of town, the protagonist may have the option to take a bath with the son and learn about the Harvest Goddess (who doesn't appear in the game) from the Harvest Sprites, Chris and Samantha can be seen having a conversation, and Daryl can be caught doing suspicious activities such as spying on the son, attempting to experiment on the protagonist's cows, and spying on Carter and Flora (whom he has a crush on). If Tartan is befriended, the protagonist can use him to create hybrid crops. Failing your married life will result in a divorce, which will cause the game to end.


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: In this chapter, lasting three years, the protagonist's son has grown into a seven or eight-year-old and can no longer be picked up and played with. Hugh and Lumina's appearance have changed again and the protagonist's house and dig site have expanded. The son's future career may be swayed by befriending villagers with similar careers or giving him items obtained from other characters (if befriended) such as a drum from Gustafa, a music sheet from Lumina, and a necklace from Flora. Nami returns in this chapter (if the protagonist does not marry her). The protagonist can also buy a sentient teddy bear named Daa-chan from Van, who may be seen trying to steal food from the refrigerator or spending time with the son. At one point, Dr. Hardy can be seen talking to Mukumuku.


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: In this chapter, lasting two years, the protagonist's son is a teenager and wants to be independent. The protagonist has aged, as have most people in the valley. His house is now even bigger. The son's career cannot be changed now without confusing him. The ruins have grown even larger, so you can dig a lot and make a good profit. The protagonist can also buy a flower pot from Van. If the protagonist befriends Cody, he may receive a sculpture from him starting from this chapter. New events can also be triggered, such as seeing Flora talking to Kate, learning about Muffy's past from Griffin (if the protagonist didn't marry her), and witnessing Sebastian confronting Mukumuku.


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: In this chapter, lasting one year, the protagonist's son is now a young adult, and his wife has aged. The son's actions mirror the protagonist's from chapter one, such as harvesting and looking for a spouse. He may question this to the protagonist at one point. The ruins are even bigger. There is no possible way for the son's career choice to be changed now.


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: In this chapter, lasting one year, the protagonist and other villagers have aged again. The protagonist's son is now certain of his career and can no longer be swayed. The game ends with the protagonist's death, his family and some of the villagers (depending on whom he has befriended) mourning him, the son undergoing his career, and Takakura thinking to the protagonist's father about how Forget-Me-Not Valley fares after the protagonist's death.


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: The heaven chapter can only be played in "Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life Special Edition". In this chapter, the player may play at any pace or chapter they wish. The protagonist gets his wife and son back, along with his money, animals, and crops.


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: This story is exactly the same as "Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life", but with a few differences: the protagonist is female instead of male and the bachelors are Rock, Marlin, and Gustafa.


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: The American pre-order bonus was a collectible dog plush that was included in the game when ordered from participating websites.


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: An updated version called "Oh! A Wonderful Life" was released in Japan for the PlayStation 2 in November 2004. The English language version was called "A Wonderful Life Special Edition" and was released in late 2005. While very similar to the original version of "A Wonderful Life", some extra items and events were added in addition to an updated soundtrack. The most notable changes were the ability to have a daughter, the ability to marry Lumina, and the ability to continue playing after death. On May 16, 2017, it was announced that a remake of the Special Edition was scheduled for the PS4 with a tentative 2017 release planned. The PlayStation 4 version of the game is said to have fixed most of the lag from the PlayStation 2, making the game more playable, added trophy support, better resolution and quality. However, some lag issues and little glitches still remain.


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: The girl version of "Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life", Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life, was released for the GameCube in the English-speaking world in July 2005. In this game, the player goes through the storyline of "A Wonderful Life" as a female character, and can court and marry one of three male NPCs, Marlin, Rock, and Gustafa. The game offers connectivity with the Game Boy Advance game "".


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: "Harvest Moon DS", the first game in the "Story of Seasons" series to be released on the Nintendo DS, has the same setting and features most of the characters from "A Wonderful Life".


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: "Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life" received largely positive reviews upon its initial GameCube release. "IGN" gave the title an "Impressive" 8 out of 10 rating, praising gameplay and lasting appeal while also noting its "monotonous" audio and upsetting lack of festivals. "A Wonderful Life" garnered an 8.7 rating from Ryan Davis of "GameSpot". Echoing other reviews, Davis considered it "a fun and potentially addictive game that, if you let it, will gladly consume any free time you choose to give it." The publication went on to name it the best GameCube game of March 2004.


title: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

text: The "Special Edition" released for PlayStation 2 did not receive such strong praise. "IGN" Juan Castro gave it a score of 6/10 and remarked "The differences, including an increase in brides, choosing the gender of your child and the ability to play forever, make little difference. What does make a difference, though, is the drastic drop in framerate, increase in load times and muddy graphics." "Official UK PlayStation 2 Magazine" gave it a 7/10 rating.


title: Portuguese-speaking African countries

text: The Portuguese-speaking African countries (; PALOP), also known as Lusophone Africa, consist of six African countries in which the Portuguese language is an official language: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and, since 2011, Equatorial Guinea. The six countries are former colonies of the Portuguese Empire. From 1778 until independence, Equatorial Guinea was also a colony of the Spanish Empire.


title: Portuguese-speaking African countries

text: In 1992, the five Lusophone African countries formed an interstate organisation called PALOP, a colloquial acronym that translates to "African Countries of Portuguese Official Language" (). The PALOP countries have signed official agreements with Portugal, the European Union and the United Nations, and they work together to promote the development of culture, education and the preservation of the Portuguese language.


title: Portuguese-speaking African countries

text: In 1996, together with Portugal and Brazil, the Portuguese-speaking African countries established the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (, abbreviated to CPLP), which East Timor later joined in 2002 and Equatorial Guinea in 2014.


title: Portuguese-speaking African countries

text: Equatorial Guinea adopted Portuguese as its third official language in October 2011. Originally a Portuguese colony before it was sold to Spain in 1778 as part of peace arrangements involving also the colony of Sacramento in the Southern Cone of the Americas, Equatorial Guinea has adopted Portuguese as the country's third official language in order to be allowed into the CPLP, despite its limited historical and cultural commonalities with the other countries.


title: Portuguese-speaking African countries

text: Equatorial Guinea was traditionally not considered part of the PALOP, and it was not a founding member of FORPALOP in June 2014, a recently created institution that includes the PALOP, a forum for political-diplomatic cooperation to deepen historical friendship ties and solidarity between these African states. Portuguese is sparsely used throughout the country. However, it was admitted into the CPLP in 2014, and it subsequently became FORPALOP's sixth member.


title: Portuguese-speaking African countries

text: These five African countries are former colonies of the Portuguese Empire, which collapsed shortly after the Carnation Revolution military coup of 1974 in Lisbon. The strains of the Portuguese Colonial War overextended and weakened the Portuguese dictatorship and precipitated the overthrow of António de Oliveira Salazar's regime. Younger military officers, who were disillusioned by a war that was far-off and taxing, began to side with the pro-independence resistance against Portugal and eventually led to the military coup d'état on April 25, 1974.


title: Portuguese-speaking African countries

text: The long-lasting rule of the Portuguese colonial empire had varying effects on the African states even after they gained independence in the 1970s. The legacy of Portuguese empire-building pervades the postcolonial discourse that attempts to explain the development of the modern nation state in Lusophone Africa and shed light on its failures.


title: Portuguese-speaking African countries

text: The Lusophone Compact is an initiative championed by the African Development Bank to accelerate inclusive, sustainable, and diversified private sector growth in the Portuguese-speaking African countries. The primary objectives of the Lusophone Compact activities are to deploy technical assistance tools and programs, leverage the risk mitigation tools available to the parties and leverage the financing tools available to the parties.


title: The Grand Chessboard

text: The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997) is one of the major works of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski graduated with a PhD from Harvard University in 1953 and became Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University. He was later the United States National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981, under the administration of President Jimmy Carter.


title: The Grand Chessboard

text: Regarding the landmass of Eurasia as the center of global power, Brzezinski sets out to formulate a Eurasian geostrategy for the United States. In particular, he writes that no Eurasian challenger should emerge that can dominate Eurasia and thus also challenge U.S. global pre-eminence.


title: The Grand Chessboard

text: Much of Brzezinski's analysis is concerned with geostrategy in Central Asia, focusing on the exercise of power on the Eurasian landmass in a post-Soviet environment. In his chapter dedicated to what he refers to as the "Eurasian Balkans", he uses Halford J. Mackinder's Heartland Theory.


title: The Grand Chessboard

text: The book was critically reviewed by "The New York Times", "Kirkus Reviews", "Foreign Affairs", and other publications.


title: SERVQUAL

text: SERVQUAL is a multi-dimensional research instrument designed to capture consumer expectations and perceptions of a service along five dimensions that are believed to represent service quality. SERVQUAL is built on the expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm, which, in simple terms, means that service quality is understood as the extent to which consumers' pre-consumption expectations of quality are confirmed or disconfirmed by their actual perceptions of the service experience. When the SERVQUAL questionnaire was first published in 1985 by a team of academic researchers, A. Parasuraman, Valarie Zeithaml and Leonard L. Berry to measure quality in the service sector, it represented a breakthrough in the measurement methods used for service quality research. The diagnostic value of the instrument is supported by the "model of service quality" which forms the conceptual framework for the development of the scale (i.e. instrument or questionnaire). The instrument has been widely applied in a variety of contexts and cultural settings and found to be relatively robust. It has become the dominant measurement scale in the area of service quality. In spite of the long-standing interest in SERVQUAL and its myriad of context-specific applications, it has attracted some criticism from researchers.


