History.

Pre-6th century.

In ancient times, the region of Najd was settled by numerous tribes like the Kindites, Tayy and many others. Led by Usma bin Luai, the Tayy invaded the mountains of Aja and Samra from Banu Tamim in northern Arabia in their exodus from Yemen in CE 115. These mountains are now known as Jabal Shammar. The Tayy became nomadic camel herders and horse breeders in northern Najd for centuries.  In the 5th century AD, the tribes of North Arabia became a major threat to the trade line between Yemen and Syria. The Ḥimyarites decided to establish a vassal state that controlled Central and North Arabia. The Kindites gained strength and numbers to play that role, and in AD 425 the Ḥimyarite king Ḥasan ibn 'Amr ibn Tubba’ made Ḥujr 'Akīl al-Murār ibn 'Amr the first King (Ḥujr) of Kindah. The Kindites established a kingdom in Najd in central Arabia unlike the organized states of Yemen; its kings exercised an influence over a number of associated tribes more by personal prestige than by coercive settled authority. Their first capital was Qaryat Dhāt Kāhil, today known as Qaryat al-Fāw.  The Ghassānids, Lakhmids and Kindites were all Kahlānī and Qaḥṭānī vassal kingdoms appointed by the Byzantines, Persians and Ḥimyarites to protect their borders and imperial interests from the raids of the then-rising threat of the 'Adnānī tribes. In the 5th and 6th centuries AD, the Kindites made the first real concerted effort to unite all the tribes of Central Arabia through alliances, and focused on wars with the Lakhmids. Al-Ḥārith ibn 'Amr, the most famous of their kings, finally succeeded in capturing the Lakhmid capital of al-Ḥirah in southern modern-day Iraq. Later however in about 529, al-Mundhir recaptured the city and put King Ḥārith and about fifty members of his family to death.  In 525, the Aksumites invaded Ḥimyar, and this had a knock-on effect with the Kindites who lost the support of the Ḥimyarites. Within three years the Kindite kingdom had split into four groups: Asad, Taghlib, Qays and Kinānah, each led by a prince of Kindah. These small principalities were then overthrown in the 530s and 540s in a series of uprisings of the 'Adnānī tribes of Najd and Ḥijāz. In 540, the Lakhmids destroyed all the Kindite settlements in Nejd, forcing the majority of them to move to Yemen. The Kindites and most of the Arab tribes switched their alliances to the Lakhmids.

The Era of Muhammad (S).

During the Islamic Prophet Muhammad's era, Muhammad (S:) carried out military expeditions in the area. The first was the Nejd Caravan Raid against the Quraysh, which took place in 624. The Meccans led by Safwan ibn Umayyah, who lived on trade, left in summer for Syria for their seasonal trade business. After Muhammad (S:) received intelligence about the Caravan's route, Muhammad (S:) ordered Zayd ibn Haritha to go after the Caravan, and they successfully raided it and captured 100,000 dirhams worth of booty.  The Invasion of Nejd, happened in Rabi‘ Ath-Thani or Jumada Al-Ula, 4 AH (i.e. in October AD 625). Muhammad (S:) led his fighters to Nejd to scare off some tribes he believed had suspicious intentions. Some scholars say the Expedition of Dhat al-Riqa took place in Nejd as part of this invasion.  The most authentic opinion according to "Saifur Rahman al Mubararakpuri", however, is that Dhat Ar-Riqa‘ campaign took place after the fall of Khaibar (and not as part of the Invasion of Nejd). This is supported by the fact that Abu Hurairah and Abu Musa Al-Ash‘ari witnessed the battle. Abu Hurairah embraced Islam only some days before Khaibar, and Abu Musa Al-Ash‘ari came back from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and joined Muhammad at Khaibar. The rules relating to the prayer of fear which Muhammad observed at Dhat Ar-Riqa‘ campaign, were revealed at the Asfan Invasion and these scholars say, took place after Al-Khandaq (the Battle of the Trench).  The Expedition of Qatan also took place in Nejd. Banu Asad ibn Khuzaymah tribe (not to be confused with the Banu Asad tribe), were the residents of Katan, in the vicinity of Fayd, was a powerful tribe connected with the Quraysh. They resided near the hill of Katan in Nejd. Muhammad (S:) received intelligence reports that they were planning a raid on Medina. So he dispatched a force of 150 men under the leadership of Abu Salama `Abd Allah ibn `Abd al-Asad to make a sudden attack on this tribe.

Post-Muhammad.

Ridda wars.

After Muhammad's death, previously dormant tensions between the Meccan immigrants, the Muhajirun, and the Medinan converts, the Ansar, threatened to split the Ummah. Other Arabic tribes also wished to revert to exit from Islam to local leadership and split from Medina's control. In some places, people claiming prophethood started to establish leaderships to oppose Medina, e.g. Al-Aswad Al-Ansi and Musaylimah. All of which are events that led to splitting the Muslim community. The Ansar, the leaders of the tribes of Medina, met in a hall or house called saqifah, to discuss whom they would support as their new leader. When Abu Bakr was informed of the meeting, he, Umar, Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah and a few others rushed to prevent the Ansar from making a premature decision. During the meeting Umar declared that Abu Bakr should be the new leader, and declared his allegiance to Abu Bakr, followed by Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah, and thus Abu Bakr became the first caliph. Apostasy and rebellion in central Arabia were led by the Musaylima in the fertile region of Yamamah. He was mainly supported by the powerful tribe of Banu Hanifa. At Buzakha in north central Arabia, another claimed prophet, Tulaiha, a tribal chief of Bani Asad, led the rebellion against Medina aided by the allied tribes of Banu Ghatfan, the Hawazin, and the Tayy. At Najd, Malik ibn Nuweira led the tribes of Banu Tamim against the authority of Medina. On receiving intelligence of the Muslims preparations, Tulayha too prepared for a battle, and was further reinforced by the contingents of the allied tribes. Before launching Khalid against Tulayha, Abu Bakr sought ways and means of reducing the latter's strength, so that the battle could be fought with the maximum prospects of victory. Nothing could be done about the tribes of Bani Assad and Banu Ghatafan, which stood solidly behind Tulayha, but the Tayy were not so staunch in their support of Tulayha, and their chief, Adi ibn Hatim, was a devout Muslim. Adi was appointed by Abu Bakr to negotiate with the tribal elders to withdraw their contingent from Tulayha's army. The negotiations were a success, and Adi brought with him 500 horsemen of his tribe to reinforce Khalid's army. Khalid next marched against another apostate tribe, Jadila. Here again, Adi ibn Hatim offered his services to persuade the tribe to submit without bloodshed. Bani Jadila submitted, and their 1000 warriors joined Khalid's army. Khalid, now much stronger than when he had left Zhu Qissa, marched for Buzakha. There, in mid-September 632, he defeated Tulayha in the Battle of Buzakha. The remaining army of Tulayha retreated to Ghamra, 20 miles from Buzakha, and was defeated in the Battle of Ghamra in the third week of September.  Several tribes submitted to the Caliph after Khalid's decisive victories. Moving south from Buzakha, Khalid reached Naqra in October, with an army now 6000 strong, and defeated the rebel tribe of Banu Saleem in the Battle of Naqra. In the third week of October, Khalid defeated a tribal mistress, Salma, in the battle of Zafar. Afterwards, he moved to Najd against the rebel tribe of Banu Tamim and their Sheikh Malik ibn Nuwayrah. At Najd, getting the news of Khalid's decisive victories against apostates in Buzakha, many clans of Banu Tamim hastened to visit Khalid, but the Banu Yarbu', a branch of Bani Tamim, under their chief, Malik ibn Nuwayrah, hung back. Malik was a chief of some distinction: a warrior, noted for his generosity, and a famous poet. Bravery, generosity, and poetry were the three qualities most admired among the Arabs. At the time of Muhammad, he had been appointed as a tax collector for the tribe of Banu Tamim. As soon as Malik heard of the death of Muhammad, he gave back all the tax to his tribespeople, saying, "Now you are the owner of your wealth." Moreover, he was to be charged because he signed a pact with the prophet Sajjah. This agreement stated that first, they would deal with local enemy tribes together, and then they would confront the state of Madinah. His riders were stopped by Khalid's army at the town of Buttah. Khalid asked them about the signing of pact with Sajjah; they said it was just because they wanted revenge against their terrible enemies. When Khalid reached Najd he found no opposing army. He sent his cavalry to nearby villages and ordered them to call the Azaan (call for prayers) to each party they meet. Zirrar bin Azwar, a squadron leader, arrested the family of Malik, claiming they did not answer the call to prayer. Malik avoided direct contact with Khalid's army and ordered his followers to scatter, and he and his family apparently moved away across the desert. He refused to give zakat, hence differentiating between prayer and zakat. Nevertheless, Malik was accused of rebellion against the state of Medina. He was also to be charged for his entering in an anti-Caliphate alliance with the prophetess Sajjah. Malik was arrested along with his clan men, Malik was asked by Khalid about his crimes. Malik's response was "your master said this, your master said that" referring to Abu Bakr. Khalid declared Malik a rebel apostate and ordered his execution. Khalid bin Walid killed Malik ibn Nuwayra. Ikrimah ibn Abi-Jahl, one of the corps commanders, was instructed to make contact with Musaylima at Yamamah, but not to engage in fighting until Khalid joined him. Abu Bakr's intention in giving Ikrimah this mission was to tie Musaylima down at Yamamah. With Ikrimah on the horizon, Musaylima would remain in expectation of a Muslim attack, and thus not be able to leave his base. With Musaylima so committed, Khalid would be free to deal with the apostate tribes of north-central Arabia without interference from Yamamah. Meanwhile, Abu Bakr sent Shurhabil's corps to reinforce Ikrama at Yamamah. However, Ikrimah attacked Musaylima's forces in early September 632 and was defeated. He wrote the details of his actions to Abu Bakr, who, both pained and angered by the rashness of Ikrimah and his disobedience, ordered him to proceed with his force to Oman to assist Hudaifa; once Hudaifa had completed his task, to march to Mahra to help Arfaja, and thereafter go to Yemen to help Muhajir. Meanwhile, Abu Bakr sent orders to Khalid to march against Musaylima. Shurhabil's corps, that was stationed at Yamamah, was to reinforce Khalid's corps. In addition to this Abu Bakr assembled a fresh army of Ansar and Muhajireen in Medina that joined Khalid's corps at Butah. From Butah Khalid marched to Yamamah to join with Shurhabil's corps. Though Abu Bakr had instructed Shurhabil not to engage Musaylima's forces until the arrival of Khalid, shortly before the arrival of Khalid, Shurhabil engaged Musaylima's forces and was defeated too. Khalid joined with the corps of Shurhabil early in December 632. The combined force of Muslims, now 13,000 strong, defeated Musaylima's army in the Battle of Yamama, which was fought in the third week of December. The fortified city of Yamamah surrendered peacefully later that week. Khalid established his headquarters at Yamamah, from where he despatched columns to all over the plain of Aqraba to subdue the region around Yamamah and to kill or capture all who resisted. Thereafter all of central Arabia submitted to Medina. What remained of the apostasy in the less vital areas of Arabia was rooted out by the Muslims in a series of well planned campaigns within five months.

