Playing career.

Szwez began his career playing for various minor league teams between 2002 and 2009, mainly in the ECHL. He played for the Augusta Lynx, Dayton Bombers, Florence Pride and the Pee Dee Pride. He also played in the American Hockey League for the Binghamton Senators, Bridgeport Sound Tigers, Syracuse Crunch and Philadelphia Phantoms. He also had ten game in the SM-liiga for the Espoo Blues during the 2007-08 SM-liiga season.  In 2009, Szwez signed for the Belfast Giants of the Elite Ice Hockey League and had a standout year, scoring 36 goals in 41 games as he helped the Giants win the Playoff Championship. He also made the league's All-Star Second team. He then moved to the Deutsche Eishockey Liga with the Augsburger Panther the following season, though the move ultimately did not work out for Szwez as he scored just 4 goals in 67 games over two seasons before moving to the Ravensburg Towerstars of the second-tier 2nd Bundesliga in January 2012 and later in the year, Szwez was playing in the third-tier Oberliga for EHC Freiburg.  On August 22, 2013, Szwez returned to the Belfast Giants for a second spell. He was able to recapture the same form he displayed in his previous spell, notching up 32 goals in 51 games and making the EIHL's All-Star Second Team once more. Szwez's second spell in Belfast would just end just like his first did, after one season and moving to the DEL, this time with ERC Ingolstadt. Szwez managed a relatively decent season with Ingolstadt, scoring 9 goals and 9 assists in 38 games, though he was not tendered a new contract and was released to free agency. On September 7, 2015, Szwez belatedly opted to remain in Germany, signing a contract with the Krefeld Pinguine of the DEL where he failed to score a single goal in 20 games and only notched up one assist. Szwez was released by Krefeld and he finished the season with Dresdner Eislöwen of DEL2. On October 13, 2016, Szwez signed for ESV Kaufbeuren of DEL2.

Jeffrey Szwez (born June 16, 1981) is a Canadian-German professional ice hockey right winger who is currently an unrestricted free agent.

Jeffrey Szwez (* 16. Juni 1981 in Etobicoke, Ontario) ist ein kanadisch-deutscher Eishockeyspieler, der aktuell bei der EA Schongau in der Eishockey-Bayernliga unter Vertrag steht.


Geography.

The city, formerly an urban-type settlement, is located on the border with Ukraine. It is 94 km to the south of the national capital Chişinău, 25 km from Cimislia, and 25 km from Comrat. The river Cogilnic flows through the city from northwest to southeast, continuing on to the Black Sea. The main populated areas are in the lowlands. These are effectively divided into several areas, such as Romanovka and Flemynda.

History.

A Jewish settlement at the site of Basarabeasca was started in 1846; it was originally named Romanovka in honor of the Russian imperial family of the Romanovs. In 1859 there were 86 resident Jewish families who worked the land, 263 men and 249 women. They owned 1750 "desyatinas" of farmland. At the time of the abolition of Jewish land tenure in 1866, 57 families were occupied in farming – 209 men and 183 women. They shifted primarily to the business of wine production, working in its sales and trade. In order to improve the lot of the colonists, the Zemstvo of Bender instituted market days weekly on Wednesday. This was done at the request of Captain Fyodor Oleynikov on October 29, 1876.  In 1897, 597 settlers lived in Romanovka (293 men and 304 women). They had established a synagogue and a prayer school (Cheder). According to the Russian census of 1897, 1625 people lived in Romanovka, with 71% (1150 people) being Jewish. The first secular school, where there was only one class, opened in 1899 thanks to Georgiy Gimishli, who helped with the facilities. The class was taught by Anna Shidlovskaya, who worked there for many years. For his support of the school, Gimishli was awarded a silver medal of zeal on December 6, 1904. In the 1905–1906 school year, 12 boys and 2 girls studied at the school.  The beginning of the 20th century was a time of rapid development of the village; the construction of the Bessarabka railway station began nearby. In 1910 some residents gained telephone service - the Merimshi, Okulish, Andelman, Tsuker, and Imasha families. On December 5, 1912 a new synagogue opened, with Doctor Boris Sverdlov as rabbi. Grigoriy and Vasiliy Gemyushliev traveled to the Russian Tsar to request money for a church, but returned with only 500 rubles; the money was collected primarily from the faithful. In October 1913 the population was 1741, whose property was valued at 346,826 rubles. Two steam mills, belonging to Lemke Adama and Semke Khristian, were valued at 9,420 rubles. The village had a mutual aid fund to help families or persons in need. By 1923 it had become a large village: there were 690 homes, with 1520 men and 1597 women, with a mill, a slaughterhouse, a pharmacy, a primary school, and 15 stores.  On September 11, 1957, while part of the USSR, the village of Romanovka was unified with the former German colony of Heinrichsdorff (in which 273 Germans lived, according to 1943 data). It was renamed Basarabeasca (). In 1968 the population of Basarabeasca was 13,300. There were a working machine repair shop, and rail transport enterprises.  According to registry data, as of October 12, 2004 there are 11,095 people living in Basarabeasca, of whom 5258 are men, and 5837 are women.

Basarabeasca (, Moldovan Cyrillic and Russian: Басарабяска; Bulgarian: Бесарабка, "Besarabka") is a city in Moldova. It is the capital of Basarabeasca District.

Basarabeasca (/"" – bis 1957 Romanowka/Романовка) ist eine Stadt am Fluss Cogâlnic in der Republik Moldau unmittelbar an der Grenze zur Ukraine, etwa 100 Kilometer südlich der Hauptstadt Chișinău gelegen.


Early life.

Tom Hooper was born in 1972 in London, England, the son of Meredith Jean (Rooney) and Richard Hooper. Meredith is an Australian author and academic and Richard is an English media businessman. Hooper was educated at Highgate School and Westminster School. His initial interest in drama was triggered by his English and drama teacher at Highgate, former Royal Shakespeare Company actor Roger Mortimer, who produced an annual school play.  At the age of 12, Hooper read a book entitled "How to Make Film and Television" and decided he wanted to become a director. For the next year Hooper researched filmmaking from publications such as "On Camera" by Harris Watts. Aged 13, he made his first film, entitled "Runaway Dog", using a clockwork 16mm Bolex camera his uncle had given to him. Hooper said: "The clockwork would run out after thirty seconds, so the maximum shot length was thirty seconds. I could only afford a hundred feet of Kodachrome reversal film, which cost about twenty-five [pounds], and you had to send off for two weeks to be processed. I could only make silent movies, because sound was too expensive and complicated." He slowed down the frame rate of the camera so he could maximise what little film stock he had. Hooper classified the short, about a dog which kept running away from its owner, as a comedy, and filmed it on location in Oxfordshire.  When Hooper was 14, his film "Bomber Jacket" came runner-up in a BBC younger filmmakers' competition. The short starred Hooper's brother as a boy who discovers a bomber jacket and a photograph hidden in a cupboard and learns his grandfather died in World War II. Another of Hooper's short films, entitled "Countryside", depicts a nuclear holocaust.  Hooper finished school aged 16, then wrote the script for his first professional short film, entitled "Painted Faces". He spent the next two years raising capital for the short by courting advertisement directors, whose financial dominance during the late 1980s was noticed by Hooper. Director Paul Weiland invested in the short, which provided Hooper with the equipment he needed. After two years of financing and production, "Painted Faces" was completed. Hooper wrote, produced, directed and edited it. It was sold to Channel 4 and broadcast on the channel's "First Frame" strand in 1992, had a screening at the 35th London Film Festival and had a limited theatrical release.  After taking a gap year to finance "Painted Faces", Hooper read English at University College, Oxford. He joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society, where he directed Kate Beckinsale in "A View from the Bridge" and Emily Mortimer in "The Trial". Hooper also had his first paid directing work, earning £200 for a corporate Christmas video, and he directed his first television advertisements, including one for "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" featuring Right Said Fred. He continues to direct advertisements alongside television and film projects. In 1996 he joined the commercial production company John S. Clarke Productions and in 2001 he signed with Infinity Productions.

Career.

BBC and ITV productions.

After graduating from Oxford, Hooper directed further television commercials, intending to break into the film industry the same way Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and Hugh Hudson did. He was introduced by his father to the television producer Matthew Robinson, who mentored Hooper and gave him his first television directing work. For Robinson, Hooper directed episodes of the short-lived Tyne Tees Television soap opera "Quayside" in 1997, four episodes of the Children's BBC television series "Byker Grove" in the same year, and his first episodes of the BBC One soap opera "EastEnders" in 1998.  Hooper directed several "EastEnders" episodes between 1998 and 2000, two of which were hour-long specials that represented the soap when it won the British Academy Television Award for Best Soap Opera in 2000 and 2001; the first was the episode in which Carol Jackson (Lindsey Coulson) learns her daughter Bianca (Patsy Palmer) had an affair with her fiancé Dan Sullivan (Craig Fairbrass). The Jackson episode marked the beginning of a week of episodes that lead to Palmer's departure from the soap, and Robinson had hired Hooper to direct the key episodes of that storyline. Hooper worked 10-hour days on "EastEnders", and learned to direct with speed. He was influenced in his early career by the cinematic style of American TV series such as "ER", "NYPD Blue" and "" and tried to work that style into his "EastEnders" episodes; one scene featuring Grant Mitchell (Ross Kemp) involved a crane shot, which Hooper believes made him infamous among the "EastEnders" production crew.  In 1999, Hooper directed two episodes of Granada Television's comedy-drama television series "Cold Feet", which marked his move to bigger-budget productions. There was initially concern at Granada that Hooper might be an unsuitable director for the series given his background in drama.  In 2001, Hooper directed his first of two costume dramas for the BBC; "Love in a Cold Climate" was based on Nancy Mitford's novels "The Pursuit of Love" and "Love in a Cold Climate". Hooper, the writer Deborah Moggach, and the producer Kate Harwood researched the period details of the production by interviewing Nancy's sister Deborah. In 2002, Hooper directed "Daniel Deronda", adapted from George Eliot's novel. "The Guardian"s Mark Lawson said of Hooper's two costume dramas, "he brought verve and intelligence to television's most conservative form".  Hooper returned to Granada the next year to direct the revival of "Prime Suspect", entitled "The Last Witness". The two-part serial was the first "Prime Suspect" instalment to be made since 1995, when star Helen Mirren quit. Hooper initially declined to direct the production because he believed the series was tired. Granada's head of drama Andy Harries introduced Hooper to Mirren, who persuaded him to take the job by promising that he could make the serial his own way. The two-part serial was broadcast on the ITV network in November 2003. Hooper's direction received praise from Andrew Billen in the "New Statesman": "Tom Hooper proved an outstanding director, imposing a bleak, overlit hyper-realism on the search for a killer in a hospital, isolating Mirren in rows of empty chairs and playing on the eyewitness/optical visual metaphors." The serial was also broadcast on PBS in the United States. Hooper received nominations for the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Serial and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special for his work on "Prime Suspect".