title: SERVQUAL

text: SERVQUAL is a multidimensional research instrument designed to measure service quality by capturing respondents’ expectations and perceptions along five dimensions of service quality. The questionnaire consists of matched pairs of items - 22 expectation items and 22 perceptions items - organised into five dimensions which are believed to align with the consumer's mental map of service quality dimensions. Both the expectations component and the perceptions component of the questionnaire consist a total of 22 items, comprising 4 items to capture tangibles, 5 items to capture reliability, 4 items for responsiveness, 4 items for assurance and 5 items to capture empathy. The questionnaire may be administered as a paper survey, web survey or in a face-to-face interview. Known studies have published high scores for validity and reliability from small to large size sample sizes. In practice, it is customary to add additional items such as the respondent's demographics, prior experience with the brand or category and behavioural intentions (intention to revisit/ repurchase, loyalty intentions and propensity to give word-of-mouth referrals). Thus, the final questionnaire may consist of 60+ items though the 22 questions are the same. The face to face interview version may take one hour, per respondent, to administer but not the print or web survey forms.


title: SERVQUAL

text: The instrument which was developed over a five-year period; was tested, pre-tested and refined before appearing in its final form. The instrument's developers, Parasuraman, Ziethaml and Berry, claim that it is a highly reliable and valid instrument. Certainly, it has been widely used and adapted in service quality research for numerous industries and various geographical regions. In application, many researchers are forced to make minor modifications to the instrument as necessary for context-specific applications. Some researchers label their revised instruments with innovative titles such as LibQUAL+ (libraries), EDUQUAL (educational context), HEALTHQUAL (hospital context) and ARTSQUAL (art museum).


title: SERVQUAL

text: The SERVQUAL questionnaire has been described as "the most popular standardized questionnaire to measure service quality." It is widely used by service firms, most often in conjunction with other measures of service quality and customer satisfaction. The SERVQUAL instrument was developed as part of a broader conceptualization of how customers understand service quality. This conceptualization is known as the "model of service quality" or more popularly as the "gaps model."


title: SERVQUAL

text: The model of service quality, popularly known as the "gaps model" was developed by a group of American authors, A. Parasuraman, Valarie A. Zeithaml and Len Berry, in a systematic research program carried out between 1983 and 1988. The model identifies the principal dimensions (or components) of service quality; proposes a scale for measuring service quality (SERVQUAL) and suggests possible causes of service quality problems. The model's developers originally identified ten dimensions of service quality, but after testing and retesting, some of the dimensions were found to be autocorrelated and the total number of dimensions was reduced to five, namely - reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness. These five dimensions are thought to represent the dimensions of service quality across a range of industries and settings. Among students of marketing, the mnemonic, RATER, an acronym formed from the first letter of each of the five dimensions is often used as an aid to recall.


title: SERVQUAL

text: Businesses use the SERVQUAL instrument (i.e. questionnaire) to measure potential service quality problems and the model of service quality to help diagnose possible causes of the problem. The model of service quality is built on the "expectancy-confirmation paradigm" which suggests that consumers perceive quality in terms of their perceptions of how well a given service delivery meets their expectations of that delivery. Thus, service quality can be conceptualized as a simple equation:


title: SERVQUAL

text: When customer expectations are greater than their perceptions of received delivery, service quality is deemed low. When perceptions exceed expectations then service quality is high. The model of service quality identifies five gaps that may cause customers to experience poor service quality. In this model, gap 1 is the service quality gap and is the "only" gap that can be directly measured. In other words, the SERVQUAL instrument was specifically designed to capture gap 1. In contrast, Gaps 2-5 cannot be measured, but have diagnostic value.


title: SERVQUAL

text: The development of the model of service quality involved a systematic research undertaking which began in 1983, and after various refinements, resulted in the publication of the SERVQUAL instrument in 1988. The model's developers began with an exhaustive literature search in order to identify items that were believed to impact on perceived service quality. This initial search identified some 100 items which were used in the first rounds of consumer testing. Preliminary data analysis, using a data reduction technique known as factor analysis (also known as principal components analysis) revealed that these items loaded onto ten dimensions (or components) of service quality. The initial ten dimensions that were believed to represent service quality were:


title: SERVQUAL

text: Further testing suggested that some of the ten preliminary dimensions of service quality were closely related or autocorrelated. Thus the ten initial dimensions were reduced and the labels amended to accurately reflect the revised dimensions. By the early 1990s, the authors had refined the model to five factors which in testing, appear to be relatively stable and robust.


title: SERVQUAL

text: These are the five dimensions of service quality that form the basis of the individual items in the SERVQUAL research instrument (questionnaire). The acronym RATER, is often used to help students of marketing remember the five dimensions of quality explicitly mentioned in the research instrument. It is these five dimensions that are believed to represent the consumer's mental checklist of service quality.


title: SERVQUAL

text: Nyeck, Morales, Ladhari, and Pons (2002) stated the SERVQUAL measuring tool “appears to remain the most complete attempt to conceptualize and measure service quality” (p. 101). The SERVQUAL measuring tool has been used by many researchers across a wide range of service industries and contexts, such as healthcare, banking, financial services, and education (Nyeck, Morales, Ladhari, & Pons, 2002).


title: SERVQUAL

text: Although the SERVQUAL instrument has been widely applied in a variety of industry and cross-cultural contexts, there are many criticisms of the approach. Francis Buttle published one of the most comprehensive criticisms of the model of service quality and the associated SERVQUAL instrument in 1996 in which both operational and theoretical concerns were identified. Some of the more important criticisms include:


title: SERVQUAL

text: In spite of these criticisms, the SERVQUAL instrument, or any one of its variants (i.e. modified forms), dominates current research into service quality. In a review of more than 40 articles that made use of SERVQUAL, a team of researchers found that “few researchers concern themselves with the validation of the measuring tool”. SERVQUAL is not only the subject of academic papers, but it is also widely used by industry practitioners.


title: Mega Brands

text: Mega Brands Inc. (formerly Mega Bloks Inc. and Ritvik Holdings) is a Canadian children's toy company currently owned by Mattel. Mega Bloks, a line of construction set toys, is its most popular product. Its other brands include Mega Construx, Mega Puzzles, Board Dudes and Rose Art. The company distributes a wide range of construction toys, puzzles, and craft-based products.


title: Mega Brands

text: In 1967, Victor Bertrand and his wife Rita founded the company as Ritvik Holdings (RH). Ritvik is a portmanteau word based on a combination of "Rit"a and "Vic"tor. RH began by distributing toys made outside Canada and also facilitated contracts between foreign brands and Canadian manufacturers.


title: Mega Brands

text: Ritvik later became a vertically integrated company as it expanded by adding plastic injection molding operations, design operations, tooling manufacturers, and marketing services. The company had a leading share of the plastic injection molded market by the early 1980s.


title: Mega Brands

text: Wanting to expand beyond Canada, Victor Bertrand took an interest in construction block sets. He saw room for growth despite them being an industry staple since the early years of the 20th century when the Batima Block was released in Belgium in 1905. With Lego being the leading construction toy, Bertrand chose to make a similar set. Bertrand ignored friends and advisors, feeling he had two advantages in launching Mega Bloks: he aimed to produce jumbo-sized bricks for toddlers, who Lego bricks were not designed for, and he considered his expertise in injection molding would give him a price advantage.


title: Mega Brands

text: At 1984 trade shows, Ritvik showed the Mega Bloks line in the US and Canada. An immediate hit, Mega Bloks had generally large sales in Canada, including a $1 million sale to Toys R Us, and were available almost anywhere in the two markets in 1985. Several multinational companies had made offers just after the trade show for distribution rights, as well as to buy either Mega Bloks or RH itself.


title: Mega Brands

text: By 1989, Mega Bloks were in 30 countries and popular in Europe, the US and Canada. Up to 30 play sets were available. A piano set with Mega Blok-compatible keys for the pre-school market was released in 1988. In 1989, Ritvik sold all of its other toy and plastics lines.


title: Mega Brands

text: A Mega Bloks "Micro" line was released in 1991; these were compatible with or a clone of Lego bricks. This finally placed Ritvik and The Lego Group in direct competition. Lego Canada soon sued Ritvik for unfair competition, claiming a likelihood of confusion between its Micro Mega Bloks and the Lego line. Since Lego's brick shape patent had expired, the lawsuit dragged on for years as sales grew worldwide (at an average 70% a year until the mid-1990s), but finally Ritvik won the case by clearly distinguishing its brand from Lego. Suits were filed in Europe and the U.S. with similar results.


title: Mega Brands

text: In 1996, a 27% share of Ritvik was sold to the Blackstone Group. Rita Bertrand and her daughter Chantal retired that year, while Marc and Victor Bertrand, Jr. were active in management. Two international subsidiaries were formed, Mega Bloks Latinoamerica S.A. de C.V. in 1997 and Mega Bloks Europe N.V. in 1998. International sales in the 1990s were at 30%, with 70% from Canada and the US; all but 10% were from four major chains: Toys 'R Us, Wal-Mart, Target, and Kmart.


title: Mega Brands

text: Ritvik followed the late 1990s licensing trend in 1998, with its first licensing agreement being for "Teletubbies", followed by an agreement with Fisher-Price with its Sesame Street characters license. A NASCAR line was also introduced. Ritvik Toys, Inc. was amalgamated with Ritvik Holdings Inc. on June 30, 1998.