Post-Ridda wars, until the 10th century.

Muhammad's followers rapidly expanded the territory under Muslim rule beyond Arabia, conquering huge swathes of territory (from the Iberian Peninsula in west to modern day Pakistan in east) in a matter of decades. In so doing, Arabia soon became a politically peripheral region of the Muslim world as the focus shifted to the more developed conquered lands. From the 10th century to the early 20th century Mecca and Medina were under the control of a local Arab ruler known as the Sharif of Mecca, but at most times the Sharif owed allegiance to the ruler of one of the major Islamic empires based in Baghdad, Cairo or Istanbul. Most of the remainder of what became Saudi Arabia reverted to traditional tribal rule.

16th-century to the unification of Saudi Arabia.

In the 16th century, the Ottomans added the Red Sea and Persian Gulf coast (the Hejaz, Asir and al-Ahsa) to the Empire and claimed suzerainty over the interior. One reason was to thwart Portuguese attempts to attack the Red Sea (hence the Hejaz) and the Indian Ocean. Ottoman degree of control over these lands varied over the next four centuries with the fluctuating strength or weakness of the Empire's central authority. The emergence of what was to become the Saudi royal family, known as the Al Saud, began in Nejd in central Arabia in 1744, when Muhammad bin Saud, founder of the dynasty, joined forces with the religious leader Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi movement, a strict puritanical form of Sunni Islam. This alliance formed in the 18th century provided the ideological impetus to Saudi expansion and remains the basis of Saudi Arabian dynastic rule today. The first "Saudi state" established in 1744 in the area around Riyadh, rapidly expanded and briefly controlled most of the present-day territory of Saudi Arabia, but was destroyed by 1818 by the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, Mohammed Ali Pasha. A much smaller second "Saudi state", located mainly in Nejd, was established in 1824 by Turki. Throughout the rest of the 19th century, the Al Saud contested control of the interior of what was to become Saudi Arabia with another Arabian ruling family, the Al Rashid. By 1891, the Al Rashid were victorious and the Al Saud were driven into exile in Kuwait.  At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire continued to control or have a suzerainty over most of the peninsula. Subject to this suzerainty, Arabia was ruled by a patchwork of tribal rulers, with the Sharif of Mecca having pre-eminence and ruling the Hejaz. In 1902, Abdul Rahman's son, Abdul Aziz—later to be known as Ibn Saud—recaptured control of Riyadh, bringing the Al Saud back to Nejd. Ibn Saud gained the support of the Ikhwan, a tribal army inspired by Wahhabism, and which had grown quickly after its foundation in 1912. With the aid of the Ikhwan, Ibn Saud captured al-Ahsa from the Ottomans in 1913.  In 1916, with the encouragement and support of Britain (which was fighting the Ottomans in World War I), the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, led a pan-Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire to create a united Arab state. Although the Arab Revolt of 1916 to 1918 failed in its objective, the Allied victory in World War I resulted in the end of Ottoman suzerainty and control in Arabia.  Ibn Saud avoided involvement in the Arab Revolt and instead continued his struggle with the Al Rashid. Following the latter's final defeat, he took the title Sultan of Nejd in 1921. With the help of the Ikhwan, the Hejaz was conquered in 1924–25 and on 10 January 1926, Ibn Saud declared himself King of the Hejaz. A year later, he added the title of King of Nejd. For the next five years, he administered the two parts of his dual kingdom as separate units.  After the conquest of the Hejaz, the Ikhwan leadership's objective switched to expansion of the Wahhabist realm into the British protectorates of Transjordan, Iraq and Kuwait, and began raiding those territories. This met with Ibn Saud's opposition, as he recognized the danger of a direct conflict with the British. At the same time, the Ikhwan became disenchanted with Ibn Saud's domestic policies which appeared to favor modernization and the increase in the number of non-Muslim foreigners in the country. As a result, they turned against Ibn Saud and, after a two-year struggle, were defeated in 1930 at the Battle of Sabilla, where their leaders were massacred. In 1932 the two kingdoms of the Hejaz and Nejd were united as the "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia".

Geography.

Boundaries.

The Arabic word "najd" literally means "upland" and was once applied to a variety of regions within the Arabian Peninsula. However, the most famous of these was the central region of the Peninsula roughly bounded on the west by the mountains of the Hejaz and Yemen and to the east by the historical region of Eastern Arabia and the north by Iraq and Syria.  Medieval Muslim geographers spent a great amount of time debating the exact boundaries between Hejaz and Najd in particular, but generally set the western boundaries of Najd to be wherever the western mountain ranges and lava beds began to slope eastwards, and set the eastern boundaries of Najd at the narrow strip of red sand dunes known as the Ad-Dahna Desert, some east of modern-day Riyadh. The southern border of Najd has always been set at the large sea of sand dunes known today as Rub' al Khali (the Empty Quarter), while the southwestern boundaries are marked by the valleys of Wadi Ranyah, Wadi Bisha, and Wadi Tathlith.  The northern boundaries of Najd have fluctuated greatly historically and received far less attention from the medieval geographers. In the early Islamic centuries, Najd was considered to extend as far north as the River Euphrates, or more specifically, the "Walls of Khosrau", constructed by the Sassanid Empire as a barrier between Arabia and Iraq immediately prior to the advent of Islam. The modern usage of the term encompasses the region of Al-Yamama, which was not always considered part of Najd historically.

Topography.

Najd is a plateau ranging from in height and sloping downwards from west to east. The eastern sections (historically better known as Al-Yamama) are marked by oasis settlements with lots of farming and trading activities, while the rest has traditionally been sparsely occupied by nomadic Bedouins. The main topographical features include the twin mountains of Aja and Salma in the north near Ha'il, the high land of Jabal Shammar and the Tuwaiq mountain range running through its center from north to south. Also important are the various dry river-beds ("wadis") such as Wadi Hanifa near Riyadh, Wadi Na'am in the south, Wadi Al-Rumah in the Al-Qassim Province in the north, and Wadi ad-Dawasir at the southernmost tip of Najd on the border with Najran. Most Najdi villages and settlements are located along these wadis, due to ability of these wadis to preserve precious rainwater in the arid desert climate, while others are located near oases. Historically, Najd itself has been divided into small provinces made up of constellations of small towns, villages and settlements, with each one usually centered on one "capital". These subdivisions are still recognized by Najdis today, as each province retains its own variation of the Najdi dialect and Najdi customs. The most prominent among these provinces are Al-'Aridh, which includes Riyadh and the historical Saudi capital of Diriyah; Al-Qassim, with its capital in Buraidah; Sudair, centered on Al Majma'ah; Al-Washm, centered on Shaqraa; and Jebel Shammar, with its capital, Ha'il. Under modern-day Saudi Arabia, however, Najd is divided into three administrative regions: Ha'il, Al-Qassim, and Riyadh, comprising a combined area of.

Major towns.

Riyadh is the largest city in Najd, as well as the largest city in the country as a whole, with a population of more than 5,700,000 in 2010 and 5,008,100 in 2016. Other cities include Buraidah (505,845 in 2005), Unaizah (138,351 in 2005) and Ar Rass (116,164 in 2005). Smaller towns and villages include Sudair, Al-Kharj, Dawadmi, 'Afif, Al-Zilfi, Al Majma'ah, Shaqraa, Tharmada'a, Dhurma, Al-Gway'iyyah, Al-Hareeq, Hotat Bani Tamim, Layla, As Sulayyil, and Wadi ad-Dawasir, the southernmost settlement in Najd.

Population.

Social and ethnic groups.

