Origin of the name.

The name "mbejú" (also written "mbeyú") means "cake" and comes from the Guarani language. Guarani is one of the two official languages of Paraguay, which defines itself as being bilingual and multi-cultural. The mbejú is bound to the Guarani mythology to be one of the most ancient recipes of this culture. Traditionally, there were about 16 ways to prepare it, although nowadays, 11 are recognized. Next to the chipá and the sopa paraguaya it is part of the so-called "tyra", a Guarani term for food consumed to accompany the "mate cocido", milk or coffee, or simply an addition to other dishes.

Ingredients.

Traditional mbejú require starch, corn flour, pork fat, thin salt, fresh cheese and milk. The variety called "mbejú avevo" ("inflated cake") uses the same ingredients but with the pork fat, the eggs and the cheese in larger quantities. Another variant, "mbejú de fariña" in which manioc flour is used instead of manioc starch.  There are other recipes for the Mbeju. Mbeju cuatro quesos, for example, which means mbeju with extra cheese, requires 250 grams of cassava starch, 75 grams of butter, 150 grams of fresh cheese, 2 spoonful of milk, salt, 2 tomatoes perita, 100 grams of cuartirolo cheese, 50 grams catupyry cheese, oregano, basil leaves, and black pepper.

Preparation.

The starch is sifted. Fat and the crumbled cheese are added and the mixture is whipped until creamy. Eggs, salt and milk are added as the whipping continues. Finally the starch and corn flour are added, mixing everything using the hands until a thick powder-like preparation results.  A greased frying pan is allowed to get very hot. A layer of the mixture of about 11⁄2 centimeters is put into the pan, squeezing the borders with the back of a spoon. It is cooked for a few minutes, moving the pan so it cooks evenly without burning the center. Using the lid of the pan, flip the mbejú, finishing the cooking the same way as above.  Steps for the extra cheese mbeju Put into a bowl the Paraguayan cheese with the butter, whisk with a spoon until it is cream. Add the starch and a little bit of salt, as soon as it gets hard add some milk and whisk again until it gets cream. For the filling, cut the tomatoes and the cheese. In a hot pan add the dough covering the entire surface, on the top add the tomatoes and the cheese the oregano, basil, and a little bit of pepper. Cover up the pan again with some more dough, and cook for 3 minutes on each side.

Mbeju or beiju is a starch cake sometimes made with fariña or manioc flour. The mbeju is a staple typical of Paraguay and the Northeast of Argentina. The recipe has existed since the 18th century and its origins lie with the indigenous Guaraní people that lived in the Guaraní-Jesuit Missions.

Ein Beiju ist ein kleiner Kuchen aus Maniok- oder Tapiokamehl, der aus dem Nordosten Brasiliens stammt. Bei seiner Herstellung wird einfach das von Natur aus süßliche Mehl befeuchtet und im Ofen gebacken.


Early life.

Olbricht was born October 4, 1888, in Leisnig, Saxony, to Richard Olbricht, a mathematics professor and director of the "Realschule" (secondary school) in Bautzen.

Career.

Olbricht successfully passed the "Abitur" (university preparatory school exit examination) in 1907, subsequently accepting a commission as a Fahnrich (ensign) with Infantry Regiment 106 in Leipzig. He fought in World War I, was promoted to captain and chose to stay in the Treaty of Versailles-decimated military (the Reichswehr) after the war.  Olbricht was assigned to the Reich Defense Ministry as leader of the Reichswehr's Foreign Armies Bureau in 1926. After the Night of the Long Knives raid, he was able to save several of those arrested from execution by finding or creating positions for them in the Abwehr.  Olbricht was appointed chief of staff of the 4th Army Corps stationed in Dresden in 1935, an assignment that lasted until 1938, when he was promoted to commander of the 24th Infantry Division.  Olbricht has the distinction of being one of the few officers who supported General Werner von Fritsch, the commander in chief of the German armed forces who was accused of homosexuality in January 1938. After von Fritsch’s resignation, it was discovered that the charges had been invented, based on the contrived testimony of a man whom some say was recruited by Himmler. The tale had been concocted as part of Hitler's plan to gain control of the military—which he did.  During the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Olbricht commanded the 24th Infantry Division and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. On 15 February 1940, Olbricht was promoted to General of the Infantry. He was appointed Chief of the General Army Office ("Allgemeines Heeresamt") in the Army High Command ("Oberkommando des Heeres"). He was furthermore made Chief of the Armed Forces Reserve Office ("Wehrersatzamt") at the "Oberkommando der Wehrmacht".

Operation Valkyrie.

Starting in the winter of 1941–42, Olbricht developed the plan for Operation Valkyrie, a General Staff plan which was ostensibly to be used to put down internal unrest, but was in fact a blueprint for a "coup d'état". Together with the resistance circles around Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Major-General Henning von Tresckow, he worked to find a means of assassinating Adolf Hitler and using the coup plan to bring down the Nazi regime. In 1943, he asked that Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg come to work at his office; Stauffenberg would later be the key man in the assassination attempt, with the job of actually planting the bomb near Hitler.  On the day of the attempted "coup d'état", 20 July 1944, Olbricht and Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim initiated Operation Valkyrie by mobilizing the Replacement Army ("Ersatzheer"). It eventually became clear that Stauffenberg's briefcase bomb had failed to kill Hitler, however, and so the plan to seize key sites in Berlin using units from the reserve army began to falter. Many consider one of the overwhelming factors which prevented this coup from gathering any real pace was the failure of troops on the ground to gain control of the communications coming into and out of Berlin; Adolf Hitler and his commanders in the Wolfsschanze were able to broadcast a speech after the coup which in turn led to quick demise of the coup as a whole. As a result, the Nazi leadership was able to regain control using its own loyal troops within a few hours.

Arrest and execution.

At 21:00, Olbricht was arrested at his headquarters in the Bendlerblock by soldiers from the Berlin garrison. Later that evening, Colonel-General Friedrich Fromm held a hastily-arranged court martial, supposedly in an attempt to protect himself from being exposed as a silent conspirator. Olbricht, Quirnheim, Stauffenberg, and his aide Werner von Haeften were then taken outside to the courtyard and executed by firing squad, against Hitler's orders to take the would-be assassins alive (those who got captured alive received more painful and prolonged means of execution). Olbricht was the first of the four to be shot.

Friedrich Olbricht (4 October 1888 – 21 July 1944) was a German general during World War II and one of the plotters involved in the 20 July Plot, an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944.

Friedrich Olbricht (* 4. Oktober 1888 in Leisnig, Sachsen; † 21. Juli 1944 in Berlin) war ein deutscher General der Infanterie. Er war am Attentat vom 20. Juli 1944 auf Adolf Hitler beteiligt.


Taxonomy.

The genus name "Aegypius" is a Greek word (αἰγυπιός) for 'vulture', or a bird not unlike one; Aelian describes the "aegypius" as "halfway between a vulture ("gyps") and an eagle". Some authorities think this a good description of a lammergeier; others do not. Aegypius is the eponym of the species, whatever it was in ancient Greek. The English name 'black vulture' refers to the plumage colour, while'monk vulture', a direct translation of its German name, refers to the bald head and ruff of neck feathers like a monk's cowl. 'Cinereous vulture' (Latin "cineraceus", ash-coloured; pale, whitish grey), was a deliberate attempt to rename it with a new name distinct from the American black vulture.  This bird is an Old World vulture, and as such is only distantly related to the New World vultures, which are in a separate family, Cathartidae, of the same order. It is therefore not closely related to the much smaller American black vulture ("Coragyps atratus") despite the similar name and coloration.

Description.

The cinereous vulture measures in total length with a wingspan. Males can weigh from, whereas females can weigh from. It is thus one of the world's heaviest flying birds. Average weights are not known to have been published for this species but the median weight figures from two sources were and. Unlike most accipitrids, males can broadly overlap in size with the females, although not uncommonly the females may be slightly heavier. These are one of the two largest extant Old World vultures and accipitrids, with similar total length and perhaps wingspans recorded in the Himalayan vulture ("Gyps himalayensis"), as indicated by broadly similar wing and tail proportions, but the cinereous appears to be slightly heavier as well as slightly larger in tarsus and bill length. Superficially similar but unrelated New World condors can either be of similar wing area and bulk or slightly larger in these aspects. Despite limited genetic variation in the species, body size increases from west to east based on standard measurements, with the birds from southwest Europe (Spain and south France) averaging about 10% smaller than the vultures from central Asia (Manchuria, Mongolia and northern China). Among standard measurements, the wing chord is, the tail is and the tarsus is.  The cinereous vulture is distinctly dark, with the whole body being brown excepting the pale head in adults, which is covered in fine blackish down. This down is absent in the closely related lappet-faced vulture ("Torgos tracheliotos"). The skin of the head and neck is bluish-gray and a paler whitish color above the eye. The adult has brown eyes, a purplish cere, a blue-gray bill and pale blue-gray legs. The primary quills are often actually black. From a distance, flying birds can easily appear all black. The immature plumage is sepia-brown above, with a much paler underside than in adults. Immature cinereous vultures have grey down on the head, a pale mauve cere and grey legs. The massive bill is the largest of any living accipiterid, a feature enhanced by the relatively small skull of the species. The exposed culmen of the cinereous vulture measures. The wings, with serrated leading edges, are held straight or slightly arched in flight and are broad, sometimes referred to as "barn door wings". Their flight is slow and buoyant, with deep, heavy flaps when necessary. The combination of huge size and dark coloration renders the cinereous vulture relatively distinct, especially against smaller raptors such as eagles or buzzards. The most similar-shaped species, the lappet-faced vulture (with which there might be limited range overlap in the southern Middle East), is distinguished by its bare, pinkish head and contrasting plumage. On the lappet-face, the thighs and belly are whitish in adult birds against black to brownish over the remainder of the plumage. All potential "Gyps" vultures are distinguished by having paler, often streaky plumage, with bulging wing primaries giving them a less evenly broad-winged form. Cinereous vultures are generally very silent, with a few querulous mewing, roaring or guttural cries solely between adults and their offspring at the nest site.