title: Mega Brands

text: Lego, K'Nex and Ritvik added features to their lines in 2000. Ritvik made transformable building sets that changed into vehicles, and a remote control electronic kit named the Mega Bloks RO Action Builder. Ritvik also added TV advertising that year with a $2 million campaign; the company spent $30 million on advertising, marketing, and research and development in 2002.


title: Mega Brands

text: With sales having approximately doubled since 1999, Ritvik went public via an initial public offering in May 2002 on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the new name of Mega Bloks Inc. The company traded at $14.50 a share. The founders' sons, Victor Bertrand Jr. and Marc Bertrand, became chief operating officer and chief operating officer/president, respectively, while Victor Sr. remained chairman of the board.


title: Mega Brands

text: The toy market was in a down cycle from 2002 to 2003, with the construction toy segment losing 10 to 15%, but Mega Bloks experienced increased sales. Since 1986, the company had seen a run of 17 years of growth, becoming number two in the construction toy segment behind Lego.


title: Mega Brands

text: In 2003, the company formed a joint venture with the Japanese toy company Bandai for Asia. Bandai marketed Mega Blok sets with their existing licensed Japanese cartoon characters. With the success of movies of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books and J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", a Dragon series was released in 2003. Mega Play!, a block set large enough for children to fit inside, was also launched.


title: Mega Brands

text: With shares trading at almost $30, in 2005 Mega Bloks, Inc. acquired Rose Art Industries, including its Magnetix line of toys, for US$350 million. Soon, Magnetix was a source of lawsuits resulting from choking incidents, causing its share value to drop quickly. Magnetix was then recalled. The company acquired Board Dudes, Inc., makers of Board Dudes posting and marking boards and Locker Dudes locker products, in January 2006, through its Rose Art Industries subsidiary.


title: Mega Brands

text: On June 15, 2006, following the acquisition of several brand names not associated with construction brick toys, the company again changed its name, this time from Mega Bloks Inc. to Mega Brands Inc. with Rose Art Industries, Inc. being renamed Mega Brands America, Inc.


title: Mega Brands

text: After 23 consecutive years of growing sales and profit, Mega lost $458 million in 2008. Heading towards bankruptcy, the company refinanced. Shares were consolidated 1-for-20, with Fairfax Financial becoming a major partner in the recapitalization.


title: Mega Brands

text: Rose Art was placed on the market in March 2008 as a result of inquiries from the previous owners and others. The former owners of Rose Art, Jeffrey and Lawrence Rosen, offered to purchase it back in April 2008. They then sued company management for insider trading in September 2008, alleging shares were sold prior to the Magnetix recall. Rose Art's base operation was shut down in New Jersey, and in 2010 the company moved its stationery and activities division, with some key employees, to Irvine, California, under new executive Thomas Prichard, a former executive at Crayola, Pixar, and Hasbro. The subsidiary was not sold, and was reintegrated into Mega operations by 2012.


title: Mega Brands

text: On February 28, 2014, it was announced that Mattel, Inc. would acquire Mega Brands Inc. for approximately US$450 million. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of Mattel as of April 20, 2014. Prior to the purchase, Mega and Mattel were partners in adding Mattel brands to Mega "Worlds" plus a line for Mattel's American Girl that competes with Lego's Friends line.


title: Mega Brands

text: Three years later, on February 10, 2017, Mattel announced that it was introducing Mega Construx, a new sub-brand of construction sets designed for children four and up as well as adult collectors. Construx's first license property line was Pokémon, launched in mid-2017.


title: Mega Brands

text: Mega Construx micro figures do not follow the iconic Lego modular mini figures: instead their figures allow up to 16 articulation points, i.e. poses and customization.


title: Mega Brands

text: In 2022, many lines of Mega Construx were rebranded to MEGA with a purple logo. Some products from prior years have been sold with either branding.


title: Mega Brands

text: Mega Bloks were featured in a commercial for the Honda Element, in which bricks fell from the sky to assemble the full-sized vehicle. The commercial clearly identifies the bricks as Mega Bloks in the opening moments of the sequence.


title: Mega Brands

text: Mega Brands currently has the licensing rights for "Thomas the Tank Engine", video game franchises "Call of Duty" and "Halo", "Barbie", "Hot Wheels", "Power Rangers", "American Girl", "Monster High", "Pokémon", "Destiny", and used to have the rights for the "Despicable Me" franchise. Mega Brands picked up the license for Nickelodeon franchises like "SpongeBob SquarePants" and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles after Lego discontinued carrying their version of the licensed sets. They also have the rights to produce sets based on Nick Jr. properties like "Paw Patrol", "Blaze and the Monster Machines", and "Shimmer and Shine". They have even recently picked the license for Alien as well.


title: Mega Brands

text: The Lego Group has filed lawsuits against Mega Bloks, Inc. in courts around the world on the grounds that Mega Bloks' use of the "studs and tubes" interlocking brick system is a violation of trademarks held by Lego. Generally such lawsuits have been unsuccessful, chiefly because the functional design of the basic brick is considered a matter of patent rather than trademark law, and all relevant Lego patents have expired.


title: Mega Brands

text: On November 17, 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld Mega Bloks' right to continue selling the product in Canada. A similar decision was reached by the European Union's Court of First Instance on November 12, 2008 when it upheld an EU trademark agency decision following an objection by Mega Bloks against a trademark awarded to Lego in 1999.


title: Mega Brands

text: On September 14, 2010, the European Court of Justice ruled that the 8-peg design of the original Lego brick "merely performs a technical function [and] cannot be registered as a trademark".


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: The 2007–08 season was the 110th season of competitive football played by Arsenal. The club ended their Premier League campaign in third position, having led the table for two-thirds of the season. Arsenal made it into the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League, but were eliminated on aggregate score against Liverpool. The team exited the FA Cup in the fifth round to Manchester United and lost in the semi-finals of the League Cup to Tottenham Hotspur. This was Arsenal's first hat-trick of trophyless seasons since 1997.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: Arsenal sold striker and club record goalscorer Thierry Henry to Barcelona, in the transfer window. Other departures included first team players Freddie Ljungberg and José Antonio Reyes to West Ham United and Atlético Madrid respectively; defender Bacary Sagna and striker Eduardo were the notable purchases from Auxerre and Dinamo Zagreb, respectively.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: A strong start to the season saw Arsenal top the league table by September. Defeat against Sevilla in November ended a run of 28 matches undefeated and it was not until a month after did the team lose in the league for the first time, away at Middlesbrough. Arsenal extended their league lead to five points in February, but a career-threatening injury to Eduardo against Birmingham City coincided with the team going on a run of four draws in the Premier League. Manchester United soon overtook them in first and defeat to Chelsea in March moved Arsenal down in third place, where they remained at the end of the season. However, their points tally of 83 remains as the highest in the Premier League for a third-placed team under the 38 game format.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: Thirty-two different players represented the club in four competitions, and there were 16 different goalscorers. Emmanuel Adebayor was Arsenal's top goalscorer in the 2007–08 season, scoring 30 goals in 48 appearances.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: The previous season was a transitional period for Arsenal. The club transferred a number of first-team players such as defenders Sol Campbell and Lauren to Portsmouth and winger Robert Pires to Spanish club Villarreal. After lengthy negotiations, Ashley Cole moved to Chelsea on the final day of the summer transfer window, in exchange for £5 million and defender William Gallas. Arsenal played their home games at the newly constructed Emirates Stadium and drew their first game against Aston Villa. After a defeat by Bolton Wanderers, manager Arsène Wenger admitted that his team were unlikely to make a serious challenge for the Premier League. Despite being a young and inexperienced team, however, Arsenal reached the final of the League Cup, where they were beaten 2–1 by Chelsea. Elimination in the UEFA Champions League in the knockout stage (two-legged matches played home and away) and FA Cup in the space of four days followed – the club lost three games in succession for the first time since October 2002. Arsenal eventually finished fourth in the league, level on points with third-placed Liverpool.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: At the end of the 2006–07 season, Arsenal transferred Fabrice Muamba to Birmingham City and released Mart Poom, who subsequently joined Watford on a free transfer. Jérémie Aliadière moved to Middlesbrough in a £2 million deal while club captain and record goalscorer Thierry Henry left to join Barcelona for a reported fee of £16 million. Henry commented that his decision to leave Arsenal was because of the departure of chairman David Dein and the uncertainty over Wenger's future. Midfielder Freddie Ljungberg and striker José Antonio Reyes departed the club in July 2007, moving to West Ham United and Atlético Madrid respectively. Other players, Arturo Lupoli, Ryan Garry and Joe O'Cearuill, left on free transfers. Defender Matthew Connolly, who joined Colchester United on loan for a six-month period, later signed for Queens Park Rangers.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: Legia Warsaw goalkeeper Łukasz Fabiański was the first player Arsenal recruited of the new season. Next to arrive was striker Eduardo, who signed from Dinamo Zagreb, shortly followed by French defender Bacary Sagna. Lassana Diarra was purchased on transfer deadline day from Chelsea, but later transferred to Portsmouth in January after he was frustrated at limited playing time; he said, "I read that the club [Arsenal] wanted to keep me. But when you want to keep someone, you do it by playing them. This hasn't been the case."