Prior to the formation of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the native population Arabian tribes, who were either nomads ("bedouins"), or sedentary farmers and merchants. The rest of the population consisted mainly of Arabs who were, for various reasons, unaffiliated with any tribes, and who mostly lived in the towns and villages of Najd working in various trades such as carpentry or as "Sonnaa"' (craftsmen). There was also a small segment of the population made up of African as well as some East and South Eastern European slaves or freedmen.  Most of the Najdi tribes are of Adnanite origin and emigrated from Tihamah and Hijaz to Najd in ancient times. The most famous Najdi tribes in the pre-Islamic era were Banu Hanifa, who occupied the area around modern-day Riyadh, Banu Tamim, who occupied areas further north, the tribe of Banu Abs who were centered in Al-Qassim, the tribe of Tayy, centered on modern-day Ha'il, and the tribe of Banu 'Amir in southern Najd. In the 15th through 18th centuries, there was considerable tribal influx from the west, increasing both the nomadic and settled population of the area and providing fertile soil for the Wahhabi movement. By the 20th century, many of the ancient tribes had morphed into new confederations or emigrated from other areas of the Middle East, and many tribes from other regions of the Peninsula had moved into Najd. However, the largest proportion of native Najdis today still belong to these ancient Najdi tribes or to their newer incarnations. Many of the Najdi tribes even in ancient times were not nomadic or bedouin but rather very well settled farmers and merchants. The royal family of Saudi Arabia, Al Saud, for example, trace their lineage to Banu Hanifa. On the eve of the formation of Saudi Arabia, the major nomadic tribes of Najd included Dawasir, Mutayr, 'Utaybah, Shammar (historically known as Tayy) Subay', Suhool, Harb, and the Qahtanites in southern Najd. In addition to those tribes, many of the sedentary population belonged to Anizzah, Banu Tamim, Banu Hanifa, Banu Khalid, and Banu Zayd.  Most of the nomadic tribes are now settled either in cities such as Riyadh, or in special settlements, known as hijras, that were established in the early part of the 20th century as part of a country-wide policy undertaken by King Abdul-Aziz to put an end to nomadic life. Nomads still exist in the Kingdom, however, in very small numbers – a far cry from the days when they made up the majority of the people of the Arabian Peninsula. Since the formation of modern Saudi Arabia, Najd, and particularly Riyadh, has seen an influx of immigrants from all regions of the country and from virtually every social class. The native Najdi population has also largely moved away from its native towns and villages to the capital, Riyadh. However, most of these villages still retain a small number of their native inhabitants. About a quarter of the population of Najd, including about a third of the population of Riyadh, are non-Saudi expatriates, including both skilled professionals and unskilled laborers. Slavery was abolished in Saudi Arabia by King Faisal in 1962. Some of those freed slaves chose to continue working for their former slave-owners, particularly those whose former owners were members of the royal family. Unlike the Hejaz and Tihamah, Najd is remote and stayed outside of the reign of important Islamic empires such as the Abbasids and the Ottoman Empire. This fact largely shaped its current dissimilarity to Hejaz.

Religion.

The region is known for its strict interpretation of Islam and is generally considered a bastion of religious conservatism. The founder of the strict interpretation of Islam called Wahhabism followed by the House of Saud, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was born in 'Uyayna, a village in the Najd.

Language.

The people of Najd have spoken Arabic, in one form or another, for practically all of recorded history. As in other regions of the Peninsula, there is a divergence between the dialect of the nomadic Bedouins and the dialect of the sedentary townspeople. The variation, however, is far less pronounced in Najd than it is elsewhere in the country, and the Najdi sedentary dialect seems to be descended from the Bedouin dialect, just as most sedentary Najdis are descendants of nomadic Bedouins themselves. The Najdi dialect is seen by some to be the least foreign-influenced of all modern Arabic dialects, due to the isolated location and harsh climate of the Najdi plateau, as well as the apparent absence of any substratum from a previous language. Indeed, not even the ancient South Arabian language appears to have been widely spoken in Najd in ancient times, unlike southern Saudi Arabia, for example. Within Najd itself, the different regions and towns have their own distinctive accents and sub-dialects. However, these have largely merged in recent times and have become heavily influenced by Arabic dialects from other regions and countries. This is particularly the case in Riyadh.

Economy.

In the early 20th century, Najd produced coarse wool cloth.

In popular culture.

Bahiyyih Nakhjavani’s first novel "The Saddlebag – A Fable for Doubters and Seekers" describes events set in the Najd plateau along the pilgrim route between Mecca and Medina in 1844–1845. A contest held in the Middle East brought light to a new character in famed SNK Playmore videogame, "The King of Fighters XIV". This character goes under the name Najd.

Najd (, ) or Nejd is a geographical central region of Saudi Arabia that accounts for about a third of the population of the country. Najd consists of the modern administrative regions of Riyadh, Al-Qassim, and Ha'il.

Nadžd (arabsky: نجد, "Naǧd", doslova "vysočina") je region v centrální části dnešní Saúdské Arábie a Arabského poloostrova. Nachází se zde hlavní město Saúdské Arábie Rijád.


Types.

Routine physicals.

The routine physical, also known as general medical examination, periodic health evaluation, annual physical, comprehensive medical exam, general health check, preventive health examination, medical check-up, or simply medical, is a physical examination performed on an asymptomatic patient for medical screening purposes. These are normally performed by a pediatrician, family practice physician, physician assistant, a certified nurse practitioner or other primary care provider. This routine physical exam usually includes the HEENT evaluation. Nursing professionals such as Registered Nurse, Licensed Practical Nurses can develop a baseline assessment to identify normal versus abnormal findings. These are reported to the primary care provider. If necessary, the patient may be sent to a medical specialist for further, more detailed examinations.  The term is generally "not" meant to include visits for the purpose of newborn checks, Pap smears for cervical cancer, or regular visits for people with certain chronic medical disorders (for example, diabetes). The general medical examination generally involves a medical history, a (brief or complete) physical examination and sometimes laboratory tests. Some more advanced tests include ultrasound and mammography.  If done for a group of people the routine physical is a form of screening, as the aim of the examination is to detect early signs of diseases to prevent them.

Evidence.

Although annual medical examinations are a routine practice in several countries, unspecified examinations are poorly supported by scientific evidence in the majority of the population. A Cochrane Collaboration meta-study found that routine annual physicals did not measurably reduce the risk of illness or death, and conversely, could lead to overdiagnosis and over-treatment; however, this article does not conclude that being in regular communication with a doctor is not important, simply that an actual physical examination may not be necessary.  Some notable general health organisations recommend against annual examinations, and propose a frequency adapted to age and previous examination results (risk factors). The specialist American Cancer Society recommends a cancer-related health check-up annually in men and women older than 40, and every three years for those older than 20.  A systematic review of studies until September 2006 concluded that the examination does result in better delivery of some other screening interventions (such as Pap smears, cholesterol screening, and faecal occult blood tests) and less patient worry. Evidence supports several of these individual screening interventions. The effects of annual check-ups on overall costs, patient disability and mortality, disease detection, and intermediate end points such a blood pressure or cholesterol, are inconclusive. A recent study found that the examination is associated with increased participation in cancer screening.  Some employers require a mandatory health checkup before hiring a candidate, even though it is now well known that some of the components of the prophylactic annual visit may actually cause harm. For example, lab tests and exams that are performed on healthy patients (as opposed to people with symptoms or known illnesses) are statistically more likely to be "false positives” — that is, when test results suggest a problem that does not exist. Disadvantages cited include the time and money that could be saved by targeted screening (health economics argument), increased anxiety over health risks (medicalisation), overdiagnosis, wrong diagnosis (for example Athletic heart syndrome misdiagnosed as Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) and harm, or even death, resulting from unnecessary testing to detect or confirm, often non-existent, medical problems or while performing routine procedures as a followup after screening.  The lack of good evidence contrasts with population surveys showing that the general public is fond of these examinations, especially when they are free of charge. Despite guidelines recommending against routine annual examinations, many family physicians perform them. A fee-for-service healthcare system has been suggested to promote this practice. An alternative would be to tailor the screening interval to the age, sex, medical conditions and risk factors of each patient. This means choosing between a wide variety of tests.

Prevalence.

The routine physical is commonly performed in the United States and Japan, whereas the practice varies among South East Asia and mainland European countries. In Japan it is required by law for regular working employees to check once a year, with a much more thorough battery of tests than other countries. In the United Kingdom, the examination remains unpopular with the general populace.

History.

The roots of the periodic medical examination are not entirely clear. They seem to have been advocated since the 1920s. Some authors point to pleads from the 19th and early 20th century for the early detection of diseases like tuberculosis, and periodic school health examinations. The advent of medical insurance and related commercial influences seems to have promoted the examination, whereas this practice has been subject to controversy in the age of evidence-based medicine. Several studies have been performed before current evidence-based recommendation for screening were formulated, limiting the applicability of these studies to current-day practice.

Comprehensive physicals.

Comprehensive physical exams, also known as executive physicals, typically include laboratory tests, chest x-rays, pulmonary function testing, audiograms, full body CAT scanning, EKGs, heart stress tests, vascular age tests, urinalysis, and mammograms or prostate exams depending on gender.

Pre-employment examinations.

"Pre-employment examinations" are screening tests which judge the suitability of a worker for hire based on the results of their physical examination. This is also called "pre-employment medical clearance". Many employers believe that by only hiring workers whose physical examination results pass certain exclusionary criteria, their employees collectively will have fewer absences due to sickness, fewer workplace injuries, and less occupational disease. A small amount of low-quality evidence in medical research supports this idea. Furthermore, the cost of staff health insurance will be lower. However, certain exams or tests that are requested by employers, such as a baseline low back x-ray, should not be performed, according to the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Reasons for this include the legality and medical necessity of the test as well as the inability of such testing to predict future problems, the radiation exposure to the worker, and the cost of the exam.

Insurance exams.

A physical examination may be provided under health insurance cover, required of new insurance customers. This is a part of insurance medicine. In the United States, physicals are also marketed to patients as a one-stop health review, avoiding the inconvenience of attending multiple appointments with different healthcare providers.

Uses.

Diagnosis.

Physical examinations are performed in most healthcare encounters. For example, a physical examination is performed when a patient visits complaining of flu-like symptoms. These diagnostic examinations usually focus on the patient's chief complaint.

Screening.

General health checks, including physical examinations performed when the patient reported no health concerns, often include medical screening for common conditions, such as high blood pressure. A Cochrane review found that general health checks did not reduce the risk of death from cancer, heart disease, or any other cause, and could not be proved to affect the patient's likelihood of being admitted to the hospital, becoming disabled, missing work, or needing additional office visits. The study found no effect on the risk of illness, but did find evidence suggesting that patients subject to routine physicals were diagnosed with hypertension and other chronic conditions at a higher rate than those who were not. Its authors noted that studies often failed to consider or report possible harmful outcomes (such as unwarranted anxiety or unnecessary follow-up procedures), and concluded that routine health checks were "unlikely to be beneficial" in regards to lowering cardiovascular and cancer morbidity and mortality.