Film debut and HBO works.

Hooper made his debut as a feature film director with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission drama "Red Dust" (2004), which stars Hilary Swank, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jamie Bartlett. The film was not widely seen, which Hooper attributed to media coverage of torture during the Iraq War: "When I started making it you could watch the movie with a wonderful sense of 'we'd never do it in our own country...they're the horrible people but it's not us.' By the time the film came out (there were) these revelations that the Americans were torturing, the British were torturing. The film became a lot more uncomfortable for the very audiences it was designed to target. I have learned that sadly the theatrical audience does not run to see films that are openly issue led." The premiere of the film in the United Kingdom came on BBC Two in 2005, making it eligible for the BAFTA Television Awards; it was nominated in the Best Single Drama category at the 2006 ceremony.  In 2005, Hooper was asked by Helen Mirren to direct the Company Pictures/HBO Films two-part serial "Elizabeth I", in which she was starring. The serial won Hooper his first Emmy Award, for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special. In January 2006, Hooper commenced filming the Granada/HBO television film "Longford". The film dramatises the failed efforts of Lord Longford (played by Jim Broadbent) to secure the release from prison of Moors murderer Myra Hindley (played by Samantha Morton). The film was broadcast on Channel 4 in October 2006. Seb Morton-Clark for the "Financial Times" called "Longford" one of the most accomplished television dramas of 2006, and praised the writer and director: "Morgan and director Tom Hooper wove a seamless narrative about obsession – and not just that of the misguided philanthropist for the incarcerated Hindley or even that that existed between the sadistic lovers themselves. More significantly, by using chunks of original television footage, they painted a stark picture of the zealotry of a vengeful nation and its press over the supposed embodiment of evil." Hooper's continued successes led him to be ranked at number four in the Directors category of "Broadcast" magazine's annual Hot 100. The following year he was nominated for the British Academy Television Craft Award for Best Director for "Longford".  "Elizabeth I" and "Longford" led directly to Hooper being selected by Tom Hanks to direct the epic miniseries "John Adams" for Playtone and HBO. Hooper had been working on a biographical film with Joan Didion about Katharine Graham, publisher of "The Washington Post", since 2006 when he was asked by Hanks to helm the programme. The miniseries, starring Paul Giamatti as John Adams, was based on David McCullough's Adams biography and was Hooper's first wholly American production. He was surprised to learn that the American Revolutionary War was not a well-documented period in film and television; Abigail Adams actress Laura Linney told him that, for her generation, the musical "1776" was the most well-known depiction of the era. He worked on the miniseries for a total of 16 months; principal photography lasted 110 days on locations in the United States, France, England and Hungary and he controlled a $100 million budget. "The Boston Globe"s Matthew Gilbert complimented Hooper's style of direction in the first two episodes "Join or Die" and "Independence":  Director Tom Hooper lets his actors shine, as he did so marvelously in Helen Mirren's "Elizabeth I" and the child-killer drama "Longford", but he complements them, too, with this kind of immediate point of view. And when he does give us panoramic shots from afar – of the Adams farm in Braintree, for example – they're askew, to keep us out of the classroom mode. At the end of episode 2 [...] Hooper showcases all his directorial strength with one bold choice. When the long-fretting Congress finally decides to break with Britain, he refrains from using any visual or aural tweaks. Upon the announcement, "The resolution carries," the scene remains perfectly silent for one long moment. The terror of responsibility hangs heavily in the room, while a victorious soundtrack surely would have chased it away.  "John Adams" received 23 Emmy Award nominations, including another Outstanding Direction nomination for Hooper, and won 13, the highest number for any nominee in a single year. He was also nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. At the beginning of 2009, he was profiled for "The Observer"s film Hotlist.

Independent feature films.

The wake of "John Adams"<nowiki>'</nowiki> Emmy wins brought offers to Hooper from studios to direct spy and comic book films, which he declined. In November 2007, he signed on to direct "The Damned United", reuniting him with Peter Morgan and Andy Harries. The film was an adaptation of David Peace's novel "The Damned Utd", a fictional version of the 44 turbulent days English football manager Brian Clough spent as manager of Leeds United. It was originally developed by Stephen Frears for Michael Sheen to play Clough. Frears quit the project after he was unable to translate the book to film. Hooper received a copy of the script while shooting "John Adams" in Hungary and noticed a similarity between the "egotistical, flawed, brilliant" Adams and the "egotistical, flawed, brilliant" Clough. He was not put off by joining the project later, as Morgan's script was in only its first draft. During pre-production, Hooper engaged in meticulous research, particularly on the locations and the football grounds of the era. He cast Timothy Spall as Clough's assistant Peter Taylor, Colm Meaney as Don Revie and Jim Broadbent as Derby County chairman Sam Longson. During editing, it was decided to make the tone of the film lighter to attract audiences and to appease the real people depicted in the film. "The Damned United" was released in 2009.  Work on Hooper's next film, "The King's Speech", began in the same year. Hooper explained: "It was a stage play, and my mother who's Australian was invited to a fringe [theatre] reading in London because she's part of the Australian community. The play's about the relationship between King George the Sixth and his Australian speech therapist. She came back and said 'you've got to read this play,' and I read it and it was brilliant...". Hooper cast Colin Firth as George VI and Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue and spent three weeks with the actors reading the script and rehearsing. Principal photography took place on location around the UK from November 2009 to January 2010. During editing, Hooper continued to consult with Firth and Rush by sending them cuts of the film and listening to their feedback.  Hooper completed the final cut of the film at the end of August 2010 and presented it a few days later at the Telluride Film Festival. The film won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and Hooper won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures. In February 2011, he was presented with the Academy Award for Best Director, though lost the BAFTA Award for Best Direction to David Fincher. In comparing the two films, "Variety"s Adam Dawtrey wrote, "Hooper's 2009 film "The Damned United" didn't register among awards selectors, but "King's Speech" is a much more personal project. His Anglo-Australian parentage reflects the culture clash at the heart of the movie, and it pays off with beautifully crafted, crowd-pleasing drama."

Studio films.

Following the success of "The King's Speech" during the awards season, Hooper joined the 15-person board of governors at the British Film Institute, was invited to join the directors branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and was ranked at number 19 in "The Times" British Film Power 100. In March 2009, Hooper met with Nelson Mandela in preparation for directing a film adaptation of Mandela's autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom". By 2012, however, he had left the project.  He was offered the chance to direct "Iron Man 3" for Marvel Studios but declined and instead signed on to direct "Les Misérables" for Working Title Films, which he had first heard about while discussing a different project with screenwriter William Nicholson in 2010. Hooper had not seen the musical, so watched a performance of it in London's West End. Adapted from the musical, the film starred Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Eddie Redmayne. As the film required the actors to sing and dance, they were auditioned in front of Hooper, producers and composers. The role of Fantine was hugely contested; Hooper said, "It was like half a dozen of the biggest female movie stars on the planet wanted to play the role".  Hooper investigated filming the feature in 3D, and performed some camera tests before deciding to film it with traditional 2D methods. He stated "[...] I slightly worry with 3D that some people will physically struggle with it. If you have a certain type of eyesight it can be more demanding than watching a normal movie." Unlike other musical films, "Les Misérables" features the actors singing live on camera, rather than miming to backing vocals. Hooper told "Los Angeles Times" that he thought there was a "slightly strange falseness" when he saw musical films where the actors sang to recordings. The actors wore wireless earpieces on set so they could sing to accompanying piano music. Hooper believed this method allowed the actors to have emotional control over their songs: "When Annie [Hathaway, who plays Fantine] is singing 'I Dreamed a Dream', if she needs to take a tenth of a second to have a thought before she sings it, or to have an emotion before she sings a line, she can take it." The actors also performed their songs in recitative style, which Hooper likened to being immersed in a 3D film. "Les Miserables" was released in North America on 25 December 2012, and received eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture.  Hooper's fifth feature film, "The Danish Girl", was released in late 2015. It loosely tells the story of Lili Elbe, one of the first people to undergo sex reassignment surgery, and wife Gerda Wegener. It stars Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, both of whom received Academy Award nominations. Critics were generally positive about the film.  In May 2016, it was announced that he would direct an adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical, "Cats", which is in turn, based on T. S. Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats". Filming commenced in November 2018 and the film, which stars Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, James Corden, Idris Elba and Taylor Swift, was released on 20 December 2019. Hooper co-produced the original song "Beautiful Ghosts" with Lloyd Webber and Greg Wells, written by Swift and Lloyd Webber.

Directing style.

Hooper uses camera styles "that encode the DNA of the storytelling in some way" and will reuse and develop filming styles in successive productions. Hooper identifies research as being key to his process of directing period dramas such as "John Adams" to make the scenes authentic. For "The Damned United", Hooper and director of photography Ben Smithard researched the look of the late 1960s and early 1970s through football photography books. Hooper has also been influenced by cinematographer Larry Smith, who worked with Stanley Kubrick and advised Hooper of techniques used by Kubrick. Hooper and Smith have worked together on "Cold Feet", "Love in a Cold Climate", "Prime Suspect", "Red Dust" and "Elizabeth I".  Hooper also uses uncommon framing techniques to emphasise story; in "John Adams", he wanted to imply American independence seemed unlikely during the Revolutionary War, so he used "a very rough camera style—almost all hand held, wide lenses close to the actors, lots of movement, many cameras shooting at once so there was often not a settled master "point of view", and lots of unmatching dutch tilts so the horizon lines of the frame were often being thrown off." The America-set scenes were contrasted by the scenes set in France, in which more traditional filming techniques were employed to evoke a feel of entrenched values. Similarly, in "The Damned United", Hooper began to experiment with using wide-angle lenses and putting actors in the extreme edges of the frame. He was influenced by the unusual framing from social photography of the 1970s, and he and Ben Smithard decided to adopt the framing style while scouting locations. Hooper used the same style in "The King's Speech", particularly in the scene where Bertie and Logue meet in Logue's consulting room; Colin Firth is framed to the extreme left of the picture, leaving most of the shot dominated by the rough wall behind Firth.  Another frequently used technique is Hooper's tendency to use a variety of focal length camera lenses to distort the resulting picture. In "The Damned United" he used a 10mm lens, notably in the scene where Clough stays inside during the Derby–Leeds match. Hooper operated the camera in this scene himself. In "The King's Speech", Hooper used "typically 14mm, 18mm, 21mm, 25mm and 27mm" lenses and put the camera close to the actors' faces. Hooper said the use of this method in the first consulting room scene served to "suggest the awkwardness and tension of Logue and Bertie's first meeting".