Distribution and habitat.

The cinereous vulture is a Eurasian species. The western limits of its range are in Spain and inland Portugal, with a reintroduced population in south France. They are found discontinuously to Greece, Turkey and throughout the central Middle East. Their range continues through Afghanistan eastwards to northern India to its eastern limits in central Asia, where they breed in northern Manchuria, Mongolia and Korea. Their range is fragmented especially throughout their European range. It is generally a permanent resident except in those parts of its range where hard winters cause limited altitudinal movement and for juveniles when they reach breeding maturity. In the eastern limits of its range, birds from the northernmost reaches may migrate down to southern Korea and China. A limited migration has also been reported in the Middle East but is not common.  This vulture is a bird of hilly, mountainous areas, especially favoring dry semi-open habitats such as meadows at high altitudes over much of the range. Nesting usually occurs near the tree line in the mountains. They are always associated with undisturbed, remote areas with limited human disturbance. They forage for carcasses over various kinds of terrain, including steppe, grasslands, open woodlands, along riparian habitats or any kind of mountainous habitat. In their current European range and through the Caucasus and Middle East, cinereous vultures are found from in elevation, while in their Asian distribution, they are typically found at higher elevations. Two habitat types were found to be preferred by the species in China and Tibet. Some cinereous vultures in these areas live in mountainous forests and shrubland from, while the others preferred arid or semi-arid alpine meadows and grasslands at in elevation. This species can fly at a very high altitude. One cinereous vulture was observed at an elevation of on Mount Everest. It has a specialised haemoglobin alpha subunit of high oxygen affinity which makes it possible to take up oxygen efficiently despite the low partial pressure in the upper troposphere. Juvenile and immature cinereous vultures, especially those in the northern stretches of the species range, may move large distances across undeveloped open-dry habitats in response to snowfall or high summer temperatures.

Behaviour.

The cinereous vulture is a largely solitary bird, being found alone or in pairs much more frequently than most other Old World vultures. At large carcasses or feeding sites, small groups may congregate. Such groups can rarely include up to 12 to 20 vultures, with some older reports of up to 30 or 40.

Breeding.

In Europe, the cinereous vulture return to the nesting ground in January or February. In Spain and Algeria, they start nesting in February in March, in Crimea in early March, in northwestern India in February or April, in northeastern India in January, and in Turkestan in January. They breed in loose colonies, with nests rarely being found in the same tree or rock formation, unlike other Old World vultures which often nest in tight-knit colonies. In Spain, nests have been found from to apart from each other. The cinereous vulture breeds in high mountains and large forests, nesting in trees or occasionally on cliff ledges. The breeding season lasts from February until September or October. The most common display consists of synchronous flight movements by pairs. However, flight play between pairs and juveniles is not unusual, with the large birds interlocking talons and spiraling down through the sky. The birds use sticks and twigs as building materials, and males and females cooperate in all matters of rearing the young. The huge nest is across and deep. The nest increases in size as a pair uses it repeatedly over the years and often comes to be decorated with dung and animal skins. The nests can range up to high in a large tree such as an oak, juniper, wild pear, almond or pine trees. Most nesting trees are found along cliffs. In a few cases, cinereous vultures have been recorded as nesting directly on cliffs. One cliff nest completely filled a ledge that was wide and in depth. The egg clutch typically only a single egg, though 2 may be exceptionally laid. The eggs have a white or pale buff base color are often overlaid with red, purplish or red-brown marks, being almost as spotted as the egg of a falcon. Eggs measure from in height and in width, with an average of. The incubation period can range from 50 to 62 days, averaging 50–56 days. Normally hatching occurs in April or May in Europe. The newly hatched young are semi-altricial. The young are covered in greyish-white to grey-brown colored down which becomes paler with age. The first flight feathers start growing from the same sockets as the down when the nestling is around 30 days old and completely cover the down by 60 days of age. The parents feed the young by regurgitation and an active nests reportedly becomes very foul and stinking. Weights of nestlings in Mongolia increased from as little as when they are around a month old in early June to being slightly more massive than their parents at up to nearly shortly before fledging in early autumn. Fledging is reported when the nestlings are 104–120 days old, though dependence on parents can continue for another 2 months. Radio-satellite tracking suggests the age of independence of juveniles from their parents to be 5.7–7 months after hatching (i.e. 2–3 months after fledging).  The nesting success of cinereous vultures is relatively high, with around 90% of eggs successfully hatching and more than half of yearling birds known to survive to adulthood. They are devoted, active parents, with both members of a breeding pair protecting the nest and feeding the young in shifts via regurgitation. In Mongolia, Pallas's cat ("Otocolobus manul") and common raven ("Corvus corax") are considered potential predators of eggs in potentially both tree and cliff nests. Gray wolf ("Canis lupus") and foxes are also mentioned as potential nest predators but since neither climb trees and there are also no incidents of predation on inaccessible cliff nests, this seems unlikely. There have been witnessed accounts of bearded vultures ("Gypaetus barbatus") and Spanish imperial eagles ("Aquila adalberti") attempting to kill nestlings but in both cases were chased off by the parent vultures. There is a single case of a Spanish imperial eagle attacking and killing a cinereous vulture in an act of defense of its own nest in Spain. Golden eagles and Eurasian eagle-owls may rarely attempt to dispatch an older nestling or even adults in an ambush but the species is not verified prey for either and would be a rare event in all likelihood if it does occur. This species may live for up to 39 years, though 20 years or less is probably more common, with no regular predators of adults other than man.

Feeding.

Like all vultures, the cinereous vulture eats mostly carrion. The cinereous vulture feeds on carrion of almost any type, from the largest mammals available to fish and reptiles. In Tibet, commonly eaten carcasses can include both wild and domestic yaks ("Bos grunniens"), Bharal, Tibetan gazelles ("Pseudois nayaur"), kiangs ("Equus kiang"), woolly hares ("Lepus oiostolus"), Himalayan marmots ("Marmota himalayana"), domestic sheep ("Ovis aries"), and even humans, mainly those at their celestial burial grounds. Reportedly in Mongolia, Tarbagan marmots ("Marmota sibirica") comprised the largest part of the diet, although that species is now endangered as it is preferred in the diet of local people, wild prey ranging from corsac fox ("Vulpes corsac") to Argali ("Ovis ammon") may be eaten additionally in Mongolia. Historically, cinereous vultures in the Iberian Peninsula fed mostly on European rabbit ("Oryctolagus cuniculus") carcasses, but since viral hemorrhagic pneumonia (VHP) devastated the once abundant rabbit population there, the vultures now rely on the carrion of domestic sheep, supplemented by pigs ("Sus scrofa domesticus") and deer. In Turkey, the dietary preferences were argali ("Ovis ammon") (92 carrion items), wild boar ("Sus scrofa") (53 items), chickens ("Gallus gallus domesticus") (27 items), gray wolf (13 items) and red fox ("Vulpes vulpes") (13 items). Unusually, a large amount of plant material was found in pellets from Turkey, especially pine cones. Among the vultures in its range, the cinereous is best equipped to tear open tough carcass skins thanks to its powerful bill. It can even break apart bones, such as ribs, to access the flesh of large animals. It is dominant over other scavengers in its range, even over other large vultures such as "Gyps" vultures, bearded vulture or fierce ground predators such as foxes. While noisy "Gyps" vultures squawk and fly around, the often silent cinereous will keep them well at bay until they are satisfied and have had their own fill. A series of photos taken recently show a cinereous vulture attacking a Himalayan griffon in flight for unknown reasons, although the griffon was not seriously injured. Cinereous vultures frequently bully and dominate steppe eagles ("Aquila nipalensis") when the two species are attracted to the same prey and carrion while wintering in Asia. A rare successful act of kleptoparasitism on a cinereous vulture was filmed in Korea when a Steller's sea eagle ("Haliaeetus pelagicus") stole from a vulture. Its closest living relative is probably the lappet-faced vulture, which takes live prey on occasion. Occasionally, the cinereous vulture has been recorded as preying on live prey as well. Live animals reportedly taken by cinereous vultures include calves of yak and domestic cattle ("Bos primigenius taurus"), piglets, domestic lambs and puppies ("Canis lupus familiaris"), fox, lambs of wild sheep, together with nestling and fledglings of large birds such as goose, swan and pheasant, various rodents and rarely amphibians and reptiles. This species has hunted tortoises, which the vultures are likely to kill by carrying in flight and dropping on rocks to penetrate the shell, and lizards. Although rarely observed in the act of killing ungulates, cinereous vultures have been recorded as flying low around herds and feeding on recently killed wild ungulates they are believed to have killed. Mainly neonatal lambs or calves are hunted, especially sickly ones. Although not normally thought to be a threat to healthy domestic lambs, rare predation on apparently healthy lambs has been confirmed. Species believed to be hunted by cinereous vultures have including argali, saiga antelope ("Saiga tatarica"), Mongolian gazelle ("Procapra gutturosa") and Tibetan antelope ("Pantholops hodgsonii").

Status and conservation.