Establishing doctor-patient relationship.

In addition to the possibility of identifying signs of illness, it has been described as a ritual that plays a significant role in the doctor-patient relationship that will provide benefits in other medical encounters. When a physical exam is expected by the patient but is not performed by the provider, patients may express concern for the lack of depth of investigation into their illness, the validity of treatment plans and exclusions, and the doctor-patient relationship.

Format and interpretation.

A physical examination may include checking vital signs, including temperature examination, Blood pressure, pulse, and respiratory rate. The healthcare provider uses the senses of sight, hearing, touch, and sometimes smell (e.g., in infection, uremia, diabetic ketoacidosis). Taste has been made redundant by the availability of modern lab tests. Four actions are taught as the basis of physical examination: inspection, palpation (feel), percussion (tap to determine resonance characteristics), and auscultation (listen).

What is examined.

Although providers have varying approaches as to the sequence of body parts, a systematic examination generally starts at the head and finishes at the extremities and includes evaluation of general patient appearance and specific organ systems. After the main organ systems have been investigated by inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation, specific tests may follow (such as a neurological investigation, orthopedic examination) or specific tests when a particular disease is suspected (e.g. eliciting Trousseau's sign in hypocalcemia).  While the format of examination as listed below is largely as taught and expected of students, a specialist will focus on their particular field and the nature of the problem described by the patient. Hence a cardiologist will not in routine practice undertake neurological parts of the examination other than noting that the patient is able to use all four limbs on entering the consultation room and during the consultation become aware of their hearing, eyesight, and speech. Likewise an orthopaedic surgeon will examine the affected joint, but may only briefly check the heart sounds and chest to ensure that there is not likely to be any contraindication to surgery raised by the anaesthetist. A primary care physician will also generally examine the male genitals but may leave the examination of the female genitalia to a gynecologist.  With the clues obtained during the "history" and "physical examination" the healthcare provider can now formulate a differential diagnosis, a list of potential causes of the symptoms. Specific diagnostic tests (or occasionally empirical therapy) generally confirm the cause, or shed light on other, previously overlooked, causes. The physical exam is then recorded in the medical record in a standard layout which facilitates billing and other providers later reading the notes. While elective physical exams have become more elaborate, in routine use physical exams have become less complete. This has led to editorials in medical journals about the importance of an adequate physical examination. Physicians at Stanford University medical school have introduced a set of 25 key physical examination skills that were felt to be useful.

How the Physical Exam is Charted.

Depending upon the chief complaint, additional sections may be included. For example, hearing may be evaluated with a specific Weber test and Rinne test, or it may be more briefly addressed in a cranial nerve exam. To give another example, a neurological related complaint might be evaluated with a specific test, such as the Romberg maneuver.

History.

The medical history and physical examination were supremely important to diagnosis before advanced health technology was developed, and even today, despite advances in medical imaging and molecular medical tests, the history and physical remain indispensable steps in evaluating any patient. Before the 19th century, the history and physical examination were nearly the only diagnostic tools the physician had, which explains why tactile skill and ingenious appreciation in the exam were so highly valued in the definition of what made for a good physician. Even as late as 1890, the world had no radiography or fluoroscopy, only early and limited forms of electrophysiologic testing, and no molecular biology as we know it today. Ever since this peak of the importance of the physical examination, reviewers have warned that clinical practice and medical education need to remain vigilant in appreciating the continuing need for physical examination and effectively teaching the skills to perform it; this call is ongoing, as the 21st-century literature shows.

Society and culture.

People may request modesty in medical settings when the health care provider examines them.  In many Western societies, a physical exam is required to participate in extracurricular sporting activities. During the physical examination, the doctor will examine the genitals, including the penis and testicles. The doctor may ask the teenager to cough while examining the scrotum. Although this can be embarrassing for an adolescent male, it is necessary to help evaluate the presence of inguinal hernias or tumors.

In a physical examination, medical examination, or clinical examination, a medical practitioner examines a patient for any possible medical signs or symptoms of a medical condition. It generally consists of a series of questions about the patient's medical history followed by an examination based on the reported symptoms. Together, the medical history and the physical examination help to determine a diagnosis and devise the treatment plan. This data then becomes part of the medical record.

Fyzikální vyšetření je vyšetření pacienta lékařem jen pomocí vlastních smyslů a jednoduchých pomůcek. Lékař by měl systematicky vyšetřit jednotlivé orgánové systémy a zaznamenávat přítomnost i nepřítomnost specifických příznaků. Ta část chorobopisu, do které se zaznamenávají výsledky fyzikálního vyšetření pacienta, se nazývá "status praesens".


Geography.

The question of how to define the subregions in the South has been the focus of research for nearly a century.  As defined by the United States Census Bureau, the Southern region of the United States includes sixteen states. As of 2010, an estimated 114,555,744 people, or thirty seven percent of all U.S. residents, lived in the South, the nation's most populous region. The Census Bureau defined three smaller divisions:  The Council of State Governments, an organization for communication and coordination between states, includes in its South regional office the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.  Other terms related to the South include:  The popular definition

History.

Native American culture.

The first well-dated evidence of human occupation in the south United States occurs around 9500 BC with the appearance of the earliest documented Americans, who are now referred to as Paleo-Indians. Paleoindians were hunter-gathers that roamed in bands and frequently hunted megafauna. Several cultural stages, such as Archaic (ca. 8000–1000 BC) and the Woodland (ca. 1000 BC – AD 1000), preceded what the Europeans found at the end of the 15th century—the Mississippian culture.  The Mississippian culture was a complex, mound-building Native American culture that flourished

European colonization.

European immigration caused a die-off of Native Americans, whose immune systems could not protect them from the diseases the Europeans unwittingly introduced.  The predominant culture of the original Southern states was British. In the 17th century, most voluntary immigrants were of English origin, and settled chiefly along the eastern coast but had pushed as far inland as the Appalachian Mountains by the 18th century. The majority of early English settlers were indentured servants, who gained freedom after working off their passage. The wealthier men who paid their way received land grants known as headrights, to encourage settlement.  The Spanish and French established settlements in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. The Spanish settled Florida in the 16th century, reaching a peak in the late 17th century, but the population was small because the Spaniards were relatively uninterested in agriculture, and Florida had no mineral resources.  In the British colonies, immigration began in 1607 and continued until the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775. Settlers cleared land, built houses and outbuildings, and on

American Revolution.

With Virginia in the lead, the Southern colonies embraced the American Revolution, providing such leaders as commander in chief George Washington, and the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.  In 1780 and 1781, the British largely halted reconquest of the northern states, and concentrated on the south, where they were told there was a large Loyalist population ready to leap to arms once the royal forces arrived. The British took control of Savannah and Charleston, capturing a large American army in the process, and set up a network of bases inland. There were many more Loyalists in the South than in the North, but they were concentrated in larger coastal cities and were not great enough in number to overcome the revolutionaries. Large numbers of loyalists from South Carolina fought for the British in the Battle of Camden. The British forces at the Battle of Monck's Corner and the Battle of Lenud's Ferry consisted entirely of Loyalists with the exception of the commanding officer (Banastre Tarleton). Both white and black Loyalists fought for the British at the Battle of

Antebellum years.

Cotton became dominant in the lower South after 1800. After the invention of the cotton gin, short staple cotton could be grown more widely. This led to an explosion of cotton cultivation, especially in the frontier uplands of Georgia, Alabama and other parts of the Deep South, as well as riverfront areas of the Mississippi Delta. Migrants poured into those areas in the early decades of the 19th century, when county population figures rose and fell as swells of people kept moving west. The expansion of cotton cultivation required more slave labor, and the institution became even more deeply an integral part of the South's economy.  With the opening up of

Civil War.

By 1856, the South had lost control of Congress, and was no longer able to silence calls for an end to slavery—which came mostly from the more populated, free states of the North. The Republican Party, founded in 1854, pledged to stop the spread of slavery beyond those states where it already existed. After Abraham Lincoln was elected the first Republican president in 1860, seven cotton states declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America before Lincoln was inaugurated. The United States government, both outgoing and incoming, refused to recognize the Confederacy, and when the new Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered his

Reconstruction and Jim Crow.

After the Civil War, the South was devastated in terms of population, infrastructure and economy. Because of states' reluctance to grant voting rights to freedmen, Congress instituted Reconstruction governments. It established military districts and governors to rule over the South until new governments could be established. Many white Southerners who had actively supported the Confederacy were temporarily disenfranchised. Rebuilding was difficult as people grappled with the effects of a new labor economy of a free market in the midst of a widespread agricultural depression. In addition, what limited infrastructure the South had was mostly destroyed by the war. At the same time, the North was rapidly industrializing. To avoid the social effects of the war, most of the Southern states initially passed black codes. Eventually, these were mostly legally nullified by federal law and anti-Confederate legislatures, which existed for a short time during Reconstruction.  There were thousands of people on the move, as African Americans tried to reunite families separated by slaves sales, and sometimes migrated for better opportunities in towns or other states. Other freed people moved from plantation areas to cities or towns for a chance to get different jobs. At the same time, whites returned from refuges to reclaim plantations or town dwellings. In some areas,

Economy after 1880s.

At the end of the 19th century, white Democrats in the South had created state constitutions that were hostile to industry and business development, with anti-industrial laws extensive from the time new constitutions were adopted in the 1890s. Banks were few and small; there was little access to credit. Traditional agricultural persisted across the region. Especially in Alabama and Florida, rural minorities held control in many state legislatures long after population had shifted to industrializing cities, and legislators resisted business and modernizing interests: Alabama refused to redistrict between 1901 and 1972, long after major population and economic shifts to cities. For decades Birmingham generated the majority of revenue for the state, for instance, but received little back in

Economy of 1940s.

World War II marked a time of dramatic change in the poor, heavily rural South as new industries and military bases were developed by the Federal government, providing badly needed capital and infrastructure in many regions. People from all parts of the US came to the South for military training and work in the region's many bases and new industries. During and after the war millions of hard-scrabble farmers, both white and black, left agriculture for urban jobs.  United States began

Decline of Southern liberalism after 1945.