Awards and nominations.

Directed Academy Award performances.

Hooper has directed multiple Academy Award-nominated performances, three of which have won.

Thomas George Hooper (born 5 October 1972) is a British-Australian film and television director. Hooper began making short films as a teenager and had his first professional short, "Painted Faces", broadcast on Channel 4 in 1992. At Oxford University Hooper directed plays and television commercials. After graduating, he directed episodes of "Quayside", "Byker Grove", "EastEnders", and "Cold Feet" on British television.

Thomas George „Tom“ Hooper (* 1. Oktober 1972 in London) ist ein britischer Film- und Fernsehregisseur. Hooper arbeitete zunächst im britischen Fernsehen, wo er vor allem als Regisseur von Historienfilmen auffiel. 2005 drehte er mit Helen Mirren den zweiteiligen Fernsehfilm "Elizabeth I", für den er mit dem Emmy Award als bester Regisseur eines Fernsehfilms ausgezeichnet wurde. "Elizabeth I" sowie die 2008 veröffentlichte Miniserie "John Adams – Freiheit für Amerika" erhielten zahlreiche Preise.


Early life.

Born in Vienna, Austria, von Guerard toured Italy with his father (a painter of miniatures at the court of Emperor Francis I of Austria) from 1826, and between 1830 and 1832 resided in Rome, where he became involved with a number of German artists. The foremost landscape painter amongst these so-called "Deutsch Römer" was Johann Anton Koch, but he also met there members of the, a group of young German breakaway artists known as the Nazarenes, From 1841 he studied landscape painting in Germany at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and travelled widely. Von Guerard's personal artistic style was formed by his first teacher, his miniaturist father with whom he travelled throughout Italy. Other influences ascribed to von Guerard are Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin and Salvator Rosa. During his studies at the Düsseldorf Academy he absorbed the new criterion for German art promoted by his landscape lecturer Johann Wilhelm Schirmer under the directorship of ex-Nazaren member Wilhelm von Schadow: to present "elevated" subject matter in the style of a new "truthful"' realism. The Düsseldorf style of painting combined concepts of prevailing trends: Historicism, a lingering Romanticism and a new visually based Realism that required taking observations from nature. Von Guerards Australian landscapes show his sensitive perception of the Australian landscape, whilst his stylistic methodology exemplifies the confluence of various styles derived from his European artistic heritage.

Australia.

In 1852 von Guerard arrived in Victoria, Australia, determined to try his luck on the Victorian goldfields. As a gold-digger he was unsuccessful, but he did produce a large number of intimate studies of goldfields life, quite different from the deliberately awe-inspiring landscapes for which he was later to become famous.  By the early 1860s von Guerard was recognised as the foremost landscape artist in the colonies, touring Southeast Australia and New Zealand in pursuit of the sublime and the picturesque. He is most known for the wilderness paintings produced during this time, which are remarkable for their shadowy lighting and fastidious detail. Indeed, his view of Tower Hill in south-western Victoria was used as a botanical template over a century later when the land, which had been laid waste and polluted by agriculture, was systematically reclaimed, forested with native flora and made a state park. The scientific accuracy of such work has led to a reassessment of von Guerard's approach to wilderness painting, and some historians believe it likely that the landscapist was strongly influenced by the environmental theories of the leading scientist Alexander von Humboldt. Others attribute his 'truthful representation' of nature to the criterion for figure and landscape painting set by the Düsseldorf Academy.  In 1866 his "Valley of the Mitta Mitta" was presented to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne; in 1870 the trustees purchased his "Mount Kosciusko". In 2006, the City of Greater Geelong purchased his 1856 painting "View of Geelong" for A$3.8M. His painting, "Yalla-y-Poora", is in the Joseph Brown Collection on display at the National Gallery of Victoria. In 2018 another painting, "Stoneleigh, Beaufort near Ararat, Victoria" (1866) was put on permanent display in the Galleries of the State Library of New South Wales.  Von Guerard's paintings were also purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales including "Waterfall, Strath Creek" (1862), "Sydney Heads" (1865) and "Milford Sound, New Zealand" (1877–1879) among many others.  The State Library of New South Wales in Sydney holds 32 sketchbooks which cover von Guerard’s twenty-eight years in Australia and also the period of his early travels in the Rhineland and Italy and his return to Europe after 1881. The drawings include pencil sketches, detailed pen and ink or pencil drawings, and a few with colour added and include works done on scientific expeditions with Alfred William Howitt and Georg von Neumayer, the meteorologist. The sketchbooks cover Italy and Germany, 1835–1852, Australia, 1854–1891, and the English sketchbook, 1891–1900.  The only known copy of von Guerard's 1852–1854 diary of his time on the goldfields is held in England. But a typescript translation made from the original German is held in the State Library of New South Wales. This translation has been digitised and can be viewed online. It consists of one volume of bound extracts from von Guerard's journal, 18 August 1852 – 16 March 1854, with ten original ink illustrations pasted onto leaves at end of volume. Extracts cover his departure from Gravesend England on board the Windermere and the voyage out to Melbourne, his stay at the Eureka and Ballarat goldfields and his departure to Geelong. The translation may have been made by his daughter, Victoria, who was born in Australia and married an Englishman. For a short time, he lived in Daylesford  In 1870 von Guerard was appointed the first Master of the School of Painting at the National Gallery of Victoria, where he was to influence the training of artists for the next 11 years. His reputation, high at the beginning of this period, had faded somewhat towards the end because of his rigid adherence to picturesque subject matter and detailed treatment in the face of the rise of the more intimate Heidelberg School style. Amongst his pupils were Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts. Von Guerard retired from his position at the National Gallery School the end of 1881 and departed for Europe in January 1882. In 1891 his wife died. Two years later, he lost his investments in the Australian bank crash and he lived in poverty until his death in Chelsea, London, on 17 April 1901.

Johann Joseph Eugene von Guérard (17 November 181117 April 1901) was an Austrian-born artist, active in Australia from 1852 until 1882. Known for his finely detailed landscapes in the tradition of the Düsseldorf school of painting, he is represented in Australia's major public galleries, and is referred to in the country as Eugene von Guerard.

Eugene von Guerard (getauft als Johann Joseph Eugen von Guérard; * 19. November 1811 in Wien; † 17. April 1901 in London) war ein österreichisch-australisch-britischer Maler, der die bedeutendste Zeit seines künstlerischen Schaffens in den Jahren 1852 bis 1882 in Australien verbrachte.


Divisive rhythm.

For example: consists of one measure (whole note: 1) divided into a stronger first beat and slightly less strong second beat (half notes: 1, 3), which are in turn divided, by two weaker beats (quarter notes: 1, 2, 3, 4), and again divided into still weaker beats (eighth notes: 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &).

Additive rhythm.

Additive rhythm features nonidentical or irregular durational groups following one another at two levels, within the bar and between bars or groups of bars. This type of rhythm is also referred to in musicological literature by the Turkish word "aksak", which means "limping" (; ). In the special case of time signatures in which the upper numeral is not divisible by two or three without a fraction, the result may alternatively be called "irregular", "imperfect", or "uneven" meter, and the groupings into twos and threes are sometimes called "long beats" and "short beats".  The term "additive rhythm" is also often used to refer to what are also incorrectly called "asymmetric rhythms" and even "irregular rhythms" – that is, metres which have a regular pattern of beats of uneven length. For example, the time signature indicates each bar is eight quavers long, and has four beats, each a crotchet (that is, two quavers) long. The asymmetric time signature, on the other hand, while also having eight quavers in a bar, divides them into three beats, the first three quavers long, the second three quavers long, and the last just two quavers long.  These kinds of rhythms are used, for example, by Béla Bartók, who was influenced by similar rhythms in Bulgarian folk music. Stravinsky's "Octet" for Wind Instruments "ends with a jazzy 3+3+2 = 8 swung coda". Additive patterns also occur in some music of Philip Glass, and other minimalists, most noticeably the "one-two-one-two-three" chorus parts in "Einstein on the Beach". They may also occur in passing in pieces which are on the whole in conventional metres. In jazz, Dave Brubeck's song "Blue Rondo à la Turk" features bars of nine quavers grouped into patterns of at the start. George Harrison’s song “Here Comes the Sun” on the Beatles’ album "Abbey Road" features a rhythm "which switches between 11/8, 4/4 and 7/8 on the bridge". "The special effect of running even eighth notes accented as if triplets against the grain of the underlying backbeat is carried to a point more reminiscent of Stravinsky than of the Beatles".  Olivier Messiaen made extensive use of additive rhythmic patterns, much of it stemming from his close study of the rhythms of Indian music. His "Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes" from "The Quartet for the End of Time" is a bracing example. A gentler exploration of additive patterns can be found in "Le Regard de la Vierge" from the same composer's piano cycle "Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus".

Sub-Saharan African rhythm.

A divisive form of cross-rhythm is the basis for most Sub-Saharan African music traditions. Rhythmic patterns are generated by simultaneously dividing a span of musical time by a triple-beat scheme and a duple-beat scheme.  In the development of cross rhythm, there are some selected rhythmic materials or beat schemes that are customarily used. These beat schemes, in their generic forms, are simple divisions of the same musical period in equal units, producing varying rhythmic densities or motions. At the center of a core of rhythmic traditions within which the composer conveys his ideas is the technique of cross-rhythm. The technique of cross-rhythm is a simultaneous use of contrasting rhythmic patterns within the same scheme of accents or meter... By the very nature of the desired resultant rhythm, the main beat scheme cannot be separated from the secondary beat scheme. It is the interplay of the two elements that produces the cross-rhythmic texture.  "the entire African rhythmic structure... is divisive in nature".