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: Twenty teams competed in the Premier League in the 2007–08 season. Each team played 38 matches, two against every other team and one match at each club's stadium. Three points were awarded for each win, one point per draw, and none for defeats. At the end of the season, the top two teams qualified for the group stages of the UEFA Champions League; teams in third and fourth needed to play a qualifier.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: The provisional fixture list was released on 14 June 2007, but was subject to change in the event of clashes with other competitions, inclement weather, or matches being selected for television coverage.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: Arsenal started their league campaign at home to Fulham on 12 August 2007. A mistake by goalkeeper Jens Lehmann, "screw[ing] an attempted return pass against his own knee", allowed striker David Healy to score, just under 52 seconds. However, a late penalty scored by Robin van Persie and a goal from Alexander Hleb resulted in the team winning the match. In their next match, away to Blackburn Rovers, another error by Lehmann – this time letting David Dunn's shot slip through his fingers and into the goalnet, meant the team drew 1–1. Cesc Fàbregas scored the winning goal against Manchester City, ten minutes before the end of the match. The result was followed with what "The Guardian" described as a "fluent attacking display" at home to Portsmouth, on the first day of September. Arsenal faced local rivals Tottenham Hotspur after a week-long international break and went a goal behind when Gareth Bale's free-kick beat goalkeeper Manuel Almunia, past the net. Emmanuel Adebayor scored the equaliser in the second half, before Fàbregas "piloted a 30-yarder beyond Paul Robinson in the 80th minute." In stoppage time, Adebayor flicked the ball up and volleyed it into the top corner of Tottenham's goal; the result meant Arsenal went top of the league table, for the first time in the season. A week after, Adebayor scored a hat-trick (three goals) in a 5–0 win against Derby County. Van Persie scored the only goal against West Ham United on 29 September 2007 to maintain the lead at the top.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: Two goals from Van Persie helped Arsenal beat Sunderland 3–2 at home, on the first weekend of October. Second half goals from defender Kolo Touré and midfielder Tomáš Rosický against Bolton Wanderers, gave the team a seventh straight victory in the league. Arsenal played Liverpool on 28 October 2007, a match billed as the "first great test" of their title credentials. Steven Gerrard gave Liverpool an early lead, from a free-kick, but as the match went on, Arsenal began to dominate possession, eventually rewarded when Fábregas equalised in the 80th minute, from a Hleb through ball.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: November began with a home match against Manchester United. Going into the match, both clubs were level on points and goal difference, at the top of the league. In the 45th minute, Gallas inadvertently scored an own goal to give United the lead, before Fábregas equalised early in the second half. Cristiano Ronaldo scored what was thought to be the winning goal, eight minutes from the end, but Arsenal equalised for the second time in the match via Gallas. The draw pleased Wenger, who after the game noted his team were "...still charge of the title race because we are top with a game in hand". A win against Reading at the Madejski Stadium on 12 November 2007 brought about Arsenal's 1,000th Premier League goal, scored by Adebayor. Reading striker Dave Kitson afterwards praised Arsenal's performance and asserted they were "the best team on the planet": "The thing that amazes you most is they are not just passing to each other – they are passing so that person can run on to the ball and then his mind is already made up what he is going to do next. It is just magic, it is unbelievable."


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: Late goals scored by Gallas and Rosický at home to Wigan Athletic kept Arsenal three points clear of Manchester United in the league table, at the end of November. The win at Villa Park against Aston Villa in December, moved Arsenal five points clear at the top of the league table, and provoked speculation as to whether the club could go another league season unbeaten; Wenger responded, "People will talk ... just let us play." The team played out a 1–1 draw at Newcastle United four days after and lost against Middlesbrough, ending a record of 22 league matches unbeaten. Arsenal beat Chelsea 1–0 on 16 December 2007 and needed a late goal, scored by substitute Nicklas Bendtner to win against Tottenham Hotspur. In spite of a draw at Portsmouth on Boxing Day, which moved Arsenal down to second place, a win against Everton helped the club move past Manchester United to the first-place spot.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: On 1 January 2008, Eduardo and Adebayor each scored to earn Arsenal a win against West Ham United. The team dropped two points against Birmingham City, but a 3–0 victory at Fulham meant that Arsenal retained their first-place status. Goals scored by Mathieu Flamini, Adebayor and Fábregas helped Arsenal beat Newcastle United in the final week of January. The team became the first to reach 60 points in February, after winning 3–1 against Manchester City; Wenger described the feat as "phenomenal". Manchester City's defeat of Manchester United the following week meant a 2–0 win at home to Blackburn Rovers put Arsenal five points clear in first spot, with 12 matches to play.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: The team then faced Birmingham City at St Andrew's. Shortly after kick-off, defender Martin Taylor was sent off and took no further part in the game, after his tackle on Eduardo. The player's challenge left the Arsenal striker with a broken leg; he was ruled out from action for the rest of the season. James McFadden scored through a free-kick in the 28th minute, before two Theo Walcott goals in the second half put Arsenal in the lead. In stoppage time, Gaël Clichy was penalised for a foul on Stuart Parnaby in the penalty area; McFadden scored Birmingham's awarded penalty to draw the match 2–2. It prompted Gallas to throw a tantrum: he attacked an advertising board situated on the side of the pitch and rested alone on the pitch, while his players headed for the dressing room. Wenger after the match called for a permanent football ban on tackler Taylor; he later retracted the comment.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: A late equaliser at home to Aston Villa preserved Arsenal's lead at the top of the Premier League to only a point. A goalless draw at Wigan Athletic, was followed by a fourth consecutive draw in the league, at home to Middlesbrough. On the same day, Manchester United moved above Arsenal, who recorded a 1–0 win against Derby County. After Gallas missed a chance to score in the first half, Sagna put Arsenal in front, heading the ball into the goal net, from a corner in the 59th minute. Didier Drogba equalised for Chelsea in the 73rd minute and nine minutes later scored the winner, from a Nicolas Anelka flick-on. The result pushed Chelsea up into second place and moved Arsenal down one; both clubs were five and six points behind Manchester United respectively at the top. At the Reebok Stadium on 29 March 2008, Arsenal played Bolton Wanderers. The team went two goals down in the first half, both scored by Matthew Taylor and lost Abou Diaby, who was sent off for a foul on Grétar Steinsson. The team's "dramatic" comeback however, in the form of a winning goal in stoppage time, secured their first league win at Bolton Wanderers' ground in six years.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: A 1–1 draw against Liverpool in early April, sandwiched in between Champions League legs between both teams "disappointed" Wenger, who refused to concede winning the title. Defeat to Manchester United at Old Trafford on 13 April 2008, however ended any realistic chance of overtaking the leaders, as United, the champions, needed two more wins to retain the title. Arsenal beat relegation-threatened Reading 2–0 the week after. Adebayor scored a hat-trick against Derby County on 28 April 2008, which made him the first player to score three goals, home and away against the same side in the same season. The win secured third place, pleasing Wenger who felt the team had a "great future – I believe we were really unlucky not to win something this year." Arsenal won their remaining two fixtures against Everton and Sunderland by a single goal, ending the campaign four points behind champions Manchester United.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: As Arsenal finished fourth in the league the previous season, the club played a qualifying round against Sparta Prague to ensure progression into the group stages. Goals from Fàbregas and Hleb in the away leg earned a 2–0 win and a 3–0 victory at home meant Arsenal qualified for a 10th successive season in the competition.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: The club were drawn in Group H, along with UEFA Cup holders Sevilla, Slavia Prague of the Czech Republic and Romania's Steaua București. Arsenal started their campaign in good stead, beating Sevilla 3–0 and followed the result with a 1–0 victory against Steaua București. Against Slavia Prague at the Emirates, Arsenal equalled their best ever victory in a European competition, scoring seven goals. Walcott, who scored his first two goals of the season in the match, earned the praise of manager Wenger: "Once Theo scored his first, you saw him much more. When they opened up the space, you could see his runs and pace, and the fact he is clinical in front of goal." Qualification into the knockout stages was ensured with a draw away to Slavia Prague on 7 November 2007. Defeat against Sevilla at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán Stadium was Arsenal's first loss since April 2007, ending a run of 28 matches undefeated in all competitions. The result moved them down into second place, and in spite of winning their final group match against Steaua at home, Arsenal ended two points behind group winners Sevilla.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: Arsenal was drawn against Champions League holders Milan in the knockout stages. In the first leg, Arsenal was held to a draw at home, with their best chance of winning the match coming in stoppage time; Adebayor headed the ball against the crossbar. A week later at the San Siro, the team produced a performance "with style, intelligence and discipline", to win the match by two goals to nil. In doing so, they progressed into the last eight and became the first English team to beat Milan, away from home.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: In the quarter-finals, Arsenal played against fellow English club Liverpool, with the first leg at home. The two matches were played either side of a Premier League match between the two sides. Adebayor scored the first goal – he headed the ball from a corner, before Dirk Kuyt equalised three minutes later. Arsenal had a strong penalty appeal harshly turned down after Kuyt seemingly pulled Alexander Hleb in the penalty box and missed a chance to score a second goal, had Bendtner not managed to inadvertently clear Fàbregas' strike. In the return leg at Anfield, Arsenal made the better start of the two teams and took the lead when Diaby scored from a tight angle in the 13th minute. Sami Hyypiä equalised from a header before Fernando Torres received a long pass and swivelled to shoot the ball with his right foot, sending it into the top-left hand corner of Arsenal's goal. With five minutes remaining of the second half, substitute Walcott "covered some 80 yards at pace" to get past the Liverpool defenders and passed the ball for Adebayor, in the middle of the pitch to score. Touré moments after was adjudged to have fouled Ryan Babel and conceded a penalty kick; Gerrard converted the ball into the net to make the scoreline 4–3 on aggregate. In stoppage time Babel scored Liverpool's fourth, meaning they faced Chelsea in the semi-finals. Wenger in his post-match news conference questioned the "dodgy decision" to give Liverpool a penalty and commented the defeat was "not down to mental strength ... It was down to a lack of experience defensively."