Southern liberals were an essential part of the New Deal coalition – without them Roosevelt lacked majorities in Congress. Typical leaders were Lyndon B. Johnson in Texas, Jim Folsom and John Sparkman in Alabama, Claude Pepper in Florida, Earl Long in Louisiana, Luther H. Hodges in North Carolina, and Estes Kefauver in Tennessee. They promoted subsidies for small farmers, and supported the nascent labor union movement. An essential condition for this North-South coalition was for northern liberals to ignore southern racism. After 1945, however, northern liberals—led especially by young Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota—increasingly made civil rights a central issue. They

Modern economy.

In the late 20th century, the South changed dramatically. It saw a boom in its service economy, manufacturing base, high technology industries, and the financial sector. Texas in particular witnessed dramatic growth and population change with the dominance of the energy industry and tourism such as the Alamo Mission in San Antonio. Tourism in Florida and along the Gulf Coast also grew steadily throughout the last decades of the 20th century.  Numerous new automobile production plants have opened in the region, or are soon to open, such as Mercedes-Benz in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama; the BMW production plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina; Toyota plants in Georgetown, Kentucky, Blue Springs, Mississippi and San Antonio; the GM manufacturing plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee; a Honda factory in Lincoln, Alabama; the Nissan North American headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee and factories in Smyrna, Tennessee and Canton, Mississippi; a Kia factory in West Point, Georgia; and the Volkswagen Chattanooga Assembly Plant in Tennessee.  The two largest research parks in the country are located in the South: Research Triangle Park in North Carolina (the world's largest) and the Cummings Research Park in Huntsville, Alabama (the world's fourth largest).  In

Education.

Southern public schools in the past ranked in the lower half of some national surveys. When allowance for race is considered, a 2007 US Government list of test scores often shows white fourth and eighth graders performing better than average

Culture.

Several Southern states (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia) were British colonies that sent delegates to sign the Declaration of Independence and then fought against the government along with the Northern colonies during the Revolutionary War. The basis for much Southern culture derives from the pride in these states being among the 13 original colonies, and from the fact that much of the population of the South has strong ancestral links to Colonists who emigrated west. Southern manners and customs reflect the relationship with England that was held by the early population, with some influences being provided by the Native American populations of the area.  Overall, the South has had lower percentages of high school graduates, lower housing values, lower household incomes, and lower cost of living than the rest of the United States. These factors, combined with the fact that Southerners have continued to maintain strong loyalty to family ties, has led some sociologists to label white Southerners an ethnic or quasi-ethnic group, though this interpretation has been subject to criticism on the grounds that proponents of the view do not satisfactorily indicate how Southerners meet the criteria of ethnicity.  The predominant culture of the South has its origins with the settlement of the region by large groups of people from parts of southern England such as Sussex, Kent, the West Country, and East Anglia who moved to the Tidewater and the eastern parts of the Deep South in the 17th and early 18th centuries, Northern English, Scots lowlanders and Ulster-Scots (later called the Scotch-Irish) who settled in Appalachia and the Piedmont in the mid to late 18th century, and the many African slaves who were part of the Southern economy. African-American descendants of the slaves brought into the South compose the United States' second-largest racial minority, accounting for 12.1 percent of the total population according to the 2000 census. Despite Jim Crow era outflow to the North, the majority of the black population remains concentrated in the Southern states, and has heavily contributed to the cultural blend (Christianity, foods, art, music (see spiritual, blues, jazz and rock and roll)) that characterize Southern culture today.  In previous censuses, the largest ancestry group identified by Southerners was English or mostly English, with 19,618,370 self-reporting "English" as an ancestry on the 1980 census, followed by 12,709,872 listing "Irish" and 11,054,127 "Afro-American". Almost a third of all Americans who claim English ancestry can be found in the American South, and over a quarter of all Southerners claim English descent as well. The South also continues to have the highest percentage of African Americans in the country, due to the history of slavery.

Sports.

Racial integration.

Racial integration of all-white collegiate sports teams was high on the regional agenda in the 1950s and 1960s. Involved were issues of equality, racism, and the alumni demand for the top players needed to win high profile games. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) took the lead. First they started to schedule integrated teams from the North. The wake-up call came in

American football.

American football, especially at the college and high school level, is by far the most popular team sport in most areas of the Southern United States.  The region is home to numerous decorated and historic college football programs, particularly in the Southeastern Conference (known as the "SEC"), Atlantic Coast Conference (known as the "ACC"), and the Big 12 Conference. The SEC, consisting entirely of teams based in Southern states, is widely considered to be the strongest league in contemporary college football and includes the Alabama Crimson Tide, the program with the most national championships in the sport's history. The sport is also highly competitive and has a spectator following at the high school level, particularly in

Baseball.

Baseball has been played in the Southern United States since at least the years leading up to the American Civil War. It was traditionally more popular than American football until the 1980s, and still accounts for the largest annual attendance amongst sports played in the South. The first mention of a baseball team in Houston was on April 11, 1861. 19th century and early 20th century games were common, especially once the professional leagues such as the Texas League, the Dixie League, and the Southern League were organized.  The short-lived Louisville Colonels were a part of the early National

Auto racing.

The Southern states are commonly associated with stock car racing and its most prominent competition NASCAR, which is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The sport was developed in the South in the early 20th

Basketball.

Basketball is very popular throughout the Southern United States as both a recreational and spectator sport, particularly in the states of Kentucky and North Carolina which are home to several historically prominent college basketball programs, the

Golf.

Golf is a popular recreational sport in most areas of the South, with the region's warm climate allowing it to host many professional tournaments and numerous

Soccer.

In recent decades association football, known in the South as in the rest of the United States as "soccer", has become a popular sport at youth and collegiate levels throughout the region. The game has been historically widespread at the college level in the Atlantic coast states of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, which contain many of the nation's most successful college soccer

Health.

Nine Southern states have obesity rates exceeding thirty percent of the population, the highest in the country: Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Texas. Rates for hypertension and diabetes for these states are also the highest in the nation. A study reported that six Southern states have the worst incidence of sleep disturbances in the nation, attributing the disturbances to high rates of obesity and smoking. The South has a higher percentage of obese people and diabetics. It has the largest number of people dying from stroke. and the highest rates of cognitive decline. Life expectancy is lower and death rates are higher in the South than in other regions of the United

Politics.

In the first decades after Reconstruction, when white Democrats regained power in the state legislatures, they began to make voter registration more complicated, to reduce black voting. With a combination of intimidation, fraud and violence by paramilitary groups, they suppressed black voting and turned Republicans out of office. From 1890 to 1908, ten of eleven states ratified new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised most black voters and many poor white voters. This disfranchisement persisted for six decades into the 20th century, depriving blacks and poor whites of all political representation. Because they could not vote, they could not sit on juries. They had no one to represent their interests, resulting in state legislatures consistently underfunding programs and services, such as schools, for blacks and poor whites. Scholars have characterized pockets of the Southern United States as being "authoritarian enclaves" from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Act.  With the collapse of the Republican Party in nearly all parts of the South, the region became known as the “Solid South”, and the Democratic Party after 1900 moved to a system of primaries to select their candidates. Victory in a primary was tantamount to election. From the late 1870s to the 1960s, only rarely was a state or national Southern politician a Republican, apart from a few Appalachian mountain districts. Republicans, however, continued to control parts of the Appalachian Mountains and compete for power in the Border States. Apart from a few states (such as the Byrd Machine in Virginia, the Crump Machine in Memphis), and a few other local organizations, the Democratic Party itself was very lightly organized. It managed primaries but party officials had little other role. To be successful a politician built his own network of friends, neighbors and allies. Reelection was the norm, and the result from 1910 to the late 20th century was that Southern Democrats in Congress had accumulated seniority, and automatically took the chairmanships of all committees. By the 1940s the Supreme Court began to find disfranchisement measures like the “grandfather clause” and the white primary unconstitutional. Southern legislatures quickly passed other measures to keep blacks disfranchised, even after suffrage was extended more widely to poor whites. Because white Democrats controlled all the Southern seats in Congress they had outsize power in Congress and could sidetrack or filibuster efforts by Northerners to pass legislation against lynching, for example.  Increasing support for civil rights legislation by the national Democratic Party beginning in 1948 caused segregationist Southern Democrats to nominate Strom Thurmond on a third-party “Dixiecrat” ticket in 1948. These Dixiecrats returned to the party by 1950, but Southern Democrats held off Republican inroads in the suburbs by arguing that only they could defend the region from the onslaught of northern liberals and the civil rights movement. In response to the "Brown v. Board of Education" ruling of 1954, 101 Southern congressmen (19 senators, 82 House members of which 99 were Southern Democrats and 2 were Republicans) in 1956 denounced the Brown decisions as a "clear abuse of judicial power [that] climaxes a trend in the federal judiciary undertaking to legislate in derogation of the authority of Congress and to encroach upon the reserved rights of the states and the people." The manifesto lauded, “...those states which have declared the intention to resist enforced integration by any lawful means”. It was signed by all Southern senators except Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, and Tennessee senators Albert Gore, Sr. and Estes Kefauver. Virginia closed schools in Warren County, Prince Edward County, Charlottesville, and Norfolk rather than integrate, but no other state followed suit. Democratic governors Orval Faubus of Arkansas, Ross Barnett of Mississippi, John Connally of Texas, Lester Maddox of Georgia, and, especially, George Wallace of Alabama resisted integration and appealed to a rural and blue-collar electorate.  The northern Democrats’ support of civil rights issues culminated when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended legal segregation and provided federal enforcement of voting rights for blacks. In the presidential election of 1964, Barry Goldwater’s only electoral victories outside his home state of Arizona were in the states of the Deep South where few blacks could vote before the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  Pockets of resistance to integration in public places broke out in violence during the 1960s by the shadowy Ku Klux Klan, which caused a backlash among moderates. Major resistance to school busing extending into the 1970s.  National Republicans such as Richard Nixon began to develop their Southern strategy to attract conservative white Southerners, especially the middle class and suburban voters, in addition to migrants from the North and traditional GOP pockets in Appalachia. The transition to a Republican stronghold in the South took decades. First, the states started voting Republican in presidential elections, except for native sons Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Then the states began electing Republican senators and finally governors. Georgia was the last state to do so, with Sonny Perdue taking the governorship in 2002. In addition to its middle class and business base, Republicans cultivated the religious right and attracted strong majorities from the evangelical or Fundamentalist vote, mostly Southern Baptists, which had not been a distinct political force prior to 1980.  After the 2012 elections, the eleven states of the former Confederacy were represented by 98 Republicans, 40 Democrats.