The cinereous vulture has declined over most of its range in the last 200 years in part due to poisoning by eating poisoned bait put out to kill dogs and other predators, and to higher hygiene standards reducing the amount of available carrion; it is currently listed as Near Threatened. Vultures of all species, although not the target of poisoning operations, may be shot on sight by locals. Trapping and hunting of cinereous vultures is particularly prevalent in China and Russia, although the poaching for trophy hunting are also known for Armenia, and probably other countries in Caucasus. Perhaps an even greater threat to this desolation-loving species is development and habitat destruction. Nests, often fairly low in the main fork of a tree, are relatively easy to access and thus have been historically compromised by egg and firewood collectors regularly. The decline has been the greatest in the western half of the range, with extinction in many European countries (France, Italy, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Albania, Moldova, Romania) and its entire breeding range in northwest Africa (Morocco and Algeria). They no longer nest in Israel. Turkey holds the second largest population of this species in the Western Palearctic. Despite the recent demographic bottleneck, this population has maintained moderate levels of genetic diversity, with no significant genetic structuring indicating that this is a single meta-population connected by frequent dispersal. More recently, protection and deliberate feeding schemes have allowed some local recoveries in numbers, particularly in Spain, where numbers increased to about 1,000 pairs by 1992 after an earlier decline to 200 pairs in 1970. This colony have now spread its breeding grounds to Portugal. Elsewhere in Europe, very small but increasing numbers breed in Bulgaria and Greece, and a re-introduction scheme is under way in France. Trends in the small populations in Ukraine (Crimea) and European Russia, and in Asian populations, are not well recorded. In the former USSR, it is still threatened by illegal capture for zoos, and in Tibet by rodenticides. It is a regular winter visitor around the coastal areas of Pakistan in small numbers. As of the turn of the 21st century, the worldwide population of cinereous vultures is estimated at 4500–5000 individuals.

Culture and mythology.

The Hebrew word for "eagle" is also used for the Cinereous vulture. As such, biblical passages alluding to eagles might actually be referring to this bird instead.

The cinereous vulture ("Aegypius monachus") is a large raptorial bird that is distributed through much of temperate Eurasia. It is also known as the black vulture, monk vulture, or Eurasian black vulture. It is a member of the family Accipitridae, which also includes many other diurnal raptors such as kites, buzzards and harriers. It is one of the two largest Old World vultures, attaining a maximum size of 14 kg, (roughly 30 lbs), 1.2 m long (almost 4 ft) and 3.1 m (a bit over 10 ft) across the wings.

Der Mönchsgeier oder Kuttengeier ("Aegypius monachus") ist eine Vogelart, die zu den Altweltgeiern (Aegypiinae) gehört. Mit einer Länge von über einem Meter handelt es sich um den neben dem etwa gleich großen Bartgeier größten Greifvogel Europas. Er brütet vorwiegend in wilden Bergwäldern und kommt in Europa fast nur noch auf der Iberischen Halbinsel, auf Mallorca und auf der südlichen Balkanhalbinsel vor. Man unterscheidet keine Unterarten.


Overview.

Phylogenetically, they may be sister to the Iguanidae, and have a similar appearance. Agamids usually have well-developed, strong legs. Their tails cannot be shed and regenerated like those of geckos (and several other families such as skinks), though a certain amount of regeneration is observed in some. Many agamid species are capable of limited change of their colours to regulate their body temperature. In some species, males are more brightly coloured than females, and colours play a part in signaling and reproductive behaviours. Although agamids generally inhabit warm environments, ranging from hot deserts to tropical rainforests, at least one species, the mountain dragon, is found in cooler regions. They are particularly diverse in Australia.  This group of lizards includes some more popularly known, such as the domesticated bearded dragon, Chinese water dragon and "Uromastyx" species.  One of the key distinguishing features of the agamids is their teeth, which are borne on the outer rim of their mouths (acrodonts), rather than on the inner side of their jaws (pleurodonts). This feature is shared with the chameleons, but is otherwise unusual among lizards. Agamid lizards are generally diurnal, with good vision, and include a number of arboreal species, in addition to ground- and rock-dwellers. They generally feed on insects and other arthropods (such as spiders), although some larger species may include small reptiles or mammals, nestling birds, flowers or other vegetable matter in their diets. The great majority of agamid species are oviparous.

Systematics and distribution.

Very few studies of the Agamidae have been conducted. The first comprehensive assessment was by Moody (1980) followed by a more inclusive assessment by Frost and Etheridge (1989). Subsequent studies were based on mitochondrial DNA loci by Macey "et al." (2000) and Honda "et al." (2000) and also by sampling across the Agamidae by Joger (1991). Few other studies focused on clades within the family, and the Agamidae have not been as well investigated as the Iguanidae.  The agamids show a curious distribution. They are found over much of the Old World, including continental Africa, Australia, southern Asia, and sparsely in warmer regions of Europe. They are, however, absent from Madagascar and the New World. The distribution is the opposite of that of the iguanids, which are found in just these areas but absent in areas where agamids are found. A similar faunal divide is found in between the boas and pythons.

Subfamilies.

Among the Agamidae, six subfamilies are generally recognized:  The chameleons of the sister family Chamaeleonidae are sometimes discussed as subfamily Chamaeleoninae and subfamily Agaminae (referring to Agamidae, not the Agaminae mentioned above).

Agamidae is a family of over 300 species of iguanian lizards indigenous to Africa, Asia, Australia, and a few in Southern Europe. Many species are commonly called dragons or dragon lizards.

Die Agamen (Agamidae Gray, 1827) bilden eine Familie innerhalb der Schuppenkriechtiere. Sie bewohnen einen großen Teil der Alten Welt sowie Australien und hier die verschiedensten Lebensräume. Das zeigt die große Anpassungsfähigkeit der Agamen. Außer in sehr kühlen Bereichen und im Wasser findet man sie so ziemlich überall in dem bezeichneten Gebiet. Sie bewohnen Steppenlandschaften ebenso wie Wälder und Wüstengebiete.


History.

The philanthropist and the founding.

On his death in 1873, Johns Hopkins, a Quaker entrepreneur, abolitionist and childless bachelor, bequeathed $7 million (approximately $ million today adjusted for consumer price inflation) to fund a hospital and university in Baltimore, Maryland. At the time, this donation, generated primarily from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, was the largest philanthropic gift in the history of the United States, and endowment was then the largest in America.  The first name of philanthropist Johns Hopkins comes from the surname of his great-grandmother, Margaret Johns, who married Gerard Hopkins. They named their son Johns Hopkins, who named his own son Samuel Hopkins. Samuel named one

Early years and Daniel Coit Gilman.

The trustees worked alongside four notable university presidents – Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, Andrew D. White of Cornell, Noah Porter of Yale College and James B. Angell of Michigan. They each vouched for Daniel Coit Gilman to lead the new University and he became the university's first president. Gilman, a Yale-educated scholar, had been serving as president of the University of California, Berkeley prior to this appointment. In preparation for the university's founding, Gilman visited University of Freiburg and other German

Move to Homewood and early 20th century history.

In the early 20th century the university outgrew its buildings and the trustees began to search for a new home. Developing Clifton for the university was too costly, and of the estate had to be sold to the city as public park. A solution was achieved by a team of prominent locals who acquired the estate in north Baltimore known as Homewood. On February 22, 1902, this land was formally transferred to the university. The flagship building, Gilman Hall, was completed in 1915. The School of Engineering relocated in Fall of 1914 and the School of Arts and Sciences followed in 1916. These decades saw

The post-war era.

Since 1942, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) has served as a major governmental defense contractor. In tandem with on-campus research, Johns Hopkins has every year since 1979 had the

In the twenty-first century.

The early decades of the 21st century saw expansion across the university's institutions in both physical and population sizes. Notably, a planned 88-acre expansion to the medical campus began in 2013. Completed construction on the Homewood campus has included a new biomedical engineering building in the Johns Hopkins University Department of Biomedical Engineering, a new library, a new biology wing, an extensive renovation of the flagship Gilman Hall, and the reconstruction of the main university entrance.  These years also brought about the rapid development of the university's professional schools of education and business. From 1999 until 2007, these disciplines had been joined together within the School of Professional Studies

Civil rights.

African-Americans.

Hopkins was a prominent abolitionist who supported Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. After his death, reports said his conviction was a decisive factor in enrolling Hopkins' first African-American student, Kelly Miller, a graduate student in physics, astronomy and mathematics. As time passed, the university adopted a "separate but

Women.

Hopkins' most well-known battle for women's rights was the one led by daughters of trustees of the university; Mary E. Garrett, M. Carey Thomas, Mamie Gwinn, Elizabeth King, and Julia Rogers. They donated and raised the funds needed to open the medical school, and required Hopkins' officials to agree to their stipulation that women would be admitted. The nursing school opened in 1889 and

Freedom of speech.

On September 5, 2013 cryptographer and Johns Hopkins university professor Matthew Green posted a blog, entitled "On the NSA", in which he contributed to the ongoing debate regarding the role of NIST and NSA in formulating U.S. cryptography standards. On September 9, 2013 Green received a take-down request for

Privatized policing.

Beginning April 3, 2019, protesters sat-in to protest the university's formation of a private campus police force. The protesters were arrested after a month long standoff, but the university chose not to press charges.

Campuses.

Homewood.

The first campus was located on Howard Street. Eventually, they relocated to Homewood, in northern Baltimore, the estate of Charles Carroll, son of the oldest surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll's Homewood House is considered one of the finest examples

East Baltimore.

Collectively known as Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (JHMI) campus, the East Baltimore facility occupies several city

Laurel, Maryland.

Akin to the Washington, D.C. campus for the School of Arts &

Organization.

The Johns Hopkins entity is structured as two corporations, the university and The Johns Hopkins Health System, formed in 1986. The President is JHU's chief executive officer, and the university is organized into nine academic divisions.  JHU's bylaws specify a Board of Trustees of between 18 and

Academics.

The full-time, four-year undergraduate program is "most selective" with low transfer-in and a high graduate co-existence. The cost of attendance per year is $60,820; however, the average need met is 99%. The university is one of fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities (AAU); it is also a member of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) and the Universities Research Association (URA).

Rankings.

JHU's undergraduate education is ranked 10th among U.S. "national universities" by "U.S. News & World Report" for 2020. For medical research "U.S. News & World Report" ranks the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2020 for 2nd in the U.S. and the Bloomberg School of Public Health 1st. The School of Nursing was ranked 1st nationally for master's degrees. The "QS Top Universities" ranked Johns Hopkins University No. 5 in the world for

Undergraduate admissions.