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: Arsenal entered the FA Cup in the third round, where they were drawn to play Championship opposition Burnley. Goals from Eduardo and Bendtner, in either half of the match ensured victory for a "second-string" team. Against Newcastle United a fortnight later, a 3–0 victory meant Arsenal progressed into the fifth round, where they faced Manchester United away. The match played on 16 February 2008, ended in a "embarrassingly one-sided victory" for the home team; defender Emmanuel Eboué was notably dismissed for a high challenge on Patrice Evra.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: Arsenal began their League Cup campaign in the third round, drawn at home to Newcastle United. They made nine changes from the previous starting XI – Eduardo paired up with Bendtner in the front two. Bendtner scored the opening goal seven minutes from the end of normal time; Denílson added a second goal to ensure Arsenal's progression. Fourth-round opponents Sheffield United were easier to defeat, with Eduardo scoring a brace (two goals). The quarter-final pitted Arsenal away to Blackburn Rovers, in a match played on 18 December 2007. Diaby gave Arsenal the lead with a volley after six minutes and Eduardo extended the lead, before Roque Santa Cruz pulled a goal back for Blackburn, three minutes from the end of the first half. Santa Cruz scored the equaliser and his second of the match, heading in a cross by David Bentley. In stoppage time, Denílson was sent off for a two-footed challenge on Dunn. In spite of playing with one less player, Arsenal regained the lead. Alex Song passed the ball to Eduardo, who held off his opponent Ryan Nelsen and with minimal effort placed it past Brad Friedel. The performance prompted Wenger to assert that his team could win the cup, while opposing manager Mark Hughes commented that Arsenal's blend of young players were capable of following in the footsteps of Manchester United's fledglings, managed by Alex Ferguson.


title: 2007–08 Arsenal F.C. season

text: Arsenal was drawn against Tottenham Hotspur in the two-legged semifinal. In the first leg, at the Emirates, Arsenal scored a late equaliser to even the tie at 1–1. However, a 5–1 victory for Tottenham in the return leg meant it was their first victory over their north London rivals in nine years. Wenger after the game defended his policy to play a young side, adding: "The only regret I have is to have played the players who should not have played."


title: P wave

text: A P wave (primary wave or pressure wave) is one of the two main types of elastic body waves, called seismic waves in seismology. P waves travel faster than other seismic waves and hence are the first signal from an earthquake to arrive at any affected location or at a seismograph. P waves may be transmitted through gases, liquids, or solids.


title: P wave

text: The name "P wave" can stand for either pressure wave (as it is formed from alternating compressions and rarefactions) or primary wave (as it has high velocity and is therefore the first wave to be recorded by a seismograph).


title: P wave

text: The name "S wave" represents another seismic wave propagation mode, standing for secondary or shear wave.


title: P wave

text: Primary and secondary waves are body waves that travel within the Earth. The motion and behavior of both P and S waves in the Earth are monitored to probe the interior structure of the Earth. Discontinuities in velocity as a function of depth are indicative of changes in phase or composition. Differences in arrival times of waves originating in a seismic event like an earthquake as a result of waves taking different paths allow mapping of the Earth's inner structure.


title: P wave

text: Almost all the information available on the structure of the Earth's deep interior is derived from observations of the travel times, reflections, refractions and phase transitions of seismic body waves, or normal modes. P waves travel through the fluid layers of the Earth's interior, and yet they are refracted slightly when they pass through the transition between the semisolid mantle and the liquid outer core. As a result, there is a P-wave "shadow zone" between 103° and 142° from the earthquake's focus, where the initial P waves are not registered on seismometers. In contrast, S waves do not travel through liquids.


title: P wave

text: Advance earthquake warning is possible by detecting the nondestructive primary waves that travel more quickly through the Earth's crust than do the destructive secondary and Rayleigh waves.


title: P wave

text: The amount of warning depends on the delay between the arrival of the P wave and other destructive waves, generally on the order of seconds up to about 60 to 90 seconds for deep, distant, large quakes such as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. The effectiveness of a warning depends on accurate detection of the P waves and rejection of ground vibrations caused by local activity (such as trucks or construction). Earthquake early warning systems can be automated to allow for immediate safety actions, such as issuing alerts, stopping elevators at the nearest floors, and switching off utilities.


title: P wave

text: In isotropic and homogeneous solids, a P wave travels in a straight line longitudinally; thus, the particles in the solid vibrate along the axis of propagation (the direction of motion) of the wave energy. The velocity of P waves in that kind of medium is given by


title: P wave

text: where is the bulk modulus (the modulus of incompressibility), is the shear modulus (modulus of rigidity, sometimes denoted as and also called the second Lamé parameter), is the density of the material through which the wave propagates, and is the first Lamé parameter.


title: P wave

text: In typical situations in the interior of the Earth, the density usually varies much less than or , so the velocity is mostly "controlled" by these two parameters.


title: P wave

text: Typical values for P wave velocity in earthquakes are in the range 5 to 8 km/s. The precise speed varies according to the region of the Earth's interior, from less than 6 km/s in the Earth's crust to 13.5 km/s in the lower mantle, and 11 km/s through the inner core.


title: P wave

text: Geologist Francis Birch discovered a relationship between the velocity of P waves and the density of the material the waves are traveling in:


title: P wave

text: which later became known as Birch's law. (The symbol is an empirically tabulated function, and is a constant.)


title: Irving Fisher

text: Irving Fisher (February 27, 1867 – April 29, 1947) was an American economist, statistician, inventor, eugenicist and progressive social campaigner. He was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt deflation has been embraced by the post-Keynesian school. Joseph Schumpeter described him as "the greatest economist the United States has ever produced", an assessment later repeated by James Tobin and Milton Friedman.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher made important contributions to utility theory and general equilibrium. He was also a pioneer in the rigorous study of intertemporal choice in markets, which led him to develop a theory of capital and interest rates. His research on the quantity theory of money inaugurated the school of macroeconomic thought known as "monetarism". Fisher was also a pioneer of econometrics, including the development of index numbers. Some concepts named after him include the Fisher equation, the Fisher hypothesis, the international Fisher effect, the Fisher separation theorem and Fisher market.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher was perhaps the first celebrity economist, but his reputation during his lifetime was irreparably harmed by his public statement, just nine days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, that the stock market had reached "a permanently high plateau". His subsequent theory of debt deflation as an explanation of the Great Depression, as well as his advocacy of full-reserve banking and alternative currencies, were largely ignored in favor of the work of John Maynard Keynes. Fisher's reputation has since recovered in academic economics, particularly after his theoretical models were rediscovered in the late 1960s to the 1970s, a period of increasing reliance on mathematical models within the field. Interest in him has also grown in the public due to an increased interest in debt deflation after the Great Recession.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher was one of the foremost proponents of the full-reserve banking, which he advocated as one of the authors of A Program for Monetary Reform where the general proposal is outlined.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher was born in Saugerties, New York. His father was a teacher and a Congregational minister, who raised his son to believe he must be a useful member of society. Despite being raised in religious family, he later on became an atheist. As a child, he had remarkable mathematical ability and a flair for invention. A week after he was admitted to Yale College his father died, at age 53. Irving then supported his mother, brother, and himself, mainly by tutoring. He graduated first in his class with a BA degree in 1888, having also been elected as a member of the Skull and Bones society.


title: Irving Fisher

text: In 1891, Fisher received the first PhD in economics granted by Yale. His faculty advisors were the theoretical physicist Willard Gibbs and the sociologist William Graham Sumner. As a student, Fisher had shown particular talent and inclination for mathematics, but he found that economics offered greater scope for his ambition and social concerns. His thesis, published by Yale in 1892 as "Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices", was a rigorous development of the theory of general equilibrium. When he began writing the thesis, Fisher had not been aware that Léon Walras and his continental European disciples had already covered similar ground. Nonetheless, Fisher's work was a very significant contribution and was immediately recognized and praised as first-rate by such European masters as Francis Edgeworth.


title: Irving Fisher

text: After graduating from Yale, Fisher studied in Berlin and Paris. From 1890 onward, he remained at Yale, first as a tutor, then after 1898 as a professor of political economy, and after 1935 as professor emeritus. He edited the "Yale Review" from 1896 to 1910 and was active in many learned societies, institutes, and welfare organizations. He was president of the American Economic Association in 1918. The American Mathematical Society selected him as its Gibbs Lecturer for 1929. A leading early proponent of econometrics, in 1930 he founded, with Ragnar Frisch and Charles F. Roos the Econometric Society, of which he was the first president.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher was a prolific writer, producing journalism as well as technical books and articles, and addressing various social issues surrounding the First World War, the prosperous 1920s and the depressed 1930s. He made several practical inventions, the most notable of which was an "index visible filing system" which he patented in 1913 and sold to Kardex Rand (later Remington Rand) in 1925. This, and his subsequent stock investments, made him a wealthy man until his personal finances were badly hit by the Crash of 1929.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher was also an active social and health campaigner, as well as an advocate of vegetarianism, prohibition, and eugenics. In 1893, he married Margaret Hazard, a granddaughter of Rhode Island industrialist and social reformer Rowland G. Hazard. He died of inoperable colon cancer in New York City in 1947, at the age of 80.