Race relations.

Native Americans.

Native Americans had lived in the south for nearly 12,000 years. They were defeated by settlers in a series of wars ending in the War of 1812 and

Civil rights movement.

The South witnessed two major events in the lives of 20th century African Americans: the Great Migration and the American Civil Rights Movement.  The Great Migration began during World War I, hitting its high point during World War II. During this migration, blacks left the South to find work in Northern factories and other sectors of the economy.  The migration also empowered the growing Civil Rights Movement. While the movement existed in all parts of the United States, its focus was against disfranchisement and the Jim Crow laws in the South. Most of the major events in the movement occurred in the South, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the March on Selma, Alabama, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. In addition, some of the most important writings to come out of the movement were written in the South, such as King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Most of the civil rights landmarks can be found around the South. The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument in Birmingham includes the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

Congress ends segregation (1964) and guarantees voting rights (1965).

The decisive action ending segregation came when Congress in bipartisan fashion overcame Southern filibusters to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A complex interaction of factors came together unexpectedly in the period 1954-1965 to make the momentous changes possible. The Supreme Court had taken the first initiative in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) making segregation of public schools unconstitutional. Enforcement was rapid in the North and border states, but was deliberately stopped in the South by the movement called Massive Resistance, sponsored by rural segregationists who largely controlled the state legislatures. Southern liberals, who counseled moderation, where shouted down

Symbolism.

Some Southerners use the Confederate flag to identify themselves with the South, states' rights and Southern tradition. Groups, such as the League of the South, have a high regard for the secession movement of 1860, citing a desire to

Major cities.

The South was heavily rural as late as the 1940s, but now the population is increasingly concentrated in

Major metropolitan areas.

<nowiki>*</nowiki> Asterisk indicates part of the metropolitan area is outside the states classified as Southern.

The Southern United States, also known as the American South, the Southern States, or simply the South, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States. It is located between the Atlantic Ocean and the Western United States, with the Midwestern United States and Northeastern United States to its north and the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico to its south.

Jih Spojených států amerických (anglicky "Southern United States"), označovaný též jako americký jih (anglicky "American South"), je oblast jihovýchodních a jižních Spojených států amerických. Oblast je známa pro svou specifickou kulturu a dějiny, rovněž tak se zde vyvinuly svébytné zvyky, hudební styly a kuchyně. Jedinečné dědictví regionu formovala řada různých událostí, zdrojů a jevů, počínaje původními domorodými Američany, přes příchod evropských přistěhovalců, přivlečení stovek tisíc zotročených Afričanů, historickou závislost na otrokářství, přítomnost významného procenta Afroameričanů a konče obdobím po pádu Konfederace v občanské válce.


Biography.

Born in Akmolinsk, Imperial Russia (modern Nur-Sultan in Kazakhstan). He graduated from Tomsk Polytechnic University, and worked at the Soviet Research Institute of Electromechanics. Kazantsev was a member of the Soviet delegation at the 1939 New York World's Fair. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Kazantsev joined the army. He left military service in 1945 with the rank of colonel, and was awarded a number of orders, including Order of the Patriotic War and Order of the Red Star. From then on, Kazantsev settled in the "literary village" of Peredelkino and concentrated on his writings. He survived the dissolution of the Soviet Union and died in 2002.

Writings.

Kazantsev was an enthusiast of the unknown, and a pioneer of Soviet UFOlogy. Many of his works, both fiction and non-fiction, deal with controversial scientific theories.  He researched the Tunguska event and published a number of science fiction, as well as popular science books, on the topic. He believed the Tunguska impact was caused by an alien spacecraft that crash-landed on the Earth.  Kazantsev researched events and legends that he believed were evidences of paleocontacts with extraterrestrials. His novel "The Destruction of Faena", an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", is based on the hypothetical planet Phaeton that some believe existed in the orbit of modern asteroid belt. According to the novel, Phaeton was inhabited by a developed civilisation of the "phaetae" race, who survived the destruction of their planet and brought some of their culture to the prehistorical people of Earth.  Kazantsev was also interested in the Martian canal theory, and used it in his fiction concerning Mars.  He was also a composer of chess endgame studies. In 1975 he was awarded by the Permanent Commission of the FIDE for Chess Compositions (PCCC) the title of International Master of Composition.

Bibliography.

Note: of this list, only "The Destruction of Faena" ("Faety"), "A Visitor From Outer Space", and "The Martian" have been translated into English.

Alexander Petrovitch Kazantsev (; 2 September 1906 – 13 September 2002) was a popular Soviet science fiction writer, ufologist and chess composer.

Alexandr Petrovič Kazancev ( 2. září 1906 Akmola – 13. září 2002 Peredělkino) byl populární ruský spisovatel sci-fi, scenárista a šachista.


History.

Slashes may be found in early writing as a variant form of dashes, vertical strokes, etc. The present use of a slash distinguished from such other marks derives from the medieval European virgule (, which was used as a period, scratch comma, and caesura mark. (The first sense was eventually lost to the low dot and the other two developed separately into the comma and caesura mark ) Its use as a comma became especially widespread in France, where it was also used to mark the continuation of a word onto the next line of a page, a sense later taken on by the hyphen. The Fraktur script used throughout Central Europe in the early modern period used a single slash as a scratch comma and a double slash as a dash. The double slash developed into the double oblique hyphen and double hyphen or before being usually simplified into various single dashes.  In the 18th century, the mark was generally known in English as the "oblique". The variant "oblique stroke" was increasingly shortened to "stroke", which became the common British name for the character, although printers and publishing professionals often instead referred to it as an "oblique". In the 19th and early 20th century, it was also widely known as the "shilling mark" or "solidus", from its use as the currency sign for the shilling. The name "slash" is a recent development, first attested in American English, but has gained wide currency through its use in computing, a context where it is sometimes even used in British English in preference to the usual name "stroke". Clarifying terms such as "forward slash" have been coined owing to widespread use of Microsoft's DOS and Windows operating systems, which use the backslash extensively.

Usage.

Disjunction and conjunction.

Connecting alternatives.

The slash is commonly used in many languages as a shorter substitute for the conjunction "or", typically with the sense of exclusive or (e.g., Y/N permits yes or no but not both). Its use in this sense is somewhat informal, although it is used in philology to note variants (e.g., "virgula/") and etymologies (e.g.,  Such slashes may be used to avoid taking a position in naming disputes. One example is the Syriac naming dispute, which prompted the US and Swedish censuses to use the respective official designations "Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac" and "Assyrier/Syrianer" for the ethnic group.  In particular, since the late 20th century, the slash is used to permit more gender-neutral language in place of the traditional masculine or plural gender neutrals. In the case of English, this is usually restricted to degendered pronouns such as "he/she" or "s/he". Most other Indo-European languages include more far-reaching use of grammatical gender. In these, the separate gendered desinences (grammatical suffices) of the words may be given divided by slashes or set off with parentheses. For example, in Spanish, is a son and a is a daughter; some proponents of gender-neutral language advocate the use of or when writing for a general audience or addressing a listener of unknown gender. Less commonly, the æ ligature or at sign is used instead:. Similarly, in German, refers to any secretary and to an explicitly female secretary; some advocates of gender neutrality support forms such as for general use. This does not always work smoothly, however: problems arise in the case of words like ("doctor") where the explicitly female form is umlauted and words like ("Chinese person") where the explicitly female form loses the terminal "-e".

Connecting non-contrasting items.

The slash is also used as a shorter substitute for the conjunction "and" or inclusive or (i.e., A or B or both), typically in situations where it fills the role of a hyphen or en dash. For example, the "Hemingway/Faulkner generation" might be used to discuss the era of the Lost Generation inclusive of the people around and affected by both Hemingway and Faulkner. This use is sometimes proscribed, as by "New Hart's Rules", the style guide for the Oxford University Press.

Presenting routes.

The slash, as a form of inclusive or, is also used to punctuate the stages of a route (e.g., Shanghai/Nanjing/Wuhan/Chongqing as stops on a tour of the Yangtze).

Introducing topic shifts.

The word "slash" is also developing as a way to introduce topic shifts or follow-up statements. "Slash" can introduce a follow up statement, such as, "I really love that hot dog place on Liberty Street. Slash can we go there tomorrow?" It can also indicate a shift to an unrelated topic, as in "JUST SAW ALEX! Slash I just chubbed on oatmeal raisin cookies at north quad and i miss you." The new usage of "slash" appears most frequently in spoken conversation, though it can also appear in writing.

In speech.

Sometimes the word "slash" is used in speech as a conjunction to represent the written role of the character, e.g. "bee slash mosquito protection" for a beekeeper's net hood, and "There's a little bit of nectar slash honey over here, but really it's not a lot." (said by a beekeeper examining in a beehive), and ""Gastornis" slash "Diatryma"" for two genera of prehistoric birds which are now thought to be the same one genus..

Mathematics.

Fractions.