Tresillo: divisive and additive interpretations.

In divisive form, the strokes of tresillo contradict the beats. In additive form, the strokes of tresillo "are" the beats. From a metrical perspective then, the two ways of perceiving tresillo constitute two different rhythms. On the other hand, from the perspective of simply the pattern of attack-points, tresillo is a shared element of traditional folk music from the northwest tip of Africa to southeast tip of Asia.

Additive structure.

"Tresillo" is also found within a wide geographic belt stretching from Morocco in North Africa to Indonesia in South Asia. Use of the pattern in Moroccan music can be traced back to slaves brought north across the Sahara Desert from present-day Mali. This pattern may have migrated east from North Africa to Asia through the spread of Islam. In Middle Eastern and Asian music, the figure is generated through additive rhythm.  \new RhythmicStaff { </score>

Divisive structure.

The most basic duple-pulse figure found in the Music of Africa and music of the African diaspora is a figure the Cubans call "tresillo", a Spanish word meaning 'triplet' (three equal beats in the same time as two main beats). However, in the vernacular of Cuban popular music, the term refers to the figure shown below.  \new RhythmicStaff { </score>  African-based music has a divisive rhythm structure. Tresillo is generated through cross-rhythm: 8 pulses ÷ 3 = 2 cross-beats (consisting of three pulses each), with a remainder of a partial cross-beat (spanning two pulses). In other words, 8 ÷ 3 = 2, r2. Tresillo is a cross-rhythmic fragment.  Because of its irregular pattern of attack-points, "tresillo" in African and African-based musics has been mistaken for a form of additive rhythm.  Although the difference between the two ways of notating this rhythm may seem small, they stem from fundamentally different conceptions. Those who wish to convey a sense of the rhythm’s background [main beats], and who understand the surface morphology in relation to a regular subsurface articulation, will prefer the divisive format. Those who imagine the addition of three, then three, then two sixteenth notes will treat the well-formedness of 3 + 3 + 2 as fortuitous, a product of grouping rather than of metrical structure. They will be tempted to deny that African music has a bona fide metrical structure because of its frequent departures from normative grouping structure.

In music, the terms additive and divisive are used to distinguish two types of both rhythm and meter: When applied to meters, the terms "perfect" and "imperfect" are sometimes used as the equivalents of "divisive" and "additive", respectively ().

In der Musik bezeichnen divisiv und additiv verschiedene Arten von Rhythmus und Metrum, deren Gruppierung und Aufbau. Die Begriffe erscheinen erstmals in Curt Sachs’ Buch "Rhythm and Tempo" 1953.


Development.

In 1989, Alan Kostelecký and Stuart Samuel proved that interactions in string theories could lead to the spontaneous breaking of Lorentz symmetry.  Later studies have indicated that loop-quantum gravity, non-commutative field theories, brane-world scenarios, and random dynamics models also involve the breakdown of Lorentz invariance.  Interest in Lorentz violation has grown rapidly in the last decades because it can arise in these and other candidate theories for quantum gravity. In the early 1990s, it was shown in the context of bosonic superstrings that string interactions can also spontaneously break CPT symmetry. This work suggested that experiments with kaon interferometry would be promising for seeking possible signals of CPT violation due to their high sensitivity.  The SME was conceived to facilitate experimental investigations of Lorentz and CPT symmetry, given the theoretical motivation for violation of these symmetries. An initial step, in 1995, was the introduction of effective interactions. Although Lorentz-breaking interactions are motivated by constructs such as string theory, the low-energy effective action appearing in the SME is independent of the underlying theory. Each term in the effective theory involves the expectation of a tensor field in the underlying theory. These coefficients are small due to Planck-scale suppression, and in principle are measurable in experiments. The first case considered the mixing of neutral mesons, because their interferometric nature makes them highly sensitive to suppressed effects.  In 1997 and 1998, two papers by Don Colladay and Alan Kostelecký gave birth to the minimal SME in flat spacetime. This provided a framework for Lorentz violation across the spectrum of standard-model particles, and provided information about types of signals for potential new experimental searches.  In 2004, the leading Lorentz-breaking terms in curved spacetimes were published, thereby completing the picture for the minimal SME. In 1999, Sidney Coleman and Sheldon Glashow presented a special isotropic limit of the SME. Higher-order Lorentz violating terms have been studied in various contexts, including electrodynamics.

Lorentz transformations: observer vs. particle.

The distinction between particle and observer transformations is essential to understanding Lorentz violation in physics because Lorentz violation implies a measurable difference between two systems differing only by a particle Lorentz transformation.  In special relativity, observer Lorentz transformations relate measurements made in reference frames with differing velocities and orientations. The coordinates in the one system are related to those in the other by an observer Lorentz transformation—a rotation, a boost, or a combination of both. Each observer will agree on the laws of physics, since this transformation is simply a change of coordinates. On the other hand, identical experiments can be rotated or boosted relative to each other, while being studied by the same inertial observer. These transformations are called particle transformations, because the matter and fields of the experiment are physically transformed into the new configuration.  In a conventional vacuum, observer and particle transformations can be related to each other in a simple way—basically one is the inverse of the other. This apparent equivalence is often expressed using the terminology of active and passive transformations. The equivalence fails in Lorentz-violating theories, however, because fixed background fields are the source of the symmetry breaking. These background fields are tensor-like quantities, creating preferred directions and boost-dependent effects. The fields extend over all space and time, and are essentially frozen. When an experiment sensitive to one of the background fields is rotated or boosted, i.e. particle transformed, the background fields remain unchanged, and measurable effects are possible. Observer Lorentz symmetry is expected for all theories, including Lorentz violating ones, since a change in the coordinates cannot affect the physics. This invariance is implemented in field theories by writing a scalar lagrangian, with properly contracted spacetime indices. Particle Lorentz breaking enters if the theory includes fixed SME background fields filling the universe.

Building the SME.

The SME can be expressed as a Lagrangian with various terms. Each Lorentz-violating term is an observer scalar constructed by contracting standard field operators with controlling coefficients called coefficients for Lorentz violation. These are not parameters, but rather predictions of the theory, since they can in principle be measured by appropriate experiments. The coefficients are expected to be small because of the Planck-scale suppression, so perturbative methods are appropriate. In some cases, other suppression mechanisms could mask large Lorentz violations. For instance, large violations that may exist in gravity could have gone undetected so far because of couplings with weak gravitational fields. Stability and causality of the theory have been studied in detail.

Spontaneous Lorentz symmetry breaking.

In field theory, there are two possible ways to implement the breaking of a symmetry: explicit and spontaneous. A key result in the formal theory of Lorentz violation, published by Kostelecký in 2004, is that explicit Lorentz violation leads to incompatibility of the Bianchi identities with the covariant conservation laws for the energy-momentum and spin-density tensors, whereas spontaneous Lorentz breaking evades this difficulty. This theorem requires that any breaking of Lorentz symmetry must be dynamical. Formal studies of the possible causes of the breakdown of Lorentz symmetry include investigations of the fate of the expected Nambu-Goldstone modes. Goldstone's theorem implies that the spontaneous breaking must be accompanied by massless bosons. These modes might be identified with the photon, the graviton, spin-dependent interactions, and spin-independent interactions.

Experimental searches.

The possible signals of Lorentz violation in any experiment can be calculated from the SME. It has therefore proven to be a remarkable tool in the search for Lorentz violation across the landscape of experimental physics. Up until the present, experimental results have taken the form of upper bounds on the SME coefficients. Since the results will be numerically different for different inertial reference frames, the standard frame adopted for reporting results is the Sun-centered frame. This frame is a practical and appropriate choice, since it is accessible and inertial on the time scale of hundreds of years.  Typical experiments seek couplings between the background fields and various particle properties such as spin, or propagation direction. One of the key signals of Lorentz violation arises because experiments on Earth are unavoidably rotating and revolving relative to the Sun-centered frame. These motions lead to both annual and sidereal variations of the measured coefficients for Lorentz violation. Since the translational motion of the Earth around the Sun is nonrelativistic, annual variations are typically suppressed by a factor 10. This makes sidereal variations the leading time-dependent effect to look for in experimental data.  Measurements of SME coefficients have been done with experiments involving:  All experimental results for SME coefficients are tabulated in the Data Tables for Lorentz and CPT Violation.

Standard-Model Extension (SME) is an effective field theory that contains the Standard Model, general relativity, and all possible operators that break Lorentz symmetry. Violations of this fundamental symmetry can be studied within this general framework. CPT violation implies the breaking of Lorentz symmetry, and the SME includes operators that both break and preserve CPT symmetry.

Bei der Standardmodellerweiterung (engl. "Standard-Model Extension", SME) handelt es sich um eine Theorie zur Erweiterung des Standardmodells der Teilchenphysik. Sie ist ein effektives Modell, um etwaige, experimentell feststellbare Lorentz- und CPT-Symmetriebrechungen theoretisch bewerten zu können. Trotz ihres Namens ist die SME nur eine von vielen Theorien, die versuchen Physik jenseits des Standardmodells zu erklären/modellieren. Die SME wurde von Alan Kostelecky und anderen ab den 1990er Jahren entwickelt, nachdem er 1989 mit Stuart Samuel eine mögliche Verletzung der Lorentzsymmetrie in Stringtheorien fand.


Early life.

Harold was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, the second son of Anna Gertrude (Hitz) and Alfred E. Burton. His younger brother was named Felix Arnold Burton.  Harold's father was an engineer and the first Dean of Student Affairs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1902-1921), reporting to the president. He taught at MIT before being selected as dean. As a former explorer, Burton had accompanied Robert Peary on several expeditions to the North Pole.  Harold's mother died young. In 1906, his father married Lena Yates, a poet and artist from England. (She later took the name

Marriage and family.

Burton married Selma Florence Smith in 1912. They had four children: Barbara (Mrs. Charles Weidner), William (who served on the USS

Early career.

After graduation and marriage, Burton moved with his wife to Cleveland and began the practice of law there. However, in 1914, he joined his wife's uncle as a company attorney for Utah Power and Light Company in Salt Lake City. He later worked for Utah Light and Traction, and then for Idaho Power Company and Boise Valley Traction Company, both in

Politics.