title: Irving Fisher

text: James Tobin, writing on the contributions of John Bates Clark and Irving Fisher to neoclassical theory in America argues that American economists contributed in their own way to the preparation of a common ground after the neoclassical revolution. In particular Clark and Irving Fisher "brought neoclassical theory into American journals, classrooms, and textbooks, and its analytical tools into the kits of researchers and practitioners." Already in his doctoral thesis, "Fisher expounds thoroughly the mathematics of utility functions and their maximization, and he is careful to allow for corner solutions." Already then, Fisher "states clearly that neither interpersonally comparable utility nor cardinal utility for each individual is necessary to the determination of equilibrium."


title: Irving Fisher

text: In reviewing the history of utility theory, economist George Stigler wrote that Fisher's doctoral thesis had been "brilliant" and stressed that it contained "the first careful examination of the measurability of the utility function and its relevance to demand theory." While his published work exhibited an unusual degree of mathematical sophistication for an economist of his day, Fisher always sought to bring his analysis to life and to present his theories as lucidly as possible. For instance, to complement the arguments in his doctoral thesis, he built an elaborate hydraulic machine with pumps and levers, allowing him to demonstrate visually how the equilibrium prices in the market adjusted in response to changes in supply or demand.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher is probably best remembered today in neoclassical economics for his theory of capital, investment, and interest rates, first exposited in his "The Nature of Capital and Income" (1906) and elaborated on in "The Rate of Interest" (1907). His 1930 treatise, "The Theory of Interest", summed up a lifetime's research into capital, capital budgeting, credit markets, and the factors (including inflation) that determine interest rates.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher saw that subjective economic value is not only a function of the amount of goods and services owned or exchanged, but also of the moment in time when they are purchased with money. A good available now has a different value than the same good available at a later date; value has a time as well as a quantity dimension. The relative price of goods available at a future date, in terms of goods sacrificed now, is measured by the interest rate. Fisher made free use of the standard diagrams used to teach undergraduate economics, but labeled the axes "consumption now" and "consumption next period" (instead of the usual schematic alternatives of "apples" and "oranges"). The resulting theory, one of considerable power and insight, was presented in detail in "The Theory of Interest".


title: Irving Fisher

text: This model, later generalized to the case of "K" goods and "N" periods (including the case of infinitely many periods) has become a standard theory of capital and interest, and is described in Gravelle and Rees, and Aliprantis, Brown, and Burkinshaw. This theoretical advance is explained in Hirshleifer.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher saw that his theory, via economic policy, was making an impact on society as a whole. Once he brought out his Quantity Theory of Money, it started to bring economic models to life. One of the strongest points that Fisher brings out in discussing interest rates was the power of impatience.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher's research into the basic theory of prices and interest rates did not touch directly on the great social issues of the day. On the other hand, his monetary economics "did" and this grew to be the main focus of Fisher's mature work.


title: Irving Fisher

text: It was Fisher who (following the pioneering work of Simon Newcomb) formulated the quantity theory of money in terms of the "equation of exchange:" Let "M" be the total stock of money, "P" the price level, "T" the amount of transactions carried out using money, and "V" the velocity of circulation of money, so that


title: Irving Fisher

text: Later economists replaced "T" by the real output "Y" (or "Q"), usually quantified by the real Gross domestic product (GDP).


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher's "Appreciation and Interest" was an abstract analysis of the behavior of interest rates when the price level is changing. It emphasized the distinction between real and nominal interest rates:


title: Irving Fisher

text: where formula_3 is the real interest rate, formula_4 is the nominal interest rate, and the inflation formula_5 is a measure of the increase in the price level. When inflation is sufficiently low, the real interest rate can be approximated as the nominal interest rate minus the expected inflation rate. The resulting equation is known as the Fisher equation in his honor.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher believed that investors and savers – people in general – were afflicted in varying degrees by "money illusion"; they could not see past the money to the goods the money could buy. In an ideal world, changes in the price level would have no effect on production or employment. In the actual world with money illusion, inflation (and deflation) did serious harm. For more than forty years, Fisher elaborated his vision of the damaging "dance of the dollar" and devised various schemes to "stabilize" money, i.e. to stabilize the price level. He was one of the first to subject macroeconomic data, including the money stock, interest rates, and the price level, to statistical analyses and tests. In the 1920s, he introduced the technique later called distributed lags. In 1973, the "Journal of Political Economy" posthumously reprinted his 1926 paper on the statistical relation between unemployment and inflation, retitling it as "I discovered the Phillips curve". Index numbers played an important role in his monetary theory, and his book "The Making of Index Numbers" has remained influential down to the present day.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher's main intellectual rival was the Swedish economist Knut Wicksell. Fisher espoused a more succinct explanation of the quantity theory of money, resting it almost exclusively on long run prices. Wicksell's theory was considerably more complicated, beginning with interest rates in a system of changes in the real economy. Although both economists concluded from their theories that at the heart of the business cycle (and economic crisis) was government monetary policy, their disagreement would not be solved in their lifetimes, and indeed, it was inherited by the policy debates between the Keynesians and monetarists beginning a half-century later.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Following the stock market crash of 1929, and in light of the ensuing Great Depression, Fisher developed a theory of economic crises called debt-deflation, which attributed the crises to the bursting of a credit bubble. Initially, during the upswing over-confident economic agents are lured by the prospect of high profits to increase their debt in order to leverage their gains. According to Fisher, once the credit bubble bursts, this unleashes a series of effects that have serious negative impact on the real economy:


title: Irving Fisher

text: Crucially, as debtors try to liquidate or pay off their nominal debt, the fall of prices caused by this defeats the very attempt to reduce the real burden of debt. Thus, while repayment reduces the amount of money owed, this does not happen fast enough since the real value of the dollar now rises ('swelling of the dollar').


title: Irving Fisher

text: This theory was largely ignored in favor of Keynesian economics, in part because of the damage to Fisher's reputation caused by his public optimism about the stock market, just prior to the crash. Debt-deflation has experienced a revival of mainstream interest since the 1980s, and particularly with the Late-2000s recession. Steve Keen predicted the 2008 recession by using Hyman Minsky's further development of Fisher's work on debt-deflation. Debt-deflation is now the major theory with which Fisher's name is associated.


title: Irving Fisher

text: The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression cost Fisher much of his personal wealth and academic reputation. He famously predicted, nine days before the crash, that stock prices had "reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." Irving Fisher stated on October 21 that the market was "only shaking out of the lunatic fringe" and went on to explain why he felt the prices still had not caught up with their real value and should go much higher. On Wednesday, October 23, he announced in a banker's meeting "security values in most instances were not inflated." For months after the Crash, he continued to assure investors that a recovery was just around the corner. Once the Great Depression was in full force, he did warn that the ongoing drastic deflation was the cause of the disastrous cascading insolvencies then plaguing the American economy because deflation increased the real value of debts fixed in dollar terms. Fisher was so discredited by his 1929 pronouncements and by the failure of a firm he had started that few people took notice of his "debt-deflation" analysis of the Depression. People instead eagerly turned to the ideas of Keynes. Fisher's debt-deflation scenario has since seen a revival since the 1980s.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher's 1942 book with the concept behind the Unlimited Savings Accumulation Tax, a reform introduced in the United States Senate in 1995 by Senator Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico), former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), and Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska). The concept was that unnecessary spending (which is hard to define in a law) can be taxed by taxing income minus all net investments and savings, and minus an allowance for essential purchases, thus making funds available for investment.


title: Irving Fisher

text: In 1898, Fisher was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the same disease that had killed his father. He spent three years in sanatoria, finally making a full recovery. That experience sparked in him a vocation as a health campaigner. He was one of the founders of the Life Extension Institute, under whose auspices he co-authored the bestselling book "How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science", published in 1915. He advocated regular exercise and the avoidance of red meat, tobacco, and alcohol. In 1924, Fisher wrote an anti-smoking article for the "Reader's Digest", which argued that "tobacco lowers the whole tone of the body and decreases its vital power and resistance ... [it] acts like a narcotic poison, like opium and like alcohol, though usually in a less degree".