The university's undergraduate programs are most selective: in 2020, the Office of Admissions accepted about 7% of its 27,256 Regular Decision applicants. In 2016, 95% of admitted students graduated in the top tenth of their high school class and the inter-quartile range on the SAT composite score was 1440–1560. In 2013, 96.8% of freshmen returned after the first year and 88% of students graduated in 4 years. The average

Libraries.

The Johns Hopkins University Library system houses more than 3.6 million volumes and includes ten main divisions across the university's campuses. The largest segment of this system is the Sheridan Libraries, encompassing the Milton S. Eisenhower Library (the main library of the Homewood campus), the Brody Learning Commons, the Hutzler Reading Room ("The Hut") in Gilman Hall, the John Work Garrett Library at Evergreen House, and the George Peabody Library at the Peabody Institute campus.  The

Johns Hopkins University Press.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is the publishing division of the Johns Hopkins University. It was founded in 1878 and holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously running university press in the United States. To date the Press has published more than 6,000 titles and currently publishes 65 scholarly

Degrees offered.

Johns Hopkins offers a number of degrees in various undergraduate majors leading to the BA and BS and various majors leading to the MA,

Research.

The opportunity to participate in important research is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Hopkins' undergraduate education. About 80 percent of undergraduates perform independent research, often alongside top researchers. In FY 2013, Johns Hopkins received $2.2 billion in federal research grants—more than any other U.S. university for the 35th consecutive year. Johns Hopkins has had seventy-seven members of the Institute of Medicine, forty-three Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators, seventeen members of the National Academy of Engineering, and sixty-two members of the National Academy of Sciences. As of October 2019, 39 Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with the university as alumni, faculty members or researchers, with the most recent winners being Gregg Semenza and William G. Kaelin.  Between 1999 and 2009, Johns Hopkins was among the most cited institutions in the world. It attracted nearly 1,222,166 citations and produced 54,022 papers under its name, ranking No. 3 globally (after Harvard University and the Max Planck Society) in the number of "total" citations published in Thomson Reuters-indexed journals over 22 fields in America. In FY 2000, Johns Hopkins received $95.4 million in research grants from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), making it the leading

Student life.

Charles Village, the region of North Baltimore surrounding the university, has undergone several restoration projects, and the university has gradually bought the property around the school for additional student housing and dormitories. "The Charles Village Project", completed in 2008, brought new commercial spaces to the neighborhood. The project included Charles Commons, a new, modern residence hall that includes popular retail franchises. In 2015, the University began development of new commercial properties, including a modern upperclassmen apartment complex, restaurants and eateries, and a CVS retail store.  Hopkins invested in improving campus life with an arts complex in 2001, the Mattin Center, and a three-story sports facility, the O'Connor Recreation Center. The large on-campus dining facilities at Homewood were renovated in the summer of 2006.  Quality of life is enriched by the proximity of neighboring academic institutions, including Loyola College, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), UMBC, Goucher College, and Towson University, as well as the nearby neighborhoods of Hampden, the Inner Harbor, Fells Point, and Mount Vernon.

Greek life.

Greek life came to Hopkins in 1876 with the charter of fraternity Beta Theta Pi, which still exists on campus today. Since, Johns Hopkins has become home to nine sororities and 11 fraternities. Of the nine sororities, five belong to the National Panhellenic Conference and four to the Multicultural Greek Council Sororities. Of the fraternities, all 11 belong to the Inter-Fraternity Council.

Spring Fair.

Spring Fair has been a Johns Hopkins tradition since 1972 and has since grown to be the largest student-run festival in the country. Popular among Hopkins students and Baltimore inhabitants alike, Spring Fair features carnival rides, vendors, food

Traditions.

While it has been speculated that Johns Hopkins has relatively few traditions for a school of its age and that many past traditions have been forgotten, a handful of myths and customs are ubiquitous knowledge among the community. One such long-standing myth surrounds the university seal that is

Housing.

Living on campus is typically required for first- and second-year undergraduates. Freshman housing is centered around Freshman Quad, which consists of three residence hall complexes: The two Alumni Memorial Residences (AMR I and AMR II) plus Buildings A and B. The AMR dormitories are each divided into "houses", subunits named for figures from the university's early history. Freshmen are also housed in Wolman Hall and in certain wings

Athletics.

Athletic teams are called Blue Jays. Even though sable and gold are used for academic robes, the university's athletic colors are Columbia blue (PMS 284) and black. Hopkins celebrates Homecoming in the spring to coincide with the height of the lacrosse season. The Men's and Women's lacrosse teams are in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Other teams are in Division III and participate in the Centennial Conference. JHU is also home to the Lacrosse Museum and National Hall of Fame, maintained by US Lacrosse.

Men's lacrosse.

The school's most prominent team is its men's lacrosse team. The team has won 44 national titles – nine Division I (2007, 2005, 1987, 1985, 1984, 1980, 1979, 1978, 1974), 29 United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association (USILA), and six Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association (ILA) titles. Hopkins' primary national rivals are Princeton University, Syracuse University, and the University of

Women's lacrosse.

The women's team is a member of the Big Ten Conference and a former member of the American Lacrosse Conference (ALC). The Lady Blue Jays were ranked number 18 in the 2015 Inside Lacrosse Women's DI Media Poll. They ranked number 8

Other teams.

Hopkins has notable Division III Athletic teams. JHU Men's Swimming won three consecutive NCAA Championships in 1977, 1978, and 1979. In 2009–2010, Hopkins won 8 Centennial Conference titles in Women's Cross Country, Women's Track & Field, Baseball, Men's and Women's Soccer, Football, and Men's and Women's Tennis. The Women's Cross Country team became the first women's team at Hopkins to achieve a #1 National ranking. In 2006–2007 teams won Centennial Conference titles in Baseball, Men's and Women's Soccer, Men's and Women's Tennis and Men's Basketball. Women's soccer won their Centennial Conference title for 7 consecutive years from 2005–2011. In the 2013–2014 school year, Hopkins earned 12 Centennial Conference titles, most notably from the cross country and track & field teams, which accounted for six.  Hopkins has an

Noted people.

Nobel laureates.

, there have been 39 Nobel Laureates who either attended the university as undergraduate or graduate students, or were faculty members. Woodrow Wilson, who received his PhD from Johns Hopkins in 1886, was Hopkins' first affiliated laureate, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. Twenty-three laureates were faculty members, five earned PhDs, eight earned M.D.s, and Francis Peyton Rous and Martin Rodbell earned undergraduate degrees.  As of October 2019, eighteen Johns Hopkins laureates have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Four Nobel Prizes were shared by Johns Hopkins laureates: George Minot

Scandals.

Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johns Hopkins University and the Rockefeller Foundation are currently the subject of a $1 billion lawsuit from Guatemala for "roles in a 1940s U.S. government experiment that infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis. A previous suit against the United States government was dismissed in 2011 for the Guatemala syphilis experiments when a judge determined that the U.S. government could not be held liable for actions committed outside of the U.S.

The Johns Hopkins University is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, the university was named for its first benefactor, the American entrepreneur, abolitionist, and philanthropist Johns Hopkins. His $7 million bequest (approximately $ million in today's dollars)—of which half financed the establishment of Johns Hopkins Hospital—was the largest philanthropic gift in the history of the United States up to that time. Daniel Coit Gilman, who was inaugurated as the institution's first president on February 22, 1876, led the university to revolutionize higher education in the U.S. by integrating teaching and research. Adopting the concept of a graduate school from Germany's historic Heidelberg University, Johns Hopkins University is considered the first research university in the United States. Over the course of several decades, the university has led all U.S. universities in annual research and development expenditures. In fiscal year 2016, Johns Hopkins spent nearly $2.5 billion on research. The university has additional graduate campuses in Italy, China, and Washington, D.C., in addition to its main campus in Baltimore, Maryland.

Die Johns Hopkins University (JHU, ) ist eine private Universität in Baltimore im US-Bundesstaat Maryland. Die Spitzenuniversität, die Forschung und Lehre nach dem Vorbild deutscher Universitäten, insbesondere nach dem Modell der Universität Heidelberg, vereinte, wurde am 22. Februar 1876 gegründet. Ihren Namen erhielt sie von dem Geschäftsmann Johns Hopkins, der zur Gründung der Universität und des Johns Hopkins Hospital bei seinem Tod 1873 ein Erbe von sieben Millionen US-Dollar hinterließ.


Structure.

Amylose is made up of α(1→4) bound glucose molecules. The carbon atoms on glucose are numbered, starting at the aldehyde (C=O) carbon, so, in amylose, the 1-carbon on one glucose molecule is linked to the 4-carbon on the next glucose molecule (α(1→4) bonds). The structural formula of amylose is pictured at right. The number of repeated glucose subunits (n) is usually in the range of 300 to 3000, but can be many thousands.  There are three main forms of amylose chains can take. It can exist in a disordered amorphous conformation or two different helical forms. It can bind with itself in a double helix (A or B form), or it can bind with another hydrophobic guest molecule such as iodine, a fatty acid, or an aromatic compound. This is known as the V form and is how amylopectin binds to amylose to form starch. Within this group, there are many different variations. Each is notated with V and then a subscript indicating the number of glucose units per turn. The most common is the V form, which has six glucose units a turn. V and possibly V forms exist as well. These provide an even larger space for the guest molecule to bind.  This linear structure can have some rotation around the phi and psi angles, but for the most part bound glucose ring oxygens lie on one side of the structure. The α(1→4) structure promotes the formation of a helix structure, making it possible for hydrogen bonds to form between the oxygen atoms bound at the 2-carbon of one glucose molecule and the 3-carbon of the next glucose molecule.  Fiber X-ray diffraction analysis coupled with computer-based structure refinement has found A-, B-, and C- polymorphs of amylose. Each form corresponds to either the A-, the B-, or the C- starch forms. A- and B- structures have different helical crystal structures and water contents, whereas the C- structure is a mixture of A- and B- unit cells, resulting in an intermediate packing density between the two forms.