In the late 1920s, Burton entered politics as a Republican. He was elected to the East Cleveland Board of Education in 1927 and to the Ohio House of Representatives in 1928. After serving briefly in the Ohio House, he became law director for the City of Cleveland in 1929 before returning to private practice in 1932.  In 1935, Burton was elected mayor of Cleveland. He worked on issues of continuing assimilation of immigrant populations, supporting industry in the

Supreme Court.

Nomination.

Justice Owen J. Roberts announced his resignation from the Supreme Court on June 30, 1945, effective July 31, 1945. Truman decided, as a bipartisan gesture, to appoint a Republican to replace him. He selected Burton as someone whom he knew and respected. Truman announced Burton's nomination on September 19. The nomination was forwarded to the Senate on

Judicial philosophy and working style.

According to biographer Eric W. Rise, Burton appeared to lack an overarching judicial philosophy. He favored judicial restraint and most of his decisions were based on narrow procedural grounds rather than the Constitution. His judicial restraint, however, was informed by his political views, not by a legal philosophy, and he tended to defer to legislative and executive branch judgments because he agreed with them personally. This pragmatism won him the respect of his fellow justices, and served as a unifying influence on the court when the other justices were split on constitutional issues but could come together on technical or procedural grounds.  From 1945 to 1953, Burton was usually in the centrist majority on the court, sometimes finding himself in a slightly more conservative majority on some issues. He was part of the "Vinson bloc", which included

Cold War, loyalty oath, and subversion rulings.

The Cold War led state and federal governments to enact a wide variety of laws and regulations aimed at curbing espionage and subversion. Burton consistently showed deference to government restrictions on free speech, voting to uphold government action 27 out of 28 times. He also wrote several important decisions. His basic approach toward these questions was judicial deference, as exemplified in his strong dissent in "Duncan v. Kahanamoku", 327 U.S. 304 (1946). His first important majority opinion came in "Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath", 341

Church and state.

Generally, Burton favored a strict separation of church and state. But his pragmatic approach to law sometimes caused him to dissent from majorities favoring a strict separation. For example, in "Everson v. Board of Education", 330 U.S. 1 (1947), Justice Hugo Black ruled, 5-to-4, that while the Constitution required a strict separation between church and state, it was constitutionally permissible for a school district to reimburse parents when their children rode public school buses to religious schools so long as all such parents and religions were treated equally. Burton initially was predisposed to declare the law constitutional. Heavy lobbying from justices Felix Frankfurter, Robert H. Jackson, and Wiley Blount Rutledge changed his mind. Burton

Criminal procedure.

Burton was deferential to the state on criminal procedure and law-and-order issues. Beginning with "Betts v. Brady", 316 U.S. 455 (1942), the Supreme Court had ruled in a wide range of cases that except in cases of illiteracy, mental incapacity, or especially complicated cases, defendants did not have an absolute right to be informed of their right to counsel or to have counsel appointed for them by the state. The Court had opportunity to revisit "Betts" in "Bute v. Illinois", 333 U.S. 640 (1948), where a felon appealed his conviction because the trial court had not advised him

Antitrust.

Burton's greatest contribution to Supreme Court jurisprudence came in the area of antitrust law. In "American Tobacco Co. v. United States", 328 U.S. 781 (1946), Burton wrote for a near-unanimous court (Justice Rutledge, concurring) that the Sherman Antitrust Act barred the mere existence of combinations or conspiracies which created monopolistic or oligopolistic market power, regardless of whether that power was actually used. Legal scholar Eugene V. Rostow declared Burton's decision would usher in a new era of swift, effective antitrust enforcement. But Burton's analysis cut both ways. In "United States

Racial segregation.

Burton's other major contribution to Supreme Court jurisprudence came in the area of racial segregation. Burton had been a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1941 to 1945, and was a dependable vote for civil rights on the high court. One of the exceptions was his first civil rights case on the court, "Morgan v. Virginia", 328 U.S. 373 (1946). Burton was the lone dissenter in the case, which involved the racial segregation of interstate buses with curtains. Burton argued that, in the absence of a federal statute, each state should be free to establish its own laws on racial segregation.  After his vote in "Morgan", Court observers believed that Burton could not be counted on to vote to expand or protect civil rights. It surprised legal analysts, then, when Burton joined the unanimous majority in "Shelley v. Kraemer", 334 US 1 (1948), a landmark case that held courts could not enforce covenants in real estate which were racially discriminating.  In a string of votes over the next three years, Burton voted to undermine the "separate but equal" doctrine in "Plessy v. Ferguson", 163 US 537 (1896). He joined the unanimous majority in "Sweatt v. Painter", 339 U.S. 629, in 1950, which held that "separate but equal" professional legal education was unconstitutional. Heman Marion Sweatt, an African American man, was refused admission to the all-white University of Texas School of Law. One of the first cases to find that "separate but equal" was not equal, the case deeply influenced the Court's opinion in "Brown v. Board of Education" four years later. During

Resignation.

By June 1957, Burton began suffering from significant shaking in his hands. As the 1957-1958 term began, his handwriting became difficult to read, and he began taking longer afternoon naps. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The shaking in his left arm had become so severe by the start of 1958 that he decided to retire from the Supreme Court. He informed President Dwight D. Eisenhower of his decision in March. Worried about other domestic and international events, Eisenhower asked Burton to consider staying one more

Retirement.

Following his retirement from the Supreme Court, Burton sat by designation for several years on panels of the United States Court of Appeals for

Legacy.

Cleveland's Main Avenue Bridge was renamed in his honor in 1986.  His papers and other memorabilia are primarily in four collections. Bowdoin College has 750 items including documents concerning 47 judicial opinions; The Hiram College Archives collection holds 69 items. The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress has 187 ft. (120,000 items) consisting mainly of correspondence and legal files. The Western Reserve Historical Society has 10 linear ft. relating mainly to his tenure as mayor of Cleveland; the collection contains correspondence, reports, speeches, proclamations, and newspaper clippings relating to routine administrative matters and topics of special interest during Burton's mayoralty. Other papers repose at various institutions around the country, as part of other collections.

Harold Hitz Burton (June 22, 1888 – October 28, 1964) was an American politician and lawyer. He served as the 45th mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, as a U.S. Senator from Ohio, and as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Harold Hitz Burton (* 22. Juni 1888 in Boston, Massachusetts; † 28. Oktober 1964 in Washington, D.C.) war ein US-amerikanischer Richter und Politiker der Republikanischen Partei. Von 1941 bis 1945 saß er für den US-Bundesstaat Ohio im Senat.


Ancient history.

The ancient history of the Mahra region begins with the formation of the ʿĀd kingdom by an Arab tribe called ʿĀd which settled in South Arabia. The Mehri people are traditionally considered descendants of the ʿĀd Kingdom and blood relatives of the Thamud. According to Islamic genealogies, the forefather of the Mehri people was Ya'rub, the son of Qahtan, grandson of the Prophet Hud, and ancestor of the Himyarite, Qataban and Sabaean kingdoms. Ya'rub (or, by alternate accounts, Ya'rub's son), is sometimes credited with the invention of the Arabic language.  During ancient times, the ʿĀd Kingdom was a transshipment point for the frankincense trade. It was exported mostly to ancient Europe. It has been suggested the ʿĀd Kingdom, and the current location of Mahra Sultanate, were the first places in the world where the camel was domesticated.

Islamic period.

During the first decade of the Islamic calendar (the 620s in the Gregorian calendar), a large delegation from Mahra under the leadership of Mehri bin Abyad went to Medina to meet the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and during that meeting the entire Mehri tribe decided to embrace Islam. Before embracing Islam, the tribe was polytheist and worshiped multiple deities. After the meeting in Medina, Muhammad issued an injunction, stating that the members of the Mehri tribe are true Muslims and no war should be waged against them, and that any violator of the injunction shall be considered to be waging war against Allah.  The entire Mehri tribe became some of the earliest adopters of Islam. Their action had an added bonus as becoming Muslims secured them a political alliance and stable relations with the Muslim leadership in Medina. Prior to embracing Islam, Al-Mahra was a vassal state of the Persian Empire and had been subjected to Persian control for many years. Siding with Medina enabled the Mehri people to break away from Persian control and regain their liberty.

Ridda Wars.

When Muhammad died in the year 632 CE, many Arab tribes, including the Mehri, interpreted his death as the end of Islam, and they abandoned the religion by either reverting to paganism or following certain individuals who claimed prophethood. In 634 CE, the Mehri and other tribes rebelled against Caliph Abu Bakar who became the new leader of the Muslims. In response, he launched a new military campaign against the rebels.  There were not many records about the power structure within the Mehris, however, during the Ridda Wars information regarding the intra-tribal affair was revealed by al-Tabari. According to al-Tabari, before the death of Prophet Muhammad, there was an intra-tribal rivalry within the Mehri tribe, which consisted of two competing factions: the Bani Shakhrah faction and their larger rival, the Bani Muharib. The Bani Muharib, who hailed from Al-Mahra's mountain regions, had the upper hand against their smaller rival.  A Muslim army under the command of Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahl was sent to Al-Mahra to face the Mehri who had turned their back on Islam like many Arab tribes. The Muslim army was too weak to confront the Mehri tribe in battle, and this situation forced Ikrimah to engage in political activity rather than initiating war in Mahra. Ikrimah met with the leadership of the Bani Muharib faction and convinced them to return to Islam. After this event, the army under Ikrimah's command, and the Bani Muharib faction, formed a military alliance against the Bani Shakhrah. The Ridda War in Al-Mahra ended quickly as the newly formed alliance subdued the Bani Shakhrah faction without bloodshed. Islam was once again the only religion in Al-Mahra.

The military legacy of al-Mahra.