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher supported the legal prohibition of alcohol and wrote three booklets defending prohibition in the United States on grounds of public health and economic productivity. As a proponent of Eugenics he helped found the Race Betterment Foundation in 1906. He also defended eugenics, serving in the scientific advisory board of the Eugenics Record Office and as first president of the American Eugenics Society.


title: Irving Fisher

text: When his daughter Margaret was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Fisher had her treated at the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton, whose director was the psychiatrist Henry Cotton. Cotton believed in a "focal sepsis" theory, according to which mental illness resulted from infectious material in the roots of teeth, bowel recesses, and other places in the body. Cotton also claimed that surgical removal of the infected tissue could alleviate the patient's mental disorder. At Trenton, Margaret Fisher had sections of her bowel and colon removed, which eventually resulted in her death. Irving Fisher nonetheless remained convinced of the validity of Cotton's treatment.


title: Irving Fisher

text: Fisher, Irving Norton, 1961. "A Bibliography of the Writings of Irving Fisher" (1961). Compiled by Fisher's son; contains 2425 entries.


title: National Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela

text: The National Bolivarian Armed Forces ( - FANB) of Venezuela are controlled by the Commander-in-Chief (the President) and a civilian Minister of Defense. In addition to the army, navy, and air force there is also a national guard and national militia primarily focused on internal security.


text: The armed forces primary purpose is to defend Venezuelan territory from attack, combat drug trafficking, provide search and rescue capabilities, aid the civilian population in case of natural disasters protection, as well as numerous internal security assignments. , the armed forces had 123,000 active personnel and 8,000 reservists.


text: The origin of an organized and professional armed forces in Venezuela dates to the Spanish troops quartered in the former Province of Venezuela in the 18th century. Politically and militarily until the creation of the Captaincy General of Venezuela in 1777, the Province of Venezuela depended on the Real Audiencia of Santo Domingo (in today's Dominican Republic) or the Viceroyalty of New Granada (today, Colombia) for the defense of the area. In 1732 the Spanish crown created a Military Directorate and established a number of battalions, and had a few units from infantry regiments based in Spain arrive in the area. Reform of the military in the colonies began a few decades later. The first squadrons of cavalry arrived from Spain in 1751. The first batteries of Artillery were officially raised just two years later. Both Creole whites and blacks were allowed to enter the ranks of the artillery companies. That same year, a Fixed Caracas Battalion was established. Until the creation of this battalion, defense had been based on small colonial militia companies, which initially only accepted whites. Gradually, this racist policy yielded and the entry of mixed-race people was allowed in the militias. It was from these various units that the bulk of the officers who fought in the battles of the Venezuelan War of Independence emerged. Among them were Generalissimo Francisco de Miranda, Simón Bolívar (Bolívar's own father had been Colonel of the Militia of Aragua), General in chief Santiago Mariño, Rafael Urdaneta, among many other heroes. With the establishment of an independent captaincy general in the latter half of the 18th century, the Spanish troops quartered in the province passed to the direct command of Caracas. The troops in the other provinces of the country, under the command of local governors, were overseen by the Captain General of Caracas, who served as commander in chief of the armed services. In this way a series of autonomous units was created for the peoples of the area and for defense duties, open to all fit males regardless of color. Aside from these the Spanish Navy also operated naval bases in the Captaincy General's territorial coastline, open to both whites and blacks as well.


text: Already in the early 19th century, many of these Venezuelans who had formed the bulk of the officer corps at the start of the formation of the national armed forces began to arrive in the country after participating in military campaigns abroad in the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution, or after completing their studies in Europe. With them came a number of mercenaries and volunteers of many different nationalities: English, Scottish, Irish, French, German, Brazilian, Poles, Russians, and others. It was only in 1810 in the aftermath of the coup d'état of 19 April that year that formally began the process of raising the national armed services. Several of the military officers of the colonial military forces supported the coup and the subsequent creation of a junta. That Supreme Junta later appointed Commander Lino de Clemente to be in charge of defense affairs for the Captaincy General, and thus the armed forces began to be formed through their efforts, including the opening of a full military academy in Caracas for the training of officers, later joined by a naval academy in La Guaira for naval officer education the following year.


text: It could be said that in the first two decades of the 19th century, the nascent Liberation Army and Navy, was in the midst of the intellectual training of their military cadres, in various attempts to unleash the revolutionary war, and trying to build a modern army and navy. In the midst of that task came the generalissimo Francisco de Miranda, and the Liberator Simón Bolívar, who called for immediate action to, once and for all, ensure the independence of the nation, achieved through the aforementioned 19 April coup of 1810 and later through the formal enactment of the 1811 Venezuelan Declaration of Independence. Bolívar surprised his military colleagues, when he rejected part of the Napoleonic military assumptions, habits and behaviors, took more British soldiers and those from other nations, and even through third parties requested the assistance of the British Crown for the formation of the regular army and navy for the growing republic. And he did made no mistake indeed: the 19th century, ultimately, was dominated by British and Prussian military influences. Once in battle, Bolívar began to develop his own tactics, military strategies and practices, whose legacy remains till this day in the National Armed Forces, and led to victory after victory and the full liberation of not just Venezuela, but of northern South America, through battles in both land and sea until the wars ended in 1824.


text: During the second half of the 19th century, a school for officers continued (Military Academy of Mathematics, which was decades in advance of the policy of unification of arms and services of the Spanish military academy, which was in fact after to the Venezuelan one), a standing Army, weapons, and creating new services including the Corps of Sappers. This phase of the Venezuelan Army, is marked by infighting and a domain of local militias with no training (the Federal War was one example). The little outside help in military matters at this stage is limited to the British and the later Chilean military missions, which began the long modernization of the army and navy. The military figures (there were other political figures) of the armed forces who were the most important at this stage were Marshal Juan Crisóstomo Falcón, General in Chief Cipriano Castro, Brigadier General Ezequiel Zamora and Manuel Ezequiel Bruzual.


text: Already in the first half of the 20th century, President General in Chief Juan Vicente Gómez, who originally based on the plans of General in Chief Cipriano Castro, began a thorough modernization in the armed services, but does not create a new army as some historians point out. This modernization was done with the help of instructors and advisers from Chile, France, Italy and Germany. The late Prussian influence did not reach the Venezuelan Army from the Germans, but from the Chilean military instructors in 1910. One of the most important reforms undertaken during the Gómez regime of the National Armed Forces, which began in 1910 with the aim of making the national armed services uniform, modern and technically advanced in this era of the 20th century.


text: The reform coincided with the centennial anniversary of the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence, which contributed to the doctrinal and political cohesion of the army and the navy. The most important milestones of this reform were:


text: In 1910, operation of the Military Academy of Venezuela that was reformed in 1903 started, and within it, the Naval Academy (then called Naval School of Venezuela), establishing the School of Application for Military officers in active service with the aim of upgrading their military expertise. In 1913 the Superior Technical Office responsible for the development of military doctrine, organization and training of the army, was founded.


text: In 1920 the Military Aviation School of Venezuela was established. It was located in Maracay and was inaugurated the first of January of the next year to train the nation's military pilots.


text: In 1923/1930 a new Code of Military law was adopted that superseded all previous military laws and responded to the new political and military situation in the country. This process was accompanied by the modernization of the infrastructure, provision of arms, equipment, uniforms and a sustained growth of the military budget, which was made possible by oil revenues. The reform had a strong German influence. This is due mainly to the fact the Prussian/German army was the most modern of the era and in this sense become a model internationally.


text: The most important political consequence of this reform, from 1913, was a sense of the rising political power of the Venezuelan military while retaining its traditional role as the defense forces of the State. Since 1914 Gomez always retained the post of Commanding General of the Army, even when not holding the presidency of the Republic. The power base of support of the regime after 1913, apart from the liberals and nationalists, was the armed forces, which became an essential element of repression to ensure public order and national progress.


text: At this stage the military and political figures more relevant (apart from the general Gómez himself), were General in Chief Eleazar López Contreras (who founded the National Guard in 1937) and Major General Isaías Medina Angarita, both Presidents of the Republic. With Angarita's ouster in 1945, civilians took over the government for the first time since 1922, albeit only briefly, but it was during those times that the Venezuelan Air Force was officially founded. The ouster of Angarita saw the participation of what is now today the 411th Armored Battalion "General in Chief Juan Francisco Bermudez", whose M3 Stuart light tanks and Jeeps saw action, and which foresaw the beginning of the modernization of the armed services.


text: The second half of the 20th century, was just as turbulent for the entire Venezuelan military, but it was projected into the future as a modern force for the coming years, though not yet cohesive. Already under the government of Major General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who led the country as president and Commander in Chief from the early 1950s to 1958 (he was, under LTCOL Carlos Delgado Chalbaud and Germán Suárez Flamerich, the Minister of Defense) and the American influence (cultural, political and military), which started with the 1944 arrival of the first US military mission, became more prominent then in the entire history of the armed forces. So jealous of the Venezuelan Army, over the subsequent decades, the armed forces kept a precarious existing French influence, as a balance to the overwhelming American influence in the armed forces. Between the years 1945 and 1952, there was a major program of military equipment purchases almost monopolized by the United States (although other military material was acquired from other countries, mostly NATO countries) plus the military missions sent by that country, and later repeated again in the early years of the decade of the 1970s, albeit in a more balanced way by their countries of origin.


text: At this time, the armed forces were composed of the traditional air force, army, navy and national guard.


text: The armed services made their mark in the 1960s in stopping anti-government actions and even two rebellions from within its very own ranks. The 1970s were also marked with the Carabobo Reorganizational Plan, aimed to enhance the capability of the Army and marked an increase of regular army units and materiel. The Air Force, Navy and National Guard increased their capabilities as well with modern equipment to satisfy all those who serve. Born again under a turbulent internal and external picture for the nation is the modern National Bolivarian Armed Forces, in the midst of the economic crises of the 1980s and the subsequent military coups of the early 1990s.


text: Under the governments of Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro, the armed forces have undergone significant changes, including in its name (from National Armed Forces to National Bolivarian Armed Forces). There has also been a political change in partnerships switching from cooperation with the United States and its allies to expanded cooperations with Russia as the biggest of those new military allies.


text: The military doctrine of the armed forces today is based on policy laid out by the late Hugo Chávez (President and Commander in Chief from 1999 to 2013). Chávez stated that the duty of the national military was to be "essentially patriotic, popular, and anti-imperialist." According to Chávez's policy, the military would also follow defense principles of a "people's war of resistance" against the enemies of the republic and to assist in "internal order," as well as participate in government economic development plans and programs for the benefit of the people of Venezuela.


text: According to the Article 3 of the Armed Forces Organic Law, the fundamental mission of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces is to ensure the independence and sovereignty of the nation and ensure the integrity of the geographical territories of the country, by means of military defense, cooperation in the maintenance of internal order and active participation in national development.