Physical properties.

Because the long linear chains of amylose more readily crystallize than amylopectin (which has short, highly branched chains), high-amylose starch is more resistant to digestion. Unlike amylopectin, amylose is not soluble in cold water. It also reduces the crystallinity of amylopectin and how easily water can infiltrate the starch. The higher the amylose content, the less expansion potential and the lower the gel strength for the same starch concentration. This can be countered partially by increasing the granule size.

Function.

Amylose is important in plant energy storage. It is less readily digested than amylopectin; however, because of its helical structure, it takes up less space compared to amylopectin. As a result, it is the preferred starch for storage in plants. It makes up about 30% of the stored starch in plants, though the specific percentage varies by species and variety.  The digestive enzyme α-amylase is responsible for the breakdown of the starch molecule into maltotriose and maltose, which can be used as sources of energy.  Amylose is also an important thickener, water binder, emulsion stabilizer, and gelling agent in both industrial and food-based contexts. Loose helical amylose chains have a hydrophobic interior that can bind to hydrophobic molecules such as lipids and aromatic compounds. The one problem with this is that, when it crystallizes or associates, it can lose some stability, often releasing water in the process (syneresis). When amylose concentration is increased, gel stickiness decreases but gel firmness increases. When other things including amylopectin bind to amylose, the viscosity can be affected, but incorporating κ-carrageenan, alginate, xanthan gum, or low-molecular-weight sugars can reduce the loss in stability. The ability to bind water can add substance to food, possibly serving as a fat replacement. For example, amylose is responsible for causing white sauce to thicken, but, upon cooling, some separation between the solid and the water will occur. Amylose is known for its good film forming properties, hence carrying a potential importance in food packaging. Excellent film forming behavior of amylose was studied already in 1950s. Amylose films are better for both barrier properties and mechanical properties when compared to the amylopectin films.  In a laboratory setting, it can act as a marker. Iodine molecules fit neatly inside the helical structure of amylose, binding with the starch polymer that absorbs certain known wavelengths of light. Hence, a common test is the iodine test for starch. Mix starch with a small amount of yellow iodine solution. In the presence of amylose, a blue-black color will be observed. The intensity of the color can be tested with a colorimeter, using a red filter to discern the concentration of starch present in the solution. It is also possible to use starch as an indicator in titrations involving iodine reduction. It is also used in amylose magnetic beads and resin to separate maltose-binding protein

Recent studies.

High-amylose varieties of rice, the less sticky long-grain rice, have a much lower glycemic load, which could be beneficial for diabetics.  Researchers have identified the Granule Bound Starch Synthase (GBSS) as the enzyme that specifically elongates amylose during starch biosynthesis in plants. The waxy locus in maize encodes for the GBSS protein. Mutants lacking the GBSS protein produce starch containing only amylopectin, such as in waxy corn. In Arabidopsis leaves, another gene, encoding the Protein Targeting to STarch (PTST) protein, is required in addition to GBSS for amylose synthesis. Mutants lacking either protein produce starch without amylose. GM potato cultivar Amflora by BASF Plant Science was developed to not produce amylose.

Amylose is a polysaccharide made of α--glucose units, bonded to each other through α(1→4) glycosidic bonds. It is one of the two components of starch, making up approximately 20-30%. Because of its tightly packed helical structure, amylose is more resistant to digestion than other starch molecules and is therefore an important form of resistant starch.

Amylose (griechisch "amylon", ‚Stärkemehl‘) ist mit einem Massenanteil von etwa 20–30 Prozent neben Amylopektin Bestandteil der natürlichen, pflanzlichen Stärke, beispielsweise aus Kartoffel, Weizen oder Mais.


Development and design.

ENIAC's design and construction was financed by the United States Army, Ordnance Corps, Research and Development Command, led by Major General Gladeon M. Barnes. The total cost was about $487,000,. The construction contract was signed on June 5, 1943; work on the computer began in secret at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering the following month, under the code name "Project PX", with John Grist Brainerd as principal investigator. Herman H. Goldstine persuaded the Army to fund the project, which put him in charge to oversee it for them.  ENIAC was designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania, U.S. The team of design engineers assisting the development included Robert F. Shaw (function tables), Jeffrey Chuan Chu (divider/square-rooter), Thomas Kite Sharpless (master programmer), Frank Mural (master programmer), Arthur Burks (multiplier), Harry Huskey (reader/printer) and Jack Davis (accumulators). Significant development work was undertaken by the ENIAC women programmers. In 1946, the researchers resigned from the University of Pennsylvania and formed the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation.  ENIAC was a modular computer, composed of individual panels to perform different functions. Twenty of these modules were accumulators that could not only add and subtract, but hold a ten-digit decimal number in memory. Numbers were passed between these units across several general-purpose buses (or "trays", as they were called). In order to achieve its high speed, the panels had to send and receive numbers, compute, save the answer and trigger the next operation, all without any moving parts. Key to its versatility was the ability to "branch"; it could trigger different operations, depending on the sign of a computed result.

Components.

By the end of its operation in 1956, ENIAC contained 20,000 vacuum tubes; 7,200 crystal diodes; 1,500 relays; 70,000 resistors; 10,000 capacitors; and approximately 5,000,000 hand-soldered joints. It weighed more than, was roughly in size, occupied and consumed 150 kW of electricity. This power requirement led to the rumor that whenever the computer was switched on, lights in Philadelphia dimmed. Input was possible from an IBM card reader and an IBM card punch was used for output. These cards could be used to produce printed output offline using an IBM accounting machine, such as the IBM 405. While ENIAC had no system to store memory in its inception, these punch cards could be used for external memory storage. In 1953, a 100-word magnetic-core memory built by the Burroughs Corporation was added to ENIAC.  ENIAC used ten-position ring counters to store digits; each digit required 36 vacuum tubes, 10 of which were the dual triodes making up the flip-flops of the ring counter. Arithmetic was performed by "counting" pulses with the ring counters and generating carry pulses if the counter "wrapped around", the idea being to electronically emulate the operation of the digit wheels of a mechanical adding machine.  ENIAC had 20 ten-digit signed accumulators, which used ten's complement representation and could perform 5,000 simple addition or subtraction operations between any of them and a source (e.g., another accumulator or a constant transmitter) per second. It was possible to connect several accumulators to run simultaneously, so the peak speed of operation was potentially much higher, due to parallel operation.  It was possible to wire the carry of one accumulator into another accumulator to perform arithmetic with double the precision, but the accumulator carry circuit timing prevented the wiring of three or more for even higher precision. ENIAC used four of the accumulators (controlled by a special multiplier unit) to perform up to 385 multiplication operations per second; five of the accumulators were controlled by a special divider/square-rooter unit to perform up to 40 division operations per second or three square root operations per second.  The other nine units in ENIAC were the initiating unit (started and stopped the machine), the cycling unit (used for synchronizing the other units), the master programmer (controlled loop sequencing), the reader (controlled an IBM punch-card reader), the printer (controlled an IBM card punch), the constant transmitter, and three function tables.

Operation times.

The references by Rojas and Hashagen (or Wilkes) give more details about the times for operations, which differ somewhat from those stated above.  The basic machine cycle was 200 microseconds (20 cycles of the 100 kHz clock in the cycling unit), or 5,000 cycles per second for operations on the 10-digit numbers. In one of these cycles, ENIAC could write a number to a register, read a number from a register, or add/subtract two numbers.  A multiplication of a 10-digit number by a "d"-digit number (for "d" up to 10) took "d"+4 cycles, so a 10- by 10-digit multiplication took 14 cycles, or 2,800 microseconds—a rate of 357 per second. If one of the numbers had fewer than 10 digits, the operation was faster.  Division and square roots took 13("d"+1) cycles, where "d" is the number of digits in the result (quotient or square root). So a division or square root took up to 143 cycles, or 28,600 microseconds—a rate of 35 per second. (Wilkes 1956:20 states that a division with a 10 digit quotient required 6 milliseconds.) If the result had fewer than ten digits, it was obtained faster.

Reliability.

ENIAC used common octal-base radio tubes of the day; the decimal accumulators were made of 6SN7 flip-flops, while 6L7s, 6SJ7s, 6SA7s and 6AC7s were used in logic functions. Numerous 6L6s and 6V6s served as line drivers to drive pulses through cables between rack assemblies.  Several tubes burned out almost every day, leaving ENIAC nonfunctional about half the time. Special high-reliability tubes were not available until 1948. Most of these failures, however, occurred during the warm-up and cool-down periods, when the tube heaters and cathodes were under the most thermal stress. Engineers reduced ENIAC's tube failures to the more acceptable rate of one tube every two days. According to an interview in 1989 with Eckert, "We had a tube fail about every two days and we could locate the problem within 15 minutes." In 1954, the longest continuous period of operation without a failure was 116 hours—close to five days.

Programming.

ENIAC could be programmed to perform complex sequences of operations, including loops, branches, and subroutines. However, instead of the stored-program computers that exist today, ENIAC was just a large collection of arithmetic machines, which originally had programs set up into the machine by a combination of plugboard wiring and three portable function tables (containing 1200 ten-way switches each). The task of taking a problem and mapping it onto the machine was complex, and usually took weeks. Due to the complexity of mapping programs onto the machine, programs were only changed after huge numbers of tests of the current program. After the program was figured out on paper, the process of getting the program into ENIAC by manipulating its switches and cables could take days. This was followed by a period of verification and debugging, aided by the ability to execute the program step by step. A programming tutorial for the modulo function using an ENIAC simulator gives an impression of what a program on the ENIAC looked like.  ENIAC's six primary programmers, Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman, not only determined how to input ENIAC programs, but also developed an understanding of ENIAC's inner workings. The programmers were often able to narrow bugs down to an individual failed tube which could be pointed to for replacement by a technician.

Programmers.

Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Meltzer, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman were the first programmers of the ENIAC. They were not, as computer scientist and historian Kathryn Kleiman was once told, "refrigerator ladies", i.e., models posing in front of the machine for press photography. Nevertheless, some of the women did not receive recognition for their work on the ENIAC in their lifetimes.  These early programmers were drawn from a group of about two hundred women employed as computers at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. The job of computers was to produce the numeric result of mathematical formulas needed for a scientific study, or an engineering project. They usually did so with a mechanical calculator. This was one of the few technical job categories available to women at that time. Betty Holberton (née Snyder) continued on to help write the first generative programming system (SORT/MERGE) and help design the first commercial electronic computers, the UNIVAC and the BINAC, alongside Jean Jennings. McNulty developed the use of subroutines in order to help increase ENIAC's computational capability.  Herman Goldstine selected the programmers, whom he called operators, from the computers who had been calculating ballistics tables with mechanical desk calculators, and a differential analyzer prior to and during the development of ENIAC. Under Herman and Adele Goldstine's direction, the computers studied ENIAC's blueprints and physical structure to determine how to manipulate its switches and cables, as programming languages did not yet exist. Though contemporaries considered programming a clerical task and did not publicly recognize the programmers' effect on the successful operation and announcement of ENIAC, McNulty, Jennings, Snyder, Wescoff, Bilas, and Lichterman have since been recognized for their contributions to computing.  The "programmer" and "operator" job titles were not originally considered professions suitable for women. The labor shortage created by World War II helped enable the entry of women into the field. However, the field was not viewed as prestigious, and bringing in women was viewed as a way to free men up for more skilled labor. For example, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics said in 1942, "It is felt that enough greater return is obtained by freeing the engineers from calculating detail to overcome any increased expenses in the computers' salaries. The engineers admit themselves that the girl computers do the work more rapidly and accurately than they would. This is due in large measure to the feeling among the engineers that their college and industrial experience is being wasted and thwarted by mere repetitive calculation".  Following the initial six programmers, an expanded team of a hundred scientists was recruited to continue work on the ENIAC. Among these were several women, including Gloria Ruth Gordon. Adele Goldstine wrote the original technical description of the ENIAC.

Role in the hydrogen bomb.

Although the Ballistic Research Laboratory was the sponsor of ENIAC, one year into this three-year project John von Neumann, a mathematician working on the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos National Laboratory, became aware of this computer. "Los Alamos" subsequently became so involved with ENIAC that the first test problem run consisted of computations for the hydrogen bomb, not artillery tables. The input/output for this test was one million cards.

Role in development of the Monte Carlo methods.

Related to ENIAC's role in the hydrogen bomb was its role in the Monte Carlo method becoming popular. Scientists involved in the original nuclear bomb development used massive groups of people doing huge numbers of calculations ("computers" in the terminology of the time) to investigate the distance that neutrons would likely travel through various materials. John von Neumann and Stanislaw Ulam realized the speed of ENIAC would allow these calculations to be done much more quickly. The success of this project showed the value of Monte Carlo methods in science.

Later developments.

A press conference was held on February 1, 1946, and the completed machine was announced to the public the evening of February 14, 1946, featuring demonstrations of its capabilities. Elizabeth Snyder and Betty Jean Jennings were responsible for developing the demonstration trajectory program, although Herman and Adele Goldstine took credit for it. The machine was formally dedicated the next day at the University of Pennsylvania. None of the women involved in programming the machine or creating the demonstration were invited to the formal dedication nor to the celebratory dinner held afterwards.  The original contract amount was $61,700; the final cost was almost $500,000 (approximately $ today). It was formally accepted by the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in July 1946. ENIAC was shut down on November 9, 1946 for a refurbishment and a memory upgrade, and was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland in 1947. There, on July 29, 1947, it was turned on and was in continuous operation until 11:45 p.m. on October 2, 1955.

Role in the development of the EDVAC.

A few months after ENIAC's unveiling in the summer of 1946, as part of "an extraordinary effort to jump-start research in the field", the Pentagon invited "the top people in electronics and mathematics from the United States and Great Britain" to a series of forty-eight lectures given in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; all together called "The Theory and Techniques for Design of Digital Computers"—more often named the Moore School Lectures. Half of these lectures were given by the inventors of ENIAC.  ENIAC was a one-of-a-kind design and was never repeated. The freeze on design in 1943 meant that the computer design would lack some innovations that soon became well-developed, notably the ability to store a program. Eckert and Mauchly started work on a new design, to be later called the EDVAC, which would be both simpler and more powerful. In particular, in 1944 Eckert wrote his description of a memory unit (the mercury delay line) which would hold both the data and the program. John von Neumann, who was consulting for the Moore School on the EDVAC, sat in on the Moore School meetings at which the stored program concept was elaborated. Von Neumann wrote up an incomplete set of notes ("First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC") which were intended to be used as an internal memorandum—describing, elaborating, and couching in formal logical language the ideas developed in the meetings. ENIAC administrator and security officer Herman Goldstine distributed copies of this "First Draft" to a number of government and educational institutions, spurring widespread interest in the construction of a new generation of electronic computing machines, including Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) at Cambridge University, England and SEAC at the U.S. Bureau of Standards.

Improvements.

A number of improvements were made to ENIAC after 1947, including a primitive read-only stored programming mechanism using the function tables as program ROM, after which programming was done by setting the switches. The idea have been worked out in several variants by Richard Clippinger and his group, on the one hand, and the Goldstines, on the other, and it was included in the ENIAC patent. Clippinger consulted with von Neumann on what instruction set to implement. Clippinger had thought of a three-address architecture while von Neumann proposed a one-address architecture because it was simpler to implement. Three digits of one accumulator (#6) were used as the program counter, another accumulator (#15) was used as the main accumulator, a third accumulator (#8) was used as the address pointer for reading data from the function tables, and most of the other accumulators (1–5, 7, 9–14, 17–19) were used for data memory.  In March 1948 the converter unit was installed, which made possible programming through the reader from standard IBM cards. The "first production run" of the new coding techniques on the Monte Carlo problem followed in April. After ENIAC's move to Aberdeen, a register panel for memory was also constructed, but it did not work. A small master control unit to turn the machine on and off was also added.  The programming of the stored program for ENIAC was done by Betty Jennings, Clippinger, Adele Goldstine and others. It was first demonstrated as a stored-program computer in April 1948, running a program by Adele Goldstine for John von Neumann. This modification reduced the speed of ENIAC by a factor of 6 and eliminated the ability of parallel computation, but as it also reduced the reprogramming time to hours instead of days, it was considered well worth the loss of performance. Also analysis had shown that due to differences between the electronic speed of computation and the electromechanical speed of input/output, almost any real-world problem was completely I/O bound, even without making use of the original machine's parallelism. Most computations would still be I/O bound, even after the speed reduction imposed by this modification.  Early in 1952, a high-speed shifter was added, which improved the speed for shifting by a factor of five. In July 1953, a 100-word expansion core memory was added to the system, using binary-coded decimal, excess-3 number representation. To support this expansion memory, ENIAC was equipped with a new Function Table selector, a memory address selector, pulse-shaping circuits, and three new orders were added to the programming mechanism.

Comparison with other early computers.

Mechanical computing machines have been around since Archimedes' time (see: Antikythera mechanism), but the 1930s and 1940s are considered the beginning of the modern computer era.  ENIAC was, like the IBM Harvard Mark I and the German Z3, able to run an arbitrary sequence of mathematical operations, but did not read them from a tape. Like the British Colossus, it was programmed by plugboard and switches. ENIAC combined full, Turing-complete programmability with electronic speed. The Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC), ENIAC, and Colossus all used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes). ENIAC's registers performed decimal arithmetic, rather than binary arithmetic like the Z3, the ABC and Colossus.  Like the Colossus, ENIAC required rewiring to reprogram until April 1948. In June 1948, the Manchester Baby ran its first program and earned the distinction of first electronic stored-program computer. Though the idea of a stored-program computer with combined memory for program and data was conceived during the development of ENIAC, it was not initially implemented in ENIAC because World War II priorities required the machine to be completed quickly, and ENIAC's 20 storage locations would be too small to hold data and programs.

Public knowledge.

The Z3 and Colossus were developed independently of each other, and of the ABC and ENIAC during World War II. Work on the ABC at Iowa State University was stopped in 1942 after John Atanasoff was called to Washington, D.C., to do physics research for the U.S. Navy, and it was subsequently dismantled. The Z3 was destroyed by the Allied bombing raids of Berlin in 1943. As the ten Colossus machines were part of the UK's war effort their existence remained secret until the late 1970s, although knowledge of their capabilities remained among their UK staff and invited Americans. ENIAC, by contrast, was put through its paces for the press in 1946, "and captured the world's imagination". Older histories of computing may therefore not be comprehensive in their coverage and analysis of this period. All but two of the Colossus machine were dismantled in 1945; the remaining two were used to decrypt Soviet messages by GCHQ until the 1960s. The public demonstration for ENIAC was developed by Snyder and Jennings who created a demo that would calculate the trajectory of a missile in 15 seconds, a task that would have taken several weeks for a human computer.

Patent.

For a variety of reasons (including Mauchly's June 1941 examination of the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, prototyped in 1939 by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry), for ENIAC, applied for in 1947 and granted in 1964, was voided by the 1973 decision of the landmark federal court case "Honeywell v. Sperry Rand", putting the invention of the electronic digital computer in the public domain and providing legal recognition to Atanasoff as the inventor of the first electronic digital computer.

Main ENIAC parts.

The main parts were 40 panels and three portable function tables (named A, B, and C). The layout of the panels was (clockwise, starting with the left wall):  An IBM card reader was attached to Constant Transmitter panel 3 and an IBM card punch was attached to Printer Panel 2. The Portable Function Tables could be connected to Function Table 1, 2, and 3.

Parts on display.

Pieces of ENIAC are held by the following institutions:

Recognition.