The people of al-Mahra played a role in the history of Islam and the Arab world's military achievements during the early years of Islam. The Mehri army participated in the conquest of North Africa and Spain. The Mehri tribe's achievements have been well-documented by historian Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam in his book titled "The History of the Conquests of Egypt and North Africa and Spain".  At the beginning of the Muslim conquest of North Africa, the Al-Mahri tribe mostly contributed cavalry to the army. They played a crucial role in the Arab Muslim army under the command of 'Amr ibn al-'As, who was a well-known Arab military commander and one of the Sahaba ("Companions"). The Al-Mahri army fought alongside him during the Muslim conquest of North Africa, which began with the defeat of the Byzantine imperial forces at the Battle of Heliopolis, and later at the Battle of Nikiou in Egypt in the year 646. The army was a highly skilled cavalry which rode horses and a special camel breed called the Mehri originating from Al-Mahra, and renowned for its speed, agility and toughness. The Al-Mahra contingent spearheaded the army during the conquest of the city of Alexandria.  The Al-Mahra army was nicknamed "the people who kill without being killed" by 'Amr ibn al-'As. Commander 'Amr ibn al-'As was amazed by army's ruthlessly efficient warfare while sustaining minimal casualties.  As a result of Al-Mahri's success in the Muslim conquest of Egypt, its commander named Abd al-sallam ibn Habira al-Mahri was promoted and he was ordered by 'Amr ibn al-'As to lead the entire Muslim army during the conquest of Libya, which at the time was a Byzantine territory. The army under the command Abd al-sallam ibn Habira al-Mahri defeated the Byzantine imperial army, and the campaign which brought a permanent end to Byzantine rule of Libya. After the Muslim conquest of Egypt, Abd al-sallam ibn Habira al-Mahri was once again promoted as a result of his success as a temporary commander of the entire Muslim army, and he was appointed the first Muslim leader of Libya.  During the Second Fitna, more than 600 soldiers carrying the Al-Mahra flag were sent to North Africa to fight the Byzantines and Berbers.  Several centuries later, another Mehri man called Abu Bekr Mohammed Ibn Ammar Al-Mahri Ash-shilbi, who was a politician from modern day Silves, Portugal, became a prime minister of the Taifa of Seville in Islamic Iberia, and served King Al-mu’atamed Ibn Abbad who was member of Mohammedan Dynasties of Spain. Abu Bekr was highly competent as prime minister, but later he crowned himself king and led a failed rebellion against the Mohammedan Dynasties of Spain. In year 1084, Abu Bekr Mohammed Ibn Ammar Al-Mahri Ash-shilbi was caught and executed by the forces of the Kingdom of Seville.  Throughout the Muslim conquest of North Africa the army from Al-Mahra was awarded lands in most of the newly conquered territories. Initially the Mehri tribe was given the region of Jabal Yashkar by the Muslim leadership. This region was located east of the town of Al-Askar which at that time was the capital of Egypt. After the end of Muslim conquest of Egypt in year 641, the Muslim commander 'Amr ibn al-'As established the town of Fustat which became the new capital of Egypt. The army was given additional land in the new capital which then became known as Khittat Mahra or the Mahra quarter in English. This land was used by the Mahra forces as a garrison. The Mahra quarter was named after the residents from Al-Mahra as they were the sole owners of the land. Other Arab tribes which were part of the Muslim conquest of Egypt had to share lands. This is the reason why their lands bore a non-tribal name. The Mahra tribe also shared the al-Raya quarter in Fustat with various tribes who were closely associated with the Prophet Muhammad and, according to historical accounts, the Mahra forces used the al-Raya quarter as a residence and stable for their horses. The Mahra quarter was located close to the Al-Raya quarter was which the absolute centre of the new capital of Fustat.

Mahra Sultanate.

After the erosion of Abbasid authority in Yemen, the tribes of al-Mahra had grown distant from Arabic rule. The Ayyubids of Egypt held loose authority over the region, followed by the Rasulids of western Yemen.

Sultanate of Shihr.

In 1432, the Ba Dujana family took control of the important coastal city of Shihr from the Rasulids, and then successfully repelled a Rasulid counterattack. In 1445, the Ba Dujana defended against an attack by the newly-formed Kathiri state, securing their borders. The independent sultanate at Shihr was the first premodern state in Mahri lands.  Following the collapse of the Rasulid dynasty and the rise of the Tahirids, a number of former dignitaries from Aden came to Shihr as refugees, and told the reigning sultan, Muhammad bin Sa'd, that Aden was ripe for conquest. In 1456, Muhammad bin Sa'd launched a naval invasion of Aden with nine ships; however, much of the fleet was broken up in a storm and bin Sa'd was captured by the Tahirids. In retaliation, the Tahirid sultan sent an army commanded by Zayn al-Sunbuli to occupy Shihr. The campaign was only half-successful, and parts of the area were still held by the Ba Dujana. Determined to break the stalemate, Sultan Malik Amir bin Tahir led a great expedition across the desert coast from Aden to Mahra. Vastly outnumbered, the Ba Dujana retreated from Shihr ahead of the Tahirid advance. The Tahirids plundered the city and installed a governor who was loyal to their interests.  The city of Shihr was once more brought under the control of the Ba Dujana clan in 1478, when it was taken by their young leader, Sa'd bin Faris. Around 1480, the Mahri settled the island of Socotra and used it as a strategic base against their rivals in Hadhramaut. During this time, al-Mahra had been in a near-constant state of war with the Kathiri, who were trying to take control of Shihr. In 1488, the Ba Dujana enlisted the help of their Socotran allies to push the Kathiri out of Shihr once more.

Sultanate of Qishn and Socotra.

Yet the dominance of the Ba Dujana clan would last only for another seven years. In 1495, bouts of infighting between the tribes of Mahra escalated into civil war. The Kathiri sultan, Jafar bin 'Amr, took advantage of the situation to support the Zwedi faction, ensuring the downfall of the Ba Dujana hegemony. After a disastrous defeat at Tabala, on the outskirts of Shihr, the Ba Dujana permanently lost control of the city and were isolated in the interior. They were replaced by the Zwedi and Afrari families of Qishn and Socotra, who, in sacrificing Shihr to the Kathiri state, managed to solidify the core Mahra domain as it would remain, more or less, until the present day.

Arrival of the Portuguese.

In 1507, a Portuguese fleet commanded by Tristão da Cunha and Alfonso de Albuquerque landed on Socotra and, after a bloody battle, seized the main fortress at Suq. Socotra would remain in Portuguese hands until 1511, and was abandoned by the Portuguese due to its poor strategic importance to control de Red Sea.  In 1545, the Kathiri sultan Badr bin Tuwayriq amassed an army and, with support from the Ottoman Turks, conquered Qishn. The Portuguese, who were competing with the Ottomans for control of trade routes in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, bombarded Qishn and returned it to the Mahris.

British protectorate.

In 1862, the Mahra Sultanate signed a protectorate treaty with Great Britain after negotiating with the British government, and later Al-Mahra state became part of the Aden Protectorate. The Aden Protectorate was the British government's effort to secure the trade route to British India. Bringing the area under British control protected a strategically important naval route against the Ottoman Empire. The main point of the treaty was that the rulers retained jurisdiction over their land, and in exchange for British protection, the Al-Mahra sultanate agreed not to enter agreements with, or cede territory to, any other foreign government. Since 1866 the Aden Protectorate meant that nine regions along the Gulf of Aden became vassal states of Great Britain.  In the 1940s Al-Mahra and its neighbouring regions along the Gulf were forced to sign Advisory Treaties, and those who refused were subjected to deadly airstrikes delivered by the British Royal Air force. The Advisory Treaty meant that the local leadership no longer had jurisdiction over their internal affairs, and the treaty gave the British government complete control over the nation's internal affairs and the order of succession. The Advisory Treaties caused resentment against British rule and the spread of Arab Nationalism in Al-Mahra and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula.

The end of the Mahra Sultanate.

During the 1960s the British sustained losses against various Egypt-sponsored guerrilla forces and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY). In 1963 the British government declared a state of emergency in the Aden Protectorate, and by 1967 the British forces had left Yemen as a result of losses against the National Liberation Front (Yemen) which later seized power in Al-Mahra. In 1967, the Al-Mahra sultanate was absorbed by the Marxist People's Republic of South Yemen which itself was an entity heavily sponsored by the Soviets. They put an end to the centuries-old Al-Mahri sultanate. Sultan Issa Bin Ali Al-Afrar Al-Mahri was the last reigning Al-Mahri Sultan of Qishn and Socotra.  The sultanate was abolished in 1967 and was annexed by Soviet supported South Yemen, which itself later united with North Yemen to become unified Yemen in 1990. In 2014 the land which was formerly known as the Mahra Sultanate of Qishn and Socotra was absorbed into a new region called Hadramaut, and this reform has angered many in Al-Mahra who now believe that the Yemeni government is further centralizing its grip on power.

Rulers.

The Sultans of Mahra had the title of "Sultan al-Dawla al-Mahriyya (Sultan Qishn wa Suqutra)". Their descendants are active politicians nowadays.

Mehri camels.

Al-Mahra is home to the Mehri camel which has been integral part Al-Mahra army's military success during the Islamic conquests of Egypt and North Africa against the Byzantine Empire. During the conquests the cavalry unit from Al-Mahra introduced the Mehri camel to northern Africa, and now it is found throughout the area. It is better known as the Mehari camel in most of northern Africa, and is sometimes also known as the Sahel camel.  It is a special breed originating in Al-Mahra. They are renowned for their speed, agility and toughness. They have a large but slender physique, and because of its small hump it is perfectly suited for ridding.  During the colonial period in northern Africa, the French government took advantage of the Mehri camel's proven military capabilities, and established a camel corps called the Méhariste which was part of the Armée d'Afrique. It patrolled the Sahara using the Mehri camel. The French Méhariste camel corps was part of the Compagnies Sahariennes the French Army of the Levant.  In 1968, France's car maker Citroën introduced the Citroën Méhari, which was a light off-road vehicle named after the famous Mehri camel. The Citroën Méhari was a variant of the Citroën 2CV, and Citroën built more than 144,000 Méhari between 1968 and 1988. A new, 2016 electric model called the Citroën E-Méhari is now being sold in Europe; it is a compact SUV like the Méhari.

The Mahra Sultanate, known in its later years as the Mahra State of Qishn and Socotra ( ') or sometimes the Mahra Sultanate of Ghayda and Socotra ( ') was a sultanate that included the historical region of Mahra and the Guardafui Channel island of Socotra in what is now eastern Yemen. It was ruled by the Banu Afrar dynasty for most of its history.

Mahra ist ein historischer Staat in Vorderasien, der auch unter den Namen Sultanat Mahra von Qischn und Sokotra () oder Sultanat Mahra von Ghayda und Sokotra () oder Mahra State bekannt ist. Der Staat umfasste das heutige Gouvernement al-Mahra im Hadramaut und die Inselgruppe Sokotra mit einer Gesamtfläche von 102.045 km2. Die Hauptorte von Mahra waren Qischn im Hadramaut und Tamrida auf der Insel Sokotra.