The fraction slash is used between two numbers to indicate a fraction or ratio. Such formatting developed as a way to write the horizontal fraction bar on a single line of text. It is first attested in England and Mexico in the 18th century. This notation is known as an online, solidus, or shilling fraction. Nowadays fractions, unlike inline division, are often given using smaller numbers, superscript, and subscript (e.g., ). This notation is responsible for the current form of the percent, permille, and permyriad signs, developed from the horizontal form which represented an early modern corruption of an Italian abbreviation of "per cento". Many fonts draw the fraction slash (and the division slash) less vertical than the slash. The separate encoding is also intended to permit automatic formatting of the preceding and succeeding digits by glyph substitution with numerator and denominator glyphs (e.g., display of "1, fraction slash, 2" as "1⁄2"), though this is not yet supported in many environments or fonts. Because of this lack of support, some authors still use Unicode subscripts and superscripts to compose fractions, and many fonts design these characters for this purpose. In addition, all of the multiples less than 1 of 1⁄8, 1⁄6, and 1⁄5 (including, for example, 1⁄2 and 2⁄3) are in the Unicode Number Forms block as precomposed characters.  This notation can also be used when the concept of fractions is extended from numbers to arbitrary rings by the method of localization of a ring.

Division.

The division slash, is used between two numbers to indicate division (e.g., can also be written as. This use developed from the fraction slash in the late 18th or early 19th century. The formatting was advocated by De Morgan in the mid-19th century.

Quotient of set.

A "quotient of a set" is informally a new set obtained by identifying some elements of the original set. This is denoted as a fraction formula_1 (sometimes even as a built fraction), where the numerator formula_2 is the original set (often equipped with some algebraic structure). What is appropriate as denominator depends on the context.  In the most general case, the denominator is an equivalence relation formula_3 on the original set formula_2, and elements are to be identified in the quotient formula_5 if they are equivalent according to formula_3; this is technically achieved by making formula_5 the set of all equivalence classes of formula_3.  In group theory, the slash is used to mark quotient groups. The general form is formula_9, where formula_10 is the original group and formula_11 is the normal subgroup; this is read "formula_12 mod formula_13", where "mod" is short for "modulo". Formally this is a special case of quotient by an equivalence relation, where formula_14 iff formula_15 for some formula_16. Since many algebraic structures (rings, vector spaces, etc.) in particular are groups, the same style of quotients extend also to these, although the denominator may need to satisfy additional closure properties for the quotient to preserve the full algebraic structure of the original (e.g. for the quotient of a ring to be a ring, the denominator must be an ideal).  When the original set is the set of integers formula_17, the denominator may alternatively be just an integer: formula_18. This is an alternative notation for the set formula_19 of integers modulo "n" (needed because formula_19 is also notation for the very different ring of "n"-adic integers). formula_18 is an abbreviation of formula_22 or formula_23, which both are ways of writing the set in question as a quotient of groups.

Combining slash.

Slashes may also be used as a combining character in mathematical formulae. The most important use of this is that combining a slash with a relation negates it, producing e.g. 'not equal' formula_24 as negation of formula_25 or 'not in' formula_26 as negation of formula_27; these slashed relation symbols are always implicitly defined in terms of the non-slashed base symbol. The graphical form of the negation slash is mostly the same as for a division slash, except in some cases where that would look odd; the negation formula_28 of formula_29 (divides) and negation formula_30 of formula_3 (various meanings) customarily both have their negations slashes less steep and in particular shorter than the usual one.  The Feynman slash notation is an unrelated use of combining slashes, mostly seen in quantum field theory. This kind of combining slash takes a vector base symbol and converts it to a matrix quantity. Technically this notation is a shorthand for contracting the vector with the Dirac gamma matrices, so formula_32; what one gains is not only a more compact formula, but also not having to allocate a letter as the contracted index.

Computing.

The slash, sometimes distinguished as "forward slash", is used in computing in a number of ways, primarily as a separator among levels in a given hierarchy, for example in the path of a filesystem.

File paths.

The slash is used as the path component separator in many computer operating systems (e.g., Unix's ). In Unix and Unix-like systems, such as macOS and Linux, the slash is also used for the volume root directory (e.g., the initial slash in ). Confusion of the slash with the backslash largely arises from the use of the latter as the path component separator in the widely used MS-DOS, Windows, and OS/2 systems.

Networking.

The slash is used in a similar fashion in internet URLs (e.g., ). Often a portion of such URLs corresponds with files on a Unix server with the same name.  The slash in an IP address (e.g., ) indicates the prefix size in CIDR notation. The number of addresses of a subnet may be calculated as 2, in which the address size is 128 for IPv6 and 32 for IPv4. For example, in IPv4, the prefix size /29 gives: 2 = 2 = 8 addresses.

Programming.

The slash is used as a division operator in most programming languages while APL uses it for reduction (fold) and compression (filter). The double slash is used by Rexx as a modulo operator, and Python (starting in version 2.2) uses a double slash for division which rounds (using floor) to an integer. In Raku the double slash is used as a "defined-or" alternative to ||. A dot and slash is used in MATLAB and GNU Octave to indicate an element-by-element division of matrices.  Comments that begin with (a slash and an asterisk) and end with were introduced in PL/I and subsequently adopted by SAS, C, Rexx, C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP, CSS, and C#. A double slash is also used by C99, C++, C#, PHP, Java, Swift, and JavaScript to start a single line comment.  In SGML and derived languages such as HTML and XML, a slash is used in closing tags. For example, in HTML, begins a section of bold text and closes it. In XHTML, slashes are also necessary for "self-closing" elements such as the newline command where HTML has simply.  Windows, DOS, some CP/M programs, OpenVMS, and OS/2 all use the slash to indicate command-line options. For example, the command is understood as using the command dir ("directory") with the "wide" option. Notice that no space is required between the command and the switch; this was responsible for the choice to use backslashes as the path separator since one would otherwise be unable to run a program in a different directory.  Slashes are used as the standard delimiters for regular expressions, although other characters can be used instead.  IBM JCL uses a double slash to start each line in a batch job stream except for /* and /&.

Programs.

IRC and many in-game chat clients use the slash to mark commands, such as joining and leaving a chat room or sending private messages. For example, in IRC, is an command to join the channel "services" and is a command to format the following message as though it were an action instead of a spoken message. In "Minecraft"s chat function, the slash is used for executing console and plugin commands. In "Second Life"s chat function, the slash is used to select the "communications channel", allowing users to direct commands to virtual objects "listening" on different channels. For example, if a virtual house's lights were set to use channel 42, the command "/42 on" would turn them on.  The Gedcom standard for exchanging computerized genealogical data uses slashes to delimit surnames. Example: Bill /Smith/ Jr. Slashes around surnames are also used in Personal Ancestral File.

Currency.

The slash (as the "shilling mark" or "solidus") was the currency sign of the shilling, a former coin of the United Kingdom and its former colonies. Before the decimalization of currency in Britain, its currency symbols (collectively £sd) represented their Latin names, derived from a medieval French modification of the late Roman libra, solidus, and denarius. Thus, one penny less than two pounds was written During the period when English orthography included the long s,, the s came to be written as a single slash. When the d. fell out of general use, one penny less than two pounds was written Similarly, "2/6" meant two shillings sixpence. In Britain, exactly five shillings was typically written "5∕-" while, in East Africa, it was more common to mark it with a double hyphen as "5/=". The same style was also used under the British Raj and early independent India for the predecimalization rupee/anna/pie system.  In decimalized currency, a slash followed by a dash continues to be used in some places to mark an exact amount of currency with no subunits. For example, "£50/-" is a variant of £50.00 and serves a similar function of providing clarity and ensuring that no further digits are added to the end of the number.  The slash is used in currency exchange rate notation to express exchange rates, the ratio of the first currency in terms of the second. For example, EUR/USD "x" expresses that the value of 1 euro in terms of US dollars is "x". This value may then be multiplied by any number of euros to find its value in dollars.

Dates.

Slashes are a common calendar date separator used across many countries and by some standards such as the Common Log Format used by web servers. Depending on context, it may be in the form Day/Month/Year, Month/Day/Year, or Year/Month/Day. If only two elements are present, they typically denote a day and month in some order. For example, 9/11 is a common American way of writing the date 11 September and has become shorthand for the attacks on New York and Washington, DC, which occurred on a day Britons write as 11/9/2001. Owing to the ambiguity across cultures, the practice of using only two elements to denote a date is sometimes proscribed.  Because of the world's many varying conventional date and time formats, ISO 8601 advocates the use of a Year-Month-Day system separated by hyphens (e.g., Armistice Day first occurred on 1918-11-11). In the ISO 8601 system, slashes represent date ranges: "1939/1945" represents what is more commonly written with an en dash as "1935–1945" or with a hyphen as "1935-1945". The autumn term of a northern-hemisphere school year might be marked "2010-09-01/12-22".  In English, a range marked by a slash often has a separate meaning from one marked by a dash or hyphen. "24/25 December" would mark the time shared by both days (i.e., the night from Christmas Eve to Christmas morning) rather than the time made up by both days together, which would be written "24–25 December". Similarly, a historical reference to "1066/67" might imply an event occurred during the winter of late 1066 and early 1067, whereas a reference to 1066–67 would cover the entirety of both years. The usage was particularly common in British English during World War II, where such slash dates were used for night-bombing air raids. It is also used by some police forces in the United States.

Numbering.

The slash is used in numbering to note totals. For example, "page 17/35" indicates that the relevant passage is on the 17th page of a 35-page document. Similarly, the marking "#333/500" on a product indicates it is the 333rd out of 500 identical products or out of a batch of 500 such products. For scores on schoolwork, in games, &c., "85/100" indicates 85 points were attained out of a possible 100.  Slashes are also sometimes used to mark ranges in numbers that already include hyphens or dashes. One example is the ISO treatment of dating. Another is the US Air Force's treatment of aircraft serial numbers, which are normally written to note the fiscal year and aircraft number. For example, "85-1000" notes the thousandth aircraft ordered in fiscal year 1985. To indicate the next fifty subsequent aircraft, a slash is used in place of a hyphen or dash: "85-1001/1050".

Linguistic transcription.