ENIAC was named an IEEE Milestone in 1987. In 1996, in honor of the ENIAC's 50th anniversary, The University of Pennsylvania sponsored a project named, ""ENIAC-on-a-Chip"", where a very small silicon computer chip measuring 7.44 mm by 5.29 mm was built with the same functionality as ENIAC. Although this 20 MHz chip was many times faster than ENIAC, it had but a fraction of the speed of its contemporary microprocessors in the late 1990s.  In 1997, the six women who did most of the programming of ENIAC were inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame. The role of the ENIAC programmers is treated in a 2010 documentary film titled "" by LeAnn Erickson. A 2014 documentary short, "The Computers" by Kate McMahon, tells of the story of the six programmers; this was the result of 20 years' research by Kathryn Kleiman and her team as part of the ENIAC Programmers Project.  In 2011, in honor of the 65th anniversary of the ENIAC's unveiling, the city of Philadelphia declared February 15 as ENIAC Day.  The ENIAC celebrated its 70th anniversary on February 15, 2016.

ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose digital computer. It was Turing-complete, and able to solve "a large class of numerical problems" through reprogramming.

Der Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) war der erste elektronische turingmächtige Universalrechner. Er diente der US-Armee zur Berechnung ballistischer Tabellen.


Applications.

Implants can roughly be categorized into groups by application:

Sensory and neurological.

Sensory and neurological implants are used for disorders affecting the major senses and the brain, as well as other neurological disorders. They are predominately used in the treatment of conditions such as cataract, glaucoma, keratoconus, and other visual impairments; otosclerosis and other hearing loss issues, as well as middle ear diseases such as otitis media; and neurological diseases such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, and treatment-resistant depression. Examples include the intraocular lens, intrastromal corneal ring segment, cochlear implant, tympanostomy tube, and neurostimulator.

Cardiovascular.

Cardiovascular medical devices are implanted in cases where the heart, its valves, and the rest of the circulatory system is in disorder. They are used to treat conditions such as heart failure, cardiac arrhythmia, ventricular tachycardia, valvular heart disease, angina pectoris, and atherosclerosis. Examples include the artificial heart, artificial heart valve, implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, cardiac pacemaker, and coronary stent.

Orthopedic.

Orthopaedic implants help alleviate issues with the bones and joints of the body. They're used to treat bone fractures, osteoarthritis, scoliosis, spinal stenosis, and chronic pain. Examples include a wide variety of pins, rods, screws, and plates used to anchor fractured bones while they heal.  Metallic glasses based on magnesium with zinc and calcium addition are tested as the potential metallic biomaterials for biodegradable medical implants.  Patient with orthopaedic implants sometimes need to be put under magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine for detailed musculoskeletal study. Therefore, concerns have been raised regarding the loosening and migration of implant, heating of the implant metal which could cause thermal damage to surrounding tissues, and distortion of the MRI scan that affects the imaging results. A study of orthopaedic implants in 2005 has shown that majority of the orthopaedic implants does not react with magnetic fields under the 1.0 Tesla MRI scanning machine with the exception of external fixator clamps. However, at 7.0 Tesla, several orthopaedic implants would show significant interaction with the MRI magnetic fields, such as heel and fibular implant.

Electric.

Electrical implants are being used to relieve pain and suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. The electric implant is embedded in the neck of patients with rheumatoid arthritics, the implant sends electrical signals to electrodes in the vagus nerve. The application of this device is being tested an alternative to medicating sufferers of rheumatoid arthritis for their lifetime.

Contraception.

Contraceptive implants are primarily used to prevent unintended pregnancy and treat conditions such as non-pathological forms of menorrhagia. Examples include copper- and hormone-based intrauterine devices.

Cosmetic.

Cosmetic implants — often prosthetics — attempt to bring some portion of the body back to an acceptable aesthetic norm. They are used as a follow-up to mastectomy due to breast cancer, for correcting some forms of disfigurement, and modifying aspects of the body (as in buttock augmentation and chin augmentation). Examples include the breast implant, nose prosthesis, ocular prosthesis, and injectable filler.

Other organs and systems.

Other types of organ dysfunction can occur in the systems of the body, including the gastrointestinal, respiratory, and urological systems. Implants are used in those and other locations to treat conditions such as gastroesophageal reflux disease, gastroparesis, respiratory failure, sleep apnea, urinary and fecal incontinence, and erectile dysfunction. Examples include the LINX, implantable gastric stimulator, diaphragmatic/phrenic nerve stimulator, neurostimulator, surgical mesh, artificial urinary sphincter and penile implant.

Classification.

United States classification.

Medical devices are classified by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under three different classes depending on the risks the medical device may impose on the user. According to 21CFR 860.3, Class I devices are considered to pose the least amount of risk to the user and require the least amount of control. Class I devices include simple devices such as arm slings and hand-held surgical instruments. Class II devices are considered to need more regulation than Class I devices and are required to undergo specific requirements before FDA approval. Class II devices include X-ray systems and physiological monitors. Class III devices require the most regulatory controls since the device supports or sustains human life or may not be well tested. Class III devices include replacement heart valves and implanted cerebellar stimulators. Many implants typically fall under Class II and Class III devices.

Materials.

Commonly implanted metals.

A variety of minimally bioreactive metals are implanted. The most commonly implanted form of stainless steel is 316L, and for long-term implants, cobalt-chromium and titanium-based implant alloys are also used. All of these are made passive by a thin layer of oxide on their surface. Stainless steel remains subject to corrosion, and is therefore only used for temporary implants, while the titanium and cobalt-chrome alloys can be implanted indefinitely. A consideration, however, is that metal ions do diffuse outward through the oxide, and end up in the surrounding tissue. Bioreaction to metal implants includes the formation of a small envelope of fibrous tissue. The thickness of this layer is determined by the products being dissolved, and the extent to which the implant moves around within the enclosing tissue. Pure titanium, a preferred implant material, may have only a minimal fibrous encapsulation. Stainless steel, on the other hand, may elicit encapsulation of as much as 2 mm.

Complications.

Under ideal conditions, implants should initiate the desired host response. Ideally, the implant should not cause any undesired reaction from neighboring or distant tissues. However, the interaction between the implant and the tissue surrounding the implant can lead to complications. The process of implantation of medical devices is subjected to the same complications that other invasive medical procedures can have during or after surgery. Common complications include infection, inflammation, and pain. Other complications that can occur include risk of rejection from implant-induced coagulation and allergic foreign body response. Depending on the type of implant, the complications may vary.  When the site of an implant becomes infected during or after surgery, the surrounding tissue becomes infected by microorganisms. Three main categories of infection can occur after operation. Superficial immediate infections are caused by organisms that commonly grow near or on skin. The infection usually occurs at the surgical opening. Deep immediate infection, the second type, occurs immediately after surgery at the site of the implant. Skin-dwelling and airborne bacteria cause deep immediate infection. These bacteria enter the body by attaching to the implant's surface prior to implantation. Though not common, deep immediate infections can also occur from dormant bacteria from previous infections of the tissue at the implantation site that have been activated from being disturbed during the surgery. The last type, late infection, occurs months to years after the implantation of the implant. Late infections are caused by dormant blood-borne bacteria attached to the implant prior to implantation. The blood-borne bacteria colonize on the implant and eventually get released from it. Depending on the type of material used to make the implant, it may be infused with antibiotics to lower the risk of infections during surgery. However, only certain types of materials can be infused with antibiotics, the use of antibiotic-infused implants runs the risk of rejection by the patient since the patient may develop a sensitivity to the antibiotic, and the antibiotic may not work on the bacteria.  Inflammation, a common occurrence after any surgical procedure, is the body's response to tissue damage as a result of trauma, infection, intrusion of foreign materials, or local cell death, or as a part of an immune response. Inflammation starts with the rapid dilation of local capillaries to supply the local tissue with blood. The inflow of blood causes the tissue to become swollen and may cause cell death. The excess blood, or edema, can activate pain receptors at the tissue. The site of the inflammation becomes warm from local disturbances of fluid flow and the increased cellular activity to repair the tissue or remove debris from the site.  Implant-induced coagulation is similar to the coagulation process done within the body to prevent blood loss from damaged blood vessels. However, the coagulation process is triggered from proteins that become attached to the implant surface and lose their shapes. When this occurs, the protein changes conformation and different activation sites become exposed, which may trigger an immune system response where the body attempts to attack the implant to remove the foreign material. The trigger of the immune system response can be accompanied by inflammation. The immune system response may lead to chronic inflammation where the implant is rejected and has to be removed from the body. The immune system may encapsulate the implant as an attempt to remove the foreign material from the site of the tissue by encapsulating the implant in fibrinogen and platelets. The encapsulation of the implant can lead to further complications, since the thick layers of fibrous encapsulation may prevent the implant from performing the desired functions. Bacteria may attack the fibrous encapsulation and become embedded into the fibers. Since the layers of fibers are thick, antibiotics may not be able to reach the bacteria and the bacteria may grow and infect the surrounding tissue. In order to remove the bacteria, the implant would have to be removed. Lastly, the immune system may accept the presence of the implant and repair and remodel the surrounding tissue. Similar responses occur when the body initiates an allergic foreign body response. In the case of an allergic foreign body response, the implant would have to be removed.

Failures.

The many examples of implant failure include rupture of silicone breast implants, hip replacement joints, and artificial heart valves, such as the Bjork–Shiley valve, all of which have caused FDA intervention. The consequences of implant failure depend on the nature of the implant and its position in the body. Thus, heart valve failure is likely to threaten the life of the individual, while breast implant or hip joint failure is less likely to be life-threatening.  Devices implanted directly in the grey matter of the brain produce the highest quality signals, but are prone to scar-tissue build-up, causing the signal to become weaker, or even non-existent, as the body reacts to a foreign object in the brain.  In 2018, "Implant files", an investigation made by ICIJ revealed that medical devices that are unsafe and have not been adequately tested were implanted in patients' bodies. In United Kingdom, Prof Derek Alderson, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, concludes: "All implantable devices should be registered and tracked to monitor efficacy and patient safety in the long-term."