Plot.

Piano prodigy Ye Xianglun (Jay Chou) lives with his father (Anthony Wong Chau-sang). In 1999, Xianglun transfers into the famous music school, Tamkang (Danjiang) Secondary School, where his father is a teacher. His classmate Qingyi (Alice Tzeng) gives him a campus tour, noting that the piano building will be torn down on graduation day. In the building, he hears a beautiful, mysterious melody ("Secret"), leading him to Lu Xiaoyu (Gwei Lun-mei), another piano student. After class, Xianglun asks Xiaoyu about the song; she tells him it is a secret that cannot be told.  Xianglun and Xiaoyu spending time together in the practice rooms or around town. They share their first kiss after he gives her a rare music score that he won for her at a school piano battle. When Xianglun tells Xiaoyu about the demolition of the piano building on graduation day, she plays him the mysterious song "Secret", telling him never to play it on the piano room's oldest piano. Xiaoyu skips class for days. An undercurrent of jealousy also begins to develop as Qingyi tries to get closer with Xianglun.  In class a few days later, Xianglun passes a note to Xiaoyu asking her to meet him at the practice rooms. However, Qingyi shows up instead, and Xianglun accidentally kisses her since his eyes are closed. He realizes his mistake when the janitor loudly says hello to Xiaoyu outside the door; Xianglun rushes out, but she is already out of sight. He goes to Xiaoyu's home to clear things up, but her mother says she is sick and had dropped out of school a long time ago. She tells Xianglun not to look for her daughter again.  Five months later, graduation day had arrived, with Xianglun set to perform on stage at the graduation ceremony. Qingyi lends him her bracelet to wish him luck. Halfway through the performance, Xianglun sees Xiaoyu by the door, and they share a smile before she quickly leaves. Xianglun abandons the performance and runs outside, chasing down Xiaoyu and embracing her, telling her to wait for him. However, before he goes back, she sees Qingyi's bracelet on his wrist.  When Xianglun goes looking for Xiaoyu after the ceremony a few minutes later, he cannot find her anywhere. Upon asking a few classmates if they had seen the girl he was always with, they are confused and reply that he was always alone. Xianglun begins to have flashbacks to all the times they hung out together, but in those memories, she is missing and he is alone. Desperate for answers, he races to Xiaoyu's house. She is missing, but Xiaoyu's mother gives him a photo of Xiaoyu with his father.  Xianglun rushes home and asks his father about her. The film cuts to a scene with Xiaoyu, in 1979 (20 years ago), speaking with Xianglun's father (her teacher at the time, at the same school). She confesses that she had found a score hidden in the oldest piano on campus, called "Secret", and when she played it on the piano, she had traveled forward in time 20 years and met Xianglun. However, she explains that during her time travels, she can only be seen by the first person she sees, and she doesn't always succeed in seeing Xianglun first, so it appears as though she is missing most days. However, she is now depressed since she had caught him kissing another girl, then saw that girl's bracelet on his wrist. Since she never wants to see him again, she gives the score of "Secret" to Xianglun's father.  Naturally, Xianglun's father thinks the story is ridiculous, and believes she is suffering from some mental illness, a sentiment quickly becoming shared by the entire class of 1979, as well as Xiaoyu's mother.  Back in the present, Xianglun realizes that the music piece that she showed him was "Secret", and could take the pianist into the past or future if played at the right speed, on the old piano. He rushes off to the piano building, which is about to be torn down. At the same time, Xianglun's father retrieves the manuscript of "Secret" that Xiaoyu had given to him for safekeeping, and realizes that Xiaoyu had written a message (20 years ago) to Xianglun on the back, corroborating her stories of time travel. Meanwhile, Xianglun enters the piano room and, as the demolition begins, starts to play "Secret" from memory, remembering Xiaoyu's words, "I always play it fast when I want to go back". He continues playing as the building crashes down around him; just before he is smashed by a wrecking ball, he plays the last note.  The scene cuts to outside the classroom. Xianglun peeks inside, and Xiaoyu looks back at him and smiles. The last scene shows the 1979 graduation photo of Tamkang (Danjiang) Secondary School, with Xianglun and Xiaoyu standing next to each other.

Production.

The film tells a "simple but very beautiful" love story, which Chou denies was adapted from his personal experiences. When the film debuted, Chou admitted that he drew from childhood experience for the plot, although his personal story was not as romantic.  Filming began in January 2007 and was completed in March. Despite previous experience in filming music videos, Chou admits that films are much more challenging due to storyline complexity and time constraints.  Because Chou was worried that people might question if he actually directed the film himself, he even refused veteran director Andrew Lau Wai Keung to visit him during shooting. However, Chou says that he did send a pilot film to Lau afterwards.  Chou has announced his plans to direct a sequel to the film and plans to invite Andy Lau to star in it.

Tribute.

Chou added elements to the film to pay tribute to his high school and his favorite composer, Frédéric Chopin.

Plot analysis.

Time travel.

According to the instructions written in the piano score, there are three conditions involved in the Time travel:  In addition, other conditions are implied:  The conditions of the piano score were rationalised in the following scenarios:  "Supplement": The above-mentioned reason why Xiaoyu was living in 1999 seems to be somewhat complicated. Another simple but unlikely way is, Xiaoyu's mom was mentally shocked by the death of Xiaoyu in 1979, she imagines that Xiaoyu is still alive. So she told Xianglun that Xiaoyu was upstairs.

Music.

A soundtrack album was released by JVR Music on 13 August 2007.

Reception.

According to "Cinema Online", Chou does a better job behind the scenes than in front of the camera. The pace of the story is satisfying, cinematography is beautiful and Chou is able to convey the magic of music: "You leave the cinema with the image of Chou's fingers dancing over the piano keys, creating that extraordinary music. It will be the image of Chou playing the piano one-handed, playing two pianos at the same time, and playing the piano with his upturned face in dream-like bliss. That is what makes this film worth the watch. As I said, its salvation. Music, so it seems, really can be magical."  "LoveHKFilm.com" agrees that Chou is not the best male lead for a romantic role, he is not able to produce the range of emotions needed to touch moviegoers. Instead, the female lead Kwai Lun Mei was praised for her excellent acting. The critic regards the film as a nice, romantic, fairly good picture and that Jay Chou directs with an able hand. Cinematography and art direction was also praised for its beauty, as well as the film score. The critic regards the illogical story as the biggest disadvantage for the film, saying that the plot often does not follow its own rules, creating logical gaps. The supporting actors were found to be boring, with the exception of Anthony Wong, who was praised for his acting diversity. According to the critic, there is a certain chemistry between Chou and Gwei but their dialogues lack depth and emotions, largely due to Chou's inability to act well. He regarded Chou as a likable, charming presence but utterly without any passion on screen, being too distant in his emotions.  "Asianmovieweb" is surprised to see Chou as a good director but dismisses him as an actor. The soundtrack is praised for its beauty as well as the cinematography and the attention Chou paid to tiny details. The critic also mentioned the logical gaps in the story being very distracting.  "Variety" thought the film was surprisingly good, with decent acting and praised the music as well. The critic sees South Korean cinematic influences in "Secret" and compared the style of the film to early Hollywood pictures from the 1940s and Taiwanese pictures from the 1970s.  "movieXclusive.com" states that it is rare to see such a well directed picture from a musician-turned-director but Chou is able to "pull it off". Casting choices were praised especially with regard to Anthony Wong and Kwai Lun Mei, the latter being praised for her ability to create a secretive air around herself. The best part of the film according to the critic is the "onslaught of piano performances" that were compared to action scenes of Jet Li and Tony Jaa. However, the critic was not satisfied with the editing and pacing of the film but nevertheless regarded the film as a successful piece of art.  "Combustible Celluloid" named "Secret" one of the "most enchanting, captivating features" of the 2008 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Remake.

In March 2017, it was announced that Hive Media optioned the rights for a South Korean remake, with the main protagonists changed from senior high schoolers to music college students. The film is expected to enter into production in 2018.

Awards and nominations.

"Secret" won three awards out of seven nominations from the 44th Golden Horse Awards in 2007 and 27th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2008.

Secret () is a 2007 Taiwanese film. It is the directorial debut feature film of Taiwanese musician Jay Chou, who also stars as the male lead and co-wrote the film. In addition to himself, the film also stars Gwei Lun-mei and Anthony Wong. Filming was conducted at Tamkang High School, New Taipei City, Taiwan, which is also the alma mater of Jay Chou. The budget was about NT$65 million.

Secret () ist ein taiwanischer Liebes/Fantasyfilm aus dem Jahr 2007. Jay Chou gab darin sein Debüt als Regisseur und Drehbuchautor und übernahm auch die Hauptrolle sowie einen Großteil der Musik.


Background.

The term "search neutrality" in context of the internet appears as early as March 2009 in an academic paper by Andrew Odlyzko titled, "Network Neutrality, Search Neutrality, and the Never-ending Conflict between Efficiency and Fairness in Markets". In this paper, Odlykzo predicts that if net neutrality were to be accepted as a legal or regulatory principle, then the questions surrounding search neutrality would be the next controversies. Indeed, in December 2009 the New York Times published an opinion letter by Foundem co-founder and lead complainant in an anti-trust complaint against Google, Adam Raff, which likely brought the term to the broader public. According to Raff in his opinion letter, search neutrality ought to be "the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance". On October 11, 2009, Adam and his wife Shivaun launched SearchNeutrality.org, an initiative dedicated to promoting investigations against Google's search engine practices. There, the Raffs note that they chose to frame their issue with Google as "search neutrality" in order to benefit from the focus and interest on net neutrality.  In contrast to net neutrality, answers to such questions, as "what is search neutrality?" or "what are appropriate legislative or regulatory principles to protect search neutrality?", appear to have less consensus. The idea that neutrality means equal treatment, regardless of the content, comes from debates on net neutrality. Neutrality in search is complicated by the fact that search engines, by design and in implementation, are not intended to be neutral or impartial. Rather, search engines and other information retrieval applications are designed to collect and store information (indexing), receive a query from a user, search for and filter relevant information based on that query (searching/filtering), and then present the user with only a subset of those results, which are ranked from most relevant to least relevant (ranking). "Relevance" is a form of bias used to favor some results and rank those favored results. Relevance is defined in the search engine so that a user is satisfied with the results and is therefore subject to the user's preferences. And because relevance is so subjective, putting search neutrality into practice has been so contentious.  Search neutrality became a concern after search engines, most notably Google, were accused of search bias by other companies. Competitors and companies claim search engines systematically favor some sites (and some kind of sites) over others in their lists of results, disrupting the objective results users believe they are getting.  The call for search neutrality goes beyond traditional search engines. Sites like Amazon.com and Facebook are also accused of skewing results. Amazon's search results are influenced by companies that pay to rank higher in their search results while Facebook filters their newsfeed lists to conduct social experiments.