A pair of slashes (as "slants") are used in the transcription of speech to enclose pronunciations (i.e., phonetic transcriptions). For example, the IPA transcription of the English pronunciation of "solidus" is written. Properly, slashes mark broad or phonemic transcriptions, whereas narrow, allophonic transcriptions are enclosed by square brackets. For example, the word "little" may be broadly rendered as but a careful transcription of the velarization of the second L would be written.  In sociolinguistics, a double or triple slash may also be used in the transcription of a traditional sociolinguistic interview or in other type of linguistic elicitation to represent simultaneous speech, interruptions, and certain types of speech disfluencies.

Letter.

The Iraqw language uses the slash as a letter, representing the voiced pharyngeal fricative, as in /ameeni, "woman".

Line breaks.

The slash (as a "virgule") offset by spaces to either side is used to mark line breaks when transcribing text from a multi-line format into a single-line one. It is particularly common in quoting poetry, song lyrics, and dramatic scripts, formats where omitting the line breaks risks losing meaningful context. For example, when quoting Hamlet's soliloquy <poem> To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them... </poem> into a prose paragraph, it is standard to mark the line breaks as "To be, or not to be, that is the Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to The slings and arrows of outrageous Or to take arms against a sea of And by opposing end them..." Less often, virgules are used in marking paragraph breaks when quoting a prose passage. Some style guides, such as "Hart's", prefer to use a pipe in place of the slash to mark these line and paragraph breaks.  The virgule may be thinner than a standard slash when typeset. In computing contexts, it may be necessary to use a non-breaking space before the virgule to prevent it from being widowed on the next line.

Abbreviation.

The slash has become standard in several abbreviations. Generally, it is used to mark two-letter initialisms such as A/C (short for "air conditioner"), w/o ("without"), b/w ("black and white" or, less often, "between"), w/e ("whatever" or, less often, "weekend" or "week ending"), i/o ("input/output"), r/w ("read/write"), and n/a ("not applicable"). Other initialisms employing the slash include w/ ("with") and w/r/t ("with regard to"). Such slashed abbreviations are somewhat more common in British English and were more common around the Second World War (as with "S/E" to mean "single-engined"). The abbreviation 24/7 (denoting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) describes a business that is always open or unceasing activity.  The slash in derived units such as m/s (meters per second) is not an abbreviation slash, but a straight division. It is however in that position read as 'per' rather than e.g. 'over', which can be seen as analogous to units whose symbols are pure abbreviations such as mph (miles per hour), although in abbreviations 'per' is 'p' or dropped entirely (psi, pounds per square inch) rather than a slash. In the US government, the names of offices within various departments are abbreviated using slashes, starting with the larger office and following with its subdivisions. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation is formally abbreviated FAA/AST.

Proofreading.

The slash or vertical bar (as a "separatrix") is used in proofreading to mark the end of margin notes or to separate margin notes from one another. The slash is also sometimes used in various proofreading initialisms, such as l/c and u/c for changes to lower and upper case, respectively.

Fiction.

The slash is used in fan fiction to mark the romantic pairing a piece will focus upon (e.g., a K/S denoted a "Star Trek" story would focus on a sexual relationship between Kirk and Spock), a usage which developed in the 1970s from the earlier friendship pairings marked by ampersands (e.g., K&S). The genre as a whole is now known as slash fiction. Because it is more generally associated with homosexual male relationships, lesbian slash fiction is sometimes distinguished as femslash. In situations where other pairings occur, the genres may be distinguished as m/m, f/f, &c.

Libraries.

The slash is used under the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules to separate the title of a work from its statement of responsibility (i.e., the listing of its author, director, &c.). Like a line break, this slash is surrounded by a single space on either side. For example:  The format is used in both card catalogs and online records.

Addresses.

The slash is sometimes used as an abbreviation for building numbers. For example, in some contexts, 8/A Evergreen Gardens specifies Apartment 8 in Building A of the residential complex Evergreen Gardens. In the United States, however, such an address refers to the first division of Apartment 8 and is simply a variant of Apartment 8A or 8-A. Similarly in the United Kingdom, an address such as 12/2 Anywhere Road means flat (or apartment) 2 in the building numbered 12 on Anywhere Road.

Poetry.

The slash is used in various scansion notations for representing the metrical pattern of a line of verse, typically to indicate a stressed syllable.

Music.

Slashes are used in musical notation as an alternative to writing out specific notes where it is easier to read than traditional notation or where the player can improvise. They are commonly used to indicate chords either in place of or in combination with traditional notation and for drummers as an indication to continue with the previously indicated style.

Sports.

A slash is used to mark a spare (knocking down all ten pins in two throws) when scoring ten-pin and duckpin bowling.

Text messaging.

In online messaging, a slash might be used to imitate the formatting of a chat command (e.g., writing "/fliptable" as though there were such a command) or the closing tags of languages such as HTML (e.g., writing "/endrant" to end an ironic diatribe or "/s" to mark the preceding text as sarcastic). A pair of slashes is sometimes used as a way to mark italic text, where no special formatting is available (e.g., /italics/). A single slash is sometimes used as a way of expressing a check mark, with the meaning "OK", "got it", "done", or "thanks". In Japan, a set of multiple slashes (typically three: ///) is used to convey shyness or embarrassment, owing to the way blushing is depicted in manga. These slashes are usually placed at the end of a statement.

Spacing.

There are usually no spaces either before or after a slash. According to "", a slash is usually written without spacing on either side when it connects single words, letters or symbols. Exceptions are in representing the start of a new line when quoting verse, or a new paragraph when quoting prose. "The Chicago Manual of Style" also allows spaces when either of the separated items is a compound that itself includes a space: "Our New Zealand / Western Australia trip". (Compare use of an en dash used to separate such compounds.) "The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing" prescribes, "No space before or after an oblique when used between individual words, letters or symbols; one space before and after the oblique when used between longer groups which contain internal spacing", giving the examples "n/a" and "Language and Society / "Langue et société"".  According to "The Chicago Manual of Style", when typesetting a URL or computer path, line breaks should occur before a slash but not in the text between two slashes.

Encoding.

As a very common character, the slash (as "slant") was originally encoded in ASCII with the decimal code 47 or 0x2F. The same value was used in Unicode, which calls it "solidus" and also adds some more characters:  In XML and HTML, the slash can also be represented with the character entity or or.

Alternative names.

The slash may also be read out as "and", "or", "and/or", "to", or "cum" in some compounds separated by a slash; "over" or "out of" in fractions, division, and numbering; and "per" or "a(n)" in derived units (as km/h) and prices (as $~/kg), where the division slash stands for "each".

The slash is an oblique slanting line punctuation mark. Once used to mark periods and commas, the slash is now most often used to represent exclusive or inclusive or, division and fractions, and as a date separator. It is called a solidus in Unicode, it is also known as an oblique stroke, and it has several other historical or technical names, including oblique and virgule.

Lomítko (/) je interpunkční znaménko, užívané zejména v odborných textech a formulářích. Slouží především k vyznačení alternativ, v zásadě nahrazuje spojku "nebo"; případně i k jinému členění textu. Lomítko se neodděluje mezerami, pokud člení neslovné nebo jednoslovné výrazy, v opačném případě je lépe ho mezerami oddělovat:


Properties.

Salt lakes form when the water flowing into the lake, containing salt or minerals, cannot leave because the lake is endorheic (terminal). The water then evaporates, leaving behind any dissolved salts and thus increasing its salinity, making a salt lake an excellent place for salt production. High salinity will also lead to a unique halophilic flora and fauna in the lake in question; sometimes, in fact, the result may be an absence or near absence of life near the salt lake.  If the amount of water flowing into a lake is less than the amount evaporated, the lake will eventually disappear and leave a dry lake (also called playa or salt flat).  Brine lakes consist of water that has reached salt saturation or near saturation (brine), and may also be heavily saturated with other materials.  Most brine lakes develop as a result of high evaporation rates in an arid climate with a lack of an outlet to the ocean. The high salt content in these bodies of water may come from minerals deposited from the surrounding land. Another source for the salt may be that the body of water was formerly connected to the ocean. While the water evaporates from the lake, the salt remains. Eventually, the body of water will become brine.  Because of the density of brine, swimmers are more buoyant in brine than in fresh or ordinary salt water. Examples of such brine lakes are the Dead Sea and the Great Salt Lake.  Bodies of brine may also form on the ocean floor at cold seeps. These are sometimes called brine lakes, but are more frequently referred to as brine pools. It is possible to observe waves on the surface of these bodies.  Man-made bodies of brine are created for edible salt production. These can be referred to as brine ponds.

List.

Some of the last 18 salt lakes in this list are also partly fresh and/or brackish water. Like a body of water can have "sea" in its name and technically be a salt lake (for instance, the Salton Sea really being a salt lake), some of the last 18 listed salt lakes are playas, basins or ponds. This might even be the same way for the original 32 salt lakes that were listed here until April 6, 2020. Civilization tends to loosely categorize many of earth's bodies of water.  117,000,000 lakes scatter the earth, and together they only hold about seventeen thousandths or less of all water on earth, making salt lakes more interesting and special.

A salt lake or saline lake is a landlocked body of water that has a concentration of salts (typically sodium chloride) and other dissolved minerals significantly higher than most lakes (often defined as at least three grams of salt per litre). In some cases, salt lakes have a higher concentration of salt than sea water; such lakes can also be termed "hypersaline lakes". An alkalic salt lake that has a high content of carbonate is sometimes termed a "soda lake".

Slané jezero je druh jezera, v jehož vodě je rozpuštěné významné množství minerálních látek. Jako minimální hranice se udává 20 g/l tj. 20‰. Jedná se o chlorid sodný, síran hořečnatý, draselné a jiné soli. Jezera s menším obsahem minerálních látek se označují jako brakická. Tato jezera se obvykle vyskytují v suchých a horkých oblastech, poněvadž velký obsah soli je většinou důsledkem velkého vypařování v porovnání s odtokem.