An implant is a medical device manufactured to replace a missing biological structure, support a damaged biological structure, or enhance an existing biological structure. Medical implants are man-made devices, in contrast to a transplant, which is a transplanted biomedical tissue. The surface of implants that contact the body might be made of a biomedical material such as titanium, silicone, or apatite depending on what is the most functional. In some cases implants contain electronics e.g. artificial pacemaker and cochlear implants. Some implants are bioactive, such as subcutaneous drug delivery devices in the form of implantable pills or drug-eluting stents.

Ein Implantat (von lat.'‚hinein‘ und'‚pflanzen‘) ist ein im Körper eingepflanztes künstliches Material, das permanent oder zumindest für einen längeren Zeitraum dort verbleiben soll. Dabei unterscheidet man häufig nach medizinischen, plastischen und funktionellen Implantaten. Im Gegensatz zum Implantat bzw. zur Endoprothese wird eine Exoprothese außen am Körper angebracht.


Taxonomy and systematics.

The Eurasian skylark was described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his "Systema Naturae" and retains its original binomial name of "Alauda arvensis". It is one of the four species placed in the genus "Alauda". The genus name is from the Latin "alauda", "lark". Pliny thought the word was originally of Celtic origin. The specific "arvensis" is also Latin, and means "of the field". The results of a molecular phylogenetic study of the lark family Alaudidae published in 2013 suggested that Eurasian skylark is most closely related to the Oriental skylark "Alauda gulgula".  Formerly, many authorities considered the Japanese skylark as a separate species. It is now usually considered a subspecies of the Eurasian skylark. Alternate names for the Eurasian skylark include northern skylark and sky lark.

Subspecies.

Eleven subspecies are recognized:  Some authorities recognise the subspecies "A. a. scotia" Tschusi, 1903 and "A. a. guillelmi" Witherby, 1921. In the above list "scotia" is included in the nominate subspecies "A. a. arvensis" and "guillelmi" is included in "A. a. sierrae".

Description.

The Eurasian skylark is in length. Like most other larks, the Eurasian skylark is a rather dull-looking species, being mainly brown above and paler below. It has a short blunt crest on the head, which can be raised and lowered. In flight it shows a short tail and short broad wings. The tail and the rear edge of the wings are edged with white, which are visible when the bird is flying away, but not if it is heading towards the observer. The male has broader wings than the female. This adaptation for more efficient hovering flight may have evolved because of female Eurasian skylarks' preference for males that sing and hover for longer periods and so demonstrate that they are likely to have good overall fitness.  It is known for the song of the male, which is delivered in hovering flight from heights of 50 to 100 m, when the singing bird may appear as just a dot in the sky from the ground. The long, unbroken song is a clear, bubbling warble delivered high in the air while the bird is rising, circling or hovering. The song generally lasts two to three minutes, but it tends to last longer later in the mating season, when songs can last for 20 minutes or more. At wind farm sites, male skylarks have been found to sing at higher frequencies as a result of wind turbine noise.

Distribution and habitat.

This lark breeds across most of Europe and Asia and in the mountains of north Africa. It is mainly resident in the west of its range, but eastern populations are more migratory, moving further south in winter. Even in the milder west of its range, many birds move to lowlands and the coast in winter. Asian birds, subspecies "A. a. pekinensis", appear as vagrants in Alaska.

Introduced populations.

In the 19th century multiple batches of Eurasian skylarks were released in New Zealand beginning in 1864 in Nelson (in the South Island) and in 1867 in Auckland (in the North Island). The wild population increased rapidly and had spread throughout both the North and South Islands by the 1920s.  In Australia the Eurasian skylark was introduced on multiple occasions beginning in 1850. It is now widespread in the southeast of the continent. In New South Wales it mostly occurs south of 33°S. It is widespread throughout Victoria and Tasmania and also occurs in the south-eastern corner of South Australia around Adelaide.  The Eurasian skylark was introduced to the southeastern Hawaiian Islands beginning in 1865. Although once common, it has declined in abundance on Oahu and is no longer found on Kauai. A study published in 1986 found European skylarks remained only on the islands of Hawaii and Maui and estimated a total population of 10,000 individuals.  The Eurasian skylark was introduced to Vancouver Island off the west coast of Canada in 1903; additional birds were introduced in 1913. The population grew and by 1962 there were around 1000 individuals. The numbers have subsequently declined due to loss of habitat, and in 2007 there were estimated to be only around 100 individuals spread over four small areas of the Saanich Peninsula.

Behaviour and ecology.

Breeding.

Eurasian skylarks first breed when they are one year of age. Nesting may start in late March or early April. The nest is probably built by the female alone and is a shallow depression in the ground lined with grasses. The clutch is 3 to 5 eggs. The eggs of the nominate subspecies average in size and weigh around. They have a grey-white or greenish background and are covered in brown or olive spots. They are incubated only by the female beginning after the last egg is laid and hatch synchronously after 11 days. The altricial young are cared for by both parents and for the first week are fed almost exclusively on insects. The nestlings fledge after 18 to 20 days but they usually leave the nest after 8 to 10 days. They are independent of their parents after around 25 days. The parents can have up to 4 broods in a season.

Feeding.

The Eurasian skylark walks over the ground searching for food on the soil surface. Its diet consists of insects and plant material such as seeds and young leaves. Unlike a finch (family Fringillidae) it swallows seeds without removing the husk. Insects form an important part of the diet in summer.

Threats.

In the UK, Eurasian skylark numbers have declined over the last 30 years, as determined by the Common Bird Census started in the early 1960s by the British Trust for Ornithology. There are now only 10% of the numbers that were present 30 years ago. The RSPB have shown that this large decline is mainly due to changes in farming practices and only partly due to pesticides. In the past cereals were planted in the spring, grown through the summer and harvested in the early autumn. Cereals are now planted in the autumn, grown through the winter and are harvested in the early summer. The winter grown fields are much too dense in summer for the Eurasian skylark to be able to walk and run between the wheat stems to find its food.  A list of conservation interventions that could impact Alauda arvensis can be found in the Conservation Evidence website. English farmers are now encouraged and paid to maintain and create biodiversity for improving the habitat for Eurasian skylarks. Natural England's Environmental Stewardship Scheme offers 5 and 10-year grants for various beneficial options. For example, there is an option where the farmer can opt to grow a spring cereal instead of a winter one, and leave the stubble untreated with pesticide over the winter. The British Trust for Ornithology likens the stubbles to "giant bird tables" – providing spilt grain and weed seed to foraging birds.  The RSPB's research, over a six-year period, of winter-planted wheat fields has shown that suitable nesting areas for Eurasian skylarks can be made by turning the seeding machine off (or lifting the drill) for a 5 to 10 metres stretch as the tractor goes over the ground to briefly stop the seeds being sown. This is repeated in several areas within the same field to make about two skylark plots per hectare. Subsequent spraying and fertilising can be continuous over the entire field. DEFRA suggests that Eurasian skylark plots should not be nearer than to the perimeter of the field, should not be near to telegraph poles, and should not be enclosed by trees.  When the crop grows, the Eurasian skylark plots (areas without crop seeds) become areas of low vegetation where Eurasian skylarks can easily hunt insects, and can build their well camouflaged ground nests. These areas of low vegetation are just right for skylarks, but the wheat in the rest of the field becomes too closely packed and too tall for the bird to seek food. At the RSPB's research farm in Cambridgeshire skylark numbers have increased threefold (from 10 pairs to 30 pairs) over six years. Fields where Eurasian skylarks were seen the year before (or nearby) would be obvious good sites for skylark plots. Farmers have reported that skylark plots are easy to make and the RSPB hope that this simple effective technique can be copied nationwide.

In culture.

When the word "lark" is used without specification, it usually refers to this species. A collective noun for Eurasian skylarks is an "exaltation". Although the "Oxford English Dictionary" describes this usage as "fanciful", it traces it back to a quotation from John Lydgate dating from about 1430. The verb "skylark", originally used by sailors, means "play tricks or practical jokes; indulge in horseplay, frolic". The verb and noun "lark", with similar meaning, may be related to "skylark" or to the dialect word "laik" ("New Shorter OED").  The bird is the subject of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley ("To a Skylark"), George Meredith ("The Lark Ascending"), Ted Hughes ("Skylarks"), and numerous others; of a play by Henrik Ibsen entitled "A Doll's House" and of pieces of music including "The Lark Ascending" by Ralph Vaughan Williams (inspired by the eponymous poem). It is also the bird emblem of Kumamoto Prefecture. The Skylark of Space is a series of four science fiction novels by E.E. "Doc" Smith.

The Eurasian skylark ("Alauda arvensis") is a passerine bird in the lark family, Alaudidae. It is a widespread species found across Europe and the Palearctic with introduced populations in New Zealand, Australia and on the Hawaiian Islands. It is a bird of open farmland and heath, known for the song of the male, which is delivered in hovering flight from heights of. The sexes are alike. It is streaked greyish-brown above and on the breast and has a buff-white belly.

Die Feldlerche ("Alauda arvensis") ist eine Vogelart aus der Familie der Lerchen (Alaudidae). Diese mittelgroße Lerchenart besiedelt fast die gesamte Paläarktis von Irland und Portugal bis Kamtschatka und Japan. Sie bewohnt nicht zu feuchte, weiträumige Offenflächen aller Art mit niedriger und gerne lückenhafter Vegetation und ist in Mitteleuropa weitgehend an landwirtschaftlich genutzte Flächen gebunden. Die Art ist je nach geografischer Verbreitung Standvogel bis Kurzstreckenzieher. Die Feldlerche ist in Europa ein sehr häufiger Brutvogel und gilt trotz teilweise deutlicher Bestandsrückgänge in Teilen des Verbreitungsgebietes weltweit als ungefährdet.