"Vertical search" spam penalties.

In order to find information on the Web, most users make use of search engines, which crawl the web, index it and show a list of results ordered by relevance. The use of search engines to access information through the web has become a key factor for online businesses, which depend on the flow of users visiting their pages. One of these companies is Foundem. Foundem provides a "vertical search" service to compare products available on online markets for the U.K. Many people see these "vertical search" sites as spam. Beginning in 2006 and for three and a half years following, Foundem's traffic and business dropped significantly due to what they assert to be a penalty deliberately applied by Google. It is unclear, however, whether their claim of a penalty was self-imposed via their use of iframe HTML tags to embed the content from other websites. At the time at which Foundem claims the penalties were imposed, it was unclear whether web crawlers crawled beyond the main page of a website using iframe tags without some extra modifications. The former SEO director OMD UK, Jaamit Durrani, among others, offered this alternative explanation, stating that “Two of the major issues that Foundem had in summer was content in iFrames and content requiring javascript to load – both of which I looked at in August, and they were definitely in place. Both are huge barriers to search visibility in my book. They have been fixed somewhere between then and the lifting of the supposed ‘penalty’. I don't think that's a coincidence.”  Most of Foundem’s accusations claim that Google deliberately applies penalties to other vertical search engines because they represent competition. Foundem is backed by a Microsoft proxy group, the 'Initiative for Competitive Online Marketplace'.

The Foundem’s case chronology.

The following table details Foundem's chronology of events as found on their website:

Other cases.

Google's large market share (85%) has made them a target for search neutrality litigation via antitrust laws. In February 2010, Google released an article on the Google Public Policy blog expressing their concern for fair competition, when other companies at the UK joined Foundem's cause (eJustice.fr, and Microsoft's Ciao! from Bing) also claiming being unfairly penalized by Google.

The FTC’s Investigation into Allegations of Search Bias.

After two years of looking into claims that Google “manipulated its search algorithms to harm vertical websites and unfairly promote its own competing vertical properties,” the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted unanimously to end the antitrust portion of its investigation without filing a formal complaint against Google. The FTC concluded that Google's “practice of favoring its own content in the presentation of search results” did not violate U.S. antitrust laws. The FTC further determined that even though competitors might be negatively impacted by Google's changing algorithms, Google did not change its algorithms to hurt competitors, but as a product improvement to benefit consumers.

Arguments.

There are a number of arguments for and against search neutrality.

Related issues.

According to the Net Neutrality Institute, as of 2018, Google’s "Universal Search" system uses, by far the least neutral search engine practices, and following the implementation of Universal Search websites, such as MapQuest, the company experienced a massive decline in web traffic. This decline has been attributed to Google linking to its own services rather than the services offered at external websites. Despite these claims, Google actually displays Google content on the first page, while rival search engines do not considerably less often than Microsoft's Bing which displays Microsoft content when rivals do not. Bing displays Microsoft content in first place more than twice as often as Google shows Google content in first place. This indicates that as far as there is any 'bias', Google is less biased than its principal competitor.

Search neutrality is a principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance. This means that when a user types in a search engine query, the engine should return the most relevant results found in the provider's domain (those sites which the engine has knowledge of), without manipulating the order of the results (except to rank them by relevance), excluding results, or in any other way manipulating the results to a certain bias. Search neutrality is related to network neutrality in that they both aim to keep any one organization from limiting or altering a user's access to services on the Internet. Search neutrality aims to keep the organic search results (results returned because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to results sponsored by advertising) of a search engine free from any manipulation, while network neutrality aims to keep those who provide and govern access to the Internet from limiting the availability of resources to access any given content.

Suchneutralität ist eine Bezeichnung für die neutrale Funktionsweise von Suchmaschinen im Internet. Sie bedeutet, dass Suchmaschinen keine redaktionellen Richtlinien haben sollten, abgesehen davon, dass ihre Ergebnisse umfassend und unparteiisch sind und ausschließlich auf Relevanz beruhen.


Pricing and features.

Windows Phone Store supported credit card purchases, operator billing, and ad-supported content. The store also featured a "try-before-you-buy" option, where the user had an option to download a trial or demo for a commercial app. Other features are said to be similar to Windows Phone Store's predecessor, Windows Marketplace for Mobile. The Windows Phone Store had 61 categories split up into 16 main categories and 25 sub-categories. Apps could only be placed in one category. Windows Phone Store also featured downloads for 3D games that will have integrated Xbox Live connectivity and features. The ability to download a XAP file to a computer was also present, allowing a user to install an app from their SD card if no internet access was available.  Developers had to pay an annual subscription fee of $99 to become an App Hub member and submit apps to the Windows Phone Store. This, according to Todd Brix, the General Manager for Windows Phone Apps and Store team, was on an ongoing promotion at $19. There was a limit of 100 free submissions for free apps; thereafter, there was a fee of $19.99 per submission for free apps. Developers could also choose to work with OEMs to deploy their apps; this would allow apps to be preinstalled on Windows Phone devices or be exclusive to that specific OEM's products. This process was used by Microsoft Mobile (formerly Nokia) for apps specific to Lumia devices (including Lumia Camera, HERE Maps, and MixRadio). OEM-exclusive apps were deployed and available to end-users in a separate channel available only on OEM-specific hardware. Most Windows Phone OEMs have a category, such as "Lumia Collection" (formerly "Nokia Collection"), "Samsung Zone", "HTC Apps" and "Huawei Selected" for this purpose.  A user could download games and apps from the Windows Phone Store; if an Xbox live account is enabled, the store could be accessed remotely from the phone itself. Microsoft had lined up a wide range of popular games to be available from the launch of Windows Phone 7. Also at Gamescom, Microsoft unveiled more than 50 premium Windows Phone 7 games and apps that used the Xbox Live mobile connection.  Windows Phone Store grew swiftly since its launch and by February 2012, it had outgrown Blackberry App World with 70,000 apps available (a milestone that Blackberry App World passed in March 2012). In June 2012, after 20 months, Windows Phone Marketplace has reached 100,000 apps. The growth to achieve 100,000 apps was faster than Android with 24 months, but slower than iOS with 16 months. The number ramped up to 150,000 in December 2012, followed by 200,000 in December 2013. Windows Phone Store contained more than 300,000 apps in August 2014.

Content restrictions.

Apps in Windows Phone Store are subjected to a content policy, which exists to guide app developers, and to facilitate a restriction or banning of certain content. Examples of restricted or banned content include pornography, promotion of violence, discrimination, hate, or the usage of drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Suggestions or depictions of prostitution, sexual fetishes, or generally anything that "a reasonable person would consider to be adult or borderline adult content" are forbidden from the marketplace, even after the unification with Windows Store.

Windows Phone 7 SDK.

Windows Phone 7 development is based on Silverlight, XNA, and the.NET Compact Framework. The primary tools used for development are Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend. Excluding unlocked developer devices, Windows Phone 7 only runs mobile apps that have first been approved by Microsoft and are only available via Windows Phone Store. Developers earn 70% of their app revenue and can include an advertising model built into their apps. However, in some countries, the share is only 56.1% when the customer purchases with methods covered by the "Commerce Expansion Adjustment". Students can submit apps free of charge through the DreamSpark program.

Windows Phone 8 SDK.

Apps for Windows Phone 8 can be developed either in native code or managed code, using Visual C#, Visual Basic.NET and Visual C++. Microsoft has deprecated XNA in favor of DirectX for Windows Runtime. The phone emulator in the SDK is also changed to use Hyper-V, which requires at least Windows 8 Pro or Windows Server 2012, in addition to hardware-assisted virtualization. A subset of Windows Runtime objects allow code reuse on Windows 8 and later. A subset of the traditional Windows API is also available. Finally, use of third-party frameworks such as Unity is also supported. For a time, developers could develop Windows Phone 7 apps using the Windows 7 SDK and they would still be compatible with Windows Phone 8.

Windows Phone App Studio.

Windows Phone App Studio was a one stop source for rapid app building for Windows Phone. With couple of configuration steps (complying with "separation of concerns"), users can generate a production-ready app for Windows Store. Once all the configuration and look and feel is set, this online studio let you publish the app directly to Windows Phone Store. Windows Phone App Studio make it significantly easy for non-developers to publish homebrew or small business apps without indulging them in source code or hiring a developer, it can be leveraged as a starting point for professional developers for boilerplate code generation. Once all the configuration is made, in addition to publishing the app, the user can actually download the Visual Studio project for advanced editing. This opens a new paradigm for rapid development, where the developers get initial assertion from clients in the form of readymade prototype code. The service is free of cost and requires to sign in with Microsoft Account. Windows Phone App Studio was later renamed to Windows App Studio which serves as unified app studio across all Windows devices.

Merger with Windows Store.

In Q2 2015, Microsoft launched Windows 10 Mobile, at which point Windows Phone Store was merged with Windows Store.

Windows Phone Store (previously Windows Phone Marketplace) is a former app store, developed by Microsoft for its Windows Phone. It was launched along with Windows Phone 7 in October 2010. With the rollout of Windows Phone 7.5, Microsoft unveiled the online Marketplace that offers silent, over the air installation of apps. In August 2012, Microsoft rebranded Windows Phone Marketplace to Windows Phone Store. In 2015, Microsoft announced that Windows Phone Store would be phased out and replaced by Windows Store which would act as a unified store for all Windows-powered devices. This process was complemented by the Apps on Windows website, an interim solution before the unified Windows Store.

Der Windows Phone Store (ehemals Windows Phone Marketplace) war ein App Store für das Smartphone-OS Windows Phone von Microsoft und wurde am 16. Dezember 2019 abgeschaltet.