text: The President of Venezuela is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces under constitutional provisions, thus he has overall supervision and control over it. He also appoints the Minister of Defense, the commandant of the Operational Strategic Command and the commanding generals of the service branches and has full authority over all uniformed personnel. In doing this, he is assisted by the Commander-in-Chief's General Staff.


text: The Venezuelan Ministry of the People's Power for Defense is the federal-level organ responsible for maintaining the Venezuelan armed forces. As of November 2014, this ministry is headed by General Vladimir Padrino Lopez, who replaced Admiral Carmen Meléndez who was appointed Venezuela's first woman minister of interior. The ministry coordinates numerous counter-narcotics operations, organizes various civil protection measures and operations, and generally oversees the conventional military capabilities of Venezuela. The office of minister is filled by a general or flag officer of the armed forces with the rank of general or admiral in chief (which is the only officer who holds this rank in the armed forces).


text: The president is assisted by the Military High Command of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which consists of the Minister of Defense, the Chief of Inspectorate General for Defense, the Commandant of the Operational Strategic Command, the Commanding General of the Army, the Commanding General of the Navy, the Commanding General of the Air Force, the Commanding General of the National Guard, and the Commanding General of the National Militia General Command (AFOL Art. 42). The National Armed Forces High Council is made by the Military High Command. It is the principal organ for consultation and advice of the President of the Republic, of the National Defense Council and Minister of Defense, on issues of organization, operation, development and employment of the Armed Forces, either in peacetime or in state of emergency. Per the 2014 amendments to the Armed Forces Organic Law, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the OSC is now renamed as the National Armed Forces Senior General Staff Authority, and now has been expanded, led by the Minister of Defense and the Commandant of the OSC, and assisted by the Assistant Commandant and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, service branch commanding generals, commanding generals of the Integral Strategic Defense Regions, and a secretary general of the HCA.


text: The Operational Strategic Command (CEOFAN) is the highest organ of command of the National Armed Forces. It was created by the current Article 60 of the Organic Law of the National Armed Forces (LOFAN) as amended in September 2005. It reports to both the President and to the Minister of Defense and is responsible for coordinating the action of military units belonging to the different service branches of the Armed Forces. The Commandant may or may not be also a concurrently serving Minister of Defense in some cases.


text: The newly created military regions are subordinate to the OSC, NBAF, alongside the air defense units of the Army, Air Force and Navy under the banner of the "OSC Air Defense Forces Command", albeit being commanded by an Air Force general officer, as of 2017 Division General Juan Manuel Diaz.


text: The "Integral Strategic Defense Regions" or "ISDRs" (REDI, "Regiones Estrategicas de Defensa Integral") were formally activated on 13 September 2008, in compliance with the provisions of the amended Organic Law of the National Armed Forces. Equivalent to a military district, these regional commands are mandated to serve the defense, social and economic needs of their respective areas of responsibility. These are divided into the "Integral Defense Operations Zones" or INDOZ (In Spanish, "Zona Operativa del Defensa Integral" or ZODI) subdivided into state commands ("State Integral Defense Operations Zones" or STINDOZ) and in the Maritime Region, 4 "Maritime and Insular Integral Defense Operations Zones" (MAIINDOZ), created in July 2015.


text: The armed forces is divided into six service branches, the Army, Navy, Air Force, National Guard, National Reserve and the Territorial Guard. The Army, Navy, Air Force and National Guard will serve under the Strategic Operational Command ('), the National Reserve and the Territorial Guard will serve under the National Reserve and Mobilization Command ('), since 2009 now called as the National Militia General Command ("").


text: The Venezuelan Army (' or '), is made up today of roughly 63,000 troops (including conscripts). Its main function is planning, implementing and monitoring terrestrial military operations in coordination with the other components of the national armed forces, in pursuit of the Integrated National Defense mission.


text: Currently, it is organized in six operating divisions plus the other components: the Army Aviation Command, 6th Corps of Engineers, Army Logistics Command, and Army Education Command. It is composed of armored units, infantry, engineers, special forces and artillery, with resources that allow it to develop various types of airlift operations. It is the largest military branch of Venezuela's armed forces. Its current commanding general is Major General Juan de Jesús García Toussaintt.


text: The Venezuelan Navy (' or ') and Marines ("Infanteria de Marina") primary mission is to implement, manage and control naval operations, naval aircraft, and the Coast Guard in support of Navy activities to ensure the execution of plans of employment.


text: The staff is estimated at 30,000 personnel including 12,000 Marines and 600 personnel from the Naval Aviation. There are five major commands: Naval Logistics Command, Naval Personnel Command, Naval Education and Training Command and the Naval Operations Command, which in turn is composed of the following commands: Fleet Forces Command, Riverline Command, Naval Aviation Command, Coast Guard Command and the Marine Division. Operationally, the country is divided into two Naval zones; Western Naval Zone (HQ: Punto Fijo) and Eastern Naval Area (HQ: Carupano) that currently covers the Atlantic coast. The activation of the projected areas: Central Naval Area (HQ: Puerto Cabello), Atlantic (HQ: Güiria) and South (HQ: Caicara Orinoco) is currently in the planning stages.


text: Navy Day is celebrated on the date of Simon Bolivar's birthday, 24 July, the day of the final battle of the Venezuelan War of Independence, the Battle of Lake Maracaibo, in 1823. The Commanding General of the Navy (as of 2015) is Admiral Franklin Montplaisier.


text: Founded in 1946 through the merger of the army and navy aviation wings, the Venezuelan Air Force (' or ') is organized the same as the other military components, with the following commands: Air Operations Command (integrated in thirteen Air Groups, consisting of squadrons of transport aircraft, helicopters, fighter and attack aircraft and training aircraft), the Air Defense Forces Command, the Airborne Command, the Air Logistics Command, the Air Personnel Command, including the Air Force Police and the Air Force Corps of Engineers, and the Air Education and Training Command, including the Air Force Academy, Air Personnel Training School, and the Air Power College. Its main objective is to protect the airspace of Venezuela in coordination with the other components of the National Armed Forces. In 2007, the Air Force was renamed as the Bolivarian National Military Air Force of Venezuela and has gone into an expansion and modernization program. The Commanding General of the Venezuelan Air Force, as of July 2015, is Major General Edgar Valentín Cruz Arteaga.


text: The National Guard of Venezuela (' or '), according to the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a military corps with police functions. With roughly 23,000 troops, its organized into 9 regional commands (division size) and 24 state level zone commands (brigade sized), with plans to expand that number to fifteen commands. Additionally, there is the Coastal Surveillance Command, the Air Support Command, the Corps of Engineers, the Logistics Support Command, the National Guard Command School and the National Guard Academy and the various other institutions under its Education Command. It is planned to structure the National Guard in divisions, under the command of the Territorial Commands. In 2007, the National Guard was renamed as the Bolivarian National Guard of Venezuela, and was expanded even further to include the People's Guards Command in 2011 and the Anti-extortion and Sequestration Command in 2013, with a Social Action Division in the planning stage as of present. The Commanding General of the National Guard is Major General Nestor Luis Reverol Torres.


text: The Venezuelan militia traces its origins to both the long struggle against Spanish rule by the indigenous peoples of Venezuela and the militia battalions raised in the 18th century during the Spanish era, that later formed the basis of the armed forces upon the independence of the nation, and two militiamen from that period, Jose Maria España and Manuel Gual, began the long road towards national independence with their failed revolt of 1797. It was only in the 21st century that the militias were revived this time as a full branch of the armed services of Venezuela, formed on the basis of the various reserve commands of the National Armed Forces first as the Armed Reserve Forces, then as the National Reserve and Mobilization Command, and from 2008, as the National Bolivarian Militia.


text: 1. The National Reserve Service, consisting of all Venezuelan citizens who are either not in active military service, have completed their military service, or serve voluntarily in the military reserve.


text: 2. The Territorial Guard Component, consisting of all Venezuelan citizens who voluntarily serve to organize local resistance to any external threat to national independence in all levels of society.


text: A third component, the People's Navy Branch, created in 2013, serves as a naval militia component composed of volunteer national servicemen and women contributing to the defense of the nation's maritime waters and coastline. It is itself divided into the Naval Reserve (part of the NRS) and the Workers' Naval Employment Territorial Militias, part of the TGC.


text: At present the National Militia is organized on the basis of nine (09) Reserve brigades, present throughout the national territory, dozens of Special Resistance Corps (grouped around workers contingents of state and private enterprises and federal, state, city and township government institutions) and territorial militia units nationwide, plus a newly created national guards brigade. It is an autonomous and auxiliary force for the Armed Forces' service branches, with its own chain of command and service arms, reporting directly to the President, the Minister of Defense and the Operational Strategic Command. It can be estimated at the present time about 400,000 men and women are on various training levels, but the target of its authorities is to reach 1,100,000 part-time national servicemen and women, including a newly raised youth cadet arm for university students and a women's militia component. As of 2021, the National Militia is a 3 million strong force of male and female reservists and part-time national service personnel. And as part of its expansion the National Militia has been active in training exercises with the other service branches in preparation for the duties of national wartime defense.


text: In honor of the reservists' honorable service during 13 April 2002 coup d'état in defense of the presidency, armed forces and the people, that day, which also honors its formal foundation, is celebrated yearly as National Militia Day (until 2009 this was celebrated on 4 February).


text: The commanding general of the National Militia is Major General Manuel Bernal Martínez, Venezuelan Army.